Innholdsfortegnelse for Winter 2021 i Buddhadharma: The Practitioner's Quarterly

RALPH H. CRAIG III is a PhD candidate in religious studies at Stanford University. His research into South Asian Buddhism examines ritual studies, Buddhist literature and history, and comparative religions. He has studied Soka Gakkai Nichiren Buddhism for more than twenty years; his book-in-progress, Wildest Dreams, is a religious biography of Tina Turner, one of the best-known faces of that tradition. PEMA KHANDRO is a teacher and scholar of Buddhist philosophy, as well as a lineage holder in the Nyingma and Kagyu traditions of Tibetan Buddhism. She founded the nonprofit organization Ngakpa International and its three projects, the Buddhist Studies Institute, Dakini Mountain, and the Yogic Medicine Institute. She is completing a doctorate specializing in Tibetan Buddhism at the University of Virginia. CHENXING HAN is the author of Be the Refuge: Raising the…

“HOW HAS VIPASSANA changed your life?” This is a standard question on the student intake form for a Vipassana course in the S. N. Goenka tradition. For years, after taking my first ten-day retreat in 2003, I used to write a paragraph-long answer describing all the positive ways Vipassana had affected me. Over time, something shifted and now I simply state, “I’m more sensitive.” And I don’t necessarily mean that in a good way. Vipassana is the systematic scanning of the sensations of the body, part by part, and the observation of the rapid arising and passing away of those sensations. Essentially, one pays attention to how external stimuli come into contact with the six sense doors and the sensations that arise from the contact between the two. As a…

MOST MORNINGS, I sit with a cup of coffee and read a portion of a Buddhist sutra before doing my practice. The first two I ever read this way were the Lotus Sutra and the Diamond Sutra, both of which are chock full of profound doctrine and vivid, engaging narrative storytelling. Undoubtedly, much of this narrative material—which may seem over-the-top or far-fetched, with characters that at times appear superhuman—falls into the genre of hagiography. As Buddhists in the modern world, we should examine how we relate to that. Hagiography means different things, depending on the context. In its primary, academic usage, a hagiography is a literary works that venerates the life of a holy being by giving an account of their life and deeds. For example, The Life of Milarepa,…

Take the uncertainty of not knowing where you come from at birth and where you will go after death and transfer it to [Zhaozhou’s] word “no,” so this mind of birth and death is incapacitated. If this entangled mind is incapacitated, then the mind that is uncertain about birth and death can be extinguished. Thoroughly fuse yourself with this earnestness to extinguish it and inability to do so. When causes and conditions arrive, suddenly—pah!—you will be able to resolve what the scriptures call the extinguishing of the mind of birth and death, the halting of the unwholesome mind, the cutting down of the dense forest of the mind, the washing away of the defiled and turbid mind. …When discriminations do not arise, vast luminosity becomes self-evident—such is the principle…. Rely…

FROM OUR USUAL point of view, health is considered being free of sickness. But we can look at health as something more than that. In the Buddhist tradition, there are three aspects of health: (1) innate, or intrinsic, health; (2) acquired, or conditioned, health; and (3) healing. Medicine Buddha practices are related to all three. INTRINSIC HEALTH Innate or intrinsic health—being healthy—is a state of wholesomeness. It is when we are in the original state of perfect balance, with body and mind synchronized. This state of being is fundamentally good in itself and is indestructible. It is also the source of ultimate healing. All other kinds of healing are simply temporary forms that may address only the symptoms and not the root cause of an illness or other health condition.…

FIRST PUBLISHED in 2001 when the author was seventy-eight, Setouchi Jakucho’s memoir Places (Hawai’i) has finally been translated into English, by Liza Dalby. Setouchi, now ninety-nine, is perhaps Japan’s most famous Buddhist nun; before she was ordained at the age of fifty-one, however, she was a novelist, controversial for her candid portrayals of female sexuality and notorious for her extramarital love affairs. In this autobiographical work, Setouchi journeys through the most formative places of her life with a frank realism that only occasionally gives way to nostalgia. From the mountains of her childhood to her last Tokyo apartment before taking tonsure, Setouchi anchors the meandering memories of her messy entanglements with love, bouts of depression, and the nascence of a “temptation to wander, to shed this worldly life” in the…

Sean Feit Oakes teaches at Spirit Rock, where he is also digital editor, and at East Bay Meditation Center in Oakland SEAN FEIT OAKES: First, to really understand what’s happening, get close to the feeling. This is the task the Buddha gave for the first noble truth: “dissatisfaction is to be understood.” Start with naming it: “doubt,” “wanting,” or whatever label feels like it gets to the heart of the emotion. Getting close to the feeling might reveal a story or view that is unconsciously held. If so, spell it out—“My obligations prevent me from deepening on the path,” or “Wealth is incompatible with liberation.” Whatever comes, feel any suffering or stress that’s there with compassion and understanding. Views like these are mostly learned from culture and are persistent, but they…

THERE ARE TIMES when we have to make a choice, either to change a situation—put up a boundary, build walls, create an exit, whatever it might take to no longer be in that hardship—or to endure it. Those times, when our agency is still so available and when we can change our circumstances, are for another day’s writing. This is about the other times, the times when we must endure the hardships, when we don’t have the choice or opportunity or freedom to change how things are. This is for when the only thing to do is work with our own minds. This is for when we cannot get out. We should know that it happens like this in a life; things get hard, and then they get harder, and…

FOR EONS across spiritual, cultural, and religious traditions, people have made offerings in honor of ancestors. It is a critical step before partaking in any ritual or ceremony. In essence, the people, teachings, and the land that have sustained the wisdom tradition are to be honored prior to the activities in which the spiritual community will participate, heal, and transform. Making offerings to ancestors is a wordless expression of devotion to awakening and an acknowledgment of the earth that supports us. When making offerings, the persons making them also receive what is given. For example, offering water may bring a calm mind, flowers a sense of beauty. Incense helps connect you to the earth, while firelit candles create illumination and symbolize destroying the darkness of ignorance. Inherent in each offering…