I’ve talked about the Sincere Mind (podcast 35) and the Profound Mind (podcast 58), these being two of the Three Minds identified by Shan Dao in his commentary on the Contemplation Sutra, the third of the three Pureland Sutras. This commentary had a
Read more…The Amida Sangha will soon be holding one of its annual meetings. This one is called Conclave.
Conclave is a meeting of all of the ordained members of the Amida order. Conclave is a private meeting in the sense that the proceedings of the meeting are
Read more…Here is today's podcast. It is about part of the Guru Lama Prayer which can be found in the Amida Shu Nien Fo Book, which is the book of chants, hymns and services. You can find a copy of the Nien Fo Book at http://www.amidashu.org/wp-content/upload
Read more…Back in the 1990s, I edited a book called Beyond Carl Rogers. Carl Rogers was one of the most influential psychologists of the 20th century and I had met him on a number of occasions. His ideas, his principles, his enthusiasm had been quite an influe
Read more…In Buddhism we have the concept of a kalayāṇa mitra. Mitra means a “friend”, kalayāṇa mitra is a “skillful friend”. Anybody who helps you to walk the Dharma path, to deepen your practice, to increase your faith, the person who brings you to the Budd
Read more…Here is today's podcast. It is about how nembutsu is defined by one's sincere intention. Sincerity is one of three dimensions of mind that give fullness of meaning to the practice.
Shan Dao 善導 (613-581) was a great Chinese Pureland teacher. In Japa
Read more…One of the basic principles of our approach, as was established by Honen Shonen, is that faith and practice cannot be differentiated. The spiritual and the concrete are not separate.
Years ago, when I was a social worker, I worked in various hospital
Read more…A few things about Amida Shu: Shu is a Japanese word meaning both teaching and school (in the sense of a school of thought). Hence, Zen Buddhism is divided into Sōtō-shū, Rinzai-shū and Ōbaku-shū; and in Japan Pureland Buddhism is divided into Jōdo-s
Read more…I’d like to talk about the mala. A mala or rosary is the one piece of equipment that you should have. As a Pureland Buddhist especially you must have a mala.
In Buddhism there is an analysis of the sense into their organs, their power and their objec
Read more…Many years ago I was in Thailand, in Bangkok, and I stayed at one of the big Buddhist temples there, a Theravada Temple; and when I arrived, I noticed that there was a big banner over the front of the temple, and on this banner were the words: “Will-
Read more…In today's podcast I explain the meaning of nembutsu from the Amida Shu perspective. Nembutsu is often chanted as part of Buddhist gatherings or you can sing it as you go for a walk on your own or in front of a home altar/shrine.
Namo Amida Bu – t
Read more…Last night I saw the beautiful full moon. We are at the full moon time in this season; and this particular full moon is significant in Buddhism. It’s called the Honey Moon. Honey Moon has a different significance in Buddhism, though also, in a sense,
Read more…This weekend it’s the solstice, the longest day of the year, the most light. It should be the happiest day of the year; we have the maximum of sunshine. Of course, when the light reaches its maximum, its apogee, the dark, initially imperceptibly, beg
Read more…There is a wonderful haiku, a small Japanese poem, by Zuigen Inagaki, which says simply:
Time to fall
Is time to float
For a lotus blossom
This is a perfectly constructed haiku. It gives a beautiful, natural image, and it has a twist in the last fe
In Pureland Buddhism there is no need for meditation in a formal sense because we have the nembutsu, which is all the mind training that we need. Nonetheless we have a system of meditation as an auxiliary practice - auxiliary in the sense that it dee
Read more…I was once travelling in an area of high mountains. I was driving an old van, and I went to visit a monastery that was at the head of a remote valley in the mountains. The journey there took longer than I had anticipated and when I finally arrived it
Read more…I’m going to talk about a Buddhist altar or shrine; and I’m thinking about the kind that you might set up in your own house, either as a permanent fixture on a table or a shelf, or that you might set up for a particular, special occasion or ceremony.
Read more…What is Nirvana? Nirvana is that state of having no resistance to the Dharma.
We all have resistances to the action of the Dharma within our lives. The Buddha talks of Three Levels of Resistance:
A cause that we should all surely support and promote is that of bio-diversity. In the land around where I live there is a great deal of bio-diversity and I do the best I can to preserve and encourage and foster it. There are many, many species of b
Read more…In the last podcast I gave an example of the wandering mind, which mind preceded from an image of stripping wall-paper to one of riding a big, black horse in the mountains. This is the action of the mind through its processes of association, free ass
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