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| Not Subhadra |
So I was just watching some kind of live broadcast from the annual Hindu Rath Yatra festival in Puri. Kind of weird seeing the temple priests using modern mobile phones, taking selfies while standing in front of Subhadra´s idol at the chariot...
I want to see this...
Something tells me this won´t be included in the next tranche of UFO files released by the Were-Trump administration! Nor in Nolan´s "Odyssey"...
För övrigt så skiter jag fullständigt i Iliaden och Odyséen. Så nu vet ni det. Den där filmen alla har snackat om i typ ett halvår nu har förresten premiär först imorgon fredag. Vilket jag inte hade en aning om. Och jag tänker göra mitt yttersta i att inte bry mig om den heller...
So I asked Gemini to make a picture of Yellow Tara (the Mahayana-Vajrayana Buddhist "goddess") as if she was a normal human. This was the result. Some kind of Tibetan grandmama?
En kritisk recension av en AI-översatt bok om shaolin. Men har inte hela shaolin-grejen redan avslöjats som värsta bluffen?
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| Credit: G41rn8 |
OK, so this week the AI is trying to convert me to "Huayan Buddhism". Rather than Soto Zen, that is. A step in the right direction if you ask me. Sometimes there really is progress...
Can you tell me about Huayan Buddhism?
Huayan Buddhism (Chinese: 華嚴, Huáyán; Japanese: Kegon; Korean: Hwaeom) is one of the most profound and philosophically sophisticated schools of Mahāyāna Buddhism. It is based primarily on the Avatamsaka Sutra (also known as the Flower Garland Sutra), a vast scripture describing the universe as an infinitely interconnected web of Buddhas, bodhisattvas, and worlds.
Many scholars consider Huayan to represent one of the high points of classical Chinese Buddhist philosophy.
Huayan developed in China during the Tang dynasty (7th–9th centuries).
Its principal patriarchs include:
Among them, Fazang is especially famous for developing Huayan's philosophical vision.
The school later spread to:
The entire system is based upon the Avataṃsaka Sūtra.
This enormous scripture describes:
Rather than presenting a linear story, it offers a grand vision of reality itself.
Unlike Pure Land Buddhism, where Amitābha is central, Huayan places:
Vairocana
at the center.
Vairocana is not merely another Buddha.
He represents:
Everything exists within Vairocana's enlightened body.
Perhaps the most famous Huayan doctrine is:
The mutual interpenetration of all phenomena.
Nothing exists independently.
Everything reflects everything else.
The traditional image is:
Imagine an infinite net stretching throughout the universe.
At every intersection hangs a jewel.
Each jewel reflects:
Thus:
Every part contains the whole.
The whole contains every part.
This became one of the most influential images in East Asian Buddhism.
Huayan often summarizes reality as:
"One is all, and all is one."
This does not mean everything loses its individuality.
Instead:
Every individual thing retains its uniqueness,
while simultaneously participating in the entire cosmos.
Huayan describes reality through four progressively deeper perspectives.
Ordinary experience.
Trees.
People.
Animals.
Mountains.
Everything shares one ultimate nature:
emptiness.
Ultimate reality and ordinary things are inseparable.
A flower is not separate from ultimate reality.
This is uniquely Huayan.
Every phenomenon supports every other phenomenon.
Everything participates in everything else.
Nothing is isolated.
Huayan strongly emphasizes:
The ideal bodhisattva works endlessly for others because:
there are no ultimately separate beings.
Helping another is helping the whole.
The final chapter tells the story of:
Sudhana
who visits 53 spiritual teachers.
Remarkably,
his teachers include:
This illustrates that wisdom can appear through many different kinds of people and situations.
Huayan is not merely philosophy.
Practices include:
Many Huayan practitioners also practiced:
The traditions often complemented one another.
This may interest you especially.
Huayan never rejected Amitābha.
Instead it saw:
as expressions within the same vast enlightened reality.
Many Chinese masters practiced both:
This combination remains common today.
You've previously described a worldview that includes:
There are clear resonances with Huayan's vision of an interconnected cosmos filled with innumerable Buddhas and bodhisattvas. At the same time, there is one important difference: Huayan does not posit a creator God or an emanating deity. Vairocana is not a creator in the theistic sense but the all-pervading Buddha whose enlightened reality is expressed through the entire cosmos.
That distinction is significant, but many people who appreciate a panentheistic or cosmic religious imagination still find Huayan deeply appealing because of its emphasis on the unity, beauty, and interdependence of all existence.
One of Huayan's best-known summaries captures its spirit beautifully:
"In one is all; in all is one. One particle of dust contains innumerable Buddha-fields, and innumerable Buddha-fields are present in one particle of dust."
This is not meant as a physical claim about atoms or cosmology, but as a contemplative way of expressing the profound interconnectedness of reality as seen through awakened wisdom.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio is the effective ruler of Venezuela, according to a recent article in the New York Times (a summary from another site below).
This raises all kinds of questions (and, I suppose, eyebrows). For instance, if the "Bolivarian Revolution" has widespread popular support, shouldn´t the people of Venezuela protest or even rebel against Delcy Rodriguez? And why does the "Bolivarian" elite accept the new order anyway?
It seems the revolution has fallen on really hard times since the halcyon days of Hugo Chavez. All it took to make Venezuela a US protectorate was to remove Maduro and his wife! Perhaps Trump assumed that the same strategy would work with Iran, but it seems the Islamic revolution is more viable than the Bolivarian one...
