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Meat: To Eat It Or Not: A Debate on Food and Practice
WHAT THE historical Buddha ate for his last meal has been the subject of much debate. The controversial passage from the Mahaparinibbana Sutta, the sutta that recounts the Buddha's final days, tells us that on his last night the Buddha rested in the home of Cunda, a metal smith apparently known to the Buddha. In honor of his guest, Cunda prepared (probably not personally) "hard and soft delicious food, and also a large quantity of� More » -
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Entering the Lotus
ALTHOUGH I WOULD NOT have described it as such at the time, looking back, I'd say that my first decade or so of Zen practice was focused on self-improvement, especially on discipline. I think I learned a lot, but most of what I learned centered on me—my strengths, my weaknesses, that sort of thing. During this time, I spent three years in monastic training at Tassajara Zen Mountain Center, and when I returned, I felt strangely adrift. I'd spent a lot of time examining and working on personal matters, but I was not particularly happy and in fact felt quite disengaged from my life. Something seemed to be missing from my practice. I began to wonder, Well, what now? More » -
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The Lotus of the Wonderful Law
IN THE MID-1970s and '80s, when I was a resident at the Zen Center of Los Angeles, we would, during periods of formal practice, recite a chant with our meals, the core of which was an invocation of Mahayana Buddhism's pantheon of Buddhas and bodhisattvas. As with so many things about Zen ritual, no one ever explained the content of the chant; you just did it. But there was something odd and intriguing about this particular chant.More » -
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The Lotus of the Wonderful Law
IN THE MID-1970s and ’80s, when I was a resident at the Zen Center of Los Angeles, we would, during periods of formal practice, recite a chant with our meals, the core of which was an invocation of Mahayana Buddhism’s pantheon of Buddhas and bodhisattvas. As with so many things about Zen ritual, no one ever explained the content of the chant; you just did it. But there was something odd and intriguing about this particular chant. There, where the recitation moves from the names of buddhas to the names of bodhisattvas—right at that juncture where the type of personification shifts—appears the name of a scripture: The Sutra of the Lotus of the Wonderful Law, or for short, the Lotus Sutra. More » -
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Single-Practice Masters
THE LOTUS SUTRA directly influenced the development of Japan's "single-practice" Buddhist traditions, which placed one practice above all others as the most correct and effective means to enlightenment for all people. Emerging during the Kamakura period (1185–1333), the primary proponents of the Japanese Pure Land, Soto Zen, and Nichiren schools of Buddhism all embraced the single-practice approach. More » -
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The Final Word: An Interview with Jacqueline Stone
What is the Lotus Sutra about? In it we read how to hear the sutra, how to preach the sutra, who was gathered to hear it preached, what happened before it was preached, why it is so important, how it was preached in the past, what will happen in the future to those who hear it, and so on. It is like an extravagant preamble to an event that never seems to arrive. Some scholars of the Lotus Sutra have noted just that point, and I think it is a fair reading. If we just read the sutra, and set aside later interpretations, one thing we see going on is that the sutra is establishing its own authority. For example, at the beginning the Buddha emerges from meditation and begins to preach spontaneously, and not, as is usually the case, in response to a question. He says that he will soon enter final nirvana, and so he is now going to preach the true and unsurpassed dharma. More »
