Month: August 2018

“In the popular Buddhism of Tibet and China and Japan, people worship the great bodhisattvas—as saviors.”

“People loved Guanyin because she/he—could be a buddha, but has come back into the world to save all beings. The Japanese call he/she Kannon, and they have, in Kyoto, an image of Kannon with one thousand arms, radiating like a great aureole all around this great golden figure.”

“These one thousand arms are one thousand different ways of rescuing beings from ignorance.”

“I remember one night when I suddenly realized that Kannon was incarnate in the whole city of Kyoto; that this whole city was Kannon.”

“That the police department, the taxi drivers, the fire department, the mayor and corporation, the shopkeepers—in so far as this whole city was a collaborate effort to sustain human life, however bumbling, however inefficient, however corrupt—it was still a manifestation of Kannon with its thousand arms, all working independently, and yet one.”

“You don’t have to go anywhere to find nirvāṇa. Nirvāṇa is where you are, provided you don’t object to it.”

The Buddha’s of Bamiyan. They were made somewhere between the 4-5th centuries.

In 2001 they were destroyed by the Taliban with heavy artillery and dynamite.

“This work of destruction is not as simple as people might think. You can’t knock down the statues by shelling as both are carved into a cliff; they are firmly attached to the mountain… Muslims should be proud of smashing idols. It has given praise to Allah that we have destroyed them. We are destroying the statues in accordance with Islamic law and it is purely a religious issue.”

That has to be the silliest shit I ever heard. “I’m going to destroy it! Why? Because I don’t like it!” It sounds like an angry child talking.

There is a difference between a living Buddha and a stone Buddha. If you go up to a stone Buddha and you hit it hard on the head, nothing happens. You break your fist. But if you hit a living Buddha, he/she may say ouch. Buddhas are human, they are not devas, they are not gods. They are enlightened men and women.

So what did they destroy? Nothing. Silly terrorist.