An American Zen Buddhist training center in the Mountains and Rivers Order, offering Sunday programs, weekend retreats and month-long residencies.
Foundations of Pure Land
Week 2: Honen's Legacy
Welcome to our six-week online video course with Dharmavidya David Brazier, a psychotherapist and head of the Amida Order, an international Pure Land Buddhist community. With a background in both Soto Zen and Pure Land Buddhism, each week Brazier will be leading us through six foundational teachings of the Pure Land path. This week he tells us about Honen's life story. As a young boy, Honen's father was assassinated. But as he lay dying, he told his son, "Don't seek revenge. Seek the dharma." From there, Honen started off on a path that would eventually lead him to creating a whole new movement of Buddhism, one specifically created to include everybody—the sinners as well as the virtuous, the meditators as well as those who could never get their mind to stop straying.
Wonderful. The realisation of how fallibly human we remain, despite our best efforts, and the permission to openly acknowledge this in the sangha and before the Buddha, is one of the things that attracts me to the Pureland way more than anything else. There is a great relief and also a determination to continue the process of change (or should I say being changed?)
Thank you Dharmavidya, Namo Amida Bu.