A picture and a thousand words June 30, 2010
Posted by James Shaheen in : General, Random Notes , 8 commentsJust picked this up from a raft, who suggests this for the more “visually minded,” and floated it over here:
Click on it to enlarge. It pretty much sums it up—Buddhism in a nutshell!
From a raft (Ashin Sopāka): “This was sent to me, so the source cannot be properly attributed, but it appears it was created by ‘S Chinawaro Bhikkhu.’”
Recalling Khyentse and Trungpa Rinpoches
Posted by Monty McKeever in : Buddhism, Buddhist Teachings, Events, Film, Meditation, Tibetan Buddhism , 5 commentsThis comes via the Newsfeed on the Celebrating the Return! website, which contains information on Khyentse Yangsi Rinpoche’s first visit to the US this August:
Image: Karma Dzong newspaper records Khyentse Rinpoche’s first visit to the US
From the Celebrating the Return! newsfeed:
Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche’s unconventional behavior and experimental methods of communicating the Buddhist teachings have become part of the spiritual folklore of America. His work laid a foundation upon which the next generation of teachers have built stable communities as the dharma has spread in our country. Throughout the many phases of his teaching in America, Trungpa Rinpoche retained a profound reverence for the deepest heart of the traditional Dharma and an unwavering devotion to his own teachers. He demonstrated that to his students through the visits of HH 16th Gyalwa Karmapa and HH Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, which provided an amazing opportunity to witness the culture of devotion so essential to Vajrayana Buddhism.
Here, in these two video clips, John Sennhauser, a senior student and teacher in the Shambhala sangha, offers a wonderful observation of Trungpa Rinpoche’s relation to Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche and Khyentse Rinpoche’s subsequent caring embrace of the Shambhala sangha over the years, and many challenging times, that followed his first visit.
Part 1 (above, click to enlarge) covers Khyentse Rinpoche’s first visit and his work after Trungpa Rinpoche’s passing to support the Shambhala community.
Part 2 (below, click to enlarge) describes Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche’s time studying with Khyentse Rinpoche in Nepal, and in this clip John also offers many of his own vivid memories of what it was like to be in Khyentse Rinpoche’s enlightened presence. He also looks forward to encountering Khyentse Yangsi Rinpoche and the impact his presence can have on our practice. Enjoy!
Click here to read “An Investigation of the Mind”, a previously unpublished instruction by Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, from Tricycle’s current issue,
After “re-education,” a Tibetan monk regrets protest
Posted by Philip Ryan in : Politics , 1 comment so far
Norgye, a 29-year-old monk, was one of the voices of protest during the run-up to the Olympic Games, when Chinese athletes carried the torch throughout China, including the “Tibet Autonomous Region.” Now he has been returned to the scene of his protest, the Jokhang Temple in central Lhasa, to formally regret his actions:
“I wasn’t beaten or tortured,” he said. “We had to learn more about the law. Through education about the law, I realized what we had done in the past was wrong and was against the law.”
Norgye, 29, who like many Tibetans goes by one name, was speaking in the ancient inner sanctum of Lhasa’s Jokhang Temple, the holiest shrine in Tibetan Buddhism. During the 10-minute interview, he was watched carefully by government employees from Beijing and Lhasa, as well as by Laba, an older monk who was the director of the temple’s administrative office. They were the escorts for a group of foreign journalists who were on a tightly scripted, five-day government tour of the Tibet Autonomous Region, which is usually closed to foreign journalists.
The manner in which the interview was monitored, with Laba interrupting several times as Norgye spoke, reflected the Chinese government’s anxiety about anything in Tibet that contradicts the official line.
How tragic that the United States’ own cynical misuse of “torture,” both as a practice and as a word, has so twisted the lexicon as to make the word meaningless. Make no mistake: This monk was beaten and tortured and the voice he speaks with now is not a free voice or a voice from the heart. The totalitarian fondness for these sickening spectacles—from show trials to struggle sessions to the barely subtler scripted media tours of present-day China—is completely baffling. They are transparently cynical, hollow, and false. They serve only to undermine the regimes they are meant to bolster. We will probably never know what terrible suffering Norgye and the other monks detained during the protests underwent. Monks and ordinary citizens still remain missing and may never reappear, silenced, murdered, for daring to speak their minds. Political prisoners rot in jails all across the globe. May they be free.
[Image: Adrian Bradshaw/European Pressphoto Agency/New York Times]
A pilgrim’s journal heads homeward
Posted by Sam Mowe in : Buddhism, Events, General, News, Travel , 1 comment so far
The Korea Times reports that the 8th century travel journal of Hyecho, a Korean Buddhist monk from the kingdom of Silla, will be sent from the National Library of France to the National Museum of Korea in Seoul to be on exhibition for the first time ever this December.
Wang Ocheonchukguk Jeon, which means “The Memoir of the Pilgrimage to the Five Kingdoms of India,” was written in 727 as an account of Hyecho’s four-year pilgrimage across India and neighboring regions. The journal consists of 5,893 classical Chinese characters (the lingua franca of East Asia at that time) in 227 lines. It’s widely regarded as one of the oldest and most important historical travel journals in human history as it provides insight into the political, cultural, and economic customs of India in those days.
The text ended up in France after French explorer Paul Pelliot purchased it on the Silk Road in China in 1908. Though it’s sure to be sent back to France after the “Silk Road and Dunhuang” exhibit is finished, it’s good to see a pilgrim’s journal return home, if just for a short visit.
Read more here.
Image: Yohap News Agency
Angry, angry, angry
Posted by James Shaheen in : Buddhism, Buddhist Teachings, Tibetan Buddhism, Tricycle , 6 comments
From Teabaggers (I never got used to “Tea Partiers” and stick with the name they gave themselves) to television news shriekers to the average Jane and Joe on the street (employed or not), Americans seem pretty testy lately. Just turn on cable or take public transportation—or read the blogs.
Whether it’s difficulty adjusting to the realities of the new century or to our much-changed role in the world, people are angry. So I thought I’d link to a short piece by Ken McLeod, who wrote on anger, its causes, and its remedies through mind-training (lojong), a practice Acharya Judy Lief writes about regularly for us at tricycle.com.
Ken wrote back in the hot summer of 1998:
Mind training is about learning and knowing that you don’t exist the way you think you do. Anger ceases to arise because there’s nothing to defend…
How does mind training help? It works in two ways, which are the two components to Mahayana practice. One, they help cultivate compassion, and two, they help cultivate an understanding of emptiness.
Since then, everyone seems only angrier. Maybe the country doesn’t exist the way it thinks it does. Or maybe everyone missed that issue. If that’s the case, you can read “Awakening to Anger” here.
Photo © William Klein
Transcending the Ox
Posted by Philip Ryan in : Art, Zen , 1 comment so far
going beyond
Part 8 of Genju’s Oxherding series. Gate gate…
Daido Roshi commentary from Path of Enlightenment:
The eighth stage is marked by the complete falling away of body and mind. The ox and the person are gone. Self and other are forgotten.
1. Searching for the Ox
2. Finding the Traces
3. Seeing the Ox
4. Catching the Ox
5. Taming the Ox
6. Riding the Ox Home
7. Forgetting the Ox
[Image: 108zenbooks]
Our visit with Her Holiness Shinso Ito
Posted by Philip Ryan in : Art, Buddhism, Environment, Interview , 8 commentsThis week, I went with Tricycle’s editor and publisher, James Shaheen, to talk to Her Holiness Shinso Ito, the head priest of Shinnyo-en, a Japanese lay Buddhist movement whose global membership numbers about one million. Shinso Ito is the first female priest in her Shingon lineage, from which Shinnyo-en emerged, and has twice presided over ceremonies in the thousand-year-old Daigoji Temple, the oldest building in Kyoto.
She is pictured below presenting a statue* made by her father, Shinjo Ito, the founder of Shinnyo-en, to New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg. Her Holiness and Hizzoner were speakers at the 2010 National Conference on Volunteering and Service that took place in New York this week.
We spoke with Her Holiness for more than half an hour about topics ranging from the practices of Shnnyo-en to the BP spill in the Gulf of Mexico, getting young people interested in Buddhism, and the message of universal Buddhahood in the Mahayana Mahaparinirvana Sutra.
The interview was recorded and we hope to present it in an upcoming issue of Tricycle!
Read our previous post about Shinnyo-en.
[Image courtesy Shinnyo-en]
*The statue Shinso Ito presented to Mayor Bloomberg, is a small version of a life-size statue which will be brought to New York City for public display when a location is confirmed, according to Shinnyo-en. The statue depicts Prince Shotoku and symbolizes a universal wish for peace. Master Shinjo Ito, the founder of Shinnyo-en, cast the statue in 1967.
Thich Nhat Hanh on Solitude
Posted by Philip Ryan in : Buddhism, Zen , add a commentBeing alone means you are established firmly in the here and the now and you become aware of what is happening in the present moment. You use your mindfulness to become aware of every feeling, every perception you have. You’re aware of what’s happening around you in the sangha, but you’re always with yourself, you don’t lose yourself. That’s the Buddha’s definition of the ideal practice of solitude: not to be caught in the past or carried away by the future, but always to be here, body and mind united, aware of what is happening in the present moment. That is real solitude.
- Thich Nhat Hanh, The Heart of the Matter
Image: Deer Park Monastery
“Buddhism & Psychology: The Art of Counseling” sponsored by Naropa University and FACES. June 29, 2010
Posted by Monty McKeever in : Buddhism, Events, Mindfulness , 1 comment so farThe Inaugural Boulder Institute on Mindfulness “Buddhism & Psychology: The Art of Counseling” will take place July 28-31 at the St. Julien Hotel in Boulder, Colorado. Speakers will include Daniel J. Siegel, MD; Jack KornField, PhD; and Karen Kissel Wegela, PhD.
This conference highlights an emerging trend in the field of psychotherapy: the inclusion of mindfulness in counseling. National conversation in the field shows that mindfulness awareness has already been proven to enhance psychotherapy. Current research shows that the benefits of mindfulness can help us explore aspects of ourselves that are not ordinarily noticed, experiences that occur below our level of consciousness.
For more information, visit Naropa’s site.
Forgetting the Ox
Posted by Philip Ryan in : Art, Zen , 2 comments
dissolving the Ox
Part 7 of 108zenbooks‘ beautiful and haunting Oxherding pictures (and poems.) Daido Roshi:
The struggle has ended. A sense of peacefulness and relaxation pervades. The world is illuminated and feeling of bliss permeates it.
The ox is gone, but the person remains.
1. Searching for the Ox
2. Finding the Traces
3. Seeing the Ox
4. Catching the Ox
5. Taming the Ox
6. Riding the Ox Home
[Image: 108zenbooks]