Buddhadharma: The Practitioner's Quarterly Spring 2022

Legend has it that when Avalokiteshvara, who had vowed to save all beings from samsara, reached out to everyone who needed help at once, her two arms shattered from the strain. Amitabha, seeing Avalokiteshvara’s plight, then provided her with a thousand arms to fulfill her vow. This issue’s cover captures a frame from the short film Choros; for a moment, we glimpse Terah Maher, the film’s subject, as a modern, thousandarmed bodhisattva. The film is the work of Michael Langan (pictured above), an experimental film director who frequently explores the manipulation of time.…

JAN WILLIS is Professor of Religion Emerita at Wesleyan University as well as a visiting professor at Agnes Scott College. She has studied with Tibetan Buddhists in India, Nepal, Switzerland, and the U.S. for five decades, and has taught courses in Buddhism almost as long. Her work has explored meditation, hagiography, women and Buddhism, and Buddhism and race; her most recent book is Dharma Matters: Women, Race, and Tantra. EJO MCMULLEN moved to Japan in his late teens and stayed into his twenties, teaching secondary school and eventually receiving ordination and training at Daijoji Monastery in Kanazawa. He is the abbot of Buddha Eye Temple in Eugene, Oregon, where he has served since its founding in 2004, and is also secretary of the Soto Zen Buddhism North America Office in Los Angeles.…

WHEN I FIRST took up Buddhist practice, I didn’t know anything about the paramitas—the transcendences, the crossingsover, the perfections, whatever we want to call them. I didn’t know much about any of it, honestly, but I knew for sure that I wanted to transcend something. I wanted to cross over to some other side. Not that it was so bad where I was; it wasn’t. But spiritual practice held the promise of ending up someplace, well, perfect. I imagined that, standing on the other shore and looking back on where I’d started, I’d grin at how small my world had been, how little I’d really seen. In this issue, we look at six paramitas: generosity, moral discipline, endurance, effort, meditation, and wisdom—the list most often associated with the Mahayana path.…

MYOKEI CAINE-BARRETT: As a Nichiren Buddhist, I rely on the teachings of the Buddha in the Lotus Sutra and also those of Nichiren Shonin, who rejected the distinction between buddhas and human beings. In “On Attaining Buddhahood,” he wrote, “When deluded, one is called an ordinary being; but when awakened, one is called a buddha. This is similar to a tarnished mirror that will shine like a jewel when polished. …Arouse deep faith and diligently polish your mirror day and night. How should you polish it? Only by chanting Namu-Myoho-Renge-Kyo.” The ten realms (hell and the realms of hungry ghosts, animals, asura, humans, heavenly beings, sravakas, pratyakebuddhas, bodhisattvas, and buddhas) are mutually possessed. That means that when one is in hell, the other nine realms are also present and can be…

Shantideva 1 Delighted, I rejoice in virtue—Respite from the painsOf lower realms—and in those who sufferDwelling in happiness. 2 I celebrate the virtues gatheredThat cause enlightenment. 3 I rejoice in beings’ emancipationFrom the suffering of samsara,In the protectors’ buddhahood,And the bodhisattvas’ levels. 4 I rejoice gladly in the oceanOf bodhichitta that bringsAll sentient beings to happinessAnd gives them benefit. 5 With my palms joined, I implore the buddhasIn all directions: LightThe lamp of dharma in the gloomOf ignorant beings’ woes! 6 Joining my palms, I beseech the victorsWho wish to pass to nirvana,Don’t leave these wanderers in blindness—Stay for countless aeons! 7 May the virtue I have amassedBy doing all of thisEliminate all the sufferingOf every sentient being. 8 As long as sentient beings are ill,Until their ailments are cured,May…

WHEN I STARTED on the path of Buddhist practice, I was mainly interested in meditation. To my novice ears, other teachings sounded less relevant or interesting. I vaguely remember hearing in a dharma talk that the Buddha had emphasized the practice of generosity for lay folks such as myself. In the trilogy of meritorious deeds (puñña), he first and foremost taught generosity, or dana, which in Pali connotes both the act of giving and what is given. Only after the practitioner appreciated this teaching did the Buddha proceed to teach ethics (sila) and mental cultivation (bhavana); it was the latter I was jumping into, head (not heart) first. My first response to dana was skepticism. Wouldn’t any leader of a monastic order espouse generosity, if for no other purpose than…