God Is Not One: The Eight Rival Religions That Run the World (54 page)

3
. This phrase is used in “The Power of Ideas,” the second episode in the BBC television series “The Story of India” (http://www.pbs.org/thestoryofindia/), which first aired in the United States in January 2009.

4
.
Majjhima-nikaya
, quoted in Rahula,
What the Buddha Taught
, 12.

5
. Only about three million Americans self-identify as Buddhists, but a recent survey found that about 12 percent of U.S. citizens—roughly 25 million people—say that Buddhism has had a significant influence on their religious or spiritual lives. See Robert Wuthnow and Wendy Cadge, “Buddhists and Buddhism in the United States: The Scope of Influence,”
Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion
43, no. 3 (2004): 361–78.

6
. Friedrich Nietzsche,
The Anti-Christ, Ecce Homo, Twilight of the Idols, and Other Writings
, trans. Judith Norman (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2005), 16; Jack Kerouac,
The Dharma Bums
(New York: Penguin, 2006), 83.

7
. Unfortunately, many scholars continue to refer to both “sin” and “salvation” in a Buddhist context. In a particularly egregious example, the
Encyclopedia of Living Faiths
(New York: Hawthorn Books, 1959) refers to Buddhism as “the gospel of salvation” (“The Buddha,” 216).

8
. This practice is sometimes referred to as
anapanasati
, or “breath mindfulness.” For an elegantly simple description see, Ajahn Sumedho, “Watching the Breath (Ânâpânasati)” and “Effort and Relaxation,” in his
Mindfulness, The Path to the Deathless: The Meditation Teaching of Venerable Ajahn Sumedho
(Morristown, NJ: Yin Shun Foundation, 1999), 23–24, 28–32. My colleague Diana Lobel reminds me that a Christian parallel to the body breathing on its own can be found in the nineteenth-century Russian book
The Way of a Pilgrim
, whose anonymous author finds the Jesus prayer starting to pray itself through him, even in his sleep.

9
. Rainer Maria Rilke,
Rilke’s Book of Hours: Love Poems to God
, trans. Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy (New York: Riverhead, 2005), 119.

10
. Novak,
World’s Wisdom
, 74.

11
. Kerouac,
Wake Up
, 30. I refer here to the Buddhist term
tanha
(which literally means “thirst”) as “craving” rather than “desire,” in part because I have been convinced by the American Buddhist and psychotherapist Mark Epstein that what Buddhism is trying to overcome has less to do with wanting than with wanting in a desperate sort of way. “The problem is not desire,” writes Epstein in
Open to Desire: The Truth About What the Buddha Taught
(New York: Gotham Books, 2006), “it is clinging to, or craving a particular outcome” (41). Epstein is most creative in reinterpreting the Middle Path as cutting between “the right-handed path of renunciation and monasticism in which sensory desires are avoided and the left-handed path of passion and relationship in which sensory desires are not avoided but are made into objects of meditation” (40). Desire, in short, can be a teacher. And its core instruction that there is always a gap between longing and satisfaction.

12
. Cheri Huber,
Trying to Be Human: Zen Talks
, ed. Sara Jenkins (Murphys, CA: Keep It Simple Books, 2006), 17.

13
. Kerouac,
Wake Up
, 7.

14
. Sumedho,
Mindfulness
, 15, 40.

15
. Haraldsson, “Popular Psychology,” 171–80. Figures are higher in Iceland (41 percent) and lower in Italy (18 percent), while 27 percent of Americans believe in reincarnation. See, e.g., Taylor, “Religious and Other Beliefs of Americans,” http://www.harrisinteractive.com/harris_poll/index.asp?pid=359.

16
. Rahula,
What the Buddha Taught
, 45.

17
. i,
F.O.A.: Full on Arrival
(n.p.: n.p., n.d.), 24.

18
. Edward B. Tylor,
Primitive Culture
(London: John Murray, 1891), 1.424.

19
. Robert A. F. Thurman, “Tibetan Buddhism in America: Reinforcing the Pluralism of the Sacred Canopy,” in Prothero,
Nation of Religions
, 94.

20
. Quoted in Dalai Lama,
Essential Teachings
, trans. Zélie Pollon (Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books, 1995), 52.

21
. Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki,
The Training of the Zen Buddhist Monk
(New York: Cosimo Classics, 2004), 103. During their life together, the Beat poet Allen Ginsberg and his lover Peter Orlovsky made a promise that Ginsberg described as “a mutual Bodhisattva’s vow.” According to Ginsberg, they promised “that neither of us would go into heaven unless we could get the other one in” (Winston Leyland, ed.,
Gay Sunshine Interviews
[San Francisco: Gay Sunshine Press, 1978], 1.109–13).

22
. Epstein,
Open to Desire
, 188.

23
. Pat Byrnes,
New Yorker
cartoon, January 15, 2001, http://www.cartoonbank.com/2001/Are-you-not-thinking-what-Im-not-thinking/invt/120275.

24
. Nagarjuna quoted in Nancy McCagney,
Nâgârjuna and the Philosophy of Openness
(Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1997), 34.

25
. Donald S. Lopez, Jr.,
The Heart Sûtra Explained: Indian and Tibetan Commentaries
(Albany: State University of New York Press, 1988), 57.

26
. Pema Chodron,
The Pema Chodron Audio Collection: Pure Meditation, Good Medicine, From Fear to Fearlessness
(Louisville, CO: Sounds True, 2005).

27
. i,
F.O.A.: Full on Arrival
, 47.

28
. Sogyal Rinpoche,
The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying,
ed. Patrick Gaffney and Andrew Harvey (New York: HarperSanFrancisco, 1993), 83.

29
. Thurman, “Tibetan Buddhism in America,” in Prothero,
Nation of Religions
, 105. In this same essay, Thurman makes a persuasive argument against equating the Tibetan situation with the church/state marriages of medieval Europe (97–99).

30
. Thurman, “Tibetan Buddhism in America,” in Prothero,
Nation of Religions
, 114–16.

31
. On Western (mis)interpretations of this text, see Bryan J. Cuevas,
The Hidden History of the Tibetan Book of the Dead
(New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 2003), esp. 5–14.

32
. I am borrowing here from my colleague David Eckel, who has lectured on these themes in my courses.

33
. Novak,
World’s Wisdom
, 103.

34
. Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki,
An Introduction to Zen Buddhism
(New York: Grove Press, 1991), 46.

35
. Dalai Lama,
Essence of the Heart Sutra: The Dalai Lama’s Heart of Wisdom Teachings
, trans. Thupten Jinpa (Boston: Wisdom, 2005), 126.

36
. Nagarjuna quoted in
The Central Philosophy of Tibet: a Study and Translation of Jey Tsong Khapa’s Essence of True Eloquence,
trans. Robert A.F. Thurman (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1991), 152.

37
. John Updike,
The Early Stories: 1953–1975
(New York: Knopf, 2003), xv. Updike is speaking here not of Buddhism but of his own writing.

Chapter Six: Yoruba Religion: The Way of Connection

1
. I am grateful to my colleague David Eckel, who came up with core concepts for this course, and to my teaching assistant Kevin Taylor, who helped to bring these concepts alive in the classroom.

2
. Keywords in Yoruba religion change from country to country and language to language. Here I use Yoruba terms (minus diacritical marks) unless I am referring to a specifically Brazilian or Cuban symbol.

3
. Proverb quoted in Joseph M. Murphy, “Òrìs¸à Traditions and the Internet Diaspora,” in Jacob K. Olupona and Terry Rey, eds.,
Òrìs¸à Devotion as World Religion: The Globalization of Yorùbá Religious Culture
(Madison: Univ. of Wisconsin Press, 2008), 482.

4
. On Yoruba-derived traditions as “rhizomes,” see James Lorand Matory,
Black Atlantic Religion: Tradition, Transnationalism, and Matriarchy in the Afro-Brazilian Candomblé
(Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 2005), 274–80. Note, however, how closely the roots and shoots of rhizomes (such as ginger) are connected to one another—so close that even Matory compares the Yoruba and Candomble traditions to “Siamese Twins” (72).

5
. Quoted in Wole Soyinka,
Myth, Literature and the African World
(Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1976), 10.

6
. Debray,
God: An Itinerary
, 57.

7
. Robert Farris Thompson,
Flash of the Spirit: African and Afro-American Art and Philosophy
(New York: Random House, 1983), 5.

8
. Karen McCarthy Brown,
Mama Lola: A Vodou Priestess in Brooklyn
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), 6.