Living With the Relics of the Buddha

My dear friend Michael sent me a trove of Zen gear, which I am charged with sheperding to a good home. One of the goodies was a wearable reliquary filled with sharira. Michael gave me some of these Buddhist relics a couple years ago, which were the inspiration for a post on this very blog.

Turns out I have a few things to add about my personal experience with sharira--for the doubting, derisive and open-minded alike.

I first encountered sharira, relics of departed Buddhist masters, when they came through San Francisco on tour in December of 2003. I was at a crisis point in my life, and needed any and all auspicious aid.

More precisely, m first exposure to the relics was actually riding in the van used to transport them. This was the personal transport of Lama Zopa Rinpoche on his land-based travels in North America, and it was adorned in high Dharma style: every available surface, including the exterior of the vehicle, was covered with prayers, images of bodhisattvas, Buddhist symbols, little statues, and the like. An edition of the Prajna Paramitra Sutra in 2000 Lines sat wrapped in yellow silk on the dashboard. Mantras taped to the roof ensured the favorable rebirth of all insects that smeared the windshield.

The relics were not actually in the van at the time of my ride, but one of the passenger seats was occupied by a human-sized model of the giant Maitreya Buddha statue that Lama Zopa Rinpoche hopes to build in Kushinagar, India. In his full-size form, fifty stories high, a vast collection of relics will be enshrined in rooms at his various chakra centers. Things were pretty cramped in the van, so I sat squished in next to Maitreya. He was outfitted for the road in a natty purple velvet cloak.

As we rode along, my companion and I remarked that we were surprisingly happy and goofy. Acutally, it was no surprise, according to the nun at the wheel. She said that, in all her adventures taking the relics around the country, countless people (including frequently-stressed, suspicious and even sexist hosts at a variety of dharma centers) had dissolved into childlike simplicity, even giggling, once they were in proximity to the relics.

What are these things, anyway? I was told that when a great master is cremated, jewel-like deposits are often found in the ashes. These may vary in color according to the area of the body they came from; there are also blood relics that are not jewel-like at all, but resemble dried strands of saffron. The relic tour has sharira reputedly found in the remains of a number of masters, from Shakyamuni and Ananda on down to twentieth-century lamas. The relics are thought to embody the departed person's spiritual understanding. They may be used for healing, or enshrined on an altar as objects of veneration. Some say they are left intentionally, to inspire faith in the practice.

You can imagine the response of the average educated American to this, Buddhist or otherwise. In fact, you may be thinking right now that this stuff is just way too weird!

But does that make it a load of crap?

My attitude has always been more tolerant. I learned in my life as a scientist that we actually know very little about the world. And that, although science is a discipline grounded in a search for the truth without bias or preconception, scientists often are some of the least curious, leastopenminded people you'll meet. We can only ask questions we can imagine asking, and we are even more limited in the topics we actually have the means to investigate.

The reality of doing research is that you pursue what you have the tools to pursue. You investigate what will get funded. No one would be so suicidally idiotic as to write a grant proposal to investigate something that resembles a stupid woo-woo question (like gems forming in cremains). There are more certain uses for your time, and you're always in a race to publish.

I left that lifestyle; I've never regretted it. And, oddly enough, I left it more mystically-inclined than I entered.

In fact, there are plenty of reasonable people who will tell you that relics do, at least, form. Before the great Korean Zen teacher Master Seung San died last year, he made his disciples promise not to try to collect his relics. He wanted his legacy to be his teaching, to be the living practice he brought to the West. His followers should live the Dharma, not venerate some token. Nevertheless, one nun secretly placed a container of water under his pyre. Apparently this is a technique (perhaps the only one?) for collecting sharira. Later it was found, full of relics.

When I first saw the relics collected by Lama Zopa Rinpoche on tour in San Francisco, I was moved by their beauty. And curious as to what the might "really" be. Although they varied, the standard relic on the tour looked like a tiny, milky moonstone. Some were dark in color. One was still stuck to a fragment of bone. The atmosphere of lightness and joy I'd felt in the van was also present at the viewing, not surprisingly. I circumnambulated the relics, chanted, and felt exhausted. Then I continued with my life, mildly stunned.

A couple years later, when I was in residence at Great Vow Zen Monastery, Michael informed me that he was giving me some sharira. I barely knew what to say; I was flabbergasted that *I* might have custody of such a thing. He assured me that the relics were "real" and said that, in true millenial fashion, he'd found them on eBay.

When the relics arrived, the majority, except for a couple very dark little grains, were clear and bluish in tint. I thought they looked like tourmalines. In spite of a somewhat-dubious reception at the monastery, the relics were enshrined in a little wooden stupa in the founders' room--the spiritual heart of the facility--where incense and bows were offered daily.

At the end of my stay at Great Vow, I retrieved the relics and took them with me to Corvallis. In the process, I opened the stupa. The relics now had an unmistakable pale, milky cast--similar to the ones on the tour--and were no longer transparent at all.

In the course of moving to Portland after a year in Corvallis, I opened the stupa again. The relics were still milky and opaque, but they had taken on a definite peachy-pink cast.

Two days ago, I received the second gift of relics from Michael. These are brilliant orange, semitransparent, with traces of pink fire. They are housed in a clear glass pendant with silver fittings. I lit incense and chanted as I disassembled my altar, looking for a way to enshrine them together with the first batch of relics.

I opened the stupa. The pink relics were still as pink as they were six weeks ago. I gently nudged a couple that had fallen down between the outer wall of the stupa and their little silken "nest." Propelled by the springiness of the silk, a tiny dark one went flying. Shit!

Holding the stupa steady, I listened and watched the tiny dot as it bounced several times. Why O why was I doing this by candlelight? The wayward dot came to a rest and I carefully crouched down to pick it up.

To tell the truth, a funny feeling came over me at this point. Not a chill, but a sense of fullness. My finger found something hard and round on the floor. A relic. But it was not the little dark one; I was touching a typical peachy-pink one about an inch away.

The relics are said to multiply of their own accord. But I would never have expected to witness such a thing. Was I witnessing such a thing? Do relics multiply when you drop them on the floor?

Maybe, I thought, two relics had jumped free in the dim light. But then I considered likelihood of dropping two marbles, having them bounce five or six times, and then finding right next to one another. Not likely. Especially if one marble is five times the size of the other, and neither is perfectly spherical: how could they possibly take the same course?

Maybe I hadn't noticed that the pink relic was already stuck to my finger, and I only felt it when I touched the floor. My fingers were indeed a bit sweaty. I tried to pick up a relic with my sweaty finger. No way; they didn't even begin to stick to my skin.

So I'm out of ideas. As a matter of policy, scientists adopt the most straightforward explanation for phenomena. Maybe in this case that means giving creedence to an ancient and mysterious set of beliefs.

Fortunately, it doesn't matter what anyone thinks, most of all myself. I do zazen with the relics every day; I venerate them as best I can; I live my life and I don't worry too much about metaphysics. I hope the departed masters would approve.