Indholdsfortegnelse for Summer 2019 i Buddhadharma: The Practitioner's Quarterly

VISHNU SRIDHARAN has worked for nonprofits dedicated to fighting poverty, promoting racial equity, and dismantling the prison–industrial complex. Now a doctoral candidate in philosophy at the University of Southern California, his dissertation draws on South Asian spiritual traditions to explore the connection between how our mind works and how we ought to treat each other. He is based in Oakland. ELISE ANNE DEVIDO is an historian of modern Buddhism in China and Vietnam; her work has focused on Thich Nhat Hanh, women and Buddhism, and the genres of hagiography and biography in Buddhist traditions. Co-president of Sakyadhita–USA, which supports women in Buddhism, she is the author of Taiwan’s Buddhist Nuns and the forthcoming Women, Buddhism and Modernity in China 1900–1950. MARK UNNO is an ordained Shin Buddhist priest in the…

GUO GU: This is an important question, and one not so dissimilar from another common question, “In what timeframe can one reasonably expect to learn meditation and reach awakening?” These are difficult to answer because whatever assumptions we may bring to perceiving ourselves and others, buddhadharma is definitely not meant to be a measuring stick for judging people. It is a practice, and it is up to each of us to engage with it and integrate it in our lives so eventually there’s no separation between buddhadharma and our lives. Done correctly, our self-referential attachments diminish. That said, naturally there are ups and downs in different periods and circumstances of our lives. Common notions of progress and regress do not apply here. What a “Buddhist” does may appear one way…

LAST OCTOBER, Thich Nhat Hanh summoned his senior disciples to communicate his wish to return home to Vietnam. No longer able to speak following his stroke in 2014, he made his wishes known using nonverbal gestures. Two days later he flew from Thailand to Vietnam, where he communicated in a letter what it meant for him to finally come home. “Although I have lived many years abroad, every year when autumn comes, my heart always returns to the ancestral teachers of Tu Hieu Temple and I touch the earth before them…I wish to end my days in the home of my spiritual ancestors so that all the descendants of the Root Temple can have a refuge to return to.” Born Ngyuen Xuan Bao on October 11, 1926, Thich Nhat Hanh…

GROWING UP, I perceived a close affinity between Hinduism—the religion of my ancestors—and Buddhism. Not only were both traditions rooted deeply in the soil of South Asia, but I had always been taught that the Buddha was the ninth avatar of Vishnu, the traditional Hindu preserver and protector of the universe (as well as my namesake). Given this, engaging with Buddhism felt like a natural part of my spiritual journey. Once I began participating in Western Buddhist circles, though, I encountered a mix of fetishization and hostility toward Buddhism’s South Asian roots that led me to wonder whether I was misunderstanding Buddhism, or whether the Western Buddhists I was practicing with were misunderstanding me. Among the first things I noticed during my early forays into Western Buddhism, particularly the Insight…

American Sutra: A Story of Faith and Freedom in the Second World War by Duncan Williams Belknap Press, 2019 400 pages; $29.95 The earliest Buddhist scriptures offer a striking image of the Buddha fighting off the delusions of the dark deity Mara in his final push toward awakening. Sitting in meditation under the bodhi tree, the Buddha touches the earth with the fingertips of his right hand, and the earth bears witness to his awakening. The message for those who would set foot on the Buddhist path is clear: true awakening must be an embodied realization that connects us to the great earth. In American Sutra, Duncan Williams illustrates this principle in action, bringing to life the stories of Japanese American Buddhists who endured illegal internment in desolate locations scattered…

N 1940 IN NEPAL, Chittadhar Hrdaya was arrested for publishing poems in the Newari language, an act regarded as subversive by Nepal’s ruling Rana dynasty. During his subsequent five-year imprisonment, he wrote The Epic of the Buddha: His Life and Teachings (Shambhala 2019; translated by Todd T. Lewis and Subarna Man Tuladhar), composed in Newari on bits of paper that were carried out secretly by his sister whenever she visited the prison to bring him food. What makes his telling unique from other versions of the Buddha’s biography is how it functions as a vast cultural encyclopedia of Newar life. From the details of ritual offerings to the precise renditions of temple iconography, the epic reveals not only Hrdaya’s mastery of his rich culture but also how he experienced it…

Ho-shang Mi of Ching-chao sent a monastic to ask Yangshan: “Right in this very moment, are you dependent on enlightenment?” Yangshan said, “There is no absence of enlightenment. Why fall into the secondary?” —The Book of Serenity, Case 62; translated by Thomas Cleary HO-SHANG MI was a peer of Master Yangshan, a very important Chinese master in the Zen lineage. Here he asks, In this moment, are you dependent upon enlightenment? Enlightenment is to see into the real nature of things—the nature of the conditioned self, our unconditioned nature, time and circumstances, the whole universe—and to realize that all things have one essence, which we speak of as “emptiness.” In this original state, all of creation is present, which we speak of as “form.” Form is emptiness, and emptiness is…

IN THE EARLY 2000s, I taught Western philosophy to Tibetan monks at the Institute of Buddhist Dialectics in Dharamsala, India. These monks were excited to explore new insights into questions they were already pursuing in Buddhist philosophy, and new questions they had never considered. I was recently reminded of my students in Dharamsala when a Buddhist friend asked why studying Western philosophy might be of any benefit to a contemporary practitioner. Buddhism offers a vast tradition of philosophical and moral reflection. But traditions endure only to the degree to which they address the experience and concerns of each new generation. Our contemporary concerns include justice and inequality, navigating difference in multicultural societies, climate change, and the pervasiveness of information technology. Discerning how to speak, act, and think skillfully in our…

The Fifty Verses, composed by Thich Nhat Hanh, draws upon key streams of Buddhist thought, from the Abhidharma to the later Mahayana teachings on the nature of consciousness. These verses, and in particular the final ten, can be understood as a kind of road map to the path of practice. 41 Meditating on the nature of interdependenceCan transform delusion into enlightenment.Samsara and suchness are not two.They are one and the same. 42 Even while blooming, the flower is already in the compost,And the compost is already in the flower.Flower and compost are not two.Delusion and enlightenment inter-are. 43 Don’t run away from birth and death.Just look deeply into your mental formations.When the true nature of interdependence is seen,The truth of interbeing is realized. 44 Practice conscious breathingTo water the seeds…

TRADITIONALLY, Buddhist monasteries, universities, and initiatives have benefited from longstanding infrastructures of support from patrons and donors. The Indian emperor Ashoka (263–232 BCE) established temples, funded the construction of stupas, and supported the ordination of monks. In sixth-century Japan, Buddhism was embraced as a religious and political tool to create centralized governance; as a result, temples became cultural hubs and were even used as hospitals, schools, and orphanages. Today in Thailand, Buddhism is still supported by the state, and kings are considered both religious and secular leaders. Other Asian countries have an engrained system of mutual dependence between lay and monastic communities. It is not uncommon for laypeople to provide monastics with the finances and labor necessary to construct buildings, supply food, pay bills, and so forth, in exchange for…

Forging the Golden Urn: The Qing Empire and the Politics of Reincarnation in Tibet by Max Oidtmann Columbia, 2018 352 pages; $65 THE GOVERNMENT of China identified the Fourteenth Panchen Lama in 1955 and expects to identify, by decision of a state committee for ethnic affairs, the Fifteenth Dalai Lama as well—an ironic process for a state that proudly claims to have repudiated the “feudal” history of the Chinese empires. As the basis for its bureaucratization of these sacred institutions, the government is invoking the precedent of the Qing empire (1636–1912). The historical relationship between China and Tibet in recent centuries is much misunderstood—not least because the government of China occasionally endeavors to make it hard to understand. For virtually the entire period of the thirteenth through nineteenth centuries, Tibet…

CALIFORNIA DHARMA REALM BUDDHIST UNIVERSITY 4951 Bodhi Way, Ukiah, CA 95482. (707) 621-7000, info@drbu.edu, www.drbu.edu • Dharma Realm Buddhist University (DRBU) is an accredited university in northern California dedicated to liberal education in the broad Buddhist tradition. KUNSANG GAR PO Box 65, Freedom, CA 95019. (831) 471-7883, kunsanggarcenter@gmail.com, http://kunsanggarcenter.org • Kunsang Gar, under the spiritual direction of Rime teacher Geshe Dangsong Namgyal, offers Dzogchen meditation classes, retreats, and purification practices. MANGALAM CENTER 2018 Allston Way, Berkeley, CA 94704. info@mangalamcenter.com, mangalamcenter.com • Mangalam Center explores new ways of bringing wisdom to the modern world. We embrace spiritual, secular, and integrated approaches to learning about our mind and ourselves. We host courses, lectures and other public events for the Berkeley community, as well as programs, seminars and academic conferences for a scholarly…