[Buddha-l] buddha-l gathering

[Richard Hayes]

On Nov 28, 2009, at 7:41 AM, Richard Hayes wrote:

> I know this is short notice, but four buddha-l veterans are meeting in
> the Antwerp train station today at 11:00 am, and we'd be delighted if
> the rest of you could join us. Erik Hoogcarspel and I are easily
> recognized, since we actually do look like the words we write on
> buddha-l. He looks like a verb, and I look like an adjective.

As far as I can tell, only four buddha-l people showed up for the  
buddha-l pilgrimage in Antwerpen/Anvers/Antwerp. I assume the rainy  
weather kept the rest of you away. And it's also quite possible that  
the rest of you were actually there in Station Antwerpen Centraal at  
the appointed hour but forgot to wear your pink spandex bicycling  
tights (the official attire for buddha-l get-togethers) so we could  
not recognize you.

Stefan Detrez took Erik Hoogcarspel, Henk Blezer and me to visit Sint  
Andrieskerk (St Andrew's Church), which has an impressive collection  
of relics of saints and martyrs. Naturally, our purpose was to visit  
the reliquary of Josaphat, because of his Buddhist connections (which  
you can read about in the online Catholic Encyclopedia at http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/02297a.htm 
  --- to see something about the late Gothic church itself see http://www.mkaweb.be/site/english/074.html) 
. It took Stefan's skillful use of a mobile telephone to persuade the  
custodians of the church to let this crew of wet and bedraggled pink- 
spandex-clad Buddhologists armed with cameras in out of the wind and  
rain, but they did graciously open the church for us. It was, after  
all, November 28, the day after Josaphat's day in the Roman  
Martyrology, and our sincerity as pilgrims could not go unrecognized.

Stefan then drove us to a Tibetan Buddhist temple which,  
unfortunately, was closed (probably recovering from intense Josaphat  
pujas the day before), and even Stefan's mastery on the mobile  
telephone could not open the doors for us; frankly, I doubt that even  
Steven Seagal could have gotten us in. That notwithstanding, we did  
have a look around the grounds and admired the heroic attempts to make  
a modern concrete Belgian building look somewhat Tibetan. We also made  
note of the anatomically correct statue of a naked Buddha and put it  
on the agenda for future discussions. We suspect Jain influence. There  
was a brief discussion of which of us would donate his pink spandex  
tights to cover the Buddha's nakedness; unable to reach a consensus,  
we left him as we had found him.

Exhausted by our emotion-charged pilgrimage, we all retired to De  
Muze, an inn constructed especially for wearied and wearisome  
Buddhologists, and became engrossed in animated discussions of such  
topics as how Joy Vriens pronounces his first name, whether "budh"  
means to awake or to attain (or obtain or detain) enlightenment, and  
whether anyone has actually ever been a Buddha. We were joined by a  
pleasant software engineer from Leuven who wanted to know why anyone  
would be a Buddhist, which gave us all a chance to practice our skills  
in explaining the subtle points of abhidharma (and Nāgārjuna's  
critique thereof) to a software engineer from Leuven. I don't believe  
Vimalakīrti would have been envious of our skills in expounding the  
Dharma in a Belgian jazz cafe, so we will all need to practice a bit  
more.

I'm not sure where the next gathering of buddha-l denizens will be.  
Perhaps Singapore. Hope to see you all there, properly dressed for the  
occasion.

yours in denizenship,
Richard