The Amida Order has adopted the practice of celebrating the memory of three founding ancestors at this time of year. The persons so honoured are
Sensei Gisho Saiko, Reverend Gyomay Kubose, and Reverend Amrita Dhammika. See more information at the foo
Read more…Living Together
A community is a group of people living together. There might be many reasons why people might live together. Humans are moderately social animals. There are advantages in living together, but there are also problems. A group living t
QUESTION: Does the common Theravada and Tibetan Mahayana teaching of three levels of suffering, briefly:
The last part of Chapter Two is as follows
Therefore, the sage,
makes not acting his thing
and not speaking his religion,
makes myriad things, but wit
The I Ching is the book of change. So it is about the patterns of change and what we can learn from studying those patterns. The basic unit of the book is the hexagram. This diagram of six lines mutates in a variety of ways. Six is 1x2x3. In other wo
Read more…QUESTION: With regard to the recent bombings in Brussels, is it better to suffer or to inflict injustice? Is it better to be the victim or the perpetrator?
SHORT ANSWER: All parties need our compassion and understanding.
LONG ANSWER: This is a complex
It is good to pray. There are many ways and many meanings and I shall describe a few. When you organise your living quarters, make sure you include a place for holy things. When you arrange your garden, create places for contemplation that are inviti
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天 下 皆 知 美 之 為 美
斯 惡 已 。
皆 知 善 之 為 善
斯 不 善 已 。
That everybody sees beauty as beautiful
is not beautiful.
That everybody sees goodness as good
is not good.
Old Chinese is very succinct and therefore, to an extent, ambiguous. Several other ways in
Read more…I wanted to explain more about the I Ching, So I thought the best way was to let the oracle speak for itself.
To use the oracle, one casts a hexagram. There is a complex method using yarrow stalks and a simpler method using coins. I always use the
Shakespeare’s play Julius Caesar has many memorable lines, but none more so than “Beware the Ides of March.” As it is, today, the 15th of March, I would like to highlight one of the most important themes of the play, which is the dilemma of Brutus.
An
In the morning service at Amida Shu temples and gatherings there is a passage that begins “Your radiant face, like a mountain peak catching the first burst of morning light, has awesome and unequalled majesty.” It is the first verse of a short text c
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