Diary 1963 - Murshid Sam's Living Stream

Diaries 1963-3Finally there is another article on the “Absolute” by one Andre Bareau, translated into English.He puts the Absolute of Buddhism back where it belongs, not to Hegel, or to reviewers abstractionsfrom a lot of nonsense, but to the Four Noble Truths and the Udana, and he quotes the Udana andafter reading a mass of speculation, you have it in clear language, in language also that I believeis accepted by all true followers of Arya Dharma: “There is, O monks, a non-born, a non-arisen, anon-made, a non-compound, for if there were no non-born, no non-arisen, no non-made, no noncompound,then no escape would be made from what is born, what has arisen, what is made, whatis composed.The article by Bareau is much shorter, more succinct and more apt.I may give a partial later review of this fascicule. But what I am concerned with, is have youeither this or the Buddhist Logic as above?Sunday I go to the Universal Church. They are announcing themselves as the “Pristine Dharma”and at the same time using the Diamond Sutra and the sutra of the Sixth Patriarch which, whateverelse may be said, are anything but “pristine.” Fortunately on May 5 somebody is giving themain sermon on “The Life of the Buddha.” We have had 50-11 speaker—probably more on “Zen,”“Buddhism,” “Cosmic Consciousness’ and nobody has spoken in English on the Buddha.Theologically I don’t care but psychologically do and here there is a growing amount of delinquency,promiscuity and vileness, for which the churches have no answer. At the same time there isgrowing interest in the practice of meditation. The “Yogis” are too concerned with postures and theSoto people so far are too “orthodox”—i.e. they do not take into consideration the difficulty facingAmericans who cannot do lotus-posture.Incidentally I now have so much material on the Lotus that I shall have to cut down rather thanotherwise in my book. The people in Mendocino wish to print part of it as review material. This is agood surprise.Faithfully,S. A. M.Samuel L. Lewis