Indholdsfortegnelse for Spring 2015 i Buddhadharma: The Practitioner's Quarterly

Hardcover $34.95 This, the frst major work from the Drupka Kagya lineage to appear in English, presents a step-by-step program of spiritual exercises that lead to the realization of noduality. “Clearly and extensively presents such topics as ground, path, and fruition; instructions on the four yogas of mahamudra; and detailed descriptions of a yogin’s meditative experiences. It is my hope that it may be of great beneft to those Westerners who wish to study and practice mahamudra.”–H.E. Dorzong Rinpoche Hardcover $29.95 “I was born in the Land of Gods, between east and west, in the center, near the Temple of Miraculous Goat-Earth Phenomena.” From that auspicious start, the Nyingma master Kyabje Thinley Norbu Rinpoche (1931-2011) went on to teach widely throughout the world beyond his native Tibet. This memoir of…

EM: Recently another priest and I were talking about the state of Soto Zen Buddhism in North America, specifically about the age bracket we’re in as teachers. Both of us are in our forties, and we’re not seeing much of a cohort. One of the questions that came up is, are we discouraging young people from taking up the path of a Zen priest, and beyond that, are our communities and institutions supporting the possibility of people engaging the vocation of priestly life? JAMES MYOUN FORD is a senior guiding teacher with Boundless Way Zen and a Unitarian Universalist minister. EJO MCMULLEN is the resident priest of Buddha Eye Temple in Eugene, Oregon. Both are Soto Zen priests. JF: I think there are going to be a whole bunch of…

We are always experiencing successive births and deaths. We feel the death of loved ones most acutely—there is something radical about the change in our reality. We are not given options, there is no room for negotiation, and the situation cannot be rationalized away or covered up by pretense. There is a total rupture in our who-Iam-ness, and we are forced to undergo a great and difficult transformation. In bereavement, we come to appreciate at the deepest, most felt level exactly what it means to die while we are still alive. 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,…

The result of a massive collaborative effort by the Dharmachakra Translation Committee, The Ornament of the Great Vehicle Sutras (Snow Lion 2014) offers in translation the Indian Buddhist classic the Mahayanasutralamkara together with commentary by the influential eastern Tibetan masters Khenpo Shenga (1871–1927) and Ju Mipham (1846–1912). Over 1,000 pages in length, this tome charts the Mahayana path in fine detail, combining theory and practice to offer a complete course for the reader. Throughout we find pithy gems, ranging from powerful insights into emptiness to advice on how to move forward as a practitioner. Mipham, for example, gives advice on finding the right teacher, noting that any good teacher avoids favoritism (how else would they show their transcendence of “I” and “mine”?), while on the topic of freedom, the root…

IT’S A TUESDAY MORNING in downtown Honolulu. I join a group of commuters gathered around the bus stop on Liliha Street to catch Line 54. Traffic drones past our toes. An elderly man wearing rags shuffles across the median strip between lanes, holding a cup in his hand. Folded into himself, dirty hair hanging from his scalp. Nearby lie his belongings in plastic grocery bags. Neither the commuters at the bus stop nor the drivers passing by look at him. In his poem “In This Passing Moment,” the Zen priest Hogen Bays writes, “If there is pain, I choose to feel. Whom I encounter, I choose to meet.” I try to apply these lines at the bus stop and fall short. Honolulu does not hide its homeless people. It cannot.…

I started out forty-four years ago as a solitary practitioner, going on long retreats and sesshin, plunging deep into practice. My daily life was business as usual, and my practice was a kind of medicine for the craziness of it. I had no real sangha. Moving to Boulder seven years later, I found myself in Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche’s large spiritual community, and it was a shock. I had little in common with many of his students, and community life felt claustrophobic, like an assault on my personal privacy. But Rinpoche emphasized the need to serve as mirrors for each other, and I found all kinds of pockets—indeed, caverns—of self-deception in my life and practice. Rinpoche’s invitation to practice within sangha was about more than personal selfimprovement. He drew from the…

SALLIE JIKO TISDALE: This is a question that every student must answer. So the first thing to consider is your willingness to be a student. In Zen Master Dogen’s words, “Even a seven-year-old—were he or she to train in and practice Buddhism, and then say something that is buddhadharma—can be a teacher and guide for monks and laity, male and female.” Authentic teachers do not look like anything in particular, and the best teacher for you likely won’t be what you imagine. Drop your ideas about teachers. Drop your notions about a teacher’s age, gender, race, and appearance. Your true teacher, above all, will be an ordinary human being— because every teacher is that. If you are insecure about your own understanding, you may seek an authority who looks different…

INTRODUCTION BY JENNY WILKS IN MY DOG-EARED 1956 edition of Nyanaponika’s The Heart of Buddhist Meditation, the preface by Graham Howe makes a prescient observation: Founded in the East, as wisdom usually is, I believe that satipatthana [the establishment of mindfulness] will prove at least equally beneficial to us in the West, especially when it has been digested by us in our experience, and perhaps been a little modified to meet our special tradition and requirements. The current explosion of interest in mindfulness— including eight-week Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction and Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy courses, mindfulness programs in schools and organizations, and smartphone meditation apps—would suggest that this prophecy is coming to pass. This key dharma practice has indeed been modified in various ways and is touching the lives of more and…

MEDITATION CENTERS 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. CALIFORNIA TENDAI MONASTERY PO Box 811, Cobb, CA 95426. (707) 295-7733, vkleary9@yahoo.com, www.caltendai.org ❖ A training monastery for bodhisattva monks practicing Japanese Mantrayana: fire offering (goma); mountain walking asceticism; Ajikan meditation; and vegetarian diet. 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…

I LOOK FORWARD to ongoing conversation about this type of abuse of power. Having been in this situation with a major practice center recently and watching what happened before, during, and after the abuses were made public, I think it is high time we took a look at the causes and subtleties and give authority back to students. — Judy Enida Sheldon AS ZEN TEACHERS, we would like to express our gratitude to Buddhadharma’s recent issue on abuse in Buddhist communities. We also appreciated Mr. Oppenheimer’s piece in The Atlantic for “The Zen Predator of the Upper East Side.” We are referring to the discussion and reports on the abuse of power and authority of Zen teacher Eido Shimano and others. We believe exposing this problem is a positive step…