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

THIS BOOK tells the story of Lama Yeshe, how he met Lama Zopa Rinpoche and how they created the Foundation for the Preservation of the Mahayana Tradition (FPMT), one of the world’s largest Tibetan Buddhist organizations. It begins in Tibet, where Lama was born, and moves to the Buxaduar refugee camp in West Bengal, where Rinpoche became his student, to other parts of India and Nepal, and finally to the entire world. The author, Australian columnist Adele Hulse, one of Lama’s earliest students, highlights his special connection with early Western Dharma seekers and skillfully weaves their intimate stories with details of where Lama went, the teachings he gave and the centers he started. It brings to life how special he was and how he connected with people from all over…

IN MY EARLY TWENTIES, when I first became involved in the Tibetan tradition, I would often hear fellow practitioners say, “I must achieve enlightenment, for the sake of all sentient beings.” When I think back on this sentiment, I can almost hear Chögyam Trungpa chuckling to himself. He once wrote that the ego will never see itself become enlightened; he said we spend our time striving to achieve enlightenment only to realize that striving itself is our biggest obstacle. For me, bodhicitta, or the intention to achieve enlightenment for the welfare of sentient beings, has been hugely significant in my Buddhist journey. But even with this selfless goal, I found my intention bound up in a kind of ego aspiration, like setting my sights on running a half marathon. I…

IN THE Tevijja Sutta (Sutra of the Threefold Knowledges) the Buddha introduces the “four immeasurables” of loving-kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity to Vasettha, a young brahmin, saying, “Vasettha, a tathagata arises in the world, a fully enlightened buddha, and preaches the dharma that is lovely in its beginning, in its middle, and in its ending, in the spirit and in the letter, and displays the perfected and purified holy life. Following the tathagatha’s example, a disciple then goes forth, practices the moralities, and attains the first jhana. Then, with a heart filled with loving-kindness, the disciple fills the whole world, upward, downward, across, everywhere.” The Buddha continued, “And it is by this meditation, Vasettha, by this liberation of the heart through loving-kindness, that the disciple leaves nothing untouched, nothing…

THIS SUMMER, while visiting my friend and close dharma sister, Rev. Dana Takagi, I encountered the teaching of Daikoku. A fellow Soto Zen teacher and emeritus professor of sociology at the University of California, Santa Cruz, Takagi had recently returned from traveling in Japan. I was seeking her assistance with writing a name in Chinese characters on a student’s rakusu, the short blue robe received when taking lay vows in a precepts ceremony; the name the student would receive was Kokuji, meaning “healing black medicine.” My friend smiled and said, “I want to tell you something about what I found in Japan.” Everywhere she went, she said, she had encountered Daikokuten (Mahakala), a deity of the great blackness. One of the seven gods worshipped all over Japan, Daikokuten is the…

ZENJU EARTHLYN MANUEL is a Soto Zen priest and founder of Still Breathing Zen Sangha. She is the author of Sanctuary: A Meditation on Home, Homelessness, and Belonging as well as The Way of Tenderness: Awakening Through Race, Sexuality, and Gender. She resides north of Santa Fe, New Mexico. PATRICK DOWD is a doctoral student in the department of anthropology at the University of British Columbia, where he is researching Tibetan language. In 2017, he directed the Bhoti Ethical Education Textbook Project, which produced a “linguistically and culturally relevant storybook rooted in the language, culture, and landscape of Ladakh.” He is also the founder and director of Storybooks Himalaya, a new website that aims to promote bilingualism and multilingualism in the Himalaya region. VANESSA ZUISEI GODDARD is a lay Zen…

Anushka Fernandopulle lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, where she teaches in the Insight Meditation tradition and works as a leadership coach and consultant ANUSHKA FERNANDOPULLE: The Buddha talked about three different levels of happiness. The first is happiness that can come from pleasant sense experiences: delicious food, nice weather, pleasant music, or any kind of positive sensual experience. These are enjoyable but fleeting. Since all sense experiences change quickly and none can be relied upon to stay forever, this kind of happiness is fragile. There is nothing wrong with pleasant experiences, but orienting one’s life entirely around them comes with a deep restlessness, one that we may not even notice while we are caught up in that game. If we were solely chasing pleasant experiences for happiness, it…

“WE LIVE IN THE AGE of the refugee,” according to Chilean playwright and human rights activist Ariel Dorfman, and the daily onslaught of news seems to confirm his grim observation. From crises in Europe and Asia to walls along the Mexican border, refugee and migrant issues are among the central concerns of our time. These days I find myself reflecting on how they relate to my dharma teaching and practice as a Jodo Shinshu Buddhist. Perhaps this is especially so because my lineage emerged from the experiences of exile and suffering of our most important founders, Shinran and Rennyo. Shinran, the thirteenth-century founder of the Jodo Shinshu (Shin) school of Buddhism, lived in an age of profound disruption, with civil wars, foreign invasions, plagues, and natural disasters. He was orphaned…

TRADITIONAL SOURCES TELL US that the written word first came to Tibet in the form of indecipherable treasures, the material manifestation of a promise that would wait five generations to be fulfilled. In the year 233, as the twenty-eighth Tibetan king Lhatotori Nyentsen sat on the rooftop of his palace, several objects descended from the sky, carried on a beam of sunlight. The first was a silver choten, a symbolic representation of the Buddha’s mind. The other was a chest containing three Buddhist scriptures. As the books came to rest on the roof, a voice resounded from above, proclaiming, “In five generations’ time, there will arise a king who will understand the meaning of these objects.” The king recognized these miraculous manifestations as holy relics but, as no one in…

THE BODHISATTVA VOWS are the path of freedom, in which rage can illuminate our interdependence. When we understand interbeing, we are freed from all that kills, lies, steals, misuses sexuality, and so forth. Our rage, even at its highest intensity, will not kill on a path in which we vow to walk upright. Advice and contemplations for Buddhist teachers across race • Learn to face rage in the transmission of light. • Focus more on being a preceptor (passing on the precepts) and less on being a teacher. Being a dharma teacher is empty if you are not working with individuals to live upright and free. As a matter of fact, it is dangerous to have a teacher/student relationship without the precepts as the foundation. • Ask yourself if you…

Jamgon Kongtrul (1813–1899), often credited as the founder of Rimé, has made an immeasurable impact on modern Tibetan Buddhism, perhaps especially as it’s understood in the West. In The Life of Jamgom Kongtrul the Great: Tibet’s Great Treasure Holder (Snow Lion 2019), Alexander Gardner, the director and chief editor of the Treasury of Lives (an online biographical encyclopedia of Tibet, Inner Asia, and the Himalayan regions), offers Western readers the first ever extensive biography of Jamgon Kongtrul in English, along with a new translation of Kongtrul’s Treasury of Knowledge, one of his key writings. Gardner notes that as more of Kongtrul’s work has been translated, a more nuanced understanding emerges: whereas many tend to interpret Kongtrul’s rimay as syncratic or anti-institutional, it is truer to say he was promoting a…

THE FIRST TIME Lasha Mutual was introduced to traditional thangka painting, what struck her was “the variety and power of the feminine imagery.” She credits her painting skills with an increasingly richer ability for visualization practices and aspires, through her art, “to cultivate a generous, peaceful, and clear mind.” Her painting “Wisdom Dakini” is on this issue’s cover. The work of Toronto-based artist Gary Taxali can be found in his children’s book This is Silly!, the Library of Congress’ permanent collection, special edition twenty-five cent coins released by the Royal Canadian Mint, and even on phone cases and toys. Known for retro-style illustrations (page 46) that draw from vintage advertising and comics but speak to the insecurities of today, his clients include Sony, Rolling Stone, Converse, The New Yorker, and…

SONOMA COUNTY is known for many things — lush landscape, rolling vineyards, and a laidback vibe. Starting in 2023 it can add Zen-inspired senior living community to the list: Enso Village. Architectural plans are being developed and approvals from the City of Healdsburg are underway. Enso Village is a project born out of The San Francisco Zen Center in partnership with The Kendal Corporation. Susan O’Connell, former President of the San Francisco Zen Center and current Spiritual Director of Enso Village, sat down with us to talk about what life will be like for future Enso Village residents. Tell me about how you came to Buddhism? I heard a wonderful teacher talk and was intrigued by the quality of his presence. Seeing the benefits my business partner was experiencing led me…

BUDDHISTS ACCEPT that human life has a deeper purpose than sensual enjoyments, wealth, power, social status, and praise gained in this life, and that a fortunate rebirth, liberation, and awakening are valuable in the long term. Since afflictions prevent us from actualizing our spiritual purpose, we want to reduce and eventually eliminate them. The various levels of ethical codes guide us to subdue our physical, verbal, and mental actions. Here “ethical code” refers to a set of precepts taken in the presence of a spiritual mentor, and “precepts” refers to the particular trainings set out in that ethical code. The meaning of mental advancement is that untamed states of mind decrease and beneficial states increase. For obscurations to be removed from the root by the wisdom realizing emptiness, our mind…

Cultivating Original Enlightenment: Wonhyo’s Exposition of the Vajrasamadhi-Sutra (Kumgang Sammaegyong Non) translated by Robert E. Buswell Jr. University of Hawaii Press, 2018 438 pages; $32.00 IMAGINE a world where dictionaries did not exist and books did not have tables of contents, indexes, or even pages that could be turned, and where note-taking and collation had to be done without a ready supply of paper. In that world libraries were extremely rare, only occasionally filled with hand-copied manuscripts brought back by foot or horseback from China by officials and Buddhist pilgrims who had traveled for months. These are the conditions under which the eminent Korean monk Wonhyo (617–686) wrote his commentary on the Vajrasamadhi Sutra. Despite these and other challenges, Wonhyo was not only able to write the commentary but to…

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. LOTUS SCULPTURE 1834 Ord Way, Oceanside, CA 92056. (760) 994-4455, info@lotussculpture.com, www.lotussculpture.com • Lotus Sculpture offers a sanctuary of Buddhist and Hindu sculpture open to all practitioners who would like to meditate fully immersed in the energy of the surrounding statues. 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…