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Voting for God

Yesterday the ritual procedure for nominating candidates for the presidency of the United States of America drew to a close. Sen. John McCain’s acceptance speech was littered with references to the consecration of the United States by God:

We believe everyone has something to contribute and deserves the opportunity to reach their God-given potential … We’re all God’s children and we’re all Americans. […]

I’m going to fight to make sure every American has every reason to thank God, as I thank Him: that I’m an American, a proud citizen of the greatest country on earth, and with hard work, strong faith and a little courage, great things are always within our reach.

Frankly, I expected just a little more from John McCain, the self-styled reflective student of history. McCain, unlike his running mate, and the current incumbent (prior to holding office), at least has some personal experience of the wider world — even if it happened to involve pouring munitions from a great height onto civilian infrastructure (for which he can hardly be accused of being unpatriotic).

McCain, in following convention and pushing the buttons of his party’s faithful, neglects to mention what happens to governments that form compacts with Almighty Gods. At some inopportune moment, they disintegrate: inexorably, ignominiously, permanently.

This year Nepal’s monarchy became just the latest in a long line of national elites forsaken by the God(s) integral to their thinking and systems of power. In some respects I am inclined to think that Nepal — where every dinner is a candlelit dinner, thanks to the mismanagement of the country’s meagre resources — not only shows the past, but the way of the future.

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Nepālāvatāra (II): I Got Wood

In Kathmandu there are worse places to hang out than in Jana Bahā, majestic home to one of the Valley’s four famed Lokeśvaras. Like many icons of the Valley, it is sacred not only to Newar Buddhists, who control the ritual and institutional complex connected with the deity, but also for Tibetans (as Jo bo dzam gling dkar mo) and a sizeable number of non-Buddhists (in the guise of ‘White Matsyendranātha’).

It so happens that tomorrow is an important day in the ongoing renovation of Jana Bahā. Formally this began with expeditions to the nearest forest (vanayātrā) to seek suitable lumber, much along the lines prescribed in Kuladatta’s Kriyāsaṃgraha (itself almost certainly a Newar composition). As almost the entire Valley has been deforested these days, the builders’ Getting of Wood took place on the mountains on the Valley’s rim. Nevertheless, chronicles record that timber was also scarce in the not-too-distant past; it would take several weeks or months to drag the chosen log(s) to their destination in the city.

What makes this renovation qualitatively different from its many predecessors in the Newar tradition is a new level of transparency. The organizers have taken the startling but commendable step of documenting much of the process online, in English, at janabahaa.blogspot.com.

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Badrīratna, ‘Dharmasaṃgrahabhāṣya’ (2005)

Nareśamāna Vajrācārya (ed.) Badrīratnakṛtabhāṣyopetaḥ Nāgārjunapādaviracitaḥ Dharmasaṃgrahaḥ. Prathamo bhāgaḥ. Kathmandu: Tri-Ratna Publication, 1126 NS [2005]. 222 pp. Rs 250.

This first volume of a presumably two-volume Sanskrit commentary on Nāgārjunapāda’s Dharmasaṅgraha is by Badrīratna Vajrācārya, a self-styled leader of the Kathmandu Vajrācārya community. As far as I can tell, not much of the text is Badrī’s original contribution, the remainder having been quoted without change, correction or comment from various Indian editions of Sanskrit texts.

On p.XXII, the editor, Dr. Naresh Man Bajracharya, repeatedly describes Nāgārjuna the Mādhyamika as a “Hīnayāni” author. Astonishingly, Dr. Bajracharya at the present time is Head of Tribhuvan University’s Buddhist Studies programme, who claims that his “teaching in Nepal and abroad are well received” (cf. back cover).