Unicode : its time has come.

Downloads from visiblemantra.org

Times Ext Roman
Self installing Windows font, just double click.

Jayarava's Indic Keyboard Map
zipped archive with map files, and some documentation on installation.

I'm fairly sure that these files are virus free but do your own scan.

They work for me but may not work for you

I've started to use Unicode a lot more in this and other places. In fact you will need to use Unicode to read this post. What is it, and why use it? Unicode is a standard for the encoding of letters and other written characters. In the old days the Americans (bless 'em) created a standard way of encoding English which is known by it's acronym: ASCII. Each letter was a assigned a number and this made encoding text much easier for computers. ASCII used one byte (8 bits) which gave it a limit of 256 characters. This just about does it for English, but of course many other languages are in use in the world, and some of them don't stick to the plain Roman characters familiar to English language speakers. Unicode solves this problem by using two bytes giving 256 x 256 = 65536 possibilities. Even this places limits, but it does mean that encoding non-Roman scripts is a possibility, and it also allows us to use a full range of diacritic marks - which is where it gets interesting for me.

I falteringly read Pāli, and I use a lot of Pāli and Sanskrit terms in my writing. Diacritics do matter in the writing of Indic languages. For instance the retroflex unvoiced stop ( ṭ ) is different from the dental unvoiced stop ( t ). Compare them in Devanāgarī for instance: ट and त are not at all alike, and are clearly distinguished in pronunciation. However in the early days of popular writing about Buddhism, publishers, who did not have readily available fonts to cope with the diacritics, nor proof readers who knew what they meant, just decided to do without them. Unfortunately this became the fashion. Scholars used them of course and this became a bit of a dividing line - serious Buddhist writing uses diacritics, but popular Buddhism does not. There is no good reason to continue this, but it's become a habit.

Until quite recently the internet reinforced this bad habit. HTML simply could not cope with anything other than ASCII (and it's one byte descendants). Several ASCII based encoding systems were invented. Let's say I want to write paṭicca-samuppāda. Two of the common methods of doing it in text look like this:

velthuis: pa.ticca-samuppaada
ITRANS: paTicca-samuppAda

Neither is very easy to read compared to properly printed text. Real problems emerge for nasals ṅ, ñ, and ṇ, and the sibilants ṣ and ś. One way around the problem was to create a special font that had to be installed before pages could be read. This works OK, but these home-made fonts use parts of the ascii scheme that are seldom used in English, and they do it idiosyncratically so that they are not interchangeable. If I use the Vipassana Research Institute font that comes with their CD of the Pāli Canon I get this if I change fonts:

VriRoman Pali: paµicca-samupp±da

Unicode solves this problem, and it is getting easier to use. On my visiblemantra.org website I used to hand code all of the extra characters. So for example ṭ = &#7789 and ā = &#257. This is time consuming, taxes the memory, and makes the source code difficult to read, but it results in a full set of Indic letters. And what's more the will display correctly in any Unicode font.

Unicode has not completely superseded the old style ASCII fonts. Since the sequence that contains the numbers and upper and lower case Roman letters are the same, for most people there is no incentive to change. We have our favourite fonts and we don't want to change. And actually there are still not many Unicode fonts to choose from. Windows and Mac both ship with a couple of Unicode fonts (For Windows Arial Unicode MS and Lucinda Sans Unicode) but not a version of Times Roman. Some fonts only implement a subset of the Unicode character set - so Times New Roman does have some extra characters, but not all the ones we need for Sanskrit.

When I set up visiblemantra.org I made the decision to use diacritics throughout the site. I believe that it is important to accurately represent the mantras. So you can't really read the site without setting a Unicode font in your browser options. I'm an early adopter and this will mean that some of the 200 or so visitors each day cannot read some of the text, but I hope I am making it more sensible for everyone to start using Unicode. Its a bit like DVDs or any of those new technologies. Some people hold out for as long as they can, but there comes a time when it just makes more sense to go with the new. I believe the time has come. I have used the occasion diacritic on this site before, but fudged it at times by leaving them off. From now on I plan to use diacritics all the time - which is to say that I intend to spell Sanskrit and Pāli words as they should be (taking into account my appalling spelling of course).

Two things have made the difference for me. Firstly I managed to get hold of a copy of the Windows Unicode font Times Ext Roman which has all the diacritics I need, and looks good both on screen and printed. Secondly I discovered how easy it is to make a keyboard map so I can type them whatever application I am using. I'm making both the font and the keyboard map available on visiblemantra.org, and I'd encourage everyone who reads this to go ahead and make the jump. I also have both a rough, and a detailed, guide to how to pronounce the letters of Sanskrit on visiblemantra.org.

Here's the Sanskrit alphabet in all its glory:

a ā i ī u ū e ai o au aṃ aḥ ṛ ṝ ḷ ḹ ka kha ga gha ṅa ca cha ja jha ña ṭa ṭha ḍa ḍha ṇa ta tha da dha na pa pha ba bha ma ya ra la va śa ṣa sa ha kṣa

See what you've been missing? (Hint: if not set your browser font to Unicode!)

A selection of fabulous Resources which rely on Unicode can be found at the following locations:

• Visible Mantra
  
• Tipiṭaka (Burmese Ed.)
• Pāli Canon Online Database (Thai Ed.)
• PTS Pāli English Dictionary
• Digital Sanskrit Buddhist Canon
• Göttingen Register of Electronic Texts in Indian Languages

Violence and the Media

Memory Alpha

I've always loved reading science fiction, and enjoy science fiction movies and TV shows. My friends and I club together to buy seasons of Star Trek. Lately I've also seen some of the remade Battlestar Galactica and a new series called Heros. In these more recent shows there has definitely been a change in the way violence is depicted. It is more graphic, the obvious intent is to make it seem more real. It is more frequent. It is also more violent. Season three of Star Trek Next Generation, which I am watching at present, seems quite innocent by comparison.

Since my ordination retreat I have become a lot more sensitised to violence in the media. I find now that I cannot bear to watch much on the screen. The emotional response is too strong. I've also become aware of how violence is hyped in other media. Even the much vaunted BBC news focusses in on the most violent and shocking news. Perhaps their coverage is a little more sophisticated than a tabloid, but the tendency is to highlight stories which are violent - wars, disasters with many dead, mass murder, violent crime. These stories get the lead, and they are lingered over.

It is my firm conviction that the purpose of the media is to entertain. Fullstop. I no longer believe that "the news" is an exception to this. Stories are chosen on their potential for stimulating an emotional response, and written in such a way as to get the maximum emotion response from the target audience. It's all about creatingwhat physiologists call "arousal" . Violent images, whether intended as entertainment, or as "news", do have an affect on us even if the effect is below the threshold of consciousness.

Constant stimulation is not good for us. One only has to consider that in the UK mental health problems have replaced back-pain as the the no.1 cause of time off work sick, and of people on incapacity benefits. The thing about a fast pace of life is that our bodies cannot get back to their optimum resting state. My current understanding of depression is that it results from over-stimulation and an inability to process the physical effects of that stimulation. I recall an experiment we did in the 6th form on earthworms. Poke a worm and it writhes about vigorously in something analogous to our fight or flight response - it is making itself difficult to catch and eat. Wait till it stops and poke it again and it will respond with less vigour. Repeat this and the worm gives less response until after only 3 or 4 times it is unable to response to being poked. The lesson here is that constantly provoking a fight or flight response wears you out. I believe this is why depressed people avoid contact and anything stimulating - at worst they lie in bed in darkened rooms not moving.

Whether you realise it or not seeing violent images produces arousal in the body. This is generally short of the fully fledged fight or flight response. It can be sustained over longer periods and with more repetition. But it's clear that for many people it is happening too much, too often.

The knee jerk Buddhist reaction is to say that violence is a breach of the first precept, and violent images are in the same category. I think there is some truth to this, but it seems to me that it is more helpful to take a different tack. The Buddha liked to point out that the unenlightened are obsessed with, intoxicated by, totally caught up in sensual experiences - including the mind-sense. The Enlightened still have sensory experiences, but they have unhooked themselves emotionally from these. They are no longer caught up in the show, they no longer suspend disbelief. If everyday experience is intoxicating, then the media is like amphetamines, and media violence like crack cocaine.

Like any addict we do get a "hit", some kind of pay off, from the drug. Thanks to Will Buckingham of thinkbuddha.org I recently read Cordelia Fine's little book A Mind of it's Own. In it she makes the point that physiologically speaking it virtually impossible to tell the difference between emotions: her example focuses on fear and anger which are physically indistinguishable. The only difference is in your thoughts apparently. Emotion, she says, is arousal + emotional thoughts. What seems to be happening in the West is that we are seeking out more and more stimulating experiences, at the same time as substituting virtual contact via the internet, email, and virtual reality games, for real human contact. The media reflects this desire for more intense and more frequent stimulation. However this is a characteristic of addictive substances also - the addict needs more frequent, and higher strength doses, in order to get the same effect. Overdose is not uncommon because of this.

The Buddha's advice for those unable to disentangle themselves from sensory experience was to apply appamāda (vigilance*), and guard the gates of the sense; or as my teacher Sangharakshita says: reduce input. I decline to watch violence violent images in the media these days as I can tell that they have a lasting deleterious effect on my mental health.

Live long, and prosper.

~~oOo~~

* appamāda can be translated more literally as not blind drunk on the objects of the senses. I expand on this a bit in my essay on the Buddha's last words.

More on Confession

I've been following up my research into confession in Early Buddhism. It is clear from the Pali texts that no one short of Awakening is expected to be able to act ethically at all times. So there are procedures for monastics which deal with confession in quit some detail. As I mentioned in my earlier blog post on the confession of Ajatasattu, there are also some paradigms for confession which are not specifically for monastics. A model is put forward in a sutta in the Anguttara Nikaya (A i.103).

The first step is to realises that you have done something wrong. Often Buddhists will insist that there is no right and wrong, that actions are skilful or unskilful. Right and wrong create a too rigid dichotomy. The texts do however talk about "faults" and "transgressions". Transgression is quite a good word because it reminds us that we measure our behaviour against the scale of the ethical precepts that we take on as Buddhists. The Pali word is accayo which literally means "going on, or beyond". There are boundaries to behaviour. Until we have Awakened it may no come naturally to act in ways that cause no harm, either to ourselves or others. The metaphor in Pali, as it is in English, is that we "see" that we have transgressed. We see it for ourselves through reflection and introspection. We may not always be very good at recognising transgressions, but practising awareness heightens ethical sensitivity as well. Often it is a matter of, as Sangharakshita says, an imaginative identification with the other person.

It is important to recall here that what the Buddha meant by kamma was cetana - intention or volition (A vi.13). Karma was originally the ritual actions carried out by Brahmins to restore them to ritual purity. The Buddha turned the notion of "purity" on its head and said that it consisted in pure conduct - not breaking the ethical precepts. The vinaya talks quite explicitly about the purity/impurity of monastics in these terms (Vin i.124). Confession, in this way of thinking consists in two aspects. Firstly having seen one's transgression as a transgression, one reveals this to another person. Secondly one resolves to be restrained in the future.

The Ratana Sutta emphasise that one should waste no time in confessing (Sn 232 and SnA i.278). One should not conceal a transgression for even a moment. I think the reason for this relates back to the idea equating action with intention. The intention to hide a transgression is not a skilful intention. As I said in my earlier blog post it can be difficult to feel motivated to reveal a transgression with the threat of punishment hanging over you. However it is better to get it out! The Vinaya says that having transgressed and wishing to be pure again, should confess because revealing makes him comfortable (Vin i.103). With regards to who we should confess to, the Ratana commentary suggests a teacher; a wise person; or a fellow practitioner. The point of confession in very many of the passages I have been studying is "restraint in the future". Confession - experiencing remorse, revealing a transgression, and making a resolution not to transgress again, helps us to keep the precepts in future. In case it is not clear we do this in order to minimise harmful effects on ourselves and others.

Having returned ourself to purity we are in a position to hear, to accept in the Pali terminology, the confessions of others. This necessity for prior purity is emphaised in the Vinaya which sets out procedures for monastics to follow if, for instance, everyone in a particular monastery has "fallen into a fault". One monk must go and seek out others to whom he can confess and return to accept the confessions of their fellows (Vin i.126). This quid pro quo is quite important for the functioning of a spiritual community, although I do not think that strict ritual purity is necessary for non-monastics (see my rant on superstition and ritual purity). If we have taken on precepts, however, then we do need to have someone sympathetic with whom to talk over our practice of them. Accepting a confession need not be an empty ritual. In the Majjhima Nikaya 140 the Buddha does not immediately accept Bhaddhali's confession. It is clear that the Buddha knows Bhaddali quite well, and knows that he is a bit half-hearted and inattentive at times. Bhaddali must request acceptance three times and endure quite a severe reprimand in order to convince the Buddha of his contrition: at one point the Buddha says to him "weren't you, Bhaddali, at that time an empty, vain, failure?" (M i.440). Ouch!

One last thing which caught my eye this week is that the Vinaya does not allow for collective confession. Over the years I have seen a number of discussions of so-called "collective karma" - does it exist or not. In one story in the Vinaya however a monk who mentions that he is not the only one to have fallen into a particular fault, but that everyone in the monastery has also. But the message is clear: it is no business of yours whether another has or has not fallen into a fault: take care of your own faults! (Vin i.127) So, even if there is such a thing as collective karma, you are still responsible for your own actions.


image: www.ordinarymind.net

Recollecting the Buddha

I have been doing a lot of reading around the practice of recollecting the Buddha and making the links between this practice and the development of Buddhist mantra. The practice generally revolves around the Buddha Vandana - the list of epithets for the Buddha - which occurs in many places throughout the Pali Canon and is explained in detail by Buddhaghosa in his Visuddhimagga. The verses containing the epithets are also known as the "iti pi so gatha". My usual experience with the Visuddhimagga is that I find it turgid and confusing, however in summing up the benefits of practising the recollection of the Buddha, Buddhaghosa says:

And his body [sarīrampi], when the recollection of the Buddha’s special qualities [Buddhaguṇānussatiyā] dwells in it [ajjhāvutthañcassa], becomes [hoti] worthy of veneration [pūjārahaṃ] as a shrine room [cetiyagharamiva] - Vism VII,67.

I've been reading the scholarly literature on this subject and surprisingly none of the writers have made much of this passage. It is only one sentence but this seems to have enormous ramifications. It seems a rather remarkable thing for the usually dusty Commentator to say.

By cetiyaghara, translated as “shrine room” by Ñanamoli, we should probably understand a meditation hall with a stupa at one end, rather like the Caitya-hall at the Bhājā caves in Maharasthra. Although the dictionary definition of cetiya (Sanskrit: caitya) is "a sacred mound, cairn or monument", the term is virtuously synonymous with stupa. Allow me to labour the point here: the body of the one who is recollecting the Buddha can be treated as though it were stupa, or monument worthy of worship. The subjective imagined presence of the Buddha is worthy of the respect which was traditionally paid to stupas and relics of the Buddha. The stupa cult continues to this day and has even been transplanted in the West. It relies on the ability to imaginatively connect with the Buddha - to see the abstract shape of the monument in stone or concrete as something more than it's material form.

Even before the death of the Buddha his presence was invoked. The classic description of this comes at the end of the Sutta Nipatta where the new disciple Pingiya sings the Buddha's praises. He says:

“You see, Sir, said Pingiya, with constant and careful vigilance it is possible for me to see him with my mind as clearly as with my eyes, in night as well as day. And since I spend my nights revering him, there is not, to my mind, a single moment spent away from him" - Suttanipātta 1142

The practice of recollecting the Buddha must have been formalised quite quickly as it's representation in the Canon is rather formulaic, ie it always uses the verses from the Buddha Vandana. But in "Pingiya praises" we get a sense of the spirit behind the formulas. Once the Buddha died these kinds of practices would have taken on a new significance, the more so when everyone who had met him has also died. Within 50 or 60 years probably there would have been no one alive who had met the Buddha in person. So the person who could maintain the kind of imaginative contact with the Buddha that Pingiya could may well have been considered worthy of veneration. Some have argued that without direct contact with a Buddha that no Awakening would have been possible, but the canon itself shows that many people were liberated without having met the Blessed One. The texts I've been looking at show why this is so - given the inspiration and the method anyone can make progress in the Dhamma and be freed. Pingiya is freed by faith (saddha-vimutta) as are several of his companions.

We clearly see here the roots of the Pure Land traditions, and of Buddhist visualisation meditations. In Mahayana texts recollection of the Buddha continues to be important - Śantideva devotes a chapter of his Compendium or Śikṣasamuccaya to it. However the hearing or recollection of the name of the Buddha (or a Buddha) starts to emerge - in the Sukhavativyūha Sūtras for instance. A key moment in the history of mantra comes in the Saddharmapuṇḍarikā Sūtra or White Lotus Sutra (the earliest reference I have found) when the practice of recollecting the name of the Buddha, is supplemented by calling the name (of Avalokiteśvara in this case). Of course the easiest way to hear a name is to say it yourself. Then a few centuries later in the Kāraṇḍavyūha Sūtra the chanting of the mantra of Avalokiteśvara is equated with recollection of his name, thus setting the scene for the Tantric revolution.

If we want to experience the presence of the Buddha in these difficult and testing times, we can. Like Pingiya there is no need for you to ever feel out of contact with the Buddha - simply bring him (or even her) to mind. There is a whole vast corpus of Buddhist art which has the precise function of helping us to make imaginative contact with the Buddha. In doing so you find your meeting, and according to Buddhaghosa you become like a holy shrine in the process and perhaps will inspire other people.

References:

Ñaṇamoli. 1997. The path of purification. Visuddhimagga. (Singapore Buddhist Meditation Centre) p.230. (=Vism VII,67.). The Pali reads: Buddhaguṇānussatiyā ajjhāvutthañcassa sarīrampi cetiyagharamiva pūjārahaṃ hoti

Suttanipātta 1142. trans. Saddhatissa 1985. The Sutta-Nipāta. (Surrey : Curzon Press), p.132.

image: votive stupa in the windhorse : evolution warehouse.

Confession in Buddhism

Confession in Buddhism is somewhat different than in Catholicism as we can see in the story of the fruits of the homeless life. (Sāmaññaphala Sutta - DN 2 *). In this story the conscience of King Ajāttasattu is pricking him - after all he has killed his mother and father and usurped the crown! He decides that a visit to a holy man might help him sleep better at night. After quizzing his courtiers on who to visit he decides to go to see the Buddha. As they approach they must abandon their transport and go on foot into the jungle. Since the Buddha is staying with a great company of monks, the King thinks he should be able to hear them, but all is silent - the murderer is worried about being assassinated himself! However they come into the presence of the Buddha and after a long talk Ajāttasattu goes for refuge to the Buddha as a lay follower, and then confesses his murderous actions. The Buddha's response, to the king in the first place, and to the bhikkhus after he has gone, highlight the two very important aspects of confession in Buddhism.

The Buddha says to the king:

"Indeed, King, transgression [accayo] overcame you when you deprived your father, that good and just king, of his life. But since you have acknowledged the transgression and confessed is as is right, we will accept it. For he who acknowledges his transgression as such and confesses it for betterment in future, will grow in the noble discipline."

The word accayo literally means "going on, or beyond", and in the moral sphere, means acting outside the established norms - so transgression is quite a good translation.

However once the king departs, the Buddha says to the bhikkhus:

"The king is done for, his fate is sealed, bhikkhus. If the king had not killed his father... then as he sat there the pure and spotless dhamma-eye would have arisen in him."

The King leaves feeling much relieved, having unburdened himself, having experienced remorse, and resolved to do better in the future. This is the benefit of confessing. It brings the unskilful act to consciousness and helps us to see the consequences of the action, and by reflecting like this we are less likely to act unskilfully in the future. The King is actually better off that he was. On the other side the Buddha was able to just hear his confession. Perhaps not everyone would be able to hear about someone killing their parents and maintain their equanimity, but the Buddha can. He is able to see that despite the crime, that the King is genuinely remorseful, and that it is important to witness that and encourage it. The past is gone, we can't change it, but we can change now and experience liberation in the future.

However notice that Buddha does not absolve the King. He does not because he cannot. The fruits of the action cannot be neutralised. Indeed if he had not committed the heinous act (patricide was considered a very horrible crime in ancient India) he would have experienced Insight (the opening of the dhamma-eye) after listening to the Buddha.

Equally the Buddha does not rub it in. He does not tell him, "OK you confessed, but you're still going to suffer". The Buddha is not cruel, he acknowledges a small goodness for what it is, and lets the King depart without much comment. However he does not let the opportunity pass to reinforce his message for the bhikkhus. He did not want them to think they could simply confess and get away with things. As a King, Ajāttasattu had a lot of responsibilities, and it is clear that he placed these above self-knowledge or liberation. He wanted to be the king so badly that he murdered his parents. The bhikkhus, however, have ostensibly abandoned worldly concerns and are supposed to be devoting themselves to attaining liberation. They cannot afford to be casual about the consequences of their actions. So the Buddha drives home the message by pointing out that the King is "done for" - the implication is that the consequences of his actions are going to be severe, that even a face to face meeting with the Buddha cannot save him from a great deal of suffering in the future. Most likely he is repeatedly reborn in hell realms.

There is another important point here. At the beginning of the story the king is restless, tormented by his conscience, and even a little paranoid. Unconfessed unskilfulness weighs on our conscience. We feel guilty and we fear punishment. The Buddha knows there is no need to punish Ajāttasattu as he is suffering in the present, and will continue to suffer in the future. This is a very difficult idea for Westerners. We are inculcated with the idea that guilt demands punishment. Society demands that someone who transgresses must have some harm inflicted upon them. We do not believe in an ethical universe in which everyone must live with the consequences of their actions, and in which evil definitely results in pain for the evil doer. This is not enough. We want to see justice (ie punishment) in the here and now. Christians also abrogate the notion that judgement for sins is God's prerogative. In fact the threat of punishment makes confession, makes taking full responsibility for our actions, all the more difficult. It is only when the threat of punishment is removed that we can fully confess our actions, experience remorse, and take the necessary actions to make amends or to prevent a repetition. Given that so few people wholeheartedly take on Buddhist ethical precepts, it may mean that we have limited opportunities for confession in the Buddhist sense. We may also have to exercise patience with those who seek to inflict harm on us as punishment. There is a lot more that could be said on the issue of culpability and justice from a Buddhist point of view but it must wait.

To sum up: in Buddhism one is encouraged to confess to someone who is able to receive the confession, this is important. Our confessor should at a minimum understand the ethical precepts we follow, and ideally should have some experience in following them. The point of confession is to experience remorse, to reflect on the consequences of our actions, with the hope that it helps us to restrain ourselves in future. In practice this results in a sense of relief. Confession does not, and cannot absolve us from responsibility for our actions, the consequences of which will still manifest. If we take Buddhist practice seriously then we try to behave ethically. An important aspect of this is to acknowledge our failures and to learn from them. Confession is indispensable in this process.


*translations are from Walsh, M. The Long Discourses of the Buddha. (Boston : Wisdom, 1995) p.91ff. There are some problems with the translation that I will regale you with in a separate essay. They don't affect my conclusions.

image: a king who got his crown illegitimately meets a holy man... from Daily Mail

The Anger Eating Yakkha

Browsing through the Pali Canon one often stumbles upon wonderful little oddities. This story from the Samyutta Nikaya leapt out at me while I was looking for something else. It is a story told by the Buddha to the bhikkhus while staying in the Jeta Grove...

Once an ugly yakkha sat himself down on the throne of Sakka, Lord of the Devas (also known as Indra in Vedic mythology). The various devas were appalled by this gauche behaviour and started to grumble and complain. But the more they grumbled and complained the more the yakkha became handsome and comely, more and more graceful. Confused the devas go and find Sakka and tell him what has happened. And Sakka said to them: "that must be an anger eating yakkha! ".

Sakka goes to the now handsome and good looking yakkha, arranges his robe over one shoulder, kneels down on his right knee and with his hands raised in greeting. Then three times he repeats: "I dear sir, am Sakka, Lord of the Devas." As he spoke thus, the yakkha became smaller, and more ugly. He got more and more ugly, and more deformed until he disappeared completely! Sakka then gives voice to these verses:

I am not one afflicted in mind,
Nor easily drawn by anger's whirl.
I never become angry for long,
Nor does anger persist in me.

When I'm angry I don't speak harshly
And I don't praise my virtues.
I keep myself well restrained
Out of regard for my own good.

Isn't this wonderful? The sutta is not much longer than my summary, and most of that is repetition. The structure of this sutta is much like an Udana - a prose story followed by two pithy gathas with a simple message. The moral is simple and straightforward - it echoes many other texts which advise on how to deal with anger. One thinks for instance of the lines from the Metta Sutta which enjoin us never to wish suffering on another even though we are angry. As far as I know this is the only occasion when an "anger eating yakkha" is mentioned in the Canon.

It brings to mind the Dhammapada verse (v.5) :

Anger never ceases through anger
Anger only ceases through love
This is an eternal law.

We could see the anger eating yakkha story as a parable illustrating this principle. The way to diffuse anger is not to meet it with anger, but to see that anger feeds on anger. If we meet an angry person with anger we escalate the situation. It's hard to be around an angry person and feel safe though - angry people can be unpredictable and even dangerous. I find I just want to get some distance between me and an angry person. If I'm responding to anger with anger then this is perhaps the best strategy. Words said in anger are often regrettable. Sakka proclaims that he keeps himself well restrained, that even if he does become angry he does not allow anger to persist.

In Tantric Buddhism emotions like anger are considered to be part of the path. Anger is related to Wisdom, is transformed into Wisdom through practice. The advantage of this approach is that it recognises the energy involved in anger, and how it can be harnessed in pursuit of our spiritual goals. However I think one needs to be very careful with this approach. One might attempt to justify unskilful behaviour on the basis that anger is "just energy" for instance. If we go around acting out anger then that is not going to help anyone, and indeed will hurt other people and ourselves. In early Buddhism anger is seen as aversion to some experience which one does not want to have. It is better to allow the experience to happen and cultivate equanimity towards it. I prefer to err on the side of caution in the case of anger and find the early Buddhist approach more helpful.

Reference.

SN 11.22. Bikkhu Bodhi. 2000. The connected discourses of the Buddha : a translation of the Samyutta Nikaya. [1 vol. ed.] Boston : Wisdom. p.338-9. [= PTS S i.237f.]

image: blogs.cisco.com (tweaked)

Meditating on Arapacana

In Nov 2007 I led an evening on the Arapacana Alphabet at the Cambridge Buddhist Centre which involved a led meditation and a talk which looked at the recent research on Arapacana, especially the work of Dr Richard Salomon. In order to lead the meditation I took the text of the verses associated with the Arapacana in the Large Perfection of Wisdom Sutra, and attempted to put them into an idiom which conveyed what I perceived to be the intention in a way that would be familiar to an FWBO audience.

For the purposes of this exercise I decided to use "experience" as a translation of "dharma" - that is dharma in its aspect as phenomena or element, and in particular mental phenomena or element. I also made the caveat that in a meditation one often makes categorical statements which are not meant to literally describe Reality, but simply to be the subject of reflection. Finally I had to admit that this is simply my reading of a text, and that as far as I know there is no living tradition of meditating in this way.

We began with some samatha meditation focussing on the body and breath. Then having calmed down and become concentrated to some extent we reflected on each of the letters (or more accurately syllables) in turn, although only the first five: a ra pa ca na. As you may know each letter is the initial letter of a word in Sanskrit, which fits into a sentence that provides a reflection on the nature of experience. My method will become more clear as we look at the examples.

The letter A (the short vowel sound in the English word cut), according to the text, is a door to the insight that all dharmas are unproduced from the very beginning (adyanutpannatvat). I take this to mean that even though we undeniable have experiences, no 'thing' - no ontologically solid and lasting entity - arises as a result. So rather than thinking, for instance, there is "the in-breath" and "the out-breath", we can reflect that there is no 'thing' called breath, there is just the experience, the physical sensation of breathing. Instead of thinking in terms of "this feeling is in my body", try to think in terms of "there is a physical feeling". Using verbs rather than nouns helps this I think. Focus on the experience, that is the flow of sensations and perhaps mental activity, rather than extrapolating from the experience to something solid.

RA is a door to the insight that all dharmas are without dirt (rajas). In this stage of the meditation we reflect that although we have experiences which are either pleasant or unpleasant or neutral, the feeling tone is not intrinsic to the experience. Something done once might be pleasant, but done a dozen times may be unpleasant; one day it might thrill us, the next it might bore us. Experience is just experience, and therefore it is "pure". We tend to be attracted to pleasant, and repulsed by the unpleasant. We want to hold onto what attracts us, and to push away what is unpleasant. It is these attempts at holding and pushing away which cause us to suffer, not the bare experience of pleasant or unpleasant. Ultimately experience is just experience.

PA is a door to the insight that all dharmas have been expounded in the ultimate sense (paramārtha). This aspect took me a little time to understand. What I think it means is that when you reach out to determine what underlies experience, or what lies behind it, you can only have another experience. So for instance although I feel embodied I might want to confirm that I have a body. I might reach out my hand and touch myself - this is simply a touch sensation; or I might look down at my body, and this is simply a sight sensation. It's as if we look behind the mirror to see if we can find the object in the mirror, only to find another mirror. This is the true nature of things, the ultimate (paramartha) explanation - we are immersed in experience, and there is nothing beyond this.

CA is a door to the insight that the decrease (cyavana) or rebirth of any dharma cannot be apprehended, because all dharmas do not decrease, nor are they reborn. Because we now know that no 'thing' arises, then we should see that the corollary is that no 'thing' ever ceases. The best we can say is there is experience. Once we start trying to talk about this experience, or that experience; my experience or your experience we are already dividing things up (vijñana) and attributing thingness to them. If there is just experience, then what is it that arises, what that dies?

NA is a door to the insight that the Names [i.e. nāma] of all dharmas have vanished; the essential nature behind names cannot be gained or lost. Since all we can be aware of is a ceaseless flow of experience, changing from moment to moment, how could any name apply to anything. By the time we have though of a name, the experience has passed and been replaced by another. The very act of conceiving a name is simply a mental experience.

There are of course another 39* letters in the Arapacana alphabet and each was associated with an aspect of experience and meditated on in turn. At the end however the text makes it clear that one is to contemplate how each letter is merely a facet of a larger truth, that each letter is in the long run identical in meaning to all the others. All experiences are impersonal and impermanent. And they are all we have.

One thing I did not mention in my talk was the way in which this meditation practice developed after the Large Perfection of Wisdom text. In the Mahavairocana Tantra the meditation begins in the same way (although substituting the Sanskrit consonants for the Gandhari ones), but then one imaginatively places the letters around the body while visualising oneself as the Buddha. The Sarvatathagatatattvasamgraha Tantra pares the whole thing down to just meditating on the letter a. It is this latter meditation which became important in Shingon, and other Vajrayana lineages - the whole shebang boiled down to contemplating that no things arise.

A recording of my talk and the led meditation are available on the Cambridge Buddhist Centre website. See also other things I've written on the Arapacana Alphabet.

15/3/08. I've just added a page to visblemantra.org which pulls out the bits of the Pañcaviṃśatisāhasrikā Sūtra related to the Wisdom Alphabet meditation, with a few added comments.


*Various versions of the alphabet differ. There are 44 in the Large Perfection of Wisdom Sutra, although the same text when discussing the meditation practice talks about the 42 letters! Other texts have 43 letters. The variation is likely to be related to difficulties representing the sounds of Gandhari from a Sanskrit perspective.

image: alphabet by Kukai from visiblemantra.org

Ritual Purity or Rank Superstition?

Many Indian ideas about ritual purity, especially with respect to the body, have made their way into contemporary Buddhism. I want to look at a few examples of this. An examination of the origins of these ideas in Brahminical thought may be cause to re-assess the relevance in contemporary Buddhism.

Feet
A couple of years ago I was showing a friend of a friend (a follower of Tibetan Buddhism) some of my thangka paintings. One of these hung at the foot of my bed so I could see it first/last thing. "You don't sleep with your feet pointed at that do you?" - there was a note of shock in the question. "It's very bad karma" she said. I pondered this for some time before coming to any understanding of it. I knew already that Buddhists were not supposed to point their feet at shrines. But why? Because in India the feet are considered ritual impure. But again why? The feet are ritually impure partly because they are in contact with the earth, and the dirt and shit that cover it. But again why the ritual impurity? I think it goes back to the famous Purisa hymn in the Rig Veda. In this cosmogonic myth the four social groups - Brahmins, Ksatreyas, Vaishyas, and Shudras - are born from the various parts of Brahma's body. It later versions it is Prajapati's body. The Shudras, serfs, are born from Brahma's feet. The Shudras are not the lowest rung on the Hindu scale, but they are the lowest rung of the people who are not considered outcasts or untouchable. Shudras are not permitted to enter temples, nor to hear the sacred mantras. This is so much a part of Indian culture - one touches the feat of a respected elder in greeting for instance - that even the new Buddhists honour it though they are frequently from backgrounds which high caste Hindus consider beyond the pale, so ritually polluting that their touch requires elaborate purification rituals involving ironically cow shit and piss. When in 1923 Dr Ambedkar drank from a tank in a Brahmin village, they tipped a load of cow shit into it to "purify" it!

But feet are not ritually polluting in Western cultures. Although foot odour is universally considered uncool at best, it is the odour not the foot itself that offends. The foot is by contrast sometimes even an object of desire in the west! Where I come from it is de-rigour, and completely natural, to go about in bare feet in summer. So why am I adopting this Brahminical value into my practice of Buddhism, which if anything denies the validity of notions of ritual purity?


Right shoulder to stupa
In the centre of the warehouse I worked in two years ago is a 7m high stupa which is both beautiful and impressive. Buddhists traditionally keep a stupa, or any revered object or person, to their right-hand side. Some people who work in the warehouse go to elaborate lengths to go around the stupa clockwise, to keep right shoulder to the stupa. Some go about it quietly, while others are (at times) vocally critical of people who dare to go anti-clockwise, showing their left-side to the stupa. But why I asked? What is the point? Because, I was told, it is traditional. I am not superstition person and I found this puzzling. Again I think this goes back to Brahminical ideas of ritual purity. Even today in India the left hand is impure because it is used for cleaning the anus after taking a dump. The Indians use water and not toilet paper for this. So the left hand is unclean, often quite literally, and one eats with the right. Hence if you revere someone you keep your left hand away from them. Additionally the outcastes were required to dress with their left shoulder uncovered, while the higher castes uncovered their right shoulder - this uncovering the right shoulder is a constant, if entirely incidental, theme of the Pali Canon.

Now I'm right handed and I wipe my arse with my right hand. So by the logic of ancient India my right side is impure and I should either go clockwise around the stupa, but walk backwards; or go the other way. But after I wipe my bum I wash my hands and consider them clean at that point. No literal or ritual pollution! My own belief that it is the quality of awareness of the significance of the stupa which is important - and I can go any way around the thing if I have the right attitude.

Tantra and ritual impurity.
My other example emerges out of the antinomian practices of the Tantra. Antinomian means "released from moral obligations". It originates in a Christian context, but with reference to Indian religion it relates to actions which are ritually impure. So the tantric yogin chooses a consort from the untouchable castes, frequents a cremations ground and messes about with bones and skulls, and consumes meat, alcohol and sexual fluids. These are some of the most polluting things a caste Hindu could do. The point is that the Buddha does not make distinctions like pure/impure . So the yogin experiences these intensely polluting activities with a view to maintaining their equanimity in the face of very strong provocation, to overcome their cultural conditioning around the notion of pollution. For the first time there is a sense of cross-over with western culture. We too have taboos around death that mean human remains are disposed of very purposefully, and according to laws and special customs. However contact with death is not ritually polluting as it is for the Brahmin - it does not require lengthy ritual cleansing for instance. Meat eating, drinking liquour, and even the odd mouthful of sexual fluid, are not particularly taboo in western society. Having sex with a low class person might be seen as tacky in some circles, but again not ritually polluting in a way that requires ritual cleansing.

So it would seem that adopting Indian antinomian practices which are entirely "nomian" (if there is such a word) in the west is a bit pointless. And yet the shrines of Westerners, and Westerners themselves, are adorned with skulls, and bones, and other reminders of death - although I think the significance is lost on most people who simply see them as reminders of impermanence. We make a big deal about the "left handed" tantra, which once again invokes the Indian left-hand-bum-wiping thing and involves acting out polluting actions, and contrast it with right-handed tantra in which one only imagines doing the dirty thing. But to us those things aren't dirty, we aren't ritually polluted by them. Some things we may find unethical, and in that case we may feel remorse if we eat meat or drink liquor, it is not the same thing as ritual pollution.

I doubt that traditional Buddhists reading this are going to want to change the tradition. Some of these things go very deep - are embedded in our canons of scripture for instance. But the Buddha was quite critical of superstition (mangalikā) and we can read for instance the Mangala Sutta as a critique of superstition and a call to just practice the Dharma - i.e. to make yourself pure by good behaviour, not through rituals; have good fortune (also mangala) through reaping the benefits of good behaviour, not through omens, divination, or other superstitions and/or rituals. Let us not turn back the clock on the age of reason in adopting this ancient religion, let us investigate the origins of superstitions and decide whether they are still relevant, and move on if they are not.


image: www.clear-vision.org