Zen Blog

Nothing is permanent, so everything is precious. Here’s a selection of some happenings—fleeting or otherwise—in the Buddhist world this week.

A Khmer Buddhist Foundation Is Launched

San Francisco resident, Cambodian advocate, and philanthropist Lyna Lam has launched A Khmer Buddhist Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to empowering the Khmer people and preserving their traditions and culture. As its first act, the organization donated nearly $500,000 to support Cambodians impacted by COVID-19, GlobeNewswire reports. The donation will be administered through Friends International, a Cambodia-based nonprofit organization, to provide the country’s stretched healthcare system with critical supplies, including ventilators, patients’ monitors, personal protective equipment, and oxygen manometers. Part of the donation will also go towards providing food and aid to impoverished children and their families. “We were saddened to hear about the devastating COVID-19 situation in Cambodia,” said Lam in a press release. “While we know firsthand that the people of Cambodia are resilient and have a history of recovering from any hardship stronger than before, we also know that additional supplies and resources can help accelerate their recovery and end this terrible pandemic.” The foundation is currently accepting donations through its website. 

In addition to COVID-19 relief, the foundation aims to support various causes for the Cambodian people–both in Cambodia and abroad—through grants to temple operations and new businesses, college internships, and arts and culture initiatives. Lam is also in the process of building a temple in San Jose, California. 

“Form is emptiness, emptiness also is form; emptiness is no other than form, form is no other than emptiness.” 

This phrase is from the Heart Sutra, the heart of the Mahayana teachings, the pith of the Prajnaparamita Sutras. The Buddha really punctured concepts with these lines! This was the first time my mind stopped. The Heart Sutra was the first piece of buddhadharma that I devoured; I even memorized it so I wouldn’t be without it, because it was both frightening and freeing. To think, all this, all this experience and solidity that we place as we move through this world, all of it is both solid and evanescent. It was the first piece of dharma I encountered that spoke to the nature of my fluid being. I just happened to be born of this female body and it is not fixed. I felt, once again, the dharma gave me the practice opportunity to view how my form emerges and dissolves in every moment. And as frightening as that was initially, I gradually practiced to remember that it wasn’t a dissolve into nothing, but an emptiness so vast it accommodates everything. 

This was tested on two very important periods in my life. For most of my life, I hated who I saw in the mirror: plastered in scars, acne, and a disfigured body that was perpetually prepubescent. As I approached any mirror, echoes of abusive taunts would ripple at me, so I hung mirrors below the neck or didn’t look at them at all. During a month-long silent meditation program, a dathun, I decided to spend time with my reflection and realized my worst fears erupted in taunting thoughts, then dissipated. Another wave, of different insults and content, arose and dissipated. I actually didn’t know who that reflection was. So I got curious. I asked it. I began to notice the faces of several family members and of no one at all. This shifted something for me. Perhaps I wasn’t who I thought I was. 

Later, my mother was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s and I returned home to care for her. Over the next year and a half, I moved from “only daughter” to whomever she decided I was in the moment. Initially, I was not only sad but irritated that she would forget my name, of all people. In that moment, the clutch onto my existence and identity became personal. I felt my “I” disappearing. I would constantly correct her, quiz her, show photographic evidence, all for her to remember. After a few times of losing my patience, praying to the dralas [or in Tibetan Buddhism, something that “cuts through one’s habitual chain of thoughts,”] for clarity did note the impact of my righteousness. My mother would grow more irritable or worse, sad, as she momentarily realized I was correct and, even more stunning, that she’d forgotten and would continue to forget. When I took in her pain, when I felt how out of control it must feel to, for any given amount of time, have no reference point, I was grateful for the ingenuity of mind to pull some memory and place it in the present. 

Nothing is permanent, so everything is precious. Here’s a selection of some happenings—fleeting or otherwise—in the Buddhist world this week.

UC Santa Barbara and Nonprofit 84000 to Translate Entire Tibetan Buddhist Canon

The University of California, Santa Barbara, has teamed up with nonprofit 84000: Translating the Words of the Buddha to commit to translating all 230,000 pages of the Tibetan Buddhist canon into English through a new project called the Buddhist Texts Translation Initiative at UC Santa Barbara. Students from the university’s Buddhist studies department have already worked with 84000 on translations, but this project provides further support for training new translators and welcomes two editors from 84000 as visiting scholars. “The 84000 is creating a bridge between the past and present and is facilitating the transmission of Buddhist knowledge between different cultural regions and languages,” says Professor Vesna A. Wallace, associate director of the initiative’s executive committee. 

Illinois Becomes First State to Require Public Schools to Teach Asian American History

Last week, Illinois ​​Governor J.B. Pritzker signed the Teaching Equitable Asian American History Act (TEAACH), which requires all public schools in the state to teach a unit of Asian American history starting in the 2022-2023 school year. The legislation comes at a time when Asian American hate crimes are surging. “We are setting a new standard for what it means to truly reckon with our history,” Pritzker said on Twitter, noting that Illinois is the first state to make such a requirement.