Indholdsfortegnelse for Fall 2022 i Buddhadharma: The Practitioner's Quarterly

BARBARA O’BRIEN is a longtime student of Soto Zen and author of The Circle of the Way: A Concise History of Zen from the Buddha to the Modern World and Rethinking Religion. She is the author of The Religious History Nerd on Patheos, and also a volunteer editor for Treasure the Road, a new online magazine devoted to formal Zen practice and Buddhist study. SONAM KACHRU is an assistant professor of religious studies at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, where his research centers on the history of Buddhist philosophy in ancient South Asia. His first book, released this summer, is Other Lives: Mind and World in Indian Buddhism, a new interpretation of the Buddhist philosopher Vasubandhu. MYOKEI CAINEBARRETT, SHONIN, was the first American woman and the first person of…

In the tradition of Vajrayana, there is something called samaya. While the word literally means “commitment,” it refers to sacred or clean relationship. If you have samaya with someone, it means that you have a commitment to uphold and view them in their fundamental goodness and dignity. Some textual sources state that a dharma student’s most important samaya is the commitment to their primary teacher. Taken out of the larger context of Buddhist ethics, this dimension of samaya would seem to imply that students should not question their teacher’s actions, no matter how unskillful. A oneway samaya sanctions students to become apologists for their teacher’s transgressions. This is a distortion of the concept of samaya. Any thorough evaluation of the larger context of Buddhist ethics reveals samaya is not unidirectional.…

TODAY, A THIRD of the people in the United States have a background that is not white. By 2045, the majority will be people of color. So, the future of our society is not white. When I think about BIPOC wisdom and skillful means, I think about making the invisible visible so that we can make real change. And what I find in myself, and also in the people I work with, is that the thing most standing in the way is the significant amount of self-deception, denial, and avoidance we all—myself included—engage in. If it were up to us, we’d keep going like this for a while. If climate change weren’t forcing us, if situations like George Floyd weren’t forcing us, we would probably keep cruising in that self-deception.…

You can often hear Western meditation-based convert circles use the term “cultural baggage” to refer to the ritualized acts, cosmological ideas, and devotional practices associated with “heritage” Buddhist communities. This is in contrast to the idea of a more “authentic” or “true” Buddhism that is consonant with a modern rationalized worldview. In my research among meditation-centric convert Buddhist communities, I consistently observe a reluctance to take “heritage Buddhist” practices and cosmologies seriously, with many of my interlocutors often commenting on these ideas’ incompatibility with their own interpretation of Buddhism. For diasporic Asian Buddhists like myself in the United States, where immigrants are expected to assimilate and to “leave their cultural baggage at the door,” the term “cultural baggage” is of course laced with a pejorative sentiment. After all, the “baggage”…

Our planetary crisis is so urgent, so out of control, that we can feel the scream rising through our bodies. While the destruction and dismemberment of our world is terrifying and intense, it is also initiating us into the fierceness of the sacred feminine. She wants us to feel, to connect, and to dissolve all separations—like Vajrayogini, the diamond-like female yogini who distills even the worst poisons into spiritual force, or like Guan Yin, who soothes by pouring healing nectar but who also wields an axe to cut through obstruction, arrows to pierce the heart, a lariat to tie up demons, and swords to slice away ignorance. This is the sacred feminine as the protector who bestows fearlessness and roams the realms of existence, shape-shifting into whatever form is needed…

THERE IS NO END to learning. The Chinese philosopher Xunzi says that he once spent a whole day ruminating but that it was not as good as a moment’s learning. The best kind of learning gets us out of the head. The Buddhist monk and poet Kenko observed that it is a joy to find someone after one’s own heart to speak with. But what one needs to learn is not “a companion who never utters a word in contradiction” (for then, as Kenko goes on to note, “one might as well be alone”). A true friend is one who, while “respect[ing] your views, will disagree a little, arguing, saying ‘Yes, that is so, but…and the reason is…’” Yes, but no, and the reason is…. One can find such solidarity,…

BUILDING THE GREAT TEMPLE had been a long, challenging project, but in the summer of 2002, it was nearing completion, and the temple’s striking East Asian xieshan roof became visible to motorists on the nearby freeway. Commuters sometimes stopped to inquire if the restaurant was open. Pao Fa Buddhist Temple was Orange County, California’s first mega-temple, with a prayer hall, classrooms, a library, a dining hall, and rooms for resident monastics housed in its 41,000 square feet. Building the temple had been the work of Master Jen Yi and the American Lotus Buddhist Association of Irvine, and it became a spiritual home and community center for the area’s Taiwanese, Chinese, and Vietnamese American Buddhists. Memory and news stories tell us 2002 was a hopeful and idealistic time for Buddhism in…

Some traditions in the Buddhist world seem hopelessly out of touch—and that can sometimes leave us, as Buddhist practitioners, feeling powerless. I have struggled with my own lineage, especially in relationship to the work that needs to be done to confront racism, sexism, patriarchy, ableism, whiteness, and all of the various invitations to spiritual bypass. My takeaway from this rather painful struggle has been this: we cannot wait for lineage elders to institute the changes we want—we need to step up and lead. Yes, the Buddhist world is still run by senior lineage holders, and their lack of education around cultural communication and the needs of a diverse global culture has posed real problems. But that doesn’t mean our traditions can’t change. Realizing this and acting on it is political,…

I THINK WE ARE FINALLY at a place where we can accept the truth that no one escapes from oppression, not one of us. Everyone is deeply wounded. It’s true, some people seem to be in a position of what we call privilege, but we have to rethink that word. We get stuck on this notion of white privilege, or dominant privilege, as if the marginalized people want what the people with privilege have. But I want no part of it. I want no part of any illness that renders people unable to see the beauty of all of our differences, the beauty of my own mixed raced-ness, blackness, queerness, all of the things I am. I want no part of an illness that renders me unable to connect to…

LET ME BEGIN by acknowledging my place in space and time as conditions of my words. I am identified with the Cascadia bioregion, living at the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia Rivers in Portland, Oregon, home to the Multnomah, Clackamas, and Clowwewalla bands of Chinookan peoples, before settler colonization and still home and base of culture for these Native peoples. I live on the edge of an active subduction zone near an active volcanic range, recently glaciated. I am an Earth-loving convert American Buddhist, shaped by integrating threads of animism, feminism, and also Unitarianism. For this conversation, I am also identifying as an institutionalist. I see institutions as vehicles for transmitting values, for positive social change, and for investment in future generations. As we face into climate change and…

WHAT DOES SHAKESPEARE have in common with the Buddha? Out of this seemingly flippant comparison comes The Buddha and the Bard: Where Shakespeare’s Stage Meets Buddhist Scriptures (Mandala Publishing), an intelligent and engaging book by Lauren Shufran. Shufran, who holds a doctorate in literature, wields this juxtaposition as a heuristic tool, using it to demonstrate how reading “Shakespeare toward Buddha” can illumine the Buddha’s teachings in surprising and often poignant ways. Each chapter begins with a quote from a play and becomes part Shakespearean masterclass—lessons in how to read with nuance—and part Buddhism seminar, lessons in the fundamental truths of existence. The book’s central thesis is that Shakespeare’s incisive talent for dramatizing the human condition is a perfect foil for understanding the Buddha’s teachings on transcending our existential quandaries. One…

THERE ARE myriads of forms and hundreds of grasses throughout the entire earth, and yet each grass and each form itself is the entire earth. The study of this is the beginning of practice. When you are at this place, there is just one grass, there is just one form; there is understanding of form and beyond understanding of form; there is understanding of grass and beyond understanding of grass. Since there is nothing but just this moment, the time–being is all there is. Grass being, form being are both time. Each moment is all being, each moment is the entire world. Reflect now whether any being or any world is left out of the present moment. —Dogen, from Treasury of the True Dharma Eye: Zen Master Dogen’s Shobo Genzo,…

WILLA BLYTHE BAKER: First of all, yes, there are shadows, and the longer you practice in the Buddhist tradition, the more you know. The infighting, corruption, and abuse that you have learned about over the years is not new—it is not a thing of this decade or this century. Buddhist institutions—like all religious institutions—are vulnerable to bad behavior. The shadow can be painful and violent. But seeing the shadow is ironically a beautiful thing—it holds promise, if you can manage to see it with a long view. Witnessing the shadow of our community opens a doorway into the truth and reform. Only when these problems become fully known and seen in all their specificity and complexity can our communities find compassionate, transparent, and just ways to address entrenched issues. It…

I HAVE BEEN, and continue to be, extremely uncomfortable with the language of leadership. I’ve studied leadership and worked with corporations around the world. I’ve studied Sun Tzu and other models. And the underlying pattern I see we’re all concerned about—these harmful power dynamics—is patriarchy. It’s a military model of what it means to be human. If you’re conditioned to control, if your understanding of being human is such that brutality and violence are solutions to a problem, this spills out in society more broadly. It spills out at home. It spills out at schools. It’s a power that harms. To practice in the midst of those forces, we need to learn how to practice without being disempowered. I’ve been learning that my whole life. I’ve also been learning how…

In the forty years that I have been involved in the Buddhist world, it has become very clear that while there are some extraordinary teachers with great integrity, they are seldom if ever flawless. They may have extraordinary depths of insight, but they also make mistakes and sometimes behave badly. As a psychotherapist, I would go further and even suggest that a few of them actually have significant psychological problems. It is possible for a teacher to have deep insights but also struggle with the stability of their personal identity in the world. The exalted, almost divine status of certain teachers such as incarnate lamas, and the way they’re brought up, can cause them to become selfcentered or narcissistic. Occasionally this can lead to bullying and even cruel and abusive…

In 1243, Eihei Dogen, the thirteenth-century founder of Soto Zen in Japan, wrote in his evocative Kuge (“Flowers of Emptiness”) that “the time and place that the blue lotus flowers open and spread are in the midst of fire and in the time of fire” (Gudo Nishijima and Chodo Cross, Master Dogen’s Shobogenzo). Dogen lived in a time of political uncertainty, violent weather, and cultural change. Perhaps these difficulties inspired Dogen to take up the poetic image of a blue lotus—associated with practice–realization—blooming within the fire of samsara. We often think our practice requires leaving behind or transcending our difficulties. Yet the blue lotus blooming, representing a bodhisattva awakened, is dependent upon fire in order to flower. A blue lotus (Skt. utpala) symbolizes both wisdom (by association with Manjusri) and…

Dr. B. R. Ambedkar, a so-called “untouchable” by birth and later the first law minister in Independent India, was the architect of India’s constitution in the Nehru government. Perhaps one of the most remarkable geniuses of his time in India, he saw clearly that while you can change things in writing, doing so has little relevance in practice. He turned to religion to explore the emancipation of his people because he realized that all caste was a state of mind, a notion, and therefore that the role of religion must be to emancipate the mind. Buddhism was his answer. He went on to conduct mass conversions, bringing hundreds of thousands of “untouchables” into Buddhism and out of the caste system into which they’d been born. He knew liberation, for his…

CALIFORNIA DHARMA CENTER 5059 Newport Ave, Suite 303, San Diego, CA 92107. (619) 797-5483, www.dharmacenter.com • Dharma Center of Trikaya Buddhism in San Diego exists to share the teachings of meditation and mindfulness and to assist in the Awakening of those who wish to free themselves of suffering. Our meditation hall and community of members provides a sanctuary where students at all levels can deepen and refine their connection to Light. 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. DZOKDEN 3436 Divisadero St, San Francisco, CA 94123. (415) 810-6168, office@dzokden.org, dzokden.org • Online and in-person classes on Kalachakra, Jonang Ngondro, Rimé philosophy,…

“ A brilliant and wonder ful distillation of Rama’s recorded talks.”–James F. Chiles, Software Systems Consultant This beautifully organized synthesis of Rama’s core teachings, with commentaries by long-time student Lawrence Borok, has just been published. Print and eBook editions available both on Amazon and in bookstores WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING American-born Rama – Dr. Frederick Lenz practiced and taught a radical pathway to Enlightenment. He adapted the venerable Eastern practices of Tantric Buddhism to a modern-day Western setting. Larry Borok does a wonderful job of organizing and distilling Rama’s core teachings in a manner that preserves their original essence while retaining their nuance, depth, and humor. – Andrew Jurkevics, Director, The Adi Da Foundation I was especially drawn to feeling the subtle energies of the actual words of Rama that…