Indholdsfortegnelse for Spring 2018 i Buddhadharma: The Practitioner's Quarterly

SHINSHU ROBERTS is cofounder of Ocean Gate Zen Center in Santa Cruz, California, and holds the appointment of Kokusaifukyoshi (international teacher) with the Soto Zen School in Japan. A student of Sojun Mel Weitsman, she trained at San Francisco Zen Center for seventeen years. Her book Being- Time: A Practitioner’s Guide to Dogen Zenji’s Shobogenzo Uji is forth-coming from Wisdom Publications in March. MATTHIEU RICARD was a close student and attendant of Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche until his death in 1991. He has also served as the French translator for the Dalai Lama since 1989. A lama in the Nyingma tradition, he has been living in the Himalayan region for the past forty-five years. He is the founder of the humanitarian association Karuna- Shechen and a member of the Mind and…

THANISSARO BHIKKHU: As with so many other issues, the Buddha took a middle path— in this case, between the two extremes of determinism and total free will. If all your experiences were predetermined from the past—through impersonal fate, the design of a creator god, or your own past actions—the whole idea of a path of practice would be nonsense. If your choices in the present moment were totally free, with no constraints from the past, that would mean that your present actions would in turn have no impact on the future. The Buddha’s alternative was to teach that present experience is a combination of three things: the results of past intentions (your old karma), present intentions, and the results of present intentions. Your present intentions determine whether the mind does…

This brief text on resolutions, the use of inner intentions in meditation, has been written for the benefit of teachers and experienced mindfulness, vipassana, and shamatha practitioners. It is especially intended to be useful for those in long retreats. — Jack Kornfield Aditthana is a Pali word that describes a quality of strong determination, one of the paramis, or “inner perfections.” It also refers to the practice of making inner resolutions. These are skillful means used to evoke and access beneficial inner qualities, especially when a practitioner has developed deep concentration. Resolutions can be used to direct the mind toward particular meditative states, as well as to invite wisdom to arise. The practice of meditative resolutions is found in many forms in the Pali suttas, and also in the great commentarial…

Buddhism beyond Gender: Liberation from Attachment to Identity Shambhala Publications, 2018 208 pages; $24.95 In terma (treasure) traditions, texts appear in the world, mysteriously, at the precise moment when they will have the greatest benefit. Rita Gross’s posthumously published book, Buddhism beyond Gender—set to be released by Shambhala Publications at a time when clarity around gender is needed more than ever—may be just such a treasure. The past year has been a time of enormous energy around examining sexism, patriarchy, abuse, and misogyny within Buddhist communities, as numerous women have come forward to publicly speak out about sexual abuse by Buddhist teachers. While these revelations have sparked confusion and disillusionment, one major current of anger stems from wondering why it has taken so long to acknowledge the insidious and unacknowledged…

When we first saw Ode de la méditation, by RU XIAO FAN (on this issue’s cover), we were both intrigued and challenged. Some of us found the work beautiful, even comforting, while for others it was unsettling. Ultimately, the work sparked intense discussion around the office—not only about what the artist intended but also what the image speaks to in our own experience of meditation. In his award-winning series La Chute (The Fall), French photographer DENIS DARZACQ captures young dancers in flight as they leap and jump against the backdrop of city spaces (see page 56). The subjects appear to defy gravity and stop time, yet we’re assured by the artist that the images have not been digitally manipulated. Initially inspired by a news report about hip-hop dancers, Darzacq “borrows…

CONTRARY TO POPULAR understanding, zazen is not a practice of mind. It is not just a thing you do with your mind, even if the thing you’re doing is attending or concentrating. It includes the mind but is not limited to it. In American culture, people tend to identify themselves with the arisings and goings-on of their minds, but zazen is not overly concerned with such things. Zazen also includes the breath and body; even so, we don’t exactly apply the mind to the breath, nor do we focus specifically on bodily sensations. Rather, zazen is simply sitting in presence to breath, sitting in presence to mind, sitting in presence to body. Zazen is body, breath, and mind harmoniously “zazening.” Body, breath, and mind are in fact one thing. Or,…

AS A BUDDHIST, I have vowed to put an end to suffering—not only my own, but also the suffering I cause, knowingly or unknowingly, to other beings. A profound way to do that is by developing cultural humility, a term coined by two women of color specializing in public health, Drs. Melanie Tevalon and Jann Murray. Although humility has connotations of weakness or submissiveness, the ability to listen to others—their speech, appearance, and values—as well as to our own speech, appearance, and values, requires great inner strength. Regardless of whether we are on the upside or the downside of sociopolitical power, we all participate in and uphold a socially constructed hierarchy that benefits some and marginalizes others. By listening to ourselves, we can begin to recognize that participation as well…

PATRUL RINPOCHE, Orgyen Jigme Chökyi Wangpo (1808–1887), a wandering practitioner in the ancient tradition of vagabond renunciants, became one of the most revered spiritual teachers in Tibetan history, widely renowned as a scholar and author while at the same time living a life of utmost simplicity. A strong advocate of the joys of solitude, he always stressed the futility of worldly pursuits and ambitions. The memory of his life’s example is still very much alive today, offering an ever-fresh source of inspiration for practitioners of Tibetan Buddhism. An exemplary upholder of the purest Buddhist ideals of renunciation, wisdom, and compassion, Patrul Rinpoche spent most of his life roaming the mountains and living in caves, forests, and remote hermitages. When he left one place, he left with no particular destination; when…

Should Vajrayana practitioners eat meat? Tibetans have long wrestled with this question, as Geoffrey Barstow elucidates in FOOD OF SINFUL DEMONS: MEAT, VEGETARIANISM, AND THE LIMITS OF BUDDHISM IN TIBET (Columbia 2017). In their discussions of ethical eating, Tibetan commentators observe that while the monastic rules permit meat’s consumption, the bodhisattva vow, with its emphasis on compassion, does not. Meanwhile, tantric Buddhist commitments mandate the consumption of the five meats during a tantric feast, but this injunction need not extend to one’s daily diet. As a result, most Tibetan Buddhists would admit that meat ideally should be avoided, but this has not stopped them from eating it daily. Barstow identifies some of the reasons for this, including the view that eating meat is critical to one’s health, as well as…

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,…

Western monastics are an endangered species. At least seventy-five percent of Western monastics in the Tibetan tradition disrobe, and the rates in other traditions appear to be similarly high. In many cases, Western monastics are neither trained and supported in the traditional way by their teachers, nor are they supported by Western Buddhists. They are not fully accepted by the traditional Buddhist institutions in Asia, and at the same time, they are not seen as part of the new lay Buddhism and secular movements taking hold in the West. At best, they can be put on a brochure to vaguely suggest the peace or discipline that popular culture associates with Buddhism. This is the landscape in which Western monastics find themselves. The Buddha chose to be a monk. He could…

Science and Philosophy in the Indian Buddhist Classics, Volume 1 Conceived and introduced by His Holiness the Dalai Lama; edited by Thupten Jinpa Wisdom Publications, 2017 552 pages; $29.95 Western historical sources posit only one origin of science: classical Greece, beginning around the fifth century BCE. According to the prevailing narrative, this initial spark was interrupted by a long pause and incubation through the Middle Ages and wouldn’t be rekindled until the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, during the European Renaissance. Aside from acknowledging some antecedents to the Greeks in ancient Babylon and Egypt, such ethnocentric accounts fail to recognize the many and varied origins of science, spanning eras and geographical regions. India and China, in particular, were home to numerous scientific achievements in mathematics, astronomy, technology, logic, linguistics, and medicine.…