A personal blog by a graying (mostly Anglo with light African-American roots) gay left leaning liberal progressive married college-educated Buddhist Baha'i BBC/NPR-listening Professor Emeritus now following the Dharma in Minas Gerais, Brasil.
JOHN CAGE,
American composer born (d. 1992). American composer. He was a pioneer
of Chance music, non-standard use of musical instruments, and electronic
music.
He is perhaps best known for his 1952 composition 4’33”,
whose three movements are performed without a single note being played.
Though he remains a controversial figure, he is generally regarded as
one of the most important composers of his era. Cage was a long-term
collaborator and romantic partner of choreographer Merce Cunningham. In
addition to his composing, Cage was also a philosopher, writer,
printmaker and avid amateur mycologist and mushroom collector.
Cage always referred to his The Perilous Night
(1943) as his "autobiographical" piece, and biographer, David Revill
has associated it with the traumas associated with Cage's sexual
reorientation, culminating in divorce from his wife (1945) and the
beginning of his monogamous partnership with Merce Cunningham, that
lasted to the end of his life.
Each
time we let go of distractions to return to our focus, whatever that
is, we practice letting go. Letting go of thoughts, scenarios,
judgments, conceptual thinking—little chunks of self.
JOHN M. MCNEILL,
Jesuit scholar, psychotherapist, born (d: 2015); For more than
twenty-five years John J. McNeill, an ordained priest and
psychotherapist, devoted his life to spreading the good news of God's
love for Lesbian and Gay Christians. One year after the publication of The Church and the Homosexual
(1976), McNeill received an order from the Congregation for the
Doctrine of the Faith in the Vatican ordering him to silence in the
public media. He observed the silence for nine years while continuing a
private ministry to Gays and Lesbians which included psychotherapy,
workshops, lectures and retreats.
In 1988, he
received a further order from Cardinal Ratzinger (soon to become Pope
Benedict XVI, the first Pope to resign in a millennium) directing him to
give up all ministry to Gay persons which he refused to do in
conscience. As a result, he was expelled by the Vatican from the Society
of Jesus (Jesuits) for challenging the teachings of the Roman Catholic
Church on the issue of homosexuality, and for refusing to give up his
ministry and psychotherapy practice to Gay men and Lesbians. McNeill had
been a Jesuit for nearly 40 years.
After enlisting
in the U.S. Army during World War II at the age of seventeen, McNeill
served in combat in the Third Army under General Patton and was captured
in Germany in 1944. McNeill spent six months as a POW (Prisoner of War)
until he was liberated in May of 1945. John enrolled in Canisius
College in Buffalo after his discharge from the army and, upon
graduating, entered the Society of Jesus in 1948. He was ordained a
Jesuit priest in 1959.
In 1964, McNeill
earned a Doctorate in Philosophy, with highest honors (Plus Grande
Distinction), at Louvain University in Belgium. His doctoral thesis on
the philosophical and religious thought of Maurice Blondel was published
in 1966 as the first volume of the series Studies in the History of
Christian Thought edited by Heiko Oberman and published by Brill Press
in Leyden, Holland.
During his
professional career, McNeill taught philosophy at LeMoyne College in
Syracuse, NY, and in the doctorate program at Fordham University in NYC.
In 1972, he joined the combined Woodstock Jesuit Seminary and Union
Theological Seminary faculty as professor of Christian Ethics,
specializing in Sexual Ethics.
In 1974, McNeill
was co-founder of the New York City chapter of Dignity, a group for
Catholic Gays and Lesbians. For over twenty-five years, he has been
active in a ministry to Gay Christians through retreats, workshops,
lectures, publications, etc. For twenty years John was a leader of
semiannual retreats at the Kirkridge Retreat Center in Pennsylvania.
One part of getting free, free into the soul or the witness, is the
ability to stand back a little bit because now you are identified with
being the witness rather than being the player, and thus you can see the
play more clearly.
Anger
that is motivated by compassion or a desire to correct social
injustice, and does not seek to harm the other person, is a good anger
that is worth having.
-- The Dalai Lama, "The (Justifiably) Angry
Marxist," Tricycle
The
gateway to compassion and lovingkindness is to be able to feel our own
pain, and the pain of others. If we are able to open in this way, our
hearts can melt, and the healing salve of compassion can anoint all our
wounds.
Millions of Buddhists seeking protection and healing from the novel coronavirus are turning to traditional religious rituals.
Since the emergence of COVID-19, the Dalai Lama, other senior monks and Buddhist organizations
in Asia and worldwide have emphasized that this pandemic calls for
meditation, compassion, generosity and gratitude. Such messages
reinforce a common view in the West of Buddhism as more philosophy than
religion – a spiritual, perhaps, but secular practice associated with mindfulness, happiness and stress reduction.
But for many people around the world Buddhism is a religion – a
belief system that includes strong faith in supernatural powers. As
such, Buddhism has a large repertoire of healing rituals that go well
beyond meditation.
Having studied the interplay between Buddhism and medicine as a historian and ethnographer for the past 25 years, I have been documenting the role these ritual practices play in the coronavirus pandemic.
Talismans, prayer and ritual
Buddhism originated in India about two and a half millennia ago. Today, with well over a half-billion adherents across the world, it is a highly diverse tradition that has adapted to many cultural and social contexts.
There are three main schools of traditional Buddhism:
Theravāda, practiced in most of Southeast Asia; Mahāyāna, the form most
prevalent in East Asia; and Vajrayāna, commonly associated with Tibet
and the Himalayan region.
In Buddhist-majority places, the official COVID-19 pandemic response
includes conventional emergency health and sanitation measures like
recommending face masks, hand-washing and stay-at-home orders.
But within religious communities, Buddhist leaders also are using a
range of ritual apotropaics – magical protection rites – to protect
against disease.
Theravāda amulets and charms trace their magical powers to repel evil
spirits not only to the Buddha but also to beneficial nature spirits,
demigods, charismatic monks and wizards.
Now, these blessed objects are being specifically formulated with the
intention of protecting people from contracting the coronavirus.
Mahāyāna Buddhists use similar sacred objects, but they also pray to a
whole pantheon of buddhas and bodhisattvas – another class of
enlightened beings – for protection. In Japan, for example, Buddhist
organizations have been conducting expulsion rites that call on Buddhist deities to help rid the land of the coronavirus.
Mahāyāna practitioners have faith that the blessings bestowed by
these deities can be transmitted through statues or images. In a modern
twist on this ancient belief, a priest affiliated with the Tōdaiji
temple in Nara, Japan, in April tweeted a photo of the great Vairocana Buddha. He said the image would protect all who lay eyes upon it.
The Dalai Lama, the Buddhist spiritual leader of the Tibetan people.Pixabay
The third major form of Buddhism, Vajrayāna, which developed in the
medieval period and is widely influential in Tibet, incorporates many
rituals of earlier traditions. For example, the Dalai Lama
has urged practitioners in Tibet and China to chant mantras to the
bodhisattva Tārā, a female goddess associated with compassion and
well-being, to gain her protection.
Vajrayāna practitioners also advocate a unique form of visualization
where the practitioner generates a vivid mental image of a deity and
then interacts with them on the level of subtle energy. Responses to
COVID-19 suggested by leading figures in traditional Tibetan medicine frequently involve this kind of visualization practice.
Buddhist modernism
Since the height of the colonial period in the 19th century, “Buddhist modernists” have carefully constructed an international image of Buddhism as a philosophy or a psychology. In emphasizing its compatibility with empiricism and scientific objectivity they have ensured Buddhism’s place in the modern world and paved the way for its popularity outside of Asia.
Many of these secular-minded Buddhists have dismissed rituals and other aspects of traditional Buddhism as “hocus pocus” lurking on the fringes of the tradition.
Having documented the richness of the history and contemporary practice of Buddhist healing and protective rituals, however, I argue that these practices cannot be written off quite so easily.
In most living traditions of Buddhism, protective and healing rituals
are taken seriously. They have sophisticated doctrinal justifications
that often focus on the healing power of belief.
Increasingly, researchers are agreeing that faith in itself plays a
role in promoting health. The anthropologist Daniel Moerman, for
example, has identified what he calls the “meaning response.” This model
accounts for how cultural and social beliefs and practices lead to “real improvements in human well-being.” Likewise, Harvard Medical School researcher Ted Kaptchuk has studied the neurobiological mechanisms for how rituals work to alleviate illnesses.
To date, there is no known way to prevent COVID-19 other than staying home to avoid contagion, and no miracle cure.
But for millions worldwide, Buddhist talismans, prayers and protective
rituals offer a meaningful way to confront the anxieties of the global
coronavirus pandemic, providing comfort and relief.
And in a difficult time when both are in short supply, that’s nothing to discredit.
John Cage
