"After Bamiyan" and after Palmyra

After Bamiyan By Gary Snyder

March 2001

The Chinese Buddhist pilgrim Hsüan Tsang described the gleaming, painted giant stone Buddhas standing in their cave-niches along the Bamiyan Valley as he passed through there on foot, on his way to India, in the 7th century AD. Last week they were blown up by the Taliban. Not just by the Taliban, but by woman-and-nature-denying authoritarian worldviews that go back much farther than Islam. Dennis Dutton sent this poem around:

Not even

under mortar fire

do they flinch;

The Buddhas of Bamiyan

Take Refuge in the dust.

May we keep our minds clear and calm and in the present moment, and honor the dust.

...

April 2001

From a man who writes about Buddhism

Dear Gary:

Well, yes, but, the manifest Dharma is intrasamsaric, and will decay.

—R.

I wrote back,

Ah yes . . . impermanence. But this is never a reason to let compassion and focus slide, or to pass off the sufferings of others because they are merely impermanent beings. Issa's haiku goes,

Tsuyu no yo wa tsyuu no yo nagara sarinagara

This dewdrop world

Is but a dewdrop world

And yet . . .

. . . “and yet” is our perennial practice. And maybe the root of the Dharma .

...

A person who should know better wrote, “Many credulous and sentimental Westerners, I suspect, were upset by the destruction of the Afghan Buddha figures because they believe that so-called Eastern religion is more tender-hearted and less dogmatic. . . . So — is nothing sacred? Only respect for human life and culture, which requires no divine sanction and no priesthood to inculcate it. The foolish veneration of holy places and holy texts remains a principal obstacle to that simple realization.”

-- “This is another case of ‘blame the victim.’” I answered. "Buddhism is not on trial here. The Bamiyan statues are part of human life and culture, they are works of art, being destroyed by idolators of the book. Is there anything 'credulous' in respecting the art and religious culture of the past? Counting on the tender-heartedness of (most) Buddhists, you can feel safe in trashing the Bamiyan figures as though the Taliban wasn’t doing a good enough job. I doubt you would have the nerve to call for launching a little missile at the Ka’aba, there are people who would put a hit on you and you know it.”

...

September 2001

The men and women who

died at the World Trade Center

together with the

Buddhas of Bamiyan,

Take Refuge in the dust.