Here's a video for you Buddhist history buffs

Hello,

if you're into this kind of thing, here's a very interesting lecture by Jan Nattier, who herself is a great scholar of Buddhist history (and was married to John MacRae who passed away much too early and whom I will always be indebted to for having written "Seeing through Zen")

http://youtu.be/DbFCXBcGdGE


DON'T FORGET YOUR DAILY PRACTISE...this kind of information is just the icing on your cake if you like that kinda thing.

It's much more important to let the rubber meet the road and to see again and again what happens, rather than to learn where the tire was made :)


Gassho,

Hans Chudo Mongen

This is great. Thanks Hans. If you watch it on Youtube there are some good videos following.

To cut to the chase, an excellent example of how sincere, religiously inspired but very human authors (claiming "visions", revelations and Buddhas whispering secrets in their ears during meditation) thus invented many of our cherished Buddhist traditions, creating a new Buddhism out of whole cloth (although based on earlier formulations), stuffing words in the mouth of Shakyamuni Buddha ... centuries after his death ... in an attempt to justify their claims and philosophical viewpoints.

Nothing wrong with that, for things change and many of the changes are good. Some of the changes perhaps not so.

We do not look at Henry Ford as the last word in automobile technology, nor the Wright Brothers as the sole experts on avionics. So with many of our other ancestors, even the founder.

The Late John McRae's lecture in the same series on the invention of the hagiography of Bodhidharma is another example ...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tqA7TnN23nE#at=12

Gassho, J

I'm big on context and eat history up like candy! Thank you for posting these. :)

During Q&A she was asked her beliefs. "I'm agnostic", she replied. "Meaning what?", she was asked.

"I don't know."

Priceless.


Gassho,
Edward