Yesterday evening the four Austin Sitagu monks were the first act of a free concert called “Peace Wave.” Our job was to establish the mood of the event. Accordingly we chanted the Metta Sutta and out of compassion ensured that there would be an easy act to follow. Here we are, Ashins Agga, Cintita, Ariya and Sacca, under the bright lights.
I have uploaded a completed draft of my autobiography:
If you were following this before you will know that the final chapter has been long over due. This chapter is included in this draft. Moreover I have shortened most of the early chapters. I wanted to post this now because we are beginning the three-month Rains Retreat, during which I intend to do no substantial writing. You can find it here:
I have uploaded a highly reworked and nearly final draft of the eBook I had called Buddhist Religiosity. Please find it here:
Growing the Dharma: Buddhism’s Religious Spadework. Draft, July 2013. “The individual or collective Western response has often much like that of the new landowner who discovers an overgrown but still potentially productive corn field on his property and with limited understanding of both corn and non-corn, dauntlessly hacks away with a machete only to destroy half of the corn and to leave half of the undergrowth, then plants one row of Monsanto super-corn and row of squash to make it look right. It looks pretty good, so we call it Western Buddhism and expect it to save Buddhism from centuries of Asian misunderstanding and cultural accretions. We have all the hubris and discernment-level of rowdy teenagers.”
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Banf, Alberta, in the Canadian Rockies, December 20, 2012.
I flew to California on the first of the month to spend about ten days with my father on the Point Reyes Peninsula. We settled some issues that remained concerning my deceased brother Arthur’s estate and spent time together. We shipped three big boxes of books that I had selected on my previous visit and before the auctioneer arrived from Arthur’s library off to Austin where they will find a welcoming place on the shelves of the non-Buddhist section of the Sitagu Vihara library.
On Monday I flew up to Calgary, Alberta, Canada, where I am staying at the Myanmar Buddhist Temple until about January 15. They have been without a monk of their own for over a year and have been inviting a series of monks for short visits, including our abbot, Ashin Ariyadhamma, who had come back to Austin with a smile on his face. I am naturally the first Westerner to come in that capacity and as expected I have been very warmly welcomed to this winter wonderland by the Burmese community. The snowy temperature here has been down to about 8 degrees Farenheit. I can look out the window and see the Canadian Rockies to the west. I had never been in Canada before, except for a brief trip to Toronto to attend a conference many years ago. I think of Canada as a colder, roomier and more civilized version of the United States. This, from their Web site, is what they expect of me:
“Bhikkhu Ashin Cintita is arriving on December 11, 2012. He will be staying at the Temple until January 7, 2013. He will be giving Dhamma Talks, Cultural and Spiritual Classes for Children & Youth. There will be special Dhamma sessions for young adults. Dhamma discussion (Q&A) and One-on-One counselling will be provided upon request. Most of the programs will be open to general public. Please send an email at mbtalberta@gmail.com or call 403 460 3161 for further information or request.”
I’ve also been helping on a community development grant proposal for remodeling the temple into a facility to serve primarily as a community center for the Burmese Buddhist Community.
I have been considering how best to proceed with my writing (you might have gotten a sense of that if you noticed that I sent no OopDay posting last week). I would like in the coming months to focus on what needs focusing on: a number of larger projects that I have in the works or could well have in the works that do not lend themselves to the format and rigor of the weekly essay. Among these are:
1. A new draft of my ebook From Thought to Destiny.
2. My autobiographical sketch Through the Looking Glass.
3. An essay, “What the Buddha Thought About Women,” reworked from my series on Folk Buddhism.
4. An ebook perhaps called Buddhist Religiosity or Buddhist Religiosity and Secular Buddhism, consolidated and rewritten from many of my other essays and covering such topics as faith, ritual, respect, devotion, bowing, Buddhist communities and institutions and traditional folk interpretations of Buddhism..
5. An essay on Zen meditation.
Accordingly I thought I would continue to post at least a greeting or news each OopDay and provide links to the results of other projects as they become available.
Sound reasonable?
I am hoping that there is a prospective sleuth or a professional gumshoe among my readership who can illuminate the Case of the Missing Hour. Not that I expect to get the hour back (I would probably just spend it writing on this blog in any case).
This is how I remember the start of the day last Tuesday:
4:30. Alarm, I lazily click it off. I lie in bad, stretch a bit. It is a little chilly in my cabin beyond the blankets.
4:41. Finally I get out of bed. I make coffee and study conjunctions in A.K. Warder’s Introduction to Pali for about 40 minutes, during which I finish the coffee. I do a little stretching put on my hat and leave for the Dhamma Hall. It is dark as always and I use my flashlight.
~5:25. Arrive at Dhamma Hall. I expect Mahendra, a visiting retreatant from India via Boston, to join me but he is not there. I unlock the door, do bows, get settled on my cushions, set a timer to count down from 1 hour. I will sit for 50 minutes. Well before the end of the period I hear someone enter the room behind me.
6:20. I ring the bell to end the sitting period. Suddenly Dr. Than Tut, another visiting retreatant, is next to me and reports that I am late for breakfast but he had not wanted to interrupt my meditation. I begin to explain to him that it is only 6:20, that breakfast does not start (for the monks) until 6:30, but as I turn to speak to him I notice that the sun is streaming through the windows whereas at 6:30 the previous day there was only the very slightest glimmer of sunrise in the sky. Disoriented, I abort my explanation.
By the time I arrive at breakfast it is in fact 7:30 not 6:30! The abbot finished eating and left long ago. Maung Wah, the cat, has also eaten but is still hanging around and is delighted to see me finally arrive. Sayaw Lay, our nun, has kept food on the table for me while Dr. Than Tut went to find me.
Where did the hour disappear to?
I explain what had happened and Saya Lay concludes that I was in very deep samadhi indeed and inadvertently sat for almost two hours. She and the doctor, looking a bit wide-eyed and awe-struck at the depth of such samadhi, both instinctively bring their hands into anjali as she interprets the incident and concludes with, “Sadhu sadhu sadhu.” I try to explain that I don’t think that was what had happened but they will not listen.
In fact there are other equally plausible explanations:
It is a far far nobler thing for an hour to be swallowed into samadhi than into slumber, but we must consider all possibilities. After breakfast I ascertained that the alarm was indeed set for 4:30 and that both of my clocks were showing the correct time. My cell phone showed that the abbot had tried to call me well before 7 am, no doubt worried about his missing monk.
By way of investigation I have no one to interview, since I saw no one that early morning. I talk to Mahendra and sure enough discovered he did not see me at all that morning in spite of his claim to have come to 5:30 meditation, to have found the door to the Dhamma Hall locked and to have gone back to his room to meditate.
One by one we lose everybody and everything that is dear to us. Until at some point anyone who is still left out there all at once loses us. We are adrift in an ever-changing unreliable world. Our every attempt to grab onto something as it flies into and out of our world, to pretend it is fixed and constantly at hand when it is in fact flying by, always hurts. Sometimes it jolts, sometimes it mangles.
We lost my older brother Arthur a couple of days ago. I flew out to California where Arthur lived not far from our childhood home, where my dad and I are dealing with his affairs. Inseparable as children, our lives took radically different paths as adults. He became remarkable in many ways. He took his own life and no one can figure out what it was that flying by hurt him so badly.
For those readers in Austin, TX:
This Thursday I will give a talk for the Mariposa Sangha in Austin. All are invited to attend.
Karma = Practice
Speaker: Bhikkhu Cintita, Sitagu Buddha Vihara
Location: Trinity United Methodist Church, Interdenominational Chapel
4001 Speedway, Austin
Time: Thursday, September 6, 7pm – 8:30pm
Afterwards Bhante Cintita will present some pictures of the new pagoda at the Burmese monastery in SW Austin.