Spirit Rock Meditation Center is dedicated to the teachings of the Buddha. We provide silent meditation retreats, as well as classes, trainings, and Dharma study.
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The Science of Enlightenment
My introduction to Tibetan psychotherapy (lojong) occurred during an encounter with the late Serkhong Rinpoche, His Holiness the Dalai Lama's philosophy tutor. Serkhong's brow wrinkled up in a smile that made him seem like a giant, red-faced Yoda, the gnome-like teacher in The Empire Strikes Back. When I brought him home to meet my family, the Rinpoche was visibly moved upon meeting my mother, who greeted us at the door. When he lifted her outstretched hand up to his cheek, tears filled his eyes as if she were a long-lost child. For years I’d been inspired by the Buddhist teaching of recognizing every living thing as kin, but what had seemed a great idea suddenly hit home as a profound way of being. More » -
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what does being a buddhist mean to you?
Reverend Gen Oikawa Reverend of the Nichiren Buddhist Temple of San Jose San Jose, California The altar at home, the“gohonzon,”is a branch of the temple. The people can practice even when they don't go to the temple. They can still have a sacred time any time and any day. As a minister of the temple, I can pray at the temple during the day. I sit at my“gohonzon”in my house in the mornings and…Reverend Gen Oikawa Reverend of the Nichiren Buddhist Temple of San Jose San Jose, California More » -
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GenNext: Reborn in the U.S.A.
Recently I was sitting in a musty old church in Cambridge, Massachusetts, waiting for Jack Kornfield to arrive for an evening dharma talk. As I looked out over the packed pews, I surveyed the sea of graying hairs and found only a handful of young adults. Where were the rising tides of GenNext Buddhists? I had the uncanny feeling of sitting with three hundred versions of my parents: middleaged Buddhist practitioners. And I had to ask myself, When the baby-boom Buddhists are meditating in their wheelchairs, will there be anyone left to be my dharma teacher? Since then, I’ve been wondering where I, a 23-year-old raised for eight years in a small Zen community, fit into the grand scheme of Western Buddhism. Reflecting on the counter-culture my parents adopted in the early seventies, what am I inheriting from them and how is Buddhism in America changing in my generation? More » -
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On translation: Nirvana
We all know what happens when a fire goes out. The flames die down and the fire is gone for good. So when we first learn that the name for the goal of Buddhist practice, nibbana (nirvana), literally means the extinguishing of a fire, it’s hard to imagine a deadlier image for a spiritual goal: utter annihilation. It turns out though that this reading of the concept is a mistake in translation, not so much of a word as an image. What did an extinguished fire represent to the Indians of the Buddha’s day? Anything but annihilation. More » -
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Science of Enlightenment
Mindfulness is defined in the Oxford English Dictionary as “the state or quality of being mindful; attention; regard; memory; intention; purpose,” but it is not listed in Stedman’s Medical Dictionary. Its recent usage as a technical term in the area of Buddhist meditation, however, has breathed new life into this archaic noun. Mindfulness is fast becoming a household word as well as a key term in medicine, psychotherapy, and neuroscience. More » -
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Life of the Buddha: The Buddha-charita Part 2
This installment is the second in a series of excerpts from“The Buddha-charita or Life of Buddha,”the first complete biography of Shakyamuni Buddha, written by the poet Ashvaghosha, probably in the first century C.E. The“Buddha-charita”is made up of twenty-eight songs recounting events in the Buddha’s life up to the time of his great awakening. The previous installment described Shakyamuni’s family and the events that surrounded his birth. In this episode we hear… More »
