We are now coming toward the end of our visit to New Zealand. Have been all over North Island, Had a nice visit with Doug Osto and his family. Seen my daughter and her husband, gone sailing on the ocean in their yacht and seen her first art exhibition. This is just a quick note penned in the local library along our travel route. Shall be back in the northern hemisphere on Thursady. Love to you all. Namo Amida Bu. Dharmavidya
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Added by Dharmavidya on November 16, 2009 at 12:40am —
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We are now coming toward the end of our visit to New Zealand. Have been all over North Island, Had a nice visit with Doug Osto and his family. Seen my daughter and her husband, gone sailing on the ocean in their yacht and seen her first art exhibition. This is just a quick note penned in the local library along our travel route. Shall be back in the northern hemisphere on Thursady. Love to you all. Namo Amida Bu. Dharmavidya
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Added by Dharmavidya on November 16, 2009 at 12:40am —
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Amida's light of unconditional love enters this world through many channels. One of the brightest of these channels was the foremost of sages, Gotama, the Shakyamuni; another was surely the man Jesus, or Yeshua, from Nazareth. Just as the former spoke the language and culture of India, so Jesus framed the message appropriately for the Jewish culture of his time and place replacing the 'eye for an eye' justice approach of the Old Testament with the compassion centred 'love thy neighbour as thou l…
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Added by Dharmavidya on October 20, 2009 at 7:06pm —
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In the Contemplation Sutra it refers to the three minds. The three minds are
# sincere mind
# deep mind
# longing mind
These correspond, respectively, with the mind of nei quan, the mind of chih quan and the mind of nembutsu.
Sincere mind means being free from hypocrisy. This is the mind that is willing to look at oneself as one actually is. It is the willingness to face and admit to one's bombu-nature. People with this first kind of mind are not too certain about themselves. This does n…
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Added by Dharmavidya on October 15, 2009 at 5:44pm —
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Today I have been teaching on the Buddhist Psychology programme and this evening gave the Sutra Study Class at The Buddhist House. We are studying Shoshin Nembutsu Ge and have reached the passage about Amida's Light. Amida's light is love. It incorporates joy, faith, wisdom, tenderness and other sublime qualities. It is the epitome of love. Amida's Light is called immeasurable. This is because true love does not measure. It is called unbounded. This is because true love liberates and does not co…
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Added by Dharmavidya on October 12, 2009 at 9:54pm —
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Members of the Amida communion are scattered all around the world, but we are all part of one family. There is a bond of love here even between people who have never met face to face. This is something quite remarkable. Each member and each group contributes in a unique manner. Each shows their faith and love by whatever means they can. We are not just local groupings. We are all part of something that is growing simultaneously in many places with a common energy that is somehow organic. This or…
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Added by Dharmavidya on October 9, 2009 at 3:34pm —
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I am reposting this piece because we have had some further discussion and thoughts, especially around the inclusion of the term ko.
The term ganko-sha means 'person of the vow light'. "Gan" means a vow or prayer or deep aspiration as in the key phrase from Tan Butsu Ge "Gan ga sa butsu" = "my prayer [is that I] become buddha". "Ko" means light. "Sha" means person. So the term ganko-sha has a double meaning. On the one side it means a person who lives in the light of Amida's vow - and the vows o…
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Added by Dharmavidya on October 9, 2009 at 12:50pm —
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The five orders (niyama) are:
utu-niyama: the inanimate domain
bija-niyama: the vegetative life domain
chitta-niyama: the involuntary mental domain
karma-niyama: the domain of intentional action
dharma-niyama: the spiritual domain
We can think of these in an objectivist manner or in a spiritual way. The former suggests the different domains of human knowledge (physics/cosmology, botany/biology, sociology/anthropology, psychology, metaphysics) and the possibility of a hierarchy of needs or func…
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Added by Dharmavidya on October 8, 2009 at 7:37pm —
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Sumaya and I travelled to Cambridge to bless Joan Court's garden. Joan, aged ninety, is an Amida-shu member and a patron of Amida Trust. Her work and writings are an inspiration. She lives with six cats and they and some of her friendly neighbours joined us for the ceremony. The garden is also the resting pla…
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Added by Dharmavidya on October 6, 2009 at 7:34am —
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The idea of memes is an interesting one. It is an extension of genes, but whereas genes are substantive entities of encoded information that are chemicals incapable of 'selfishness' or other anthropomorphic attributes, memes are a purely speculative concept. That does not mean that it is not a useful concept - the idea that ideas have life of their own and use us as vehicles is an intriguing way of thinking about things. My philosopher friend, Mary Midgley hates the whole idea because it is tota…
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Added by Dharmavidya on October 3, 2009 at 8:25am —
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In the Udana, which is a collections of Buddha's most important utterances, there is the core passage that says "There is an unborn, uncreated... the deathless... nirvana... If there were not... then there would be no liberation." According to the text it was this passage that made his disciples really excited "until the hair on the backs of their necks stood on end."
Buddhism as presented in the West, however, commonly de-emphasizes this central aspect of the teaching. Buddhist apologists like…
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Added by Dharmavidya on October 2, 2009 at 7:49am —
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The expression socially engaged Buddhism was coined by Thich Nhat Hanh and developed by Sulak Sivaraksa and has become a widely used term referring to the activism and social work performed by some Buddhists either indvidually or as a function of their sangha activity. The Amida sangha has become well known for its commitments in this type of activity as a co-ordinated and committed sangha at the levels of resisting oppression, assisting the afflicted and demonstrating an alternative, in arenas…
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Added by Dharmavidya on September 30, 2009 at 6:18pm —
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A sangha is a communion of people linked by their devotion to Buddhist faith and practice. Commonly heretofore the Buddhist sangha has had two primary tiers, one mobile and one static. The homeless componant lives a life of sharing with one another and goes from place to place according to need. The rooted component develops Buddhist life and Buddhist activities in one place both for the benefit and increase of the sangha and for the welfare of the wider society. The interaction of the two parts…
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Added by Dharmavidya on September 26, 2009 at 11:13am —
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When I was about twenty years old we lived in what was called the Permissive Society. Notwithstanding the fact that we had entered the nuclear age, it was an era of hope. Many people thought that some of the tight disciplines of earlier eras had been swept away for good. A new age of creativity and love was upon us and the human race would be able to make a great leap forward into a new kind of society. The exploration of outer space was opening up. We all thought that humans would soon be livin…
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Added by Dharmavidya on September 25, 2009 at 6:07pm —
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Added by Dharmavidya on September 6, 2009 at 9:52pm —
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These pictures of the front field/lawn at Amida France are especially intended for the interest of those who took part in the July sesshin and participated in the hay making. Namo Amida Bu.
North view, mid-July
…
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Added by Dharmavidya on August 31, 2009 at 7:46pm —
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In our nei quan exercise we review what we have received: we count our blessings. Blessings may be physical, such as food, clothing, transport and so on, social, as in the support that we receive from the presence and goodwill of friends, or spiritual in that we have the Dharma and the example and assistance of the spiritual ancestors. The spiritual help is what can carry us through times when other circumstances are adverse. If one has the buddhas in mind (nembutsu) then one can cope even if ph…
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Added by Dharmavidya on August 27, 2009 at 2:48pm —
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I have been asked about the formula in Buddhist teaching that is commonly called the Three Signs of Being. The full text, in Sanskrit, is
Sarva samskara anitya
Sarva samskara dukkha
Sarva dharma anatma
This is a very important text in Buddhism - a core statement of the doctrine. What does it mean?
'Sarva' means 'all'. 'Samskaras' are things that we construct, particularly 'mental formations'. D.T.Suzuki used to translate the term 'confections' which is etymologically correct and has the right…
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Added by Dharmavidya on May 6, 2009 at 10:16pm —
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The message of messiah-buddhas is "Follow me into freedom". Spiritual salvation is liberation. There might seem to be a certain paradox in the idea that a 'follower' is 'free', therefore one has to understand these terms in a more than superficial way. Freedom is always freedom from some form of coercion or bias. The coercion or bias that rules one's life may be 'internal' in the form of neurosis or ego, the fear of being overwhelmed by compulsively arising passions or confusion; or it may be 'e…
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Added by Dharmavidya on May 3, 2009 at 7:34pm —
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Peter added a blog post about complaining and invited me to respond. Of course, people do get something from moaning. It is not all bad. Most people's greatest sense of intimacy comes when they share with another what they feel they could not say directly. If A feels hurt by X, A might not want to confront X and might, indeed, feel that doing so would makes matters worse, but A still feels discomfort at keeping the hurt to himself. She therefore shares it with B. In this way she relieves himself…
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Added by Dharmavidya on April 17, 2009 at 12:30pm —
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