"Publishers and editors," writes Joseph Epstein, "acquire their ideas about the world from their own newspapers."
I'm no publisher or editor, but that's where I acquire my ideas: from the newspaper. So when our Carrie Moore wrote about the new Tibetan Buddhist Temple in Salt Lake City, I saw it as news indeed. I knew I had to visit.
I went by last Wednesday — to hear Tsoknyi Rinpoche, a visiting Buddhist master, talk about lovingkindness.
To begin with, the inside of the new temple is colored blue, yellow and red, giving it a "lively calmness." Tosknyi sat serenely in a large chair at the front, beneath an image of a serenely seated Buddha. About 150 people were there.
It was, in a word, other-worldly.
Years ago a Buddhist friend of mine told me that when Jesus goes East his name becomes Buddha. And when Buddha comes West his name becomes Jesus. I had no clue what he was trying to say. I was like my son's friend who left the LDS Church to join the Buddhists, but three weeks later was back in church again. I asked him why.
"Too many new vocabulary words," he said.
To his credit, at the new Buddhist temple, The Rinpoche didn't use too many vocabulary words — unless some people are unfamiliar with words like "rush hour," "chicken-hearted" and "Honey, help me find my shoes." He spoke in simple sentences laced with humor.
He said people think about giving out lovingkindness the way we squeeze toothpaste out of a tube. For many, kindness is something to be dispensed or received. But we'll never have enough if we look at it that way. We have to come to see kindness as a frame of mind, as our natural state.
I liked what he had to say, and I liked the way he said it. He didn't draw attention to himself. He let his words point to grand truths beyond him.
In fact, over the years I've come to see that style as a mark of spiritual authenticity. Those truly in tune try to get out of the way and let the light shine in. I sense that approach in the great hymns, in the best writing of the Catholic saints and Protestant preachers.
I think Joseph Smith summed it up well in a letter he penned while in Liberty Jail. Part of that letter became Section 121 of the LDS Doctrine & Covenants. The rest of it is worth reading, too. What he said about writing and speaking hits home:
"A fanciful and flowery and heated imagination beware of," he wrote, "because the things of God are of deep import; and time and experience and careful and ponderous and solemn thoughts can only find them out."
A few lines later he cautions, "Let honesty and sobriety and candor and solemnity and virtue and pureness and meekness and simplicity crown our heads in every place; and in fine, become as little children, without malice, guile or hypocrisy." (History of the Church, Vol. 3, Chapter 20).
That part of the letter was never canonized as scripture. But I don't think it would hurt people who read, write and speak about the things of God to take it as such.
In the end, my night at the Buddhist temple was time well spent. I was moved by what Tsoknyi Rinpoche had to say. He gave me hope. It might have been a rainy, gray evening outside, but inside, I think we all left feeling a little more blue, yellow and red.
E-mail: jerjohn@desnews.com