A Tongva Native American Garden (and Tibet)

Xochitl, Ashley Wells, CC Liu, Wisdom Quarterly; Pitzer Arboretum; Hendon Harris

When the world was a garden: Los Angeles' original inhabitants the Tongva tribe

Pitzer College has a hidden treasure: a Native Tongva Garden (pitzer.edu)

 

Native American Tongva, Chumash, Anasazi (Hopi, Puebloan peoples), and in fact all indigenous people made use of all of the plants at hand.

Berries were abundant, particularly a local favorite [alongside elderberry], the manzanita (Spanish "little apple") a.k.a. madrone. Sobochesh, as it was known to the Tongva, was useful to eat, drink, and use as natural medicine.
 

A lotion made of leaves is an excellent treatment for treating exposure to poison oak, or they can be simmered into a tea to cure diarrhea, urinary infections, and headaches, a poultice for skin sores... The blossoms are also useful.

Arroyo Seco Foundation (facebook), March 22

While berries are wonderful, every plant is useful, from yucca to sagebrush to wild buckwheat to black sage and, of course, sacred white sage... Pitzer College, at the eastern extreme of modern Los Angeles County, at the base of massive Mount Baldy, has prepared a hidden treasury of plant uses and folk cures.

Other Tongva Indians will be on hand along with Wisdom Quarterly this Saturday for the Fourth Annual Hahamongna Walkabout in JPL's front yard in Pasadena.

Native American (Tibetan) Buddhism

Native Wm Leclair with Buddhist brothers (BP)

What is the Buddhist connection? Not only are the similarities between the "Indians" of India, Ladakh, Tibet, and the mountainous parts of Asia -- the Karen, for example, and other tribes in Burma, Thailand, Bhutan, and Nepal -- and the "Indians" of America patently obvious to anyone who looks, there is a historical reason for it.

Gomari, Tibet/China (Rietje)

Hendon Harris (Chinese Discover America) helps us understand, and Rick Fields laid it out in How the Swans Came to the Lake: A Narrative History of Buddhism in [Ancient] America. But as early as 1885, American historian Edward P. Vining knew that a group of Buddhist monks from Afghanistan had come to the New World, that is, long before Columbus, they "discovered" America and brought the Dharma to the Native Americans. See An Inglorious Columbus about the Buddhist discovery of America.

QUESTION

Native dance, Hemis Gompa (Stella Peters)

Harris, responding to Native American Buddhism and Tibet, writes in to ask: In Wisdom Quarterly's opinion is the Native American "Ghost Dance" revival movement, which started in approximately 1880 and ended violently at Wounded Knee in South Dakota in December 1890, directly related or religiously or culturally linked to the Tibetan "Ghost Dance" tradition celebrated to this very day? Please explain the reasons for your opinion.

ANSWER: Hendon, we only know it's possible, and we wouldn't be the first to notice. We will have to consult with our non-resident expert, H.M. Harris, to see if it is probable. (We hope he reads this and sends us the answer soon).

• Native American Walkabout 2014 (March 22)
• Early Chumash and Tongva cultures (PDF)
• Native American Buddhism and Tibet
• The Tibet-Pueblo [American Indian] Connection
• Buddhism among the Pueblo Indians, USA
• Native American Ethnographic Study: Ventura
• A Sneak Peek into Santa Monica's "Tongva Park"
• Pitzer College (Claremont) John R. Rodman Arboretum

Travel for wisdom (video)

Dhr. Seven and Pat Macpherson, Ashley Wells, Wisdom Quarterly

"The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page." - Saint Augustine

(Funny Commercial) Lionel Messi versus Kobe Bryant: Globe-trotting Selfie Battle. A soccer superstar and basketball all-star join forces once again with the help of Turkish Airlines.

"Not all who wander are lost" - JRR Tolkien

Travel! Originally, all Buddhist monastics were encouraged to behave like proper "wandering ascetics" (shramanas) in Indian. Rather than staying put inhabiting temples like Brahmin temple-priests (brahmanas), they wandered far and wide to break the sense of identification with one group, culture, way of looking at things, what one might call parochialism.

 

“Perhaps travel cannot prevent bigotry, but by demonstrating that all peoples cry, laugh, eat, worry, and die, it can introduce the idea that if we try and understand each other, we may even become friends.”

- Maya Angelou

Buddha walking (WQ)

While travel was difficult for mendicants, it was possible due to vast India's dana system, a mutually beneficial system of providing for the needy, particularly to spiritual seekers. They were provided with requisites as a means of social cohesion and making merit. "It is only right to give food to those who do not make or store food," was the common outlook.

"To travel is to discover that everyone is wrong about other countries."

- Aldous Huxley

East-west travel along the Silk Route went between the large city-states of India (Bharat) through Central Asia. The enriched the Buddha's hometown in present day Afghanistan (not Nepal), which was the northwest frontier of India, according to Dr. Pal. It made it possible to go long distances when desired. But it was quite enough to travel lesser distances and still benefit by being exposed to great variations from clan territory (janapada) to clan territory -- different customs, observances, dialects, ways of life.

“As the traveler who has once been from home is wiser than [one] who has never left [one's] own doorstep, so a knowledge of one other culture should sharpen our ability to scrutinize more steadily, to appreciate more lovingly, our own.”

– Margaret Mead

Having left the comfortable social order, take self-responsibility.

In a time when most humans lived and died within ten miles of their birthplace, it was quite eye opening and conducive to getting the most out of the liberating Dharma the Buddha taught. The same holds true for us today. 

In spite of the ease of travel, most people stay close to their birthplace most of the time. Some may never leave, but even the few who do return and linger in the region. We seek comfort and familiarity. We have ties and social circles. And these tend to blind us to others and other ways of doing things. Therefore, travel then and now can be a wonderful thing, opening one up to a connection to all people on the planet, our t small place in the grand scheme of things, our parochial and small minded attitudes.

“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness... Broad, wholesome, charitable views of [people] and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.”

- Mark Twain (The Innocents Abroad/Roughing It)

• Memories can be passed down through DNA
• How to meet your guardian devas with Doreen Virtue
• My Son is a great travel destination (Nat'l Geo)
• PHOTOS: Bicycling through Asia
• My Son travel destination (Lonely Planet)

Google ramps up plan to make robots

Two million stolen passwords online

Writer Suri honored for bad sex

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Two million stolen passwords online 

Next-generation USB is reversible

Thousands of Eritreans "abducted"

Launch of world's biggest "ship"

Rockwell painting in record sale

Close "torture camps" N Korea urged 

Leg bone gives up oldest human DNA

Cleaning the Himalayas: Green Odyssey (film)

Amber Larson, Wisdom Quarterly; PadYatraFilm.com; Valerie (FilmIsNow); KPFK.org

A chronicle of a spiritual journey and eco-compassion trek across the Himalayas to a glacial region devastated by global warming. U.N. honoree Gyalwang Drukpa leads the journey to trigger a green revolution. Opens Nov. 11/15, Laemmle's Music Hall 3 in Beverly Hills.

"Pad Yatra: A Green Odyssey" (trailer) directed by Wendy J.N. Lee, produced by Michelle Yeoh, narrated by Daryl Hannah. Premeires at the Awareness Fest 2013, Los Angeles
 
Pad Yatra: A Green Odyssey takes an environmentally-friendly adventure with 700 people trekking across the Himalayas with a call to save the planet's "third pole," a glacial region devastated by the climate chaos associated with global warming. Battling the most treacherous terrain on the planet, these trekkers spread their message of ecological compassion through a human's most basic means -- by walking on foot, cleaning from village to village, showing by example. Surviving harrowing injuries, illness, and starvation, they emerge with nearly half a ton of plastic litter strapped to their backs, triggering a historic "green revolution" across the rooftop of the world in Buddhist India's Himalayas.

• Clean up of dead bodies and rubbish on Mt. Everest

"Letting Go" with Thich Nhat Hanh (video)

Amber Larson, Wisdom Quarterly; Source of Light Monastery; plumvillage.org (donate)

Thay ("teacher")

To preserve some of Ven. Thich Nhat Hanh's previous lectures, some of his older lectures are being uploaded by Source of Light Monastery as they become available.

Here Thay, as he is affectionately known, discusses what he calls the most important practice in Buddhist meditation -- the practice of letting go or "throwing away."

Wrong ideas, misperceptions, and false notions (moha, delusion, ignorance) are at the root of our suffering: They are the ground of all afflictions whatsoever. Cravings and aversions never stand without the support of ignorance.

 

In order for us to touch happiness in the here and now, we need to throw away the strong ideas and subtle notions that prevent us from learning and growing. 

Mahayana Buddhism's Diamond Sutra suggests four notions that should be thrown away: self, human being, living being, and life span. The main portion of this talk is dedicated to elaborating on these notions as well as our attachment to views, pairs of extremes, as well as "rules and rituals" we expect can lead to enlightenment. 

• Free Buddhist eBooks: sourceoflightmonastery.com

Thich Nhat Hanh on Oprah's OWN