Video Find of the Day
Tenzin Gyatso, Fourteenth Dalai Lama, will be in Seattle for 5 days in April and we here at Real Change are thrilled. We think His Holiness is neat.
But who is this guy? What is a dalai lama? What happened to the other 13? Could the same thing happen to me?
The Wikipedia article begins with this:
"In Tibetan Buddhism, the successive Dalai Lamas form a lineage of (tulku) magistrates which traces back to 1391. According to tradition, the rarefied mindstream of these tulku take repeated births and embodiment to fulfill their Boddhisattva vow. They are of the Gelug School of Buddhism. Tibetan Buddhists hold the Dalai Lama to be one of innumerable incarnations of Avalokiteśvara ("Chenrezig" in Tibetan), the bodhisattva of compassion."
[We've seen Avalokiteśvara before, by the way. He's the boddhisattva of compassion with the thousand arms and the 11 heads. If you want to know why he has so many arms and heads, look him up.]
There's this video, which has a prolonged interview with the man, so you can get a good sense of him. Of course, the prolonged-ness means it's a quite long video, too. Sorry 'bout that. You could watch it in shifts.
Charlie Rose - The Dalai Lama
Showing posts with label Buddhism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Buddhism. Show all posts
Thursday, February 28, 2008
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
Always Learning
[Reminder: Some of my posts, including this one, are memoirs of my abusive childhood. In this post I'm relating events that happened in November 1957, when I was 8. The links to the right can be used to follow backward through the memoirs, or to restrict viewing to other kinds of posts.]
In November '57 my Mother and I rode in a sleeper car from Seattle to San Francisco. We were met at the train station by a family friend, a woman who had a daughter my age. We stayed with them a day and night.
Here we were, on our way to Nationalist China, and our hosts had to take us to San Francisco's Chinatown. I've always thought that was a little funny. But I loved that excursion. What got my attention was a visit to a small shop, and glimpsing a back room with a small Buddhist shrine. I asked what it was, horrifying my Mother. She felt the question would be seen as rude. But the shopkeeper seemed glad I asked, told me it was a shrine to Buddha, and gave me a thirty second explanation of Buddhism that went right past me. The only thing I took away from it was her graciousness. It made a lasting impression.
That night was a little funny, too. We all turned in pretty early, even our hosts. I had to sleep on the floor of the living room. I don't know where my Mother and the others were sleeping, but after an hour or so the daughter walked out into the living room wearing only underpants, stepped over me, walked into the kitchen, got a glass of water, and started back to where she came from.
I had never seen a girl my own age wearing nothing but underpants. I actually said, "Don't you feel a little naked walking around me like that?"
She said, "False modesty is vanity."
I had to ask, "What's 'modesty'?" For some reason I'd never learned the word before. She laughed, and explained it slowly to me. Again, I don't recall the answer. My mind was elsewhere.
In November '57 my Mother and I rode in a sleeper car from Seattle to San Francisco. We were met at the train station by a family friend, a woman who had a daughter my age. We stayed with them a day and night.
Here we were, on our way to Nationalist China, and our hosts had to take us to San Francisco's Chinatown. I've always thought that was a little funny. But I loved that excursion. What got my attention was a visit to a small shop, and glimpsing a back room with a small Buddhist shrine. I asked what it was, horrifying my Mother. She felt the question would be seen as rude. But the shopkeeper seemed glad I asked, told me it was a shrine to Buddha, and gave me a thirty second explanation of Buddhism that went right past me. The only thing I took away from it was her graciousness. It made a lasting impression.
That night was a little funny, too. We all turned in pretty early, even our hosts. I had to sleep on the floor of the living room. I don't know where my Mother and the others were sleeping, but after an hour or so the daughter walked out into the living room wearing only underpants, stepped over me, walked into the kitchen, got a glass of water, and started back to where she came from.
I had never seen a girl my own age wearing nothing but underpants. I actually said, "Don't you feel a little naked walking around me like that?"
She said, "False modesty is vanity."
I had to ask, "What's 'modesty'?" For some reason I'd never learned the word before. She laughed, and explained it slowly to me. Again, I don't recall the answer. My mind was elsewhere.
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