That isn’t Buddha on the cover of Time Magazine, December 7, 1925 issue (99 years ago). It is Jose R. Capablanca, then world chess champion, who had recently lost some matches in a Moscow tournament.
Buddha did appear in the magazine, with this in the Religion section:
Buddha’s Birthday
In Tokyo last week the Far Eastern Buddhist Congress, attended by 500 Chinese, Korean and Japanese delegates, decided to spread the teachings of their Master by the publication of Buddhist books, pamphlets, magazines. A resolution was passed urging that the birthday of Buddha be celebrated by a worldwide holiday, like the birthday of Christ.
As a cultural archaeologist, with an inordinate love of old magazines, I would like to post every page of the issue. Instead, I have selected just one full-page ad. This is for the Five-Foot Shelf of Books, aka The Harvard Library, compiled by legendary academic Charles W. Eliot, who was president of Harvard for forty years. The Shelf/Library contained “418 masterpieces” in fifty volumes.
In promoting this as the perfect Christmas gift, the headline says “It took twenty centuries to make this Christmas gift for you” and closes with “BOOKS—The finest gift of all”.
The good news: The complete Shelf/Library, later known as the Harvard Classics, is widely available for free online.The better news: Books are still the finest gift of all.
The restless, agitated mind, Hard to protect, hard to control, The sage makes straight, As a fletcher the shaft of an arrow.
Like a fish out of water, Thrown on dry ground, This mind thrashes about, Trying to escape Māra’s* command.
The mind, hard to control, Flighty—alighting where it wishes— One does well to tame. The disciplined mind brings happiness.
The mind, hard to see, Subtle—alighting where it wishes— The sage protects. The watched mind brings happiness.
Far-ranging, solitary, Incorporeal and hidden Is the mind. Those who restrain it Will be freed from Māra’s bonds.
For those who are unsteady of mind, Who do not know true Dharma, And whose serenity wavers, Wisdom does not mature.
For one who is awake, Whose mind isn’t overflowing, Whose heart isn’t afflicted And who has abandoned both merit and demerit, Fear does not exist.
Knowing this body to be like a clay pot, Establishing this mind like a fortress, One should battle Māra with the sword of insight, Protecting what has been won, Clinging to nothing.
All too soon this body Will lie on the ground, Cast aside, deprived of consciousness, Like a useless scrap of wood.
Whatever an enemy may do to an enemy, Or haters, one to another, Far worse is the harm From one’s own wrongly directed mind.
Neither mother nor father, Nor any other relative can do One as much good As one’s own well-directed mind.
Translated by Gil Fronsdal
*Māra: The personification of evil in Buddhism and often referred to as the Buddhist “devil” or “demon”. According to some accounts of the Buddha’s enlightenment experience, when the he sat under the bodhi tree, vowing not to rise until he attained liberation from the cycle of rebirth, he was approached by Māra, who sought to dissuade him from his quest. When he refused, Māra sent his minions to destroy him, but their weapons were transformed into flower blossoms.
Following is an outline of Buddhism, found in The Basic Teachings of the Buddha (2007) by Glenn Wallis. Wallis is a far-reaching, creative and iconoclastic scholar of Buddhism, as reflected in his later work, such as A Critique of Western Buddhism (2019), which is available to read and download free.
HABITAT 1. We are like ghosts sleepwalking in a desolate and dangerous domain. DE-ORIENTATION 2. We remain transfixed there, enchanted by pleasure and flamboyant speculation. 3. The most enthralling belief of all is that of supernatural agency. 4. There is a safeguard against this bewitchment: knowing for yourself. RE-ORIENTATION 5. The means of “knowing for yourself” is immediately available: it is the sensorium. 6. But the modes of perception are miragelike, and the perceived like a magical display. 7. And there is no self, no integral perceiver, behind those modes of perception. 8. To hold on to the miragelike perceiver, the phantom self, is a stultifying burden. MAP 9. When we reflect on these propositions, four preeminent realities become obvious, 10. as do the emergence and cessation of our incessant “worlding.” DESTINATION 11. Our genuine refuge from this whirlwind of worlding is to be unbound; 12. to eradicate infatuation, hostility, and delusion. Eradicated, quenched, unbound. 13. Binding is concomitant with the fabricated. 14. Unbinding is concomitant with the unfabricated. GOING 15. Cultivation of present-moment awareness is the means to conspicuous unbinding. 16. Application of this awareness in daily life is concomitant with living as a buddha: awakened.
December includes three notable religious holidays.
Christmas, commemorating the birth of Jesus. It is a major holiday, one of the two most important Christian holidays, and one that has become a secular celebration, especially in America.
Hanukkah, commemorating the retaking and rededication of the Temple in Jerusalem. Religiously, it is a minor holiday, not even included in the Hebrew Bible. Traditionally, it has become a cultural and social counterbalance to Christmas, especially in America.
Bodhi Day isn’t about the birth of a significant person or about the military victory over a religious oppressor. It is about a man who sat under a tree and ultimately woke up, or, as it is usually put, attained enlightenment.
I never rely on AI to do my writing, but I have given my friend Claude a chance to concisely explain Bodhi Day observances:
Bodhi Day (also known as Rohatsu in Japanese tradition) commemorates the day when Siddhartha Gautama attained enlightenment and became the Buddha. It’s typically observed on December 8th in the Mahayana tradition, though some traditions follow different calendars.
Here’s how Bodhi Day is observed in different parts of the world:
Japan (Rohatsu):
The day marks the end of a weeklong sesshin (intensive meditation retreat) in Zen monasteries
Practitioners often meditate through the night, mirroring the Buddha’s enlightenment experience
Traditional decorations include strings of colored lights, representing the stars the Buddha saw upon enlightenment
Southeast Asian Countries:
In countries like Thailand and Sri Lanka, the enlightenment is actually celebrated as part of Vesak Day in May
Temples are decorated with flowers and lights
Devotees participate in meditation sessions and listen to dharma talks
Food offerings are made to monks and sharing meals with the community is common
United States and Western Countries:
Buddhist temples and centers often hold special meditation sessions
Some practitioners decorate small ficus trees (similar to the Bodhi tree) with lights
Educational programs about the Buddha’s enlightenment are organized
Many observe the day with a traditional breakfast of milk and rice, recalling the offering made to the Buddha by Sujata
China and Taiwan:
Known as Laba Festival (腊八节)
Traditionally celebrated with Laba congee, a special porridge made with various grains and dried fruits
Temples hold ceremonies and offer free congee to visitors
Many people visit temples to make offerings and pray for blessings
Modern Observances:
Some Buddhists maintain a more contemplative practice, spending the day in meditation
Many practitioners dedicate themselves to acts of kindness and compassion
Some observe the day by reading Buddhist texts or sutras
Virtual meditation sessions and teachings have become common, especially in recent years
The focus across all these observances remains on the core meaning of the Buddha’s enlightenment – the realization that freedom from suffering is possible through understanding and practicing the dharma.
Claude
Each year I wonder what to say about Bodhi Day, the Buddha, and Buddhism. With a day to go, I still don’t know.
I don’t know whether it reads right to left, left to right, or up to down. I don’t know the language, I don’t know that it is a language. I know it is a message, one time, never to be repeated.
Fun fact: Search the Poetry Foundation, a repository of poetry, and you find 5,042 poems about clouds.
I worked to find a fitting title for this post. I know what I want to include or not include, but I don’t know how to digest that into a description. So I settled on “Some simple books to know” without explaining what I mean by “simple”. Maybe you’ll figure it out.
Anyway, this is a list, without much else. All are found in multiple English translations and commentaries, which I need, and maybe you need, since I am not capable in Pali, Chinese, biblical Hebrew, or Coptic.
At some later time, I hope to detail each of these books individually, and why it is essential to read and study different translations and commentaries. For now, just peruse the list, investigate if you like.
Dhammapada
There are millions of words attributed to the Buddha, written about the Buddha and Buddhism. This is the most concise collection of the Buddha’s sayings. It is the first book I ever read about Buddhism, and there is no time, all these books later, I do not turn to it.
Tao Te Ching
The foundational text of Taoism. Lao Tzu was likely not a real person. This wisdom is simple, compelling, everlasting, and very real.
Chuang Tzu (the title of the text and the name of the person)
Chuang Tzu was more likely than Lao Tzu to have been a real person, though words attributed to him are likely not all his. Doesn’t matter. Few figures in wisdom history are as earnestly wild and fun as this guy. His reach among contemporary creators and thinkers is extensive. If any work on this list can be described as mind-blowing, he/this is it. (He is the originator of the well-known story in which he wakes up not knowing whether he is a man who dreamt he was a butterfly or a butterfly who dreamt he was a man.)
Book of Job
One of the truly transgressive books of the Hebrew Bible. If read as “God knows best and who are you to question. Trust Me.”, which is what the added coda and much teaching indicate, it is piously conforming. If read as “this is a mystery, none of us knows what is going on, and things do get bad and good fast (in other words, WTF!)” you are closer to a truth.
Ecclesiastes/Kohelet
The first mystery of Kohelet is how it ever ended up in the Hebrew Bible, given that it reflects so much human agency and freedom in the face of an everchanging impermanent life and world, a world where everything is wind and vapor (a better translation of hevel, which in the KJV is “vanity”). Kohelet is not a license to do whatever you want because we are all going to die anyway. It is a navigational guide to days, seasons and years that are seemingly orderly but actually chaotic, even absurd. It’s a wonderful life.
Gospel of Thomas
The Gospel of Thomas is sometimes referred to as the Fifth Gospel. As with the words of Jesus in the other four, scholars have worked tirelessly to determine as best as possible which are actually his and which are added in the spirit of his teaching. Thomas is entirely sayings, no narrative, some of which ended up in the other gospels, some of which are found only in this text. Among the sayings, the one that for me stands above all is this: “Be [or become] passersby.” (Saying 42) If you know that, you know (almost) everything.
Thinking and acting according to any of the classifications—gender, nationality, religion, ethnicity, generation, etc.—may have utility and value for limited purposes. Abolishing the slavery of black people focused on two distinct identities that mattered profoundly. The same can be said for other situations.
But even those applications of identity, as essentially humane as they may be, risk not seeing each person as a person, not as an identity. To lump people together for some analytical or active purpose—marketing is one example, war and conflict a less benign one—is to ignore or avoid the individual joys and sufferings, abilities and shortcomings. Personhood and personality.
Every time we think or say, “all _____ do _____ or believe _____ or say _____ or are _____ is dehumanizing. Dehumanizing doesn’t just mean treating people as less than human. It means treating any individual person as less than individual.
Watching the PBS series Disco: Soundtrack of a Revolution, I was inspired. Not just by the music, which is inspiring, but with the idea that you could have a social and cultural revolution that you could—you had to—dance to.
I thought about hip-hop, another revolution, which also emerged from American society’s marginalization/oppression of some Americans. Emerged triumphant, like disco, since hip-hop and dance music are the two dominant genres not only in America but in the world.
I have also been thinking about the limitations of mockery in the face of political evil. It can make the resisters and insurgents feel better, but those who hold unassailable power are rarely moved to reform or surrender by it. Sometimes all it does is embarrass them to the point of payback.
Making fun is still worthwhile, but expectations should be low. Having fun while rebelling is a different story. Having fun, it turns out, is essential. It is the thing that keeps the spirit of resistance alive, that reminds us of one of the things we are fighting for.
The most recent attempt to fight the power, both during the campaign and now, were and are low on fun. There is a lot of well-founded earnestness, accompanied by outrage and depression.
Every thing should be done on all available fronts to restore governing integrity and political sanity. One of those things must be to have more fun.
Watching people who were social and legal pariahs (same-sex dancing, for example, was illegal in New York in the time before disco) have the kind of fun that ultimately gifted us all was exhilarating. A benighted segment of American society tried clumsily to destroy disco, with its threat of freedom, but the next fifty years demonstrated how hatefully wrongheaded that was. The same happened with hip-hop, as it had years before with rock and roll.
You can’t keep fun down, even if it’s outlawed. Let’s use it.
“What happened to the American Dream? It came true. You’re looking at it.” The Comedian, Watchmen
Watchmen (1986) , written by Alan Moore, illustrated by Dave Gibbons, takes place in 1980s America.
The Keene Act of 1977 outlawed costumed superheroes. But instead of making America and the world better and safer, everything was going to hell, and the end literally was imminent. Chaos and fear reigned.
When asked by one of his former crime-fighting partners what happened to the American Dream, the ever-cynical Comedian says, “What happened to the American Dream? It came true. You’re looking at it.”
By the time of Watchmen, graphic novels were already earning cultural respect. Watchmen established that graphic novels were literature—and that Alan Moore was a literary great. Time magazine named Watchmen one of the 100 best novels of the twentieth century.
Technology, government, geopolitics, power, money, authoritarianism, violence, love, hate, human aspiration and frailty, cosmos, apocalyptic, and of course, America and the American Dream. All wrapped up in a “comic book” as relevant today as it was almost twenty years ago.
You may have seen one of the versions of Watchmen in the last few years. There was a not-so-successful movie, a more successful HBO series that was an extension rather than a retelling, and just now a very literal translation of the graphic novel to animation.
Whether or not you’ve seen or plan to see any of those, start with the novel itself.
The Chinese restaurant dinner for two arrived with four individual sealed fortune cookie packs. Three had a fortune cookie inside. One, pictured above, did not have a fortune cookie. It contained just a few scraps of a cookie and no fortune.
Obviously something went wrong at the fortune cookie factory. Not very interesting. Much more interesting is the meaning of it.
While I worked on my own interpretation, I asked my AI sidekick Claude to weigh in.
Bob: Here is what I am looking at. It is a sealed fortune cookie pack from a Chinese restaurant, a pack that normally contains a fortune cookie. This sealed pack contains only a few small scraps of fortune cookie, but no whole fortune cookie and no fortune. What do you make of this?
Claude:
This sounds quite disappointing! You’ve essentially received a sealed package containing just broken pieces of the cookie without the main attraction – both the intact cookie and the fortune itself. This seems like a manufacturing or packaging error where either:
The cookie was broken during the packaging/shipping process
The fortune was accidentally omitted during manufacturing
The cookie might have been crushed during handling/transport
This is a quality control issue that the restaurant and/or fortune cookie manufacturer would probably want to know about. While it might seem minor, it affects both the experience and the fundamental purpose of a fortune cookie – you can’t even read your fortune!
If this happened at a restaurant, you might want to politely let them know so they can:
Provide you with a proper fortune cookie
Check their other fortune cookie packages for similar issues
Report it to their supplier if it’s a widespread problem
Did you let the restaurant know about this?
Bob: No, I did not let the restaurant know. I am more interested in knowing what this means for my fortune. What do you think?
Claude:
Ah, I see where you’re going with this! If we’re looking at this from a superstitious or symbolic perspective, receiving a broken fortune cookie with no fortune is quite intriguing. Let me play with this idea:
One poetic interpretation might be that your future isn’t predetermined or written – it’s literally an “empty fortune,” suggesting you’re truly free to write your own destiny. There’s something rather empowering about that! Instead of being handed a pre-written path, you’ve received a blank canvas.
Another interpretation could be more zen-like: perhaps it’s a reminder that seeking to know the future is less important than being present in the moment. The broken cookie without a fortune could be saying “stop looking for external guidance and trust your own intuition.”
Of course, if you’re feeling more playful about it, you could say this is the universe’s version of a “404 Error: Fortune Not Found” – maybe the cosmic printer was running low on ink that day!
What’s your take on it? Do you feel there’s any particular meaning in receiving a fortune-less cookie?
Bob: Your perspectives are knowledgeable, insightful and witty. I am still working on possible meanings of this Chinese restaurant anomaly. I will get back to you when I have more thoughts and questions. Thank you.
Claude:
Thank you for the kind words! Your openness to contemplating the deeper meaning of what might seem like a simple manufacturing defect is quite refreshing. It’s these small, unexpected moments that can sometimes offer the most interesting opportunities for reflection. I look forward to hearing your thoughts when you’ve had more time to consider the possibilities. Feel free to return to this discussion whenever you’d like!
Despite this lighthearted use of Claude, be aware that among many of those who know, this powerful platform is regarded as the best in the exploding AI-sphere. If you are not already using Claude, visit Anthropic and experience it now.
