The Altar 2.0

I've finally got the altar up at our new house. I've been wanting a Chinese style altar table for some time as I really like the designs. Plus, at the old place the altar was sitting on our entertainment center. So, it was a bit cramped. I also like that this altar has a little storage space inside; behind a set of small doors in the front of it. You can kind of see them with the knobs in this picture. They slide back and forth, and there is surprisingly more room in it then you might think form looking at the outside.

So, that gives me all the room I need to store my incense, candles and other Dharma items. The Buddha is a new addition as well. I wanted one that looked a bit more Indian in design. I just like that style of depicting the Tathagata.

Then I've got my traditional picture of my teacher Thich Nhat Hanh on the altar with a stalk of bamboo, a bowl for incense, a Tibetan singing bowl and a rock candle holder. It's nice to have the altar unpacked and sitting in the new home. It brings a nice energy to the place. Anyway, boring post but I thought some might be interested in where I meditate. Bowing.

~Peace to all beings~

Of Robots and Altars.

We've been in the process of moving over this past month into our first house and the packing has dislodged all our "possessions" from their "right" place and thrown them into a mixed soup of items. As I was dutifully sorting and wrapping up our materialistic karma into the appropriate boxes, I noticed that during the churning maelstrom of the process that my toy, "Robot B-9" from the 1960s, American, science-fiction, t.v. program, titled, "Lost in Space" had found its way to the altar. Anyway, at first glance my conditioned mind saw this clunky, garish, pop-culture refugee, toy as a blight on my otherwise serene, elegant and meticulously designed, altar.

Yet as I questioned this initial reaction from my mind I began to see the cheap, plastic, robot in a different light. I questioned myself, "Why do you see the Buddha differently than the robot?" In a flash my newly focused mind replied, "me." By their nature, the Buddha statue and robot are inanimate objects made unique by their artists yet still of the same nature or essence. It was my mind that was labeling one as "beneficial" and the other as "clutter."

So, just to shake up my habitual mind I've decided to replace the Buddha statue on the altar with the robot for a few days as a kind of koan to contemplate. Religious paraphernalia can be a powerful reminder of what it means to follow the Dharma. However, it can quickly turn to spiritual materialism where we start to think that the items have some sort of power that improves our spirituality; and that without them we're somehow less of a practitioner. Surely the first time I go to bow to Buddha before meditating and instead see that goofy robot I will laugh out loud at my silly mind. Perhaps in a different world in a different part of this universe Buddha takes the form of a robot!! If you find that idea sacrilegious then perhaps you have some of your own spiritual materialism to shed?

---End of Transmission---