MAHENDRANATH GUPTA a.k.a. “M”

Mahendranath Gupta (1854-1932) was a householder-disciple of Sri Ramakrishna.  After some time working for the government and a merchant house, he began teaching English, psychology, and economics at various colleges.  Eventually he became headmaster of Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar Secondary School.  There he was called "Master Mahashay," just as he was often addressed in Ramakrishna's circle, where he was also referred to simply as "M."  He came to Dakshineswar in 1882. 

From his diaries, M compiled the Sri Sri Ramakrishna Kathamrita, translated as The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, which is an almost stenographic record of many of Ramakrishna's conversations and activities.  It is a five-volume work published consecutively in the years 1902, 1904, 1908, 1910 and 1932. The Kathamrita is regarded as a classic and revered among the followers of Ramakrishna as a sacred scripture.

Initially when M began writing the diaries, he had no plans of publication.  Regarding his methodology, he said, "I wrote everything from memory after I returned home. Sometimes I had to keep awake the whole night.  Sometimes I would keep on writing the events of one sitting for seven days, recollect the songs that were sung, and the order in which they were sung, and the samadhi and so on."  In each of his Kathamrita entries, M records the time and place of the conversation or activity.  

In 1932, when the fifth volume of the Kathamrita was at the printers, M died at his home, now called Kathamrita Bhavan.  He was seventy-eight years old.  The home is located near the Thanthania Kali Temple in Calcutta.  Kathamrita Bhavan is a place of pilgrimage for followers of Ramakrishna due to the many visits there by Ramakrishna and Sarada Devi.  Several relics associated with their lives are there as well.

THE SITUATION, PART ONE

He felt from an early age that he was being lied to, was being betrayed.  But by whom?  By what?  At the same time, he felt himself to be a lie.  When he opened his mouth he did not know who it was that was speaking.  He spent years in the university, which he argued was worth the effort.  It was intellectually stimulating, entertaining even, but of what use was it in the end?  He was left with the real question, what was worthwhile doing?  What he really wanted was salvation.

“Seek out your own salvation with diligence,” the Buddha said.  “Try it, see for yourself.  You can search throughout the entire universe for someone who is more deserving of salvation than you are yourself, and that person is not to be found anywhere.  When we are suffering, we are as much in need of our compassion as is any other being, and we are equally deserving of it.”

Only the individual can attain his own salvation. The Buddhas can merely teach that there is a Way.  It is the individual’s responsibility to follow it.  “Abide with oneself as an island, with oneself as a refuge,” the Buddha taught.  “Seek no external refuge.”

Of whatever teachings you can assure yourself that they conduce to dispassion and not to passions, to detachment and not to bondage, to decrease of worldly gains and not to their increase, to frugality and not to covetousness, to content and not to discontent, to solitude and not to company, to energy and not to sluggishness, to delight in good and not to delight in evil, of such teachings you may with certainty affirm that this is the Norm, this is the discipline, this is the Master’s message.---Digha Nikaya II.156

Salvation begins with Right View, which means the way we look at life, our perspective on it.  Without Right View, we are confused, resulting in frustration, depression, and anxiety.  The goal of Buddhism is quieting the conflicted mind.  The following is Right View, the First Door.

THERE IS NO PAST.  “Bring out the past here and show it to me,” the Buddha said.  All there is, is memory.  Memory, though, is selective, hence unreliable.  Historians balk at this, because the past is everything to them.  They don’t want to hear about the shortcomings of language, for instance, how peoples’ recollection of themselves, of others and events can be faulty, how the interpretation of facts can be suspect, and indeed how the accuracy of facts to start with can be in doubt.  Whole lives and major events are guided by this often shaky information, the blind leading the blind.

We must give no thought to our past, no remembering, no regretting, no thought to who we used to be or to what our circumstances once were, even five minutes ago.

THERE IS NO FUTURE.  “Bring out the future here and show it to me,” the Buddha also said.  All there is, is anticipation, planning, expectation, which like the past is unreliable.  This is to say, how can we know what our circumstances, much less we ourselves, will be like at a given point in the future, will be like even one hour from now.  We might be dead by then.  Only the present exists, one breath, one heart beat at a time.  

Moreover, remembering the past and planning for the future are done now, in the present.  “All we have is now,” Marcus Aurelius reminds us, as does Eckhart Tolle who speaks of now as “Isness,” what actually "is.”  Alan Watts said, “There is no place to be but here and now.  There is no way to be anywhere else.”  Watts added, “Interestingly, time is moving, yet there is only now.”

We must give no thought to our future, no anticipation, no expectation, no planning, no worrying, no thought to who we are yet to be or what our circumstances will be at some point in the future, even five minutes from now.

EXISTENCE IS IMPERMANENT.  When a prince asked his jeweler to make him something that would carry him through times of triumph as well as times of defeat, the jeweler made him a ring inscribed with the words “It will pass.”  

Impermanence, “annica,” is the First Dharma Seal.  Existence is in a state of constant flux.  Every day is different from the previous day, and the next day.  Every moment is different from the previous moment, and the next moment.  All is transient, hence unreliable, hence the cause of all our suffering.  We seek fulfillment in our lives but we never really feel fulfilled because what we seek fulfillment in is time bound, transient.  When we tries to grasp it, it just runs through our fingers.  We are not happy with what we achieve, own, and know because only too quickly we are tired of it, bored with it.  Time kills it.  We then go on to achieve, own, and know still more, which once again because of time is satisfying to us only briefly.

THERE IS NO SELF.  Memory, present consciousness, and anticipation of what is coming next create the illusion of a self.  Krishnamurti said, “Could it be that you identify with a merely abstract ego, based on nothing but memories?” There is this physical body, this happening, sure enough, Alan Watts said, but it is all there is.  As well, there is no self separate from the rest of existence as our egos would have us believe.  This is the Second Dharma Seal, called “anatta” or “anatman.”  We have a body versus we are a body.  

Hormones contribute to the illusion of a self.  This is the lie of hormones.  A case in point, it is not until testosterone recedes in us males, usually in our fifties, that we see the extent to which testosterone has us seeing the world through a veil.  

There is as well the lie of mental states.  We have been conditioned to view the world and ourselves in a certain light, which may be false.  This includes the lie of symbolic thinking e.g. thinking about thinking and the problems that thinking creates in us, and the lie of language e.g. words about words and problems that words create in us.  We don’t know what we are looking at half the time and then go on to communicate about it using symbols which are merely approximations of what we mean.  Alfred Korzybski noted, “Whatever you say something is, it isn’t,” with Alan Watts adding, “nothing is really describable.”  Compounding this, we identify ourselves with our thoughts.  We think we are our thoughts.

Also there is the lie of feeling states.  We have been conditioned to react to the world and ourselves in certain emotional ways, which may be false.  When we are lonely, we miss our families, friends, and God.  Loneliness, though, like all other feelings we have, comes, as Krishnamurti explained, from thoughts, which again are impermanent, transient, and unreliable.  Feelings, likewise then, are impermanent, transient, and unreliable.  Yet we identify ourselves with our feelings.  We feel we are our feelings.  We feel we are our moods.  Our entire lives are just these smoke and mirrors, called “maya” in Buddhism, meaning to be enchanted, spellbound.  All we actually are is just consciousness.  We are conscious bodies.  As Buddhism sums up, we are only a temporary collection of momentary events that are constantly in flux in their causal relationship to each other, with a consciousness that expires when we expire.

WHAT IS WORTHWHILE DOING?  “Survival is not the issue,” Alan Watts said, “because you are not going to survive.”  Rather, liberation is it.  Everything other than the Path to liberation is irrelevant.  “It is not what others do, or do not do, that is my concern.  It is what I do, and do not do.  That is my concern.”---The Dhammapada p54.  

KILLING TIME.  Kill time before it kills us.  The Dalai Lama kills time by fixing clocks, a reminder to him that he is “on the clock,” memento mori.  Much like chanting, it to keep his mind from itself.  My elderly mother looked at her watch incessantly, seemingly to see whether her time was up yet.  On her deathbed she must have been greatly relieved to realize she could put her watch away.

OCCUPATION OF LIBERATION.  Everything other than the Path is irrelevant.  We must make liberation our occupation, so that there is but one thing.  Our day is for this one thing only.  All we want in this life, after all, is to be happy.  We are naturally happy.  The reason we are not happy is because we are too bound up in the irrelevant.

SUFFERING.  Termed “dukkha” in Buddhism, this is the Third Dharma Seal. “Greater than the waters in the four oceans is the flood of tears each being has shed, or the amount of blood he has lost when, as an animal or wrong-doer, he has had his head cut off,” the saying goes.

Life is not all suffering, of course, but largely it is.   According to Buddhist psychology, every moment of life when happiness and inner peace are absent is a moment of suffering.  When you are rushing, impatient, irritated, frustrated, anxious, angry, fearful, bored, sad, or jealous, when you are filled with desire for something you want that you don’t have, or feel aversion toward something you do have but that you don’t want, you are suffering.  When you are reliving a painful experience from your past or imagining a future one, you are suffering.  Nothing on this planet is free of suffering.  Even long-time Buddhists who endeavor to not suffer still do so, because all our sources of suffering cannot be eliminated. 

PLEASURE TRAIL.  To ease our pain we seek out what pleasures we can find here and there, food, sex, adventure, like a chicken on a trail of corn.  The trouble is, we adapt to them to where we need more and more of them to get the same effect.  The same effect, however, is not what we get.  It’s always something less.

THE SITUATION, PART TWO

WHY AM I UNHAPPY?  It is because we are filled with wanting, with desire, to the point that eventually the desire becomes a thirst that cannot be satisfied, even when we achieve what we desire.  So how can we be happy?  By ceasing to desire.  Just as a fire dies down when no fuel is added to it, so our unhappiness will end when the fuel of our desire is removed. 

We must not strive, grasp, cling, clutch, wanting to do this or to be that, for even when we attain what we want, it is not enough.  The more we have the more we want.  Attaining what we want is suffering just as much as not attaining it is, with “suffering” defined as chronic frustration. 

What do we gain by striving but wealth, power, and prestige, what society has taught us are the desirable things to have in this life.  It was Krishnamurti who said, “Think it through.  Do you really want what you think you want?” 

We must beware of what we want, Buddhism warns, we might get it.  Hell is getting what we want, often.  The reality of wealth, power, and prestige is that they are transient and therefore will end soon enough in suffering.  The old adage “less is more” is correct.  The less we have the less we want, and in this way we take the greatest pleasure in the smallest things and are happy.  “He who knows he has enough is rich,” Lao Tzu said.

DO NOT COMPETE.  With competition there is a winner and a loser, with the biggest loser being the winner.  Winning is a hollow victory because when we win we must equal or better myself the next time out, feeling guilt at the same time for the suffering we have caused the loser. 

As for the person who has just lost, he feels resentful toward us, wishing us ill, looking forward vengefully to when we can compete again, when he might win, perpetuating the cycle.  Our aim must be to end suffering, not prolong it.  There is a popular picture of Buddhist monks shooting pool, a seeming contradiction to this tenet.  The monks, though, are not competing.  Like the Dalai Lama repairing his clocks, they are only killing time.

HAVE NO AMBITION.  Ambition is our attempt to fill a void in our lives, a need for love or respect, for instance.  Love and respect, however, are transient.  Wealth, power, prestige, love, and respect are hollow victories.

AVOID ALL ATTACHMENTS, FETTERS, CHAINS THAT BIND.  We must not be attached to our personal possessions, to our location, to our money, to other people we know, and least of all to ourselves.  Attaching ourselves to anything is folly because soon enough we are bored with it, wish we never had it, even as we cannot get rid of it because now we are attached to it.

We become attached to people but because we don’t like most of them very much, it undercuts our happiness in the end.  Have feelings for people, the Buddha said, but don’t make them responsible for your happiness. 

And why should we attach ourselves to ourselves, to our physical selves in particular, for our physical selves are dying, have been dying from the day we were born?  Why should we attach ourselves to our psychological selves when our psychological selves are an illusion?

VEGANISM.  Buddhists do not kill animals for any reason (ahimsa), much less to eat them.

NO DUALITY.  This is known as the principle of relativity.  There is only the appearance of opposites, when in fact everything is one, called the unity of opposites. Everything is the same energy, this is to say.  Opposites are two sides of the same coin.  Light is not possible without darkness, substance without space, life without death, self without other.  They go together.  They arise mutually, called the coincidence of opposites, and since Nature hates a vacuum, as it is said, they create each other continually.

REALITY.  The truth is that we are on a rock hurtling blindly through space, a rock containing, by a fluke, life forms.  The biggest fluke is that one of these life forms, we humans, is aware of itself.  We are aware that we will die one day, for example.  Life on this rock has no purpose beyond perpetuating itself.  We are in denial about our life on this rock, all the while.  We understand life here intellectually but cannot grasp it fully.  When we look up at the stars at night we do not know what truly it is we are looking at.  It overwhelms us.  We have a false sense of security about it, at the same time, much as we have when we climb into a jet plane, believing that we will be as safe in it as we are walking around outside it.  The same with an automobile.

DIRECT EXPERIENCE IS SUPERIOR TO SECONDARY EXPERIENCE.  Direct experience is, for example, classical music (abstract sound), physical labor (body at work), and color (sensory perception).  It is the experience of the five senses.  Secondary experience is the symbolic world, thinking and language, life once removed.  While secondary experience is useful in ways, it generates a world unto itself that is false, or, more often than not, is only partly true.

DEPENDENT ORIGINATION.  This states that what is, is dependent upon something else, the law of cause and effect.  The Majjhima Nikaya II,32 states:  If this is, that comes to be; from the arising of this, that arises; if this is not, that does not come to be; from the stopping of this, that stops.  The Majjhima Nikaya I.416 adds: The skillful man asks, “What are the consequences of my actions?  Will it lead to hurt of self, of others, or of both?  What will happen if I stop, or do nothing?”  It is like a clock where if one wheel turns, all the wheels turn.  Everything we do and do not do affects everything else that is done and not done.

JI-JI-MUGE.  Related to Dependent Origination is Ji-Ji Muge.  This refers to the interdependence, the mutual interpenetration of all things and events.  It is likened to a spider’s web where every dew drop reflects every other dew drop on it.

MINDFULNESS.  To be aware of Dependent Origination and Ji-ji Muge is called mindfulness.  A person unaware of them is described as either ignorant “avidya” or ignore-ant, that is, one who has chosen to pay no attention to them.  The cause of human misery and evil is ignorance.  We humans are, in general, so darkly ignorant about his own nature that all of our actions have the wrong orientation.  Not moral transgression then, but mental error is the root of human misery and evil.  The result of ignorance, it is said, is an endless chain of false illusions in which each succeeding illusion is due to its preceding illusion.

AHIMSA.  Non-injury to other beings.  “All things breathing, all things existing, all things living, all beings whatever, should not be slain or treated with violence, or insulted or tortured or driven away,” according to the Acaranga Sutra of Jainism, the view of Buddhism and Hinduism as well.  Jain monks while walking in a forest carry long staffs which they tap on the ground out in front of them to drive off any animals or insects lest they innocently get trampled.

NO VIOLENCE.  Physical violence goes without saying, but mental violence we must also avoid.  Anger and ill will are mental violence and are among the destructive emotions, mental afflictions, so called, which also includes hatred, jealousy, confusion, desire, and hubris.

COMPASSION.  We must be compassionate toward others as we hope others will be compassionate toward us.  We are all in the same boat, insofar as everyone suffers.  Indeed, suffering is the common denominator for every living thing on this planet.  Even for the bacteria that will kill us one day we must have compassion; they live here too.  Compassion is the cornerstone of Buddhism because it not only benefits the recipient of it but the one offering it as well.  This is to say, by shifting our attention away from ourselves and onto another, we do not feel own pain so much.  An alternative to “compassion,” a word implying superiority on the part of the one extending it, is sympathy.  We can sympathize with others because we all suffer.  If, on the other hand, we have not yet lived much life, or have not yet lived a particular aspect of it, such as the death of a loved one, we can empathize with others.

FORGIVENESS.  Forgiving a person of something that he or she has done or said is the greatest gift we can give them, and ourselves.  Forgiveness includes not trying to change someone who does not want to change, or who cannot change.

NO REHEARSAL, NO REPLAY.  Our thinking is dominated by our rehearsing what we will say to someone in the future, or our replaying what we have already said to someone in the past.  But there is no future, there is no past.  Rehearsal and replay are a waste of time.  We must live in the present.  We must treat each heartbeat, each breath, each meal, each laugh, as if it were our last, because one day it will be.

ZEN TEST.  The four Buddhist propositions are:  something is; something isn’t; something both is and isn’t; something neither is nor isn’t.  Zen asks what is beyond the four propositions?

THERE IS SUCH A THING AS BAD LUCK.  Baby birds in a nest get killed when the tree trimmers come through.  The birds were in the wrong place at the wrong time.  We will all be in the wrong place at the wrong time one day.  It is tempting to say that the killing of the birds is bad karma working itself out, but all the birds in that nest would not have bad karma.  Rather it is tathata, that which is so of itself.  Bad luck just happens of itself.

DYING.  As soon as we realize that we are alive, we know that we will be dead before long, Alan Watts said.  Every last person in the world will die eventually, just as every speck of living anything will die.  If we are nothing, however, we have nothing to lose.  Buddhists seek to be nothing.  “When Death came, there was no one there,” their saying goes.  Some say that Buddhists have a death wish.  It is not that they don’t want to live any longer, they say, but that they don’t need to. 

OBJECTS.  Buddhists conceive of an object, a rock for instance, as an event, not as a thing or substance.

THE WORLD.  Buddhists accept the world as they find it, as it is.  Above all, they do not place blame.  They believe that the individual determines what happens to him, that the individual, not something “out there,” is responsible for his fate.  The external world only reacts to what the individual does.

SUCHNESS.  Also termed thusness or, again, tathata, it means reality as it is, without superimposing any ideas upon it.

GOD.  The issue of God is avoided in Buddhism because it is not the point.  The point is liberation, in real terms, today.

ICONOGRAPHY.  Even Zen Buddhists have elaborate temples where they bow to statues of the Buddha, but, as Alan Watts put it, this is merely what Buddhism comes in, the packaging.

THE MIDDLE WAY.  The Middle Way is so the cure is not worse than the ailment. The Middle Way is what is common between opposites.

CONTAGION.  Our behavior is that of the people around us.  We do what other people are doing usually, called “contagion” in psychology.  The result is conformity, even when conformity is bad for me, like war.

ON THE BRIGHT SIDE.  Rather than dwell on how our lives would have been better had we done this or done that, we should think, instead, of the ways in which it might have been much worse.

BURDENS.  Talent, celebrity, intelligence, duty are burdens, baggage, chains that bind. 

LONE RHINO ON THE PLAIN.  Pratyeka-buddha.  This is a monk who choses to not live in a monastery, wandering the countryside instead.  “Seek out your own salvation with diligence,” the Buddha said, relevantly.  “Be a lamp unto yourself.”

SAMADHI.  A remarkable place in the brain.  Samadhi is not self-hypnosis.  It is absorption to the point of ecstasy.  It can occur spontaneously during deep meditation or be the result of such “technical means” as repeating a mantra at length.  Frustration over not attaining it at will, though, can make it a fetter. 

TAO.  The Tao that can be named is not the Tao.  He who says he knows the Tao does not.  It cannot be said what the Tao is, only what it is like.  The Tao is like gravity.  Wu wei in Taoism means non-interference.  We should flow with our lives, not get in the way of them.  Alan Watts explained, “You are going along with the Tao whether you want to or not.  You can swim against it but you’ll still be moved along by it.  If you swim against it, all you’ll do is wear yourself out.  But if you swim with it, the whole strength of it is yours. Yet the difficulty for us is determining which way it is going.”

WHAT WE ARE, FINALLY.  Our will has nothing to do with it.  We are happening of ourselves.  There is nothing for us to figure out.

OUT OF NOTHING COMES SOMETHING.  What we are, finally, is where mysticism begins.  The Buddha called this wisdom.  It comes when we empty or purge from ourselves our ego-identities.  We become like newborn children then.  We are, afterwards, on the surface, no longer buried under layers of self, thinking, memory.  What remains is feeling, feeling not of the emotional kind, but of the intuitive kind.  We need only feel it, not interpret it.  We must not expect anything from it.  There is nothing we are to do about it.  It is there that we see that we are all of existence.  Tat tvam asi, that art thou, as Vedanta puts it, or as Alan Watts states it, “You’re it.  You’re the whole works.”  What follows is mystical union, but not of self with other, but of self with self, in the way that the Atman is Brahman, in Vedanta.  And with this comes a fundamental shift in consciousness.

RIGHT DIRECTION.  We are facing in the right direction.  All we need do is keep walking.

FLOWER.  A plant at the end of its life suddenly sprouts a flower.  The plant is surprised by it more than anyone.  It is now what it was meant to be, it sees, the only thing it could ever be.  So it is with us in the liberated state.

LIBERATION.  Consciousness sees that it is a broader consciousness, not that it is a part of a broader consciousness but that it is that broader consciousness.  It is like sitting with your hands resting on your thighs, where your hands feel your thighs at the same time that your thighs feel your hands.

BHAGAVAD GITA

Buddhists hold The Dhammapada in high regard, no less so than the Hindus the Bhagavad Gita.

The Gita is an episode in the enormous epic, the Mahabharata. It is eighteen chapters long.  In the form of a dialogue between Sri Krishna, the divine incarnation, and his friend Arjuna, the great warrior of the family of Pandavas, its significance lies in its endorsement of bhakti (devotion) as a true way of salvation.

The story has Arjuna hesitating at the point of leading his brothers and their allies into battle against the Kuru princes, sons of his uncle the blind Dhritirashtra and thus his close relatives.  Arjuna wishes to abandon the battle.  Krishna is his charioteer in the story who stands at his side poised for instant action.  As it happens, it is not Arjuna who goes on to act, but the Kuru leader, his uncle.  He is the one who now orders the conch-shell to be blown as the signal for battle.

Krishna states to Arjuna that his, Arjuna's, hesitation stems from his lack of an accurate understanding of the "nature of things."  His hesitation, Krishna goes on to say, is now an impediment to the proper balancing of the universal dharmic order.  Krishna warns that without action, the cosmos will fall out of order and truth will be obscured.

Krishna counsels Arjuna on the larger idea of dharma, or universal harmony and duty.  He proceeds to tell Arjuna that the soul (Atman) is eternal and immortal, that any "death" on the battlefield would involve only the shedding of the body, whereas the soul is permanent and would continue on. 

At the heart of the Gita is that the world is the play, as in drama, of Brahman, with Brahman playing all the parts.  And Brahman is doing so for its own purposes.  It is not for us to judge any aspect of it.  We are to keep Brahman ever in our minds, keep devoted, and understand that the world is going the way it is meant to go.  We must remain steadfast in our devotion to Brahman, and trust it.

SARADA DEVI

Sarada Devi (1853-1920) was the wife and spiritual counterpart of Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, the nineteenth century mystic of Bengal. She was reverentially addressed as the Holy Mother (Sri Maa) by the followers of the Ramakrishna monastic order. She played an important role in the growth of the Ramakrishna Movement.

Sarada was born Saradamani Mukhopadhyaya in Jayrambati, a village in West Bengal. At the age of five she was betrothed to Ramakrishna.  Ramakrishna was twenty-three at the time, the age difference not unusual in nineteenth century rural Bengal.  She joined him at Dakshineswar, at the Kali temple, when she was eighteen years old.

Sarada's days began at 3:00 a.m. After finishing her ablutions in the Ganges, she would practice japa and meditation until daybreak. Ramakrishna taught her the sacred mantras, and instructed her how to initiate people and guide them in spiritual life.  Sarada is considered to be Ramakrishna's first disciple.  Except for her hours of meditation, she spent most of her time cooking for Ramakrishna and the growing number of his devotees.

It is interesting how Ramakrishna, a mystic and holy man, came to take a wife in the first place.  Rumors had spread that he had become unstable as a result of his spiritual exercises at Dakshineswar. His mother and his elder brother, Rameswar, decided to get him married, thinking that marriage would be a good steadying influence upon him.  It would force him to accept responsibility and to keep his attention on normal affairs rather than his spiritual practices and visions. 

According to Sarada Devi's traditional biographers, both lived lives of unbroken continence, the ideal of the monastic way of life. After Ramakrishna's death, Sarada Devi stayed most of the time either at Jayrambati or at the Udbodhan office, Calcutta. The disciples of Ramakrishna regarded her as their own mother, and after their guru's passing looked to her for advice and encouragement. She outlived Ramakrishna by thirty-four years.

NICHIREN BUDDHISM

Nichiren (1222-1282) began as a Japanese Tendai monk.  He believed that the Lotus Sutra contained all the true teachings of the Buddha.  He also believed that the other sects of Buddhism in Japan, Shingon, Pure Land, and Zen in particular, were corrupted and no longer taught the true dharma.  Nichiren felt that it was his mission in life to prepare the way for true Buddhism to spread throughout the world.

By its focus on the Lotus Sutra, Nichiren Buddhism holds that all people have an innate Buddha-nature and are therefore inherently capable of attaining enlightenment in their current form and present lifetime.

Nichiren Buddhism includes:

Daimoku.  Daily chanting of the mantra Nam Myoho Renge Kyo, or sometimes Namu Myoho Renge Kyo.  This chant may be repeated for a fixed number of times, keeping count with a mala, or rosary.  The chant may also be for a fixed amount of time.

Gohonzon.  The use of a mandala created by Nichiren that represents Buddha-nature and which is an object of veneration.  The Gohonzon often is inscribed on a hanging scroll and kept in the center of an altar.

Gongyo.  The chanting of some part of the Lotus Sutra in a formal service.  The precise sections of the sutra that are chanted vary by sect.

Kaidan.  The establishing of a sacred place of ordination or a seat of institutional authority.  The precise meaning of kaidan in Nichiren Buddhism is a point of doctrinal disagreement.  Kaidan might be the place from which true Buddhism will spread to the world, which could be all of Japan, or it might be wherever in the world Nichiren Buddhism is sincerely practiced. 

Today a number of schools of Buddhism are based on Nichiren's teaching, the most prominent of which are:  Nichiren Shu, Rissho-kosei-kai, and Soka Gakki.

SHINGON BUDDHISM

Shingon Buddhism was founded in Japan early in the 9th century by the monk Kukai (774-835).  It is based on a form of tantric Buddhism called Chen Yen, or True Word, that Kukai studied in China.  It remains one of the largest schools of Buddhism in Japan.

"Shingon" means "school of the true word," which refers to the importance of mantras in Shingon practice.  Shingon is also known for its use of mandalas and other artistic representations of the dharma.  Many of the teachings and rituals of Shingon are esoteric, passed orally from teacher to student and not made public.  Shingon's historic "home" is Mount Koya, or Koyasan, a monastery about 50 miles south of Kyoto.

Shingon is syncretic, incorporating aspects, including deities, of Hinduism, Confucianism, Taoism, Shinto, and other forms of Buddhism.  Since it is esoteric, the inner knowledge, so-called, is not written in books where the uninitiated can read it. 

A considerable emphasis is placed on the use of painting so that the obscurities of the esoteric can be better grasped.  Kukai himself was a superb artist and a patron of art.  As Kukai put it, "The various attitudes (appearances) and mudras (hand gestures) of the holy images all have their sources in Buddha's love, and one can attain buddhahood at the sight of them.  

Thus the secrets of the sutras and commentaries can be depicted in art, and the essential truths of esoteric teaching are all set forth in them.  Art is what reveals to us the state of perfection."

Shingon was seriously challenged by the Zen sects, but it is still one of the major players in Japanese Buddhism.

PURE LAND BUDDHISM

Nirvana is no longer practical or possible to attain in our present day.  This is the central teaching of Pure Land Buddhism.  Because of this, a person should focus on devotion to Amitabha (Amida in Japanese), one of the Five Wisdom Buddhas, and his Pure Land paradise called Sukhavati.  Devotion to Amida will gain a person enough karmic merit to go to the Pure Land.  The Pure Land is not an eternal destination, but a pleasant place in which all karma disappears and nirvana is simple to attain.

Most Pure Land Buddhists focus on chanting or repeating a mantra of devotion to Amida.  This mantra is usually "namu Amida butsu," which is to be repeated as often as possible.  This reinforces a proper and sincere state of mind, gaining a person admission to the Pure Land at death.  This simple form of religious practice has contributed greatly to its popularity, in Japan especially.

Jodo is the oldest school of Pure Land Buddhism in Japan.  Its founder was Honen (1133-1212), a Tendai monk who converted to Pure Land teachings at the age of 43.  Honen taught that anyone can be reborn in Amida's Pure Land simply by reciting the nembutsu mantra.  He insisted that Pure Land be considered a separate sect of Japanese Buddhism.  Honen's followers included Shinran, who founded the Jodo Shin-shu school, and Ippen (1239-89), who founded the Ji school.

Jodo Shin-shu ("True Pure Land School"), also known as Shin or Shin-shu Buddhism, is a branch of Pure Land Buddhism which was founded, again, by the monk Shinran (1173-1262).  It was organized by Rennyo (1414-99).  Shin-shu is a lay movement with no monks or monasteries and is based on simple but absolute devotion to Amida.  In Shin-shu, the nembutsu is an act of gratitude, not one of supplication or trust. 

The founder of the Ji-shu sect of Pure Land Buddhism was, once more, the monk Ippen.  He was on a pilgrimage to Kumano when the kami deity enshrined there revealed to him that enlightenment was determined by Amida Buddha and that he should devote himself to preaching the importance of reciting the name of Amida, i.e. the mantra nembutsu.

Ippen and a band of followers then travelled throughout the country proselytizing with their ecstatic nembutsu dance (nembutsu odori), winning a wide following among common people.  Other practices associated with the Ji-shu sect include scheduled sessions of chanting, the handing out of slips of paper with the nembutsu written on them, and keeping a register of the converted.

TENDAI BUDDHISM

Tendai is a Japanese school of Mahayana Buddhism, a descendant of the Chinese Tiantai or Lotus Sutra school.  In time, it became the dominant form of mainstream Buddhism in Japan, and gave rise to most of the developments in later Japanese Buddhism.

Nichiren, Hōnen, Shinran, and Dōgen, all famous thinkers in non-Tendai schools, were all initially trained as Tendai monks.  Japanese Buddhism was dominated by the Tendai school to a much greater degree than Chinese Buddhism was by its forbearer, the Tiantai.

Tendai has been a syncretistic movement, embracing other Buddhist schools, from Vinaya to Shingon and Zen, as well as Shinto, the indigenous Japanese tradition.  Its distinctive focus, though, continues to be the teachings of the Lotus Sutra.  

The Lotus Sutra teaches the way to salvation, meaning the attaining of buddhahood.  It presents itself as the true and complete teaching of the Buddha, who is described as more of a cosmic being than an historical figure.  The Buddha of the Lotus Sutra is "a transcendent, eternal being, preaching to myriad arhats (saints), gods, bodhisattvas (buddhas-to-be), and other figures using all sorts of sermons, lectures, imaginative parables, and miracles."

Tendai's influence in Japan is pervasive and powerful to this day, though its lay membership is not so great as is that of some of the other Buddhist sects.

VIPASSANA

Vipassana is one of the world's oldest techniques of meditation, the rediscovery of which is credited to the Buddha.  In English, vipassana is often referred to simply as "insight meditation."  The purpose of vipassana is seeing reality as it truly is.

By focusing on body, feelings, mind, and objects of mind, noting how they change from moment to moment, indeed how all of existence seems coming and going constantly, one sees that what he considers to be himself, and the world, is an illusion.  With this realization arises the not-self, so-called, a state only of consciousness, experienced as bliss. 

Vipassana is one of two categories of Buddhist meditation, the other being samatha.  Samatha is a focusing, pacifying, and calming of the body and mind, common to many traditions in the world, most notably yoga. It is used as a preparation for vipassana.  In Buddhist practice it is said that while samatha can calm the mind, only vipassana, insight, can reveal how the mind was disturbed to start with.

IS BUDDHISM ATHEISTIC?

The historical Buddha taught that believing in God or gods was not helpful to a person seeking enlightenment.  He rejected metaphysical speculation, focusing instead on the practical ways to end suffering.

God, in this way, is unnecessary in Buddhism.  For this reason, Buddhism is more accurately called non-theistic than atheistic.

The Buddha also plainly said that he himself was not a god but simply "awakened."  Throughout Asia, though, it is common to find people praying to the Buddha or to the many clearly mythical figures that populate Buddhist iconography.  Stupas that are said to hold relics of the Buddha are crowded with pilgrims.

Even in Theravada Buddhism, or Zen Buddhism, considered non-devotional schools, there are rituals that involve bowing and offering food, flowers and incense to a Buddha figure on an altar.  But these activities are more gestures of respect than the worshiping of a god or God. 

In the case of Zen, rituals may also be a way of making a philosophical point.  The monks will point to the Buddha on the altar and say, "That is you up there.   When you bow, you are bowing to yourself."  Everyone, in other words, is a buddha potentially.

HEART OF BUDDHISM

You may not be suffering at this moment, but you have suffered in the past and you will suffer in the future.  The suffering may be major or it may be minor.  It may be intermittent or it may be constant.  But one thing is certain:  you will not escape it. 

Be aware that everyone, from your parents to your siblings to your Aunt Tilly and Uncle Charley to your coworkers to your spouse to Steve your neighbor and to Shirley your other neighbor, to the president of this country and of all countries, to the Pope and all his cardinals, they are all suffering.  Do not say that you do not relate to their suffering, because due to your own you do.

PRINCIPAL CAUSE

The principal cause of suffering is impermanence, transitoriness, called annica in Buddhism.  Everything in existence is in a state of flux, is changing, ever changing. The Pali word "anicca" literally means "inconstant." 

Impermanence has implications.  We identify with our empirical or egoic self, for instance, saying that this is "me," "mine," "my story."  "I am this one thing."  But since all is transient, there is no such "one thing."  There is no permanent, unchanging, substantial, undeniable self.  The term for this is anatta, no-self.  A socially-conditioned, relative, temporary self exists, but that is all. 

This is frustrating because the person we remember ourselves to be is not the same person who exists in the present moment.  We recall feeling a certain way, happy, sad, angry, etc., in our youth, for instance, but the happy, sad, angry, etc. we feel now is not the same that we experienced back then.  In the same way, we cannot relate to ourselves in the future, how we will feel when we are older.

BINDU

Bindu literally means a drop or a point.  It is sometimes likened to a pearl or a seed.  A standard religious symbol throughout the world, it often is found in the center of a yantra or a mandala representing a cosmic axis. 

The bindu is an all-pervading spatial concept, the limit of manifestation.  When something exists yet does not exist, it is represented by the bindu.  When the universe collapses into dissolution, it culminates into a point--a bindu--ultimately to re-form from it. 

There is a stage of yoga meditation in which all experiences collapse into a point from which all experiences arose in the first place.  From there, from that bindu, one travels beyond the mind and its content, finishing at the Absolute.

YANTRA

Yantra is the Sanskrit word for "instrument" or "machine."  Traditionally such symbols were used in Eastern mysticism to balance the mind or focus it on spiritual concepts.

In the Tantric traditions of Indian religions the act of wearing, depicting, enacting and/or concentrating on a yantra is held to have spiritual or astrological or magical benefits.

Many yantras seem like nothing more than an interwoven complex of geometrical designs centered upon a single point called a bindu.  A yantra, though, is a complex of stored imagery of sight and sound.  Yantras often have an accompanying mantra and psychic and mystical content. 

Though two-dimensional, yantras are conceived as having depth and full dimension.  They may be drawn or painted on any material, out of any substance.  

A yantra is often enclosed in a square, signifying the cosmic dynamics and the four corners of the universe.  Yantras are thus worshiped as containing divine presence. 

The yantra is sometimes confused with a mandala, the former appropriate to a specific devata (god, or guardian spirit), the latter implying many devatas.

MANDALA

Mandala is a Sanskrit word that means "circle."  In the Buddhist and Hindu religious traditions their sacred art often takes the form of a mandala.

The basic form of most Buddhist and Hindu mandalas is a square with four gates containing a circle with a center point (bindu). Each gate is in the shape of a T. 

Mandalas have spiritual and ritual significance in both Buddhism and Hinduism.  They are images of the universe that are used for focusing cosmic and psychic energies.

The term "mandala" is of Hindu origin and appears in the Rig Veda, but it is also found in other Indian religions, particularly in Buddhism. In the Tibetan branch of Vajrayana Buddhism, for example, mandalas have been developed into sand painting.  They are also a key part of Anuttarayoga Tantra meditation practices.

A mandala may be as small as a drawing, or as large as a temple enclosure.  The world itself is considered a type of mandala. 

Similar to a mandala is a yantra.  The yantra, however, embodies but a single devata (god, guardian spirit), while a mandala may enclose an infinite number of them.

MUDRA

A mudra is a symbolic hand gesture meant to aid in concentrating the mind.  It is found in Hinduism and Buddhism.

While some mudras involve the entire body, most are performed with the hands and fingers only. In Hinduism, they are employed statically in meditation and dynamically in classical dance.

Mudras are used in yoga practice.  A famous book published by the Bihar School of Yoga is called Asana, Pranayama, Mudra, Bandha.  Asana are body postures.  Pranayama are breathing exercises.  Mudra are, again, symbolic hand gestures.  Bandha are "body locks," i.e. the way a participant holds the body postures in place.

As for Buddhism, common mudras are:

The Abhaya mudra represents protection, peace, benevolence, and the dispelling of fear.

The Bhumisparsha Mudra calls upon the earth to witness Shakyamuni Buddha's enlightenment at Bodh Gaya. 

The Dharmacakra mudra represents a central moment in the life of Buddha when he preached his first sermon after his Enlightenment.  In general, only Gautama Buddha is shown making this mudra.  It signifies the turning of the wheel of the Dharma.

The Dhyana mudra is the gesture of meditation, of the concentration of the Good Law and the sangha, i.e. the monastic order of monks.

The Varada mudra signifies offering, welcome, charity, giving, compassion and sincerity.

The Vajra and Jnana mudras are gestures of knowledge.

The Vitarka mudra is the gesture of discussion and transmission of Buddhist teaching.

The Karana mudra is the mudra which expels demons and removes obstacles such as sickness or negative thoughts.

In Tibetan Buddhism, mudras are believed to establish actual contact with gods.   These mudras are directed to thirty-five or more Tantric deities, great and minor, and run in sequences which often require thirty to fifty hand patterns in each sequence.  They are believed to not only attract the presence of the benevolent powers but also to drive off the evil ones.