Some of you know I know and some of you I don't know. My name is Yvonne Rand. And as Wendy said as I walked up the path, ah, the stupa lady. It is true. I'm very drawn to the topic for this evening. And what I'd like to do before we look at some slides is to talk a little bit about stupas and their origins. Can you hear me, George? How's that? Can you hear me? Not certainly, no. Do you want to sit closer or do you want to just be here? I'll just try and pay attention. Okay, all right. How many of you have been to India or Nepal? So some of you know stupas from being in that part of the world. They're maybe in modern parlance best understood perhaps as monuments, but their origin is ancient.

[01:19]

And I didn't really understand how ancient until some years ago I met Lama Anagarika Govinda, who lived under Zen Center's umbrella, so to speak, for about 10 years, the last 10 years of his life. He and his wife lived in a little house in Mill Valley. And I was one of the people involved in the logistics of his care, and so was blessed with spending time with him. And one of the things he used to do was to tell stories about his life. And one of the things that he did, in fact, I think his first work was doing archaeological studies, I believe, on the island of Sicily. of prehistoric monuments called tumuli that are the early ancestors, if you will, of stupas.

[02:25]

And he studied them because they're a great interest and puzzle. in the world of archaeology. There's not much that's known about them, except that there are these grand monuments of different shapes, cones and pyramids and hemispheres, mostly, made of stone. And they have been there for a very long time. And they are the shapes of monuments used as sacred monuments in a number of wisdom traditions. But most particularly, especially the ones that are shaped like a hemisphere, they are clearly the early source forms, if you will, for Buddhist stupas. And they were, in their early forms in southern Europe and in India, they were used as a place to remember the dead.

[03:28]

In particular, kings and great warriors and great saint types and people that everybody in the neighborhood loved. Heroes. I think probably mostly heroes. Maybe not so many heroines. Heroines, I'm afraid to say. One text that I have read about stupas described them as monuments for great personalities. So in the Digha Nikaya Sutra, the 16th chapter, verse 5, the Buddha is talking to Ananda about these early monuments and says, at the four crossroads, they erect a cairn to the king of kings. And so the Buddha said, well, if this is the way honor is shown to the great kings and leaders of the world, then the same honor should be shown for the awakened ones.

[04:42]

And so that's said to be the sort of absorbing and utilizing of this early tradition by the Buddha and has been followed ever since. Except that in the Buddhist system, they become monuments to the living rather than monuments to the dead. Even to the degree that they... maybe the structure in which ashes or relics are kept. They're really primarily to be a source of inspiration, a source of encouragement. They represent enlightenment or great illumination, the boundlessness of illumination or enlightenment. And are sometimes described as the form which represents, which expresses the Buddha's mind. And for those of you who've been in Nepal in particular, sometimes, actually rather often, the stupas are put together in such a way that eyes are painted on them.

[05:55]

so that they actually represent the Buddha seated in meditation. So for example, here is this great stupa in Bodanath. I'll pass these around. And you'll see on the top of the hemisphere, there is a square structure, which is actually reminiscent of old ancient sacrificial altars. And then there is another structure with a series of canopies. Fortunately, I didn't bring my glasses. But anyway, on that square kind of altar shape is where they do the eyes. And then this is the body of the Buddha. And hidden in the foundation structure is his crossed legs. So it's the figure of the Buddha in this posture of enlightenment. That's a very famous statue. Stupa, here's another one of that same stupa at night, all lit up. But this is just some stupa somewhere in the Himalayas in the area of Nepal.

[07:06]

And you find them with the eyes painted on in this way over and over and over again. And then this card is a picture of the great stupas at Swambu, which is in Kathmandu and is covered with monkeys. Monkey temple, right? So anyway, to go back to the Buddha, he said, let us pay the same honor to the awakened ones and their true disciples. Lama Govinda has written this book on Buddha's stupas, which is quite marvelous. And there's a quote in here. Now I'm not sure I can read it. Maybe somebody else is going to get to read it. Yeah, somebody else has to read this. Would you be willing to read it? I want you to read this quote, and you can leave out the things that are in parentheses. This is this quote from the Buddha about these stupas, beginning at the top of the page.

[08:09]

As they treat the remains of a king of kings, so Ananda, should they treat the remains of Tathagata. At the four crossroads, Charon should be erected to the Tathagata. And whosoever shall there place garlands or perfumes or paints, or make salutation there, or become in its presence calm in heart, and then shall long be to them a profit and a joy. Just a second. So that's a list of the different kinds of offerings he's suggesting that one might make at such a monument. The man, Ananda, worthy of a Karen, are four in number. Which are the four? A king of kings. Should I read the Pali too? No, you don't have to. A Tathagata, an able awakened one, is worthy of a cairn.

[09:11]

One awakened for himself alone is worthy of a cairn. And a true healer of the Tathagata is worthy of a cairn. Am I pronouncing this right? Cairn. Yeah. A cairn is a monument, anything from a pile of stones to stacked stones to something built with some shape. So he's really referring to these early stupa forms as cairns. At the thought, Ananda, this is the Karen of that able-awakened one. The hearts of many shall be made calm and happy, and since they had calmed and satisfied their hearts, they will be reborn after death, when the body has dissolved in the happy realms of heaven. It is on account of this circumstance, Ananda, that a Tathagata, an able-awakened one, is worthy of a Karen. Great, thank you.

[10:14]

So from the time of the Buddha on, there is this shift from these big structures being burial sites to being structures which are made with the intention of reminding us of the pioneers who have gone before us. inspiring and encouraging us, and monuments which will make us happy, make our hearts happy. It's one of the descriptions of the Buddha's suggestion about the effect or benefit of having a stupa. And when I read that passage, I remembered my experience when I first went to India. The first time I went to go on a pilgrimage and I went to Bodh Gaya and to Sarnath and to Vulture Peak and to Nalanda, particularly at Bodh Gaya because I spent the most time there.

[11:18]

I couldn't stay away from the stupa that's built at the site of the Bodhi tree under which Shakyamuni was enlightened. It's actually a garden of stupas. There are hundreds, maybe thousands of stupas there. And I did indeed have a happy heart whenever I was there. It was a place of great beauty. It was a place filled with people doing every possible practice you could imagine. Some people would be there on bowing boards doing prostrations. Some people would be sitting in meditation. Some people would be reciting texts. Many, many, many people would be doing circumambulations and reciting mantras and doing visualizations. And it was like all happening at once. One day when I was there, a young woman came with a big, huge bag in which she had 108 little clay dishes that she had made.

[12:23]

And she then filled each one with ghee, with clarified vegetable oil. And she hand-rolled wicks and made candles. And then she put her 108 handmade candles at the base of the stupa because that was a practice of offering. And it said that you would receive great merit from doing those kinds of practices. And the more you did in making all of it, the better. The niches in the stupa, the main stupa at Bodh Gaya are filled with figures of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas. And often there are many butter lamps and candles. But what was particularly wonderful was being there on the winter solstice when the stupa was completely covered with those little tiny Christmas tree lights. And thousands of butter lamps, which were burning all night long.

[13:27]

Monks debating, people, I mean it was just buzzing all night with people doing practices. And at the time that I went on that pilgrimage, my heart was rather heavy. And being there certainly healed the heaviness of my heart and left me feeling really inspired by the liveliness of the Buddhist tradition and the wonderful variety of practitioners and yet this quality of a kind of through line through all of them, no matter what color their robes, no matter what country they came from, no matter what practices they were doing. And, of course, what happened as I went from one place to another, I actually only made it to, let's see, Bodgaya Sarnath. Bodh Gaya and Sarnath, the first time, I'm doing this the slow way. It's probably going to take me seven pilgrimages to go to all the pilgrimage places.

[14:30]

But everybody that I'd seen at Bodh Gaya, I then ran into at Sarnath, by which time we were all sort of old buddies and waving to each other. And then when I went back to Delhi, there were some holy places there and of course they all showed up there. So there gets to be this kind of loose knit traveling group and you all keep running into each other and you have tea and you trade rosaries and it's really lovely. Before I show you the slides, there's one other piece of symbolism. The symbolism of stupas is quite extensive. But the main symbol that I want to mention tonight is that the hemisphere, the dome, which you find in most stupas, is described as being the symbol of the all-encompassing or all-embracing sky. And so it reminds us of this wonderful sky under which we live.

[15:38]

And the whole stupa, because of the richness of the symbolism, I think is quite vast. I brought these four stupas just to give you a little sense of the great variety of them. And because I wanted to tell you about this one that's associated with Atisha. This big stupa here has little leaves that are, for the botanists in the group, would recognize them as the shape of the leaf of a ficus. And, of course, the Bodhi tree is in that family and has that shaped leaf. So here's a stupa which is adorned with these little leaf-shaped pieces of copper. And when I first got this stupa, which I think probably has somebody's ashes in it because there's a certain amount of rattling around in there. There were a few leaves missing and the young man who was making some copper gutters at our house said, oh, I'll make some more leaves for you.

[16:46]

And he sat down, carefully cut out with his tin snips some more leaves. So that's a pretty simple one, that big one there. This one here in the middle is a full-blown Tibetan style stupa. Interestingly, the Tibetan stupas and the ancient Indian stupas that were built in the early days of the flowering of Buddhism in India are more alike to each other than stupas in other countries, which I thought was interesting. You'll notice in all three of these that there are these rings, and those are like umbrellas. And so some stupas have just a single umbrella like this one. And then as they get more gussied up, they have more umbrellas. This one I think is quite splendid, the dark one, because it's sitting on the back of a turtle.

[17:48]

And I don't know if any of you heard, before Nakamura Sensei left, a few days before she left, she had a dream in which a great turtle came up to her. And when she told me about the dream, she said, this is a very good dream because turtles are the sign of long life and it means I'm going to live for 10,000 years. Turtles are wonderful. And, of course, it is said that our continent is... is on the back of a turtle. So this stupa is now on the back of a turtle. And on the side, above the double lotus throne, on the side of the square section are the Jnani Buddhas. A little funky because it's a little old and hard to read, but that's who they are, I think. The stupa I'd like to tell you a little bit about is the one here at the end of the table on my left.

[18:53]

And a stupa that has this kind of shape in the middle where there are these kind of spurs coming up. That particular, a stupa that looks like that is associated with Atisha. And if any of you do not know about Atisha, I recommend the great text attributed to him called The Lamp Illuminating the Path to Enlightenment. It is a very important text for us Soto Zen people because he really delineates the Bodhisattva path in a way that is referenced for us when one goes through Dharma transmission ceremonies. One of the sort of maps that you are expected to draw is an illustration of this text. It's very consistent. It's quite interesting. Anyway, the story goes that Atisha did a lot of wandering, wandered around through Asia and taught and studied with great teachers.

[20:05]

Wherever he went, he always carried a stupa in his backpack. And whenever he'd have some great illumination or he'd meet some wonderful teacher or he'd come to a sacred place, anything special happened, he'd take his pack off and he'd take the stupa off the pack and he'd put it down on the ground and then he'd do prostrations. So he had this traveling stupa, which I think is wonderful. So this particular stupa has a cloth, a piece from one of Lama Govinda's robes in it. Anyway, I like the association with Lama Govinda and also with Atisha, whom I have great, I revere greatly. I've been helped by his text a lot. So let's, yeah. Is there any significance to its conical shape versus the other ones that are squirted? Well, no, except that it's a very early form.

[21:07]

And interestingly, these prehistoric monuments, this is one of the shapes of them. It happens not to have been the shape that's picked up on primarily in India. But you do find shapes like this in Southeast Asia somewhat more often. And I don't quite know what's going on with this kind of spire business around that middle section. Now, above that, those concentric rings are versions of an umbrella, a series of umbrellas stacked with a kind of flame on top. Yeah? Do you ever go inside of stupas? Well, in Bodh Gaya, there is a temple that you can go in with a big figure of Shakyamuni Buddha in the posture of enlightenment. And then on the second level, there's another big room where the entire Buddhist canon is kept.

[22:14]

And then on the four corners of that upper terrace there are smaller stupas which you can go and sit in. And very often people will sit in meditation in those. The Tibetans wouldn't dream of having an unoccupied or open stupa or figures. They're all stuffed with prayers and texts and things like that. In Japan, on the other hand, you go inside stupas, you go inside figures of Buddhas. On a train ride from Tokyo to Kamakura, one day I saw this enormous Avalokiteshvara looming up the size of a mountain. Suddenly from the mountain right the train was going by, looming up behind the mountain is this vast white cannon. Well, I got off the train and decided I better go see that.

[23:20]

It took me forever to figure out how to get to it. I kept knocking on people's doors to try to find the path. When I finally got to it, it's fairly new. It's concrete. It's described as the goddess of mercy and was built for world peace. And next to it, they have a constantly burning lamp, which was lighted by flames from the fires that were started by the bombing of Hiroshima. And you go inside that figure, and there's this whole little Shingon temple with a priest who hits the bells and the drums and chants and waves flags and does all these things. It's this kind of one-man Dharma band. It's quite wonderful. So it depends on what country you go to. The Tibetans are appalled at the idea of having it all kind of open. It's not what you do with the body of the Buddha.

[24:21]

So it just depends. And, of course, all of these are sealed or are meant to be because they are commonly used for relics, ashes or a bit of clothing or a tooth or toenail clippings or, you know, whatever one has. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Well, the big ones are built with a platform, a terrace on the upper level where you can do your circumambulations. And they're actually designed that way. Yes, that's true. That's particularly true of the big stupa at Bodanath. Bodanath. It's about not very far from Kathmandu. Quite beautiful. Okay, so let's turn off the lights and I'll show you some slides.

[25:25]

What time should we end? Okay, so we'll, oops. No, it's all right. It's okay. So this is the great stupa in Bodh Gaya. For a long time, the original stupa was buried. I think it was covered up to save it from destruction by invasions. in India and then this was constructed on the site of the early stupa and to the left of the stupa as we're looking at it is where the Bodhi tree, the relative of the Bodhi tree under which it is said Shakyamuni sat and was enlightened. And you see all those little alcoves And many of them have Buddha figures or figures of Bodhisattvas in them.

[26:28]

And originally they were all filled. And you can see then up on the top all the arrangement of canopies. Hmm. I was afraid this might happen. Hmm. Stuck. No, it's stuck. Somebody has to turn the light back on. Now, what are we going to do here? We have a great deal of moisture in our house, and I'm having trouble with my slides being a little wet, and I think they started to come apart. No. Take it off. I'm gonna, no, there's an easier way to do it. Let's not risk that again, huh? Yeah.

[27:31]

Well, we'll see. I tried to pick slides I seem to take, you know, 400 pictures of everything, so I tried to pick slides, but this was not going to happen with them. Okay, now, those stupas on either side are actually on the second story. And, of course, in that whole region, this is what you can see. Now, this is a very old stupa, one of, as I said, hundreds, maybe even thousands, in the garden that surrounds that big stupa that we were just looking at. And this is a very classical shape.

[28:34]

And you see there's another old stupa on top. Very common to just take little remnants of this and that and pile them all together. Excuse the darkness, but here's some more. And at certain times, particularly at this time of the year, coming, well, not quite this early, but in the week or so before Buddha's Enlightenment Day, someone might donate yellow paint, or if someone was really wealthy, they might come and actually put gold leaf on some of the figures. So you'll notice in the stupa on the left, those figures have all been painted yellow. Now this is, you can see there in the background the kind of entrance that comes all the way down to the ground and that's where the shrine that's on the inside of the stupa is. But then you get a sense of all these other structures around.

[29:39]

Now this is just piled up bits of old stupas. Just all glopped together with cement. Just any old witch way. And then someone comes along with their bucket of yellow paint and just paints whatever they feel like painting. And it's a great offering. You can see some of the figures that are glistening have actually been covered with gold leaf. So that's all in the manner of offerings. Is Buddha on the way top? Yes, on the very, very top. There's a figure of Buddha. Well, that figure's maybe, I don't know, a foot and a half. You know, it's not so big. You mean the one on top? The one on the very top. So the whole thing? Oh, the whole thing is 15 feet, maybe. I just flipped.

[30:40]

I thought, this is, anything goes. We could do anything we want. But embedded in there, you see some really old pieces that are this very, you know, just this hemisphere shape. This is a close-up of the main stupa with the niches with figures in them. And it gives you some idea of the level of the stone carving. It's just incredibly beautiful. Pardon me? Oh, yes. Well, it's just, you know, more offering material. This is in Bodh Gaya. Another of Ivan's exquisitely focused. Well, you get the idea. I'm sorry it's not so focused. But now his lips have been painted. See? See? No, no, no, it's not permanent.

[31:45]

Nothing's permanent in India. Now, behind this stupa, you see a stone fence, which is quite old, that goes all the way around the main stupa in Bodh Gaya. And this is right in the area. We're actually looking at a part of the Bodhi tree. And this, not very long ago, this fence was completely reconstructed. So it's mostly the old original pieces, but then when there were some missing, they re-carved and replaced, rebuilt the whole thing. So that's all done out of stone. It's beautiful, slightly pink cast to it. So here's a stupa carved into a kind of pillar. This is looking through the fence out into the garden beyond the Bodhi tree.

[32:57]

And you'll see there are a number of stupas there in the background. And this particular big grassy area is where there'll be a great assembly of monks and nuns and lay practitioners for teachings or to do special ceremonies to commemorate Buddha's Enlightenment Day or his Nirvana Day or whatever. Now, we are now walking around the base of the main stupa inside the stone fence on a marble walkway. On the right are lotuses. which is one of these platforms where people will very often put candles or butter lamps for offerings. And then in the background is this wonderful white stupa, which is up on that knoll, grassy knoll, and then there's a whole little room inside of it.

[34:00]

Again, a place where people often will go and sit and meditate. And because it's painted white, it's kept white like that, and it just glows. It's really beautiful. There's a Tibetan pilgrim with her prayer wheel and her beads doing her mantras. There are three walkways at three different levels, one at ground level, one at the medium level, and one higher up. And often those walkways, especially during the main pilgrimage season, will be just packed with people. Here's a, excuse me. Yeah, yes. In fact, the beggars in India charter buses to go to Bodh Gaya during the pilgrimage season because the begging is so good. This is, again, a very old stupa, and you see the form of it is quite simple.

[35:02]

Another one that's quite old. This wonderful dome shape. Here we have the concentric rings that are the layers of the umbrella protecting the dome. This is from up on the second level of the main stupa looking down into the garden below. A woman sitting down there reading a text. So here's a stupa with green taras and white taras. in that bottom section of it. In the background is a stupa with a Shakyamuni Buddha figure as the main figure in it. Here are some monks gathered for morning practices in the early morning.

[36:05]

No, those are all Tibetan Buddhist monks, and they just don't all have their formal okesa on. The yellow robe is the formal okesa, which is exactly like the one that we wear. And then the other monks just have their shawls on. So it must be a somewhat informal gathering of morning practices. If it was a more formal ceremony, they would all be with the yellow robe on over the maroon robes. And my guess is that what they've got is the young monks who are all in their yellow robes there with some of the older monks coaching them through some practices or prayers. In the background you can see more of the stupa, stupas. So this is again looking down into the garden and you see there are stupas of many different sizes and shapes and they're kind of just everywhere. Gives you a little sense of the detail in that stone fence.

[37:20]

More offerings. Can of white paint and, you know, you say your prayers and put a little dab of paint there. Oh, yeah, just do your thing. There are no guards. Nope, nothing. And this is up on the second level, looking down into the Bodhi tree. So there's this abundance of stupas on that side of the terrace. This is actually a tree that was, I guess, seed for this tree was brought from a tree that was in Sri Lanka, which was planted from seed from the original tree. Or maybe it's grandparent, great-grandparent, something like that. So at one time, every one of those niches had a figure in it.

[38:42]

I don't know. I think in this particular area, not. But in other parts of Bodh Gaya, in fact, the Japanese are just now building an enormous... Shakyamuni Buddha. It's huge. And there are stupas being built in other parts of Bodh Gaya. These are really old. So this is one of the smaller stupas on the second floor with the little kind of shrine room. You know, it's probably... Five feet square, something like that. Oh, this is some detail from that one we looked at earlier that was just a whole hodgepodge.

[39:55]

Now that's looking down through the main entrance into the temple that's in the base, the ground floor of the stupa. And then you can see on the second level the door into the room where the Buddhist library is. This is the sort of... It's not the sort of, this is the main entrance. And then just to the left are a series of little alcoves where you can sit and meditate. I don't remember how old it is. It's... It was rebuilt in this century, the early part of this century. Yeah, this, the main big stupa was. And I'm not sure when the original early stupa was rediscovered. It had been buried. Oh, they were unearthed when they started, you know, and they've been brought together.

[41:16]

Yeah, yeah, I think some of them are certainly that old. So this is going into the shrine room. And you can see there, way in the back, the figure of Shakyamuni Buddha. This is the entrance at the ground level. And this is at night. And you see people bringing old candles. This is the Bodhi tree. And just on the other side of it, there are big stone carved feet with a very sweet Indian man smearing them with yellow paint and taking cloth rubbings, which he sells to tourists and pilgrims. A relative.

[42:18]

So this is another view of the Bodhi tree with the stupa in the background. That carved stone altar in front. Those are bowing boards. People are doing prostrations. No, that's not a Bodhi tree. That's a banyan tree. And this is the stupa at Sarnath. which I was... I really loved this soup. I found it very... I felt a very strong pull to this place. In fact, there was another hill outside of... the village itself, which I was drawn to even more, that had hundreds of little tiny, you know, maybe a foot or a foot and a half high stupas people had made with loose stones, hundreds of them on this hill, and ruins from an old stupa. And I never could get my camera to work.

[43:22]

I never could get a picture of it. But I couldn't stay away from that place. It was like a magnet. And what was striking to me in all of these pilgrimage places was how much of a sense of the historical Buddha's presence I had. I was really amazed. Anyway, this is, of course, much older than the stupa that we've been looking at. And you'll See some of the detail of it. There's our friend Robert Thurman and his son. This is the main walkway going up to the stupa. And you see, this is what it looks like up close. All carved and layered together. When I was there, the Indian government was actually working on doing some restoration work on the stupa. And this is, of course, where the Buddha gave his first teaching at the Deer Park.

[44:22]

Well, it's over 2,000 years old. Now, this is taken from the ruins of the monasteries there at Sarnath. This is from inside one of the monastery ruins. And there, we're looking over towards where the deer are, as in Deer Park. Here are all these pilgrims doing their circumambulations. I must have the picture in backwards, because they're certainly not going the wrong way. Now, this is a very interesting stupa.

[45:32]

This is Rajgir. And I took this picture from Vulture Peak, from the platform on Vulture Peak, where the Prajnaparamita was first taught. And on the hill above that spot, Vulture Peak, the Japanese have built this enormous stupa. There it is. Vast. And inside is a really marvelous big shrine room. It's very beautiful. So there is the Parinirvana Buddha. It's a different Buddha in each of the four directions. The teaching mudra. This is Nalanda University. And here are the remains of some old stupas with some newer ones mixed in.

[46:38]

That's the library in the background. This is just a tiny portion of the excavation. to make a kind of pyramid-shaped monument, which carries a lot of the same association with the more traditional stupa form. It's the one where... There's a famous Jizo figure there. It's on the west side of the city. I just can't remember the name of it. This is an old graveyard on Chococo Island, but you can see some of the stupas that are used in graveyards.

[47:41]

Yes, it is. And a Jizo figure in the foreground. There's some stupas in the foreground, more the kind that you find in Japan. Oh, this is interesting. This is a stupa shape. used for burning incense at the entrance to this temple. This is Tartulku's temple in Bodh Gaya. So that would have incense put in it and then it would come out the top, but it's that same shape. And then this is one that was up near the shrine room that was filled with incense every morning, just before dawn. This is back in Japan again. This is the shape of a stupa that is used for marking the ashes site for a priest in Japan.

[48:46]

This is actually quite a marvelous graveyard at a temple that was originally built as a refuge for battered women, battered wives near Kamakura. And this is a more kind of pagoda-style stupa in Japan, but still essentially a stupa form. Okay, we can have the lights. So I showed you pictures. Okay, maybe we have a little bit of time for some questions. You have some things that you wonder about with all of this? Part of the inspiration for having me talk a little bit about stupas and show you these slides of stupas in different parts of the Buddhist world is because of our hoping to build a stupa for world peace here at Green Gulch above the garden.

[49:59]

My dream has been to drop this image into the mind's eye of all the tourists that go by in the tour buses on Highway 1. What is that over there? And since it's such an ancient form and has continued through so many centuries and through so many different cultures, it seems wonderful to begin having them on this continent. And of course, the people who have been building the most stupas in the United States have been Japanese practitioners. There are some big ones. There also are a few stupas that have been built more in the Tibetan style, but not so many. Stupas have not come to America in anything like the quantity they could. Well, yeah, except that Cairn really means burial place.

[51:12]

It's a burial monument. That's why I like to use the word monument, because it can go either way. And although they certainly, in the mainstream of the way they're used traditionally in Buddhism in many different traditions, commonly do have relics in them or are on top of an ashes site, they aren't only to be used as a memorial for someone who's died, but are clearly, from the time of the historical Buddha, meant to be a source of inspiration. Yeah. How many would you estimate new stupas being built there in each year? Oh, I have no idea. I mean, it depends to some degree on how strict your definition is. People are building stupas by piling stones, right?

[52:14]

wherever they go throughout the Buddhist world, and particularly in the Himalayan region. And a lot of it has to do with being in an area where there's a lot of rock. And one of the things that was news to me when I went to India is that it's a country with extraordinary stone. Marble, marble, marble, marble everywhere. Everything is built of marble. beautiful stone. Japan has incredibly beautiful stone. So some of the stone stupas in Japan are really very beautiful, very, very beautiful. But, you know, wherever practitioners are practicing, they seem to be continuing to be making stupas. And they continue to be used as monuments that you build at a place where something, a sacred place or in remembrance of some great teacher.

[53:19]

Commonly when a great teacher dies, a stupa will be built to hold his remains. And that certainly is continuing, that practice is continuing throughout the Buddhist world in Asia. Well, there's one in Western Massachusetts. Yeah, they're all built for peace in the world. See, there's one near Amherst. There's one somewhere in the Midwest. No, not that I know of. Oh, that's not true. There is a big Chinese, not Japanese, but there's a big Chinese temple in Southern California near Los Angeles. And they have a big, big stupa there with thousands of Buddhas in it.

[54:21]

What's the size of the one we proposed for here? About 13 or 14 feet high. Including the platform for circumambulating, I think we figured 16 feet square, but that would include a four-foot, no, three-foot? I can't remember. It anyway includes a section, a walkway for circumambulating. Re-restore. No, we'd probably do it in cement and then maybe face part of it. I mean, what I would hope we might be able to do would be the square base could be faced with stone. And... I actually, I don't know why I didn't, oh, I know why I didn't bring the picture because I couldn't find it. We are, we had the septic, the septic tank, the pipe that puts all the stuff into the septic tank has a big hole and leaks, et cetera.

[55:30]

So my interview room has been, has a cement floor got shack hammered and it's just, anyway, I can't find anything because everything's in boxes. But one of these days, all on earth, maybe, do you still have a copy of the photograph? You might stick it up in the bulletin board. There's a stupa that's a somewhat simpler version of this middle, small stupa that was built at Vajrapani in the Santa Cruz Mountains. And it's quite beautiful. And One of the nice things about doing a stupa along that pattern is that the people who worked on it would help us along with getting some help from the monks. No, that one. That one, yeah. But not with all the curlicue stuff. Yeah. If you can find the picture, you could probably find it sooner than I can find mine. Because it's pretty clear from that picture, and the base has been faced, actually, with stone.

[56:36]

And then you do a kind of stucco over the cement. It's quite beautiful. And then you make, in that little chamber, you put a Buddha figure in the, you see that top section? There's like a little shrine in there. You can put a figure of the Shakyamuni Buddha in it. They have one in the Tibetan Center in Vermont. Oh, I'm sure. Sure. Anybody else have questions or things you wonder about? I don't know where it's from. It feels more Indian to me. I love the leaves. Aren't they great?

[57:38]

Which meaning do umbrellas have? They are for protection and also for celebration. So for example, when you do a procession for some big ceremony, We've done it in Zen centers. Sometimes when we have had a big procession, you get a big splendid umbrella and you carry it over the head of the abbot or the presiding priest who's leading the procession for some ceremony or another. I have a wonderful photograph of a big procession that His Holiness the Dalai Lama did prior to special teachings at the stupa in Bodh Gaya. This extraordinary, vast, yellow cloth umbrella, very beautiful. Sometimes they're made with big, like a canvas that's been painted with scenes from the life of the Buddha or whatever.

[58:45]

So it's a combination of protection and celebration. And often with some sense of being the mark of nobility, only in this case we're talking about the nobility of the spiritual realm. I didn't read very much at all about the thing that Christo just did after everybody else did. His umbrella thing? Right. Was that in line with the spirit that you're talking about? It had nothing to do with those yellow umbrellas? No. It was purely a device to... Well, it was his... That's his art form, you know, to do... He's big on cloth things out of doors. It was kind of heartbreaking the way the project ended. One of the big umbrellas blew over and killed a woman.

[59:49]

And then a man who was working on the cranes, doing something with the umbrellas in Japan, something happened with the crane. So there were two deaths associated with the project. So to put a real, anyway, it's been very, it was very sad. Yes. Yes. No, that seems to be very much in the tradition with the way stupas are built in Nepal. That's one of the characteristics of stupas in that part of the Himalayan world. Yeah. And they're all done that way. I mean, even the kind of funky ones way off the beaten track. Yeah. Yes, absolutely. They just got carried away with the umbrella part. But they are essentially stupas.

[60:52]

Yeah. Yeah. Any of you who are interested in reading more about Buddhist supas, I recommend this little book of Lama Govinda's, The Psychocosmic Symbolism of the Buddhist Supa. The history, it's good German scholarship, you know. The history and the symbolism and how it changes historically through time. It's a very interesting book. I really enjoyed studying it. Oh, I wanted to show you this. I don't know if any of you have gone to this exhibit of Indonesian art at the Asian Art Museum. It'll be on, I think, through December, the end of December. This is a figure of Prajnaparamita. And it is, I think, one of the most beautiful figures I've ever seen. It's a portrait of a princess.

[61:54]

who lived, was a real live princess in Indonesia. And so, very like what we saw in the Wisdom and Compassion exhibit with some of the Tibetan sacred art, in this, some of the figures in this exhibit as well, and this picture of this sculpture, I think is really the quintessence of the combination of this world and transcendence. This is clearly the face of someone who lived. And the figure is also absolutely an expression of transcendent wisdom. It's really stunningly beautiful. Anyway, some of you have undoubtedly heard of the great ruins at Borobudur. And I've put markers in here of three pictures of that site.

[62:59]

And in this first one, you can see how the whole place was built as a mandala. And it's a series of stupas that are put together to make a giant stupa. It's all there. It's quite interesting. And then this picture is another view of it. And then the third one shows up on the upper level, they have these stupas. that are like, I call them the peek-a-boo stupas, because there are big openings. You can look inside, and inside each one is a stone carved figure of a Buddha. And on each layer of the main structure, there are different Buddhas in different groupings. So, for example, on the very uppermost, there are 540 figures of Vairocana. each one inside a stupa.

[64:04]

And then there's one stupa that's left partially open, so you can see how the figure is set inside. Anyway, you might enjoy looking through those. It's pretty wonderful. So I encourage you to go to the exhibit. There's a big, maybe life-size carving of a monk meditating, and then there's a very, very large figure of... And you will learn a lot about meditation and meditation posture from looking at those figures. And what I was struck by in seeing them, I've gone in and sort of sat with them. four or five times now. And I realized that these wonderful figures communicate something about not only posture but states of mind without it going through the language centers.

[65:07]

So you have an enormous amount of information that you just get when you see these beautiful figures. These figures are very different from the Wisdom and Compassion exhibit. They're very quiet, but quite beautiful, really quite beautiful. Through December. So... Yeah. Yeah, I'd love to go. Sure. Sure. Oh, yeah. I'd be glad to. If we could ever organize it on a Monday or a Tuesday, we could actually have it to ourselves. No. No, really. We could go in and have it completely to ourselves. And what I've done the last few weeks when I've gone is to take a cushion.

[66:08]

I'll talk, you know, like I did with the other exhibit, talk for an hour or an hour and 15 minutes, and then everybody can pick the figure they want to sit with and do a period of meditation with the figure. And I'll tell you, doing that with this Prajnaparamita figure is really, it's the way to be with these figures. Say goodnight to George. Goodnight, George. Goodnight, George. That was very interesting. I did this year's Indeed. It's very true, Lois. Sleep tight. That's a quite old piece, that one. It's about 250 years old with relics in it. One always wonders what. I made a Bodhidharma altar the other day

[67:12]

And I don't pick the image up very often, but I realized when there was this little trickle of what at first I thought was sand, that it's actually a reliquary. Okay. Okay. When I get unpacked again, I actually have more pictures of stupas from Japan. These were just a few that I could find. But they're very interesting in Japan because there's such a clear distinction made between the way they're used for lay people as ashes markers, for distinction between lay people and priests. And it took me a while to realize that it was such a clear distinction. But looking at the picture I showed you made me think of the first time I went to Suzuki Roshi's temple in Japan.

[68:15]

And there is a row. This is quite traditional. In the temple, there's a graveyard for all of the abbots. So going back to the founder. So the person who is the current abbot, every time he goes out to that graveyard, gets to see the spot where his ashes will be placed. His spot is sitting there kind of saying, yoo-hoo. And it was quite striking going into the graveyard and seeing that space, sitting there and looking at Hoichi and realizing, you're going to be there one of these days. And of course, they're all about the same size and the same shape. Quite beautiful. Okay, thank you very much.

[69:08]

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