The Dalai Lama Talks to the Thais (and Some White Guy Watches it on Youtube)

I perhaps should reiterate my larger goal in posting my personal experience with Dharma in this otherwise public forum, for I do think the benefits of having not one but many of us regularly contributing some tid-bit or essay on our connection with Buddhism would be great. After all, we are bound more strongly by the Dharma than any other attribute or affiliation—and right now we are spread over states and continents. It is a pity not to share what should be shared and what will only make us more coherent and comprehensive as a group. As of now, I’m not sure what anyone knows about anything (I don’t say that as a challenge, but in simple honesty; although I know how heavily most of you are involved with the Dharma, I have only rarely, through some collaborative projects involving Urban Dharma, gotten to hear anyone talk about why Dharma was important to them, and what they wanted others to get from it). So I imagine this blog has the potential to become such a forum to develop not only our sense of a Dharma community but also our own personal ability to express Dharma-related ideas.

If you think this Dharma sharing is a good idea and want to contribute, I would suggest making a schedule (and a promise) for yourself to do so. Contribute once every week, or every other week. To contribute something. I think it is very hard to wait to be inspired to write something. Rather make it a scheduled goal to do so, then, all week, your mind will be anxious to catch upon something to write about. Then you’ll have something to share, and you might also have caught something you would have otherwise missed.

Lastly, I would suggest trying to avoid, if it arises, a false humility that Dharma is something too pure and you shouldn’t mar it by putting it into your own words. I think it’s our responsibility to really counteract this idea. Dharma is not an abstract ocean of truth; it’s our everyday collision with obstacles and our fumbling attempts to solve them. For us, now, Dharma is going to mundane, no matter if it’s how we write about it--it’s already probably how we think about it.

So what I was going to post in the first place:

Link to video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xl9ycLV7IKA&feature=youtu.be

I have had time recently to go over my “Buddhist” inbox in g-mail to re-look at some things that flew by me the weeks leading up to Baby William’s birth, a period also including my sister’s visit to Taiwan. (I had originally wanted to post something about that as well, but, you know, obstacles…in any case, while she was here, we sort of did the, what, “initiative rites” of becoming a Buddhist, like buying a mala, smelling incense, and becoming familiar with some deities through a regular practice, things that I definitely remember going through though not at the time realizing they were necessarily going to repeat with my role changed; but most sincerely, I wanted to write how valuable the time with my sister was for my own practice, at that time, to have someone constantly by my side especially for meditation practices; sharing with another person is quite grounding!) One thing that I pulled up in g-mail was the approximately two hour Youtube video of His Holiness the Dalai Lama talking to a room of Thai Buddhists.

It’s a fairly small setting and, though the questions are read off pieces of paper, it seems fairly informal. How often are you invited to a two hour question and answer with the Dali Lama? But the best thing about getting your Dharma from Youtube (besides not having to worry about if you should ask a question or not) is that you can watch sections several times over to gain a deeper appreciation for the movement of the rational or the details of a specific consideration. Besides being a deeply profound, non-mysterious, discussion about Buddhist values and motivation, the video also affords many opportunities to laugh along with His Holiness, which I must confess, I found myself doing so much that Fiona began giving me more and more quizical looks across the room as though disbelieving I was still watching the same Buddhist video. All of that is to say, upfront, that I really hope you check it out when you have the time. If, either up to now or by the end of the post, your urge to view this has been satiated by my words in anyway, then I would regret that I wrote too much. That is to say, what follows are my reflections upon seeing the video; they certainly do not substitute as summation.

What I felt like I could learn from His Holiness the Dalai Lama was both the sincerity and breadth of the fundamental practice of compassion which he advocates and his non-mysterious rational approach, such as, through western scientific methods and experiments proving the human benefit of compassion. Perhaps from anyone else I might not have taken that news as profound or even revolutionary because, of course, the whole premise of Mahayana practice is built upon the transformative aspects of compassion, and in the texts, it doesn’t very often turn up as a surprise that it actually is. Luckily then, there are still some that have taken Buddha up on his requirement to “test his teaching.”

This comes at the same time I am, and many of us are, reading Bodhicharyavatara, where the benefits of cultivating bodhichitta are quite clearly explained. It will, “take our impure flesh and make of it the body of a Buddha,” “consume great sins like a fire,” “protect us like a hero even through we walk through great perils,” “continuously bare fruit,” “even in diversity bring forth positive effects,” and so on (these previous are all paraphrased but can all be found in the first chapter). If these pronouncements are a little too unbelievable to you now in your practice (they seem fantastical to me), perhaps we haven’t done enough of the most basic investigation, like above—what the Dali Lama seems intent to bringing us back to—the clear, tangible benefits that a practice based in compassion (not even necessarily Buddhist) has been scientifically proven to have on the calmness of mind, personal happiness, and even physical health and wellbeing. If we can accept that as our medicine, then the rest, the proud pronouncements made by Shantideva, can be felt with more devotion and certainty. The more we study Buddhism and test it to clear, impartial standards the more clarity and faith we can eventually have and the more powerful our practice will be.

So this I really found helpful, and otherwise I really enjoyed his teaching (not only because I laughed a lot but because it was instructive) and hope that you get to watch this if you get a chance. I would also like to hear—because he covers quite a lot in these two hours—what you got from the teaching as well, perhaps in a comment below.