October 19, 2003

zen tibetan

[or Zen and the Art of Being Tibetan Buddhist]

Vajrapani is hosting a Zen group from the Bay Area this weekend. It is amazing the differences between the Japanese/Zen groups and the Tibetan/Mahayana tradition. A comment was made the other day about how simple their altar setup and everything seemed to be. “I’d like to have Zen aesthetics with Tibetan philosophy,” she said. “Exactly!” I said. I’ve thought this for years. The imagery and color in the Tibetan tradition is nice and it certainly has it’s place, but when you are just trying to meditate it seems like it can be a little distracting. Fortunately for both of us, one of the senior nuns, Ven. Ingrid [she is the nun sitting directly above Lama Osel in this picture], was in the room. She has been to His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s residence and has seen his meditation room. She said that it is very “Zen-like” in that he only has one painting (tankha) on the wall of the deity he is meditating upon. Not hundreds of water bowls, hundreds of tankha’s, hundreds of Buddha statues. That is in other parts of the house maybe, but not in the meditation room.

I just thought I would share that because I’ve had this belief that sometimes our tradition get very caught up in all of the imagery and we forget about the reasons we practice. We’re trying to end our suffering and attachment — not increase it by switching our desire from images of say beautiful women in some magazine to beautiful paintings of Buddhas.

posted @ 8:58 AM

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