Friends,

Christians generally are not in the habit of acknowledging external sources (what more Buddhist elements) in the historical and religious developments. But lately I notice a healthy openness by Christian seekers esp towards Buddhist meditation.

The National Geographic Dec 2005 has a very educational article on "Buddha Rising".

Sukhi

Piya

--- "Dan D." <onco111@...> wrote:

> Dear Yong Peng and Rett,
> Your speculations sound like a variation on "I like Eastern
> mythology. Good stuff. I like Tolkien. Good stuff. Therefore,
> Tolkien's ideas must be Eastern."
>
> Tolkien wrote a long letter to his friend Milton Waldman in 1951
> explaining where his LoTR and related works sprang from. There is no
>
> need to speculate on Indian or Sanskrit or other influences--he
> explicitly credits many western and northern European influences
> without a word about Asian: "I was from early days grieved by the
> poverty of my own beloved country: it had no stories of its own
> (bound up with its tongue and soil), not of the quality that I
> sought, and found (as an ingredient) in legends of other lands.
> There
> was Greek, and Celtic, and Romance, Germanic, Scandanavian, and
> Finnish (which greatly affected me); but nothing in English, save
> impoverished chap-book stuff. Of course there was and is all the
> Arthurian world, but powerful as it is, it is imperfectly
> naturalized, associated with the soil of Britain but not with
> English...I had a mind to make a body of more or less connected
> legend, ranging from the large and cosmogenic, to the level of
> romatic fairy-story--the larger founded on the lesser in contact
> with
> the earth, the lesser drawing splendour from the vast backcloths--
> which I could dedicate simply to: to England; to my country. It
> should possess...fair elusive beauty that some call Celtic (though
> it
> is rarely found in genuine ancient Celtic things)...Anyway all this
>
> stuff is mainly concerned with Fall, Mortality, and the Machine.
> With
> Fall inevitably, and that motive occurs in several modes...It may
> become possessive, clinging to the things made as its own, the sub-
> creator wishes to be the Lord and God of his private creation. He
> will rebel against the laws of the Creator--especially against
> mortality [distinct echoes of both St. Paul and Genesis]. Both of
> these (alone or together will lead to the desire for Power, for
> making the will more quickly effective,--and so to the Machine (or
> Magic). By the last I intend all use of external plans or devices
> (apparatus) instead of developments of the inherent inner powers or
>
> talents--or event he use of these talents with the corrupted motive
>
> of dominating: bulldozing the real world, or coercing other wills."
>
> He certainly may have read and been influenced by Mahabharata and
> Arabian Nights but apparently not to a degree that he noticed or
> acknowledged.
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Dan
>
>
> --- In Pali@yahoogroups.com, rett <rett@...> wrote:
> >
> > Dear Yong Peng and group,
> >
> >
> > >I wonder if
> > >authors like C.S.Lewis and Tolkien were in any way directly
> influenced
> > >by the Jataka Tales or inspired by Arabic sources, especially
> the
> > >Arabic Nights which was in turned influenced by Indian (Hindu
> and
> > >Buddhist) sources.
> >
> > I have also wondered that as well. I've studied Tolkien's letters
>
> and iirc he doesn't mention those sources at all, but I strongly
> suspect that he was influenced _in part_ by the Mahaabharata
> (possibly in Ganguli's translation) and tried to do something
> comparable for 'western' culture and then suppressed mention of
> Indian sources. The only hint he seems to give is that he wanted,
> with the Silmarillion and LotR, to give Britain a national epic
> comparable to the Eddas and the Mahabharata.
> >
> > Among many other things, Lord of the Rings concerns a shift from a
>
> third to a less magical fourth age, which fits very well into the
> setting of the Mahabharata. (transition to kaliyuga after a
> cataclysmic battle)
> >
> > Another is that the Elvish alphabet devised by Feanor is arranged
>
> in a systematic way that reminds one of the phonetic arrangement of
>
> the Sanskrit alphabet.
> >
> > Tolkien was, after all, a philologist, and must have at least had
>
> contact with indological scholars. Sanskrit was foundational to
> comparative Indo-European philology and was fairly widely studied in
>
> Britain at the time. It seems to me unlikely that the Feanorian
> script system wasn't influenced by Sanskrit (just as it would be
> uncontroversial to suggest that the Dwarvish runes were influenced
> by
> the Futharc)
> >
> > On a more whimsical note I wonder if the young Tolkien had read TW
>
> Rhys Davids' _Buddhist India_ and all but forgotten a certain line
> that then popped out as he was correcting exams, and idly jotted
> down
> the idea of a Mr Baggins who lived under 'The Hill'. Consider page
> 22
> of Rhys-Davids' book, where he lists Khattiya clans beginning with:
> >
> > "1. The Bhaggas of Sumsumaara Hill."
> >
> > Sounds almost like Baggins of the Hill to me. Too tenuous for
> serious literary criticism perhaps, but I like to think that little
>
> lines and phrases we read can take a new form many years later
> without our even remembering where they came from. Especially since
>
> Tolkien himself described his writing process as akin to an act of
> remembering. He couldn't force the story in certain directions, but
>
> had to look inwards and recall what 'actually happened'. This
> suggests a powerful unconscious creative activity taking place, and
>
> everything he had read in his youth could possibly be involved in
> that activity.
> >
> > Also, consider how the great wizards, like Gandalf the Grey and
> Saruman the White, as well as Radagast the Brown were essentially
> incarnated divine powers, avatars. Two of these wizards were said to
>
> have 'disappeared into the east' and not only that they were _Blue_.
>
> Krishna and Balarama? Again, perhaps too whimsical for an academic
> study, but somehow Gandalf at the head of an army in the West, and
> Krishna at the head of an army in the East, in the same legendary,
> transitional period of history, seems to me like a very productive
> parallel that the old professor might have toyed with, but never
> told
> anyone about. It would've been like him.
> >
> > In Tolkien the elves reincarnate.
> >
> > In ancient Indian culture, everything is oriented towards
> the 'east' which is the most auspicious direction. In Tolkien it's
> the exact opposite, the 'west' is the direction leading towards
> heaven.
> >
> > There's so much more. I'm very inclined to think that the hordes
> of
> Southrons and Easterners that march to the final battle outside of
> Gondor in LotR are essentially Mahabharata era heroes of legendary
> Indian and Arab background. The only sad thing about it is that he
> would then be making out the whole ancient culture of the East to be
>
> essentially under the sway of evil and darkness, something that I,
> as
> a Buddhist and admirer of ancient Indian culture, am not prepared to
>
> admit.
> >
> > best regards,
> >
> > /Rett
> >
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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