Vignettes della Vita ein Gelegenheitslamas #31 I Woke Up This Morning

The Barocksaal of the Carl der Große centre is named after a series of 18th.C canvases which cover the four walls from floor to ceiling, showing European aristocracy at play.

Delicate ceiling-mouldings and paneling, and an elegant Delft-tiled stove, no two tiles the same, complete the sense of a heritage of effortless refinement. The segue into the modern era was accomplished through a coffee-machine which resonated with all the overtones of the Gyuto choir, sleekly post-industrial in styling like the power-source of Dr. Who’s TARDIS. It was topped with a rack of transparent organ-pipes stacked with flying-saucer capsules in metallic foil, colour-coded to connote more-or-less serious grades of fuel. The paintings, the decor, with the caterers’ largesse of soft drinks, fruit and croissants, and the street outside blended easily into a continuum cheerily mimicking the god realm.

This was easy inspiration to talk about the Buddha’s life as both king and guru of Tushita. The Buddha regularly helped the gods with meditation practice so that they could go beyond hope and fear in their struggles with the jealous gods. A modern analogy might be an aristocratic English private school having to admit the children of financiers, or Clint Eastwood as mayor of Carmel arbitrating zoning disputes, or the good ol’ boys of Augusta, Georgia reconciling themselves to the spikes of Tiger Woods prickling their shaved velvet swards. Massaging the egos of the god realm - so that they would relax – was an ideal warm-up for the Buddha, prior to negotiating between the kshatriyas and the brahmins when he took rebirth in Indian caste society.

The Buddha in the god realm is always shown playing a musical instrument. Why? Because the gods are so spoiled, by their apparently endless effortless spontaneous luxury and bliss, that they would be unable to connect with spiritual training unless it were presented as entertainment. Like Tiger Woods, it is only the Buddha’s skill as an entertainer which has secured him the entrée to this restricted area. The Buddha, who has ‘access all areas’, is manifesting as though he had merely been invited on a whim, as a mascot or a pet. The aristocracy cannot bear the uppity Middle-Way-classes – hence their eternal exclusion of the jealous gods.

The Buddha must be singing the blues. He is depressed, because, stage left, the gods are careering off to war, not taking a blind bit of notice of anything the Buddha has been trying to teach them. The Buddha had to go through similar disappointments with the karma of the Shakya clan later on. The gods have not yet recognised that their insecurity, in response to the porosity of their frontier with the jealous gods (which the thangka makes explicit), is a warning that they are not enlightened beings. Their kingdom is not above cyclic existence and their vastly long lives are doomed to end in tears unless they can hearken to the message the Buddha is floating on top of his divertissement.

So the Buddha sings “AH WOKE UP DIS MAWNIN’…” (what else?)
and the gods all rotate vaguely in his direction, sigh and murmur “Whoah yeah…”
“… AH HAD JUS’ ONE THANG ON MAH MAHND…”
“Tell it, tell it like it is, Buddha…”

“When you woke up this morning everything you had was
gone. By half past ten your head was going ding-dong.
Ringing like a bell from your head down to your toes,
like a voice telling you there was something you should
know. Last night you were flying but today you’re so low
- ain’t it times like these that make you wonder if
you’ll ever know the meaning of things as they appear to
the others; wives, mothers, fathers, sisters and
brothers. Don’t you wish you didn’t function, wish you
didn’t think beyond the next paycheck and the next little
drink’ Well you do so make up your mind to go on, ‘cos
when you woke up this morning everything you had was gone.”
- from the soundtrack to ‘The Sopranos’ by Alabama 3,  eight men and a woman from Brixton, London.
http://www.alabama3.co.uk/en/general_articles/about