Medicine Buddha Sadhana, May 20, 2001
His Holiness, the XIV Dalai Lama gave Medicine Buddha Empowerment at the Shoreline Amphitheater in Mountain View near San Jose last weekend.
I am not good at crowd estimation and have not read any reports, but it was a substantial crowd. The event raised impressive amounts of money which will be spent to improve living conditions for monks and nuns and to further Buddhist education in India, Mongolia and other places as well. Sorry to be vague here, but I do not have the facts and figures.
But I can report to you about the event itself. This might be of value, especially if any readers are, like myself, not crowd people and might wonder if a mass spiritual ceremonial can be effective.
For starters, our tickets were such that we had to sit on the lawn in blazing sun without any shade; I certainly had misgivings about that beforehand. I remember so many lawn experiences, all of them concerts, all of them on flat lawns, lower than the stage, which meant there was not the slightest chance of seeing what was happening up there. The music was a distant rumor, and I came away with a memory of little more than mosquitoes in my ears and a parade of feet inches from my nose, not to mention the blinding headache and rolling nausea of approaching sunstroke. Why are lawn crowds constantly in motion? Probably because nobody there can handle the lawn experience, and so the more active try to escape the pain by wandering around. I won't even get into the self-medication that goes on. And why does everybody who comes in late manage to sit themselves on that one little patch of open real estate right in front of me, so I have to get arranged all over again?
Nevertheless, even for an aging curmudgeonette, Medicine Buddha turned out to be a good experience. For one thing, this amphitheater works, unlike many amphitheaters. The lawn is higher than the stage and is sloped so that visibility is good. The sound and video were well placed and clear. Then the crowd was, as one would hope, motivated not to make disturbance. So it was possible to focus on the proceedings.
We were fortunate to get not only Medicine Buddha Empowerment but also White Tara on that day. I have materials on Medicine Buddha only, so will share some of that with you, and leave White Tara, which is sublime, to be explained to you by those qualified to do so. Explanation will open outer doors, but the essence of Tibetan Buddhism is an experience which begins with the teachings and then floods into and around your life. His Holiness encouraged the crowd not just to attend teachings, but to practice.
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