Innholdsfortegnelse for Summer 2022 i Buddhadharma: The Practitioner's Quarterly

LA SARMIENTO brings their experiences as an immigrant, nonbinary, Filipinx American to the Insight Meditation Community of Washington, DC, where they serve as the guiding teacher of both the BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ sanghas. A graduate of the Spirit Rock Community Dharma Leader Training, they are a mentor for both the Mindfulness Meditation Teacher Certification Program and Cloud Sangha and teach at retreat centers around the US. ALEC SOUCY is a professor of religious studies at St. Mary’s University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, where he is also a research associate for the Centre for the Study of Sport and Health. An anthropologist of religion, he has focused his work primarily on Vietnamese Buddhist practices, exploring themes of gender, age, transnationalism, globalization, and neoliberalism. CAROL IWATA first became interested in Buddhism as a Peace Corps…

THE WRITINGS of philosophically inclined scholars of Buddhism published in the past several decades reveal a remarkable variety of positions on rebirth, ranging from deliberate silence, to outright rejection, to the doctrine’s acceptance on metaphysical, empirical, or other grounds. A number of writers who wish to place Buddhism in dialogue with contemporary philosophy and science have been content to leave traditional cosmology and metaphysics—especially the notion of rebirth—in abeyance. Thus, philosopher and neuroscientist Owen Flanagan writes in The Bodhisattva’s Brain of his desire to “naturalize” Buddhism within modern philosophical discourse, in part by bracketing out such unproven and likely unprovable notions as rebirth, karmic causation, nirvana, magical powers, heavens and hells, and nonphysical states of mind. Similarly, in his best-selling Why Buddhism Is True, journalist Robert Wright specifies that the…

MARIANA RESTREPO: Is there something we can identify as BIPOC Buddhism? Are there distinct Buddhist practices or teachings, for example, that have more affinity within the BIPOC context? MARGARITA LOINAZ: What stands out for me in BIPOC sanghas is the emphasis on community, the relational aspect, the interconnectedness, and the valuing of our ancestors, the understanding of what comes through the lineage that we’re born into physically and culturally. I feel like the priority within the BIPOC sangha is the relational aspect of the teachings. CAROL IWATA: I agree. And I wonder, how would the relational aspect really take hold in the predominantly white sanghas? I spent some time talking with the Buddhist scholar Jake Nagasawa about how Buddhism was sold, if you will, to white America, because it was…

AS A STUDENT and teacher of Zen, Joan Sutherland has spent her entire adult life with koans. That she has “loved and struggled” with koans for so long is evident in her lush and evocative Through Forests of Every Color: Awakening with Koans (Shambhala). Almost every sentence pulses with delicate insight, illuminating for us how to “keep company with koans” so that we might uncover the most intimate depths of our heart–mind. In Sutherland’s experience, a koan transforms through sustained engagement; what begins as an invitation to question eventually “starts to look like shelter.” Through practice, koans become enduring, all-weather friends, “robust, capable of being hauled around, leaned on, and argued with”—friends that lead the way to the experience of freedom. Of the many misconceptions about Buddhism, one of the…

IT’S THE INTERNATIONAL Western Dharma Teachers Gathering, and in the comments of the live panel, a participant has just written the word “shocking!” My cowriter Dr. Ann Gleig and I are giving a keynote on right-wing Buddhist reactions to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives. In all fairness, to some degree, our research is “shocking,” as we outline the often bigoted and sometimes violent perspectives of our subjects. But in many ways, it is not—with notable examples of alt-right and extremist acts rising in North America, including the blockade of the Ambassador Bridge by anti-vax Canadian truckers earlier this year, extremist belief systems across the U.S. have been growing in recent years, fueled by misinformation, conspiracy theories, and alt-right fringe groups. But it’s not the extremist part of our talk…

The key to Dharmakirti’s positive argument for rebirth lies in his invocation of the notion of a homogeneous cause (sabhagahetu), that is, a cause of the same general type. A common example of a homogeneous cause is an apple seed, which inevitably will produce an apple tree, and not a mango, papaya, or any other sort of tree. By the same token, says Dharmakirti, the physical only can arise from the physical, and the mental from the mental, because although each is an entity, or substance (vastu), they are entities so different in kind that they cannot be related as substantial cause and result or special assistant condition and result. And what makes them so dramatically different is that mind is by nature immaterial and cognitive, while the body is…

WE HAVE BEEN studying the Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch—and with it, prajna, or wisdom. But this wisdom is not intellect or knowledge. This wisdom is our so-called inmost nature, which is always in incessant activity. Zazen practice is wisdom seeking for wisdom. “Wisdom seeks wisdom” is zazen practice, and everyday life is wisdom. Realization of our precepts is our everyday life; when our everyday life is based on wisdom, we call it “precepts.” When we sit, we do not do anything. We just sit. There’s no activity of our mind. We just sit, and all we do is inhale and exhale. Sometimes you will hear some birds singing, but you are not actually hearing. Your ears will hear it; you are not hearing it. Just sound comes, and…

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,…

BHANTE SUMANO: For you at this moment, Buddhism as ethics will have to be enough. Practicing morality, virtue, ethics—being of benefit to oneself and others—these are activities the Buddha always applauded. It just so happens he also said there was something greater: the possibility of enlightenment. Buddhist traditions offer various perspectives on bodhi—enlightenment or awakening. Here, I offer one of the simplest descriptions from the Pali texts: enlightenment is the end of greed, hatred, and delusion. No more grasping, no more hating, no more ignorance. Freedom. You’ll find a litany of synonyms and metaphors for enlightenment. Some call it a refuge, a sanctuary, the far shore, or the sublime. Essentially, enlightenment is the attainment of true peace, one born of seeing reality clearly. Enlightenment, then, doesn’t preclude ethics, or sila. It…

MY FAMILY AND I immigrated to the United States when I was in my early teens. As undocumented immigrants, we had to go unnoticed; we had to blend in as much as possible, never calling attention to ourselves and never talking about our situation because you never knew who could be trusted. There was no celebrating our heritage and customs. When speaking in Spanish to friends at school, I often heard “This is America! Speak English” or “Go back to your country!” I learned to be observant and, following all these rules, I unconsciously learned how to belong. I assimilated. Looking back, it was a process of discerning what fit and what didn’t, erasing the parts of me that were considered “other.” Back then, my accent mortified me. While my…

WHEN I FIRST ARRIVED at Pullahari Monastery in the hills overlooking Boudhanath twenty years ago, I had completed a graduate degree in biology and left a law career in Silicon Valley, the tech bubble bursting flamboyantly behind me as I winged my way to Nepal. If there was one thing I knew how to do, it was study. I wanted to know. Not ride the coattails of those who said they knew. Not assume that I knew. Not hope, think, or believe that I knew. To know the dharma with immediacy, deep within, in the very tissues of my body. Knowledge is power, they say. I sought empowerment. An intensive philosophy and meditation program conceived by His Eminence the Third Jamgon Rinpoche and birthed by Kyabje Khenpo Tsultrim Gyatso Rinpoche…

Black Buddhists and the Black Radical Tradition: The Practice of Stillness in the Movement for Liberation by Rima Vesely-Flad NYU Press, 2022 344 pages; $30 GROWING UP IN A SMALL TOWN in North Carolina in the 1970s, religion meant church, and church meant one thing: the experience that emanated from a small, worn building in my community. There, we would gather once weekly, freshly bathed and in our best clothes and shiniest shoes, take our seats on wooden benches sagging under the weight of decades of lamentation and supplication, sing together, shake hands across the pews, hear the word of God as seen through the eyes of those struggling against the yoke of centuries of white supremacy, and come away uplifted, connected, and renewed. Looking back on the Christianity of…

A mind without any projection or dissolution of thoughts, remaining exactly as it is placed—an utterly one-pointed wakefulness and emptiness. This is precisely what is called one-pointedness. A complete absence of clinging to substantial things—a total openness with mind not dwelling on anything whatsoever. This is precisely what is called simplicity. A feeling of, “What else can there be? However I look at it is the same! There is nothing to abandon or accomplish!” This is precisely what is called one taste. A feeling of, “What else is there to search for? This is it whether one meditates or not! There is nothing whatsoever to practice! There is no thing to be cultivated through meditation!” This is precisely what is called nonmeditation. —Shri Singha describes his experience of the Four…