In both Buddhist and Hindu traditions, devotional objects seek to bring the viewer and worshiper into tranquil and compassionate states, aimed at getting the mind into concentration, samadhi, and closer to the sublime. In The Benevolent Beings: Buddhas and Bodhisattvas from South and Southeast Asia, currently being exhibited at Pasadena’s Norton Simon Museum until February 19, 2024, the interplay between the objects of these two religions is on full display. Inspired by assistant curator Lakshika Senarath Gamage’s personal experiences growing up in Sri Lanka, Gamage organized the show to “speak to the continuity of devotional engagement with objects that remain essential to healing and tranquility” in these two traditions.

In contrast to the monumental deities that make up part of Norton Simon’s permanent collection, many of the objects exhibited in Benevolent Beings reflect small-scale everyday devotional objects, whether previously installed in temples or possibly kept in people’s homes—some still bearing traces of their original intended use. The exhibition’s design evokes South Asia’s 13th- to 18th-century Buddhist temples, and the three galleries are organized to guide visitors to increasingly sacred objects as they progress through the exhibition, encouraging slow and deliberate contemplation and the feeling of interaction and interconnection between the object and the viewer. As a visitor, I felt encouraged to slow down and look closely to immerse myself in the values shared across these two dharmas. The challenge of this exhibition is to keep in mind that these are devotional, votive objects and not just art items. With thoughtful and meaningful curation, the exhibition aims to be accessible to both religious practitioners as well as the lay art-appreciating public. 

Visiting this exhibition as a scholar of comparative religions, I am reminded that Buddhism has always existed in the context of other traditions. We recall that it was first introduced into the region in the 4th century CE in conjunction with several types of pre-Hindu religions, Vedic beliefs, and local indigenous animistic cults. The Buddhas and bodhisattvas in this exhibition highlight the syncretic nature of the artistic exchanges between pre-Hindu and Buddhist and, in some cases, Islamic, or Persian, art and culture. The art exhibited in these galleries retains regional distinctions yet showcases a sense of cosmopolitan artistic interplay. 

The first gallery features a selection of mythical bird-shaped incense burners from South India, including Censer in the Form of a Mythical Bird, designed to either venerate the Buddha or to please the senses of the Hindu gods. It also includes a Buddhist Manuscript with Covers, from northern Thailand or Myanmar, and Hanging with Nepali Stupas, a cotton scroll, which most likely originated in India. Most of the objects in this gallery were commissioned by either laypeople or religious patrons who aimed to accumulate merit. By commissioning works of art, patrons believe that they acquired an abundance of blessings and protection, a practice that continues to this day. The gallery also includes a selection of bodhisattvas and merciful gods, including Ganesha with the Hindu Triad, a 10th-century sculpture of Ganesha, a beloved Hindu “remover of obstacles,” as well as the god Vishnu. 

In both the Buddhist and Hindu traditions, elephants are sacred symbols. In Buddhism, elephants are the guardians of the Buddha and Earth’s energy and represent physical stress that also indicates mental stress and responsibility. Similarly, in Hinduism, elephants also represent intellectual and mental strength. Further, the notion of mental strengths and knowledge is exemplified in the Bodhisattva Manjusri, a bodhisattva of wisdom, who generally holds a sword in one arm to cut off all delusion. Notably, Vishnu often appears in Buddhist temples to protect visitors in sacred spaces. Gamage explains that it is not unusual for Hindu gods to be placed near the Buddha. Placing Buddha close to Vishnu allows the worshipers to combine blessings for earthly matters with a focus on transcendent values, further underscoring the notion of religious interrelation. Buddha with Two Bodhisattvas, a triad of the Buddha with two bodhisattvas, can be perceived as having only Buddhist relevance. Here, the idea of compassion is underscored with Avalokiteshvara, the bodhisattva of infinite compassion, on the Buddha’s right, and Vajrapani, the earliest protector and guide of Buddhism, on his left. However, we should note that Vajrapani shares his origin with the Vedic deity Indra, also the king of gods in Hinduism.  

Another significant art object is the statue Buddha, from 20th-century Thailand, which features the Buddha standing on a lotus pedestal placed on a mythical bird. It appears that artisans possibly combined the Buddha with Garuda, which in Hindu mythology is the bird and the mount of Vishnu. While the Buddha does not have a similar carrier, since he is not divine but human, some Vishnu devotees consider the Buddha Vishnu’s avatar or a manifestation of the deity on earth. The interplay of the traditions can also be observed in Descent of the Buddha. Here, we see Hindu creator Brahman, who is positioned on the Buddha’s right, and Indra, the king of gods, on the left. In Descent, note how the depiction of the Buddha is made to look much larger than his Hindu counterparts, illustrating the concept of hierarchical scale, or hierarchical proportion, displaying the sensibilities of the environment where it was created and the weight of importance given to the separate traditions by the image’s creator, Tibetan artist Phurbu Tshering of Chamdo.

The second gallery aims to convey the concept of multiple Buddhist heavens and evokes the same architecture as seen in South Asian Bodhi shrines. A Bodhi tree is placed in the center and is surrounded by four sitting Buddhas or four stupas or four objects. This setting allows practitioners to circumambulate the Buddhas (or four stupas or four objects) just as they would have done in the Bodhi shrines. For the general public, it is a space to encounter each individual Buddha within a frame of the Bodhi tree to appreciate the iconography, the material, and the quality of the art. This approach considers different audiences and makes it accessible to anybody without being didactic in its application. 

Along the second gallery’s back wall viewers encounter Stele with Buddhas and Bodhisattvas—a solitary Buddha dated to c. 1100 India, of either West Bengal or Bangladesh origin. Carved from a chlorite stone, it glitters and shines in the light, allowing devotees to experience the immediacy of this visual encounter. The representation of the Buddhist cosmos in the stupa and the three-dimensional mandala brings forth the idea of symbolic meaning that serves not only as a meditation guide but also as protection against negative forces. Stupas illustrate the earthly realm (through their base), as well as nirvana (the jeweled pinnacle), or the ultimate goal of cessation of death and rebirth. The three-dimensional mandala, in turn, represents a cosmological map of the universe. The symbolic meanings of these images serve not only as meditation guides but also as forms of protection against negative forces. It needs to be noted that this lotus mandala is meant to commemorate the Hindu god Vishnu, the preserver of the universe, even though mandalas are most commonly used for Buddhist symbolism. Visitors will note the confluence of Buddhist and Hindu symbols: at the left side of the Buddha is Lakshmi, a goddess of wealth, prosperity, fertility, and abundance, and on the right is Sarasvati, a goddess of education, creativity, and music. 

Another example of this interplay is the Lotus Mandala with Eight Mothers, from 18th-century Nepal, composed of a bronze cosmic diagram that features eight female deities, known collectively as the Ashthamatrika, which is deeply rooted in Hinduism. These Eight Mothers symbolize the connection between the divine and their maternal forces of creation. Another example is Railing Pillar: Female Deity, which also serves as a prototype within both Buddhist and Hindu contexts. 

The third and final gallery has two benches for visitors to sit down and relax, or meditate, and includes my other favorite object—Buddha Shakyamuni in Meditation, a solitary Buddha placed in the front of the gallery. A sculpture of a solitary Buddha dates to 6th-century Sri Lanka. Here, the Buddha manifests a feeling of deep meditation and invites visitors to partake in meditation as well.

Notably, this gallery provides a space for tranquility and serenity but also underscores the idea of cultural interplay and productive coexistence. Benevolent Beings explores the links between Hinduist and Buddhist traditions; their shared history, their shared liturgy, and the compassion and sublime attitudes they both value above all else. It’s a must-see exhibit for those who wish to engage in openness of religious and cultural interplay that transcends territorial boundaries, ideologies, and biases, presenting the spiritual as a vast and interconnected web imbued with wisdom for those who are willing to stop for a moment and take in what’s around them.

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Prime Video recently released the second season of Wheel of Time, a television series based on the vast fantasy world of Robert Jordan. The first season covers the first book in the series but also pulls in aspects from later books. Rebirth is an important component of the show. 

Characters make frequent, even cynical references to the cycle of death and rebirth, while the book mentions the topic distantly and reverently. It is only referred to regarding the savior/destroyer of the world, who keeps being reborn, and the discovery of this character’s identity drives the plot. A character on the show says casually, “There is a wheel that spits out our lives,” in the midst of an everyday conversation. It’s as common a topic as the weather.

In addition to the wheel governing characters’ lives, there is a “pattern” made up of threads that dictate characters’ fates. Only one character, a seer, can see the pattern. She can tell by looking if someone is destined for great things or “important to the pattern.” Everyone is subject to the wheel of rebirth, but it seems not everyone is clearly a part of the pattern. The main characters on the show are, naturally, and part of the mystery is that you don’t know why they are important or what role they will play. Even the seer isn’t sure. (The seer is a moody character; a bartender and drinker. Seeing the innermost truth about people at a glance will do that to you.) The relationship between the wheel and the pattern is not made clear in the first season or book, but how they interact is apparently one of the saga’s major themes. (In the first episode of the second season a character muses about the wheel weaving, implying the wheel creates the pattern. Maybe.)

Richard Gombrich discusses belief in rebirth among Sri Lankan laypeople in his 1971 classic Buddhist Precept and Practice. His two categories of belief are affective and cognitive belief, with affective or conventional belief referring to the idea that personalities and memories transmigrate between lives, and cognitive belief referring to the more doctrinal notion of an impersonal karmic survival or continuation between lives. Wheel of Time seems to operate in this latter mode, and it’s key to the suspense. No one knows what their previous lives were; if they did, their paths would be much clearer.

It is accepted by all that time is a circle, that events that happened long ago will recur, and that the principal players will return to the stage to reenact the drama, but the outcomes are not necessarily predetermined.

The book series, begun in 1990, was planned at six volumes but eventually numbered fourteen, as well as a prequel and ancillary stories. Jordan died in 2007, before he could complete the work, and the final volumes were written by fellow fantasy author Brandon Sanderson, with the last one being published in 2013. I recently read the first volume, the 800-page Eye of the World, before watching the first season of the show. This to say that I’m no expert on Jordan’s world, which is huge and richly detailed. A reader of the entire series told me as much, saying that the first book (and TV series) is essentially a prologue with very little “real” information given, and that the story only gets going later. 

Early episodes of the show lacked the urgency of the book, which may seem like an odd thing when comparing an enormous book to eight fifty-minute television episodes. The first episodes were painfully slow while tearing through the plot at a dizzying speed. Unpromisingly, showrunner Rafe Judkins made his entrée into the industry as a contestant on the 2005 season of Survivor. But things pick up later.

Wheel of Time premiered in 2021, roughly a year before Rings of Power, based on J. R. R. Tolkien’s Silmarillion—also a Prime Video production—and HBO’s House of the Dragon, the Game of Thrones prequel based on the work of George R. R. Martin. Both these series received a great deal of mainstream attention, positive and negative, while interest in Wheel of Time seemed limited to fans of the books. This comparatively narrow and passionate audience may explain why the first season received such harsh criticism. Though it failed to live up to the fandom’s demanding standards, the series was somehow renewed and Season 2 earned better reviews, and more viewers.

Rebirth as a fact of life comes up frequently on the show, and is accepted as a fact across all the cultures encountered in the world of Wheel of Time. Beyond this, as the name of the show implies, it is accepted by all that time is a circle, that events that happened long ago will recur, and that the principal players will return to the stage to reenact the drama, but the outcomes are not necessarily predetermined. Some change is possible, but it’s not clear how much. Jordan himself said in a 1998 interview that “Hindu mythology” informed his writing of the series as well as the concept of time as a circle, or wheel, and that the world of Wheel of Time was meant to be a mirror of our world:

I wanted the circularity because I wanted to go into the changes by distance. So the myths and legends and a few of the stories that these people tell, some of them are based on our current events, on the present. What they are doing is based on our myths and legends. So they are the source of our myths and legends, and we are the source of theirs.

I felt that because America is a melting pot, I had at least some right to mine the mythologies of any nation that is represented in the United States. And also religion. So there are elements that come out of religious books.

The wheel is a trap that forces the same conflicts again and again, and there is one person who seems to have the power to disrupt the cycle, but who is it?

The story begins, in classic Tolkienesque fantasy fashion, in a wholesome and bucolic village. A group of young friends prepares to celebrate a seasonal festival. (In the book they are teenagers, but on the show they are older, in their 20s.) A mysterious woman named Moiraine (played by Rosamund Pike) and her grim “warder,” a warrior named Lan (Daniel Henney), arrive, in search of someone born (or reborn) in this area. Shortly afterward, monsters called trollocs invade, burn the town down, and chase Moiraine and Lan and the friends out onto the road, in search of the far-off city where they will be protected. In the show, some of the group quickly (by the fifth episode) reach their destination. In the book, none of them do, but it doesn’t matter, because arriving at the destination only creates new problems.

Wheel of Time is full of magic and monsters, which isn’t for everyone, but the series is fairly restrained in both these areas. Only certain women, known as Aes Sedai, can “channel” magic. Moiraine is one of them. We learn that men used magic long ago but abused it somehow, and the power was taken away. As the show begins, this power shows signs of returning, and the Aes Sedai have been dispatched to contain the threat. Everyone, every villager and innkeeper on the show, knows that a person will someday be reborn who can use magic far more forcefully than anyone else, and they will be called the Dragon Reborn, after the ancient wizard who is said to have “broken the world.” A few “false dragons,” men using magic, are abroad in the land, causing trouble. (The Dragon himself can be seen on YouTube from an earlier attempt to film the series that was derailed for copyright issues. But it features the underappreciated Billy Zane.)

In the book, the Dragon Reborn can only be a man, or rather a boy. In the show, it is not known what form the reincarnated wizard will take. Though skeptics might see this as pandering to modern sensibilities of equity and representation, it greatly improves the story. The reincarnated soul may even be split among multiple people, one character suggests. In the novel, it is soon made clear to any reader paying attention who the chosen one is, but the show does a much better job at concealing this important point. The uncertainty gives greater opportunity for tension within the group, and the characters are often as confused as the viewer. 

There’s a lot more to all this. There’s the Dark One, the satanic figure everyone is trying to defeat, who gives our heroes a lesson in impermanence (or is it just a threat?), saying, “Everything that means anything can be gone in an instant.” There are the Forsaken, powerful servants of the Dark One whose presence is barely hinted at in this season but whose role will loom ever larger. There is the Light, which is an undefined deity, or an aspect of the deity power. And there is the One Power, the source of Moiraine’s magic, and what the Dark One seems to draw on as well. Access to it appears to drive men mad. 

Toward the end of the first season it is revealed that, at the Eye of the World, a place of great magical power that is crucial to the mission, the young people who are not the reincarnated Dragon will be killed. Moiraine demonstrates tremendous power, doing all sorts of wizardly things, but she is not omniscient. Her failure to detect the correct figure has potentially horrendous consequences for everyone around her, and as it turns out, it’s not so great for her either.

In the world of Avatar and Legend of Korra, another franchise with rebirth at its heart, reincarnation seems to be limited to the superpowered savior of the world, and it is easy to identify this figure because they display extraordinary powers at a young age. The extended Avatar universes also borrow the Tibetan tulku system’s use of identifying toys and ritual objects of the previous incarnation. Moiraine has only vague ideas to guide her to the one she seeks, and because she doesn’t know, she exposes innocent people to great danger. The one intimate relationship she is allowed is with her boss, which goes about as well as you might expect. Moiraine’s task is a painful and lonely one that ends with decidedly mixed results. But then again, when the wheel turns again, she may get another chance to do it a bit better. 

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The Buddha is the meditator par excellence. When people think of meditation, they often picture the Buddha, his hands in what is called the dhyanamudra, the “meditation pose,” right palm resting on the left palm, thumbs touching to form a circle. And yet more common is a different pose, left hand turned upward and resting in his lap, right hand extended over his knee. It is called bhumisparsha in Sanskrit, literally “touching the earth.”

A fabulous exhibition of early Indian Buddhist art opened at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York on July 21, continuing until November 13, featuring masterpieces from 200 BCE to 400 CE, a golden age of Buddhist art. It is called “Tree & Serpent. Early Buddhist Art in India, 200 BCE – 400 CE.” The signature piece shows, as one might expect, a tree and a serpent, indeed a magnificent serpent, with five hooded heads. The Buddha, however, is nowhere to be seen. Unless, that is, one knows how to look. Unless one knows the story. Because if you look closely, you see a small rectangle on the coils of the giant snake, and below the rectangle, you see what appear to be a pair of footprints. The footprints are the footprints of the Buddha; the seat is where he is seated in meditation. The Buddha, however, is not there. 

This is one of many representations of the Buddha in early Indian Buddhist art in which the Buddha himself is not represented. Instead, there is a seat, a wheel, a stupa, or a pair of footprints. Art historians call these works “aniconic.” It is not that other humans, gods, and animals are not depicted in these works. Only the Buddha is absent. Art historians have been arguing for more than a century about why this is the case. No prohibitions of drawing, painting, or sculpting the Buddha have been found in the Buddhist canon. And in later centuries, as we know, statues of the Buddha began to appear in both northwest India and in central India. Striking examples of both aniconic and iconic works are found throughout the exhibition.

The exhibition makes clear that we cannot understand the Buddha until we see what surrounds him.

And so the Buddha is absent in this piece, at least in the form that is familiar to us; this piece is clearly aniconic. But why the giant serpent? For this, you must know the story. After he achieved enlightenment, the Buddha spent seven weeks—forty-nine days, the same period as that between death and rebirth—in the vicinity of the Bodhi tree. Not eating, not sleeping, not speaking, reliving the experience of enlightenment, trying to decide whether he should teach. Each of those seven weeks is marked by a particular event at a particular place; those places are now shrines at Bodhgaya. During the third week, there was a horrific rainstorm. A huge serpent, the guardian of a nearby tree, emerged from a lake, wrapped himself around the Buddha, and spread his hood, providing shelter from the storm. This is the event depicted in the sculpture.

Such stories abound in the works on display in “Tree and Serpent,” suggesting that early in the history of Buddhism in India, scenes from the life of the Buddha could be carved in stone, without textual description, and often without the Buddha himself, and be still recognized by the faithful. Ordinary people knew these stories, and if they didn’t, there was likely a monk around, especially at a stupa, who was happy to tell the tale. 

“Tree and Serpent” is the result of the imagination, the expertise, and the remarkable labor of John Guy, the Met’s senior curator of South and Southeast Asian Art. He has brought together many stunning pieces, many displayed outside of India for the first time. And he has moved beyond the usual Buddhist sites in the north that we associate with the life of the Buddha to include extraordinary works from South India, where Buddhism thrived for so long. The importance of the show, however, goes beyond its individual pieces.

The Buddha obviously lived and died in India; we still go on pilgrimage to the four places that he is said to have recommended on his deathbed: the place of his birth, his enlightenment, his first teaching, and his passage into nirvana. But it sometimes seems that during his eighty years in India, the Buddha’s feet never really touched the ground. Some texts actually say that they didn’t. “Tree and Serpent” corrects our mistake. Ancient India, like so many traditional cultures, had an animated landscape, with all manner of spirits and sprites. Buddhist texts list eight types of nonhumans, none of which are animals. The most common of these were yakshas and nagas, two names that are difficult to translate. A yaksha is often the spirit that inhabits a tree, easily offended and able to both cause harm and bestow benefit. Tibetans had such difficulty translating the term that they rendered it simply as “harm-generosity.” Nagas are serpentine creatures, not quite snakes, often depicted in Buddhist art with the head and torso of a human and the tail of a snake. The Sanskrit term was translated into Chinese as “dragon.” Nagas live beneath the waters in bejeweled palaces. They have magical powers, and their breath is poisonous to humans. Much of ancient Indian religion was concerned with pleasing, or at least not offending, these spirits. “Tree and Serpent” makes clear that Buddhism was deeply grounded in this natural and supernatural land. 

The Buddha and his monks lived in a world of spirits who needed to be appeased; many texts are devoted to this. But just as the Buddha commanded the respect of the visible powers—kings and merchants—he also commanded the respect of the invisible: the yakshas and nagas who control the natural world. When the Buddha delivered a sutra, they were often in attendance. Their reverence for him is depicted throughout the exhibition; one of the Buddha’s epithets is devatideva, the “god above the gods.” Thus, “nature worship” is not something that we should consign to the category of the primitive. It has been with Buddhism from the beginning. It is with Buddhism now. The exhibition makes clear that we cannot understand the Buddha until we see what surrounds him. In “Tree and Serpent,” the Buddha comes back home. The beautiful exhibition catalogue, Tree & Serpent. Early Buddhist Art in India by John Guy and published by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, is a major work of scholarship and is not to be missed.

Tree & Serpent. Early Buddhist Art in India, 200 BCE – 400 CE
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, until November 13, 2023

John Guy, Tree & Serpent. Early Buddhist Art in India. New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2023.

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Three-year retreat is one of the focal points of committed Tibetan Buddhist practice. And yet there are virtually no published, first-person accounts of what it entails to spend three years, three months, and three days in intense, sometimes solitary, practice. Vicki Mackenzie’s Cave in the Snow, a third-person narrative of Tenzin Palmo’s twelve years in a mountain cave, revealed little of that practitioner’s personal, inner journey. Diane Rigdzin Berger’s memoir exposes a great deal.

Most three-year retreats occur in a group setting, and the rules of such a retreat, specified by the supervising lama, usually restrict broadcasting details about specific practices and inner experiences to outsiders. In Berger’s case, the rules were a little more relaxed, and although she couldn’t give details of specific practices, her story comprises a rich tapestry from which anyone knowledgeable about Tibetan Buddhism can get a clear picture of what she was practicing and how these practices affected her. We can also be thankful that the author is an experienced writer with a gift for description and a poetic touch. She brings the reader right into the heart of her retreat. 

Not only was this a solo retreat, but necessity required Berger to move from place to place, supported by friends, family, and sangha members in several Pacific Northwest locales. Her retreat was directed by Kilung Rinpoche, lama and head of the Pema Kilaya sangha, based near Seattle. Berger draws on journal entries from the retreat and reflections added once she had decided to write a book about it.

The texture of Berger’s memoir is flowing and atmospheric. Closed retreat brings greatly heightened sensitivity, and here she is generously open, giving the reader access to everything from her emotional struggles and occasional physical difficulties to her insights, dreams, and inner reactions to practice. All of this is richly embroidered with references to the abundant wildlife that inhabited her various retreat settings and her feelings of close attunement to the natural world.

Despite the unusual mobile aspect of the retreat, we are given a very clear idea of what it means to be in a long, solitary, and essentially traditional Tibetan Buddhist retreat. Berger often practiced five or six sessions per day. Appropriate altars were maintained in each setting. Full attention was given to protectors and local spirits. Sang and incense offerings (such as the well-known Riwo Sangchö) were performed regularly. Her practices included Dzogchen meditation, deity sadhana practices, lengthy mantra recitation, foundational practices (ngondro) and prostrations, predawn fire pujas, daily tsoks (food offerings), and other rituals. Anyone familiar with the more advanced Tibetan Buddhist practices can guess what other, more esoteric, activities Berger was engaged in.

But why would a Westerner, and in particular Diane Berger, attempt such a feat? “To achieve enlightenment?” or “to be free?” This is, of course, the final goal for all Buddhists. But deep practices—especially those addressed in long retreats in this tradition—are done more specifically to remove obstacles to realization. And what that boiled down to for Ms. Berger, as she explains it, was to free herself from the distractions and sidetracks she had acquired from life. Perhaps these could be called her personal neuroses. Berger came to her retreat as a seasoned meditator, with decades of experience in the Tibetan tradition. She had received teachings from a number of highly regarded lamas and had practiced in Tibet and Nepal. But she was not, by nature, a recluse. Leading an exceptionally active life, early on she had worked as a journalist and later helped found a humanitarian foundation and a Buddhist sangha. Like many modern people, she was engaged with society and proactive. She had married twice, raised children, and had grandchildren.

Contemplating in her journal the benefits of her retreat, she wrote, “And now, somehow, perhaps that is the big miracle after these three years—it has become simple to sit for practice. No underlying diversionary pull, no addictive ideas, no some-thing else.”

Because her book is so open and honest about her inner world and its difficulties—similar to those all of us in the modern world acquire—we are given a realistic picture of what deep Tibetan Buddhist practice can release us from and how that comes about. This became especially clear in those transitional moments when Berger moved from one venue to the next—by car, ferryboat, and even a small airplane. Anyone who has done long solo retreat knows how overwhelming it can be to suddenly need to engage other people, to encounter the normal chaos of a supermarket, to set up a new living space. At these moments, our ingrained mental and emotional patterns suddenly reveal themselves. Such encounters are woven into the multicolored fabric of Small Boat, Vast Ocean.

At the same time, it also becomes clear that the guidance of an experienced mentor was essential. (For an uninitiated person to “cook book” such a journey from written material would be impossible and potentially dangerous.) The retreat was designed for her specifically by Kilung Rinpoche, and Berger consulted with him frequently, either via in-person visits or by phone. In some of those moments when the ground seemed to fall out from under her feet, her teacher’s advice and support kept her on track. 

By literally making her three-year retreat an open book, Berger has given those on the spiritual path an incredible gift. Readers who wish to deepen their knowledge about Tibetan Buddhism, or those considering long solo retreat, will find Small Boat, Vast Ocean entertaining and enlightening.

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Inciting Joy, poet and professor Ross Gay’s latest inquiry into happiness, reads like an intimate conversation with a close friend. With his usual playful, openhearted wisdom, Gay explores what incites joy and what joy incites through subjects like basketball, dancing, and losing your phone. The word “incite” is often used alongside something like a riot or a revolution, but it’s just as apt for Gay’s definition of joy: a force that dissolves our deepest systems of order—“me,” “you,” “good,” “bad”—and embraces the sweet complexity of what’s left. 

Sorrow is inextricably bound up in Gay’s definition of joy. In the first chapter, Gay describes this with a scene almost identical to the night before the Buddha’s enlightenment when Mara attacks him beneath the Bodhi tree. The assault finally ends, as the story goes, when the Buddha says, “I see you, Mara,” and invites him to sit down for tea. Gay’s version adds one more step: Invite your friends and their demons (he calls them sorrows) to the table too and make it a party. This “potluck of sorrows” places communion and interdependence at the center. Joy isn’t the lack of pain but the presence of love.

If joy happens when the borders of the self dissolve, suffering happens when they harden.

Gay addresses the traditional beliefs about joy, namely that it’s confined to accomplishments and possession: the big raise, a new car, organizing that pernicious storage closet, or “getting the dishes sparkling clean.” “It is sad, so goddamn sad—that because we often think of joy as meaning ‘without pain,’ or ‘without sorrow’… not only is it considered unserious or frivolous to talk about joy, but this definition also suggests that someone might be able to live without/free of heartbreak or sorrow.” 

In the chapter “Death: The Second Incitement” Gay explores his father’s cancer and eventual death. Amidst the tragedy is a tender, enduring caretaking between the father and son. The litany of pains and indignities his father suffers (being too weak to open a water bottle, vomit stains on his clothes) chips away at the ice block between them. “It was through my tears I saw my father was a garden. Or the two of us, or the all-of-us… And from that what might grow.” Illness forces us to face the reality we all exist in—we know how this ends, or more aptly, that it will. Although not all of us look after someone right up to the end, we’re all caring for the dying. From that, what might grow?

The essays on skateboarding, poetry, comedy, and academia that follow are a cartography of connection. “Despite every single lie to the contrary, despite every single action born of that lie,” Gay writes, “we are in the midst of rhizomatic care that extends in every direction, spatially, temporally, spiritually, you name it.” Each incitement enumerates the ways we brush against each other: We imitate a pro’s three-point shot, we let a classmate look at our exam, we offer a high five to a stranger.

Or we plant a garden. Gay frequently touches on his experience planting the Bloomington Community Orchard alongside a group of go-getters who transformed a barren lot into a hundred yards of fruit trees. Digging into the soil side-by-side (whose hand is whose becoming less important) to nourish seeds and saplings so they can, in turn, nourish a community—that is interdependence.

Holding each other while we fall apart, Gay says, is another word for joy. 

Caretaking, a “radical joyning,” happens when we soften the boundaries around the self. A community garden can just be another hobby, but when every mouth that enjoys a ripe mulberry is your mouth too, it becomes something much more beautiful. In a story about dancing to Kendrick Lamar in a sweaty basement, Gay describes how the crowd became “amoebic, hive-ish,” how “‘each other’ got murky.” 

If joy happens when the borders of the self dissolve, suffering happens when they harden. An essay on Gay’s college football career shows how hypermasculinity backed by violence shrinks who the self is allowed to be. After a while, there’s no need for the figure of the coach or the cop to mark the boundaries—you become your own enforcer. Don’t cry. Don’t talk back. Make the right jokes. On either side of that narrow plank, shame and punishment await. 

Even amid the minefield of men’s sports, joy persists. Gay recalls how they shaved their legs together before games, feeling each other’s freshly smooth skin, and a teammate breaking his fall with a hand on his lower back. “In almost every instance of our lives—our social lives—we are, if we pay attention, in the midst of an almost constant, if subtle, caretaking,” Gay writes in his previous collection A Book of Delights.

Lest you think Gay just has a natural proclivity for happiness, he describes a significant period of doubt and depression following his graduation. “Falling Apart: The 13th Incitement,” catalogs how his pattern of repressing tough emotions—those things we think of as “not-joy”—led to a dark period of numbness, doubt, and depression. 

“The obsessive thoughts were the churning, disturbed waters of grief denied, or grief refused, and the way to soothe those waters, it seems so obvious from here, is to wade into them. Into the deep waters, as my nana says.”

In the midst of his struggles, Gay attends a meditation class and is horrified by the teacher’s inquiries into a student’s discomfort. “Not only couldn’t I look at them talking about sorrow,” he says, “I thought it was cruel and unusual that we might be invited to watch.” Unsurprisingly, he later realizes, when you avoid your own pain, you can’t bear to look at anyone else’s either. If we want to be in meaningful relationships with others, we don’t just have a responsibility to ourselves to wade into the deep waters; we have a responsibility to our community. And holding each other while we fall apart, Gay says, is another word for joy. 

Gay’s sometimes cheeky, always honest narratives are a pleasure to read, but the book’s real gift is that it prompts us to consider our own joy. What are my incitements? What family legends and ordinary delights and old, not-forgotten wounds would end up in my own tome of joy? Not the well-polished milestones, but the moments that feel like a handful of soil in my fist: fragrant, full of life and decay, and proof of how we sustain each other. 

The post A Radical ‘Joyning’ appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

“I stayed up at night thinking about it for weeks. I wondered what I could have done in a past life that was so bad that I would be convicted as filthy and unclean in this one. Was I a murderer, a rapist, or a thief? And now that we were in America, would the conditions of my current life still be a punishment? Or had I escaped? What did escape mean? I remember lying in bed and asking God: What did I do wrong? I really want to apologize. If I hurt somebody, I want to know. I don’t think I’m untouchable. I don’t feel it, but you know, if I deserve it, I want to know . . .” 

These are the late-night ruminations of a 10-year-old Thenmozhi Soundararajan, recounting how she learned she was a Dalit, or the pejorative so-called “untouchable” caste. 

Soundararajan, an artist, Dalit activist, cofounder of civil rights organization Equality Labs, and Ambedkarite Buddhist, is the author of The Trauma of Caste: A Dalit Feminist Meditation on Survivorship, Healing, and Abolition. Through personal stories and research, the book demonstrates all the ways caste continues to separate and discriminate, both in Southeast Asia and far beyond. 

The numbers are truly shocking—in India, 37 percent of Dalits live below the poverty level, 54 percent of Dalit children are malnourished, and 38 percent of Dalit children eat separately from the rest of their classmates in government-run schools. More than 67 percent of Dalit women have experienced sexual violence, and Dalits make up 53 percent of India’s prison population. Soundararajan also cites these horrific numbers from the Indian National Human Rights Commission Report on the Prevention of Atrocities against Scheduled Castes: “every hour two Dalits are assaulted; every day three Dalit women are raped, two Dalits are murdered, and two Dalit homes are torched. A crime against a Dalit happens every 18 minutes.” And current political efforts, including the Citizenship Amendment Act, are working to revoke citizenships of “caste, gender, and religious minorities.”

India’s caste system has existed for 3,000 years and is an exclusionary social hierarchy system outlined in the Hindu religious texts. Caste can broadly be broken down into four groups: Brahmins, or the priestly caste; warriors and soldiers; merchants and businesspeople; and unskilled laborers. At the very bottom is a fifth group of the Dalits and indigenous tribes. Dalit can be translated as “broken,” and is Soundararajan’s preferred term. Others may use the government-official “Scheduled Caste.” 

In The Trauma of Caste, Soundararajan discusses the violence displayed toward Dalits in religious texts. Dalits were barred from hearing, speaking, or reading Sanskrit, the language that Hindu religious texts were written in, including the rules for different castes. She quotes the Manusmriti, which decrees that if an outcaste person hears a Vedic teaching, their ears should be filled with lead; if they repeat it, their tongue cut off; if they learn it, their body ripped apart.

While originally a distinction for Hindus, the caste system has evolved to include most religions in Southeast Asia. Caste statuses are hereditary and passed down through families, and caste often dictates access to education and the types of jobs one performs (historically, lower-caste people have assumed jobs like cleaning sewers). British rule reinforced the caste system, and after India gained independence in 1948, caste discrimination was banned in the constitution. 

For Soundararajan, her caste identity manifested as her parents’ “mysterious” social mannerisms with other South Asian families they knew—Soundararajan writes that her father introduced himself by a shortened version of his name, which she realized later was an effort to conceal where he was from and his caste status. Soundararajan’s mother—whose first reaction to Soundararajan’s question about their caste was “caste is a terrible lie”—kept her Christian altar in a closet, as she was accustomed to hiding her faith in India, where most Christians are Dalits. 

Not long after Soundararajan learned her family were Dalits, but before she realized this wasn’t a topic for open discussion, she mentioned that she was “untouchable” to a classmate, whose family was Brahmin. The girl’s mother was within earshot, preparing a snack for them: 

Her mother looked deeply uncomfortable and immediately switched plates on me—the act obvious, not hidden in any way, it disturbed. It was a line she drew quickly, and I felt its sharp sting. When I told my mom, she tried to contain her anger. Shaking, she told me not to go to that house ever again. That family was Brahmin. Their caste dictates that you don’t serve Dalits—untouchables—on the same plate you use. If Dalits so much as touch it, you have to clean it afterward, or throw it away, because of our polluted nature. 

I felt truly shocked while reading Soundararajan’s accounts of growing up in the United States. I also felt ashamed; I just had no idea caste continued to be an issue so far from India. During college, I spent a semester at a university in India and recall well the matchmaking newspaper advertisements that not so subtly hinted at caste status. I also felt angry that current Hindu nationalist efforts to eliminate those from caste-oppressed backgrounds aren’t a cause we hear very much about. 

According to Soundararajan, this is also by design, as caste privilege has worked its way into the fabric of the United States. It arrived in the late 1800s with the first wave of Indian immigrants, primarily Punjabi Sikhs who settled in the western US and worked as laborers, Soundararajan writes. The US Naturalization Act of 1906 limited citizenship to white and African Americans; Soundararajan notes two court challenges from high-caste men, A. K. Mozumdar and Bhagat Singh Thind, respectively. “Neither of them challenged the racial stipulation itself but rather made the argument that they were essentially white, given their dominant-caste identity. A. K. Mozumdar asserted that as a high-caste Hindu, he belonged to the ‘Aryan’ race; therefore, he was a brown ‘white’ person, given the shared Aryan-racial histories of white Europeans and dominant-caste people in South Asia,” Soundararajan writes. (Both men ultimately lost their cases and had their citizenship revoked.) A similar sentiment can be found today, according to Soundararajan, among highly skilled workers and CEOs from dominant castes. According to a 2021 Carnegie Endowment survey, nearly half of all Hindu Indian Americans surveyed identified with a caste, with eight out of ten belonging to a higher or upper caste.

Soundararajan is a key player in the often contentious movement in the US to include caste as a protected category on college campuses and in workplaces. In December 2022, Brown University became the first Ivy League institution to officially ban caste discrimination. In April 2022, Soundararajan was scheduled to give a talk about caste to Google News employees for Dalit History Month. The Washington Post reported that her talk was canceled after “employees began spreading disinformation, calling her ‘Hindu-phobic’ and ‘anti-Hindu,’ ” with some employees arguing on an email chain for South Asian employees that caste doesn’t exist in the US and lower-caste people lack the ability to “properly interpret Hindu scripture around caste.” Those who invited Soundararajan to speak were reportedly doxxed, and Soundararajan’s family was temporarily moved to a safe house following threats of violence. The Post also reported that Equality Labs, the organization that Soundararajan founded, started receiving invites from tech companies to speak about caste following the death of George Floyd in 2020, and that she has spoken with employees at companies that include Microsoft, Airbnb, and Netflix. 

Criticism of Soundararajan isn’t limited to the Google talk, and a quick search produces opinion pieces alleging Equality Labs fabricates surveys and has funding from nefarious sources. After Soundararajan appeared on the Conspirituality podcast and discussed her discomfort with mantras used in yoga classes, she was accused of going on an “anti-Brahmin” “tirade.” 

Soundararajan, who was raised Hindu and Christian, converted to Buddhism as an adult in the tradition of Dr. Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar (1891–1956), a Dalit who became the first to be awarded a PhD, India’s first law minister, and a drafter of India’s constitution. Ambedkar was born a Hindu and converted to Buddhism, embracing what he saw as the original teachings of the Buddha. In October 1956, six weeks before his death, Ambedkar presided over a mass conversion of an estimated half-million former Dalits. The conversions continue to this day. 

For Soundararajan, who writes that “Dalit experience was what originally illuminated suffering for the Buddha,” Buddhism offered her a way to escape her painful heritage. Soundararajan writes that she embraced Buddhism when she felt she “could not shift any of the conditions of (her) life and struggled with tremendous amounts of suffering and anguish.” 

Over the past few years, and especially in the wake of Floyd’s death, many American sanghas have been working to address their often overwhelming whiteness and make their communities a refuge for everyone. Soundararajan calls on us as Buddhists to consider caste in addition to racial inequity, and I wholeheartedly agree. The book’s appendix includes worksheets inspired by Ruth King’s Mindful of Race that can help examine our relationship to caste. Perhaps the most rewarding aspect, in addition to gaining knowledge of the Dalit struggle, is the appendix on “Caste Abolition Ancestors,” which gives short biographies on influential Dalits and Buddhists, including Ambedkar and Iyothee Thass. The Trauma of Caste should be required reading for Buddhists, so those of us privileged enough to live outside the confines of the caste system can understand what fellow Buddhists (and humans) have had to endure. 

The post ‘The Trauma of Caste’ Is Essential Reading  appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

“When there are problems, we must be able to provide help, because the purpose of [the Tibetan Children’s Village] is to serve the Tibetan children,” says Jetsun Pema, younger sister of His Holiness the Dalai Lama, in the opening sequence of Amala. Filmmaker Geleck Palsang’s graceful, succinct documentary about Jetsun Pema’s life and work is currently touring film festivals and will soon be available to wider audiences.

Alternating between historical footage and recent interviews with Jetsun Pema and the children of Tibetan Children’s Village (TCV), the organization serving Tibetan orphaned and refugee children in India that she ran from 1964 to 2006, the film recognizes Jetsun Pema’s decades of work on behalf of the Tibetan people. The message of the documentary is clear: without Jetsun Pema’s remarkable leadership, the Tibetan Children’s Village would not be what it is today. 

The majority of the documentary consists of engaging, original interviews with Jetsun Pema’s friends; her older brother Gyalo Thondup; teachers from Tibetan Children’s Village who also grew up there as children; and Jetsun Pema herself. Fascinating details about Jetsun Pema’s life as the sister of the Dalai Lama abound. As the first sibling in the family born after her brother was enthroned in the Potala Palace, Jetsun Pema was also the first child whom the Dalai Lama named, following the Tibetan tradition where parents request a lama choose the name for their child. His Holiness was 6 years old at the time. He later personally guided his sister’s education: after she graduated from Catholic boarding school in India, having been described as a “sober” young woman by her friends, she went to study in Switzerland on His Holiness’s specific advice. He told her that she would be better able to serve the Tibetan community if she had additional education. In 1964, he gave her the special task of directing the Tibetan Children’s Village.

In the process of depicting the personal trajectory of Jetsun Pema’s life, Amala also documents the development of the Tibetan Children’s Village. Beginning as a nursery for orphaned refugee children, it grew over time into a network of schools organized around a unique family model in which groups of 20 to 25 children live in homes cared for by foster parents assigned to each house. The schools became a critical agent of preserving Tibetan language and culture by educating the children in both. Cognizant that the children living in exile have both the opportunity and the responsibility to maintain the language and culture denied to their counterparts in Tibet living under the rule of China, Jetsun Pema personally translated textbooks into Tibetan and eventually helped open the Tibetan Language Institute for higher learning.  

The film also captures painful moments in TCV’s history, including early on when the organization lacked the facilities and medical care the children sorely needed. At one point, Jetsun Pema describes the year (1964–65) when 150 children arrived after walking to India from Nepal, all extremely ill. Swiss Red Cross doctors volunteering for TCV did their best, but in one night alone, four children died. In the days that followed, a child died every three to four days because of the lack of adequate medical facilities.

The documentary also covers Jetsun Pema’s leadership of the third fact-finding delegation to Tibet in 1980 that revealed horrific abuses of the Tibetan people by the Chinese government. “We spent 105 days in Tibet, over three months, and during all that time, I shed buckets and buckets of tears,” she says in the film. Personal tragedies, such as the death of Jetsun Pema’s husband and one of her daughters, are mentioned too, but only briefly. What is notable, however, in the representation of these personal losses, is that friends recount that even after the death of her husband, when her children were still young, and after the death of her daughter, she did not let her pain affect her work. 

Overall, Geleck Palsang balances heartbreaking moments with interviews by TCV graduates and teachers as they describe what the school has meant to them. A particularly moving and heart-lifting scene shows TCV alumni gathering to formally honor Jetsun Pema, and weeping as they sing to her and pray for her long life.

It’s no wonder that she is known as Amala, or “mother,” to the thousands of children who grew up at TCV. Indeed, Jetsun Pema’s own daughter says that her mother was equally mother to all of the children there as much as her own.

By celebrating Jetsun Pema in this documentary, Geleck Palsang honors both the accomplishments of an intrepid and resourceful leader, and the contribution of the Tibetan Children’s Village itself. Not only has the center provided a safe and loving home and education for thousands of Tibetan children over decades, but it has also helped preserve Tibetan language and culture for current and future generations. While viewers may leave wanting to know even more about Jetsun Pema’s personal story and fascinating life, it is likely that this film features her just as she would prefer: as a dedicated servant for the Tibetan people and the preservation of their unique culture in the face of a challenging and increasingly integrated world. 

The post New Documentary ‘Amala’ Pays Tribute to Jetsun Pema, Sister to the Dalai Lama appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

Defining literature is an undertaking that is fraught with challenges. While academics and critics long regarded literature as solely the arts of poetry, prose, and dramatic writing, contemporary understanding has expanded to include canonical texts, oral traditions, and anything written in which form and content matter. The new biannual Journal of Tibetan Literature (JTL), which launched November 15, offers a space to present, celebrate, and engage Tibetan literary expression in all its diverse forms, from ancient sutras to modern prose.

Since the Western beginnings of Tibetan studies in the 1960s, scholars have been acutely focused on texts, often Buddhist, and have largely avoided discussions based in literary criticism and theory. When scholars do explore contemporary works, they tend to categorize them based on genres that have no equivalents in Tibetan composition. Western scholars also tend to dominate published research, sidelining the voices of Tibetan researchers. With these issues in mind, the editors at JTL provide a peer-reviewed platform dedicated to research, translation, and critical appreciation that seems ready to redirect Tibetan literary studies onto a more inclusive path.

Notably, translation will take a prominent position in JTL, elevating this oft-ignored scholarly skill. Effective and faithful translation requires a depth of knowledge that transcends rote academic learning. It also necessitates a familiarity with numerous languages, a broad view of history, and a mastery of the content. Despite a long history of scholars translating texts, the academy tends to relegate translation as grunt work and not scholarship. JTL founding editors Andrew Quintman and Kurtis Schaeffer note in the first issue’s “Letter from the Editors:” 

While the practice of translation has long been central to the study of Tibetan literature, it has frequently been under valued or overlooked in the academy as a productive form of scholarship. Accordingly, there have been few venues for peer-reviewed publication of translations. JTL seeks to highlight not only the final products of academic translation but asks translators to reflect on their approaches, contexts, problems, and practices in their work. 

With an impressive editorial team of exceptional scholars, including Janet Gyatso, Brandon Dotson, Tenzin Dickie, Tsering Wangmo Dhompa, and Nancy Lin, the new Journal of Tibetan Studies seems well-positioned to become a leading voice in the field, offering engaging material for both the seasoned expert (e.g. “‘Avadana of Silver Flowers:’ A Discussion on Decolonization and Anti-Colonial Translation Practices for Tibetan Poetry” by Rabsal and Willock) and the interested non-academic (e.g. the translation of “Tsyultrim Jyamtso” by Dondrup Gyal). And it’s open source! That alone is enough to garner kudos and appreciation.

The post Redefining Tibetan Literature appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

I can’t remember when or where I first encountered the idea that Buddhists aren’t supposed to indulge in too many words, but I’ve since been exposed to all the rituals of silence and the refraining from talking, reading, or writing that happen at retreats or in Buddhist spaces. From what I understand, this caution about language stems, at least in part, from a conviction that language is a finger-pointing-at-the-moon, that it mediates reality and should be sidestepped, overcome, or disregarded to attain a higher awakening. Lately, though, I’ve been thinking that this idea must only be partially true.  

The intimate relationship between thought and language is frequently studied, but rarely has it been depicted as vividly as in Fifty Sounds, a memoir by Polly Barton, who moved to Japan at 21 and later became a literary translator. The book is a collection of fifty personal essays each revolving around Barton’s experience with a particular Japanese onomatopoeic phrase. 

The Japanese language contains an impressive sound-symbolic vocabulary, including, of course, words that describe sounds produced by animals and people, as well as ones that imitate those of the inanimate world, such as rain or wind. Additionally, there are tons of mimetics that express states of actions, and those that depict psychological modes and feelings. “Unlike most European languages, in which onomatopoeic…words are considered unrefined or baby talk, in Japanese they are an indispensable component of the language. …They overwhelm ordinary speech, literature and the media due to their expressiveness and load of information,” writes scholar Gergana Ivanova.  These phrases are, indeed, used in a wide range of situations: Take goro-goro for example, which means rolling, tumbling, or rumbling, and is often used when someone wants to say that they just spent the day at home lolling about and watching TV. Or bura-bura, “to swing back and forth,” and is used to mean a kind of wandering, browsing, or strolling. You can use the expression ho-to, which evokes a sigh of relief, and or describe the quality of a heavy downpour using zaa-zaa. When a memory or a recollection is clear in the mind, it’s maza-maza (“vividly, clearly, distinctly”), and when you’ve only just caught the train or that deadline, you’ve giri-giri (“almost, barely”) made it. There are also a dizzying number of these kinds of words to modify the quality of everyday actions like smiling, walking, and laughing. 

These mimetics, Barton writes, have traditionally been overlooked by linguistics scholars but are being reconsidered as not just very evocative means of expression, but as mechanisms with the uncanny ability to place the listener and speaker in the same exact moment by means of affect. She goes as far as to say that these phrases are, for her, “where the beating heart of Japanese lies.” More than the mastery of keigo, or honorific language that is an essential-but-Sisyphean step toward fluency that gives most Japanese-learners massive headaches, mastering these phrases—which represent for Barton “a Japanese of gesturing and storytelling, of searing description, of embodied reality”—is her linguistic ambition. 

But Barton does not discuss these mimetics merely to celebrate a specific phenomenon of Japanese (in the way that a lot of pithy articles and memes about Japanese words like the one that means, for example, “the sun seen through the trees,” tend to do). Rather, she uses them to make a larger point about how language learning is shaped by personal experience.  

“Language is something we learn with our bodies,” Barton writes, “and through our body of experiences; where semantics are umbilically tied to somatics, where our experiences and our feelings form a memory palace; where words are linked to particular occasions, particular senses.” In opposition to “the text-books, memorized lists of verbs, and smartphone apps” that are the dominant representation of language learning, Fifty Sounds tells the story of how Japanese came to be etched into Barton’s consciousness in a certain way, creating a pulsing body of knowledge unteachable by the flat interface of apps. 

“Language is something we learn with our bodies.”

I first took an interest in the book because I had a similar trajectory to Barton; I moved to Japan at 23 and began learning Japanese there. Like Barton, my life had been overwhelmingly monolingual, so the development of a new, creative power that amassed over time, and with tedious practice, was something I experienced as totally miraculous, mainly because it had felt so impossible before I started. Barton is very good at describing what those first excruciating days (or, in my case, years) are like—especially considering that those experiences must be a distant memory for someone who, today, is such a skilled translator (her renderings of fiction by Aoko Matsuda, Kikuko Tsumura, and Tomoka Shibasaki are incredible).The initiation of a true process of immersion, Barton contends, jumpstarts a second infancy—complete with toddling, incautious attempts to find a “language parent”—which is all very difficult and humiliating, and sometimes lonely:

It is the kind of learning that makes you think: this is what I must have experienced in infancy except I have forgotten it, and at times it occurs to you that you have forgotten it not just because you were too young when it happened but because there is something so utterly destabilizing about the experience that we as dignified, shame-fearing humans are destined to repress it.

There’s maybe no other way to designate this feeling of vulnerability aside from likening it to childhood, when you’re learning everything all at once. At the same time, there’s an ease when you’re not very good: “You are on holiday from the disingenuity of language. You cannot express yourself except in the most basic terms . . . plainly, with terrible grammar, and a kind of deep profundity . . . Your very incompetence, it seems, has liberated you.” 

This type of liberation, of course, is short-lived, and, as the language-learner goes deeper into their target tongue, that bliss fades. The vulnerability entailed by immersive learning contains a heavy dollop of world-shattering, which Barton describes in ways not limited to what I’ll mention here. 

Cognition is bound by the words we know, and when we only know one language—that is, when we only live with one set of cues, concepts, assumptions, and rituals—we think that those cues, concepts, assumptions, and rituals are all there could be. Barton writes, 

As long as we are part of the linguistic majority, we never have the opportunity to question [our language], or at least to do so in a fundamental, world-shifting, ground-pulled-from-under-one’s-feet way. We do not learn to define our context at all, because it is transparent to us; it is only a short step from this to a felt sense that this is all that is possible. Which means, necessary.

If we never view this context from the outside, we can mistake it as “an unshakeable aspect of profundity and permanence” and can confuse our native framework “with deep, metaphysical truths.” Our language, Barton muses, paraphrasing Ludwig Wittgenstein, is a pair of glasses through which we see the world, and it never occurs to us to take them off. Of course, this can lead us to think of language as something riddled with inaccuracies, or sure, something like directions (the pointing finger) but not the actual place (the moon). But what if language is not simply “‘a flawed distorting mirror’ of reality, but a complex, naturally evolved system to be taken on its own terms? What if . . .its primary function is not the internal thought but the social interaction?” 

In any case, the language(s) we know shape who we are, and achieving a level of competency in another tongue may help to put some dents in our self-hood, or to create another self entirely. 

“Authenticity—‘telling the truth’—is necessarily a construct forged by context.”

As her Japanese improves, Barton starts to entertain thoughts about the self being forged through language-mimicry and its lack of inherence, and although they “felt intolerably teenage-angsty,” these thoughts reveal the existence of a kind of chameleon-ship that is often praised in the abstract but despised in the day-to-day. Our society sees something noble in the ability to code-switch, to bounce between languages and diverse contexts. But sometimes the reality for multilingual people is less seamless, and certainly less glamorous. 

“It seemed to be woven into the cultural fabric of both the place I’d grown up and this new one I found myself in: a person should be consistent in their behavior if they want to avoid being immature, self-centered, flighty and irresponsible,” Barton writes. Yet, in Japan, Barton notices herself “being spineless and unfaithful on an almost daily basis.” She catches herself talking in English about how strange she finds certain concepts in Japanese, only to find that the same concepts make sense while speaking Japanese. This sense of hypocrisy may sound familiar to those who have tried to immerse themselves in another language. While living in Kyoto, I began a relationship with someone who was also studying Japanese, and who couldn’t speak English. Our fights, which happened constantly despite the obvious smallness of our range of communication, were peppered with contradictory statements. This, of course, is nothing special in and of itself. After reading Barton’s memoir, I realize that perhaps, moving between three languages, this person and I could never truly hold fast to what we were saying. For me, there were real psychological costs to this: I was skittish where my English self would have erected a boundary, and with my usual communicative defenses rendered useless, I had few tools to defend myself when our disagreements were more than miscommunications. 

It’s fruitless, Barton writes, to expect consistency from people who speak different languages, and important to remember that this changeability affects monolingual selves, too—no matter the language, we adapt to the circumstances, becoming what is expected of us. Perhaps we don’t really want to think about these things, because they also uncomfortably point to how authenticity—“telling the truth”—is necessarily a construct forged by context. 

At no point does Barton claim any sort of ownership of the Japanese language. And while her immersion contains moments of healing—liberation from self-judgment, and clarity around intentions—Barton was and remains wary of how susceptible a person of a different culture can be to “ignor[ing] the existing community… and caus[ing] those around [them] discomfort and labor that [they] are perfectly unaware of.” In other words, how easy it is to Eat, Pray, Love their surroundings into a back-drop for personal growth. More to this point, the memoir contains many amusing and somewhat painful encounters with gairaigo, or foreign loan words, that show well enough to the fact that she can never own it. Fifty Sounds situates itself in Barton’s specific journey to learn a language—it’s a memoir that “holds no aspirations to serve as a balanced or academically rigorous investigation” and is instead an “unashamedly subjective celebration of the interpersonal dimension to taking up a language.” 

So, in the end, perhaps the criticisms leveled at language as obstruction are rational enough. Immersion involves obsession, the diligence and drive to close the language barrier between you and other people. Even if language itself is not the issue, surely fixating on the right way to say things can only be a distraction to spiritual practice, if your goal is the moon. 

This is where it may be helpful to consider the parallel Barton draws between learning a language and eros: “Making the commitment to learn a language is not solely a practical, rational, commendable choice, a way of improving communication, although it can evidently be all of those.” It might more fruitfully be considered as an attempt to access the “tantalizing body of knowledge” in another, or a grasp at intimacy—a nod to the impossibility of “merging [one’s] self with theirs.” Perhaps, instead of blaming language and our attachment to language for spiritual sluggishness, we can recognize these very real desires within ourselves. 

I’m reminded of a friend who has on more than one occasion described his initial encounter with Buddhism in the same terms: “It felt like falling in love.”

The post Self in Translation appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

Sitting on a bench with my eyes closed, I suddenly heard the sound of a chime. I opened my eyes, glanced to my left, and noticed a woman leaning against the wall, scrolling through her phone. In the periphery, I could see outlines of the motionless figures around me, all seated upright in lotus position. I closed my eyes and decided to stay for a few more minutes. It felt like I was among friends, all sitting together and embracing the quiet.

This was not a meditation class. That afternoon, I sat in the presence of several large Buddha statues at the Brooklyn Museum‘s new Arts of Buddhism gallery, which opened on January 21st of this year. Though not intended for meditation, the gallery offers visitors a serene, contemplative, and educational experience while viewing a wide range of historic Buddhist art.

The setup of the gallery is unique. Rather than displaying pieces of Buddhist art in chronological order, Joan Cummins, the Lisa and Bernard Selz Senior Curator for Asian Art, has organized the gallery in distinct sections: depictions of Buddha, portrayals of various bodhisattvas, and a display of Buddhist ritual objects such as bells, vajras, and pouring vessels. This arrangement encourages visitors to consider similar objects alongside each other and discover subtle differences in style, form, and composition. In the section of buddhas, a buddha composed of granite (India, circa 9th-10th century) sits alongside one carved from wood (Japan, 12th century), and another formed from bronze (Thailand, 14th-15th century).

Nineteen of the objects on display have never before been shown in the museum. These include a Ming dynasty gilt bronze Amitayus Buddha, or Amitabha, made for a Tibetan-style temple, as well as a dry-lacquer seated buddha from Myanmar, which required extensive consolidation of the lacquer before being exhibited.

“[The gallery] is a mix of objects that are new to the collection, including some pieces that are on loan, and objects that have been in storage for a long time,” wrote Cummins in an email. “The storage pieces were either not properly studied or understood, or they required lots of conservation that they finally received prior to the installation.”

Well over half of the pieces in the gallery portray various versions of the Buddha, including the historical Shakyamuni Buddha, the Medicine Buddha, and Maitreya, the Buddha of the future. One section of the gallery portrays different versions of Shakyamuni Buddha throughout various stages of his life. A gilded bronze statue from late 19th-century Thailand—another piece that has never before been displayed in the museum—portrays him as an emaciated, starving ascetic. His face is sunken and gaunt, and his arms form a thin, lanky frame around his exposed ribs and hollow stomach. The piece feels extreme and arresting, and these characterizations remind visitors of a key Buddhist teaching—that a Middle Way approach to life, rather than one guided by either deprivation or indulgence, can lead to enlightenment.

The display of bodhisattvas juxtaposes multiple depictions of Avalokiteshvara, the bodhisattva of compassion, from India, China, Korea, and Indonesia. Also on view in this section are three impressive depictions of the goddess Tara, including a rare, eighth century sculpture from Odisha, India. This image, which portrays Tara with a soft, padded figure and warm expression, is one of the world’s earliest known depictions of the goddess. 

According to the Museum, the gallery is intended to serve as an introduction to the tenets and history of the Buddhist religion. The central gallery label provides an overview of Buddhism as both a religion and philosophical system, and includes a brief guide to the iconography that visitors will observe in the art. Throughout the space, the individual exhibit labels also function as helpful learning tools. It is through these labels that a visitor can read about the life story of Shakyamuni, learn about the distinctions between a buddha and a bodhisattva, and understand the intended purpose of a mandala, a “diagrammatic tool used by Buddhists to guide their meditation and prayer.” In the case displaying Buddhist ritual objects, the labels explain the significance of a vajra and a bell and how they represent action and wisdom, respectively. 

One of the two contemporary pieces in the exhibition, a 2011 wood painting by Brooklyn artist Megumi Nagai titled Rinne III, features Buddhist depictions of hell combined with the structure of a Buddhist mandala. While the label explains the idea of samsara, I wondered if more could have been explained about reincarnation, the Wheel of Life (in Sanskrit, the bhavachakra), karma, and dependent origination (pratitya-samutpada). While it would be impossible to convey all of Buddhism’s teachings in one gallery, I found myself yearning for more information about central Buddhist tenets such as shunyata (emptiness) and the four noble truths.

Though not intended for meditation, the gallery offers visitors a serene, contemplative, and educational experience while viewing a wide range of historic Buddhist art.

I also wondered about the absence of pieces from the Himalayas in a gallery that includes so much from India, China, Japan, and Indonesia. Cummins explained that an immediately adjacent space called Arts of the Himalayas—set to open later this year—will contain both Buddhist and Hindu art from these regions. Some of the objects on display will be a 14th century Tibetan thangka, or painting, featuring a portrait of Taglung Thangpa Chenpo, founder of Taglung Monastery in central Tibet, as well as a 16th century Tibetan Ritual Apron (Rugyan), carved from both human and animal bone.

“The Arts of the Himalayas gallery will consist primarily of art from Tibet and Nepal,” Cummins wrote. “In order to give the Himalayan region a proper treatment, we kept most of the Tibetan pieces for that gallery.”

What the Arts of Buddhism gallery can instill for any visitor is a sense of Buddhism’s vast influence across many parts of the world, and how diverse artistic representations can offer a cohesive portrayal of the faith’s central figures and symbols. Cummins also noted that the gallery will not be static, that the Museum will incorporate new pieces as it gains access to them—a point I found both exciting and grounding. Even in the world of historic Buddhist art, nothing is fixed, nothing is permanent.

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