Rogues in Robes?

Now here’s something you don't see every day. Chinese policemen in Lhasa with neatly folded Buddhist monk’s robes tucked under their arms. Are they taking them to the dry-cleaners as a gesture of kindness to the lamas? Have they just purchased them and are on their way to a monastery to gift them to the lamas? Are they going to a fancy-dress ball with their fancy dress? Could it be that the robes have holes in them and the police are taking them home to their mums for mending before returning them to the lamas? Have they just finished smashing up shops and beating up people in Lhasa while being disguised as lamas? I’m just a simple monk so I just can’t figure it out.

Burma

More of the Same
As if the tornado isn’t enough, the Burmese people are about to be subjected to yet more bulling by their military overseers – they must vote for a draft constitution that most have not seen and that all know wont make any difference at all. Whatever the outcome, the military will continue doing whatever it wants. Burma has one of the worst government in the world. However, it might be worth pointing out that it has always had bad governments. I don’t mean your run-of-the-mill incompetent, cruel and tyrannical monarchs that used to be common everywhere. I mean really bad! Apart for one or two exceptions like Mindon Min, nearly all Burma’s kings were or quickly became vicious, paranoid megalomaniacs. Most died either in battle or at the hands of scheming offspring or courtiers. It was the custom that the first act of a new king was to murder all his brothers and sisters. As kings usually had many wives and therefore numerous children, this could mean the death of dozens of people. The last king, Thibaw, murdered about 150 of his siblings and their servants. He had spent much of his youth as a monk!! Burmese kings were also excessively and aggressively expansionist. Hardly a decade in Burmese history went by without a major war and these wars were fought with incredible ferocity. The fact that all of the troops were Buddhists and most of the lands they conquered were Buddhist, counted for nothing. Monks were butchered, nuns were ravaged, temples were looted and burned with the same murderous abandon. The sack of Ayutthaya in 1767 is a well-known example of this but there were many others known only to specialists in Burmese history. In the past, the main aim of conquest was either strategic or more commonly, to increase the king’s tax base. The British in India, who monitored Burma’s numerous wars in Arakan, Tripura, the Shan states and Assam through the late 18th and early 19th centuries, could never understand why the Burmese would conquer a new territory and then utterly lay waste to it – burn all the crops, poison the wells, set fire to the forests and then massacre all the inhabitance.
When not making war, crushing rebellions or purging their courts, Burmese kings spent their time erecting pagodas and lavishing wealth on the Sangha. This piety also went hand in hand with cruelty and megalomania. King Bodawpaya for example, wanted to build the largest stupa in the world. The country was stripped of its wealth and thousands were dragooned into forced labor gangs where many died through mistreatment and privation. The situation became so desperate that a cleaver astronomer convinced the superstitions king that if the stupa was finished his dynasty would be finished too. Work stopped and the enormous Mingun Pagoda sits there half-completed even today. No later kings finished it because you don’t get any merit doing anything to something that belongs to someone else. Like several other king Burmese kings, Bodawpaya claimed that he was Maitriya, the coming Buddha. Of course, rulers in the ancient world often claimed that they were deities, manifestations of deities or anointed by deities; the Pope and the Dalai Lama being the only two left. Such claims were a political expedient, an adjunct to polity. A good many Burmese kings made similar claims but they seem to have genuinely believed their twisted grandiose fantasies. Certainly all of them sat in their palaces believing that they were omnipotent cakkavtais, Universal Monarchs.
The massacre of Aung San, his whole cabinet and three others in 1947 was very much in accordance with Burmese political tradition. So was U Nu’s squandering of the country’s recourses on Buddhism during the brief period of democracy in the 1950’s. And so are the sinister brutal generals who misrule Burma today.
Burma is and always has been a land literally imbued with Buddhism. So how come it seems to have had and still has, so little impact on its rulers? Is it that the Dhamma never really penetrates below the gilded expressions of piety, and that as soon as people have power they do whatever they want? Is it that their understanding of concept of merit makes them think that they can safely counteract any evil they have done by feeding monks or building pagodas? Is it that the teaching of acceptance encourages them to put up with things non-Buddhists would never tolerate? Is it that these tyrants are not really Burmese but are shipped in from another country or perhaps from another planet? Is it…? I don’t know what it is! But I do think that Western Buddhists might do well to abstain from claiming that the traditional Buddhists countries were spiritual paradises and that traditional models of Buddhism are worth emulating or even worth praising.

By the Naranjara

Then being a quester for the good, searching for the incomparable, matchless path of peace, while walking on tour through Magadha I arrived at Uruvela, the army township. There I saw a beautiful stretch of ground, a lovely woodland grove, a clear flowing river with a pleasant ford and a village nearby for support. And I thought; ‘Indeed, this is a good place for a young man set on striving.’ So I sat down there, thinking; ‘Indeed, this is a good place for striving’ (M.I,167).

Cannon Balls and Confusion

Me in a Sal forest near Dehar Dun

More on Sal Trees
Being Vesakha I thought it okay to return to the subject of Sal trees again. Hope you don’t mind. A quick perusal through Yahoo Image and Google Image will show an almost universal misidentification of the Cannon-ball tree (Couroupita guianensis) with the Sal tree (Shorea robusta). The Cannon-ball tree is native of Brazil and gets its English name from the large cannon-ball-shaped fruit that hang in bunched from its trunk. How can a Brazilian tree get confused with an Indian tree? Well, first of all, this confusion seems to have began with the Sinhalese, the people of Sri Lanka. The Sinhalese of course have never seen a Sal tree which does not grow in tropical climates. They are however, quite familiar with the Cannon-ball tree because it was introduced into the Island by the Portuguese. Now the Cannon-ball tree not only has an extravagantly beautiful blossom with an almost overpowering perfume, but also in the heart of the flower is a small creamy-white nodule that looks exactly like a little stupa. The rest followed automatically for the Sinhalese. The Buddha died under a Sal and his remains were enshrined in a stupa + the Cannon-ball tree has a stupa in its flower = the Cannon-ball tree must be the Sal tree.

One can well understand how simple Sinhalese peasants could make this harmless and innocent mistake. But it says something about the power (at least in some areas) of expatriate Sri Lankan monks that they have disseminated this mistake so widely that now almost all Buddhists (outside India. Indian Buddhists know better) take it as gospel. From one point of view this is, as I said, a harmless, innocent mistake. From another point of view it is not. It could be seen of as yet another example of Buddhist imprecision, of that ‘a myth is as good as a truth’ attitude so common amongst Buddhists and perhaps also of the Western Buddhists tendency to accept everything Asian Buddhists tell them. So please! Lets have no more confusion on this matter. As the Buddha lay dying at Kusinara it was Sal blossoms that sprinkled down on him, not cannon-balls!

The golden-yellow flowers on the right are Sal flowers. The red and white flower on the left is a Cannon-ball tree flower.

The Sal Tree

When the Buddha arrived in Kusinara and lay down between two Sal trees, they burst into flower out of season and sprinkled their petals over him. Ananda expressed amazement that the very trees were revering him, the Buddha said: “Ananda, these Sal trees burst into flower out of season in homage to the Tathagata and covered his body…But the monk or the nun, the lay man or the lay woman who lives practicing the Dhamma properly and perfectly fulfills the Dhamma, he or she honors, reveres and respects the Tathagata with the highest homage” (D.II,137-8). Being Vesakha I thought it appropriate to say something about Sal trees.
The Sal tree (Shorea robusta) is sala in Pali and occasionally assakanna because the leaves resemble a horse’s ear (Ja.VI,528). Sal is a majestic tree growing up to 45 meters in height and having a girth of 3.6 meters, with ovate oblong leaves and pale yellow flowers. Its difficult to find huge Sal trees today, they are almost always cut down before they become what the Buddha called “forest monarchs” (vanaspati, S.IV,302). Once I saw one on the edge of Corbett National Park that must have been about 40 meters and I am told that there are still giants growing in Royal Chitwan National Park in Nepal. The tree is described as having dark green leaves, a straight trunk and being beautiful to see (Ja.V,251). In the light of this story and the belief that the Buddha passed away during Vesakha, it is interesting to note that the Sal usually blossoms in March-April and occasionally in May, if there has been a lot of rain. The huge Sal trees that grew in the lower reaches of the Himalayas had leaves and foliage, bark and shoots, soft wood and heart wood (D.III,152). The Buddha described how a man would make a boat out of a Sal trunk. First he would locate a large tree in the forest and cut it down with his ax. After shaping the exterior and hollowing out the inside, he would them further shape it with a scraper and then smooth it with a rock ball. Finally, he would fix a rudder, make a pair of oars and then slide it down to the river (A.II,201). The Buddha also describes a man going to a Sal forest near a village and thinning the other trees and the crooked Sal saplings so that the other Sal trees would grow bigger and straighter (M.I,125). Sal trees were sometimes strangled by parasitic vines (Dhp.162). The Buddha once said that his Dhamma was so convincing that if the great Sal trees had consciousness and could comprehend, even they would benefit from it (A.II,193). One moonlit night, Ananda and Revata went to visit Sariputta at the Sal forest of Gosinga which was “delightful…with all the trees in full bloom and with a heavenly fragrance wafting through the air” (M.I,212). Sometimes gruel was made from or flavored with Sal, either the flowers or perhaps its resin (A.III,48). The Sal was and continues to be even today an important source of timber in India. The picture at the top is of a Sal forest in Uttaranhcal.

Birth

That being bound for enlightenment,
that incomparable and excellent jewel,
has been born into the world of humanity
for their welfare and happiness,
at Lumbini in the Sakyan country.
Therefore we are so happy and joyful.
(Sn.683)

Vesakha

This month is Vesakha, the second month of the ancient Indian calendar. Vesak, the Sinhalese pronunciation of Vesakha, has become more widely used in the West than the original Pali and Sanskrit. According to the earliest Buddhist tradition, Siddhattha Gotama was born, became enlightened and passed away on the full moon eve of the month of Vesakha, although this is not mentioned anywhere in the Tipitaka itself. In fact, the Tipitaka says almost nothing about Prince Siddhattha’s life before he renounced the world and what is said is probably legendary. There is no evidence of when the Buddha became enlightened and it is only in the references to his passing that we get some evidence of chronology. According to the Mahaparinibbana Sutta, while the Buddha was staying at Vesali he said that he would pass away in three months time (ito tinnam masanam, D.II,114). As he did not leave Vesali until the end of the rainy season (mid-October) this means he would have passed away no later than mid-January. The distance between Vesali to Kusinara, is about 190 kilometres and so we can calculate that the Buddha would have walked an average of 2 kilometres each day. He stopped in several places along the way, although for how long we don’t know, so he probably actually walked more than that. Either way, such a trip would have been tiring given the Buddha’s age, the state of his health and the weather.
When the Buddha arrived on the outskirts of Kusinara he lay down between two sal trees and gave his final instructions to his disciples. We are told that he passed away during the third watch of the night (rattiya pacchime yama, D.II,147). In ancient India the night was divided into three watches - pattama, majjhima and pacchima - starting at sunset, finishing at sunrise and each being of equal length. So if the information given in the Mahaparinibbana Sutta contains historically accurate information, and I think it does, we can say that the Buddha passed away some time in January between about 3 A.M. and sunrise.
When the Chinese monk Hiuen Tsiang was in India during the 7th century he found that while most Buddhists celebrated the Buddha’s birth, enlightenment and passing on the full moon of Vesakha, some sects did so at other times. He wrote: “According to the general tradition, the Tathagata was eighty when, on the fifteenth day of the second half of the month of Vesakha, he attained final Nirvana…But the Sarvastivadins say he died on the eighth day of the second half of the month of Kattika.” “The Bodhisattva was born on the eighth day of the second half of the month of Vesakha…But the Savaka school say that it was the fifteenth day of the second half of Vesakha.”
Whatever day or time the Buddha was born, became enlightenment and passed away, may this Vesakha reawaken or enhance within my readers reverence for the Buddha and the desire to practice and realize the Dhamma.