Just A Little Dust

Saturday I was at the library reading stories from the Pali canon, which started out as a bit of a grind.  I had already read several short pieces that lacked the setting and author; most of the suttas start out with the place and players but this whole series of them lacked attribution and setting, and most of them seemed like late additions, so I was frustrated.  Then I came on a wonderful tale — full of holes, but with good bone structure, that is, my imagination could fill in the gaps left by those who had trimmed the tale over the years — and that made the previous hours and hours feel worthwhile.

Somewhere in the middle of working my way through trying to figure out what might really have gone on during this story, I found my thoughts turning over the possibility of an Introduction to Skeptical Buddhism for youtube.  By the time I’d finished with the sutta, I felt I’d done enough work to reward myself by writing the outline for the first talk, which just flowed from brain through fingertips to bits to phosphorescent glows on the screen.  I love it when that happens.

When I got home, I dug into creating the first video and found it was surprisingly easy to do with free tools.  I started with a free teleprompter script called Telekast, then located Microsoft’s Movie Maker which was already on my PC, and, well, you don’t need the whole list (the rest is in the credits at the end of the video anyway).  It was sheer luck that my first attempt ended at just seconds under ten minutes — the opening title and credits brought it right up to ten — because I hadn’t known youtube had a limit.  I’m going to be challenged to do a series in such small chunks; brevity is not in my nature.

This first video introduces my avatar, Star, from Second Life, and then discusses what Skeptical Buddhism is, and (very tentatively) introduces a few Buddhist terms — karma, Buddha, dharma, and sangha.

One of the interesting things about Buddhism, one that gives it a lot of its flavor and mystery, but also adds to confusion for beginners, is the really fluid definition of certain words.  The great teachers out there often tell us that each word has several meanings — dharma, for example, can mean “the teaching, the truth, the body of work under the Buddha’s name, the correct view, the law” and, I expect, a few I have forgotten to include — and we have to figure out from context which one is meant.  But it seems to me in my reading that what’s meant is usually all of those meanings at the same time but with one pushed a little more to the front of the thoughts in any particular usage.  This makes understanding almost impossible for those who are stuck on the context we Westerners have given the terms; a challenge for those who have just begun to understand that “karma” doesn’t mean the same to the Buddha as it does to us; gives a sweet subtlety when we begin to understand it; and, when we really get it,  has the effect of forming threads that bind the whole teaching together in a way that is just stunningly beautiful.

At any rate, I hope you enjoy the first in the series and will come back for more.  SB002 is already rambling around in my brain looking for the path to escape into the real world, so it won’t be long now till there’s another episode up.

Namasté!