The Buddha in the Tarot
Page 22
From a statement by the Gross National Happiness Commission, 2015, quoted in Michael Givel, “Mahayana Buddhism and Gross National Happiness in Bhutan,” International Journal of Wellbeing, 5.2 (2015), pp. 14-27 (p. 23).
The Hierophant (5)
A. E. Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (New York: Parragon edition, 1978/1910), p. 91.
ibid, pp. 88, 91.
Pollack, Seventy-Eight Degrees, p. 56; Banzhaf, Tarot and the Journey of the Hero, p. 49.
From Waite’s The Key to the Tarot reproduced in The Rider Waite Tarot Cards Instructions booklet (London: Rider Books, 1993), p. 5.
Paul Fenton-Smith, The Tarot Revealed (Australia: Simon & Schuster, 1995), p. 176.
Blake, Urizen, accessed November 13 2016, http://www.public-domain-poetry.com/william-blake/book-of-urizen-chapter-ii-9264.
A term used by thealogian Mary Daly in her book Gyn/Ecology: The Metaethics of Radical Feminism (Boston: Beacon Press, 1999/1978).
Gardner, The Tarot Speaks, pp. 71-2.
Pollack, op. cit., pp. 55, 56.
Asvaghosa, Buddhacarita, 2: 24, 28.
From the short story The First Meditation, accessed November 5 2016, http://www.bodhitales.org/the-first-meditation.php.
From the Sigala Sutta in Bhikkhu Bodhi, ed., In the Buddha’s Words: An Anthology of Discourses from the Pali Canon (Massachusetts: Wisdom Publications, 2005), pp. 117, 118.
Alan Watts, The Way of Zen (New York; Vintage 1985/1957), p. 163.
John Powers, Introducing Tibetan Buddhism (New York: Snow Lion Publications, 1995), p. 271.
Yeshe, Introduction to Tantra, p. 105.
From the Dhammapada in W.D.C Wagiswara and K.J. Saunders, trans., The Buddha's Way of Virtue (London: John Murray, 1920), accessed November 13 2016, http://www.sacred-texts.com/bud/wov/wov16.htm.
From the Mahaparinibbana Sutta in Paul Carus, Buddha: The Gospel (Chicago: The Open Court Publishing Company, 1894), accessed November 3 2016, http://www.sacred-texts.com/bud/btg/index.htm.
Ling, The Buddha, esp. chapters 4 and 5.
From the Maitri (Maitreya) Upanishad in K. Narayanasvami Aiyar, trans., Thirty Minor Upanishads (Madras: 1914), accessed November 3 2016, http://www.sacred-texts.com/hin/tmu/index.htm.
From the Anguttara Nikaya in Bhikkhu Bodhi, In the Buddha’s Words, p. 88.
From the Kutadanta Sutta in T. W. Rhys Davids, trans, Dialogues of the Buddha: The Digha-Nikaya: The Sacred Books of the Buddhists, Vol. II (London: Oxford University Press, 1899), accessed November 3 2016, http://www.sacred-texts.com/bud/dob/index.htm.
From the Rig Veda in Ralph T.H. Griffith, trans., The Rig Veda (1896), accessed November 3 2016, http://www.sacred-texts.com/hin/rigveda/rv10090.htm.
The Bhagavad-Gita (18: 44). The social stratification embodied in the doctrine of the three gunas is still found today in the presentation of a three-stranded thread to only those Hindu boys of the “twice-born” varnas at the moment of their coming of age.
From The Bhagavad-Gita (2: 31-33) in Kashinath Trimbak Telang, trans., The Bhagavadgita: Sacred Books of the East, Vol. 8 (1882) accessed November 3 2016, http://www.sacred-texts.com/hin/sbe08/index.htm.
Muller, The Dhammapada, accessed November 3 2016, http://www.sacred-texts.com/bud/sbe10/sbe1028.htm.
From the vows quoted in Himansu Charan Sadangi, Dalit: The Downtrodden of India (Delhi: Isha Books, 2008), p. 104.
The Lovers (6)
See Sallie Nichols, Jung and Tarot: An Archetypal Journey (San Francisco: Weiser Books, 1984/1980), p. 132. Nichol’s interpretation highlights one criticism that feminists have made of the Jungian “Hero’s Journey”; namely that it might be exactly what it says – descriptive of the male experience. It raises the obvious question of whether women actually have a journey, or if they simply sit at home until their questing men-folk recover their “lost feminine.” There are a few exceptions. Mary Greer for example does make an attempt to sketch out a possible “Heroine’s Journey” in appendix D of her work on Tarot Reversals; but the very fact that she does so underscores its general absence elsewhere. With some pathos she recognizes that the heroine’s journey may not even go noticed, never mind celebrated. See Mary K. Greer, The Complete Book of Tarot Reversals (Minnesota: Llewellyn Publications, 2012), p. 255. My own position on this matter is that the general themes of the cards address every person, regardless of gender. An awareness of the limitations and the conflicts of life, the inner reflections these prompt, and the desire for a more actualized and fulfilled existence, are universally human - not the proclivities of one gender.
Nichols, op. cit., p. 134.
From the Preface to Irenaeus’ Against Heresies: Book V, in A. Cleveland Coxe, Alexander Roberts, James Donaldson, eds., Ante-Nicene Fathers: The Writings of the Fathers down to A.D. 325. Volume 1: The Apostolic Fathers, Justine Martyr, Irenaeus (New York: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1885), p. 526.
Nichols, op. cit., p. 137.
Although Smith’s rendition only shows four fruits, the Case B.O.T.A. deck makes the link with sensuality clearer by depicting five.
Warren, Buddhism in Translations, p. 55.
Asvaghosa, Buddhacarita, 2: 31-2.
John Stevens, Lust for Enlightenment: Buddhism and Sex (Boston and London: Shambhala, 1990), pp. 7-8.
Asvaghosa, op. cit., 2: 26.
Stevens, op. cit., p. 6.
From Yeshe Gyaltsen’s version of the life of the Buddha in Robert A. F. Thurman, Essential Tibetan Buddhism (NJ: Castle Books, 1995), p. 69.
From the Sigala Sutta in Bhikkhu Bodhi, In the Buddha’s Words, p. 117.
From the Mahadukkhakhandha Sutta in Bhikkhu Bodhi, op. cit., p. 197.
From the story of Subha of Jivaka's Mango-grove (Canto XVI), in Mrs. Rhys Davies, trans., Psalms of the Early Buddhists: Psalms of the Sisters (London: Pali Test Society, 1909), accessed November 5 2016, http://www.sacred-texts.com/bud/pos/pos19.htm.
From the Hevajra Tantra, quoted in Powers, Introducing Tibetan Buddhism, p. 226.
ibid., p. 251.
ibid., p. 252.
Georg Feuerstein, Tantra: The Path of Ecstasy (Colorado: Shambhala Press 1998), p. 271.
The Skeptic Tantrika, “Kundalina Danger – The Real Dangers of Tantra,” accessed November 5 2016, http://tantrasoul.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/kundalini-danger-real-dangers-of-tantra.html.
Paramananda, Change Your Mind: A Practical Guide to Buddhist Meditation, (Birmingham: Windhorse Publications, 2002/1996), pp. 47-70.
Thubten Chodron, How to Free Your Mind: the Practice of Tara the Liberator (Boston & London: Snow Lion, 2013), pp. 32, 33.
The Chariot (7)
Waite, The Pictorial Key, p. 96.
Nichols, Jung and Tarot, p. 139.
Irreverent Feminist, “The Chariot,” accessed November 6 2016, https://irreverentfeminist.wordpress.com/2010/12/16/.
Nichols, op. cit., p. 145.
Warren, Buddhism in Translations, p. 56.
Asvaghosa, Buddhacarita, 3: 36, 46, 61.
Robert A. F. Thurman, “Nagarjuna’s Guidelines” in Fred Eppsteiner, ed., The Path of Compassion: Writings on Socially Engaged Buddhism (Berkeley: Parallax Press, 1988/1985) pp. 120-144, (pp. 130-1).
Warren, op. cit., p. 57.
ibid., pp. 60, 61.
Pollack, Seventy-Eight Degrees, p. 44.
Gardner, The Tarot Speaks, p. 82.
Pollack, op. cit., p. 68.
From the Milindapanha in Warren, Buddhism in Translations, p. 134.
Dominique Side, Buddhism: World Religions (Oxfordshire: Phillip Allan, 2005), pp. 92-3.
Departure and Trials:
From Strength to The Tower
Introduction
A term from the story of Subha in Mrs. Rhys Davies, Psalms of the Early Buddhists: Psalms of the Sisters, accessed November 6 2016, http://www.sacred-texts.com/bud/pos/pos19.htm.
George Gordon Noël Byron, Manfred, Act 2 Scene 2, in The Complete Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 4 (Paris: Baudry, 1825), p. 25.
&
nbsp; Pollack, Seventy-Eight Degrees, pp. 22-3.
Banzhaf, Tarot and the Journey of the Hero, p. 22.
Pollack, op. cit., p. 23.
Strength (8)
Fenton-Smith, The Tarot Revealed, p. 184.
Jayanti, Living the Tarot, p. 127.
See images in Kaplan, The Encyclopedia of Tarot, pp. 36, 40.
Waite, The Pictorial Key, pp. 100, 103.
Nichols, Jung and Tarot, p. 102.
Banzhaf, Tarot and the Journey of the Hero, p. 98.
Waite, op. cit., p. 100.
Pollack, op. cit., p. 74.
Banzhaf, op. cit., pp. 97-8.
Warren, Buddhism in Translations, p. 61.
Asvaghosa, Buddhacarita, 5: 61, 63, 64.
Warren, op. cit., p. 62.
Definition of Kanthaka in marathi.indiandictionaries.com, accessed November 7 2016.
Warren, op. cit., p. 62.
ibid.
Barnett, The Path of Light, accessed November 7 2016, http://www.sacred-texts.com/bud/tpol/tpol10.htm.
ibid., http://www.sacred-texts.com/bud/tpol/tpol04.htm.
From the The Collection of Pure Dharma Sutra, discussed in Geshe Namgyal Wangchen, Awakening the Mind of Enlightenment (London: Wisdom Publication, 1987), p. 123.
Geshe Kelsang Gyatso, The Bodhisattva Vow: The Essential Practices of Mahayana Buddhism (London: Tharpa Publications, 1995/1991), p. 11.
The Hermit (9)
Lady Lorelei, Tarot Life Planner (London: Bounty Books, 2014/2004), p. 36.
Jayanti, Living the Tarot, p. 142.
Gardner, The Tarot Speaks, p. 88.
Saunders, The Authentic Tarot, p. 25.
Waite, The Pictorial Key, p. 104.
Pollack, Seventy-Eight Degrees, pp. 77-9; Wen, Holistic Tarot, pp. 91-2.
Banzhaf, Tarot and the Journey of the Hero, p. 79.
Nichols, Jung and Tarot, p. 168.
Warren, Buddhism in Translations, p. 63.
Asvaghosa, Buddhacarita, 5: 80-1, 78.
Warren, op. cit., p. 64.
Asvaghosa, op. cit., 5: 84.
Warren, op. cit., pp. 65, 66.
ibid., p. 67.
Asvaghosa, op. cit., 6: 1; 7: 1.
See Rajeev Srinivasan, “The Buddhist Connection: Sabarimala, and the Tibetans,” accessed November 9 2016, http://www.rediff.com/news/dec/31rajeev.htm.
See Pretoria Bhajanai Mandram, “Holy 18 Steps,” accessed November 9 2016, http://www.ayyappaa.org.za/ayyappanworship/holy-18-steps/.
T. Prince, “Renunciation” in Collected Bodhi Leaves: Volume II, (Kandy: Buddhist Publication Society, 2010), pp. 65-80.
David Chapman, “Renunciation is the engine for most of Buddhism,” accessed November 8 2016, https://vividness.live/2013/11/22/renunciation-in-buddhism/.
Lama Yeshe, Introduction to Tantra, pp. 83, 54.
The Wheel of Fortune (10)
Jayanti, Living the Tarot, p. 155.
From Kauffman Kohler’s article on Merkabah in the online Jewish Encyclopedia, accessed November 9 2106, http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/10698-merkabah.
Waite, The Pictorial Key, pp. 96, 99.
Jayanti, op. cit., p. 153.
Asvaghosa, Buddhacarita, 10: 1, 28, 34.
ibid., 12: 1-2, 13-4, 15.
ibid., 12:18, 23, 30, 65.
ibid., 12: 69-70.
ibid., 12: 82.
From the Majjhima Nikaya in Warren, Buddhism in Translations, p. 338.
See for example David Nichtern, Awakening from the Daydream: Reimagining the Buddha’s Wheel of Life (Somerville, MA: Wisdom Publications, 2016).
Peter Wren Howard and Christine Battersby, notes on the “Tibetan Wheel of Life,” found on the reverse of a Tibetan Wheel of Life poster, which was reproduced by permission of the Director of Samye-Ling Tibetan Centre (published by Peter Wren Howard, England, 1990).
Justice (11)
Pollack, Seventy-Eight Degrees, p. 92.
ibid., p. 91.
Thomas à Kempis, William Benham, trans., The Imitation of Christ (London: C. J. Nimmo, 1886), accessed November 10 2016, http://www.sacred-texts.com/chr/ioc/ioc024.htm.
Cirlot, A Dictionary of Symbols, pp. 166-67.
Pollack, op. cit, p. 92.
Jayanti, Living the Tarot, pp. 167, 168.
Matthew Fox, Original Blessing: A Primer in Creation Spirituality (New Mexico: Bear & Co., 1983), p. 260.
ibid., p. 70.
Paul Carus, Buddha: The Gospel (Chicago: The Open Court Publishing Company, 1894), accessed December 3 2016, http://www.sacred-texts.com/bud/btg/btg10.htm.
Daisaku Ikeda, The Living Buddha: an Interpretive Biography, (Santa Monica, CA: Middleway Press, 2008/1973), pp. 42, 43, 43-4, 44.
See for example Jayanti, op. cit., pp. 169, 179; Greer, Tarot for Your Self, p. 240; Place, The Buddha Tarot Companion, p. 168.
Stephanie Kaza, “How Much is Enough? Buddhist Perspectives on Consumerism” in Richard K. Payne, ed., How Much is Enough? Buddhism, Consumerism and the Human Environment (MA: Wisdom Publications, 2010), pp. 39-61.
Nelson Foster, “To Enter the Marketplace” in Fred Eppsteiner, ed., The Path of Compassion, pp. 47-64.
Kaza, op. cit., pp. 49, 47, 58.
ibid., pp. 49, 47, 54.
ibid., pp. 48, 55, 58.
Christian Feldman, “Nurturing Compassion” in Eppsteiner, op. cit., pp. 19-23 (pp. 21, 22).
Donald Rothberg, The Engaged Spiritual Life: A Buddhist Approach to Transforming Ourselves and the World (Boston: Beacon Press, 2006), p. 61.
The Hanged Man (12)
Fox, Original Blessing, p. 395.
Ruether, Sexism and God-Talk, pp. 11-2.
Asvaghosa, Buddhacarita, 12: 89, 91.
From the Maha-Saccaka Sutta, translated by Thanissaro Bhikkhu, accessed November 13 2016, http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/mn/mn.036.than.html.
From the Maha-sihanada Sutta, translated by Nanamoli Thera and Bhikkhu Bodhi, accessed November 13 2016, http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/mn/mn.012.ntbb.html.
Asvaghosa, op. cit., 12: 96.
Warren, Buddhism in Translations, p. 70.
From the Maha-sihanada Sutta, op. cit.
David Halberstam, The Making of a Quagmire: America and Vietnam during the Kennedy Era (London: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2007), p. 128.
Thich Nhat Hahn, Love in Action: Writings on Nonviolent Social Change (Berkeley, California: Parallax Press, 1993), p. 43.
Death (13)
Pollack, Seventy-Eight Degrees, p. 101.
Leo Tolstoy, Maudes translation, “A Confession,” accessed November 13 2016, https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/A_Confession_(Maudes_translation)/IV.
Don Cupitt, “Learning to Live With One Foot in the Grave,” accessed November 14 2016, http://www.sofn.org.uk/press/ofigrave.html.
Warren, Buddhism in Translations, p. 70.
From the Padhana Sutta in V. Fausboll, The Sutta Nipata (Simplicissimus Book Farm edition, n.d.), p. 119.
Warren, op. cit., pp. 70-1.
Muller, The Dhammapada, accessed November 14 2016, http://www.sacred-texts.com/bud/sbe10/sbe1012.htm.
Chand R. Sirimanne, “Symbols in Theravada Buddhist Meditation (Bhavana),” accessed October 23 2016, http://www.buddhismandaustralia.com.
Thich Nhat Hahn, No Death, No Fear: Comforting Wisdom for Life (New York; Riverhead Books, 2002), pp 25-6.
From the Milindapanha in Warren, Buddhism in Translations, p. 149.
Temperance (14)
Katz and Goodwin, Secrets of the Waite-Smith Tarot, p. 171.
From a German alchemist’s prayer in Manly Hall, The Secret Teachings of all Ages: An Encyclopedic Outline of Masonic, Hermetic, Qabbalistic, and Rosicrucian Symbolical Philosophy (New York, Dover Publications, 2010/1928), p. 451.
Bunning, Learning the Tarot, p. 141.
Nichols Jung and Tarot, p. 250.
Karen Armstrong, The Spiral Staircase (New York: Anchor Books, 2005/2004), p. 270.
See David L. No
rton, Personal Destinies: A Philosophy of Ethical Individualism (N.J., Princeton University Press, 1976).
Martin Luther, “An Open Letter to The Christian Nobility of the German Nation Concerning the Reform of the Christian Estate, 1520” in James Atkinson, ed., Luther’s Works Vol 44: The Christian in Society I (Philadephia: Fortress, 1966), pp. 115-217 (p. 115).
See Joseph Kotva, The Christian Case for Virtue Ethics (Washington D. C.: Georgetown University Press, 1997).
See for example Peter Smith, “Virtue Ethics: An Ancient Solution to a Modern Problem,” accessed November 15 2016, https://scientiasalon.wordpress.com/2014/09/25/virtue-ethics-an-ancient-solution-to-a-modern-problem/
Gardner, The Tarot Speaks, p. 103.
Asvaghosa, Buddhacarita, 12: 98.
Edwin Arnold, The Light of Asia (London: Trubner and Co., 1879), p. 145. I have searched in vain for the original scriptural version of this sitar episode. The Lalitavistara Sutra mentions ten village girls who provide the Future Buddha with alms, and various daughters of the “Naga king” who played music for him as he approached the “Seat of Enlightenment”; but there is no mention of a sitar. However, the Sona Sutta has the Buddha offering advice to young monk called Sona on the best way to meditate, and uses the example of a correctly-tensioned vina (lute) to do so. Perhaps Arnold combined these to create an imaginative re-telling of the Future Buddha’s discovery of the Middle Way.
Swami Swarupananda, trans., Srimad-Bhagavad-Gita (Mayavati: Advaita Ashrama, 1909), accessed November 16 2016, http://www.sacred-texts.com/hin/sbg/sbg20.htm.
Warren, Buddhism in Translations, pp. 75, 76.
Campbell, Oriental Mythology, p. 17.
Warren, op. cit. p. 76.
From the the Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta in A. Ferdinand Herold, Paul C Blum, trans., The Life of Buddha (New York: A. & C. Boni, 1927/1922), accessed November 15 2016, http://www.sacred-texts.com/bud/lob/lob26.htm.
Bhikkhu Sujato with Jessica Walton, trans, Verses of the Senior Monks (Sutta Central, 2014), accessed November 26 2016, https://suttacentral.net/en/thag12.1.