It's perfect for kicking back and relaxing in between frisbee with the dog, disc golf or kicking your hackey sac around for a bit.
Marx Meadow, Golden Gate Park |
Part of the vast "chain of meadows" in this middle section of Golden Gate Park, Marx Meadow is located near Fulton Street and the 25th Avenue park entrance. It's a sloping bowl of lawn bordered on two sides by the Disc Golf Course. The meadow is named for a Napa resident, Johanne Augusta Emily Marx, who left a donation to the park. She was worth $146,000 when she died in 1912.(1)
BUDDHIST
PRAYERS BRING RAIN
By
Bhiksuni Heng Hsien
Buddhist Text Translation Soc.
Buddhist Text Translation Soc.
Anyone
who was in Golden Gate Park on Saturday, February 19, 1977 for the Dharma
Gathering for rain sponsored by the Sino-American Buddhist Association of
Gold Mountain Temple, 1731 15th Street San Francisco, can testify to one
thing: the people present were really working hard for rain. Arriving well
before dawn, the Sino-American sponsors quickly unpacked their equipment,
scoured the area of debris, and by sunrise had created a formal altar with
a golden statue of their Original Teacher, Sakyamuni Buddha, and a picture
of the spiritual being whose compassion was to be especially sought that
day: the Bodhisattva Gwan Shr Yin. Offerings of flowers, fruit and incense
framed the images, while Dharma instruments lay on the red velvet altar
cloth waiting to be played. A brilliant gold banner, lettered with the
invocation: NAMO GWAN SHR YIN PU SA, was stretched across the far end of
the meadow, and the foreground was dotted with dragon-bearing posters
(dragons make rain) pointing to where the SABA banner was suspended in the
breeze, each poster with the announcement, DHARMA RAIN. The
host-participants wore robes, some black, others subdued blue or grey, and
sashes of earth tones. Those who had left the home life as monks and nuns
had their heads freshly shaved, a symbol of renunciation. All had an air
about them of joyous intensity and seriousness of purpose. They had
already been reciting prayers and mantras for the entire week previous to
the Gathering. To represent their sincerity, many of them, including those
whose regular practice is to eat only one simple vegetarian meal a day,
had decided not to eat at all that day, and perhaps not the next if it did
not rain. One monk had been fasting to end the drought since the previous
Tuesday, and had made the vow not to eat again until it rained.
The
weather forecast gave no hope of rain, for a minimum of two full weeks
ahead, due to the high-pressure zone off the coast, which was blocking
storm clouds unseasonably. The days prior to the Gathering, temperatures
reached a high of 75-76 degrees with bright sunshine drought weather in
the middle of winter, the culmination of two years of scarcity of rain. As
the day of prayer and chanting opened officially at seven A.M.,
approximately one third of those present piled into The Great Vehicle, the
Sino-American Buddhist Association's converted city bus, and headed for
the Bandshell to begin the procession back to Marx Meadow, chanting NAMO
GWAN SHR YIN PU SA. NAMO means "homage," and PU SA is short for
"Bodhisattva," that is, a being who is enlightened and who
enlightens other beings. GWAN SHR YIN, whose Sanskrit name is
Avalokitesvara, is the Bodhisattva who embodies infinite compassion, in
much the same way as does the Virgin Mary in the West. But whereas the
Virgin Mary is known as the Mother of Jesus, Buddhists feel the
Bodhisattva Gwan Shr Yin is the compassionate Mother of every single
person. As one of the nuns from Gold Mountain said in her talk that day,
"You might forget her name; but if you ever saw her, you'd never
forget her thousand arms and all those heads." The multitude of hands
and eyes and arms represents the ability of the Bodhisattva to rescue all
living beings at once, under any circumstances, anywhere. Buddhists teach
that Gwan Shr Yin Bodhisattva universally responds to invocations, and
that anyone who is sincere will obtain a response, rescue from
difficulties and relief from pain.
NAMO
GWAN SHR YIN PU SA, then, was what they chanted as they walked from the
Bandshell to Marx Meadow, their strides slow and solemn, and most of them
bareheaded on that unexpectedly cold and foggy morning. The procession
took one hour to reach the Meadow, where the monks, nuns and lay people
were reciting a mantra before the altar. Their number had been augmented
by members of the general public, who may or may not have believed in
Buddhism, but who were united in their wish for rain. As the crowd
repeated the chant, the fog began to swirl, as the wind picked up and blew
through the meadow. The ceremonies continued: recitation once again
of NAMO GWAN SHR YIN PU SA while circumambulating the altar, then sitting,
more recitation, followed by the formal meal-offering for lunch. Those who
were fasting continued to recite mantras and, when rejoined by those who
had eaten, began another procession, this time from Marx Meadow to the
Bandshell.
Recitation
of the mantra there gave way to informal talks and lively songs, as the
monks and nuns of Gold Mountain, no longer solemn and intense, explained
to their fellow San Franciscans just why it was that they were having a
drought. "We've been too selfish and greedy, and we've wasted
water," they said, "But if we can admit our mistakes and change
for the better, the sincerity of our repentance and reform can evoke a
response. If we don't change for the better, however, we are sure to
experience far worse troubles. Due to everyone's becoming greedier every
day, and having more and more hatred and being more and more stupid, our
very lives are in danger each moment, for we have reached the point where
our weapons could destroy all life on this planet. That is the real danger
which we face right now, beside which a water shortage or even a famine,
scarcity of energy or a lack of consumer goods is insignificant."
Their message was, as Buddhism teaches, that individuals are responsible
for the situations in which they find themselves, and so are people as a
group; that there is retribution in kind for everything one does or omits
to do. "Plant good causes and you will reap good results' plant bad
causes and you will reap bad results," they told the crowd, which
meant that each one of us is responsible for whether we have timely rain
or not.
Seeking
rain, participants in the Dharma Gathering for Rain, held in Marx Meadow,
Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, February 19, 1977, bow before the Buddha
altar with sincerity and concentration.
After
talks in the Bandshell, a great many people joined the procession chanting
Gwan Yin's name back to Marx Meadow, as reporters took pictures and films
for television. Once again before the altar, all the participants joined
in the sincere and intense chanting, now kneeling on the bare, damp
ground, now bowing in full prostrations to the ground, now
circumambulating the altar as they recited. Later in the afternoon as the
mantra was recited, actual rain clouds began to form, and some people saw
golden dragons in the sky and in the trees. At one point, before the
Dharma Gathering was to end at six P.M., the rain clouds, which had
formed, moved in from the West and covered the city. Clearly it would only
be a short time before it rained. As the crowd dispersed with nightfall,
the Buddhists from Gold Mountain, after twelve solid hours of concentrated
effort seeking rain, returned to their Temple for the daily seven P.M.
Sutra lecture and evening worship.
After
that, did it rain? At the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas, the Sino-American
Buddhist Association's new center in the Ukiah Valley, one hundred and ten
miles north of San Francisco, it began to rain early Sunday morning.
It was around 11:30 A.M. that Sunday when the massing rain clouds one
could see over the city pelted San Francisco with rain. People started
calling Gold Mountain to ask how long it would continue to rain. It was
still raining Monday when Susan Hewitt, reporter for Eyewitness News, KPIX
channel five, who had covered the Gathering on Saturday, returned to Marx
Meadow for an on-the-spot report. Right there had stood the altar, she
pointed out, where the Buddhists had prayed for rain. Now it was raining,
just as they had sought, and where the altar had stood was a huge puddle
of water. That confirmed it for the city and when people saw the monks and
nuns of Gold Mountain on the streets, often they would thank them for the
rain. But, as was then pointed out, anyone can evoke such a response by
sincere and unselfish self-examination, repentance and reform, and
invocation. The power of repentance and prayer is not the sole preserve of
one particular religious group. As long as people embody the compassion of
Gwan Shr Yin Bodhisattva, do not fight with each other, and do not waste
water, there is every hope for timely rain.(2)
Jerry performed here on
9/2/74 Legion of Mary
5/30/75 Diga Rythm Band
1.)^California District Court Of Appeals, California Appelate Decisionss, Volume 22, pg. 428, http://books.google.com/books?id=1mkEAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA428&lpg=PA428&dq=Marx,+a+napa+resident&source=bl&ots=ebn38vwqx2&sig=uviACz96P08oNx-s6T7SfhkGg3Q&hl=en&sa=X&ei=GmkLUJ_GDYOw2QW_16wn&ved=0CFUQ6AEwBQ#v=onepage&q=Marx%2C%20a%20napa%20resident&f=false
2.)^http://www.drbachinese.org/vbs/1_100/vbs808182/80_19.html
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ReplyDeleteI was at both of these free concerts as a 16-year-old Deadhead, hoping that the gang would show up. My friends and I were bummed that the Dead had "retired," and we had no idea whether it was a hiatus or a permanent end to touring. We were more hopeful after they played the SNACK Benefit on March 23, 1975 two months before the May 30, 1975 Diga/Sons of Champlain /Starship free concert at Marx Meadows.
ReplyDeleteI don't remember either show very well. Before the Marx Meadows show with Diga, everybody who hung out at "The Pit" at George Washington High School pitched in for a keg of beer, and we cut school to drink it at Lands End early that morning. Shortly before stumbling over to Marx, we broke out the brown windowpane.
There were lots of free concerts at Marx Meadows over the years, and I feel like I saw Jerry and Merle there more than once. But specific memories fail me. There are excellent super 8 home movies of the March 23, 1975 show on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGwAAlwghoA