Going To Borobudur?

Some years ago while on a visit to Borobudur I was looking at books about the place that were for sale at the site itself. They ranged from large coffee-table tomes to small booklets giving a brief overview of the temple. Most gave details about when it was built, how many tons of stone had been used to build it, it’s alignment with two other temples nearby, the usual speculation about what the structure of the temple might symbolize, etc.  But strangely, not one of them explained what each of the 120 panels depicting the life of the Buddha mean. So I decided to write a book doing just that. As I finished  about  two years ago an Indonesian friend sent me a copy of a just released book doing what I had done – Titus Leber’s Lalitavistara: The Life of the Buddha as Told on the Borobudur. I was a bit peeved that someone had ‘beaten me to it’ but had to admit that the book’s photos are excellent and its production top notch. Anyway, after many delays my A Pilgrim’s Guide to Borobudur finally came out last month. While Leber’s Lalitavistara describes each panel in only a few lines, mine does so in detail, sometime as much as a full page. My hope is that  the book will help the visitor to Borobudur learn all about the life of the person who was the inspiration behind this amazing monument, i.e. the Buddha. The book is published by Karaniya, it’s in English and Bahasa Indonesia, and an English-Bahasa Indonesia-Chinese edition is due out soon. If you are visiting Borobudur you can purchase the book on site.     

Leonard Cohen. A Monk?

One of the people who I had great appreciation for when I was young was Leonard Cohen, who has just passed away. May he have a good rebirth and continue to make music in it.  Given how his poetry and music moved me I have read several articles and obituaries about him over the last few days. While doing so I couldn’t help notice a particular incongruity in the language used in a few of these. In several Cohen is said to have been ordained as “a Zen monk.” In another his teacher Kyozan Joshu Sasaki is described as “a Japanese monk” or “a Zen monk.”

The word monk comes from the Greek monachus meaning alone or solitary; i.e. living in isolation from others, at least for certain periods, and also being unmarried. In Christianity, Jainism, Buddhism and I think in Taoism too, the word monk always implies celibacy. To the best of my knowledge almost all Japanese Buddhist clergy have been married since the late 19^th century. I know that Cohen was in relationships with women at the time of his ordination and afterwards as well, and my understanding is that Kyozan Joshu Sasaki was married too.  Given this, wouldn’t it be more correct to describe Buddhist clergy who are married as priests? 

 And there’s another word that’s undergoing change, in this case gender reassignment – priest. Until recently female religieux were nuns (Latin nunna), now they are “female priests” or ‘female monks’. I’m bewildered by such inivations. What’s wrong with the universally understood, long-standing, non-derogatory, more compact, and correct word nun? I note that the New Oxford Thesaurus of English does not recognize ‘female priest’, not yet anyway. And if we are going to describe nuns as “female priests” why not go the whole hog and call Diana a “female prince”? Or Charles a “male princess” for that matter! We have the malapropism, the catachresis and the spoonerism for other mangleings and misuses of the language. Seeing as we are inventing new words and phrases, why not create one for the sort of thing ‘female monk’ would be an example of?  Can anyone think of a good word for it? 

Another Forgotten Early Western Buddhist

Now here’s a book that somewhat curiously includes several subjects that I am quite interested in – Buddhism, travel, horticulture or at least plants, colonial Ceylon, and biographies. It’s about Reginald Farrer (1880-1920), still appreciated amongst gardening enthusiasts but virtually unknown beyond. I have heard of him because of his plant-hunting expeditions in Korea, northern Burma and the borderlands of Tibet, but I have never read his famous and still consulted best-seller My Rock Garden. But I never knew that he was also a well-informed and devote Buddhist. I have not read this, I think, first biography of him, but I plan to get it soon. You can read more about it here.

 http://www.legendabooks.com/titles/isbn/9781909662858.html