Buddhist Goddesses of India

Miranda Shaw's Buddhist Goddesses of India is one of my most cherished books. The Introduction itself is something that I think every Buddhist should read, and you can download it for free from the publisher's webpage. Here's just a taste:

"The Buddhist pantheon of India features a fascinating and diverse array of female divinities. The pantheon is dazzling in its breadth, encompassing voluptuous tree spirits, maternal nurturers, exalted wisdom figures, compassionate healers, powerful protectors, cosmic mothers of liberation, and dancing female Buddhas. Goddesses preside over childbirth, agriculture, prosperity, longevity, art, music, learning, love magic, and occult practices. There are goddesses who offer protection from epidemics, snakebite, demons, curses, untimely death, and every mortal danger. There are also goddesses who support practitioners in their pursuit of knowledge, mental purification, a higher rebirth, and full spiritual awakening."

After the Introduction, the first chapter is on the Earth Goddess, Prthivi. Most Buddhists are vaguely aware of the fact that just before the Buddha attained enlightenment he reached down and touched the earth. In fact, this "earth-touching posture" is one of the most common motifs for statues and other depictions of the Buddha. The whole story goes like this, according to Shaw's rendition:

"When Mara, the king of demons, challenged Siddhartha to provide a witness to his worthiness to attain enlightenment, the Bodhisattva stretched forth his golden hand and touched the earth, invoking the one who observes and remembers every event that transpires on her vast body. Responding to his summons, the earth goddess rendered her testimony in world-shaking tones and personally dispersed Mara's armies. In doing so, she created the environment of peace necessary for the Buddha-to-be to enter the subtlest spheres of meditation and attain full spiritual awakening. So crucial was her intervention that she is said to perform the same role in the enlightenment of every Buddha throughout the ages."

Other chapters that I especially loved were the ones on Lakshmi (whose image adorns the earliest known Buddhist structures found in India), Prajnaparamita (the Goddess who embodies the foundational teachings of Mahayana Buddhism), Tara (the Universal Savioress), Chinnamunda (the Goddess who cuts her own head off while dancing ecstatically), and the Red Enchantress and Mistress of Knowledge Kurukulla (who is often associated with Red Tara).

Maybe some day I'll write a more in depth review of this book. Here's a short and sweet review I found on the web, by Leah Samul.

Alan Watts explains it all

Here is a very well done video which combines snippets of talks given by Alan Watts with animation from Trey Parker and Matt Stone of South Park fame.

Unfortunately whoever posted this on youtube gave the whole thing the moronic title "Atheist Spirituality" - but that can be ignored. Alan Watts was about as much of an atheist as I am.

My favorite segment from the video is the one on "Appling", which starts at 3:01. A different version of what Watts says in that segment can be found in "The Book on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are", which can now be downloaded as a pdf (clicking on this link will automatically download the file) here.

Brad Warner on Buddhism, Evolution, and Women

Brad Warner's article on Buddhism, Evolution, and Women that he wrote for Suicide Girls is damn good. He says "The powerful patriarchal religions of the modern world have mostly treated women like shit .... Except for Buddhism." He then spends the rest of the article defending this claim against the anticipated charge of "sounding like a shill for Buddhism."

The reason I really like what Warner says is that there are far too many people who unthinkingly make sweeping generalizations about "all religions" without ever bothering to find out what different religions actually do and say. Buddhism is far from perfect with respect to the issue of sexism, but I think Warner makes a good case that wherever and whenever there is sexism in the Buddhist Sangha, this "goes against the explicit directions" of the Buddha himself.

Oh, the actual article by Warner (at the Suicide Girls website) is here. Warner is supposed to have a new article coming out soon on meditation and post-traumatic-stress, or something like that. That's what I was looking for when I found this article. When that one comes out I'll probably post something about it, too.

OK, so finally I've got a little Buddhist content on this blog!

Note added later: Warner's next SG article won't appear until Monday, his blog says it will be "about whether or not zazen is dangerous for trauma survivors."

Wicca and Philosophy, Part Three: The Threefold Law

'Thou hast obeyed the Law. But mark well, when thou receivest good, so equally art bound to return good threefold.' (For this is the joke in witchcraft, the witch knows, though the initiate does not, that she will get three times what she gave, so she does not strike hard.)
[High Magic's Aid by Gerald Gardner]

The Story, Glaucon, would take too long to tell; but the sum was this: --He said that for every wrong which they had done to any one they suffered tenfold .... for each and all of their offenses they received punishment ten times over, and the rewards of beneficence and justice and holiness were in the same proportion.
[The Republic by Plato, Book X, The Myth of Er]

Selena Fox, of Circle Sanctuary, wrote (here) that "Most Wiccans acknowledge that whatever magical force is sent out returns magnified to the sender." I have taken the liberty of emphasizing the word "magnified" in the quote, because I think that this puts the correct focus on what is truly important. The idea is not just that the results of of our actions return to us, but that my actions have more effect on me than they do on others. It is not just that when I harm others I am also harming myself - I am primarily harming myself and only incidentally harming anyone else. Agreeing on exactly what the "magnification" is (whether 3, or 10, or whatever) is far less important than understanding that this magnification does occur.

Wren Walker, of the Witches Voice website, has written (here) that "The Threefold Law takes the notion that 'what we reap, we will sow', a few steps further ... in fact, THREE steps further. For what we do 'for good or for ill, shall be returned to us threefold.' In light of this fact, Witches are loath to cause any harm..." This makes it clear that the Threefold Law is usually not just interpreted as applying to magic, but to all of our actions.

It is completely within the realm of the possible that Gardner was directly influenced by Plato's Myth of Er when he wrote about the Threefold Law of Return. References to Plato and other Greek philosophers and classical authors can be found scattered throughout High Magic's Aid, Witchcraft Today, and The Meaning of Witchcraft. However it is not necessary to claim such a direct influence merely to establish that the idea wasn't simply concocted by Gardner out of thin air.

The idea of karma appears to have been already present in Western culture since even before Plato. In all probability the Greek concept of metempsychosis was taught by Pythagoras, and possibly even earlier by a philosopher named Pherecydes of Syros (whom some believe to have been one of Pythagoras' teachers). But it was Plato (who was born over 60 years after Pythagoras died) more than anyone else who popuarized the idea of metempsychosis, not only in the Republic, but also in his Gorgias, Phaedrus, Meno, Phaedo, Timaeus, and Laws.

For now it is important to separate out the idea of (a) any sort of spiritual progress being made from one lifetime to the next from (b) the more basic idea that the results (ie, "karma") of a person's actions carry over from one lifetime to the next. In fact there are four different ideas which, despite being closely related, need to be kept at least somewhat separate:

(1) that the results of all of our actions return to have an impact on us
(2) that when our actions redound on us the impact is even greater than the impact on others
(3) that this process of returning karma persists from one lifetime to the next
(4) that the purpose of all this is for us to make spiritual progress over many lifetimes

It might appear that the Threefold Law only entails the first two of the above concepts. But we all know of examples of people who act badly throughout their lives and yet appear to suffer no (or very little) negative consequences, just as we also know of all too many cases of good people to whom bad things happen. Only if karma persists for more than a single lifetime is it plausible to insist that all of our actions redound on us, because without that it seems almost certain that it is possible to "cheat" karma. But as one American Buddhist teacher once quipped, "karma means you don't get away with nothin'."

But we needn't go all the way back to Plato to find indigenous (or at least indigenized) Western versions of the concepts of karma and reincarnation. German, French, British and American literature from the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries offers many references to Seelenwanderung, palingenesis, metempsychosis, and reincarnation. And these ideas and terms are found in philosophy, poetry, drama, fiction, and even in political discourse! Two excellent books on this subject are: Secular Spirituality: Reincarnation and Spiritism in Nineteenth-Century France by Lynn L. Sharp, and Continued Existence, Reincarnation, and the Power of Sympathy in Classical Weimar by Lieselotte E. Kurth-Voigt.

Wicca and Ancient Philosophy, Part Two: The Really Big Picture

Either Wicca is a religion divinely inspired by the same Gods that ancient Pagans worshipped thousands of years ago, or it is not. My belief is that it is. This does not in any way require that Wicca, as we know it, existed thousands of years ago, or even hundreds of years ago. All religions change over time, and this is just as true of Pagan religions as it is for Buddhism, or Hinduism, or Christianity, or any other religion.

But all religions must have some essence, and this essence obviously does not change over time, or if it does, then the religion itself changes into something that, essentially, it was not before. So what is the "essence" of Wicca? Although you might never guess it if you talked to Wiccans, there are actually a great many things that we generally agree on.

Here are some things that most Wiccans will agree on:

(1) worship of the old Goddesses and Gods that were worshipped by the Pagans of the ancient oikoumene prior to the suppression of that worship in North Africa, the Middle East and Europe by Christians and/or Muslims.
(2) spiritual progress through successive incarnations
(3) the efficacy of divination of various sorts
(4) the immanence of the divine in nature
(5) the erotic/sexual nature of the divine
(6) sympathetic magic
(7) The Threefold Law
(8) The Wiccan Rede

Is it possible that all 8 of these aspects of modern Wicca can be found among ancient Pagans? If so, are we not completely justified in declaring that our religion is the same as theirs, that is to say, that we truly are practitioners of the Old Religion?

In the first post in this series I already addressed the Wiccan Rede itself, and a great deal more could be written on just that one aspect of Wicca and it's ancient roots. But I want to fly over each of these eight aspects of modern Wicca at 30,000 feet, so to speak, before dropping down to take a closer look and going into more details.

Some people (including many Pagans) might find it absurd to suggest that there are meaningful links between Greek philosophy, or classical Greco-Roman culture in general, and Wicca. This objection would have never occurred to Gerald Gardner, who quoted the Roman Pagan author Apuleius in the forward to his first major nonfiction work on Wicca, Witchcraft Today:

"I can only repeat the words of Lucius Apuleius in the Metamorphoses, xl, 23, who wrote a long account of his own initiation into the mysteries in cryptic language, saying: 'I have told you things of which, although you have heard them, you cannot know the meaning.'"

In addition to the Apuleius quote, Gardner also makes references to Plato, Pindar, Heraclitus, Proclus, and Orphism. And on the specific issue of origins, Gardner states that his view is that Wicca had been "influenced by the Greek and Roman mysteries which originally may have come from Egypt" (see the chapter on "Witch Practices").

Wicca and Ancient Philosopy, Part One: Plato, the Stoics and the Wiccan Rede

Donald Frew, Wiccan author and elder, has pointed out that both Platonism and Hermeticism are important sources of (modern) Pagan ideas. In this interview (which is taken from the book Modern Pagans) Frew specifically mentions the writings of Porphyry, Iamblichus, Julian ("the Apostate"), and Proclus, along with the Corpus Hermeticum, as among "the oldest written sources for Pagan theory and ritual". In an article he wrote for the Academic journal Ethnologies Frew provides a more detailed argument to support his contention that much of "the roots of Wicca can be found in the writings of the late Roman Neoplatonists."

I want go a bit further than Frew and show that basic Wiccan ideas can be traced back to Plato himself, who lived six centuries before Plotinus, and also to the Stoic philosophers, whose school is almost as old as Plato's.

It is unfortunate that modern writers, including even a Pagan like Frew, continue the misguided practice of referring to Plotinus, Porphyry, Iamblchus, Julian, and Proclus as "Neoplatonists". The inevitable implication of the use of the term "Neoplatonists" is that many of the ideas of these later Platonists, especially their more mystical and religious ideas, are not genuinely Platonic. The prefix "neo" is affixed precisely in order to insinuate that Plato's own writings were neither mystical nor religious in any way. In fact, all of the philosophers labeled by scholars as "Neoplatonists" referred to themselves simply as Platonists, and their philosophical writings were based solidly on Plato's. Therefore the term "Neoplatonist" should be rejected as anachronistic and misleading, and, for that reason, I will consistently refer to Plotinus, etc, using the terminology they themselves used: Platonists.

Let's start with the Wiccan Rede: "An it harm none, do as you will." The exhortation to "harm none" comes straight from the most famous of all of Plato's dialogues, the Republic. As classicist Robin Waterfield states in his own translation of the Republic, "Socrates finally concludes that it is never right to harm anyone under any circumstances." (See his commentary on p. 8 of that book.) It is especially significant that Waterfied is here commenting on the first book of the Republic, and that the remaining nine books are largely devoted to defending this conclusion. This same idea is found in other Platonic dialogues as well, especially the Crito and the Gorgias.

But what about "do as you will"? It turns out that the clearest expression of this admonition is found not among the writings of Plato, but among the Stoics. For it was the Stoics who taught that:

"They are free who live as they will; who are not subject to compulsion, to restraint, or to violence; whose pursuits are unhindered, their desires successful, their aversions unincurred."

The Stoics not only provide an ancient and highly respectable pedigree for the second half of the Wiccan Rede, they also provide a strong argument for how the two parts of the Rede are connected:

"Who, then, would wish to lead a wrong course of life? No one. Who would live deceived, erring, unjust, dissolute, discontented, dejected? No one. Wicked persons, then, do not live according to their own wills; therefore no such person is free."

Both of the above quotes are taken from the Discourses of Epictetus, book IV, section 1.

At the risk of being repetitive, let me summarize. The Wiccan Rede really has three components: (1) to "harm none", (2) to "do as you will", and (3) the implication that these two admonitions are connected with each other, or at least compatible with each other. The writings of Plato provide multiple examples of the first idea, while the writings of the Stoics provide an ancient philosophical basis for all three. In fact, as the last quote from Epictetus shows, we can only truly be free (that is, do as we "will"), when we act justly and rightly, and that anyone who is deceptive, unjust, etc, is not truly free.

Finally it should be noted that the second quote from Epictetus is actually a restatement of one of the most famous and singular teachings of Socrates: that no one ever does wrong knowingly. The Socratic world view had no place in it for "evil" as a fundamental principle. For Socrates, Plato, and the Stoics the Cosmos is fundamentally "good", and all apparent "evil" is only the result of our ignorance. This radical view of the Cosmos teaches us that if we so choose, each of us is capable of living in a way that is beneficial to ourselves and to our fellow creatures, and that is also in accordance with our own wills, and that, moreover, living in such a way is the only way to be truly free.

Plato's Timaeus

"The very properties that constitute goodness in the cosmos also do so in human life: order and proportionality. Timaeus' ethical recommendation is therefore that through cosmology we can imitate the order of the universe in our own souls and thereby become more virtuous and happier."
Plato's Natural Philosophy: A Study of the Timaeus-Critias Thomas Kjeller Johansen (p.3)

"[the Demiurge] found that, among things that are by nature visible, no work that is without intelligence will ever be better than one that has intelligence ... and moreover that intelligence cannot be present in anything apart from soul [psyche]. In virtue of this reasoning, when he framed the universe, he fashioned reason within soul and soul within body .... This, then, is how we must say, according to the likely account, that this world came to be ... a living creature with soul and reason." Timaeus 30a-c [Cornford translation]

"[W]e may conclude that Plato's Demiurge, like the human craftsman in whose image he is conceived, operates upon materials which he does not create, and whose inherent nature sets a limit ... on his work." Cornford Plato's Cosmology p. 37

"This was his [the Demiurge's] intent: first that it might be in the fullest measure a living being whole and complete, of complete parts; next, that it might be single, nothing being left over, out of which another might come into being; and moreover that it might be free from age and sickness [!!!]. For he perceived that, if a body be composite, when hot things and cold and all things that have strong powers beset that body and attack it from without, and they bring it to untimely dissolution and cause it to waste away by bringing upon it sickness and age. For this reason and so considering, he fashioned it as a single whole consisting of all these wholes, complete and free from age and sickness." Timaeus 32c-33b

All Along The Watchtower

"There must be some kind of way out of here," said the Joker to the Thief.

Out of where? Obviously, the Joker and the Thief are inside something, and not only that, but the Joker (at least) feels trapped and wants to get out. There is a clear sense of impending trouble - big trouble.

The Joker and the Thief might be inside but they are outsiders. They are lawbreakers, anarchists, poets, philosophers, hippies, artists, trouble-makers, street-people, revolutionaries, etc.

"There's too much confusion, I can't get no relief. Businessmen they drink my wine - plowmen dig my earth. None of them along the line know what any of it is worth."

This identifies the "Joker" as a cosmic figure associated with "wine" and "earth", which he claims belong to him. If the "Joker" is not the God Dionysos, then he is someone very much like him. Dionysos is a God of wine, agriculture, dancing, sexuality and fertility. But we shouldn't forget that he is also the ancient patron God of the Theater. Dionysos had a very strong connection with the the cult of the Goddess of Agriculture, Demeter (the Eleusinian Mysteries), and Dionysos also had a distinctive Mystery cult of his own as well - characterized by night-time rites infamous for their orgiastic excesses.

But if the Joker is Dionysos, or someone like him, why would a God complain that he "can't get no relief"? And how can a God come to feel trapped and in need of "some kind of way out of here"?

Maybe the relationship between humans and Gods (or at least this God, Dionysos) is just that - a true relationship. If that is the case then it involves compromises on both sides - and it entails not only the possibility, but the certainty of disappointment (on both sides). Maybe this is the downside of being a God that is "worshipped" by humans - as opposed to Gods that are unknown, or even unknowable, to humans.

Having given humans the great gift of wine - what have they done with it? The Joker/Dionysos, looks down on "my earth" and what does he see? Instead of ecstatic revelers, true Bacchantes, he sees men in suits making business deals over lunch as they "drink my wine". And having given humanity the great gift of agriculture, what do they do? They carve "my earth" up into petty little plots owned by petty little farmers or, worse yet, into huge plots owned by the privileged and powerful few - because "none of them along the line know what any of it is worth."

"No reason to get excited," the Thief he kindly spoke.

If the Joker is Dionysos, then the Thief can only be Hermes, the God of Thieves (the beautiful image to the right is by Nigel Jackson. Click here for more information - you can buy it as a poster!). Hermes, very appropriately is also the God of Boundaries - and while this means he is associated with city walls and borders of every kind, it also means that he is the master of all boundaries and is, therefore, very much the God of crossing boundaries.


"There are many here among us who feel that life is but a joke. But you and I, we've been through that, and this is not our fate.'"

The Joker's friend, the Thief, is, in essence, telling him to get hold of himself - to remember who and what he truly is. From their cosmic perspective they know that life is not meaningless, and however humans may have abused and misused the gifts they receive from the Gods, it really doesn't harm the Gods Themselves in any way. Or does it? The dilemma is that the Gods (or at least these two Gods, Dionysos and Hermes) truly do care for humans - and this caring must entail suffering on the part of the Gods in response to human suffering. But what the Joker has forgotten, or lost sight of, is that this suffering is inevitable, and that there is "no way out" of it. This is something that the Joker already knows - the Thief is just reminding him ("you and I, we've been though that").

The word "joke" certainly does not appear here at random. The Thief implies that those who "feel that life is but a joke" just don't "get it". But what is it they don't get?

"So let us stop talking falsely now, the hour is getting late."

Dionysos is not really the Joker - that is just how He appears to (some) humans. Dionysos is a God of laughter and revelry, but that does not define him, limit him - it does not make him "the Joker". Just so, life itself is, or should be, full of laughter and revelry, but, all the same, that does not make life "but a joke".

Just as Dionysos is much more than merely "the Joker", Hermes is also much more than "the Thief". In fact, Hermes is the God of language - and of writing and literature in particular. He is even the God of Wisdom itself! Perhaps it is fine to see the Gods as crude, cartoonish characters sometimes - as Jokers and Thieves. But now it is time to "quit talking falsely" - for "the hour is getting late."

All along the Watchtower, Princes kept the view ...

The Princes are on guard - protecting their walled city. Obviously, this is the place that the Joker wishes to find a way out of - this fortress that is about to be assaulted by an as yet unseen enemy.

... while all the women came and went - barefoot servants, too.

But despite their watchfulness, the Princes are oblivious to the women, who come and go as they please - not to mention the lowly, barefoot servants. These are of no concern to the Princes. The enemy, or so it is imagined, must be out there:

Outside in the cold distance, the wildcat he growls, two riders were approaching, and the wind begins to howl.

The Princes have become truly paranoid - the distant sound of a lone wild animal, or just the howling of the wind, everything outside their walled fortress, everything outside their control appears threatening to them.

But the Princes don't realize that their real enemy is already within. The Joker and the Thief are archetypal images representing those who live within society but outside it's laws. And women and servants are those who live not so much in society as under it. However, outlaws and underlings can become "confused" - they can come to identify with the Princes, and fear the destruction of the very order that they either already defy, or that oppresses them.

"All Along the Watchtower" is a call to all those who have already "been through this", to remember who and what we are and to "stop talking falsely". As a Jewish folksinger, Dylan certainly was a crosser of boundaries. His musical hero was Woody Guthrie, who was simultaneously a rail-riding hobo, artistic genius, and dangerous political subversive - an outsider's outsider. And although Woody Guthrie was internationally famous - it is difficult to think of him as a celebrity.

Dylan disdains the Princes and the businessmen, while identifying with the women and the barefoot servants. But he also disdains the lowly plowman and identifies with the cosmic, God-like Joker and Thief. The song is, somehow, both populist and elitist at the same time. But the elite Dylan wants to address, those of us who should "stop talking falsely" are a self-selected, spiritual elite: those who are truly free, if only we can put aside confusion and remember who we are.

Dylan, in my opinion, is the Joker. The song expresses his own misgivings and fear - his confusion - caused by his fame and success. He realizes, with some horror, that as a wealthy international celebrity he was in danger of, in spite of himself, identifying with the Princes. What would Woody Guthrie, the communist hobo poet, think?

... I can't get no relief ...

The song was written in 1967, during a time when Bob Dylan was angry at the world, and had for the most part withdrawn from it. Woody Guthrie, his hero, was dying, confined to a mental institution with undiagnosed and untreated Huntington's Disease, and would be dead soon. Both the media and the bulk of his adoring fans treated Dylan little differently from the way Britney Spears is treated by the media and her adoring fans today. Once he started playing "electronic" music in live performances he was routinely booed at concerts around the world. But he kept doing it. And they kept booing.

A recent English translation (by classicist Paul Woodruff) of Euripides' 2500 year old play about the cult of Dionysos, The Bacchae, features a picture of Elvis Presely on its front cover. A picture of Bob Dylan might have been even more appropriate. In that play, Dionysos, the son of Zeus, is offended by Pentheus, the ruler of Thebes, who has ordered that the followers of this new cult should be arrested and the worship of Dionysos suppressed. Taking on a human form, Dionysos appears to Pentheus, who fails to recognize the God. The arrogant ruler is first humiliated and then killed by Dionysos' dancing, frenzied female followers - who tear him apart with their bare hands and teeth. These maenads include Pentheus' own mother - who unknowingly picks up the severed head of her son, thinking it is that of a wildcat.

This sudden burst of activity

The four posts on "Prisca Theologia" are from another blog I started back in Aug/Sept '08. I made a few very minor changes, but mostly decided to just move them here as is.

I will continue to consolidate a bunch of scattered writings that I have all over the place, so for a while it might appear as if I am being very productive, and in a sense this is true.

I have been trying to gather my thoughts on the interplay of cosmology and teleology both in the Platonic and Stoic traditions. Much of this is based on the Timaeus, but it also draws on the Symposium and the Phaedrus, as well as Stoic sources such as Seneca's Natural Questions and the Stoic Astrological writings of Manilius and Firmicus. That might result in a few posts soon.

And who knows? I might even post something about Buddhism some day!