Parable - The Emperor's Three Questions

[image source]

A cool and seemingly Buddhist parable from Leo Tolstoy. Rather than Buddhist, however, it is likely more a version of Christian anarchism, although he didn't ever call himself an anarchist.

I hadn't read this story before -- found it quoted in Thich Nhat Hanh's Miracle of Mindfulness.

The Emperor's Three Questions By Leo Tolstoy

One day it occurred to a certain emperor that if he only knew the answers to three questions, he would never stray in any matter.

1. What is the best time to do each thing?
2. Who are the most important people to work with?
3. What is the most important thing to do at all times?

The emperor issued a decree throughout his kingdom announcing that whoever could answer the questions would receive a great reward. Many who read the decree made their way to the palace at once, each person with a different answer.

In reply to the first question, one person advised that the emperor make up a thorough time schedule, consecrating every hour, day, month and year for certain tasks and then follow the schedule to the letter. Only then could he hope to do every task at the right time.

Another person replied that it was impossible to plan in advance and that the emperor should put all vain amusements aside and remain attentive to everything in order to know what to do at what time.

Someone else insisted that, by himself, the emperor could never hope to have all the foresight and competence necessary to decide when to do each and every task, and what he really needed was to set up a Council of the Wise and then to act according to their advice.

Someone else said that certain matters require immediate decision and could not wait for consultation, but if he wanted to know in advance what was going to happen he should consult magicians and soothsayers.

The responses to the second question also lacked accord.

One person said that the emperor needed to place all his trust in administrators, another urged reliance on priests and monks, while others recommended physicians. Still others put their faith in warriors.

The third question drew a similar variety of answers.

Some said science was the most important pursuit. Others insisted on religion. Yet others claimed the most important thing was military skill.

The emperor was not pleased with any of the answers, and no reward was given.

After several nights of reflection, the emperor resolved to visit a hermit who lived on a mountain and was said to be an enlightened man. The emperor wished to find the hermit to ask him the three questions, though he knew the hermit never left the mountains and was known to receive only the poor, refusing to have anything to do with persons of wealth or power. So the emperor disguised himself as a simple peasant and ordered his attendants to wait for him at the foot of the mountain while he climbed the slope alone to seek the hermit.

Reaching the holy man's dwelling place, the emperor found the hermit digging a garden in front of his hut. When the hermit saw the stranger, he nodded his head in greeting and continued to dig. The labor was obviously hard on him. He was an old man, and each time he thrust his spade into the ground to turn the earth, he heaved heavily.

The emperor approached him and said, "I have come here to ask your help with three questions: When is the best time to do each thing? Who are the most important people to work with? What is the most important thing to do at all times?"

The hermit listened attentively but only patted the emperor on the shoulder and continued digging. The emperor said, "You must be tired. Here, let me give you a hand with that." The hermit thanked him, handed the emperor the spade, and then sat down on the ground to rest.

After he had dug two rows, the emperor stopped and turned to the hermit and repeated his three questions. The hermit still did not answer, but instead stood and pointed to the spade and said, "Why don't you rest now? I can take over again." But the emperor continued to dig. One hour passed, then two. Finally the sun began to set behind the mountain. The emperor put down the spade and said to the hermit, "I came here to ask if you could answer my three questions. But if you can't give me any answer, please let me know so that I can get on my way home."

The hermit lifted his head and asked the emperor, "Do you hear someone running over there?" The emperor turned his head. They both saw a man with a long white beard emerge from the woods. He ran wildly, pressing his hands against a bloody wound in his stomach. The man ran toward the emperor before falling unconscious to the ground, where he lay groaning. Opening the man's clothing, the emperor and hermit saw that the man had received a deep gash. The emperor cleaned the wound thoroughly and then used his own shirt to bandage it, but the blood completely soaked it within minutes. He rinsed the shirt out and bandaged the wound a second time and continued to do so until the flow of blood had stopped.

At last the wounded man regained consciousness and asked for a drink of water. The emperor ran down to the stream and brought back a jug of fresh water. Meanwhile, the sun had disappeared and the night air had begun to turn cold. The hermit gave the emperor a hand in carrying the man into the hut where they laid him down on the hermit's bed. The man closed his eyes and lay quietly. The emperor was worn out from a long day of climbing the mountain and digging the garden. Leaning against the doorway, he fell asleep. When he rose, the sun had already risen over the mountain. For a moment he forgot where he was and what he had come here for. He looked over to the bed and saw the wounded man also looking around him in confusion. When he saw the emperor, he stared at him intently and then said in a faint whisper, "Please forgive me."

"But what have you done that I should forgive you?" the emperor asked.

"You do not know me, your majesty, but I know you. I was your sworn enemy, and I had vowed to take vengeance on you, for during the last war you killed my brother and seized my property. When I learned that you were coming alone to the mountain to meet the hermit, I resolved to surprise you on your way back and kill you. But after waiting a long time there was still no sign of you, and so I left my ambush in order to seek you out. But instead of finding you, I came across your attendants, who recognized me, giving me this wound. Luckily, I escaped and ran here. If I hadn't met you I would surely be dead by now. I had intended to kill you, but instead you saved my life! I am ashamed and grateful beyond words. If I live, I vow to be your servant for the rest of my life, and I will bid my children and grandchildren to do the same. Please grant me you forgiveness."

The emperor was overjoyed to see that he was so easily reconciled with a former enemy. He not only forgave the man but promised to return all the man's property and to send his own physician and servants to wait on the man until he was completely healed. After ordering his attendants to take the man home, the emperor returned to see the hermit. Before returning to the palace the emperor wanted to repeat his three questions one last time. He found the hermit sowing seeds in the earth they had dug the day before.

The hermit stood up and looked at the emperor. "But your questions have already been answered."

"How's that?" the emperor asked, puzzled.

"Yesterday, if you had not taken pity on my age and given me a hand with digging these beds, you would have been attacked by that man on your way home. Then you would have deeply regretted not staying with me. Therefore the most important time was the time you were digging in the beds, the most important person was myself, and the most important pursuit was to help me."

"Later, when the wounded man ran up here, the most important time was the time you spent dressing his wound, for if you had not cared for him he would have died and you would have lost the chance to be reconciled with him. Likewise, he was the most important person, and the most important pursuit was taking care of his wound."

"Remember that there is only one important time and that is now. The present moment is the only time over which we have dominion. The most important person is always the person you are with, who is right before you, for who knows if you will have dealings with any other person in the future? The most important pursuit is making the person standing at your side happy, for that alone is the pursuit of life."

Tags: Parable, The Emperor's Three Questions, Leo Tolstoy, Buddhism, folktales, Philosophy, literature, hermit, Miracle of Mindfulness, Thich Nhat Hanh

The Myth of Shambhala

The myth of Shambhala is one the most enduring and corrupted ideas to come from Buddhism. Even the Nazis attempted to claim some form of occult inspiration from the idea. Perhaps they were working some of the same terrain as Madame Blavatsky, who posited Shambhala as the metaphysical home to the Aryans.

Cabinet Magazine took a look at the history of the myth, from the Fall 2007 issue. This is a well-researched and highly entertaining look at the many [false] conceptions of shambhala.

Utopia on the Roof of the World

---

Chris Wiley

Svetoslav Roerich, Portrait of Nicholas Roerich, 1937. Courtesy the Nicholas Roerich Museum, New York.
Somewhere high up in the Himalayas, surrounded by a range of snow-capped peaks treacherous enough to defeat even the most intrepid mountaineer, lies a kingdom of unparalleled splendor, peace, and tranquility. This place, known as Shambhala, is home to palaces built of rare stone and pure gold and bedecked with a lapidary's laundry list of precious gems, glasses, and colored corals. There are lakes where Shambhala's noble, healthy, and prosperous subjects cavort in boats carved from jewels, and a lush sandalwood grove where they can peacefully contemplate an enormous, three-dimensional Mandala of unparalleled opulence. But beyond this bountiful earthly splendor, Shambhala is also a privileged spiritual realm -- those who are born there are guaranteed to achieve Enlightenment in the span of a single lifetime. It is, in short, a paradise -- a utopia cordoned off from the world not by water, like Sir Thomas More's famous island, but by tectonic eruptions of stone.

It is also, of course, a myth, though one that has been, and continues to be, taken as serious, geographic fact by both Eastern and Western Buddhists, as well as a cavalcade of mystics, occultists, ufologists, New Agers, and Neo-Nazis. This credulous attitude towards the Shambhala myth may seem absurd, but it has furnished history with some of the oddest stories of the West's fantasies about, and interactions with, the Far East.

The Shambhala myth is derived from a number of esoteric Buddhist texts, primarily the Kalachakra Tantra. Taken together, these texts provide detailed descriptions of the kingdom, trace the arc of its history, and prophesy its future. We are told that the enormous, lotus-shaped, mountain kingdom is ruled by a lineage of wise, august monarchs, who each reign for a hundred years. They serve as the keepers of the sacred Kalachakra teachings, which were passed down by the Buddha to Shambhala's first king, King Suchandra. By living according to these esoteric teachings, all of Shambhala's millions of villagers have fulfilling, enlightened lives. Despite the relative humbleness of their villages when compared to the extravagances of the capital city, they are left wanting for nothing.

While the Kalachakra Tantra describes Shambhala as a perpetual bastion of peace and wisdom, it also foretells the decline of the world beyond its borders, where the Buddha's teachings will gradually be forgotten. The climax of the kingdom's history arrives when the outside world has reached its spiritual nadir: then, Shambhala's last king, Rudra Chakrin, and the kingdom's vast armies will mount their horses and gallop over the mountains, cleansing the world of blight and ushering in a thousand-year Golden Age.

Nicholas Roerich, Sophia - the Wisdom of the Almighty, 1932. Courtesy the Nicholas Roerich Museum, New York
It is an evocative eschatology, a fantastic ending to a fantastic tale. It is not surprising, then, that during the heyday of Western imperialism, as the Orientalist-minded began to mine the exotic religious traditions of the Far East for new sources of spiritual expression, Shambhala should make its way into the vocabularies of such seekers. But, of course, the Shambhala myth did not just appear, ex nihilo, in the drawing rooms of the West's occultist elite. Instead, it was placed there -- almost single-handedly -- by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, the eccentric matriarch of the Theosophical Society.

Madame Blavatsky, or HPB, as she was commonly referred to, was a self-described "hippopotamus of an old woman" who, despite frequent accusations of charlatanism and allegations made by the British government of spying for the Russians, managed to establish a worldwide network of devotees to her particular brand of esotericism. A spiritual vocation of Byzantine complexity, Theosophy may be understood as a unique bricolage of spiritualism, ancient mythology, Eastern religion, and the legendarily turgid mystical novels of Edward Bulwer-Lytton. The Shambhala myth made its way into Blavatsky's mystical stew through an account of anthropogenesis offered in her most famous book, The Secret Doctrine (1888).

Put briefly, The Secret Doctrine retells human evolution as a progression of five distinct "Root Races." Each of the historical Root Races (with the exception of the first, which had no physical form) inhabited a different mythological continent: the second inhabited Hyperborea; the third, Lemuria; the fourth, Atlantis. According to HPB's account, Shambhala became the place where surviving Atlanteans fled after their homeland sank into the ocean. From there, the Atlanteans shared their culture and wisdom with a fifth, overlapping Root Race, which has since spread out across most of the known world: the Aryans.

Theosophy's fantastical tales turned Shambhala into fodder for those already hungry for the occult. But some were not content to let the stories of this mythical land simply rattle about in their parlors. With its intoxicating blend of utopianism, exotic religion, and potential adventure in far-flung lands, the Shambhala myth proved too compelling to let lie.

Considering the importance of Blavatsky's phylogeny for those interested in Aryans and Aryanism, it should come as no surprise that some of those stirred to action by the Shambhala myth were members of the Nazi party -- in particular, those working under Reichsfuhrer Heinrich Himmler in a branch of the SS called the Ahnenerbe, which served as the organization's "Ancestral Heritage" office. The Ahnenerbe was Himmler's pet project, established to trace the heritage of the "master race" back to its origins. It was to this end that, in 1938, five SS officers were sent on an expedition to Tibet.

The Ahnenerbe's "scientific" endeavors were colored by Himmler's library of bizarre beliefs, which ranged from the pseudoscientific (he was an advocate of Hans HÃrbiger's World Ice Theory, which posited that the universe is shaped by the continual battle between fire and ice), to the merely egomaniacal (he was convinced that he was the reincarnation of the tenth-century Saxon king Henry the Fowler, and organized expeditions to prove this). As a result, the Ahnenerbe was staffed by an assortment of cranks, amateurs, and, in the case of Karl Maria Wiligut, often referred to as "Himmler's Rasputin," the clinically insane. This made for a combustible mix of occult belief and all manner of contemporary pseudoscience. And so it was that the Shambhala myth, filtered through Theosophy, came to meet phrenology and physiognomy on the Tibetan plateau.

The main players in the SS expedition were Ernst SchÃfer, a famous explorer and zoologist who served as the expedition's leader, and Bruno Berger, who served as the team's anthropologist. Unlike many in the Ahnenerbe, SchÃfer was a respected scientist, and it remains unclear whether his allegiance to the SS was ideological or, as he later claimed, merely opportunistic. Berger's alliances were slightly more clear-cut. During his time on the "Roof of the World," he measured the heads of Tibetans with menacing calipers that pinched and prodded, and made physiognomic facial casts out of torturously slow-drying plaster, all in hopes of finding traces of the master race. Berger would later be involved in gathering anatomical specimens from among the prisoners in Auschwitz, in preparation for a never-realized expedition to the Caucasus with SchÃfer's then-newly established Sven Hedin Institute for Inner Asian Research.

When the members of the Ahnenerbe's "German Tibet Expedition" returned in 1939, laden with animal skins, artifacts, holy texts, photographs and film reels, and, of course, the facial casts and phrenological data collected by Berger, Himmler declared the expedition an unqualified success. Though in this case Shambhala served as merely a catalyst for the journey rather than its destination, the "German Tibet Expedition" sparked later assertions -- despite lack of evidence -- that the Nazis made frequent, secretive trips to Tibet in search of the utopian kingdom itself. These rumors have made Shambhala central to a branch of contemporary Neo-Nazi thought known as "Esoteric Hitlerism." Miguel Serrano, a former Chilean diplomat and major figure in the Esoteric Hitlerist movement, in fact asserts that Hitler did not die in Berlin but rather fled to Shambhala (in Serrano's account, relocated from the Tibetan Himalayas to the center of the earth), whence he will soon emerge, astride a white steed and flanked by an army of UFOs, to inaugurate the "Fourth Reich."

Despite scant evidence that the Nazis journeyed to Tibet in search of Shambhala itself, the "German Tibet Expedition" was preceded by two Tibetan expeditions led by a man who most certainly was: Nicholas Roerich, once a world-famous painter and renowned mystic who lent his name to a major international treaty, was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize three times, and played a behind-the-scenes role in the Roosevelt administration. Roerich rose to fame at the beginning of the twentieth century in his native Russia where, in addition to his painting practice, he designed sets and costumes for the theater, most notably for the Ballets Russes's staging of Stravinsky's Le Sacre du Printemps. He was also involved in Moscow's flourishing occult movement, which orbited around HPB's Theosophical teachings. It was through his involvement in the construction of a Theosophical-Buddhist Temple in Moscow in 1909 that he met Agvan Dorjiev, a major player in Russian-Tibetan relations and tutor to the thirteenth Dalai Lama. Dorjiev's fascination with the location of Shambhala would inspire Roerich's epic quest.

By the time Roerich moved to New York City in 1920, he had developed a complex system of beliefs surrounding Shambhala, which he concluded was located in the Himalayas. For Roerich, Shambhala was linked not only to the myth of the Holy Grail but literally connected to the Altay Mountains in Central Asia via a series of underground tunnels that joined it to Belovode, the "Land of White Waters" from Siberian mythology. However, Roerich's most outlandish belief, which he hid from all but his closest confidants, was that he and his family were fated to play an integral role in bringing about the dawn of the Golden Age.

Roerich referred to his project of bringing about the eschatological prophecies laid down in the Kalachakra Tantra as the "Great Plan." He believed that it was his calling to found a pan-Buddhist state, which would unite areas of Russia, Mongolia, and China with Tibet, and whose creation would finally summon the armies of Shambhala from their mountain stronghold. For most, a plan this grandiose would flounder in the realm of delusion. But Nicholas Roerich had powerful and influential friends and two of them -- Louis L. Horch, a successful Wall Street currency broker, and Henry A. Wallace, Franklin D. Roosevelt's secretary of agriculture and, later, his vice president -- would respectively fund Roerich's two lengthy expeditions in the Far East. The exact details of what occurred on these expeditions remain somewhat cloudy, as Roerich, ever secretive about his geopolitical scheming, preferred to maintain in public the persona of an artist, scholar, and guru. However, his actions were public enough to garner the attention of at least a half-dozen governments that were convinced that he was a covert political operative.

Despite his best efforts, Roerich's pursuit of his "Great Plan" finally ended in scandal and disappointment. His fall from grace was precipitated by his actions during his second journey east from 1934 to 1936, which was funded -- with taxpayer dollars -- by Wallace's Department of Agriculture. While Roerich's first expedition had, on the surface, been an artistic and scholarly one free from political significance, this second expedition was organized to gather drought-resistant grasses that would help combat the American Dust Bowl. Like Horch, Wallace was aware of Roerich's ulterior motives -- or at least some of them -- as the two had maintained, in the years preceding the expedition, an extensive, mystically-oriented correspondence in which Wallace played the part of Roerich's awed and obedient pupil. However, Wallace could not have predicted that Roerich would allow these secret motives to take total precedence over the serious mission with which he had been entrusted, and leave the exasperated botanists who had been put in his charge to chase him across Japan, China, and Mongolia.

Though it would take some time for Wallace to see Roerich as anything but infallible, the utter lack of botanical specimens returned for the purpose of erosion control (Roerich did send back a number of superfluous medicinal herbs) left Wallace increasingly disillusioned with his former guru. Roerich's funding was suspended in 1935, and his expedition's misadventures opened the way for Treasury Department allegations of tax evasion, as well as a lawsuit filed over old loans by a similarly disenchanted Horch, who had, in addition to the money he fronted for Roerich's first expedition, funded the creation of the Roerich Museum in a palatial building on New York's Upper West Side. After the calamitous end to his final Tibetan excursion, Roerich settled permanently with his family in India's Kullu Valley and never returned to the United States. Though he and his family remained prominent figures in India, counting among their friends the future Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, Roerich's fame in the West faded. Even the Roerich Museum, once ensconced in Horch's imposing, twenty-seven-story Art Deco skyscraper, was relegated to a modest townhouse on a sleepy side street, where it remains today.

Similarly, the Shambhala myth itself has gradually slipped from its prominent place in the Western imagination. It now resides only in a few scattered outposts, maintained by groups with eclectic subcultural proclivities. It has, however, persisted as a vestigial cultural memory, sneaking into the popular lexicon in disguise. When the West dreams of a utopian mountain hideaway, it now dreams of Shangri-La. The name itself is enough to conjure visions of clear mountain streams, and lush, sequestered valleys in exotic locales. However, it is not a name that has its roots in some occluded, mythic past, as one might be led to suspect. Instead, Shangri-La arrived in our collective fantasy life through Lost Horizon, a 1933 novel by James Hilton, in which Shangri-La is the name of a utopian lamasery in the Tibetan Himalayas that seems to exist outside of time. Hilton's Shangri-La is clearly based on the Shambhala myth, though he has Westernized some of its aspects (rather than acting as a storehouse for esoteric spiritual teachings, for instance, Shangri-La is fashioned as a modern-day Library of Alexandria, which will keep the world's cultural treasures safe during the coming apocalypse), and it is this version that has seeped into our contemporary fantasies of the place. Thus Shambhala remains with us in a third-generation form -- no longer the impetus for daring or dastardly exploration of far-flung lands, it has moved from myth, to fiction, to a mere passing daydream.

Shambhala thangka, Eastern Tibet, possibly Derge, mid-1800s.

Chris Wiley, a former editorial assistant at Cabinet, is a Brooklyn-based photographer and writer. He recently received his MA in Contemporary Art Theory from Goldsmiths College, London, and served as the managing editor for Charley 05.

Tags: Shambhala, myth, folktale, Cabinet, Chris Wiley, history, culture, anthropology, folktales, mythology, Madame Blavatsky, Nazis, Theosophy, Aryans, Utopia, Himalayas, Kalachakra Tantra, Buddhism, King Suchandra, occult, Heinrich Himmler, Nicholas Roerich

Fractured Fairy Tales - Rapunzel

A great cartoon from 1959.


via videosift.com

Tags: Fractured Fairy Tales, Rapunzel, cartoons, animation, folktales

"The End" -- A Scarecrow, a Magpie and Treason

Interesting little piece of animation.

In this beautiful Computer Animation, a scarecrow befriends a magpie and is judged harshly and imprisoned by his peers. Never Trust The Enemy.

via videosift.com

Tags: The End, Scarecrow, Magpie, Treason, animation, cartoon, folktale, prison

Folktale: Raven and Noah’s Ark

I wrote this folktale several years ago. A watered-down version (read: not offensive to Christians) was published by Reading A-Z. I always thought Raven got a bum rap in the flood story simply because he was black, while dove was white. So I wrote my own version of the story. The simple language and structure is due to the fact that this was written for second graders.

[image source]

Raven and Noah’s Ark

A long, long time ago, before the world was as we know it now, there was a great storm. Blades of lightning cut through the sky and thunder shook the ground. The rain fell, and kept falling, for forty days and forty nights.

Noah was a wise man. He had known the storm was coming and had built a big boat. He named his boat the Ark. He gathered his family onto the Ark. He also gathered one male and female of every animal, bird, and insect, just in case they didn’t survive the storm.

After three days of rain, the ground was completely covered with water. After seven days of rain, the big, heavy Ark began to float. When the rain stopped after forty days and nights, not one patch of ground was visible anywhere. Trees floated by, uprooted by the water. A pod of dolphins swam alongside the giant boat. In the distance, the clouds parted and revealed a blue sky.

Noah found Raven, the smartest of all the birds. “Mr. Raven,” Noah said, “please come here.” He addressed Raven with respect because what he was asking was serious. “I need you to leave the Ark and fly until you find land. When you do, bring back a tree branch so that I know we can start a new life. Wherever we land will be our new home.”

“Caw, caw,” said Raven, agreeing to do this most dangerous and important job.

For three long days, Raven flew over the water, but he found no land. By the fifth day, he noticed the water was receding. Below him he saw the first small patch of dry ground. On the seventh day, Raven saw a whole mountain above the water and flew toward it. He was very tired by now and wanted to rest for a while.

When he landed he found the opening of a cave in the side of the mountain. Raven was a curious bird so he hopped, quietly, from spot to spot, until he was inside. In the darkness he saw a group of people huddled around a small fire.

A man saw him and shouted, “Raven, come here, share our fire. We have stored plenty of wood. You are welcome to join me and my family.”

Raven hopped to the fire and spread his tired wings to the warmth.

“Tell us, Raven,” said the man, “where have you come from?”

“Caw, cahaw, caaaw, ca, ca, caw,” said Raven, eager to share his story. But the people around the fire just stared at him, unable to understand.

But the man nodded. He was a great shaman and knew the language of animals.

“When you have rested, take this deerskin to your master. He must know others have survived.” The man traced the outline of his hand onto the deerskin with a piece of charcoal from the fire. “When he sees this he will know you found us.”

After a short nap, Raven began the long trip back to the Ark. He was excited to share his news. For seven days he flew, as the sun began to dry the waters from the Earth.

When Raven finally found the Ark, he was very tired. Noah was busy chasing the animals onto the dry land. The big boat had come to a rest on the rocks of a big mountain. As the water formed into lakes and rivers, the land below was a fertile valley.

“Caw, cahaw,” said Raven. He dropped the deerskin at Noah’s feet.

“You crazy bird,” said Noah, “Dove found this mountain four days ago. Where have you been?”

Noah bent to pick up the deerskin. He unrolled it and saw the freshly drawn outline of a hand, a human hand.

“We are not alone,” Noah whispered to himself, dancing in a circle. “We are not alone!”

Noah bent down to Raven and whispered, “Thank you, wise bird. But this must remain our secret. The others will want to leave to find these new people. But this is our new home. I can feel it. We must say here.”

Raven knew Noah was a very wise man. “Caw, caw,” said Raven, agreeing.

So Noah and his sons, each with a wife and children, settled the new land. Their crops grew healthy and plentiful. The animals multiplied and filled the land. Everyone was very happy. Raven kept his promise, and his secret. He allowed Dove to be the hero who found their new home. But, in his heart, he knew the truth.

Tags: Raven, the Flood myth, Noah's Ark, The Bible, folktales