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| As you might see above, there's a new feature on Buddhism and equanimity, which is something I'm working on personally. Well, sort of working on it. At least, I've recognized I need to work on it. That's a start.
Anyway, after I wrote the article I found a post by NellaLou at Buddha Cabaret that begins with a quote from Insight meditation teacher Gil Fronsdal about equanimity, part of which I also had used in my article. In brief, it says equanimity is about not getting pulled off center by attraction or aversion. And to do that, it helps to be able to see the big picture and not get stuck in one side or another.
Read more... The Challenge of Equanimity originally appeared on About.com Buddhism on Thursday, September 2nd, 2010 at 13:56:56. Permalink | Comment | Email this
09/02/2010 09:56 AM |
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| As I mentioned in a recent post, I've been reading Zen teacher Grace Schireson's book Zen Women: Beyond Tea Ladies, Iron Maidens and Macho Masters. Here Grace Schireson discusses Zen convents and how they adapted Zen training practices for the specific abilities and cultural circumstances of women:
Studying the process of adaptation -- maintaining the intent of practice while appropriately varying the form -- can be useful for Western practitioners. For example, while most meditators face the wall or the floor in front of them, at times the nuns of Tokeiji temple practiced meditation in front of a mirror, a practice especially suitable for deconstructing a woman's attachment to her physical self-image, whether positive or negative. Addressing some of our culturally specific more stubborn Western delusions through adaptation is currently underway in the West. These adaptations, versus a rigid imitation of our Asian teachers, are an important component of our developing Western Zen practice. Studying women's adaptations may assist us in completing the transplantation of Zen to the West.
Let's discuss --
Read more... Zen Women and the Path of Adaptation originally appeared on About.com Buddhism on Monday, August 30th, 2010 at 21:59:29. Permalink | Comment | Email this
08/30/2010 05:59 PM |
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| At Tricycle blog, James Shaheen has a post on the parallels between hostility toward Japanese-Americans during World War II and hostility toward Muslims in the United States today. As you may know, in one of the more shameful acts of American history, during World War II ethnic Japanese living in the western coastal states were forced into internment camps. A majority of the internees were U.S. citizens.
That much I knew, but I learned from reading James's post that some nativist organizations like the Anti-Asiatic Association and the Asian Exclusion Association also protested the building of Buddhist temples as well as Japanese Christian churches. I did a little more digging and learned that Jodo Shinshu priests were arrested by the FBI and imprisoned separately from the internment camps. (Jodo Shinshu is the largest Japanese Pure Land school.) The priests were targeted for arrest because they were community leaders.
Read more... Buddhism and the Japanese Internment originally appeared on About.com Buddhism on Friday, August 27th, 2010 at 13:38:09. Permalink | Comment | Email this
08/27/2010 09:38 AM |
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| "Way-seeking mind" is a phrase one hears in Zen that seems to mean different things to different people. To me, it's something in us that seeks the dharma even when we're not conscious of seeking the dharma. Perhaps we don't even know what the dharma is. Yet the events of our life bring us to the dharma. We find the path and realize we'd already been walking it.
At Huffington Post, Susan Piver ("Are You a Buddhist? You Tell Me.") talks about her way-seeking mind journey in Tibetan Buddhism. She said she read one of Trungpa Rinpoche's books, The Heart of the Buddha, and recognized that she was a Buddhist. I had a similar experience many years ago, reading a book by Thich Nhat Hanh.
It's something like stumbling along in the dark and then turning on a flashlight and seeing where you are. And you see that in a meandering sort of way you'd already been going in a good direction, without realizing it. But now that you've got some light and can make out a path, you can direct yourself with a little more awareness.
Read more... Way-Seeking Mind originally appeared on About.com Buddhism on Wednesday, August 25th, 2010 at 14:59:52. Permalink | Comment | Email this
08/25/2010 10:59 AM |
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| His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama recently told an audience there is no reason his successor, the 15th Dalai Lama, could not be a woman. Unfortunately, he added that he thought an attractive female might be more effective than an ugly one. But let's leave that alone for now.
A few days ago Zen teacher Grace Schireson spoke at my Zen center on women in Buddhism. The sensei is also a clinical psychologist and author of the book Zen Women: Beyond Tea Ladies, Iron Maidens and Macho Masters, which is very good. If you're interested in women's issues in Buddhism, I recommend it.
Anyway, while there may be no gender bias in the dharma, one cannot say the same for institutional Buddhism. And much of the institutional bias is hardwired into Buddhism via the Vinaya, the rules for the monastic orders established by the historical Buddha. In the Vinaya recorded in the Pali Canon, nuns were given more and stricter rules than monks, including the eight Garudhammas, or special grave rules. Among other things, under the Garudhammas all nuns are junior to all monks and may not scold or "advise" a monk.
Read more... Dalai Lama: No Gender Bias in Buddhism originally appeared on About.com Buddhism on Tuesday, August 24th, 2010 at 15:15:33. Permalink | Comment | Email this
08/24/2010 11:15 AM |
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| Here's some inspiration for you -- the Rev. Myokei Caine-Barrett, the first western woman to be ordained a priest in the Nichiren Shu order, talked about taking refuge in the Buddha on CNN. The Rev. Caine-Barrett, who is of African-American and Japanese descent, talks in particular about diffusing racism through compassionate practice.
I also very much appreciate what she says about using one's own suffering to help others. But to do that, she first had to realize the impermanence of suffering. Clinging to suffering just intensifies it, but letting it go helps us awaken. As Leonard Cohen says in his song "Anthem": "There is a crack in everything / that's how the light gets in." The Rev. Myokei Caine-Barrett originally appeared on About.com Buddhism on Monday, August 23rd, 2010 at 10:32:15. Permalink | Comment | Email this
08/23/2010 06:32 AM |
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| Awhile back I wrote a post called "Zen Police" that alluded to the Eido Shimano scandal. Well, now there's a detailed article about it in the New York Times, by Mark Oppenheimer, "Sex Scandal Has U.S. Buddhists Looking Within."
The details of the Eido Shimano scandal, as far as I know them, are accurately presented in the article. Oppenheimer also correctly points out that many Buddhist institutions in the West are in an awkward phase -- they aren't really Asian any more, but neither do they fit standard western models of religious institutions.
Read more... Priests and Propriety originally appeared on About.com Buddhism on Saturday, August 21st, 2010 at 13:44:46. Permalink | Comment | Email this
08/21/2010 09:44 AM |
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| The 2010 Philadelphia Live Arts Festival/Philly Fringe, September 3-18, will include a new play on the life of Yeshe Tsogyal. Yeshe Tsogyal was a woman of 8th century Tibet who is revered as a Buddha and thought to be the first enlightened Tibetan.
(There are a number of biographies of Yeshe Tsogyal on the web, and of course they all tell very different stories; some highly mythologized, others less so. This page on the website of His Holiness the Karmapa gives one of the more detailed biographies of the great lady, so that's the version of her life story I'm going with.)
Read more... New Play About Yeshe Tsogyal originally appeared on About.com Buddhism on Wednesday, August 18th, 2010 at 15:03:02. Permalink | Comment | Email this
08/18/2010 11:03 AM |
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