Freyja’s Day

“I heard that when the Red Guard came with sledgehammers to break up Maitreya Bodhisattva at Dafo Temple, Xinchang, Zhejiang, the locals plastered the figure with handbills bearing pictures of Mao. The vandals left in frustration. The 15-meter-high statue was carved in the native rock 486-516 CE.“ Reddit

This is the kind of story I might hear in Zen Baggage by Red Pine/Bill Porter as he travels around China inspecting Buddhist temples. I've got his last book on my shelf, ready to read after I finish the funny novel The Sellout by Paul Beatty.

My daughter has been sick and I woke up with a sore throat but that can go away during the day, but my nose is running a little bit. Nobody likes being sick, and nobody likes to feel it coming on.

43% waning moon is above my rupa, my statue of the Buddha that I meditate in front of, my shrine. 

Last day of anapanasati. I'm so distracted. Not sure if I'm going deeper, so I'm noticing it more, or I'm more superficial so I'm not going as deep. Probably the latter. 

Biggest Volcano in solar system

I find the solar system very interesting. I said goodnight to the moon, and good morning to it. I get comfort from greeting the moon.

I had a phase where I was studying Mars because I wrote a novel set on Mars, and it has the biggest volcano in the solar system. On a planet, maybe there's a higher one on a comet or asteroid, I forget the story, I was corrected on Reddit. Anyway, that's pretty huge. Looks like a pimple. And then the shelf drops off, wonder how much dust Mars has lost into space. It's almost the size of France, close to Poland's size.

Woke up late. I feel lost without my Rumi book to read, I'm mourning the loss of reading it. I took it back to the library. What a great book. 

My online persona is Kamuka which can mean a lot of things, including lover. Rumi has showed me a sort of universal way to love, a spiritual love. Buddhists are moving away from sex. 

I talked to a woman from Iran, a friend of Mehdi, and I realized how much I miss feminine energy. I don't like the whole macho fighting for status male energy. I like to be collaborative. 

I was very distracted in my 3rd day of anapanasati. 

Rumi’s funeral

 

Rumi’ funeral was interesting because the Muslims wanted the Christians and Jews to go away. They would not go away.

And thus Muslims will always claim Rumi, and seem to want to push others away. They will not go away.

Woden Day

Gymnastic exercises from the Western Han Dynasty (206 BC-24 AD). This silk painting discovered in 1973 in Hunan (China) depicts exercises with and without weapons. It is the oldest exercise "guide" found in China and is believed to be a Kung-Fu manual.

Woden was Odin, in Norse mythology.

I ended up late, and then Mehdi sent me an email 5 minutes in, which I'm not going to check during my meditation. I've laid out timelines, and whatnot. Here is a conversion of the times between countries:

USA.                        Iran

Religion of love

Rumi wrote, "My heart is a field of tulips that can't be touched with age." He seems to apprecicate the unconditioned, which the Buddhists strive for. 

Rumi wrote: 

A fool believes the love of a bear is true, 

Yet his love is anger and his anger is love.

Rumi wrote: "Oh brother, you are nothing but your thoughts, the rest of you is merely skin and bones," seemingly echoing the yogacara school of Buddhism.

Rumi's Secret by Brad Gooch is a wonderful book that explains Rumi within the context of the times, the context of Islam and Sufism. 

The Times review by Azadeh Moaveni (Gift Article) of his book suggests he's not Iranian, so perhaps he can't really get Rumi, but I think if you're Iranian that criticism flows off your lips easily, but without specifics or what the vague statement really means. But I think Azadeh Moaveni actually has a point:

"Many contemporary translations of Rumi strip the Persian, Arabic and Quranic references out of his verse, or simply ignore the vast bulk of the “Masnavi” dealing with hard Islamic theology."

Gooch has sentences like this: “A respite from the Mongol threat was promised by their first defeat—by the Egyptians at the battle of Ayn Jalut in Syria in 1260—shifting the Muslim power base from Baghdad to Cairo. Yet for the Parvane, machinations became more elaborate, as he engaged in a perilous game of playing the Egyptian Mamluks against the Mongols.”

The sentence is evocative of a past I can dimly imagine. 

From the time Rumi was born, his family was migrating west, away from the incursions of Hulegu Khan and the Mongolian empire. The sack of Baghdad ends the golden age of Islam. 

Do I have to become a scholar of Islam to appreciate Rumi's poetic voice? I appreciate him loosing the strictures of Islam, in favor of a universal love. I appreciate him bucking tradition. I think I could sink into the study of Islam to better appreciate what he's doing. I'm not a Muslim. I'm a Buddhist. 

Who is the great Buddhist philosopher of love?

Buddhism appreciates rapture but doesn't have a deity of rapture like Dionysus, so I borrow from the ancient Greeks. 

The Brahma-viharas are the sublime abodes, and consist of universal loving kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy and equanimity. Seems somewhat related to love.

Amitabha represents love.

The symbol śrīvatsa represents love, the endless knot:

Rāgarāja turns lust into spiritual awakening.

Feels like Buddhism is more specific, and doesn't need to emphasize love to smash small mindedness.

Rumi wasn't all love, all the time. One time his wife went to a rival sect of Sufi, the Rafa'i (Refaiyya in Gooch) performance, and had jealous anger (p. 275-6 Gooch).

Moon Day

 

The moon can represent so many things. To me it's a friend I look for in the sky to accompany my meditations. Every time I see it I'm pleased. I'm disappointed when it's overcast, or it's set. On full moon days you're supposed to gather with the local Buddhist friends. The monks would talk Dharma all night.

The complaint of book reviews is that non-muslims de-emphasize the Islamic aspect of Rumi, but I think it's OK if you're not a muslim, but like Rumi, that you don't go into what you don't really know about, and extract what makes sense to you. Rumi, in many ways, shucked off the formality of fundamental Islam, for freedom. Maybe those strictures feeling tight would give another feel to Rumi, but if you don't feel the strictures, you don't feel the strictures. You just like the freedom, and have your own strictures. (New Yorker article)

Love emerging from a structure, a tradition, a lifetime of scholarship, is glorious. Love smashes all the arbitrary separators of class, gender, sexuality, sect, etc. 

I really should go to the Chan center in Elmhurst to connect with sangha, but when I went a tall bald female monk said, "Oh Triratna, you have no lineage, we have two lineages." Now lineage is important, I'm not brushing it away, but so literal a mind, seemed unworthy of the deep Buddhism I aspire to practice. Love destroys these kind of barriers to love. Lineage is beautiful and wonderful. 

One must accept the banishment from the beloved sangha as the natural consequences of ethical misconduct. 

I must be a solitary practitioner from my chosen sangha. The sangha is allowed to make the mistake of pushing you away unjustly. The sangha is not perfect, or enlightened yet, but they are trying. They can't waste energy. I tried to return after many years, but hey superficially judged me unworthy. I shall not try again. They are wrong, and I and healed and pure, their lack of vision shows how impure and unhealed they are. It doesn't matter, I still love the time i spent in the bosom of the sangha, and learned so much. Forever solitary, like the great mountain poets of China. It's OK to be rejected by imperfect being you want to connect to, I shall take it as a lesson and strive on. 

Somehow I lucked on a practitioner far away. He doesn't seem to mind my quirks so far. He is young but he sees deeply. Though he tries to be casual, he is deep and committed.

I have found a new sangha, foreign, far away. It fits just right, I am forgiven and appreciated. I have not hidden my past misconduct, indeed, I lament about it probably too much. I shall work to be worthy of their love, and be loving in return. 

Rumi

 

(From"Why is Rumi the best selling poet in the Americas?" BBC)

His father raised him well. He raised his sons well. Rumi had Shams to show him about transcendent love and joy. He had Salah another friend and guide. He had Hosam who was a handsome bookkeeper and comproler so he didn't have to worry about money, who suggested people really like to read and listen to poetry. 

He had traveling the first 15 years of his life. He had education and teachers and mentors. He had enough wealth and frugality. He had wives and slaves and family and a household of support.

He disliked fame and challenged people, worked to be authentic, went places people said he shouldn't, taught people they said he shouldn't. He was kind to animals, taught others to be kind to animals. Love breaks down barriers. 

He wrote his poems with Hosam, who was his scribe, amenuesis and encourager, agent and publisher. He was grateful for his support and enshrined his gratitude in his poems. Hosam called him Mowlana. Rumi sometimes would have him dictate and read back to him the poems, and then he'd throw them all on the fire. He wrote his first book of poems in the 1260's. 

He said he was from Balkh Afghanistan, but here is another view:

"Tajiks and Persian admirers still prefer to call Jalaluddin 'Balkhi' because his family lived in Balkh, current day in Afghanistan before migrating westward. However, their home was not in the actual city of Balkh, since the mid-eighth century a center of Muslim culture in (Greater) Khorasan (Iran and Central Asia). Rather, as Meier has shown, it was in the small town of Wakhsh north of the Oxus that Baha'uddin Walad, Jalaluddin's father, lived and worked as a jurist and preacher with mystical inclinations. Lewis, Rumi : Past and Present, East and West: The Life, Teachings, and Poetry of Jalâl al-Din Rumi, 2000, pp. 47–49."

If anyone transcends place and time, it's Rumi, and you can place him in Greater Iran, or Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Turkey, Saudi Arabia. He wrote in Persian and Arabic.