[Buddha-l] Buddhist stupa to be moved from NM Petroglyph Park

[Richard Hayes]

On Sep 26, 2012, at 11:01 , jo <05jkirk at gmail.com> wrote:

> A point to note about both authors on these two links is that neither one of them deign to mention that there is a 'Buddha Cloister' also in the Grand Canyon.

That's interesting. I had never realized that before. That's a location that somehow escaped my attention.

The first time I walked across the Grand Canyon, I was ten years old, and I did it twice more as a young adult. All three times I was with my dad, who pointed out all main the geological features. I just remember him saying that the formations of the Grand Canyon so impressed John Wesley Powell that he named them after Hindu deities. He also said that Powell lost a boat and lots of supplies and I think a few men in a canyon that he then named Dirty Devil Canyon. Some of his men were spooked by the name and Powell made up for his reference to the devil by naming the next place he saw Bright Angel. I have no idea where my dad picked up these stories, but I do know he read all the journals of John Wesley Powell and was fascinated by the early explorations of the Grand Canyon, so he may have gotten the stories from those writings.

Last time I went to the Grand Canyon, I saw all those plaques placed there by evangelical Christians, and I was so horrified that I almost forgot to look at the beautiful scene before me. I was also depressed by how the Grand Canyon is being loved to death. Trails on which one used to encounter no more than half a dozen people in a day now have thousands of people running around on them, and stepping off them to get spectacular photos. Not long after I saw the depressing commentary about Noah's ark, I saw a model or movie star out doing poses on a promontory while a gaggle of photographers too photos of her. I don't think John Wesley Powell ever could have envisioned that the Grand Canyon would become a backdrop for an advertisement for designer jeans.

Richard Hayes