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

VENERABLE PANNAVATI BHIKKHUNI is founder of Heartwood Refuge, an intentional spiritual community in Hendersonville, North Carolina, and abbot of Embracing Simplicity Hermitage, a twenty-first–century trans-lineage Buddhist order. She has received ordination in both Theravada and Mahayana, as well as Vajrayana empowerments. She also serves as a US vice president for the Global Buddhist Bhikkhuni Association. NAGAPRIYA is an ordained Dharmachari in the Triratna Buddhist Community. Originally from the UK, in 2013 he moved to Mexico, where he helped found the Centro Budista de Cuernavaca. He is cofounder and director of Editorial Dharmamegha, a small publishing venture dedicated to sharing Buddhist teachings in the Spanish-speaking world. He also works as part of a team training men from Latin America for ordination into the Triratna Buddhist Order. REV. BLAYNE HIGA is the…

MYOZEN JOAN AMARAL: Yesterday, my friend Ivana and I were celebrating Central American Independence Day. Among many other things, she is Honduran, and spiritual, and actually also latently religious. She has just begun sitting zazen with the sangha, after many years of meditating through her own yoga practice. She didn’t call her meditation practice “Buddhism,” so it’s been interesting to see her turn to “Buddhist” practice now. As we enjoyed pupusas and some delicious passionfruit juice, I asked her, “What do you think makes Buddhism, Buddhism?” Without hesitation, she replied, “Buddha.” Boom. Done. Hecho y satisfecho. Beginners mind—without pretense, without that kind of tribalism that can creep in after years of practice. After founding a sangha and leading it for ten years, I notice that this is where I go:…

THE MOTHER TANTRA teaches that a dakini is the protector and guardian of sacred sleep. It is helpful to make a connection with her essence, which is also the nature of the practice, so she can guide and bless the transition from unconscious to conscious sleep. Her name is Seljé Dö Drelma (gSal byed gdos bral ma). This translates as “She Who Clarifies Beyond Conception.” She is the luminosity hidden inside the darkness of normal sleep. She is formless in sleep practice itself, but as we are falling asleep, she is visualized as a luminous sphere of light, a tiglé. We visualize light, rather than a form like the syllables used in dream yoga, because we are working on the level of energy, beyond form. We are trying to dissolve…

THE DALAI LAMA fled Tibet sixty-three years ago, after China’s invasion of his country. He’s been trying to return ever since. During that more than half a century of exile, the Dalai Lama entrusted one individual to speak officially to the People’s Republic of China. The Dalai Lama’s Special Envoy: Memoirs of a Lifetime in Pursuit of a Reunited Tibet is a newly published book by that individual, Lodi Gyaltsen Gyari. I first met Gyari in the late 1990s in Washington, D.C., when I collaborated with the Smithsonian Institution on Tibetan cultural programs. Later, when I lived in Kathmandu and traveled frequently to Tibet to document human rights abuses for the International Campaign for Tibet, I was in close contact with him. While we discussed political matters in our frequent…

Arising from stillness, carry out activities without hesitation. This moment is the koan. When practice and realization are without complexity, then the koan is this present moment. That which is before any trace arises, the scenery on the other side of time’s destruction, the activity of all buddhas and awakened ancestors, is just this one thing. You should just rest and cease. Be cooled, pass numberless years as this moment. Be cold ashes, a withered tree, an incense burner in an abandoned temple, a piece of unstained silk. This is my earnest wish. —From Zazen Yojinki (“Notes on What to be Aware of in Zazen”), translated by Anzan Hoshin and Yasuda Joshu Danien in The Art of Just Sitting: Essential Writings on the Zen Practice of Shikantaza (Wisdom Publications)…

:: EXPERTISE Abacus Wealth, Astrology Now, Bari Tessler, Buddhist Astrology, Deborah Young, Maggie Kelly, Michael Carroll, Pico Iyer, Tarot by Tashi, The Pigeon’s Heart:: DIGITAL & AUDIO Alex Cline:: BOOKS & PRINT Amber Lotus, Cheryl Wilfong, Karma Calendar, Lama Tsomo, Mango, New Harbinger, New World Library, North Atlantic Books, Padmasambhava Buddhist Center, Parallax Press, Particular Press, Quarto Group, Shambhala Publications, Sounds True, Sumeru Press, Wisdom Publications:: SIGNED WORKS Andy Karr, Claire B. Willis, Clare Goldsberry, Dan Zigmond, David Richo, Dean Sluyter, Elena Mannes, Erika Sanchez, George Saunders, Jacoby Ballard, Kaira Jewel Lingo, Karl Brunnholzl, Lauren Shufran, Mark Nepo, Mirabai Bush, Noel McLellan, Pamela Ayo Yetunde, Pema Chodron, Pierce Salguero, Quan Barry, Roger Jackson, Ruth Ozeki, Sallie Tisdale, Sandra Cisneros, Taste Tibet, Thubten Chodron, yung pueblo:: ART Archie Frink, Boulder Shop,…

I am such that I do not know right and wrongAnd cannot distinguish false and true;I lack even small love and small compassion,And yet, for fame and profit, enjoy teaching others.—The Collected Works of Shinran WHILE AT FIRST GLANCE this might not seem much of a consolation, according to Shinran (1173–1263), the founder of the Jodo Shinshu or True Pure Land School in Japan, an honest assessment of our own limitedness is the beginning of a more sincere relationship to dharma practice, to oneself, and to others. That honesty is the catalyst for a metanoia, a “change of mind” or conversion. Once we learn to recognize that our ego-directed effort is ultimately futile in the pursuit of spiritual liberation, we can begin to live in a way that more fully…

WE CALL SHAKYAMUNI the “historical Buddha,” yet mostly treat him as a quasi-mythic figure who transcends time and space, whose actual existence on our planet is but a faint memory. Xinru Liu, a historian of ancient India, would beg to differ. In Early Buddhist Society: The World of Gautama Buddha (SUNY Press), she attempts to reconstruct a full-bodied sense of the Buddha and the world he inhabited. To restore Shakyamuni to the flesh and to his social context, Liu looks to narratives embedded in early Pali texts, Brahmanical sources, and the earliest Buddhist stupas for clues. What emerges from Liu’s reading of these sources is the Buddha as a person who was first and foremost responding to the greatest challenges of his historical moment: the rapid urbanization of the Indian…

IN JULY 2022, seven clergy of various faiths in Miami-Dade County filed lawsuits against the State of Florida seeking to invalidate House Bill 5 (HB 5), the Reducing Fetal and Infant Mortality Act. HB 5 prevents women and girls from having autonomy over their own bodies; has no exceptions for rape, incest, or the age of the victim; no exceptions for life-threatening medical emergencies; and no exceptions for incurable fetal abnormalities. I was one of the seven. Can our lawsuit be considered bodhisattva activity? If motivation counts, then yes. Can we as Buddhists dispassionately examine this issue, asking ourselves and our teachers difficult questions? Can we dialogue with those who disagree with us? And whatever perspective we adopt regarding abortion, can we offer spiritual support and understanding to women and…

IT IS SAID THAT after Siddhartha Gautama realized enlightenment, his first impulse was to teach others how to achieve liberation. But after contemplating his initial enthusiasm for sharing what he had learned and who he had become, he became burdened with grave doubts about humanity’s ability to receive and understand his dharma. As the story goes, a heavenly deity reached out to the Buddha to inform him that some people were capable of learning what he wanted to teach, so the Buddha embarked on a teaching ministry. As he taught from grove to grove, his student base grew, giving rise to the need for additional dharma teachers. In the centuries since, across countries and eventually continents, Buddhist traditions have continued to grapple with, and in some cases define themselves by,…

I wish I could tell you that my love of language—of transferring the sense and heft and lushness of one tongue to another—rose unbidden, ripe, and startling, like a Botticelli goddess emerging from a sea. ¡Ay, cuanto lo deseo! A better storyteller than I would fashion all manner of fables out of my passion—habla claro, mija, es pasión—for the English language. The truth, however, is pedestrian, cobbled together of necessity in supermarkets, schools, and Social Security offices. A child of a Spanish journalist and a Cuban law school graduate who fled Cuba after Fidel Castro took power, I was born in New York, only to be whisked immediately to Caracas, where my father and others struggled to revive the Cuban magazine Bohemia. When that venture failed, my family, now including…

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,…