When we were in Lumbini at the end of December, we visited different monasteries every day. The site at Lumbini is reserved for building monasteries, with Buddhist associations (and even governments) from around the world building their style of monastery and temple there.
http://picasaweb.google.de/craigmeulen/Lumbini03TheMonasteries
An interesting thing happened on Sunday, although it was not the happiest occasion. I was invited to a Hindu funeral.
A young woman who was very active in the Esperanto association in Nepal had died, and it was her funeral. Although I didn't know her, I was allowed to attend her funeral. It was obviously sad, but an honour to experience this part of the culture that most people don't get to see.
She was very young - in her mid-twenties - and had gone to America to do her PhD studies. At New Year she was with some other students from the Indian sub-continent and they had a car crash. Two of them died. May they rest in peace (Christian culture), or receive a very auspicious re-birth (Hindu culture)
The Hindu tradition is to burn the body on a funeral pyre (a big pile of wood.) In Kathmandu there is a very famous funeral site on the banks of the main river. Many tourists go there, but I didn't feel like a tourist on Sunday.
There are some photos on the website of the Esperanto group. If you are too sensitive, don't look at them: it might be a culture shock to see the photo of her lying there and her father setting light to the pyre.
In the Teachings 03 post I mentioned a modern Bhutanese master. His name is Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse Rinpoche. I am very inspired by the way he speaks and teaches and I want to recommend you a book he has written because it is a very good introduction to Buddhism (and I know a lot of you are very curious about this).
The book is called:
"What makes you not a Buddhist?"
and for the Germans among you:
"Weshalb Sie kein Buddhist sind?"
It's a very thin book (only 128 pages in the English edition) and it is easy to read, full of irony and humour, and full of very modern examples.
He bases the book on the "four seals" spoken by the Buddha himself. (Understand 'seal' here like the red wax people put on letters in the old days to confirm that the letter was authentic.)
1) All composite things are impermanent.
2) All emotions are pain.
3) All things have no inherent existence.
4) Nirvana is beyond concepts.
If we look at these, we see that they are simple statements of fact. They are not moral guidelines or commandments: they do not tell you what to do. They are simply statements of wisdom describing how Buddha saw the world after he gained enlightenment. Let's look at them in a little more detail:
1) A composite is something that is made of other things. A table is made of wood and nails. The tea you drink is made of leaves and water. You are made of flesh and bones. The view out of your window is made of light hitting the trees and then hitting the cells in your eyes which react and send a message to the cells in your brain. The feeling of happiness you have when you sit at your table and drink your tea while you look out of the window is made of all these things, plus a few hormones and some past experiences that made you happy.
But all of these things (table, tea, you, view, feeling) are impermanent: they will change. The table will break some day; the tea disappears when you drink it; you are changing all the time and eventually you will die; and the view out of your window is undoubtedly different depending on the time of day and the weather. Feelings are very impermanent, I'm sure you will agree.
2) In fact, Buddha went further on the subject of feelings: not only are they all impermanent, but they are all 'dukha'. This Sanskrit word is often translated as 'suffering' or 'pain'. You might think this is very depressing, but Buddha did not mean it in a depressing way. Buddha's path is a path to show you that all of your emotions are based on some cause and conditions: something made you happy, something made you sad. It might be a long chain of causes: you have good memories of the countryside from your childhood so you rent a flat with a view of the countryside from the window; many people were involved in producing, transporting and selling the tea, as well as building a modern water system that makes it possible to drink a cup of tea easily; imagine how unhappy you would be if you didn't have a table in your kitchen and had to work on the floor all the time. All these factors contribute to your 'happiness' as you drink your cup of tea: if any one of them were to change, perhaps you would no longer be as happy. So what Buddha means with 'dukha' is this: if your happiness is not 'pure' and independent of everything, then it will end. When happiness ends, you suffer. Of course, this suffering will also end, and you will be happy again. But that will end, and you will suffer again. This endless cycle of changing emotions is one way of looking at 'samsara': Buddha's word for the world as we normally see it. It is a 'cyclic existence', and the enlightenment that Buddha experienced was nothing other than a view of the way to get out of this cycle.
(I'll continue with the third and fourth seals in my next Teachings post.)
I never continued the series of 'Teachings' posts to this blog. Why was that? Well, to be quite honest, the philosophical class is so difficult to understand that I have no idea how I can explain it to you! A lot of the time I don't understand myself what is going on.
We have the "root text": the Madhyamakavatara (written in the seventh century). Then our Khenpo reads the author's commentary about the root text and then Khenpo explains things himself, too. But that isn't enough to fully understand. So I have two other commentaries: one written by a Tibetan scholar in the second half of the 19th century, and one from a very modern Bhutanese teacher who made this commentary about 8 years ago.
So if I have time to read all of them, I usually manage to understand something! But please forgive me if I can't find a way of telling you about it all.
