Outlands Community USA

Thich Nhat Hanh

 

 

ROY:  I really thought he might have had us in mind, but that's my ego, I think.  There are others.

LLAM:  For those who do not know who he is, Thich Nhat Hanh is a Vietnamese Buddhist monk born in 1926, currently living at the Plum Village Monastery in Dordogne, France.

ROY: Did you learn that with your devic abilities?

LLAM:  No, I looked him up in a Wiki, there's a good one at  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thich_Nhat_Hanh   There are also a couple of excellent videos at YouTube.

ROY:  What was I doing that you did that without my being aware of it?

LLAM:  You were talking with Johanne.  I just went down the cable from the modem into the Internet.

ROY:  I noo dat.  (looking sheepish)

LLAM:  What do you know about Buddhism, or perhaps I should ask, what do you know about the Buddha?

ROY:  That's like asking Christians who or what Jesus was, you'll get as many answers as people you ask.  However, the historical Buddha was a prince who was raised in a sheltered way and got out as an adult to see the world.  He saw all of the miseries under which human beings lived and was shocked to the core and vowed to do something, anything.  He tried all kinds of religious disciplines, most of them ascetic and got nowhere.  Finally he resolved to sit under a tree - a bodhi tree, mind you - and not leave until the answer came to him. The answer did come to him and it was profoundly simple: in Western terms he realized that it was up to him to change things, him and nobody else.  He had a number of other revelations that day, which is the way with visions for us mortals, everything comes in a package and we hafta sort it out.  Our sufferings are things that are illusory and we embrace them as reality.  Our world is illusory.  Very simply put we can transcend our suffering by practicing mindfulness.

LLAM:  Mindfullness?  That has an oddly familiar ring to it.

ROY: (grins)  It sure does!

LLAM:  In fact, it sounds like Mike Archontas urging us to "pay attention."

ROY:  I forget what the word is in Prakrit, the language that the Buddha spoke, but "mindfulness" will translate tolerably well as "paying attention."

LLAM:  Now, having gone through that head of yours, and checking a few things out about the Buddha, the name is a title and means "enlightened one," correct? (Roy nods)  That means that a Buddha is in some way fully paying attention.  To what, I think is immaterial at this point, but I would assume that she or he would be mindfull of the whole world.  Somehow!  (grins)  The original Buddha died like 2500 years ago and a number of Buddhist groups claim that he is reincarnated in the flesh through a number of generations.  He could stay in eternal bliss but has chosen to come back to help all of you.

ROY:  That makes him a "boddhisatva."  The Tibetan Buddhists make that claim about their leader, the Dalai Lama.

LLAM:  I find it extraordinary that Thich Nhat Hanh might imagine the Buddha being a community.  I find it fascinating, charming even!

ROY:  Things go better in some instances when distributed across a network, and such a thing would prevent the focus devolving onto one person.

LLAM:  Yes, but it grandfathers the attention to that community of which he spoke.  I suppose it would behoove such a group to ignore things like praise and recognition.

ROY:  My first reaction, as I said, was "could he be talking about us?"    Just quite possibly, but that's not up to us to decide.  There are other groups in the world, possibly doing more better than we.

LLAM:  O f course.  I have in my mind's eye this communal Buddha sitting at individual keyboards and hooked to the Internet.

ROY:  That would kinda make the Internet the Buddha, I think.

LLAM:  Now there's a thought!  (laughs)

ROY:  (laughing)  Oh, look!  There goes another thought!

LLAM: (rolling his eyes)  Time to close!