06/06/06
It has been a revelation to me that Tuesday was supposed to be so unspeakably horrible that a mother-to-be in Massachusetts was quoted in the San Francisco newspaper for saying if her baby didn’t come out quickly, she would close her legs rather than have a child born on June 6, 2006 which is 6/6/06. How was I to know that three sixes means Armageddon horror brought on by an Antichrist when I thought they were just heralds of full house in poker or a near book in Go Fish. I can’t even make the digits in supposedly unlucky 13 add up to that.
Until Comedy Central Tuesday night and the newspapers Wednesday morning, I had no idea that I should have mightily panicked when like three cherries on a slot machine these three numbers of the Apocalypse showed up together on a calendar. They’ve actually got a name for this terrifying moment: hexakosioihexekontahexaphobia — fear of the numbers 666. Revelations 13:18 says: “Let him who has understanding reckon the number of the beast, for it is a human number, it is six hundred and sixty-six” and we’ve suddenly got a date with the devil, the Antichrist, Mr Triple six. Or apocalypse now. The six shooter big Bang! Bang you’re dead! A visit from the beastly Antichrist is evidently so scary that the beauteous Reagans had their Bel Air address changed from 666 St. Cloud to 668.
As it happens, that particular little Revelation 13:18 starts with words that seem to have been left out of the day’s sound and fury: “This calls for wisdom.” According to the news reports, the wisdom of acknowledged Biblical scholars is that this 666 is simply a coded numerical reference to the reigning despot Nero (reigning 0057-0068) whose beastly behavior heightened what was seen as an ongoing struggle between good and evil. The wisdom of CNBC about that struggle is the triple digit hype loosed upon the world was a Hollywood marketing maneuver for a horror film, The Omen, (a re-make) being launched that day.
It was also a rogue evangelical reverend’s merchandising mayhem for his new novel The Rapture. The wisdom of the evangelical website Raptureready.com is Hang On! The rapture index is at 156, which it calls “fasten your seatbelts” time. The bogeyman is on his way and he's gonna get us if we don't watch out. Well, if we’re all going to get carried away (and that is the third meaning my trusty old dictionary assigns to the word rapture), I offer this wisdom: Okay Jesus, buckle up!
The wisdom of the Buddha is that we are talking about a stretch of space and time that defines a single orbit of Earth around the sun: let’s call it “a day.” It is just like any other day except that we decide to call it something special to single it out: Tuesday or Friday, March or June, 4th or 7th. The one that caused all the fuss is the plain one we happen to call the sixth day of the sixth Roman Catholic month of the 2006th Christian year. It was only the third day of the week if you think a week starts on Sunday or it was the second if you think it starts on Monday when your job does and no matter what you think it wasn’t the same day at the same time everywhere the same in the world. It was already half over in Japan when it started in New York.
Miraculously no matter where we were at what time we all survived this deadly threat. What rapture! (That’s the primary meaning my trusty dictionary offers: ecstatic joy.)
On that proverbial other hand, Tuesday was also the tenth day of the fourth month of the Tibetan year of the dog. The tenth day of any Tibetan month is considered sacred: all virtue is doubly rewarded, all wrongdoing gets double demerits. It is thus a day on which devout Buddhists are likely to make offerings or free an animal from the food chain. Moreover, the fourth month of the Tibetan year, Saga Dawa, is its holiest and because awareness of all actions should be intensified, many devout Buddhists practice a Lenten-like ritual of abstaining from meat, eggs, fish and all other forms of sentient life for its 28 days. The reason for this holiness is that Tuesday, the sixth of June, was also celebrated on the Western calendar as the birthday of Gautama Siddartha, the Shakyamuni Buddha. So it was a kind of triple points day for the good guys.
Tuesday, June 6th was my Tibetan god daughter’s birthday and I wanted to take her out for dinner. Since she was adhering to vegetarianism for Saga Dawa, finding a festive restaurant was tricky but I triumphed in choosing a new south Indian eatery recently listed among the 100 best eating establishments in the Bay Area. What I was truly afraid of that day was that this place was devilish enough to not take reservations and parking would be nightmarish. But as fate would have it, we both got legal parking very close by, the hostess gave us a very good table with very little wait and by mistake the waitress brought us ice cream for dessert which she then volunteered as a gift, not even knowing about the double birthdays, Tashi’s and the Buddha’s. It was a nice dream come true: good times rolling.
On Sunday, June 4th, friends in Denver (a widower and his daughter) had phoned in the wake of the father’s birthday to announce that he was going to move into the Senior Center near his poker game, doctor’s office and favorite deli. I told the daughter I found her father’s enthusiasm remarkable; this was yet another example of the inspiring resilience displayed at the death of his son, and then his wife. He was going to sign the lease on Tuesday.
On Wednesday the daughter emailed to say her father had changed his mind about moving into a place where people go to die. It was all too much doomsday. Thinking she was stuck on 666 I cybershot back what Tuesday had meant to me, whereupon she sent this message in reply:
"Well my dad fooled us all!! The move has been bothering him for months with sleepless nights but he did not say anything to me because he thought I would think he was crazy. I wish he would have said something sooner which would have made this process much less painful for him. He is now happy and sleeping again, as well as I. This was stressful for me too …
My father got enlightened or had his aha! moment on the 6th and my long awaited new project came to fruition on this special year of 6/6. I wish the news would give this alternative perspective on the rewards of merit on 6/6 instead of the doom and gloom version!"
Et voila! As it says in six sixes Deuteronomy 30:15 (30 = five 6s; 1+5=6):
“See, I set before you this day life and prosperity, death and adversity.” Choose your rapture.
Technorati Tags: Yours In The Dharma. Sandy Garson, Dharma, Buddhist
Until Comedy Central Tuesday night and the newspapers Wednesday morning, I had no idea that I should have mightily panicked when like three cherries on a slot machine these three numbers of the Apocalypse showed up together on a calendar. They’ve actually got a name for this terrifying moment: hexakosioihexekontahexaphobia — fear of the numbers 666. Revelations 13:18 says: “Let him who has understanding reckon the number of the beast, for it is a human number, it is six hundred and sixty-six” and we’ve suddenly got a date with the devil, the Antichrist, Mr Triple six. Or apocalypse now. The six shooter big Bang! Bang you’re dead! A visit from the beastly Antichrist is evidently so scary that the beauteous Reagans had their Bel Air address changed from 666 St. Cloud to 668.
As it happens, that particular little Revelation 13:18 starts with words that seem to have been left out of the day’s sound and fury: “This calls for wisdom.” According to the news reports, the wisdom of acknowledged Biblical scholars is that this 666 is simply a coded numerical reference to the reigning despot Nero (reigning 0057-0068) whose beastly behavior heightened what was seen as an ongoing struggle between good and evil. The wisdom of CNBC about that struggle is the triple digit hype loosed upon the world was a Hollywood marketing maneuver for a horror film, The Omen, (a re-make) being launched that day.
It was also a rogue evangelical reverend’s merchandising mayhem for his new novel The Rapture. The wisdom of the evangelical website Raptureready.com is Hang On! The rapture index is at 156, which it calls “fasten your seatbelts” time. The bogeyman is on his way and he's gonna get us if we don't watch out. Well, if we’re all going to get carried away (and that is the third meaning my trusty old dictionary assigns to the word rapture), I offer this wisdom: Okay Jesus, buckle up!
The wisdom of the Buddha is that we are talking about a stretch of space and time that defines a single orbit of Earth around the sun: let’s call it “a day.” It is just like any other day except that we decide to call it something special to single it out: Tuesday or Friday, March or June, 4th or 7th. The one that caused all the fuss is the plain one we happen to call the sixth day of the sixth Roman Catholic month of the 2006th Christian year. It was only the third day of the week if you think a week starts on Sunday or it was the second if you think it starts on Monday when your job does and no matter what you think it wasn’t the same day at the same time everywhere the same in the world. It was already half over in Japan when it started in New York.
Miraculously no matter where we were at what time we all survived this deadly threat. What rapture! (That’s the primary meaning my trusty dictionary offers: ecstatic joy.)
On that proverbial other hand, Tuesday was also the tenth day of the fourth month of the Tibetan year of the dog. The tenth day of any Tibetan month is considered sacred: all virtue is doubly rewarded, all wrongdoing gets double demerits. It is thus a day on which devout Buddhists are likely to make offerings or free an animal from the food chain. Moreover, the fourth month of the Tibetan year, Saga Dawa, is its holiest and because awareness of all actions should be intensified, many devout Buddhists practice a Lenten-like ritual of abstaining from meat, eggs, fish and all other forms of sentient life for its 28 days. The reason for this holiness is that Tuesday, the sixth of June, was also celebrated on the Western calendar as the birthday of Gautama Siddartha, the Shakyamuni Buddha. So it was a kind of triple points day for the good guys.
Tuesday, June 6th was my Tibetan god daughter’s birthday and I wanted to take her out for dinner. Since she was adhering to vegetarianism for Saga Dawa, finding a festive restaurant was tricky but I triumphed in choosing a new south Indian eatery recently listed among the 100 best eating establishments in the Bay Area. What I was truly afraid of that day was that this place was devilish enough to not take reservations and parking would be nightmarish. But as fate would have it, we both got legal parking very close by, the hostess gave us a very good table with very little wait and by mistake the waitress brought us ice cream for dessert which she then volunteered as a gift, not even knowing about the double birthdays, Tashi’s and the Buddha’s. It was a nice dream come true: good times rolling.
On Sunday, June 4th, friends in Denver (a widower and his daughter) had phoned in the wake of the father’s birthday to announce that he was going to move into the Senior Center near his poker game, doctor’s office and favorite deli. I told the daughter I found her father’s enthusiasm remarkable; this was yet another example of the inspiring resilience displayed at the death of his son, and then his wife. He was going to sign the lease on Tuesday.
On Wednesday the daughter emailed to say her father had changed his mind about moving into a place where people go to die. It was all too much doomsday. Thinking she was stuck on 666 I cybershot back what Tuesday had meant to me, whereupon she sent this message in reply:
"Well my dad fooled us all!! The move has been bothering him for months with sleepless nights but he did not say anything to me because he thought I would think he was crazy. I wish he would have said something sooner which would have made this process much less painful for him. He is now happy and sleeping again, as well as I. This was stressful for me too …
My father got enlightened or had his aha! moment on the 6th and my long awaited new project came to fruition on this special year of 6/6. I wish the news would give this alternative perspective on the rewards of merit on 6/6 instead of the doom and gloom version!"
Et voila! As it says in six sixes Deuteronomy 30:15 (30 = five 6s; 1+5=6):
“See, I set before you this day life and prosperity, death and adversity.” Choose your rapture.
Technorati Tags: Yours In The Dharma. Sandy Garson, Dharma, Buddhist
posted by Sandy Garson @ 12:33 AM
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