Thanks to Gene Smith
Monday, February 7, 2011 at 12:25PM
Gene Smith dedicated his life
to preserving Tibet’s literary heritage, and played a key role in its
survival. In December he passed away, at the age of 74. Janet Gyatso
remembers the man and his historic contribution.
Gene Smith was an academic maverick and
preeminent pioneer of Tibetan Studies who singlehandedly preserved for
posterity the vast heritage of Tibet’s texts on philosophy, history, and
culture. For decades, he had been recognized by scholars around the
world as the de facto dean of
Tibetan Studies and held in the highest regard due to his extraordinary
accomplishments in protecting and sharing Tibet’s imperiled literary
treasures and his dedication to making Tibetan literature universally
accessible. Smith had extensive knowledge of Tibetan religious history,
and provided generous assistance to scholars worldwide for more than
forty years.
EditorInside Art, with Kay Larson
Monday, February 7, 2011 at 11:44AM
Grain of Emptiness
An exhibition at the Rubin Museum of Art
An exhibition at the Rubin Museum of Art
In its timely wisdom, the Rubin Museum of Art
in Manhattan is asking interesting questions about the soft landing
being achieved as the Buddha sets a gentle foot in Western culture. The
traditional imprint of his teachings, as we know, is an emptiness (a
footprint) given form by the stone that contains and defines it. Grain of Emptiness,
the first exhibition of internationally renowned contemporary artists
at a museum usually vibrating with brilliant thangkas, plays with that
image. What is the form, what is the emptiness, in the transmission of
the buddhadharma into the minds and lives of artists?
The Worst Place in the World
Monday, February 7, 2011 at 11:41AM
By Roberta Werdinger
In May of 1995, I found myself standing with my
father, a Polish Jew who had lost his entire birth family in the
Holocaust, at the threshold of the worst place in the world. We had
travelled to northern Austria, along with thousands of others, for the
fiftieth anniversary of the liberation of the Mauthausen concentration
camp, a place he knew only too well. A chartered bus had let us off in
what once was a quarry. Prisoners—starving, brutalized, and freezing—had
been made to carry rocks up this path, the very path we were walking.
If they failed, they were made to run to the camp fence and summarily
shot.
Ask the Teachers
Monday, February 7, 2011 at 11:39AM
Question: I am a
Zen Buddhist practitioner, and I live many states away from the order
with which I practice, so most of the time I practice alone, even though
there is a large community of Tibetan Buddhists and teachers nearby. I
feel an affinity with Zen Buddhism, and I wonder about that attachment.
Am I missing something by not opening myself to the teachings of those
where I live?
Narayan Liebenson Grady: I
don’t think it’s a question of missing something, unless you feel it
would be beneficial to have a community to practice with that’s
geographically closer so you are not so alone. I see this more as an
affinity based on one’s karma, and the inclination to practice in one
tradition over another to be an alignment with a particular vocabulary,
set of rituals, and atmosphere. Often it is our connection to a teacher
that draws us into a particular tradition.
Zazen That Amounts to Nothing
Monday, February 7, 2011 at 11:36AM
True zazen is not for the sake of seeing positive results, says Kosho Uchiyama.
You can’t practice true zazen if your practice
is for the sake of seeing positive results. There are many who say, “I
once practiced zazen and felt clear-headed and I want to experience that
feeling again,” or, “After my first Zen retreat, the landscape
completely changed—everything sparkled. However, I’ve never experienced a
similar feeling since then.”
Book Briefs
Thursday, February 3, 2011 at 1:47PM
The Caves of Dunhuang (Dunhuang Academy and
London Editions 2010) by Fan Jinshi is a rare glimpse into one of the
great artistic achievements of human history. With spectacular
photographs that reveal the caves’ murals and sculptures in magnificent
detail, this is a book to get lost in. The art and architecture of the
Dunhuang caves, which were excavated by hand between the fourth and the
fourteenth centuries, contains a dazzling array of styles and subject
matter, from Daoist-inspired early Chan topics to multi-armed tantric
deities dancing in sexual union. The author, a Chinese scholar who has
been leading research at Dunhuang for decades, packs the book with short
essays describing the history, architecture, sculpture, styles and
content of the murals, and includes also a chapter on conservation and
on the library cave, which was discovered sealed in 1900 and yielded
tens of thousands of texts that changed the way we understand Chinese
and Tibetan Buddhism.
The Upside of Money Troubles
Thursday, February 3, 2011 at 1:39PM
Carolyn Rose Gimian reminds us
that our difficulties with money are valuable opportunities for working
with our mind and strengthening our practice.
Working with money is a challenging and
somewhat inescapable practice. Do you have enough to live on? Do you
need more to buy a new (fill in the blank)? Should you give some money
to charity? We all grapple with such questions in everyday life, whether
we’re living a frugal existence or a lavish one. Relating with money is
also a powerful source of emotional upheavals. Money or lack thereof
can quickly put you in touch with desire, aggression, envy, jealousy,
anxiety and fear—and many other juicy feelings.
Practicing Financial Awareness
Thursday, February 3, 2011 at 1:33PM
Laura Jomon Martin suggests ways to identify
our habitual patterns and attitudes around money and to foster a more
generous outlook.
There is neither virtue in what is meager;
nor evil in what is bountiful. Regardless of wealth or poverty, when the
mind of greed arises people lose their beautiful minds. The buddha mind
is the mind that knows what is sufficient.
—Eihei Dogen
Lay Buddhist practice affords us a wide
latitude in which to practice and learn what is sufficient. In
householder life, we can cut our expenses to the bone and throw all our
belongings in a river, or we can live in some other extreme, spending
money for things and experiences that cause more problems in our lives
or the lives of others. Regardless of how we express our lives
financially, observing our behavior with money reveals how we approach
everything—shining a light on our assumptions, habits, relationships.
Happiness in Every Breath
Thursday, February 3, 2011 at 1:31PM
When we stop feeding our cravings, says Thich Nhat Hanh, we discover that we already have everything we need to be happy.
The human mind is always searching for
possessions and never feels fulfilled. This causes impure actions ever
to increase. Bodhisattvas, however, always remember the principle of
having few desires. They live a simple life in peace in order to
practice the Way and consider the realization of perfect understanding
as their only career.
The Buddha said that craving is like holding a
torch against the wind; the fire will burn you. When someone is thirsty
and drinks only salty water, the more he drinks, the thirstier he
becomes. If we run after money, for example, we think that a certain
amount of money will make us happy. But once we have that amount, it’s
not enough; we think we need more. There are people who have a lot of
money, but they are not happy at all. The Buddha said that the object of
our craving is like a bone without flesh. A dog can chew and chew on
that bone and never feel satisfied.
Lighten Up