Comments on Buddhism, Atheists and Amitabha.

From "The Message of the Buddha" by K.N Jayatilleke (via The Zennist)

What is the Buddhist answer to this question? What the Buddha a Theist, an Atheist, an Agnostic or a Positivist? The answer is fairly clear. Given the above definition of God [in The Book of Common Prayer] in its usual interpretation, the Buddha is an atheist and Buddhism in both its Theravada and Mahayana forms is atheism.

Atheism here is defined as the denial of the existence of God with a big "G". Usually when defined by the captital "G", the God we are talking about is a creator god. One that made everything we see around us including us and anything else we may stumble across. Most consider this to be the Judeo-Christian "God" when referenced as such but it can also include Islam, Hinduism, or any religion with a set and organized creation myth that involves supernatural creation of the world.

I agree with The Zennist when he asserts that Buddhism, in general (there may be sects or practices that I am not familiar with) does not fall in line with a standard Deist outlook. Being an atheist can also vary from no belief in a creator God to no belief in anything of a supernatural/transcendental origin or belief. Even with the most extreme of Atheist views, Buddhism still barely falls outside of its realm.

Some assert that the Amitabha Buddha takes the place of a creator God and is thus the Pure Land Sects are a Deistic religion. Again, I think this in part due to a fallacy of viewing an Eastern Religion through Western, Christian eyes. "We (Western Christians) have a creator God so they (Asian Buddhists) must have one as well". Then you see people praying and making offerings to the Amitabha Buddha and you assume that Buddha is a deified.

From my very basic understanding of Pure Land Buddhism, the Amitabha was once a human monk that transcended into a Buddha Realm and promised to grant liberation to any that recited his name. While supernatural and transcendental in nature, the Amitabha Buddha is far from a creator God and more or less provides another path to enlightenment. A method that requires an "other" power to help achieve it rather than focusing on just personal practice.

So, personally, I consider myself an agnostic. And, personally, I think Buddhism does not specifically deny a creator "God" but rather considers it unimportant in the grand scheme of things. The primary focus of Buddhism is not on higher powers but rather personal practice. That personal practice, however, can be a mixture of reliance upon the compassion of past Buddhas as well as personal striving to achieve enlightenment or liberation.

What is of prime importance to me is that the practice of Buddhism does not require the acceptance of higher powers or supernatural entities. You can practice perfectly well from a completely secular stance. The Buddha was a human and figured out a way to cease suffering and be happy. I wish to cease my own suffering and be happy.

Simple as that. From there you make your choice to follow the path and begin your practice. Your practice may always be strictly secular and atheistic or it may move in to more transcendental areas. Either way, it is fine. It is your practice and you need to use what works for you. Just don't mistake choice with ease. Just because you have choice does not mean that your practice must be easy. There should always be a sense of striving in your practice.

Cheers,

Homebrewing Sake Mindfully

The following is a beginner's recipe for making sake. There are other, more difficult recipes but this one will produce a nice, smooth, cloudy sake.

What You Need

• A Sieve


• A big, deep brewing pot w/a lid


• A primary fermenter (old glass wine jug. You know the ones...cheap stuff. I like to make my own. The instructions are simple. Purchase cheap jug o' wine. Drink jug o' wine. Save empty jug.)


• Some sort of airlock (you can buy one from whatever store near you that sells brewing supplies)
  

Ingredients

• A little more than 3 lbs of rice (I like Jasmine but any medium or short grain rice will do)


• A little less than 1 lb of Kome-Koji (Some call it Malt-Rice but in reality it is rice with mold growing on it). Some can make it themselves but I usually get the pre-made variety (kindly provided by a friend when she visited Denver) and available at most Asian markets.


• One teaspoon of citric acid (lemon juice) or 4 grams of hops (I have never tried with the hops)


• Almost one gallon of purified (chlorine-free) water


• 5 grams of yeast (wine/champagne yeast or brewers yeast)
  

Process

• Wash all equipment with sanitizer


• Wash rice (NOT with sanitizer) in water until water runs clear. Soak rice for 1-2 hours. Steam rice. When done, let rice cool to 80-90 degrees F.


• Dissolve citric acid in one gallon of water in your brewing pot.


• Add your Komi-Koji. Mix.


• Add steamed rice. Mix.
  
• Transfer to primary fermenter (wine jug). But in rubber stopper and valve (valve will let gasses escape).
  

I should mention that fermentation will be vigorous. I was unprepared for this on my first attempt. I placed even mixtures into mason jars and then sealed them. The resulting build up of gas caused several of the tops to bubble up and eventual pop in a glorious explosion of semi-fermented rice, fungi, yeast and abandoned practice. The resulting smell, while not really bad, was however...strong and pervasive.

Just like ultimate realization, fermentation needs to be allowed to release some pressure.

Imagine each grain of rice as containing a small Buddha. A whole brew pot full of small, identical, unrealized, oblong Buddhas. Each deserved to be treated with the same amount of reverence and respect. Without the fermentation process changing each of those starches to sugars and then those sugars to a fermentables and those fermentables to alcohol the realization of the rice would be unfulfilled and would spend their existence as a starchy side-dish. Thus, I like to think of the fermentation process as the process of each grain of rice realizing their innate Buddha-Nature. Only when the bubbles begin to rise and the rice begins to release that nature do we see the extent of the transformation. If too many fermentables the process stops; if too much yeast the result is murky; if contaminated then the result is ruined. But of main importance is time and balance.

Back to the recipe.

Once secured at room temperature and in a dark cabinet, you need to agitate the mixture daily. You could open your fermenter and stir it with a sanitized spoon but I would rather not take the chance at contamination. I usually just shake the fermenter enough to get the mixture inside to move around a bit. After two days, the rice-Buddhas forget about their individual natures and meld into a chunky white slurry. Small bubbles of Buddha-nature will peculate through the slurry and in approximately two weeks the fermentation will cease.

Strain the resulting slurry into a decanter or if you would like to preserve it for long-term storage you can pasteurize it by slowly heating the liquid in a saucepan for 5 minutes at about 130 degrees F. It will stay for up to 3-5 years bottled at this point if remained unopened. I usually put my whole bunch into one large bottle and then store it in a dark place for a month to age. (unpasteurized is by no means a bad sake. It will be cloudier, smoother and yeastier when unpasteurized and will need to be refridgerated.)

Just remember how many grains of rice realized their true nature through this process and respect their months of striving and diligence. I use my homebrew sake for toasting ancestors, offerings to the Three Treasure as well as offerings to the six directions. Feel free to do the same or something different.

Cheers,

The Blood Pool Hell Sutra

Generally, Zen priests and monks are not seen as mediators and benefactors of the afterlife for their practitioners. However, in medieval to early modern Japan, priests took exactly this role; mostly in the role of funerary practices that guaranteed movement of the deceased into a Buddha Land or traditional heaven through priestly intervention over a period of up to 33 years after the deceased's passing.

More interesting though is the placement of women in Japanese Zen as being intrinsically tainted and inevitably fall into the pits of the Blood Pool Hell. The torments of which was described by a young girl possessed Buddhist nun in 1730:

"Six times a day we come out of the pool to drink blood. If we refuse...frightening demons come and torture us with metal rods before being thrown back into the blood pool. In the blood pool, countless insect like creatures with metal snouts come to pierce our skin and worm into our flesh to suck our blood." [From Duncan Williams' "The Other Side of Zen"]

The Ketsubonkyø, or the Blood-bowl Sutra, is a sutra composed in China around the end of the 12th century or the beginning of the 13th.4 It describes how Mokuren(Mu-lien, Maudgalyåyana), disciple of the Buddha famous for his supernatural or magical powers, descended to hell to save his mother. This narrative differs from the classic Mokuren story, as told in the Yü-lan p’en ching (Urabonkyø), which we explored in Chapter Three. In that story as it appears in the Buddhist cannon, Mokuren saves his mother from the realm of hungry ghosts. Here, however, we find her sunk in hell submerged in an enormous pond, or lake, of menstrual and birth blood. She is in the company of a multitude of women there who suffer abuse at the hands of the hell wardens and are forced to drink the blood. They are punished like this, the sutra explains, because the blood produced by their bodies spills on the ground and offends the earth gods, or ends up in rivers from which the water to make tea for holy men is drawn. This hell, called chi no ike jigoku (blood pool hell) in Japanese, threatens damnation for the sin of female biology. (It is worth noting that late medieval Japanese visual representations illustrate another hell for women who are unable to bearchildren, the umazume jigoku). [from Childbirth, Violence and the Mother's Body by Hank Glassman]

It was later explained that only the recitation of the Ketsubonkyo (Blood Pool Hell Sutra) by Zen priests or use of talismans sold by the temple would save and free women from this hell. The priest was then visited in a dream by Jizo who told him of the location of the sutra in a marsh behind the monastery.

Women, according to tradition, inevitably fell into this hell due to the evil karma accrued from the dispensing of menstrual blood and blood from childbirth that seeps into the ground and then spoils deities sacred to the native Shinto religion as well as Buddhists deities and monks. Offerings made from water which has been stained by blood (even from soiled clothes that were washed in rivers) in turn, rather than placate the Deity or Buddha, would instead anger them.

The promotion of the idea of women being intrinsically polluted and thus absolutely unable to avoid the Blood Pool Hell was promoted primarily by the Soto Zen sect as well as that pollution to be passed onto the activities and purposes of men. The failure of the construction of a temple or a specific artifact could be blamed upon the pollution of women within proximity to the site.

Many are attracted to Buddhism because of a sense of egalitarianism and gender equality but with the Blood Pool Hell Sutra we have an example of a culture of mysogany being accepted, promoted and propagated by Zen priests.

Just something to keep in mind. Here is one of the several versions of the sutra:

Bussetsu Mokuren shokyo ketsubon kyo
[from "Menstration Sutra Belief in Japan" Takemi Momoka
Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 10/2-3 1983]

Once the Buddha took 1250 biksus into the middle of the Deer Park. At that time, the venerable Mokuren put the following question to the Buddha: Once I went to such-and-such a prefecture, and saw in the middle of a large field there a Hell composed of a pond of menstruation blood. This pond was some 84,000 jujana wide, and in the middle women who were wearing handcuffs and ankle chains were undergoing hardships. The demon who was the lord of this Hell came here three times a day and forced the women sinners to drink the polluted blood; if they refused to do so, he would beat them with an iron rod. Their screams of anguish could be heard from great distances away. The sight of this made me very sad, and so I asked the Lord of the Hell why the women were being forced to undergo such hardships. He replied that the blood the women had shed during the birth of their children had polluted the deity of the earth and that, furthermore, when they washed their polluted garments in the river, that water was gathered up by a number of virtuous men and woman and used to make tea to serve to holy men. Because of these acts of uncleanliness, the women were now forced to undergo sufferings.

Thus Mokuren used his holy powers to come to the seat of the Buddha and to inform him of what he had seen with his eyes. He asked, then, what he needed t o do for the women to be saved from their punishments in the pond of blood. The Buddha then answered, teaching Mokuren how t o save the women. He said it would be necessary for them to respect the three treasures of filial piety, to call on Mokuren, to hold a Blood Pool Liberation service, to hold a Blood Pool Feast, to read sutras, to have an esoteric ceremony, then to make a boat and float it off. At that time a five-colored lotus flower would appear in the middle of the Blood Pond. Then, he said, all of the women sinners would be saved, and reborn in the Buddha's land.

For the most part it seems that this particular belief and practice no longer occurs in Japan in any form but I would be curious if anyone knows if there are any remnants of this practice still alive.

Cheers,