So, here is a way of combining Zen, which is meditation, and Pureland, which is nembutsu, in a single formal practice. We say formal, there is formal practice and informal practice. This is sometimes also called intensive practice and extensive pract
Read more…Last time I talked about the relationship between Pureland and Zen – Zen and Pureland and of course, it’s perfectly possible for a person who practices the nembutsu to also include a period of zazen. They do fit together quite nicely and indeed this
Read more…I’d like to say something about the relationship between Zen and Pureland – Pureland and Zen. Often Zen and Pureland are presented more or less as opposites:
Zen is presented as self-power and Pureland as other-power.
Zen is rigorous and disciplined
Towards the end of his life Buddha had a conversation with a politician about what makes for strength and stability in societies. When I look at our contemporary societies, it seems that the kind of things that make for strength and stability are muc
Read more…Here is today's podcast. It is the story of Ananda and Prakriti. Ananda was the Buddha's assistant - his "close jissha", we would say - and after the Buddha had died it was Ananda who remembered all the the Buddha's teachings. His recitation of the
Read more…Here is today's podcast. It includes the "Summary of Faith and Practice", that is based on Honen Shonin's "Ichimai Kishomon". The text includes reference to a number of central Amidist teachings, some of which I shall refer to in other podcasts and
Read more…I think it was C. G. Jung who coined the term “Mid-Life Crisis”. In his system it went with his idea of psychological types. Jung developed a typology of personalities or psychological functions, which was based on four different styles. You may rem
Read more…A quick rundown on the Go I – The Five Ranks (Ch. Wu wei; Jap. Go I 五位) an early Chinese Buddhist teaching from Dongshan Liangjie 洞山良价 (807–869), [generally regarded as founder of the Cao Dong School of Chan Buddhism (Soto Shu in Japan).]
The Five Ra
Read more…The time has come when we’re starting to think about the Bodhi Retreat. The Bodhi Retreat is a retreat, a gathering of the Sangha in December around the time of the 8th December, which is Bodhi Day, when we celebrate the enlightenment of Shakyamuni B
Read more…There are various stories about the origin of the Pureland style of practice. Some say that originally the practice was a purely mental exercise and that only later did the verbal nembutsu become the preferred form, but I think this is wrong. My own
Read more…Here is the latest podcast. It concerns the Buddhist teaching of pratityasamutpada - dependent origination or conditional arising. The Buddha defined his own enlightenment in terms of his having fully grasped the meaning of dependent arising both for
Read more…This morning I read the news and discovered that over the past several years I have myself paid more in income tax than Donald Trump. This does not mean that I’m a superlatively rich man. You’ve probably paid more then Donald Trump as well.
One could
Read more…Here is the latest podcast. It is about Yelui Chu Tsai 耶律楚材 (1190-1244), a Buddhist Confucian Taoist, who was an enlightened politician in a period of war, genocide, oppression and chaos.
Somebody has asked me to tell the story of Yelui Chu Tsai, wh
I was recently asked whether my views of the Four Truths, the first announcement of the Buddha’s teaching, setting in motion of the Wheel of Dharma, whether my views on the subject have changed since, many years ago, I wrote the book The Feeling Budd
Read more…In this podcast I’d like to say a little bit about the idea of the koan. We know the word koan from particularly Zen Buddhist practice in Japan, China and Korea.
The origin of the idea: back in olden times in China: a trainee might be given the task
Read more…Karma. People ask: “What is Karma?” Karma is the drama of consequentiality. In the Eastern philosophies it is generally believed that there are consequences, even ones that do not seem to be, as we might say, scientific.
I was asked this question onc
Read more…Once upon a time, long ago, in Japan (and I think it’s a true story) there was a man called Jiroemon. He was a simple man, a peasant, a workman. He was a member of the Jōdo Shinshū. This is a branch of Pureland Buddhism following the teachings of Shi
Read more…When I look at history in a very broad sense, I see that civilizations come and go. There have been many. They arise, they prosper, they decline and they fall. Sometimes, a civilization falls and is quickly replaced by another one, a new culture that
Read more…The last two podcasts have been about transferring merit (podcast 80) and about shravakas and bodhisattvas (podcast 81), so today's podcast is about how transferring merit created a bodhisattva. The podcast refers to Kshitigarbha Bodhisattva who is
Read more…In the Pure Land of Amitabha, Amida Buddha, all the beings are either shravakas or bodhisattvas.
Shravaka – the word literally means a listener or a hearer – shravakas are those who hear the Buddha, who hear the Buddha’s call and who are deeply touch
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