June 4, 2006  Yesterday, Portland Buddhist Festival took place at Colonel Summers Park.  At any given time, there were over a hundred adults and a dozen children participating.   Some local groups I hadn't heard of had booths; on the other hand, some groups I do know of, were not officially represented.  When it comes to religion, people tend to find their own group and then pay little attention to other groups.  This festival makes for a nice, once a year occasion to learn a little bit about the wider cluster of Buddhist communities in the area.  Of course, it's also a chance for the general public to do the same.  Jan van Raay posted photos at flickr.

There was the Buu Hung Temple of Vancouver (that would be Vancouver, WA, just across the Columbia, I assume).  These folks are not google-able.  They were mostly ethnic Chinese and female, but amongst them was a man dressed like a Tibetan monk, with features that could have been Tibetan.  Otherwise, it was predominantly Caucasian Westerner congregations.  Maio Fa Chan, which Bettina visits occasionally, is just down the street, but they did not participate -- although I saw their head teacher, the Ven. Fat Thai, playing basketball in the park as I was leaving.

I learned of the existence of the Bodhi Tree Center in Portland, from Adhi, a Westerner turned Theravadin monk.  He was actually there representing Buddha Powers, but they operate out of the Bodhi Tree Center, which also hosts Chinese language and cultural activities.

The Dzogchen group were inconsiderate in a couple ways.   First, they had volunteered to lead off the program with a forty-five minute talk to be given by their Khenpo Choga Rinpoche.  But the Rinpoche flaked out, and some his followers filled in, even though he was on the premises.  Not long after that disappointment, they had a lively ceremony which competed with the scheduled program.  Organizers had to repeatedly ask them to turn the volume down, so that the scheduled program wouldn't be completely inaudible.  I think lively ceremonies at a Buddhist festival are a good idea, but they should be planned and executed in coordination with the organizers.  The Rinpoche apparently felt obligated to visit each booth and take a piece of literature, because he came by the Buddhist Peace Fellowship booth which I was manning and, without even looking at me, said, "what am I supposed to take here?" and randomly grabbed a piece of paper and went on.  Can you tell how impressed I was?

Feb 5, 2006  Here are the promised further thoughts on my weekend at Cloud Mountain.

January 31, 2006  I just did a long weekend retreat at Cloud Mountain.  Lama Michael Conklin of KCC led this retreat focused on shamatha (calm abiding), vipasyana (insight) and mahamudra (combining the two).  I appreciate Lama Michael all the more after this retreat, seeing again his authority and his comfort in his role, displaying gravity and levity at will, impishly prolonging the moment of alert expectation before releasing us from our cushions at the end of a session.  I was also gratified to find that this retreat, which was open to beginners, offered basic teachings that I had not previously encountered in more than twenty years of Buddhist practice.  I feel more inclined to build a stronger connection with KCC.  But I still want to continue exploring the Pacific Northwest Buddhist ecoregion.  And I am still disinclined to gallop happily into a mythology.  More reflections on the weekend, and pictures too, to come.

December 31, 2005  A little holiday time helped me make it to a year-end weekend retreat at Kagyu Changchub Chuling (KCC).  This center was founded by Kalu Rinpoche, and the resident lama is a Westerner, Michael Conklin.  He carries a tradition-rooted authority about him that I like.  The lineages taught and practiced here are Karma and Shangpa Kagyu.  Trungpa Rinpoche was of the Karma Kagyu lineage, too, so there is a feeling of familiarity.  Interestingly, I didn't feel the instant sense of "home" here, that I felt when I first went to Gil Fronsdal's Insight Meditation Center in Palo Alto (which has since moved to Redwood City).  This may be because my identity is more shaped by wife and son now.

The tradition mentioned above does carry a certain amount of mythology with it, of course, and that mythology, or let us say, speculation treated as truth, raises my antennae.  I'm more skeptical now than I was the last time I dealt personally with Tibetan Buddhism, and particularly in light of my current study of the "Intelligent Design" movement, I'm more aware of the extent to which large groups of people sometimes collude in deception (and larger groups willingly swallow the draught).

November 12, 2005  Sharon Salzberg's Loving-Kindness: The Revolutionary Art of Happiness recounts a list of eleven benefits of cultivating loving-kindess (Skt. maitri, Pali metta) provided by the Buddha.  It comes from the Metta or Mettanisamsa Sutta, AN XI.16.   ('AN' is Anguttara Nikaya, the Numerical Discourses, organized by the number of topics or elements in each discourse; 'XI' is the 'Book of Elevens', or book of discourses containing eleven elements each; '16' is the sixteenth list.)   Piyadassi Thera's translation from the Pali goes:

1. He sleeps in comfort.
2. He awakes in comfort.
3. He sees no evil dreams.
4. He is dear to human beings.
5. He is dear to non-human beings.
6. Devas (gods) protect him.
7. Fire, poison, and sword cannot touch him.
8. His mind can concentrate quickly.
9. His countenance is serene.
10. He dies without being confused in mind.
11. If he fails to attain arahantship (the highest sanctity) here and now, he will be reborn in the brahma-world.

(Salzberg's version is available online - search in page for Salzberg, or scroll down)
(original source: Metta (or Mettanisamsa) Sutta)

The eleventh one made me wonder about the Buddha's teachings (and reputed lack thereof) on what happens after death.  Western Buddhists commonly think that the Buddha was silent on this topic, and commonly misunderstand the doctrine of "no-self" (Skt. anatman) to imply that there is no rebirth, no afterlife.  What, then, is this last item in the list?

But the traditional concept of no-self is more technical and restricted than that.  It means there is no permanent, unchanging, independently existing entity called the self.  It's one of the three marks of existence, a central teaching of Buddhism. 

No-self does not mean there is no ego, just that the ego is not permanent, unchanging, etc.  The standard basic teaching on ego is the analysis of it into five heaps (Skt. skandhas).  What I wish to point out here, though, is the concept of a "thread of continuity."  Phenomena are linked into threads of continuity by cause and effect.   There is a thread of continuity of consciousness and form, which is the basis of a person's individuality.  We each have our own thread of continuity.  The person writing this paragraph is not the same as the little boy who went fishing with his granddaddy some forty years ago, but I'm the one who remembers that, and many other things from past years of my life.  These memories are how I recognize my own thread of continuity of phenomena and form my own self-image.  We each have our own self-image and our own thread of continuity.

Notice that the thread of continuity does not simply consist of memory.  Memory is just how I recognize the existence of the thread.  Even if I had a severe memory disorder, the thread of continuity would be observable by others.

At some point we ask, where are the beginning and the end of this thread of continuity?  Well, since all phenomena arise in dependence upon causes and conditions, there can technically be no beginning.  It seems there can be no end either; every phenomenon in turn serves as cause and condition for subsequent phenomena.

But the question of rebirth, or more generally of afterlife, is more specific than that.  Of course, my physical, living body is a precursor to a decaying corpse, and the carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, etc. become constituents of other physical forms.  We are interested in consciousness.  The twine of continuity which I label myself certainly has a physical thread, but there is a thread of consciousness intertwined with it.  What happens to that thread of consciousness at death?  The traditional doctrine of no-self does not draw a distinction between body and mind; it treats them both as phenomena. 



October 9, 2005  This text should actually begin a few years back, when I took a business trip to Hillsboro, and visited several of the Buddhist centers in the area.  I took notes at the time, and have them around somewhere, so someday I'll find them and put them up here.  But for now, we begin with today, October 9, 2005.  We've been living here since April, and once visited a Taiwanese Buddhist temple dedicated to Guan Yin (Kwan Yin) 'way out in NE Portland, but did not feel the need to return, distance being a big factor.  Subsequently, we started going to the Miao Fa Chan Temple, which is also essentially a Taiwanese Buddhist temple, but closer to home, once a month or so.  Generally we eat lunch and spend a few minutes in the main roon, where Bettina prays to Buddha to bless our family, help her find a good job, etc.  (what I like to call "folk buddhism").  The Ven. Fa Thai is the teacher, and apparently he leads an English-language Vipassana practice on weeknights, but I haven't made it to that yet.  It just hasn't felt right to me, to go do much by myself away from the house, yet, as we settle into our new home and care for a toddler. 

But this month, Bettina and Arno are in Taiwan, so I'm getting out and exploring a bit.  In the Buddhist department, today that meant a trip to the Portland Insight Meditation Center, which is also out on the far side of the Portland area.  The last Buddhist group I was involved with in the San Francisco Bay Area was an insight meditation group, the Mid-Peninsula Insight Meditation Center , led by Gil Fronsdal - this group introduced me to Theravada Buddhism, and I appreciated them (and him) very much.  The website for the Portland IMC put me on guard, though, due to the prominence given to Robert Beatty.  I guess I'm a bit wary of personality cults, these days.  But anyway, I figured, Bettina and Arno are gone and I'm not on call, so this is a good time to go check out one of the more distant Buddhist groups in the Portland area. 

They've bought a church and moved pews to the perimeter of the main hall.  A buddha statue sits on the stage, and we all sit in a circle facing the center of the room.  They have a child care arrangement, six or so kids who came out after the meditation to dramatize the five hindrances (desire, aversion, restlessness, sloth, and doubt), which is very nice.  Robert Beatty was OK; his talk on the five hindrances was useful for this out-of-shape practitioner; but I still felt wary all the way through, thanks to the website feature mentioned above.  I did like the way the floorboards groaned during walking meditation.  It's a bit touchy-feely too, which could be fine for me I suppose, but maybe not just now.  At the end we held hands in a big circle and OM'd.  He did mention he had spent a lot of time at Breitenbush, which was a hippie hotbed back in 1980 when I lived at that that other hippie home, the Rainbow Farm.  All in all, if it were closer to home I'd probably be more interested in exploring it further, but for me, now, not worth a thirty minute drive each way.

The good news is, through my local Tai Ji class, I found a Tuesday night meditation group which is close to home.  It's very simple, just a few people meditating together at someone's house, which suits me perfectly at present.  The folks are Vipassana types and linked with the center PIMC discussed above.

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