Opening the Heart: Buddhist Meditation Weekend

“How can we take up the bodhisattva path?” This is the question with which Anyen Rinpoche opened this weekend retreat at Naropa University in February of 2011. Rinpoche was very affable, humorous, and relaxed, but at the same time intensely serious. His English was very good, but he was assisted by his wife and translator, Alison Graboski, who enabled him to have very precise interactions with the students, whom he engaged quite frequently over the course of the weekend. In a natural yet systematic way Rinpoche led us through an overview of Mahāyāna Buddhism and gave us specific instructions for practicing the bodhisattva path. Rinpoche’s definition of this path was simple—to put others before ourselves.

Anyen Rinpoche challenged us to think about how we might do this with the people closest to us: our boyfriends, wives, or partners. In the first of several personal anecdotes, he told us how, as a young tulku,1 he had been given the only comfortable seat—a cushion with branches under it—in the tent which served as a practice hall. He related how he gave his seat up to an old lama who was in physical pain, and how he had to consciously make the decision to do so—to follow through, in action, on the concepts of the bodhisattva path he was studying. Rinpoche then gave detailed teachings on some of those concepts.


The Four Seals

First, there was a lengthy discussion of the “Four Seals,” or the four things which characterize all existence, according to Buddhism: 1) All conditioned phenomena are impermanent. Rinpoche said “Impermanence is the door, or the key, to the spiritual path—if we could think about this [that everything is impermanent], our life can become easier, because we realize there is no reason to be attached to either happiness or suffering. This realization will bring us patience, diligence, and compassion.” 2) The nature of saṃsāra is suffering. Suffering is broken down into three categories: all-pervasive suffering, the suffering of suffering, and the suffering of change. All pervasive suffering is the background noise of saṃsāra—the basic unsatisfactoriness at the root of confused existence. The suffering of suffering is simple pain—the pain of an injury or slight. The suffering of change is the pain we feel when he are happy, yet we know that it will not last. 3) All phenomena are empty of self. According to Anyen Rinpoche, this seal points to the path to getting rid of afflictive emotions. Examining things, we find they have no inherent existence, but are the result of innumerable causes and conditions in an infinite web of “dependent arising.” 4) All phenomena are characterized by enlightenment. This means that enlightenment, or nirvāna, is the actual state of that which seems to us to be confused.

Bodhichitta

Rinpoche discussed two types of bodhichitta: conventional and absolute.
Bodhichitta (literally “awakening mind”) is the aspiration to attain enlightenment for the benefit of all beings. On the conventional level, it is aspirational and engaged. On the absolute level, the belief in self and others no longer operates, and compassion is a natural function of a non-dual experience of emptiness. Rinpoche stressed the importance of motivation for those who would undertake the bodhisattva path. He encouraged us to examine our motivation at every turn, and if we found it to be selfish, to try to turn it towards benefiting others, saying “beings who have excellent motivation sooner or later experience the benefit of that motivation [themselves].” He also said that without the proper motivation, it would be difficult to practice the six pāramitās of generosity, discipline, exertion, patience, meditation, and wisdom—the six “perfections” necessary to help beings. Rinpoche discussed the two accumulations: of merit and of wisdom. He said that merit is more important than wisdom—that it alone would suffice whereas wisdom alone would not—and that generosity could include all the other pāramitās.

The Four Immeasurables

Another way to cultivate bodhichitta is the practice of the Four Immeasurables. Equanimity is “not falling into attachment or aversion” and can be cultivated through śamatha, or “calm-abiding.” Loving Kindness is unconditioned love, like that of a mother for her child, and can be cultivated by wishing that “sentient beings should have happiness and its causes.” Compassion is putting others ahead of ourselves, and can be practiced in tonglen, or “sending and receiving” meditation, which Rinpoche taught us, and in which we learned to take the suffering of others—even our enemies—and transform it into benefit for them. Finally, Joy is to rejoice in the happiness or good fortune of others instead of being jealous of them.

Conclusion

I found Anyen Rinpoche to be a sensitive, humorous, humble, and compassionate teacher, and I left the retreat feeling very inspired to put his teachings into practice. In addition to his extensive doctrinal teachings, Rinpoche spent quite a bit of time practicing with us, both śamatha and tonglen, which gave us the opportunity to follow his instructions directly and immediately, with his very presence to guide and invigorate us.

Of the many personal stories he told, one in particular was very touching and I still remember it vividly. When he was a small Child, and was still living with his parents and being tutored by his first teacher, Lama Chupur, he had a “yak baby” which he loved very much. When the baby yak got sick and died, he was inconsolable, and would not let his father “touch a knife to the yak baby’s body.” Lama Chupur used the situation to teach the young Anyen Rinpoche about the truth of impermanence, and told him to cultivate that same feeling of love he had for the yak, and to extend it to all sentient beings. This strategy of starting with cultivating bodhichitta towards someone we love—for whom its easy to feel compassion—and then expanding the feeling to include more and more beings, is one that Rinpoche recommended, and which makes a lot of sense as a method. The idea of generating compassion and love equally for all beings can be daunting, and starting small can be a way to get a handle on the practice. I now have a renewed sense of urgency toward acting out the creed of the bodhisattva as elucidated by Anyen Rinpoche. He is truly a treasure, and we are extremely lucky to have him as an instructor at Naropa University.

1 Tib., sprul sku, a reincarnated master.

The Interracial Origin of Appalachian Fiddling: Lost in Perception

Writing Seminar II
Professor Spohn
3 December 2009

Appalachian fiddle music has long been associated in the popular mind, at least through most of the twentieth century, with white Americans. Images of fiddle-and-banjo players in the modern era have been almost exclusively of white “hillbillies” or mountain people, and most of the people actually playing the music in that time period have been white, which tended to reinforce the stereotype. But this was not always the case. In an earlier era, there was much more diversity, with many players of fiddle-based dance music in the Upper South being black, and derogatory images in popular culture reflecting an association of the music with blacks. Fiddle has, from very early in America, been identified with the banjo, and this duet of instruments became intimately tied together, both in actual practice and in the popular imagination. The banjo can be traced directly to Africa, and that is only the most obvious clue pointing to the interracial origin of Appalachian instrumental music. The duet of fiddle and banjo is “interracial” in itself—the fiddle, European, and the banjo, African—and this paper will show that there are many other signs that the music which is traditionally played on this duo of instruments has components of both Anglo-Celtic and African musical concepts, material, and practices deriving from a process of exchange between European and African Americans.

There are many references to exchanges between blacks and whites in the 19th century. Joel Walker Sweeney, the first famous white banjo player, learned the instrument from a slave on the plantation of a neighbor, Dr. Joel Walker Flood, Sr. But cultural interchange between whites and blacks, though not well documented, certainly went back to the very first contact, and was more extensive than has been portrayed by the conventional historical view.

Modern Perceptions of Old-Time Music

I grew up in rural southwest Michigan, in an area which had many families whose parents or grandparents had migrated from the south during the Great Depression, seeking work in the factories of the auto industry. Some of these families migrated intact from Tennessee and Kentucky, and my father’s family was one of these. Many of these family groups kept aspects of southern culture, and Bluegrass music, a modern descendant of Old-time music, was very popular. I don't think any of these people would have conceded that African-Americans had any role in the history of their music. From a young age, I was aware of a pervasive racism among my neighbors and even members of my family. The music perceived to have come with them from the Appalachian region of their forefathers—which they generically called Bluegrass—was very much imbued with a sense of white pride. At the annual Bluegrass festival in Barry County, which I often attended with my parents, confederate battle flags and other symbols of White Supremacy were prominently displayed.

Of course, Bluegrass music is quite different from what I am referring to here as “Old-time” music: it is a product of the 20th century, mainly created by Bill Monroe, its most famous proponent. Monroe actually acknowledged the influence of Jazz on his music, and said that he organized the Bluegrass band along the same lines as the Swing band—with each instrument inhabiting a different sonic space, and taking turns soloing over the chord changes of the tune. Bluegrass owes much to the fiddle music it supplanted, which came to be called “Old-time” to distinguish it from Bluegrass, and for many white non-musicians, there is no distinction between the two. For many, if the music is Southern, and has fiddle and banjo, it is “Bluegrass.” The perception that this southern, Appalachian fiddle music was the exclusive province of whites was largely unspoken. It was a matter of white pride to associate oneself with fiddle, banjo, guitar, dulcimer, and the “high lonesome sound” of what was taken to be a racial heritage of music stretching in an unbroken line back to the British Isles.

This is the story I internalized growing up, and it still persists today. I don’t know how many times I have been at a Celtic- or Folk-music festival and had someone approach me saying: “that Irish music is in my blood, just like my Grandad used to play in Kentucky,” or “Bluegrass music (interchangeable with Old-time in the popular mind) and Irish music are all the same thing,” or some such construction conflating Anglo-Celtic and Appalachian musics. Actually, the fiddle music of the Upper South is very different from that played in either the Irish or Scottish traditions today. Though there are many tunes in common, and many tunes in American fiddling that seem to have their origin in Anglo-Celtic sources, there are a great many tunes that are native to America, and moreover, have no archetypes in European music. More importantly, though, the rhythmic conception embedded in Appalachian fiddling is utterly different from that of either Irish or Scottish fiddling, and is profoundly syncopated and polyrhythmical: in a word, it is African. Later, as I learned more about music generally, and was exposed to different styles, I realized that Irish fiddle music sounded quite different from the Bluegrass and Old-time music I had grown up hearing. If Appalachian fiddle music had come directly from Ireland and Scotland, what accounted for the drastic difference I heard, but could not yet describe, between the two?

The answer is complex, and much more interesting than the simple idea of Anglo-Celtic migrants bringing their music intact from one continent to another. It involves the profound cultural interchange brought about by the African slave-trade and the colonization of America, a largely brutal and tragic history which nevertheless produced a unique and beautiful style of fiddle music which is quite unlike the parallel styles in Ireland and Scotland. This dissimilarity is made more clear by the unlikely combination of the European fiddle and the African banjo.

The Exchange of Instruments: Fiddle and Banjo

The tradition of the banjo, an instrument which has existed in various forms and been called by different names, goes back to at least the seventh century in Africa. The first documented instance of African-American slaves playing the banjo is from 1740, but the instrument in America undoubtedly goes further back. By 1781, Thomas Jefferson could say that “the instrument proper to them (the slaves) is the Banjar, which they brought hither from Africa”. While it is not clear exactly when the banjo arrived in America, historians and musicologists agree that it was very early; probably in the 17th century. The Reverend Jonathan Boucher, who lived in Virginia and Maryland prior to 1775, noted in his Boucher’s Glossary of Archaic and Provincial Words, published in 1832, that in Maryland and Virginia,

The Favourite (sic) and almost only instrument in use among the slaves there was a bandore, or as they pronounced the word, banjer. Its body was a long hollow gourd, with a long handle attached to it, strung with catgut,and played on with fingers. Its sound is a dull, heavy, grumbling murmer; yet not without something like melody, nor incapable of inspiring cheerfulness and myrth. Negroes... are always awakened and alive at the sound of the banjer.

During the 17th and 18th centuries, large numbers of Scottish, Irish, and Northern Irish immigrants were arriving in the colonies, many of them as indentured servants. Some undoubtedly brought their “recently standardized” fiddles with them, but actually, rather than fiddle music from the British Isles being the ancestor of American fiddle music, all of these styles emerged simultaneously as part of a revolution of instrumental violin music throughout the English-speaking world in the late 18th century. A profound democratization of the instrument occurred at that time, corresponding to its becoming widely available due to mass production. During the earlier part of that period, the African slave-trade was just getting underway, and the ruling elites of the colonies depended on these “white slaves” for a large part of the labor force. They didn’t consider the Irish—mostly Roman Catholic and Gaelic speaking—to be “white” at that time, and white and black slaves were often housed together, resulting in a great deal of interchange, including de facto intermarriage. It is likely that the Africans, being familiar with fiddle-like instruments from their homeland, were quick to understand and adapt to the European violin, and it is probably during this period that the instrument was introduced to them. One thing which is very clear is that the unique combination of fiddle and banjo—the very signature sound of Old-time music—which is today so strongly associated with white mountain people, was played exclusively by blacks for at least 100 years.

African Rhythm, European Melody

Thus began a process, lasting over three centuries, of musical interchange whereby Africans and African-Americans were introduced to Anglo-Celtic instruments and melodies, and Anglo-Americans were exposed to African conceptions of rhythm. By the end of the 17th century, planters in the colonies had turned more and more to African slaves for their labor needs. Frightened by a series of interracial revolts, most notably “Bacon’s Rebellion,” in 1676, they segregated white and black servants, and began to develop the legal system of slavery.

During the height of plantation slavery, slave owners often sought to have the more musically talented of their slaves play for their dances, parties, and celebrations. They would have wanted the slaves to play familiar types of dance-tunes, which the slaves would have had to have been taught. Because these slave owners wouldn’t have necessarily had white musicians at their disposal, and presumably would not have cared one way or another as to the color of the musicians, it became very common for blacks to play for white dances. In fact, it appears to have been the rule rather than the exception for musicians at white dances to be black. The iconography of the period shows the fiddle as practically the only instrument played at these gatherings, sometimes accompanied by percussion such as the bones.

It is likely, almost inevitable, that the slaves would have “Africanized” the Anglo-Celtic melodies they were required to play. These would have been standard dance-tunes like marches, quadrilles, flings, and reels, and would have been Africanized by simplifying them melodically, while complicating them rhythmically. African music is, in general, less melodically dense than European music, but much more complex in terms of rhythm. Africans would have introduced polyrhythm into these melodies, or what whites would hear as “syncopation”—the stress of non-primary beats or divisions of beats in the cycle of the rhythm. At the same time, the white dancers would have experienced, in their very bodies, the influence of this Africanized rhythm, and it could not have but had an effect on them.

Musicologist Douglas Goodhart, of Kansas City, believes that African rhythm is actually embedded in the bowing patterns still used today in Appalachian fiddling. Goodhart has discovered that “bell patterns,” set rhythmic patterns that form the basis for many styles and genres of African music, are actually being “hammered out” constantly by the bows of fiddlers. The most common bell pattern is related to what is called the “clave beat” of Caribbean music, The melodies played or sung over these rhythms also begin halfway through the rhythmic pattern. Goodhart can show that, in the bowing, the melody will start at that same halfway point. This is uncanny, and there is “absolutely no way white people could have come up with this.” Yet, for blacks, in whom these rhythms were ingrained, it would have been second-nature, and could have easily entered their fiddle playing. The impact of these rhythms is undeniable and would have been adopted by whites immediately, as a fashion. If you watch Goodhart play a tune like “Cluck Old Hen,” and you follow the movement of his bow, you can see it defining this twelve-eight bell-pattern rhythm all the way through the tune.

In addition to the tunes of Anglo-Celtic origin which were rhythmically Africanized, there are also tunes of American origin that follow a “short motif” form in which the melodic content is very short—usually two bars long—and extremely simple. The melodic content in these tunes “says” almost nothing in comparison to the relatively well-developed melodies of European dance music. These tunes are profoundly African in their rhythm, and are melodically very similar to certain styles of African tunes. There is absolutely nothing like this in European music, and it is almost certain that these kinds of tunes were originally composed by African-Americans or by white musicians, in imitation of those kinds of melodies. Tunes like “Backstep Cindy” and “Boogerman” are examples of the short-motif form which are still played today.

In addition to the interchange and Africanization which took place purely in the context of the fiddle, the combination of the fiddle with the banjo further solidified the African-American component of the fiddle music of the upper south. The common style of playing the five-string banjo is called “frailing,” or “clawhammer,” and involves a downward brushing motion of the hand in which the backs of the fingernails of either the first or second fingers play the longer strings on the downbeat and on the upbeat, while the thumb plucks the short “drone-string” in between those beats, creating a “micropulse,” or a further subdivision of the beat. This way of playing banjo-like instruments with a short drone-string is still done in Africa today, and is done on no European instrument. The effect is a repeating rhythm of eighth-notes which, especially when every other thumb is left out, sets up a loping rhythm that sounds like “bum-titty, bum-titty.” When the syncopated melodies of the fiddle are overlaid on this micropulse, the effect becomes all the more polyrhythmical.

Polyrhythms are rhythms, usually of two and three, which happen simultaneously one over the other. These rhythms are already suggested in many traditional fiddle tunes, but the micropulse, or the minutely divided rhythm of the banjo, makes them even more explicit. Goodhart defines polyrhythmic music this way:

Polyrhythmic music is music organized so that two or more rhythmic parts, independent in their rhythmic makeup, create a whole, with an identity different from that of any of the parts. The parts may, seemingly, have nothing to do with one another but when played together interlock and form unity. The difference between polyrhymic and non-polyrhythmic music is that in non-polyrhythmic ensembles it is possible for an instrument to drop out and still have a version of the music, depending on the genre and which instrument is absent. But with polyrhythmic ensembles if an instrument drops out there is no music. The vase has been broken and the pieces of glass are no longer a vase.

Polyrhythms tend to be heard by Europeans as being “off” the main downbeats because the concept of polyrhythm is basically absent from formal European music. It is, however, central to African music.

In addition to the evidence of African-American and Anglo-Celtic interchange that is embedded in the music itself, there is work being done on the iconography of the period by musicologists, including Chris Smith, who is looking at the work of painter William Sydney Mount (1807-1868), and is finding evidence for widespread musical contact between blacks and whites in New York, where Mount lived, throughout Mount’s life and apparently long before. Musicians were a favorite subject for Mount, and a painting of a black banjo player is one of his most famous. His sketchbooks abound with images of white and black musicians playing together, and they are thought to have been rendered from life. Mount was an amateur musician who is known to have learned from black players, most notably, Anthony Clapp, a fiddler. Mount once wrote “I have sat by Toney Clapp and heard him play his jigs and reels.” The cultural interchange between blacks and whites was “far more ubiquitous” than conventional history would have us believe. There is also evidence of an important black role in Old-time music cited by musicologist and fiddler Paul F. Wells. Of particular note are the recollections of Kentucky fiddler Richard Burnett (b. 1883), interviewed by Charles Wolfe in 1973:

Oh yeah. Yeah. Bled Coffey here in town [Monticello, Kentucky], he was a fiddler during the Civil War, and the Bertram boys here, Cooge Bertram was a good fiddler. He was raised in Corbin [Kentucky]. Yes sir, there were a lot of black men playin’ old time music. Bled Coffey was the best fiddler in the county. Been dead for years. I played many a tune with him—used to play with me, oh, sixty year ago. He’d play any o’ the old songs that I did. The old-fashioned tunes, like “Cripple Creek,” “Sourwood Mountain,” “Soldier’s Joy,” “Fire on the Mountain―them old-fashioned tunes is about what he played. (Quoted in Wolfe 1973, 7)

This kind of interchange between white and black musicians was common from at least the early 19th through the early 20th century. While there was always fiddling among whites, the quintessential duet of fiddle and banjo, the signature sound of Appalachian music, was played only by blacks for over 100 years.

Minstrelsy and changing styles

White people did not begin playing the banjo in earnest until the middle of the 19th century, and when they did, it was with their faces painted black. Blackface minstrelsy has a poor reputation today. It is considered the very embodiment of the racist society that gave birth to it, and, of course, it does reflect that society. However, it was also a medium which showed African-American characters in a positive light relative to “Mr. Interlocutor,” who represented the slave-owner, and was always the villain. Moreover, white performers who pioneered the minstrel stage were often serious fans and students of African-American music, learning it from the slaves themselves and striving for, and taking pride in “authenticity.” Many liberal, anti-slavery Americans at the time welcomed the minstrel shows as an indigenous art-form equivalent to opera. Mark Twain, Horace Greeley, Margaret Fuller, and Walt Whitman sang its praises. The material presented on the minstrel stage, with its

studied imitations of slave styles of singing and dancing and celebrating...brought to the nation’s attention the very concept of racial and cultural difference, making black-style expression into a vocabulary of social commentary. How else could a form of entertainment be interpreted when everyone on the stage but one performer, Mr. Interlocutor, was portrayed as black, and when he continually played the straight man to those portraying slave—and was often the butt of laughter?

Roger Abrahams argues that even while the minstrel-stage reinforced simplistic and negative stereotypes of blacks as lazy, happy, and carefree, at the same time, it humanized plantation life, and celebrated blacks’ creativity and talent at entertaining. “In this process,” he says,

the minstrel-stage entertainment confounded American notions of self and other, for the very success of the form placed actors of all sorts in the position of agreeing to play black even as the system of enslavement was being subjected to moral scrutiny.

The minstrel shows were the most popular form of dance-hall entertainment in America for the better part of 100 years, starting in about 1830. Their influence on all styles of American music, both commercial and vernacular, is undeniable. Their styles were drawn directly from corn shucking and other forms of African-American performance. Joel Walker Sweeney learned to play from African- Americans in his area, and so did many other minstrels. They seem to have been among the more progressive members of white society in that they respected African-American culture, and learned it on its own terms. The African-American music they strove to faithfully reproduce on the stage was taken into the remotest corners of the south, where it was adopted by whites, and entered their traditions. Mountain whites also came into contact with black musicians at the river ports of the Ohio and the Sandy, where tunes and songs were no doubt exchanged, and by the end of the 19th century, Banjo/fiddle music was well-established among whites all over the Upper South.

The 20th Century: Whites Only?

Though blacks continued to play Old-time music well into the 20th century, a number of causes contributed to their moving away from fiddle and banjo. Blues and Jazz grew more popular outside their places of origin—the Mississippi delta and New Orleans—and as blacks migrated in large numbers to urban areas in the north, these newer styles were seen as more vital and relevant. Also, the phenomenon of Blackface minstrelsy soured blacks on the old-fashioned music that was being used to satirize them. At the same time, fiddle and banjo were being embraced by whites in the South, particularly in the Appalachian mountains, and by mid-century, the fact that blacks had once been central to this style of music had faded from memory.

By the early 1900’s blacks had moved on to other styles of music: ragtime, blues, and jazz were all created and embraced by African-Americans, who may not have been anxious to hold on to the fiddle music which represented a past for which they probably did not feel much sentimentality. This “moving on” by blacks can also be said to typify an African approach to music which is constantly seeking change. African arts are always replacing and updating the content within a form. Conversely, the Celto-European approach can be seen in the English ballad tradition, in which generations of singers passed down lyrics which changed very little over time. Thus, as time went on, white musicians tended to preserve the fiddle music, while blacks, for a variety of reasons, sought fresh avenues of expression, and made those their own as well. By the middle of the 20th century, the pivotal role of black Americans in developing fiddle music was all but forgotten.

Conclusion

Perceptions are often slow to change, but sometimes they are abandoned overnight. The idea that Appalachian fiddle music is “white” is simply wrong, and should be thrown out and replaced with a more truthful story of the history and provenance of this unique and powerful music. The evidence is overwhelming, and it comes from many different lines of inquiry: Alan Jabbour has collected accounts of past interchange between white and black fiddlers from his sources in the Piedmont; Roger Abrahams uses written records to reconstruct some of the crucial musical interaction between blacks and whites; Cecilia Conway looks at patterns of migration and traces the routes of interchange; Paul Wells analyses tune families, teasing out the probable timeline of variation; Chris Smith finds graphic proof, in the sketchbooks of an artist, of black and white musicians playing together as a matter of routine; Douglas Goodhart has discovered the structure of African music theory embedded in Old-time bowing patterns. All of these scholars, in one way or another, have found strong evidence for African-Americans’ deep involvement in the development of the music—not just “influence,” as some scholars have conceded in the past—but a central role in the very foundations of the music. Since both black and white culture, music, and dance were absolutely critical to the formation of this native American genre, Appalachian fiddle music is truly interracial.

Bibliography:

Abrahams, Roger D. Singing the Master: The Emergence of African American Culture
in the Plantation South. New York: Pantheon Books, 1992.

Carlin, Bob. The Birth of the Banjo:Joel Walker Sweeney and Early Minstrelsy.
Jefferson:McFarland, 2004.

Conway, Cecelia.“Black Banjo Songsters in Appalachia,” Black Music Research Journal, Vol.
23, No. ½ (Spring – Autumn, 2003) pp. 149-156

Goertzen, Chris, “American Fiddle Tunes and the Historic-Geographic Method”
Ethnomusicology, Vol 29, No. 3 (Autumn, 1985), 448-473.

Goertzen, Chris and Alan Jabbour, “George P. Knauff's Virginia Reels and Fiddling in
the Antebellum South” American Music, Vol. 5, No. 2 (Summer, 1987), 121-144.

Hay, Fred J., “Black Musicians in Appalachia: An Introduction to Affrilachian Music”
Black MusicResearch Journal, Vol. 23, No. ½, (Spring-Autumn, 2003), 1-19.

Small, Christopher. Music of the Common Tongue: Survival and Celebration in Afro-
American Music. London: John Caldor, 1987.

Southern, Eileen and Josephine Wright. Images: Iconography of Music in African-
American Culture, 1770s-1920s. New York: Garland Publishing, Inc. 2000.

Wells, Paul F. “Fiddling as an Avenue of Black-White Interchange,” Black Music
Research Journal Spring/Fall (2003) 135-147.

Takaki, Ronald. A Different Mirror: a History of Multicultural America. New York: Back Bay
Books, 2008.

Śāntideva: A Look at Two Translations of the Bodhicharyāvatāra

Mason Brown
Professor Jobson
REL150 Research Paper
11/26/2009

Śāntideva was an Indian monk who likely lived in the Early 8th century in the university/monastery of Nālānda. The great work attributed to him is the Bodhicharyāvatāra, or “Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life,” which has been a central, inspirational scripture in Tibetan Buddhism for over twelve hundred years, and has been translated, copied, and commented upon constantly over that period, resulting in a great body of literary, pedagogical, and practical knowledge, which leads to the rich pool of modern work on the subject. This paper will examine two English translations of Śāntideva’s masterpiece, both of which are recent and readily available, and it will also attempt to give a general introduction to Śāntideva and his most important work.

The first of the two translations, which is by Kate Crosby and Andrew Skilton, with a general introduction by Paul Williams, and published by Oxford University Press in 1995, is based on a somewhat fragmentary Sanskrit text known as “Prajñākaramati’s commentary on the Bodhicharyāvatāra, the Bodhicharyāvatāra-pañjikā,” and, as the translators are both British—from Oxford University and the University of Bristol—the style is “standard British English.” (Crosby xxxv) The second, by the Padmakara Translation Group, Published by Shambala in a revised edition in 2006, is based on the Tibetan, with special attention paid to the commentary of Nyingma master Khenpo Kunzang Pelden. It was translated by Wulstan Fletcher and seems to favor American English.

The Padmakara group, after acknowledging the importance and utility of Crosby and Skilton’s translation to themselves and to scholarship in general, claim that their Tibetan-based translation, with its reliance on living tradition, might be more useful to the practitioner of Mahayana Buddhism:

we would argue that for those who are interested in practicing the Bodhisattva path, the Tibetan translation of the Bodhicharyāvatāra occupies a position of greater significance than a modern rendering, be it never so scholarly and accurate, of a Sanskrit manuscript that by chance escaped the destruction of the Buddhist libraries in India. The accidents of history have determined that the textual and commentarial transmission of the Bodhicharyāvatāra stretching back to Śāntideva—the human connection, so to speak—lies in the Tibetan and not in the Sanskrit. (Padmakara Translation Group, xv)

Crosby and Skilton are very concerned with textual questions, such as the arrangement of the chapters, since they are confronted with the fact that verses from Śāntideva’s other work, the Śikṣā Samuccaya, appear in the canonical Sanskrit text of the Bodhicharyāvatāra, and that the number of chapters varies in the received versions. Their Translator’s introduction, as well as the general introduction by Buddhist practitioner and scholar Paul Williams invaluable reading for understanding some of the problems involved with reaching a perfect translation, as well as providing a connection to present-day practice, belying the Padmakara Group's implication that their translation might be too scholarly to be of use to actual practitioners.

Nālandā University and the context of the Madhyamaka

When Śāntideva was at Nālandā around the turn of the 8th century, The monastery, university, and world-renowned center of learning had been there, in northern India, in the modern-day state of Bihar, for over 300 years (Crosby xxviii). It was a major educational center, with a Buddhist orientation, but was by no means exclusively Buddhist. Hindu studies, as well as “logic, grammar, medicine, magic, Sāṃkhya philosophy, and a number of other subsidiary subjects, such as art” were taught there. In this intellectual environment, with its open and cosmopolitan style, the Buddhist dialectical school known as Madhyamaka came to predominate. The founder of this school, the name of which means “Middle way,” was Nāgārjuna, “who lived sometime during the first few hundred years after Christ,” (Huntington, 32) and coined the term, “Madhyamika.” The philosophy of the Madhyamaka, which was conceived as a refutation of the “Yogacara,” or “mind-only” school, is that attachment to either the extreme of innate existence or the extreme of complete and literal non-existence are both in error, and that any rational postulation contains the seeds of its own refutation. In other words, though something may be true in terms of “relative truth,” rational constructs are insufficient for describing the “absolute truth” of phenomena. Another important exponent of Madhyamaka, Chandrakīrti, was associated with the Prāsaṅgika-Madhyamaka, which held that “ one must either be led toward a gradual realization of emptiness solely by means of a critique against one’s own prejudices and presuppositions about so-called empirical experience and the arguments consciously or unconsciously posited to support these preconceived ideas,” (Huntington 34) or “one need only to observe patiently, with extreme care and devotion, the appearance of reality on which our commonsense assumptions are based, and in so doing the emptiness of all ontological and epistemological categories will reveal itself in these everyday appearances.” (35) Madhyamaka is, in short, a dialectical system in which, through reductio ad absurdum, all conventional views, indeed, all positions are refuted.

Śāntideva is solidly within Nāgārjuna’s and Chandrakīrti’s tradition, and the chapter entitled “The Perfection of Understanding,” (Crosby) or simply, “Wisdom,” (Padmakara) is famous for summarizing the many arguments that went on among different schools of thought at Nālandā, and for refuting all those opposed to Madhyamaka. That chapter is notoriously difficult, and is often problematic for scholars and writers, and describing its meaning is beyond the scope of this paper, and the abilities of this author. My main concern will be with a comparison of the prose of the two translations, with reference to commentaries including one by the Dalai Lama. According to him, the Bodhicharyāvatāra “condenses the three turnings of the wheel of the Buddha’s teaching.” (Tenzin Gyatso 8) According to the Padmakara Group:

It is a frequent practice to divide The Way of the Bodhisattva into three main sections, along the lines of a famous prayer, perhaps traceable to Nāgārjuna:

May bodhicitta, precious and sublime,
Arise where it has not yet come to be;
And where it has arisen may it never fail
But grow and flourish ever more and more.” (2)

Turning the Mind Toward Bodhichitta

The word Bodhichitta means, “awakening mind” according to Crosby and Skilton. Padmakara leaves the term untranslated, as it is widely used and understood by English-speaking Buddhists to mean “mind of enlightenment.” (2) Kobun Chino Otogawa translated it as “wayseeking mind,” and it is at the heart of Śāntideva’s method. The first three chapters of Bodhicharyāvatāra are called “Praise of the Awakening Mind,” “Confession of Faults,” and
“Adopting the Awakening Mind” by Crosby and Skilton, and their thrust is to rouse us from complacency; to inspire us to follow the still-small voice of our own innate enlightenment to live for the benefit of beings:

To those who go in bliss, the dharmakaya they posses, and all their heirs,
To all those worthy of respect, I reverently bow.
According to the scriptures, I shall now in brief describe
The practice of the Bodhisattva discipline. (Padmakara 31)

Or:

In adoration I make obeisance to the Sugatas and their sons, and to their bodies of Dharma, and to all those worthy of praise. In brief, and in accordance with scripture, I shall describe the undertaking of the sons of the Sugatas. (Crosby 5)

After this opening verse, with strikingly different wording in our two translations, the first three chapters take us through many verses of humility; of reflections on the pointlessness of samsara; of pointing out the preciousness of bodhichitta, and the rarity of human birth; of full confession of Śāntideva’s past misdeeds, supplication for aid from powerful Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, and promises of extravagant offerings. We witness Śāntideva’s vows of Refuge in the Three Jewels, and hear his inspired homage to enlightenment: an acknowledgment of the beginning of theBodhisattva path.

Reading either of these translations, we might be inspired to join Śāntideva in his renunciation and aspiration to service. The Padmakara version, however, seems to roll a little easier off the tongue, while the Crosby version is a little more cerebral and makes one wonder about the literal meaning. Consider the following verse:

All that I posses and use
Is like the fleeting vision of a dream.
It fades into the realms of memory,
And fading, will be seen no more. (Padmakara 42)

Or:

Everything experienced fades into memory. Everything is like an image in a dream. It is gone and not seen again. (Crosby 37)

While the Crosby/Skilton version is relatively terse, though still with a certain beauty, the Padmakara version is simply more poetic and euphonious. Through these three chapters, Śāntideva is working to arouse and inflame; to inspire bodhichitta. Bodhichitta, according to the Dalai Lama, is “a double wish: to attain enlightenment in itself, and to do so for the sake of all beings.” (Gyatso 12)

Maintaining the Aspiration to Help Others

The fourth, fifth, and sixth chapters, called “Carefulness,” Vigilant Introspection,” and “Patience” by the Padmakara Group, are concerned with nurturing our newfound bodhichitta, and sustaining the necessary level of effort required to see the Mahayana path through. The Dalai Lama says “the thought of bodhichitta has now been generated in our minds. Next we come to three chapters devoted to protecting it from deterioration.” (Gyatso 35) Śāntideva is telling us that if we want to follow the Bodhisattva path, we must guard against backsliding with unwavering zealotry, and that, having come so far, we shouldn’t waste the one chance of thisprecious human life:

The appearance of the Buddhas in the world,
True faith and the attainment of human form,
An aptitude for good: all these are rare.
When will they come to me again?

Today, indeed, I’m hale and well,
I have enough to eat and I am not in danger.
But this life is fleeting, unreliable,
My body is like something briefly lent.

And yet the way I act is such
that I shall not regain a human life!
And losing this, my precious human form,
My evils will be many, virtues none. (Padmakara 55)

Or:

When shall I find such rare circumstances again: the arising of a Tathāgata, faith,the human state itself, the capacity to practise skilful deeds,

Health, on this day,with food and freedom from disaster? In a moment life breaks its word. The body is like an object on loan.

The human state is never achieved again by such acts as mine. When the human state is lost there is only evil. How could there be good? (Crosby 26)

Both translations are quite beautiful here, I especially like “life breaks its word,” from Crosby and Skilton. Over the course of many verses in these three chapters, Śāntideva slowly builds an ironclad case for continuing on our course of Bodhisattvahood. If he fails even one being, he tells us, he will “work the ruin” (Padmakara 54) of himself, being born in the lower realms of hungry ghosts and demons. He tells us that a human birth is “as likely as a turtle poking its neck through the hole of a yoke floating on a mighty ocean.” (Crosby 26)
Śāntideva’s case is not only ironclad and irrefutable, it is emotionally rousing and inspiring. Reading the middle three chapters is like hearing the most charismatic southern preacher. His small examples and statements slowly build into a torrent, and we are swept into the mainstream, ready to give our lives. How can we sit idly by

When fishers, butchers, farmers, and the like,
Intending just to gain their livelihood,
Will suffer all the miseries of heat and cold,
Why, for being’s happiness, should those like me not bear the same? (Padmakara
59)

Or:

Their minds set only on their own livelihood, fisherman, caṇḍālas, ploughmen, and the like, withstand such distress as extreme heat and cold. Why have I no endurance though it is for the advantage and well-being of the universe? (Crosby
28)

Śāntideva warns us to protect our newly aspirational mind like we would protect our own broken arm in an “unruly crowd.” (Padmakara 64) After all the difficulty of arriving at our current situation, with all its potential to do good and help beings, we can lose it all instantly:

All the good works gathered in a thousand ages,
Such as deeds of generosity,
And offerings to the Blissful Ones—
A single flash of anger shatters them. (Padmakara 77)

Or:

The worship of the Sugatas, generosity, and good conduct performed throughout thousands of aeons—hatred destroys it all. (Crosby 50)

After I read these chapters, I am thoroughly convinced and converted: I am ready to take the next step.

Deepening Bodhichitta and Realization

The next three chapters are about learning to develop bodhichitta continuously (Gyatso 75). Crosby and Skilton translate them as the perfections of “Vigour,” “Meditative absorption,” and “Understanding,” which are the last three paramitas, or “perfections,” of the bodhisattva path. Diligence is recommended, and is defined as taking “joy in virtuous ways,” (Padmakara 97) and we are asked again what we did not understand:

Don’t you see how, one by one,
Death has come for all your kind?
And yet you slumber on so soundly,
Like a buffalo beside its butcher. (Padmakara 98)

Or:

You do not see those of your own herd as they are killed one by one? You even go to sleep like a buffalo at the butcher. (Crosby 67)

Śāntideva gives us yet another chance to understand the gravity of the situation. He enjoins us to make sure everything we do is in furtherance of our bodhisattva path, culminating in the practice of meditation. He encourages us to contemplate the transitory nature of our lover’s body, and to seek the “lovely, gleaming woods,” where “mental wandering will cease.” Always Śāntideva brings us back to mindfulness of the inevitable consequences of evil deeds, backsliding, and forsaking our vows. He gives us instructions for shamata and vipashyana, and for exchanging self with others. (Gyatso 88)

In the ninth chapter, “Wisdom,” Śāntideva turns to an explication of the Buddhist
doctrine of emptiness: the idea that “things have no true, objective existence.” (Gyatso 117) Śāntideva talks about the “two truths,” which is an essential idea in the Madhyamaka:

Relative and ultimate,These the two truths are declared to be.
The ultimate is not within reach of intellect,
For intellect is said to be relative. (Padmakara 137)

Or:

It is agreed that there are these two truths: the conventional and the ultimate. Reality is beyond the scope of intellection. Intellection is said to be conventional (Crosby 115)

According to Crosby and Skilton, the idea of emptiness began to be asserted in the
Prajñā-pāramitā sutra as a reaction to the reification of prototypical ideas of emptiness contained in the Abhidharma: The truths described therein were being treated as absolutes, and that understanding had to be refuted:

The chapter on the perfection of understanding in the Bodhicharyāvatāra is a deluge of such refutation. A number of opponents are lined up, each to be rebutted in turn as their views become relevant to Śāntideva’s line of argument. It is in the nature of such works as this that one knows the winner from the outset. For the audience it is just a matter of watching how skilfully each opponent is rebutted, how smooth the turn to the next. No opponent is taken all the way through the argument. Each is dismissed once he has served Śāntideva’s purpose. Opponents are refuted on their own grounds, their theories shown to be flawed and often made laughable; or they are taken under the wing of the author and shown that, did they but understand their own theories properly,they would realize they were in agreement with the Madhyamaka in what is really relevant. (Crosby 106)

Śāntideva gives us a large dose of absolute truth in the ninth chapter:

The mind that has not realized voidness,
May be halted, but will once again arise,
Just as from non-perceptual absorption.
Therefore one must train in emptiness. (Padmakara 144)

Or:

Without emptiness a mind is fettered and arises again, as in the meditative attainment of non-perception. Therefore one should meditate on emptiness. (Crosby 120)

Dedication

In typical Mahayana fashion, Śāntideva concludes his song with a dedication. With sober
and humble awareness that his poem will benefit many countless beings for unknown time, he casts away the merit accrued; the karmic energy for good, to all beings, rather than keep it for himself. He then articulates the bodhisattva’s vow:

And now as long as space endures,
As long as there are beings to be found,
May I continue likewise to remain
To drive away the sorrows of the world. (Padmakara 171)

Or:

As long as space abides and as long as the world abides, so long may I abide, destroying the sufferings of the world. (Crosby 143)

He ends the dedication with a bow to Manjusri, the Bodhisattva of Wisdom, who is a kind of “patron” bodhisattva for the Madhyamaka and for the sects of Buddhism in Tibet and Japan that derive from it.

As a serious student of Śāntideva; one who would aspire to follow his path, I would keep both of these translations near. Crosby and Skilton have obviously chosen to represent Śāntideva”s Sanskrit verse in prosaic English, delivering a very precise and sharp language, with economy of words, and occasionally jarring, stark phrases that stick in the mind. The Padmakara Group has attempted a more poetic rendering in four-line free verse which they hoped would be similar in feeling to the Tibetan source. To my ear, this is a little easier to take in. In spite of it being longer, in number of words, than Crosby and Skilton, its rhythm is entrancing; its melody engaging, and its content is revolutionary. Though it is not quite for the reason the Padmakara Group claims, I think their translation just might be superior—for the practitioner—to Crosby and Skilton’s: because it is easier to sing.

Work Cited

Crosby, Kate, and Andrew Skilton. The Bodhicharyāvatāra. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995.

Gyatso, Tenzin. A flash of Lightning in the Dark of Night: A Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life. Boston: Shambala, 1994.

Padmakara Translation Group. The Way of the Bodhisattva: A Translation of the Bodhicharyāvatāra. Boston: Shambala, 2006.

Huntington, C. W., Jr., and Geshé Namgyal Wangchen. The Emptiness of Emptiness: An Introduction to Early Indian Madhyamaka. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1994.

Readings on Pluralism: a Response

Mason Brown
Professor Miller
Contemplative Learning Seminar, Sec. F
Preparation Paper 6
11/16/2009

I found all the readings from “Speaking in Silence,” very interesting and instructive. I didn’t have a strong response to Chogyam Trungpa’s chapter, having read it repeatedly and being in complete agreement with it. This is my tradition: internalized from my youth—but, as always—Trungpa’s words remain fresh and inspiring. He delivers another concise, elegant description of the practice and process of meditation in absolutely ordinary language: mindfulness and awareness join together (200), aggression subsides (201), and we are able to help others (201). Of course, it’s not always so simple in the real world, or “on the ground” as the current phrase goes. This process seems to have a lot of ebb and flow to it; it has the inevitable backsliding. The kind of insights Trungpa describes have happened for me as flashes of perception which, if anything, have slowly grown closer together in frequency over the years, but still sustain me through long intervals of ignorance. I don’t see any real discussion in the text itself of “exclusivism, inclusivism, pluralism, diversity, relativism and/or syncretism,” But I can relate my own feeling that I do have a twinge of exclusivism in myself when I read these teachings: so much more correct than any others I have encountered. I don’t necessarily buy into the twinge, and it soon fades. I do think that the process Trungpa describes, if followed completely, will unavoidably lead to inclusivism and pluralism, and honest acceptance of the diversity which surrounds us, without reliance on the dubious compromises of relativism and syncretism.

I have always loved and respected the Quaker tradition. With its uncannily Buddhistic silent meditation, justice-based social activism, and community values of respect for the individual as a part of the whole, it strikes me as one of the most beneficial forms of Christianity. I have even visited the oldest continually used Quaker church in the United States, said to be America’s oldest frame building, in Easton, Maryland, and seen its rough wooden benches; its spare interior, devoid of an alter of any kind. Quakers I have known have been very inclusive and embracing of diversity—often to the point of putting their bodies in harm’s way to stand in solidarity with people of other faiths and cultures—but I suspect that, like many Buddhists, they harbor unspoken feelings of exclusivism. The relative superiority of their spiritual tradition almost demands it. However, They probably also go through those feelings and do not rest on them. They have too much to do, and that doing includes not-doing. I think that the problem with Quaker contemplative practice is its lack of any real methodology or pedagogy of consciousness. There is no concrete description in this text of how to do it [Quaker scholars were even persecuted for trying to syncretize such methodologies (Yungblut 203)]. Practitioners are simply told to “wait upon the Lord in silence (202).” It would take a true spiritual genius to reach the highest levels of understanding through this system—which is strikingly like Zen—and I imagine that it was founded by such geniuses.

I have long been acquainted with the contemplative traditions within the Catholic and Orthodox Churches, and I have great respect for Tessa Bielecki, David Stendl-Rast, and George Timko. It is not surprising that the meditative techniques developed by the Church are the some of the most thorough, subtle, and refined in the European culture. In spite of this, I feel my exclusivism: Their contemplative practices are somewhat advanced, but their explanation of reality is utterly fanciful. This fact makes pluralism problematic, especially when one considers that the contemplative Christians featured in these readings, although representing a spiritual elite within Christianity, and holding some of the religion’s oldest and deepest forms, are a tiny minority of Christians in the world. Most adherents of Christianity take inflexible-belief-in-the-Bible-as-literal-Truth, and “faith in Jesus” as comprising the “practice” of Christianity, with nothing but a telephone call with God for their prayer (215), and disdain for true internal investigation. Bielecki describes a process of syncretization of her own (209), and I think it’s a good thing. She is taking knowledge which was discovered and transmitted by Buddhists to enrich her Christian practice, which is obviously deep and penetrating, but she is not giving up her Christianity; on the contrary, it seems to be strengthened.

How do I, who have acknowledged strong opinions about the shortcomings of other religions, and expressed visceral exclusivist tendencies also claim to be a pluralist? Because while I do hold those opinions and, on occasion, defend them, I do not really believe them. I know that my understanding is imperfect, and that inasmuch as my belief system does not perfectly depict reality, it is just as flawed as any other, no matter how primitive or outrageous that other might seem to me. Judith Simmer-Brown says that “in learning lessons of openness, the great yogis failed again and again (Simmer-Brown, n.p.).” This gets to the heart of the issue: “They were willing to risk, willing to fail, and willing to learn (Simmer-Brown, n.p.).” If we open to others as no different from ourselves, we will eventually realize the truth of that condition experientially, and, in the words of the Baptist hymn, there will “be no distinction there.”


Work Cited:
Simmer-Brown, Judith. “Chapter 6/Commitment and Openness: A Contemplative Approach to Pluralism,” in Glazer, The Heart of Learning, pp. 97-112.

“Natural Dharma,” “Corporate Mysticism,” Long, Loving Look at the Real,” and “Letting Go if Thoughts,” in Speaking of Silence:Christians and Buddhists in Dialogue, First Edition. 200-203;206-221.

Spiritual Materialism

Mason Brown
Professor Miller
Preparation Paper 5
11/8/2009



Reading the introduction to “Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism,” I can almost mouth the words. I have read this material at least a dozen times, starting when I was about ten years old. The contours of the prose are familiar; utterly known to me. I feel I could find my way through this text in the dark. It’s like returning to my own home at night and walking through the unlit halls with complete confidence—no matter how long I have been away. At the same time, the words are absolutely fresh and current. They are amazingly relevant to my life right now. I am reminded what a genius Trungpa Rinpoche was. He was able to put the Buddhist teachings into words—in a foreign language—with total efficiency, moving beauty, and crystalline clarity.

Spiritual Materialism is a very useful term coined by Trungpa to describe the phenomenon of the use of spiritual practices, forms, or traditions to enrich one’s own ego; to do the exact opposite of what these forms were intended to be used for. Trungpa generously allows that all spiritual traditions are aimed at the same target: ego. He says that the “differences between the ways are a matter of emphasis and method”(4), and that the “basic problems of spiritual materialism are common to all spiritual disciplines”(4). I would argue here that many of our dominant traditions (Christianity and the other theistic religions) are simply wrong—their descriptions of reality are patently untrue—but that would be nitpicking and is beside the point. The point is that these traditions are supposed to teach us to think and act for some purpose greater than ourselves, and that the very processes they initiate can be hijacked by ego for its own selfish ends. Trungpa has put his finger on the main problem of spirituality throughout history. Despite the good intentions that lead us to seek out and cultivate spiritual practices, ego’s Trojan horse is inevitably brought in with us, sabotaging our efforts to escape its hold. Trungpa reminds us to be ever on our guard against the pernicious vampire of ego, which will feed on anything, wholesome or profane, to satisfy its insatiable hunger to be.

Jack Kornfield’s chapter, “No Boundaries to the Sacred,” is insightful and well-written. He approaches the topic of Spiritual Materialism from another angle. He talks about our tendency to create different spaces and separate aspects of our lives for sacred and profane activities, cutting our prayer or meditation off from our indulgences like sex or drugs. He calls this process “compartmentalization” (184). Kornfield cites Trungpa, correlating the concept of Spiritual Materialism with the “Golden Chain,” an Indian concept that defines “the notion of attaining a pure and divine abode” which

fits unfortunately well with whatever neurotic, fearful, or idealistic tendencies we may have. To the extent that we see ourselves to be impure, shameful, or unworthy, we may use spiritual practices and notions of purity to escape from ourselves. By rigidly following spiritual precepts and forms, we may hope to create a pure spiritual identity. (186)

Kornfield gives several moving anecdotes of people in various stages of spiritual paths—some of them quite advanced—who nevertheless run in to trouble in their lives which he traces back to this compartmentalization. I can’t disagree with anything Kornfield says—he seems to be a powerful and inspired teacher—but I find myself a little suspicious of him. It seems a little too easy in his world. He talks of “an opposite shadow, an area that is dark or hidden from us because we focus so strongly somewhere else” (193), but I wonder what Kornfield’s “dark shadows” are? He says “periods of holiness and spiritual fervor can later alternate with opposite extremes—binging on food, sex, and other things—becoming a kind of spiritual bulimia.” Something in Kornfield rings puritanical—the Thai monk he speaks of who was a dedicated activist and teacher; who fell in love with a student and tortured himself to the point of contemplating suicide, is redeemed by breaking off the relationship and rededicating himself to his vows—and one wonders where Kornfield is coming from. Who am I to say what this monk should have done? Apparently, it all worked out out alright, but somehow I suspect Kornfield of a little Spiritual Materialism of his own. It seems to me that Kornfield is on dangerous ground when he worries about “drinking, promiscuity and other unconscious conduct” (193), since I know from my teachers that those kinds of superficial value judgments of behavior are some of the most insidious traps of Spiritual Materialism waiting to snare us. I do agree with Kornfield, however, that

we must bring a deep attention to the stories we tell about these shadows, to see what is the underlying truth. Then, as we willingly enter each place of fear, each place of deficiency and insecurity in ourselves, we will discover that its walls are made of untruths. Of old images of ourselves, of ancient fears, of false ideas of what is pure and what is not. We will see that each is made from a lack of trust in ourselves, our hearts, and the world. As we see through them, our world expands. As the light of awareness illuminates these stories and ideas and the pain, fear, or emptiness that underlies them, a deeper truth can show itself. By accepting and feeling each of these areas, a genuine wholeness, sense of well-being, and strength can be discovered. (194)

For my own part, I have struggled with Spiritual Materialism for many years, and continue to pay attention to it; to look for those blind spots where it hides. My relationship to my robes and vows as a priest are a sensitive area. The accouterments of a Zen priest are costly, fine, and beautiful, and easy to either get attached to or develop feelings of aversion to. I have sometimes embraced them wholeheartedly, sometimes shied away from them and sometimes felt conflicted, embarrassed or ashamed of them. It's easy to see these vestments as a separating wall between me and other people who either practice Buddhism or don’t. It's tempting to project their perceptions for myself: what do they think of me, a white American, in this funny-looking Indo-Sino-Japanese costume?
After all this time, I no longer care. The attitude I have arrived at in recent years is one of gratitude to my teachers. They went to a lot of trouble to give me these robes; to hand this lineage to me, and it is my duty and obligation to carry that forward, However, I can’t be attached to the external properties of that obligation, and I am fully willing, at any moment, should it become necessary, to throw these robes into the fire and completely give them up, never looking back. In the same way, I am prepared to say goodbye to my very life, friends, family, and most of all, to music, to which I am most deeply attached. I am reminded, however, By Kornfield and especially by Trungpa, to examine those stories I so easily tell myself and to make sure I am not deluding myself: building up my ego with the mortar of Spiritual Materialism.



Work Cited
Kornfield, Jack. “No Boundaries to the Sacred”, Chapter 13 from Path With Heart. n.d, n.p.
Trungpa, Chogyam. Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism. Boston: Shambala, 1987.

Brown Enters Sinister “Phase II of Operation”

I think I am done gathering sources. I have way more than I can read already, and some of it extremely interesting. Through ILL I was able to get a copy of the “Black Music Research Journal” with an article by Paul F. Wells called “Fiddling as an Avenue of Black-White Musical Interchange.” This article is very important for me to read because it is, in effect, the article I wish I could write. It was published in 2003, so it is not too old, and cites a great many sources, so it should completely fill me in on what is already in the scholarship on this subject. There is a great quote in the article from a 1973 interview with Charles Wolfe of Kentucky fiddler Richard Burnett, who was born in1883. Wolfe asked Burnett about whether many blacks played old-time music when he was young:

Oh yeah. Yeah. Bled Coffey here in town [Monticello, Kentucky], he was a fiddler during the Civil War, and the Bertram boys here, Cooge Bertram was a good fiddler. He was raised in Corbin [Kentucky]. Yes sir, there were a lot of black men playin’ old time music. Bled Coffey was the best fiddler in the county. Been dead for years. I played many a tune with him—used to play with me, oh, sixty year ago. He’d play any o’ the old songs that I did. The old-fashioned tunes, like “Cripple Creek,” “Sourwood Mountain,” “Soldier’s Joy,” “Fire on the Mountain―them old-fashioned tunes is about what he played. (Quoted in Wolfe 1973, 7)1

This is exactly the kind of information I was looking for, and Wells and Wolfe got to it way before me. But that’s okay. I am thankful to have their work to learn from, and I hope, to build on or at least to synthesize with what I am getting from some of the other fantastic sources I’ve gotten through ILL, such as “the Birth of the Banjo: Joel Walker Sweeney and Early Minstrelsy” by Bob Carlin, the fascinating story of one of the first well-known white banjo players, who learned the instrument from slaves.


I also still have three or four interviews to do, which I will start over the weekend. I’m very excited and less intimidated every week. This seems doable! I will now turn to my document, edit the bibliography to reflect these new sources, and begin to add some headings; some kind of break-down of the different sections I want to go on about. I will print out the first draft of my paper, such as it is, for the perusal and criticism of my illustrious professor. I am thankful for the opportunity to get everything right as I’m doing it, rather than waiting to hand in a draft when the whole thing is already done. Tally Ho!

Bibliography

Wells, Paul F. “Fiddling as an Avenue of Black-White Interchange,” Black Music Research
Journal Spring/Fall (2003) 135-147.

Analysis of the Chariot

The use of a chariot as a simile for the self first appears in Buddhist scripture in the Saṃyutta-nikaya, the third of the five collections of sūtras in the Pali canon. A Buddhist nun, one Vajira, tells Māra the tempter:

There is no “being” found...[within oneself], only a heap of karmic constituents. Just as the word “chariot” is used when we come across a combination of parts, so we speak conventionally of a [human] being when the five aggregates are present. (Mitchell 39)

Later, the monk Nāgasena, in a dialogue known as the “Questions of Milinda”(Stryk 89), uses this same simile in greater detail, asking King Milinda a series of rhetorical questions:

Is the axle the chariot?... Are the wheels the chariot?...Is the chariot-body the chariot?...Is the flagstaff...the yoke...the reins...Is the Goad-stick the chariot? (Stryk 92)

He goes on to ask whether the chariot is simply “a sound”(92), and then explains to the King that, like the chariot, human beings are simply the sum of their parts: namely, the five aggregates (skandhas). Any one part of a human being, though it might be integral, is not the being. The parts of the chariot, though while they are assembled do conventionally constitute a chariot, are destined eventually to separate, leaving no sign that a chariot ever existed.

This simile, like many used in early Buddhism, seems designed to be grasped fully by even the simplest hearer of the teachings. There can be no doubt. Any object or thing can be described with the simile of the chariot. For instance, a toaster is not the heating elements, nor is it the controls. It is is not the plastic feet, nor is it the metal body. Neither is it the springs or the logo imprint of the manufacturer. It is is definitely not the toast, though bread may transmigrate through the toaster, becoming toast. When viewed in this way, the toaster can be seen more
accurately. It is an assemblage of parts, briefly put together for the function of heating bread, or perhaps frozen pizza, but it has no permanent or independent self. In that way, in an absolute sense, it can be considered illusory. In the same way, all beings are made up of impermanently gathered parts, all interdependent on each other and on countless other causes and conditions. It is a very powerful and immediate way to illustrate two subtle and sublime aspects of the Buddha's teaching: the five skandhas and no-self, which would otherwise be very challenging to explain.

Works Cited:

Mitchell, Donald W. Buddhism: Introducing the Buddhist Experience. New York:
Oxford University Press, 2008.

Stryk, Lucien. World of the Buddha: A Reader. Garden City: Anchor Books, 1969.