When Jesus Met Buddha

A really great article from the Boston Globe details the ancient, amiable, and unfortunately mostly forgotten interactions between Christians and Buddhists in Asia. Here's a snippet:

...One story in particular suggests an almost shocking degree of collaboration between the faiths. In 782, the Indian Buddhist missionary Prajna arrived in Chang'an, bearing rich treasures of sutras and other scriptures. Unfortunately, these were written in Indian languages. He consulted the local Nestorian bishop, Adam, who had already translated parts of the Bible into Chinese. Together, Buddhist and Christian scholars worked amiably together for some years to translate seven copious volumes of Buddhist wisdom. Probably, Adam did this as much from intellectual curiosity as from ecumenical good will, and we can only guess about the conversations that would have ensued: Do you really care more about relieving suffering than atoning for sin? And your monks meditate like ours do?...

A Hundred Years From Today

A hundred years from today
who are you, sitting, reading a poem of mine,
under curiosity’s sway -
a hundred years from today?

Not the least portion
of this young spring’s morning bliss,
neither blossom nor birdsong,
nor any of its scarlet splashes
can I drench in passion
and despatch to your hands
a hundred years hence!

Yet do this, please: unlatch your south-faced door,
just sit at your window for once;
basking in fantasy, eyes on the far horizon,
figure out if you can:
how one day a hundred years back
roving delights in a free fall from a heavenly region
had touched all that there was -
the infant Phalgun day, utterly free,
was frenzied, all agog,
while borne on brisk wings, the south wind
pollen-scent-brushed
had suddenly arrived and in a flash dyed the earth
with all youth’s hues
a hundred years before your day.

There lived then a poet, ebullient of spirit,
his heart steeped in song,
who wanted to open his words like so many flowers
with so much passion
one day a hundred years back.

A hundred years from today
who is the new poet
whose songs flow through your homes?
To him I convey
this springtime’s gladsome greetings.
May my vernal song find its echo for a moment
in your spring day
in the throbbing of your hearts, in the buzzing of your bees,
in the rustling of your leaves
a hundred years from today.

-Rabindranath Tagore, translated by Ketaki Kushari Dyson

Noo Yawk Nurvanah

The New York Times recently published an article called "The Simple Life" about the growing popularity of Upstate NY monasteries and ashrams. It seems weekend programs in particular are becoming a big draw:

..Zen Mountain is just one example of an ashram or monastery in upstate New York that promises to recharge the mind and spirit of its guests with a combination of simplicity and meditation, served up on a tight schedule. At least half a dozen of these spiritual retreats are tucked away among the Catskill Mountains.

Most have been around for several decades, but until recently their visitors were mainly practicing Buddhists, serious yoga students or devotees of an ashram’s guru. Today, these spots are attracting clientele from the surrounding metropolitan areas who’ve had limited interaction with Eastern religions, yoga or a spiritual guru. Like Mr. Malkmus, who spent several months before his trip clocking 60-hour workweeks, more nonbelievers are coming to experience the rigors of an ashram or monastery as a way to escape...

Anatomy of a Pilgrimage: Ellora

In Jan. '08, I had the great fortune to visit the famous cave temples of Ellora with my mother. Below is my account of the trip.


It was just after 10 in the morning yet the sun was already bearing down on us. The Deccan landscape reminded me of the sweeping landscapes found in Old Western movies, be they spaghetti or otherwise. After much planning and anticipation we were finally here, standing at the threshold to the Ellora caves. Wow.


Our "base camp" was the WelcomeRama, a nice hotel situated near the Aurangabad airport. Aurangabad itself is a city with a long and fascinating history. Located in Maharashrashtra state and a quick 45 min plane ride from Mumbai, Aurangabad and it's surrounding areas, I dare say, emcompass almost all the major phases of Indian history. In addition to famous Hindu temples, Sufi shrines, and the Jain/Hindu/Buddhist cave temples of Ajanta and Ellora , you'll also find the tomb of the last great Mughal emperor, Aurangzeb (from which the city takes it name). Nowadays, it's an up and coming boom-town on the forefront of India's development but still pays homage to it's glorious past with the annual Ellora-Ajanta Festival.

After breakfast, we met up with our driver (a pleasant local fellow) and arranged the details of our excursion: a trip to Ellora with a visit to Daulatabad Fortress on the way back. I then decided I'd break the ice and practice my Hindi a bit. Although Marathi is the local language, Hindi (as well as English) is widely spoken too.

Me: "Driver-sahab, Apka naam kya hai? - ड्राईवर सहब, आपका नाम क्या है?"
(Driver-Sir, what's your name?)

Javed-Sahab: "Oho! Hindi-bolte?! Accha Accha! Maing Javed Mohammed Aktar hoon. - ओहो! हिन्दी बोलते?! अच्छा अच्छा। मैँ जावेद महोम्मेद अख़तर हूँ।
(Oh! You speak Hindi huh? Great! I'm Javed Mohammed Akhtar.)

After some brief cordial talk, I then switched the topic to one of utmost seriousness.

Me: "Aapko Amitabh Bachchan pasand hai? - आपको अमिताभ बच्चन पसंद है?"
(Do you like Amitabh Bachchan?)
[the Bollywood Megastar...arguably the most famous man in India]

Javed-Sahab: "Ji, zaroor! Voh sabse accha hai! - जी, ज़रूर! वो सबसे अच्छा है!"
(Of course! He's the greatest!)

Ellora is comprised of three cave groups, Buddhist, Hindu, and Jain. The Buddhist caves are the oldest (5-7th Century AD), followed by the Hindu ( 7th - 9th Century AD) and Jain caves (8 - 11th Centuries AD). The drive took about 30 minutes and we were dropped off first by the Jain caves. They're neatly tucked away from the Hindu and Buddhist caves which are clustered together.


The thing that immediately caught my attention was the not the statues of Tirthankars or the big Indian families with rowdy kids but the floor. For most caves, in accordance with Indian tradition (and to help preservation efforts) one's shoes must come off. Walking on the warm and amazingly smooth stone was a very unique experience. I'm not sure if the floors were polished by the builders or if the rock is naturally this smooth but I really felt "grounded' in the most literal sense. Although it was the "winter season" in India, the temperatures even in the late morning were a toasty 80°F (27°C) but the sensation of my feet on the smooth, warm stone floor was very pleasant.


My initial feeling of wandering through the caves with my mom was one of pure wonder. The alternation between peaceful, silent, stillness and waves noise (courtesy of the previously mentioned 'wild child' gang, boisterous school kids, and miscellaneous loud mouthed folks) was an interesting contrast that recurred throughout all the sites of Ellora.


Having explored the Jain caves, we then took a quick drive down to the "main site" to visit what is probably the biggest star of Ellora: Kailash Temple (कैलाश मंदिर). Built over a period of 150 years, there are two immediately striking things about it. The first is that it has a more South Indian style to it and the second is the entire thing was carved out from a single, giant piece of rock. Reading the last phrase may not seem so awe inspiring but hopefully the photos can give an idea of the massive scale and fine detail the temple is famous for.



Kailash Temple was built to function as a stylized and mystical representation of Mount Kailash in the Himalayas, where Hindus believe Lord Shiva dwells. This particular temple is therefore dedicated to Shiva. After exploring much of the "ground level" and side caves, my mom and I headed to the central structure that contained the inner sanctum. A simple room houses a shrine with a Shiva lingam in the center. A number of people (locals and tourists alike) took the opportunity to offer prayers and enjoy the serenity of a spot far removed from the constant hustle and bustle of the rest of the site. The fact that Kailash Temple was still a "living temple" and not simply an architectural showpiece reminded me that I had come to Ellora (and Ajanta) not really as a tourist but as a pilgrim.


From Kailash Temple, we wandered through some more of the adjacent Hindu caves. Although it was similar to the Jain caves, albeit with Hindu iconography, what I found in one of the caves pleasantly surprised me.


Places like Ellora draw all kinds of visitors from all kinds of backgrounds so I didn't make too much of an elderly Muslim man with four or five of his grandchildren nicely sitting on the floor in the middle of Cave 15. It was also no surprise when they began their noon prayers (dhuhr - ظهر) facing Mecca. Watching from afar however, I slowly realized I was witnessing a wonderfully unusual scene that illustrated the beauty of Indian pluralism. Here was a Muslim family praying inside of a Hindu cave with their direction of prayer directly facing the centrally placed Shiva lingam! Almost as if on cue, the family finished their prayers just as a group of French tourists walked in.


The last part of the Ellora visit was to the Buddhist set of caves. We decided it would be more convenient to "go in order" and start with the oldest (and farthest off) cave, Number 1. Although it and the other earlier caves were quite bare, there was a simple, utilitarian beauty to them.


Wandering through the other caves with their amazing sculptures of buddhas, bodhisattvas, and various celestial beings was, in a word, majestic. The rock-cut architectural style made everything seem so...organic, as if the sculptures weren't carved by artisans but rather manifested from the earth itself.


The statues and reliefs have been subjected to centuries of weathering as well as some abuse at human hands but they still effortlessly maintain their serene postures and calm, subduing expressions.



Cave 10 is a unique hall known as the 'Carpenter's Cave'. A seated buddha in the teaching pose (Dharmacakra Mudra) as well as the unique style of the hall itself (more reminiscent of the older caves at Ajanta) make it the most famous Buddhist cave of Ellora.


My personal favorite of all the caves would have to be Cave 12, called teen tal (तीन ताल), meaning 'three floors'. The uppermost floor contains rows of bodhisattvas flanking a row of buddhas on the center of the hall.





Aside from the beauty and arrangement of the sculptures themselves, another thing that moved me was thinking about the long history of the caves. For centuries, people who had completely devoted their lives to the Buddhadharma studied, prayed, meditated, worked, and lived right were I was walking around. Thinking about this made me reflect on a question that popped up in my head while wandering the Red Fort in Agra (the former capital of Mughal India) a week earlier: what condition will our cities, schools, and landmarks be in thousands of years from now? Will tourists throng to see the remains of the White House in Washington D.C. or the head of the Statue of Liberty in a museum? Maybe tour groups will roam ancient centers of learning like Berkeley, MIT, or Columbia or look upon the aged remains of the NASA platforms that launched human beings into space.

Overall, it took about 3.5 - 4 hours to see almost all of Ellora (we had to skip a few of the more far flung Hindu caves) but one can easily spend an entire day wandering around. I'd love to return soon, not simply to see sites I missed, but to once again be in the midst of a place that is, in so many ways, beyond time.

Treasures From the "Perfectly Composed Language"...

In 2005, Sanskrit language enthusiast and businessman John Clay, in association with the New York University Press began publishing the Clay Sanskrit Library. This massive publishing project aims to bring the greatest classics of Sanskrit literature to the modern audience. Bookforum gives a great overview of the series in their review:

Just because Sanskrit lacks a precise word for "angel"––amsara approximates the Judeo-Christian notion––the language doesn't lack for an actual angel. His name is John Clay, a businessman and lifelong devotee of Sanskrit literature who has created the Clay Sanskrit Library, copublished with New York University Press. Once completed, the series will comprise one hundred volumes, including the entire text of the Mahabhárata (in thirty-two volumes) and the Ramáyana (in eight). Each book is published in the geek-chic format made familiar by Harvard's Loeb Classical Library, with honeyed turquoise covers replacing the spartan reds and greens favored by Loeb.

The New Criterion's review says:

The Clay Sanskrit Library, a marvelous new venture, grapples with these, and other, problems in a bold yet delicate manner. Modeled on the Loeb Library of Greek and Latin classics, the Clay Sanskrit Library (CSL) presents masterpieces of Sanskrit poetry, drama and prose in a dual-language format. In addition to the entire Mahabharata, one of the two national epics (it will occupy thirty-two volumes of the Library!), translation of some fifty other classical works is envisaged. The original Sanskrit (in transliteration) on the left side of the page faces the English translation on the right. Each volume includes a brief introduction to the author or work, a clear guide to Sanskrit pronunciation as well as a concise description of sandhi (that complicated system of “euphonic combination” in the script that drives beginners mad) and a “sandhi grid” (on the inside back cover of each volume), together with succinct but useful notes. The transliteration, which is at first a disappointment in place of the lovely Devanagari script, is very cleverly done to enable a beginning reader of the original to recognize the root forms of Sanskrit words. (In Devanagari script, sandhi causes the forms of final and initial letters in compounds to mutate or to fuse).

There series will ultimately contain 100 volumes and includes classic Buddhist literature. Ashvaghosa, with his "Life of the Buddha" (Buddhacaritaṃ - बुद्दचरितं), and "Handsome Nanda" (Saundaranada - सौन्दरनन्द) as well as the "Heavenly Exploits" -(Divyāvadana - दिव्यावदन), a Jataka-like series of birth stories are currently available.

In the words of The Master poet Kalidasa:

Shivo rakshatu girvanabhasharasasvadatatparan
शिवो रक्षतु गीर्वाण्भाषारसास्वादतत्परन्
(May Shiva bless those who delight in the language of the Gods)

Hearing With the Eyes

How incredible!
How incredible!
Inanimate things proclaiming Dharma is conceivable.
It can't be known if the ears try to hear it,
But when the eyes hear it, then it may be known.

-Dongshan Liangjie (洞山良价)

Infect Someone Close to You...With Happiness!

A new study by researchers at UC San Diego suggests that good cheer is indeed contagious:

LONDON – When you're smiling, the whole world really does smile with you. A paper being published Friday in a British medical journal concludes that happiness is contagious — and that people pass on their good cheer even to total strangers. American researchers who tracked more than 4,700 people in Framingham, Mass., as part of a 20-year heart study also found the transferred happiness is good for up to a year.

"Happiness is like a stampede," said Nicholas Christakis, a professor in Harvard University's sociology department and co-author of the study. "Whether you're happy depends not just on your own actions and behaviors and thoughts, but on those of people you don't even know."...