Indholdsfortegnelse for Fall 2017 i Buddhadharma: The Practitioner's Quarterly

One of my favorite Zen stories is about teachers. The great Zen teacher Huangbo strides into the hall and says to the assembled monastics, “You people are all dreg-slurpers! If you go on like this, when will you ever see today? Don’t you know that in all of China, there are no teachers of Zen?” A monastic comes forward and says to him, “Then what about all those people like you who set up Zen places that students flock to like birds?” Huangbo replies, “I don’t say there is no Zen, only that there are no teachers.” There is more to “no teachers of Zen” than meets the eye. I still believe that students are responsible for their own practice and their own awakening. No one can communicate a truth…

For many years, I made biannual visits to Dhamma Dena, Ruth Denison’s rustic retreat center in Joshua Tree, California, for two-week silent retreats. One night, perhaps at my fourth retreat, a deep fear caught me in its grip. I dutifully followed the sensations of panic as they crawled through my belly and tightened my chest and constricted my throat. Unable to manage the anxiety, I crawled out of my bunk and in my pajamas made my way to Ruth’s trailer. I knocked tentatively, fearful of waking her but even more terrified of facing my terror alone. Ruth, in her nightgown and nightcap, her hair in braids, invited me in. Not just into her trailer but into her bed. I realize this sounds scandalous. How can a dharma teacher coax a…

One hot summer evening several years ago, I found myself listening to a teaching in a meditation hall in upstate New York, an activity that had become far too rare at that point in my life. A hush came over the crowd as the diminutive teacher entered the room and took his seat. “Do you want to know the secret to meditation?” he asked. Vigorous nods answered his question. Who doesn’t like to be in on a secret? “All right. The secret to meditation is—” He paused again to heighten our anticipation. “Don’t meditate.” After pausing again to let the instruction sink in, he added, “Instead, just be present, as you are, right here, right now. No grasping. Nothing more needs to be done.” I’m not sure what others in…

In vipassana meditation we observe the breath, or rather the sensations caused by breathing, in order to concentrate moment to moment. Because the breath is a neutral object, this practice effectively calms the heart– mind. There are several places where meditators feel the sensation of breathing, and they vary from person to person. Some feel it more at the nostrils or upper lip, others in the rising and falling of the chest, and still others in the abdomen. In terms of vipassana meditation, observing the breath at any of these places is a valid practice. The Burmese teacher Mahasi Sayadaw, however, favored observing the sensations of the breath at the abdomen, in part because it is related to slow walking. Just as we observe and experience the foot rising and…

I’ve very rarely taught meditation in the West, but in Thailand a common problem among lay meditators is that they take up meditation practice in order to become peaceful. When people meditate and they don’t become peaceful, or they don’t achieve the kind of peace they imagined they should be achieving, they become frustrated and discouraged, and even assume that they don’t have sufficient spiritual aptitude. In many ways we can say that following the path is the fruit; this is something that I find myself talking about a lot. To make a comparison, let’s say a small child is learning to walk. You could say, “Well, where did the child walk to today? How far did she get?” But that’s not the point. The child wasn’t standing up, walking…

One does not need to abandon thoughts. One does not need to make thoughts go away, because thoughts in their essence are self-arisen and self-liberated. According to the second turning of the wheel of dharma, just as thoughts arise, they are nothing other than the freedom from conceptual fabrications. Their true nature is beyond concept—as they appear and as they are liberated, their true nature is beyond concept. The whole point of Mahamudra is to see the true nature of thoughts. That’s what Mahamudra is—it’s nothing other than the true nature of thoughts. When you can see that, then thoughts are your friends. Mahamudra is the practice of not abandoning thoughts, not abandoning appearances, not abandoning disturbing emotions, not abandoning suffering, but bringing all these to the path and realizing…

I’d like to reveal the natural nature of sitting fully as it is. If I put some concept on this, and make you understand what I think is an ideal way to sit, I would be a kind of special gardener who fixes boxes and lets you go through to become square bamboo. Or I would be an automatic newspaper man who runs a newspaper—whoever comes, I would just put you in the machine and make you flat, and you would come out a squished being, or something like this! Too much talk about zazen, or shikantaza, is not so good for you. It’s impossible to teach the meaning of sitting. Until you really experience and confirm it by yourself, you cannot believe it. It has tremendous depth, and year…

Silent illumination is the simultaneous practice of stillness and clarity, or quiescence and luminosity. It is similar to the practice of shamatha and vipashyana, as long as we don’t consider these sequential to each other, first practicing shamatha and then practicing vipashyana. In silence there is illumination; in stillness, clarity is ever present. The clarity of the second stage of illumination is like looking through a spotless window. You can see through it very well, almost as if the window were not there, but it is there. In the second stage, the self lies dormant but subtle self-grasping is present. In other words, seeing through a window, even a very clean one, is not the same as seeing through no window at all. Seeing through no window is one way…

Our daughter, now thirty, is autistic, nonverbal, and has pervasive communication issues. She was an infant when diagnosed in 1981. Back then there was little knowledge of autism, even among health care professionals, and not much in the way of support. As we worked to find ways to help her, my wife and I realized we needed to find a source of strength and spiritual support in our daily lives in order to stay positive for her. During a retreat with Thich Nhat Hanh many years ago, we learned about the three doors of liberation, especially the first one: emptiness. I’m sure he wouldn’t recall my questions during a walking meditation he led. It was supposed to be in silence but I maneuvered to be near him, feeling that I…

Race is a touchy subject in discussions of American Buddhism. Those who address the issue head-on risk being accused of reverse racism against white Buddhists. Pointing out racism in Buddhist communities may also lead to people discrediting your religious credentials (“real Buddhists would be more compassionate”) or a dismissal of your grasp of Buddhist teachings (“if only you could understand that reality is non-dual, then you wouldn’t get so hung up about race”). These responses bring to mind African American writer and activist bell hooks’ encounters with white Buddhists who, as she puts it, “are so attached to the image of themselves as nonracists that they refuse to see their own racism or the ways in which Buddhist communities may reflect racial hierarchies.” hooks observes that she rarely sees prominent…

We who have grown up in this land of choices have become savvy consumers, practiced at sorting through our options in order to maximize pleasure and minimize displeasure. Yet through our very success at getting our way, we also bind ourselves to the poles of grasping and rejecting, thus sabotaging our efforts toward freedom. Ultimately, the integrity of American Buddhism rests on our going beyond the freedom to (have, get, buy, etc.) so that we may find the freedom from our desires themselves. As Americans, we’ve shown the impulse to remake Buddhism, demanding that the dharma accommodate itself to us, rather than our accommodating ourselves to the dharma. But while our national character presents significant challenges, it has other, more positive, sides to it. Our individual self-identities come with self-awareness…

On occasion, people have said to me, “Oh, I didn’t know that there were African American Buddhists!” Mostly my reaction is demure, but I sometimes want to respond with the question, “Why shouldn’t there be?” After all, African Americans are human beings who think and breathe and experience suffering just as other human beings do. Who, having heard and reflected upon the Buddha’s teachings, would not wish to undertake and practice them? Many African Americans of my generation who later inclined toward Buddhism had already heard teaching similar to the Buddha’s in the words of Martin Luther King Jr. Striving to move this country closer to being a more just society, King and others had built the nonviolent civil rights movement around the principles of love, forgiveness, and interdependence. Hearing…

Buddhism can be learned and practiced without spending a lot of money. One can abide by ethical principles without borrowing cash. One can adopt a Buddhist philosophy without investing. But to experience the spiritual and psychological transformation that retreat practice offers—that takes capital. Without capital that is equitably distributed, retreat communities may contribute, ironically, to the perpetuation of mostly wealthier religious adherents, and in Western contexts to potentially wealthier and white (by way of class that is inextricably linked to race) leaders and teachers. In the U.S. context in particular, the valuing of retreat practice has contributed to racial stratification between white leaders and an increasingly racially diverse sangha. If compassion for others’ suffering is the primary motivation of an awakening heart–mind, then surely compassion for the impoverished can also…

Once Katagiri Roshi told us, “Practicing Zen is not like training your dog: Sit. Heel. Fetch. We are not training ourselves to be obedient and just follow the rules. We are training ourselves to wake up.” When a teacher says this, you know he’s seen a lot of people trying to get it right. And failing. And being miserable. Katagiri Roshi would also say, “The meaning of life is to live” and “Let the flower of your life force bloom.” Not an easy task when so much by-the-book structure appears to demand compliance. Still the wisteria grows freely using the trellis for support. One day during the spring of 1984, the officers of the temple, serious and stern, came to inform me that one of the students, James, had been…

Just Now Mind Zen teacher Dae Kwang says that right now, in this moment, there’s no way for you to practice Buddhism. And that’s as it should be. Buddhism has a very radical teaching: there’s no process, there’s only this moment. You’re always in the moment, but you think you aren’t. That’s all. Tell me the truth, does anybody ever have the past? If you can bring me even one molecule of it, you’ll win the Nobel Prize in physics. You can think about the past, but you can never get it. The same is true of the future. Buddhism says that the past is dead and the future is just a dream. Maybe it’s a good dream, or maybe it’s a bad dream, but it’s just a kind of dream. If…

I’ve had rheumatoid arthritis, a painful and crippling disease, for more than thirty years. Back in the mid-seventies, my rheumatologist recommended I try a number of risky medications to curb my RA, but told me frankly that I would not be able to take any of these drugs for more than ten years because of their impact on the liver and kidneys. I thought, well then, why not strike out on my own right now and find out how to control this disease without medicine? Despite the bravado that decision implied, I often felt afraid and alone, reckless even—as my doctor insisted I was. As I began to feel my way along a dark corridor, I was guided by eight years of Zen meditation training. I had been taught to…

About a year after I finished the traditional three-year retreat program and had begun my work as a dharma teacher, I experienced a kind of breakdown, a severe sense of being stuck and uninspired. I reached out to my dharma teachers, mentors, and other spiritual guides, and it quickly became clear that my identity as a lama and resident teacher had somehow choked my identity as a queer Black man. I was privileging the lama over Rod. Rod was the person I had earned the right to be; Rod had gone through years of working directly with self-hate, depression, and low self-esteem to emerge fierce, fabulous, edgy, and beautiful. Meeting the dharma had furthered my personal and interpersonal transformation, but now I was trying to fit into the mold of…

The Tibetan term bardo, or “intermediate state,” is not just a reference to the afterlife. It also refers more generally to these moments when gaps appear, interrupting the continuity that we otherwise project onto our lives. In American culture, we sometimes refer to this as having the rug pulled out from under us, or feeling ungrounded. But to be precise, bardo refers to that state in which we have lost our old reality and it is no longer available to us. There is no ground, no certainty, and no reference point—there is, in a sense, no rest. This has always been the entry point in our lives for religion. Milarepa referred to this disruption as a great marvel, singing from his cave, “The precious pot containing my riches becomes my…

When I get desperate, which is pretty often, I ask myself how to not be overwhelmed by despair or cynicism. For my own sake, for my family, and for my sangha, I need to vow to not burn out. And I ask others to vow similarly, so they’ll be around when I need them for support. In fact, I’ve formulated a “Great Vow for Mindful Activists”: Aware of suffering and injustice, I, _________, am working to create a more just, peaceful, and sustainable world. I promise, for the benefit of all, to practice self-care, mindfulness, healing, and joy. I vow to not burn out. It’s the first thing I give to students in my yearlong program of secular mindfulness for social justice activists. I ask them to sign and date…

Zen master Dogen said that zazen was not a meditation technique but was instead the dharma gate of enjoyment and ease. Yet how often we stray from that reminder, especially when we are sitting alone. A technique is something we can do right or wrong, well or badly. True practice is about being grounded in a place free from these dichotomies. So we need to frame our practice in such a way that we do not get lost in dualisms of right or wrong, progress or the lack of it. I have found that a good way of maintaining this perspective is to liken sitting to looking in a mirror. When you sit down on your cushion, the state of your mind and body automatically appears to you, the way…

If our practice consists of toughing it out, a time will come when we feel we have endured enough. We may decide to give it all up and go dancing—as if practice and enjoyment were at odds. In his book The Words of My Perfect Teacher, Patrul Rinpoche says we often practice “as if we are paying taxes.” We really just want to come home after work and watch TV, but we feel we should meditate. The purpose of meditation practice is to enjoy the natural vitality of the mind; practice is not something we should do out of a sense of duty. Who are we practicing for? The teacher? Are we doing this so we won’t go to hell? To be good? Who is the arbiter of “good,” anyway?…

The Buddha’s gentle gesture of touching the earth is a magnificent metaphor. It is saying that even though we might have this enlightened, free space internally, it needs to be interfaced with the phenomenal world. Otherwise, there is no completion. This is why meditating with the eyes open is, in a way, such a useful bridge. We cultivate a vast internal space, but it is necessarily connected to the phenomenal world. If there is only an internal, subjective experience of enlightenment, we ‘re still caught. Mara’s army won’t retreat. The hassles are everywhere—the tax returns, the permits, the jealousies. We can see that they are empty, but they are still coming at us from all directions. But in reaching out to touch the earth, the Buddha recognized, yes, there is…

People frequently ask me, “Why is my mind and life so terribly restless?” I can’t answer this for you. Of course I can give answers, but we need to realize for ourselves that the nervous impulse to search for explanations and relief, and the impatient thrashing about to be free, is just more brain activity. Can there be a humble moment of being here without knowing? Can we let pain, discomfort and uncertainty be here without knowing? When people come to Springwater they say, “Here it’s relatively easy to be with problems. But it isn’t easy at home, in the office, with the family, or in a relationship.” Actually it isn’t difficult anywhere when it dawns what it truly means to be in this moment. It may be a moment…

For all the subtlety of his teachings, the Buddha had a simple test for measuring wisdom. You’re wise, he said, to the extent that you can get yourself to do things you don’t like doing but know will result in happiness, and to the extent that you refrain from things you like doing but know will result in pain and harm. He derived this standard for wisdom from his insight into the radical importance of intentional action in shaping our experience of happiness and sorrow, pleasure and pain. Given that our actions are so important and yet so frequently misguided, our wisdom has to be tactical—and strategic—in fostering actions that are truly beneficial. It has to outwit our shortsighted preferences in order to yield a happiness that lasts. Because the…

Since nothing has inherent nature nor any singular, permanent qualities, it is as if all phenomena are magically produced by causes and conditions coming together—just like a rainbow, in which sunshine, rain, and moisture in the atmosphere produce arching colors in space. Like the rainbow, every phenomenon and experience is insubstantial, with nothing to grasp and hold on to; it is also essenceless, with nothing we can pinpoint as something to react to. It’s all as unreal as a movie. “Realness” is not out there at all. Nor is it here in the mind. It is merely a product of ignorance, an imputed quality imposed by ignorant mind onto objects and subjective experience. If you understand this, then you see the twofold character of everything that happens: the background and…

Western Buddhists have tended not to explore the impact that their Western heritage may have had on how they practice Buddhism. But I would suggest that aspects of our Western heritage are extremely valuable to our Buddhist practice and that we discard or denigrate our Western roots at our peril. Would we feel so comfortable abandoning the religions of our parents and families without Western concepts of individual choice and freedom of religion? For most of human history, in most parts of the world, such conduct would have been unthinkable and nearly impossible. We Western Buddhists sometimes decry individualism, human rights, and other ideas of the European enlightenment, or question their relevance to Buddhist practice, but without their large-scale acceptance in our society, I doubt that Western Buddhism would have…

Abuse can take different forms: financial, psychological, physical, sexual. Recent headlines have revealed that spiritual communities, including Buddhist ones, are particularly vulnerable to sexual abuse by male authority figures. At the same time, all over North America, targets of sexual abuse and institutional betrayal are speaking out with newfound energy, their words and experiences echoing over instant media to resonate with millions of others. More and more people are calling out habitual oppressions, exorcising self-blame, and inspiring others to wake up, saying, “No more! I am worthy of decency and respect.” We are casting off centuries of myths that normalized abuses or at best treated them as an insurmountable problem. Communities are genuinely asking, what can we do differently? A new way forward will require daring. If we really think…

I’ve been thinking about Buddhism as an act of translation. I don’t mean the translation of texts from one language to another. I’m thinking more of the symbolic act of bringing instructions and customs and a path of knowledge from one culture to another. It seems to me that translation in this sense always strives for some sort of pure conveyance from the original culture, yet always ends up with a hybrid. It is natural to want to introduce something serviceable and relatively normal to your own culture— let’s say something equivalent to a horse. But if it started out as a horse in China, when it arrives in America or Australia you might have something more like a giraffe, a creature with definite surreal or even Dada elements. If…

CALIFORNIA AGAINST THE STREAM BUDDHIST MEDITATION SOCIETY 4300 Melrose Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90029. (323) 665-4300, Fax: (323) 665-4404, service@againstthestream.org, www.againstthestream.org • Founded by Noah Levine, author of Dharma Punx, Against The Stream has two centers in Los Angeles and Santa Monica offering weekly classes, daylong retreats, and special class series. AGAINST THE STREAM BUDDHIST MEDITATION SOCIETY 2701 Folsom St, San Francisco, CA 94110. bayarea@againstthestream.org, www.againstthestream.org • Meditation center in the Mission offers weekly classes, daylongs, class series and residential retreats. CHAGDUD GONPA RIGDZIN LING PO Box 279, Junction City, CA 96048. (530) 623-2714, FAX: (530) 623-6709, sangha@chagdudgonpa.org, www.chagdudgonpa.org • Nyingma Buddhist center in serene Northern California Alps. Founded by Chagdud Tulku Rinpoche. Daily meditation; teaching and retreat programs; individual retreat facilities. DHARMA ZEN CENTER 1025 S Cloverdale Ave, Los…

Q I’ve been a Buddhist for more than twenty years and I’ve done a lot of meditation practice. But I’ve never experienced any real peace or absence of thoughts in my meditation, at least for more than brief moments here and there. I’ve also had the benefit of many wonderful teachings, yet I still succumb to my emotions and old habits. More and more I find myself asking, “What’s the point?” What should I do about this? Tulku Thondup (contributor 2002–2004) Meditation works, even if it is not visible to you. A friend of mine was involved in ritualistic and devotional meditation on the Buddha of Compassion. He never believed it would have much effect on him since he spent so little time and energy on it. But then one…

Sooner or later it’s going to happen—it might be the very first time you meditate or only after years of dedicated practice, but someday you’re going to have a spiritual experience. These experiences come in many forms, ranging from simple tranquility to radiant ecstasy. In their fullest expression, they are spiritual earthquakes that can transform your life. At more modest levels, they can manifest as the total cessation of thought, an out-of-body experience, or sensations of bliss and clarity. You might have an experience of profound meditation, or of union with the entire cosmos, and say to yourself, “This is it! This is what I’ve been waiting for.” Like the endorphins released in a runner’s high, these experiences are the meditator’s high. And they are addicting. Spiritual experiences are called…

I was drawn to the work of Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, because he wrote about loneliness and desolation. He emphasized the experience of hopelessness, and he wrote poetry about the stark landscape in which I lived. He spoke a language I thought I understood, and I was eager to meet him. But that first summer of Naropa University, I was unprepared for the actual experience of encountering him face to face. In our first conversation, he reached into my mind, knowing the question behind my question, and he answered it before I could even ask. He recognized my inner desolation, and yet to him it was not tragic. There was no boundary between us, and he neither confirmed nor denied anything in my experience. He had not lost heart, and his…

In January 2003, I began a one hundred-day solitary retreat. It was my third such retreat and I had waited seventeen years for the opportunity to practice this way again. During the third week, I had what would be my last menstrual period. I experienced the most severe contractions and abundant bleeding I’d ever had, except for the time my first baby miscarried at six months. At 2 a.m., forty-nine days into the retreat, I read this quote from the mystic poet Rumi: “This rain weeping and sun burning twine together to help us grow. Keep your intelligence white-hot and your grief glistening, so your life will stay fresh.” I climbed into my sleeping bag, and with a warm brick on my stomach, I cried. Away from all my family…

There is a popular notion permeating the world regarding zazen and nembutsu, reciting the name of Amida Buddha: once you experience satori through Zen meditation or experience a settled mind through chanting Amida Buddha, it is as though a red light has turned green and you become completely refreshed, and the feeling never changes. I have to say that talk like this is nothing more than a fairy tale. For example, people who view others in the wondrous posture of zazen see them as feeling cool in the heat of summer or comfortably warm while sitting during the cold winter. The fact is, however, that for those actually practicing Zen meditation in summer, because their bodies are confined in the heat, they become hotter and hotter; and for those practicing…

The nembutsu is the flowing call of the Buddha of Immeasurable Light and Life, coming from the fathomless center of life itself, as well as our response to that call without any hesitation or calculation. Thus, it is not a petitionary act, a mindless, mechanical repetition, or a mantra with magical powers. This calling of nembutsu awakens us to a liberating power that sanctifies all life, because it comes from beyond the small-minded self that is always engaged in calculating life only in terms of gain or loss, winning or losing. Sooner or later we will respond to this call, if we are ever to know a sense of security and well-being. If I were to translate nembutsu into English, it would be the “Namethat- calls,” for it calls us…

Awareness practice isn’t about throwing a bucket of loving-kindness, or metta, down your nerve-endings, or pushing for catharsis. It’s about maintaining a holistic awareness and letting that have its effects. Awareness is normally something that is directed by volition (cetana), the conscious or semiconscious will to do, to be, or to have; we don’t necessarily recognize that it has an innate vitality and energy that can be brought to bear with a more empathic kind of intention. To put it more simply, we don’t have to do a whole lot—doing is already happening in a subtler way. When we attend to something and listen to it, awareness naturally brings the intention or dominant tone of that energy, or sankhara, to the object. In this stuck state, the sankhara that we…

When we think about prayer in a Buddhist context, we find there at least two major types: prayers for and prayers of. Prayers for are directed to future fulfillment of specific goals. These might include prayers for peace, prayers for health and well-being, or prayers for the fulfillment of the bodhisattva vows. Prayers of are the prayers of buddhas and bodhisattvas—that is, prayers arising out of the awakened mind. Buddhist practitioners, especially those who are new to the practice, can be susceptible to magical thinking. A practitioner may say, “I just spent ten continuous days praying for my brother and now his doctors have told him his cancer is in remission.” Or “I did two months of Buddhist prayers for my mother’s heart condition, but my practice wasn’t strong enough…

At the very heart of Buddhism is the promise of enlightenment. It’s the bright flame illuminating the dharma, and the rich variety of practices developed in the traditions that make up Buddhism are all in some essential way in the service of that promise. For millennia, in response to the struggles and sorrows of life on this planet, and in honor of the breathtaking beauty of life on this planet, people have passed this flame from hand to hand, encouraging one another to take part in the agonizingly slow but impossibly tender awakening of our world as a whole. In the West the idea of enlightenment has gotten a little bruised, in part because the intensity of our longings has made us so vulnerable to disappointment. Some of us don’t…

In Genjokoan, Dogen says, “No trace of enlightenment remains and this traceless enlightenment continues endlessly.” We call this endless activity “filling a well with snow,” the seemingly inane occupation of the ancient sages. No one can tell whether they’re sages or whether they’re crazy, whether they’re ordinary or holy. One of them gathers a few others and they all climb the mountain to get to the snow-capped peaks. They fill their buckets with snow and carry them down and throw the snow into the well, trying to fill it. Of course, filling the well with snow is impossible. Yet they do it, trip after trip, day after day. It is like the four bodhisattva vows that all Zen practitioners make each night: Sentient beings are numberless; I vow to save…

In Tibetan Buddhism, we recognize that enlightenment comprises both feminine and masculine aspects. We say that enlightenment is not possible without both wisdom and compassion, which we sometimes refer to as wisdom and method. Wisdom, or the recognition of emptiness, is connected with the feminine, because the empty nature of reality is the basis, or mother, of all. As the Heart Sutra says, form is emptiness, emptiness is form. In other words, there is no form or reality apart from emptiness. In that sense, emptiness is the mother of all. Accordingly, when we speak about the wisdom aspect of enlightenment, we associate this with the feminine principle. The feminine aspect of enlightenment is represented by female deities. We see female images at every level of Tibetan art. There are peaceful…

Seeing the immensity of the world’s anguish has raised in my mind questions about the future prospects for Buddhism in the West. I’ve been struck by how seldom the theme of global suffering—the palpable suffering of real human beings—is thematically explored in the Buddhist journals and teachings with which I am acquainted. It seems to me that we Western Buddhists tend to dwell in a cognitive space that defines the first noble truth largely against the background of our middle-class lifestyles: as the gnawing of discontent; the ennui of over-satiation; the pain of unfulfilling relationships; or, with a bow to Buddhist theory, as bondage to the round of rebirths. Too often, I feel, our focus on these aspects of dukkha has made us oblivious to the vast, catastrophic suffering that…

The assimilation and adaptation of Buddhism is taking place today on an international scale. Given how rapidly this is occurring, there is real danger that the integrity of the Buddha’s teachings may be lost when the teachings are diluted to the level of pop psychology and when teachings from diverse Buddhist and non-Buddhist traditions are haphazardly mixed together. On the other hand, if teachers of buddhadharma refuse to adapt to the modern world, there is the danger that Buddhism will soon appear antiquated and irrelevant. This is certainly the perception of many non-Buddhists, as well as some younger-generation Asian Buddhists. The purity of dharma, then, depends on maintaining both its integrity and its effectiveness in the modern world, leading people from suffering and its causes to an experience of greater…

The Japanese Zen master Yamada Koun Roshi (1907–89), fearing that Zen was dying out in Japan, held out hope that it might live on as a tradition within the Catholic Church. Yes, you read that right. But why the Catholic Church? Richard Bryan McDaniel’s Catholicism and Zen (Sumeru 2017) traces the connections, looking to early Catholic encounters with Zen and contemporary Catholics invested in Zen practice. One such practitioner is Elaine MacInnes, a Catholic nun who was the first Canadian to receive authorization to teach Zen. She defines Zen practice as “responding to God’s presence at all times, in all circumstances.” He also speaks with Father Kevin Hunt, a Trappist monk who is the primary Zen teacher of the Day Star Sangha in Massachusetts, and whose early attempts at cross-legged…