[Buddha-l] How to help the Dharma grow in the USA

[d f tweney]

Drumming is fun. People like drumming. What's non-Buddhist about it? Are 
there sutras that prohibit drumming, for laypeople or for monks? Our local 
Japanese Buddhist church has a Taiko drumming group. I love listening to 
them and I bet it's a lot of fun to play in it, too.

In fact, think Buddhist gatherings might attract more people if there was 
some music and singing. The few Buddhist gatherings I've been to have been 
about as exciting as a Unitarian service, but with more silence. There is 
a time for quiet meditation. But there is also a time for people to get 
together and have fun and build a community of common purpose. For that, 
music is a great facilitator. I think perhaps Richard was being ironic 
when he proposed drumming for the Dharma but maybe someone should take 
this seriously.

And video games don't have to be violent. I'm now playing Okami, a game 
set in ancient Japan in which you play a benevolent white wolf deity who 
has to rid the countryside of evil spirits, help villagers, and return 
life and growing things to a blasted landscape. In format, this game is 
not that different from Grand Theft Auto. But in spirit, it's completely 
different. It may be silly and fantastical, but it's not necrophilic.

Anyway, there are other good ways to spread the dharma too:

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2007/01/03/MNG73NC2QC1.DTL

Priest brings Zen to S.F.'s neediest souls
Buddhist teaches meditation, holds memorials for homeless

Justin Berton, Chronicle Staff Writer

Wednesday, January 3, 2007

Inside the community room of the Raman Hotel, a single-room occupancy 
hotel at Howard and Sixth streets, Jana Drakka set up a makeshift altar 
for a tenant named Guillermo who had died a week earlier.

"Memo," as his fellow residents and caseworkers knew him, was a 
76-year-old World War II veteran as well as an alcoholic who had 
ricocheted among the city's streets and homeless shelters.

He had spent most of his last three years at the Raman, one of city's 
low-rent SROs, and the 16 people who had gathered at his memorial 
reflected the tail end of his life: eight tenants from the Raman and eight 
social workers who had met him at rehab clinics, nursing facilities and a 
halfway house for parolees on the mend -- but not a family member in 
sight.

At the altar, Drakka, an ordained Buddhist priest, dressed in a layered 
kamboa, dropped pear incense onto a piece of charcoal and offered a 
prayer.

"Memo," she said in her lithe Scottish accent, "we're here to give you a 
proper send-off."

In the past three years, Drakka has performed about 100 such memorials 
inside SROs in the Mission, Tenderloin and South of Market districts. No 
one keeps an official count of how many people die inside the estimated 
500 hotels each year, said Sam Dodge, director of the Central City SRO 
Collaborative, but living conditions there are often stressful and 
uniquely fit for death. The majority of the 30,000 residents are elderly 
and without health insurance, Dodge said; drug addicts, who often hole up 
in the cheap rooms, are more likely to overdose in an SRO than anywhere 
else in the city. In the past two months alone, at least nine people have 
died in Mission District hotels, said Christina Olague, coordinator of the 
Mission SRO Collaborative.

The caseload can keep Drakka busy. At 54, the priest has become the 
unofficial on-call chaplain to San Francisco's SRO constituency. In 
addition to the memorials, she conducts weekly meditation groups at five 
locations in what's believed to be the nation's first meditation network 
aimed directly at a homeless population.

...

On 
Wed, 3 Jan 2007, jkirk wrote:

> Re: the CSM article.
>
> Well, I know a guy, my computer guru to be precise,  who joined a rousing 
> evangelical- services- with- muzak (that's what I call the various dumming 
> bouts and heavy metal additions to church) outfit when he was pre-21, and 
> lasted two years in the fold. Now all he does is sport a "Got Jesus?" bumper 
> sticker.
>
> This country has so lost any semblance of any culture, except for immigrants 
> who are being dailybrow-beaten to shed theirs, that the Gen-Y (is that the 
> term used these days for 20-30 somethings) won't last long on this new route, 
> either. Hollow consumerism, and sham funerals such as we've been subjected to 
> for the past week since a former fairly untalented president died, are all we 
> have left. I bet Dubya gets a state funeral when he kicks. After killing 
> Saddam, now many are feeling guilty because we supported him for so long and 
> then turned on him.
> It's another version of necrophilia, wallowing in guilt and lies after a 
> funeral.
>
> Media and consumer necrophilia rules the day. The rampant materialism of this 
> country is simply another form of "necrophilia, love of dead things." What 
> are most video games about? killing people. What is this country officially 
> about? killing people. The ahimsa of Buddhism is far from our shores.
>
> Necrophilia has invaded and now dominates Thailand, only nominally Buddhist 
> today, as they grab as much as they can of contemporary materialism and 
> stuff, while evangelicals missionize the people with Jesus. (Some evangelical 
> churches in the USA today preach that "Jesus WANTS you to make money. Praise 
> the Lord.")  Last time I was in Chaing Mai I couldn't believe my eyes: they 
> had a shopping mall with escalators. Reminded me of Buddhism's levels of 
> hells as people traveled up and down on it while stereos blasted at top 
> decibels pop songs for the masses. Just like here.
> Thus, I predict that when the current younger folks finally get fed up with 
> mass consumerism and no-culture, they won't turn to religion--any kind 
> of--but instead will turn to terrorism, as they are now doing in tough 
> neighborhoods of wasted cities around the global capitalism circuit. It will 
> just spread.
> Joanna
>
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Richard Hayes" <rhayes at unm.edu>
> To: <buddha-l at mailman.swcp.com>
> Sent: Wednesday, January 03, 2007 10:12 AM
> Subject: [Buddha-l] How to help the Dharma grow in the USA
>
>
>> Dear denizens,
>> 
>> I begin every year feeling convinced thatthis will surely be the
>> lastyear in which people continue to show an interest in Buddhism and
>> other Asian religions and philosophies. The baby boomers are returning
>> to their cultural roots, and their children and grandchildren never
>> shared their parent's fascination with alternatives to Western
>> materialism anyway. For most young people in the xenophobic culture of
>> the United States, everything good about Asia has already found its way
>> itno restaurants, video games and action movies. Who needs to study
>> Asian languages, history and culture? (Who, think most young Americans,
>> needs to study ANY languages, history or culture?)
>> 
>> Buddhist temples, churches and centers are growing increasingy empty,
>> populated only by a few pot-bellied former pot-smoking hippies who just
>> can't let go of their misspent youths. The Zen cushion has given way to
>> the wheelchair. Can Buddhism survive another year in America?
>> 
>> The following article from the Christian Science Monitor suggests a
>> solution. If the aim is to fill dharma centers again the answer may be
>> to provide more drums, more guys and less reverence. (But hasn't Zen
>> already been doing that for decades?)
>> 
>> Have a noisy year beating your Dharma-damaru,
>> Richard
>> 
>> ====================================================================
>> 
>> Click here to read this story online:
>> http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0103/p01s01-ussc.html
>
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