politics on the way to religion

in september, the harvest moon on the 15th was an absurdly large pumpkin-colored orb this year. and in october, that pumpkin grew into an excitement that couldn't get enough of political news. i spoke with colleagues at my transient workplace in slow to rise whispers about the new presidency and the daring gop palin excuses. we had to contain our excitement inside tiny semi-walled cubicles. an urban, tan-collared migrant worker, i moved from office to office speaking of things that would have gotten me fired for agitating an otherwise "comfortably numb" milieu.

i never really pegged myself as an agitator but as one who executed executive orders, rebuilt "the man" by being firm and respectful when i needed to remind him that i had push buttons. this kind of "re-tooling" is so much like teaching preschool, except for the reversed power dynamics.

when i mentioned in last year's blog entry that "cable tv brings worlds together," i didn't know what a truism it turned out to become. since the election countdown started to build momentum in august with the beginning of the debates, (and as was measured by the shortening daylight hours), evenings at the house sounded loud with john stewart and with cnn's nightly tracking updates. i translated into broken english for my conservative republican korean mother and for my freedom-fighting tibetan husband, the meaning behind the polls, the political philosophies of the gop and the democratic party. i used john stewart for humor and cnn for its somewhat objective and data-oriented reports to build my case for obama and his message of change. occasionally, i even flipped the channel to watch fox news and msnbc just to show the contrasts and how we have to balance the information and views. granted, fox news was translated with tad fewer words.

in november, as election day approached, i asked my mother who she would be voting for. she replied that she may not vote at all. she didn't like palin for the very reasons that colin powell pulled away from his allegiance to the republican party. she, unlike many other christian right republicans, had hoped for a religious and upstanding candidate. she thought mccain was upstanding enough but not christian enough. palin was christian enough but not upstanding which then reduced her christian factor to a very dim single digit percentile. mom just didn't believe palin was a good christian woman especially after seeing the news reports that she is gungho for the nra and that she herself proudly shoots and kills moose and wants to put a moratorium on protecting polar bears. (after korean tv, then yes tv, mom's third and fourth favorite channels are discovery and national geographic.) even my sister-in-law, a young thai "princess," who idolizes sarah palin because she's "pretty" couldn't justify her reasons for supporting someone who would have buried the deep and viral need for an intelligent and global america.

so, when i asked mom who she was voting for, i eliminated the possibility that she could vote for the republican party this year. she simply responded that she probably wouldn't vote at all, though she told me that my christian conversative pastor dad would vote for obama. he also felt the way mom did about palin. though he admitted to liking obama as an upstanding and righteous man. i still had to work on mom.

on election day eve, i mapped out how mom should vote, just to tease her a little. when i slowly spelled out the letters "o-b-a-m-a," she laughed once she realized what i had spelled out. on election day, as i stood on line to enter the poll booth, mom came up behind me in line with some random flyers for local senate seats. mom held the picture of the democratic senator in her right hand and the republican senator in her left. when i told her that we needed to elect more democrats in the senate, she asked me which was the democrat. she squinted at the picture and read the name out loud. dad arrived a few minutes later, with another set of leaflets. he showed me one of a woman from another state, perhaps virginia that he thought he should vote for. i had to tell him that we couldn't vote for someone running from out of state. he seemed disappointed. but when i quickly told him the name of the democratic senator running for new york, his eyes lit up with the hope of pushing more levers and asked me to spell out his name. it was longer than 4 letters, so mom just handed him her leaflet.

how is it that it took a political black man to unite a disparate asian family of mixed religious views? my christian republican parents, conservative by virtue of korean confucianism and i, a globally worthless liberal buddhist democratic daughter strolled through the park nearby with its multicolored fall foliage saturated by the overcast sky, smiling and feeling in harmony with the tao of change.

adam's apples and eve falls

karma told me once that i don't have enough of "this" - wiggling his index finger against his adam's apple. huh??? of course i don't have an adam's apple. it's a man's thing. he said in tibetan this "lump" keeps a person from saying too much. it's expression is better translated as prior to "putting one's foot in the mouth." of course, in english, i have to add, re-emphasize and bold the word, "PRIOR." i tried to explain to him that women typically don't have that thing, wiggling my own index finger against the non-existent place where i would have put my foot if i hadn't already done so.

it made sense. men have this lump of adam's apple as a way of keeping things inside, like a bottle neck (metaphor intended). and like a traffic pattern under stress, it strangles them at the pressure point just until they have a clear view of the mess and then it's unexpectedly gone. the traffic moves smoothly once again. how marvelous this analogy was until i realized the discussion was about me.

i have to admit, i have been talking far too freely ever since i learned the tremendous power of the spoken word. it's terrible. if it were a weapon of mass destruction, it would sound a lot like: IT'S ALL YOUR FAULT..... then, the aftermath of destruction would sound like this: so sorry...

it's difficult to say why men and women are so generically and genetically different. and then there's culture. the tibetan reference to speaking little against adversity would have been a nice buddhist practice had i been raised in that culture. but the christian reference pulses a tad more in my veins. i wish adam didn't have to grow apples in his garden and i wish eve didn't have to talk him into eating his own ripened fruit. anyway, i'm allergic to apples.

What's in a name?

It's difficult to understand the meaning of "karma" especially if one is not Buddhist. More difficult than that is actually trying to discuss it in an interfaith forum. Well, forum is not the right word. It's actually my mother's living room, sitting in front of the big, HDTV screen, with the rickety voice of a Korean televangelist pelting monosyllables into our interfaith conference room.

Karma and I arrived from India at the end of February. Mom one day last month asked about Karma's name saying, "do you know what Karma's name means?" I was too busy and tired for an interreligious dialogue at that time so I deftly avoided her question with one of the cleverest answers I could think of: "no."

My mother is catching on. She's getting clever herself now. Especially since she's been spending over a year working on Soduku puzzles. Sometimes I regret buying the Blackbelt Book. She asked Karma two days later about his name while I wasn't around. Karma reported to me soon after that my mother told him, "Karma, daddy want you change your name." Very subtle. Karma, in his defense, told her that it was a good name (especially since His Holiness the 16th Karmapa gave him that name.) She asked him, "(Does) Margaret know what your name mean?" He replied, "Yes." ....uh...Doh..... She's so clever.

Apparently, the Korean translation of "karma" is mostly used in a negative form, often referred to as punishment or sin. It leans too far to the Christian right for what is supposed to have been an etymologically Indian word. I don't know the way that this word traveled in the Asian world. I tried to inquire, but thus far have no answers.

"Upbo" is one of those Korean words. My parents struggled to understand the broader meaning of karma when I tried to explain that it referred to the law of cause and effect which included both negative and positive actions and results. My mom listened with moderately glazed eyes, but I can see the image bubbling above the crown of her head of me prostrating in front of the root of all evil. If she tried a little harder she would be able to visualize me sitting in front of a cloud of ambiguity instead. "Karma" is so slippery. I wish I could understand better what it means and how it's used for I suspect it's meaning and its usage are not necessarily in synch.

Whole worlds are destroyed by semantic misunderstandings. If we should share the same language, would it be easier? One very learned lama told me that he will never learn English because, "even people who speak the same language argue. So, if I speak a little bit, it may create greater misunderstanding and we will argue even more." I think this is what he was saying through a broken translation. Well, I thought he was serious and I became morally pushy about the usefulness of learning English, not realizing that he was totally playing with me. He had every intention of availing himself of the first opportunity to immerse himself in English classes. Now, my only hope is that together we will piece together this puzzle through culture, language and history... Indian, Tibetan, Korean and English.

dheradhun

"i love buddha"














"buddha lives here"

cable tv brings worlds together

My mother is a Korean Christian minister’s wife. She has been for many years now. Although we have had many arguments and problems on the complexities of an interfaith household, I am very grateful for one thing: the advent of cable TV. Since the dawn of cable in our home, her openness to the world and to the other-ness of new people and to different cultures seems to bring her closer to God.

Together, we have watched Korean news segments of film crews capturing the bizarre lama dancers in Kham, Eastern Tibet and of the significance of Guru Rinpoche in Bhutan. She exclaimed on watching the Buddhist lamas chanting in ceremony, “I never learned anything about their history before.” She speaks of people who are said to be the ethnographic cousins of Mongolians and more interestingly, of Koreans.

One day, she told my friend that it’s good to have cable TV, since she can then see the broader world (telecast on satellite.) She commented that this exposure to the world allows her to understand what it is that she is praying for in the world. Just a minute later, she holds up the remote and settles on one of her favorite channels: YES TV, the Yankees network channel.

At the opposite end of the world, in a small rural village community in Eastern Sikkim, an old Ama-la and Aba-la invite my friend and I to lunch at their home. They are about the same age as my parents, although because of the climate and of the hardships of living in India, they wear weather more guardedly. DISHTV is one of the popular cable companies, boasting several hundred satellite-directed channels from India and quite a number of channels from the US and the UK, among the international countries.

At Ama-la’s and Aba-la’s home, a 27” LG flatscreen floats lightly upon a tiny satellite box and a compact DVD player. Ama-la, with a large ancient prayer wheel in her right hand and a large multi-button remote control on her left hand, moves both arms well. She is adept at maneuvering ancient and modern tools and blurring samsara and nirvana into a whirlwind of one flavor. She finally stops on a daily Hindi serial and rests both the prayer wheel and the remote on the coffee table. She has found her slice of nirvana for the moment.

how to make butterlamps

Butterlamps at the Tsuklhakang, the residence of HH Dalai Lama in McLeod Ganj

The following is a method for making and offering traditional butterlamps for use with Copper, Brass or Silver Lamps:

Before beginning, if it’s necessary, clean and wash the lamp with hot water, removing the used wick.










Melt butter in a pot. The amount depends on how large and how many lamps are used. Place fibrous cotton wick or traditional wool wick inside the base of each Lamp.













Slowly pour melted butter into the Lamp, carefully saturating the wick.

Wait for butter to harden.

Offering butterlamp before a shrine.

from kagyu.org:

SINCE BUDDHA SHAKYAMUNI attained enlightenment 2,500 years ago and dispelled the darkness of ignorance that obscures the mind's true nature, lamp offerings in Buddhist practices have symbolized his realization. Each lamp offering celebrates the Buddha's enlightenment and thus is associated with great good fortune.

For Tibetan Buddhist practitioners, a lamp offering also carries the wish to attain buddhahood and the aspiration to recognize the clear light at the time of death, thereby experiencing liberation in that moment. In this way lamp offerings are associated with transitions in one's life.

Lamp offerings are best made before consecrated representations of fully awakened wisdom, loving-kindness, and compassion.

Read more...

the way of foreign sponsors

China may have taken away Tibetan independence during the cultural revolution of the 1950’s, but today, it is giving back to the Tibetan-Indian Buddhist diaspora, a share of its technological earnings. A television crew of over 300 from China arrived in Bodhgaya to film and to participate in the Kagyu Monlam, an annual prayer festival held underneath the sacred Bodhi Tree. They bring camera equipment, miles of colored wires and cables, laptops, short-range audio devices and most coveted of all, efficiently packaged Chinese “bento-boxes” swiftly distributed during break.

Sponsors from Hong Kong, Malaysia and Taiwan pour not just piecemeal bits of technology from chips to laptops, but they also come with technical experts to assist the operation. Dressed in traditional Tibetan monastic red robes, the Chinese-Tibetan Buddhist monks and nuns efficiently dart among the Tibetan-Tibetan monks, checking wires around the sound box, distributing headsets and setting up the microphones. The Tibetan-Tibetan monastics are much more confident sitting under the Great Tree, chanting prayers and scrolling through pages of a prayer text.

Not only are technological gadgets and tools exported to developing cultures like Tibetans in India, but technical experts and even high-level business executives outsource themselves to volunteer and to bring their professional-level expertise. A business CEO from Hong Kong on her way out of town stops my Tibetan friend and I. She is a key sponsor at the monlam. She wants to thank us for helping out and grabbing her keys from her handbag, opens the back door of her jeep-for-hire and hands my friend two 1GB Pretec memory sticks packaged in Christmas design. He hands one to me and we stand there, smiling at our holiday "bonus."