Buddhist Halloween with Ven. Thanasanti

Wisdom Quarterly

Theravada nun Ven. Thanasanti, Halloween Dharma Punx, Hollywood (Wisdom Quarterly)

Against the Stream welcomed American Theravada Buddhist nun Amma Thanasanti Bhikkhuni for an extended teaching visit. There are several chances to meditate and hear her teach, ask questions, and share community (sangha) building in simple conversation. Scheduled events from Halloween to Nov. 5, 2012 include:

• Oct 31: Halloween night, 7:30-9:30, Melrose Center. Come in costume, take some candy, listen to the Dharma from a California native in robes for 22 years. This even was recorded by Wisdom Quarterly for those trick-or-treating elsewhere for Samhain.
• Nov 3: Living on the Razor's Edge: Amma and JoAnna Harper team to spend a day investigating desire and renunciation. 10-4 at Melrose - a dana only day.
• Nov 4: Picnic and Games on the Beach in Malibu. Join Amma and the ATS sangha for some meditation and a relaxed gathering Sunday morning from 10:30 till... Bring a dish or something to share.
• Nov 5: Monday night meditation. Amma closes out her time with us by teaching the Monday evening class at Dharma Punx, Santa Monica.

  

(HeyItsWilliam/flickr.com)

Ven. Thanasanti began meditating over 30 years ago and has been a Buddhist nun for over 20 years. After two decades in monasteries associated with [Thai tradition] Ajahn Sumedho and Ajahn Chah, she returned to the US and founded Awakening Truth (awakeningtruth.org), an organization whose mission to support a nun's (bhikkhuni) training monastery and a new interface between monastic and lay Buddhist practitioners in the modern world. Amma's work spans Dharma teachings, non-dual meditation, depth psychology, subtle body somatics, and the Divine Feminine. She teaches meditation as an art and skill, integrating body, heart, and mind to experience our natural state of wisdom, love, and peace. She has taught meditation internationally for over 15 years. Currently she resides at Shakti Vihara Hermitage in Colorado Springs.

• Take a moment to read Sitting with a Monastic for information on interacting with nuns and monks in the Theravada tradition.
• For schedule and times, visit againstthestream.org or awakeningtruth.org

• VIDEO: Meat the Truth, A Most Inconvenient Truth
• PHOTOS: Pagan (Bagan) Burma's Buddhist past

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"Buddhism for Vampires" (Halloween)

David Chapman (Buddhism-for-Vampires.com); Wisdom Quarterly HALLOWEEN SERIES
COMING SOON, BREAKING NEWS: Peaceful Buddhists go on murderous rampage.

European vampires were killed and given a special postmortem meal -- a stake. Here a female had a brick placed in her mouth to prevent her from feasting on blood (Daily Mail).

WQ has been sitting on this Bon/Black Magic exposé. For Halloween, we introduce B.F.V.

  

Cheater and Sap vamps (Life&Style)

“Buddhism for vampires? That’s silly. Buddhism and vampires don’t have anything to do with each other -- or do they?”

Surprisingly, vampires have played a significant role in Buddhism in Asia for centuries. They are not a Western invention.

Contemporary vampire fiction -- “preternatural romance” -- provides tools for presenting aspects of Buddhism that are otherwise difficult to communicate.

  

Vampires in Buddhist history

Vomiting blood (Buddhism-for-vampires.com)

There is extensive vampire lore [that preceded and was incorporated] within traditional Buddhism. This has been summarized in “The Tibetan Book of the Undead.” Apart from its intrinsic interest, this history makes it clear that one cannot dismiss “Buddhism for vampires” as bogus.

  

...No one can say this is an illegitimate topic or some kind of Western commercial distortion. One can combine Buddhism and vampires as a cheap gimmick -- but I believe it is possible to explain Buddhism accurately in the language of the undead. In fact, I believe some aspects of Buddhism are best explained that way.

Vampires, ambiguity, and paradox

Vajrayana is a mix of Bon and Buddhism

Buddhism, at root, is a method for facing the paradoxes of life and death with curiosity, appreciation, generosity, and joy. Its starting point is the experience of ambiguity. The natural tendency is to polarize: to say “this is this and that is that; I love this and hate that.” But experience is unavoidably undefinable.
  
Reality refuses to fit into categories; it is always in flux. When “this” inexplicably turns into “that,” and you love or hate the “wrong” thing: that is paradox. Rejecting ambiguity is, according to Buddhism, the primordial error, and source of all unhappiness. Paradox is resolved through non-duality: allowing the horns of a dilemma to co-exist.

   

"China accuses me of being devil" (Dalai Lama)

What has this to do with vampires? Consider the basic paradox of the undead. To paraphrase the great Buddhist philosopher Nagarjuna, they are not alive, nor dead, nor both, nor neither. The undead are, as contemporary Buddhist philosopher Stephen T. Asma puts it, “liminal beings.”
  

China really dislikes Dalai Lama and Buddhism

“Liminal” means “on the threshold”; a defining feature of monsters is that they are neither one thing nor another. This is just the fundamental Buddhist paradox of emptiness and form, reflected in a pool of blood. More

• Halloween STORM likely to kill everyone on East Coast
• Meet the real-life US vampires (Smithsonian)
• "Vampire" skeletons found (Discovery News) 
• National Geographic finds real vampires
• China warns: Some paths are bad and evil!
• Evils of Communist Khmer Rouge in Buddhist Cambodia
• Lama sex abuse calls Buddhist taboos into question
• Name-calling in China: Hitler, Devil, HHDL
• Tibetans self-immolate, Americans use guns
• VIDEO: CIA's CNN dismisses the Kentucky UFO
• PBS: The investigative reporting crisis in America
• PHOTOS: Monster (yakkha) temple protectors
• China on Buddhism: Brainwashed with evils
• SCARY: 14-year-old student punished by Buddhist monk for refusing to learn Buddhism

"But who's more Gothic and Vampiric than us?"

3,154

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China: "Buddhism has a 'devil' as its 'Pope'"

Ashley Wells, Dhr. Seven, CC Liu, Wisdom Quarterly HALLOWEEN SERIES

China thinks this humble CIA operative/asset (not "agent") -- spiritual leader and former head of state, Tibetan "God-King" or Vajrayana "Pope" -- is the devil (AP/Examiner.com).

  

Bon is the  pre-Buddhist black magic infused shamanism of Tibet and Bhutan. It blended with the missionary religion of peace and enlightenment from the subcontinent below.
  
But Buddhism did not displace Himalayan superstitions, necrcomancy, talk of spirits, banshees, and Abominable Snowmen. Wise old wives' tales remain and the necessity of doing something to ward off disgruntled ghosts, vile demons, and other unseen inimical forces.
  
The Shugden controversy is related to the worship of forces the current Dalai Lama believes resulted in the invasion of ancient Tibet by imperial atheistic-communist China.
  
In the exquisite photo above the 14th Dalai Lama uses his hands as horns speculating on the Chinese government's views of his freedom-fighting efforts. "His Holiness" has just completed 50 years in exile from Tibet, from which he was able to escape with the help of CIA agents out to subvert China and its expansionist Cultural Revolution.
  

China is a ruthless police state opposing Tibet.

In spite of their violent invasion, he (Tenzin Gyatso) remains remains compassionate, forgiving, and jovial about the situation -- one worsened by multiple self-immolations protesting Chinese police state tyranny. He hopes to return to Tibet, even if it remains a part of China, but the current Chinese government will not stand for it. The Dalai Lama frequently visits Washington DC and tours the US, drawing sell out crowds in massive arenas wherever he appears. Calling him "the devil" is an interesting commentary to confer on him. For no matter how he is attacked, he remains a leader in the campaign against injustice toward all living beings. (See official Website).

Dharamsala, India's Tibetan exiles hold candlelit vigil after Tamdrin Dorjee's demonstration-suicide in Tsoe Monastery, Gansu province, 10-13-12 (AP/Ashwini Bhatia).

   

Tibetan nun sets herself ablaze in China (AFP).

BEIJING -- Two Tibetan cousins set fire to themselves in their village to protest Chinese rule, bringing the total number of self-immolations this week to seven, the highest since the protests began last year, a rights group said Saturday.

  

The London-based group Free Tibet said cousins Tsepo, 20, and Tenzin, 25, called for independence for Tibet as they set themselves ablaze Thursday in front of a government building in their village in Biru county north of Lhasa, Tibet's main city.

  

Tsepo reportedly died and Tenzin's condition was unknown after he was taken away by authorities, Free Tibet said. 

Dozens of ethnic Tibetans have set themselves on fire in heavily Tibetan regions since March 2011 to protest what activists say is Beijing's heavy-handed rule in the region. Many have called for the return of the Dalai Lama, their exiled spiritual leader.

  

The protests have intensified as Beijing nears a once-a-decade power transfer in early November. More

Real vampire arrested in Texas, USA

What we think we become [because "Mind/heart is the forerunner of all conditions" (Dhp. 1)]. This means that it is important to think of ourselves in the best possible way. For as it is said since the days of Dale Carnegie's friendly-and-influential-popularity, "If we can conceive it and believe it, we can achieve it" (Napoleon Hill). It works to our detriment as well, wallowing in our depression, self-pity, "evil," or perceived shortcomings. We are without limits and capable of achieving anything -- even heavenly splendor, full enlightenment in this very life, even the ability to teach as a perfectly awakened buddha.

•  AUDIO: Mind is the Forerunner of all?

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The SCIENCE of Monsters and Ghosts

Wisdom Quarterly HALLOWEEN SERIES

Too bad most of us do not believe in science. If we did, we'd believe in ghosts. What will happen when science dictates there is enough evidence for disembodied phenomena? Frightening thought. Science-lovers run out of haunted dwellings as quickly as ignoramuses. Why? The body knows what the brain cannot yet accept. What? Seen and unseen monstrosities roam about and among us. Wisdom Quarterly is only interested in the real-life ones in history and today.

• Buddhist Ghosts? Stories of the Departed
• Could dragons (nagas) have been real?

  The Science of Monsters
Matt Kaplan, The Science of Monsters (ScienceFriday.com, Oct. 26, 2012)

At their most basic level, monsters represent fears held by society, fears associated with dangers perceived in the surrounding world.

  

The Science of Monsters (Matt Kaplan)

These fears have a powerful evolutionary history by encouraging people to flee instead of fighting suicidal battles. When ancient hunters encountered a saber-toothed tiger by accident, they ran. When the human ancestor Homo erectus caught angry cave bears by surprise, it ran. When chimpanzees and [our sexy cousins the] bonobos, the nearest genetic relatives to modern humans, encounter large predators in the wild, they run.

  

While Hollywood heroes have made running away distinctly unpopular on the silver screen, every single actor who has ever portrayed a hero/heroine who stood his or her ground against some abominable terror comes from a long genetic lineage of cowards who fled in the face of danger.

  

Real life sea serpents: sturgeon (naga)

That is why they are here to act today. If their ancestors had fought against monsters far more powerful than themselves, as Hollywood heroes do all the time, their lineage would have been destroyed by predators long ago. Fear, in short, keeps people alive. But fear can also go too far.

  

Recent work in animal behavior has revealed something fascinating: There are personality types in animals. Among fish in a single species, there are adventurous individuals, ready and willing to take risks, and there are more cautious and timid individuals, fearful of doing anything that could put them in danger.
  

Yeti's bones, Tibet (factfictionandconjecture.ca)

Similar variations in personality are starting to be found in birds and mammals too. A recent study led by Kathryn Arnold at the University of York revealed... Being courageous or curious undoubtedly presents serious dangers. Ongoing studies indicate that fish with more daring personalities are...

  

Whether some humans are genetically predisposed to be more adventurous than others remains to be determined, but there clearly are some people who ultimately are more willing to take risks. Make no mistake, the instinct to flee from danger is still deeply rooted in every person’s brain, but some of us are more willing than others to go to places associated with danger....
  

LISTEN: Science of Monsters (Science Friday, NPR)
Parapsychology: Scary science (Coast to Coast AM) 
 
Like lion cubs play-fighting in the safety of their den, monsters may be allowing threats to be toyed with in the safe sandbox of the imagination.

  
So if monsters are present in society for both pleasure and mental practice for future frightening interactions, what happens when our fears are overcome? What then?
   

Camera catches real ghost (angelsghosts.com)

To a certain extent, danger should function as the life essence of monsters... Fears have changed a lot since the dawn of humanity, and with these changes have come alterations in the pantheon of monsters that lurk in our world.
  
The Minotaur is no longer with us, but aliens are. In a sense, monsters, while strictly the stuff of fantasy, experience evolution at a rate that is in stride with the pace of human understanding of the surrounding world. Science, the empirical testing and exploration of the world, which is about as seemingly unrelated to monsters as can be... [actually only denies their existence because of acceptability-filters not because of an absence of evidence.]

  
[Excerpted from Medusa’s Gaze and Vampire’s Bite:  The Science of Monsters (Scribner). Copyright © 2012 by Matt Kaplan. Kaplan is a science journalist and a regular contributor to The Economist. He has also written for National Geographic, New Scientist, Nature, Scientific American, Science, BBC Wildlife, and The New York Times. When not chained to a desk, he travels the wilds of the world as part of a London expedition group. He lives in London.]

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Paranormal Investigation: The Afterlife (video)

ParanormalTVchannel; Seven, Wisdom Quarterly

 

A real apparition (answers.com)

For five years a medium group and scientists witnessed more psychokinetic phenomena than any other experiment in the history of paranormal investigations. This included conversations with the dead that were recorded, written messages on sealed film, video footage of spirit faces and spirit forms materializing.

 

There is not only this world but worlds beyond. We have this life and many (more miserable) lives to come. 

  

Samsara's Six Sensual Spheres, Tibetan thangka

Enlightened beings make an end of ALL suffering by making an end of this endless round of rebirth (samsara).
  
How can one make an end of the "endless"? The Buddhist path analyzes what fuels the fire of this impersonal process called samsara ("the continued wandering on from birth to birth and death to death") then removes its principal supports: delusion, craving, aversion, fear. 

  

Besides, it is "endless" only in the sense that in and of itself it would never come to an end. Like a self-renewing hamster wheel, it would cycle on endlessly, hamster after hamster. Saying that it does not end, technically speaking, is wrong. It is constantly ending. It is radically impermanent: What arises almost immediately passes away moment by moment.
  
Each moment of existence breaks down into three blended phases or sub-moments: arising, turning, and passing away. The macro mimics the micro, for as above so below. Not only sub-moments but entire phases of our lives go like this: youth, aging, and decrepitude, birth, maturation, and death.

Many of us exist in realms bound by addiction.

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Halloween from a Buddhist's Perspective.

First of all let me wish those who celebrate Halloween today a "Happy Halloween!!" Or maybe I should say have a "Scary Halloween!!" I don't believe in ghosts, ghouls and goblins. Except for the state of being a "hungry ghost" but they aren't exactly the kind of ghosts thought about during Halloween. Hungry ghosts are too consumed with their own suffering to go out and "haunt" or "scare" other beings.

Halloween is my favorite holiday because I enjoy spooky movies and dressing up. As a former actor I really enjoy being able to dress up as just about any character that I want for at least one day a year and not be looked at as a loony. As a Buddhist Halloween also reminds me of death and the importance of this human birth in over-coming samsara, which includes death, fear and anxiety, which are all aspects of Halloween. However, it also reminds me of my belief that along with death comes rebirth so there is hope in death. Such reflection helps take the fear and sting out of death.

Our minds make up so many delusions that confuse us and scare us into thinking that we have no ability to transcend such strong emotions. So Halloween is a way to face some of our fears and work through them and to train our mind to concentrate upon the present moment rather then let our mind carry us away into a state of paralyzing fear. Halloween is presented in a fun way, which can greatly help take the power out of our fears and even laugh at how irrational they are.

When we can take the power out of our fears then they basically disappear back into the ether of our deluded mind, which is where they came from in the first place. Fear is a deep instinct to try and protect us but it can be so powerful that it actually works against us. For example, being crippled in fear by the supernatural, which is debatable that it even exists. However, more importantly Buddha either said nothing on the subject of advised us not to give it much attention because it only feeds delusion and distracts us.

I'm not sure if ghosts in the traditional western sense are real (I currently don't believe in them) but the point is that we should overcome our concern and focus on them and worrying that if they are out there that they can somehow control our minds. It is my firm belief that nothing can control our minds unless we allow it to happen. Other than some aspects to severe mental illness, which make controling one's mind much more difficult even with medication.

PHOTO CREDIT: Buddha image carved into a pumpkin lit up with a candle by Nalini Asha.

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