When Mother Earth saved Siddhartha

TEAM BHUMI DEVA, Wisdom Quarterly, COUNTDOWN CLOCK: -3

(Magical-mushroomz/tumblr.com)

"It will be a long time before the brain knows in detail what the body already perfectly understands."

- (Susan Lowenberg, L.A. Theatre Works, 4-22-12)

(FYN) Tree devi watches Of Monsters and Men (OMAM), Lollapalooza 2012 (Minute 29:19).
 

Siddhartha calling (vam.ac.uk)

Bhumi is the Earth personified. She is Mother Nature, Gaia, Sthavara (immovable like the ground, solidity, support).

BODH GAYA, India - When Siddhartha was striving to discover the path to enlightenment and final liberation, a killer came to him and told him to move: "The place you're sitting in meditation belongs to me," that killer said. "Who or what gives you the right to sit there?" Siddhartha reached out his right hand and called on the Earth to witness (Bhūmiśparṣa mudrā) for his right to pursue enlightenment in a forest grove under the tree of wisdom. The Earth shook. And the ogres, confused, ran away.

"You're gone, gone, gone away. I watched you disappear. All that's left is a ghost of you. Now we're torn, torn, torn apart. There's nothing we can do. Just let me go; we'll meet again soon. Now wait, wait, wait for me. Please hang around. I'll see you when I fall asleep. Hey! Don't listen to a word I say. Hey! The screams all sound the same. Hey! Though the truth may vary, this ship will carry our bodies safe to shore..." More 
 
Invitation to the Devas
Wisdom Quarterly translation (Namakara-siddhi Gatha)

Devi sylph (megamitensei.wikia.com)

From around the galaxies may the devas come.
May they listen to the true teaching of the supreme sage,
Which leads to higher-births and nirvana.

Those on planes of sensuality or fine-form,
On mountain peaks and precipices, in palaces floating in space,
On islands, in countries, and towns,
In groves of trees and thickets, around homes and fields.

Earthbound "angels" (Boticelli's Venus)

And the earth (bhumi)-devas, sylphs, messenger minstrels, and powerful creatures
In water, on the ground, in the wilderness, and nearby:
May they come and listen approvingly
As I recite the word of the excellent sage.

This is the time to listen to the Dharma, venerable ones.
This is the time to listen to the Dharma, venerable ones. 
This is the time to listen to the Dharma, venerable ones.

Asian conception of the beautiful angelic beings from space (tribudragonthai)

 

Do not look long, do not look short.

In the seen, let there be only the seen

In the heard, only the heard

In the otherwise sensed, only the otherwise sensed.

When for you there is just this,

there will be neither here, nor there,

nor going from one to the other.

-The Buddha said to Bahiya of the Bark Cloth (Fast Enlightenment)

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Delusions are inexhaustible; I vow to... (Zen)

Roshi Jeff Albrizze, Don, Ron, Richard, Pasadharma.org; Seven, Wisdom Quarterly

There are four traditional vows in Zen, a Mahayana Buddhist sect of the Ch'an school as it developed in Japan. They are customarily translated as:

1. Sentient beings are numberless; I vow to save them.
2. Desires are inexhaustible; I vow to put an end to them.
3. The Dharmas are boundless; I vow to master them.
4. The Buddha-Way is unsurpassable; I vow to attain it.

A practitioner at ZCLA (Zen Center of Los Angeles) recently called this translation into question hoping to change it to a new and improved four:

1. Sentient beings are numberless; I vow to serve them.
2. Delusions are inexhaustible; I vow to put an end to them.
3. The Dharmas are boundless; I vow to practice them.
4. The Buddha way is unsurpassable; I vow to embody it.

Why would anyone tamper with tradition? While Zen Buddhism as practiced in the US is iconoclastic and tends toward rebellion, is it any reason to make this gatha less of a conundrum?

  

Some Zen Buddhists are recovering fundamentalist Christians. And whenever they hear, "Desires are inexhaustible; I vow to put an end to them," they can only assume it refers to sex. Population control advocates (who seem to im0plicitly favor mass die offs helped along by government interventions) might be put off by the first vow. And similarly the remaining two vows present their own difficulties.

In thinking about these changes for a few weeks, it seems to me that there are several perspectives about this old Sanskrit hymn (gatha) to sit with.

The old version has always been a bit of a koan, an inscrutable riddle that might lead one to enlightenment when one breaks free or lets go of linear reasoning. 

   

Each vow is impossible to fulfill. Yet, many of us have chanted them daily for many years. They speak of a spiritual intention, a higher aspiration. They are a manifestation of attaining the unobtainable. In this way, "Zen" is bigger than I am, bigger than I can wrap my mind around.

  

Do we change them now to make them more accessible? Does making them more palatable by using a more devotional translation take away from the spirit intended?

Admittedly, the old translation is a bit cryptic, even clunky. There is a better flow, a clearer connection between the first state mentioned and the vow that flows from it.

What do folks think about this debate?

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