Andrew Olendzki, excerpt of the Attadanda Sutra: "Arming Oneself" (Sn 4.15, PTS Sn 935-951); Pfc. Sandoval, Seth Auberon, Sheldon S., edited by Dhr. Seven, Wisdom Quarterly
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| It's not easy being the temporal and spiritual leader of the country the CIA has recruited you to fight a proxy war for. Even a head lama finds himself equivocating sometimes (yourfates.com). |
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| Our God-King wants us to fight fire with return fire. I have to practice! Our words affect kids. |
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[The Budha said:] ...Fear is born from arming oneself.
Just look at how many people fight!
I speak of the dreadful fear
that caused me to quake all over:
Seeing creatures floundering
Like fish in water too shallow,
Hostile to one another!
— Seeing this, I became afraid.
The world completely lacks essence;
It trembles in all directions.
I longed to find for myself a place
Untouched — but it I could not see.
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| I did it for the money. I mean, I did it to avenge China...and that CIA money didn't hurt. |
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| Thich Nhat Hanh, I love peace! |
Seeing people locked in conflict,
I became utterly distraught.
I discerned here a thorn — hard to see —
lodged in the heart deep.
It's only when pierced by this thorn
That one runs in all directions
So that if that thorn is pulled out —
one does not run but settles down. ...
Who here has crossed over sensual desires,
the world's bond, so hard to get past,
that person does not grieve, does not mourn.
The stream is cut and is unbound (liberated).
What went before — let go of that!
All that's to come — have none of it!
Hold not on to what's in between,
And you will wander fully at peace.
For whom there is no "I-making"
All throughout body and mind,
Who grieves not for what is not
Is in the world undefeated.
For whom there is no "This is mine!"
Nor anything like "That is theirs!"
Not even finding "self-ness," one
Ceases to grieve at "I have nothing." ...
Translator's note
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| The Dalai Lama G.I. Joe bootleg toy doll |
The Buddhist collection of discourses known as the Sutta Nipata is probably one of the most diverse collections of sutras to be found in the Pali language threefold collection (Tipitaka).
And the chapter from which this sutra is taken, the Atthaka-vagga, may well be the oldest portion of the entire Pali canon. It is composed mostly in verse and includes lovely poetry.
There is something particularly moving for me about this poem. Perhaps that's because it's composed in the first person and appears to reveal the process through which the future-Buddha, Siddhartha Gautama himself, came to understanding.
Perhaps it's because of the vulnerability expressed in the opening stanzas, where he admits his fear and sense of dread over the nature of the human condition.
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| The Dalai Lama needs a new PR firm because equivocating looks bad (arebuddhistsracist.com) |
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Or maybe it is just the utter simplicity of first, the problem (people hurting people), then its cause (common human selfishness driven by sensual desire) and, finally, its solution (letting go of the ego's attachments). How easy he can so often make it all sound!
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| The CIA cares about the CIA, not the US or Tibet |
The first line alone is a counter-intuitive show stopper. Conventional wisdom suggests that arming oneself is a prudent response to fear of self-injury.
Yet, the Buddha's wisdom goes deeper to observe how this actually contributes to generating more fear. Do we really feel safer when we lash out at our critics and adversaries?
Our Western culture certainly assumes so. But the Buddha offers an alternative response, emerging from experience.
The phrase translated here as "arming oneself," which serves as the title of the sutra, is elsewhere rendered "embracing violence" (Mr. Norman) or "violent conduct" (Ven. Saddhatissa).
The basic image is of a person taking up a cudgel or staff (danda), a stick being a common symbol in Indian literature for both violence and punishment.
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| "If someone has a gun and is trying to kill you, it would be reasonable to shoot back with your own gun" [reasonable but not acceptable, and I didn't say HIT him, just, you know, warn him by shooting the air or something. Shoot the gun out of his hand, yeah, that's it.] (Seattle Times). |
The reader can hardly help but feel swept up in the emotional turmoil of the author. The tension mounts as the fear and despair builds then suddenly breaks with the insight:
Like animals driven to madness by injury, humankind is not evil by nature but is only driven to violence by the relentless pressure of sensual desire and insatiable craving.
The latter half of the poem describes how to cultivate a state of heart/mind — a stance within unfolding experience — that avoids the dysfunctional move of creating and projecting oneself on every situation.
These few verses embrace the whole of the Four Noble Truths:
- the suffering manifest as violence
- its cause by the thorn in the heart
- the release ("unbinding") or crossing over this
- the way to cultivate selflessness that constitutes real freedom.
i like dalai lamma
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