The Laughing Lama.

That video was brought to my attention by Budding Buddhist and it has become one of my favorites. I watch it often. Recently His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama visited Taiwan and this was my favorite moment of the event, which I read in this article.

At the beginning of the ceremony, the Dalai Lama asked that a small table in front of his seat be removed. However, as officials were in the process of removing it, it collapsed, to a complete silence in the audience. The Dalai Lama broke the silence with loud laughter, which triggered more laughter and applauses from the crowd.

James: I can't get enough of the DL's smiling, laughing and relaxing demeanor. Every time I see his warm, cheery face I can't help but smile too and the same goes when I see or hear him laugh. His laugh is infectious and sincere like the unstifled belly laughs you hear from kids. They (like he) are usually unencumbered with feelings of low self-esteem or a compulsive neurosis over their laugh and body language. That said, at the same time he's that big brother who has seen a lot and traveled many places both in our physical world and within the dungeons of the mind. The older brother who gives you the exact advice needed without being condescending, mean or grumpy.

In fact I can't think of a time when I've seen or heard of the Dalai Lama being grumpy--have any of you? He seems like the kind of person who can give you criticism with a smile and a laugh to where you thank-him for it. He truly is a great master and I really like that he goes against a common view of a Buddhist master as being stern, cold and always intensely serious. I'm not anywhere near the understanding of the Dalai Lama or Thich Nhat Hanh but I'd say that laughter and enlightenment go hand in hand. It's certainly a great way to reduce stress and suffering and besides that; in the end (as Shinzen said recently)what's their to do but laugh at this silly world?

~Peace to all beings~

Book Review, "Footprints in the Snow: The Autobiography of a Chinese Buddhist Monk."

Publicist Adrienne Biggs was kind enough to send me an advanced copy of the book, "Footprints in the Snow: The Autobiography of a Chinese Buddhist Monk." That monk being Ch'an Master Sheng Yen. The first thing that I was struck with in reading this book was how thoughtful and sensitive Master Sheng Yen is. He comes across in this book as a very kind person whom you'd enjoy listening to for hours and he has led a very eventful life being born to a poor farming family, joining the military, living in Taiwan and finally his monastic life. With a wonderful part on visiting Japan.

It was very fascinating for me to read his journey as a monk because I have always been curious about that life. I must say though that I was disturbed by some of the training techniques. His Master would make him do, undo and the redo things over and over, day after day. He made him stack, re-stack and then unstack a pile of bricks for days on end. He also berated him with (what seems to my unenlightened mind) unproductive criticism such as calling him stupid and other insults that I would not expect from a Buddhist master.

Sheng Yen said that it taught him patience and that he needed to go through that to purify his karma but what of the karma of the Master? Is not that kind of violent speech accumulating negative karma for himself? I think there are better ways to teach patience but I'm not a monastic, nor a Master monk and I come from a western mind frame so perhaps I'm missing something. Perhaps Sheng Yen needed to go through that to pay off a karmic debt to his master from a past life? I don't know.

And yet he says in the book, "Religious experience is not enlightenment" so he does understand that no matter what the religious training we must ultimately realize enlightenment on our own.

Just one of the profound parts of the book occurs while Sheng Yen is in the military in Taiwan. He writes to one of his teachers, Master Nanting complaining that he has little freedom in the military and the Master relpies, "Who has freedom in this world? As long as there is the body, there is no freedom."

All in all though this book was a great read. It was neat to see the inner details of the monastic life in the Ch'an tradition. Sheng Yen writes with such beauty in his vivid descriptions and his attention to detail is amazing. He writes in a way that makes you feel as though you are reliving every bit of his life with him. The last few words of the book were perhaps the most profound for me, "Now it is time to let go."

~Peace to all beings~