Buddhism

Amitabha triad © Metropolitan Museum of Art

Hearing Sounds Through the Eyes, by Jisu Sunim

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Sometimes people feel afraid because they don’t know what the teacher is talking about! `How we can face our own reality?’ But the teacher also has difficulty in getting the student’s discursive mind to understand what he is talking about. The best policy for the teacher, then, is to let practitioners continue with their practice, giving them time for some perspective to slowly come into focus. The most chronic disease for people who find it difficult to face reality is, indeed, this discursive mind…

Model of the Mahabodhi Temple

Part 2 Toward Nirvana and From Nirvana, by Professor Masahiro Shimoda

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In order that you may gain a clear understanding of the idea of the bodhisattva, I would like to turn your attention to a long-­­­standing discussion in the scholarly world regarding an erroneous belief widely maintained by contemporary scholars. According to their understanding, the bodhisattvas of Buddhist scriptures belong to two almost mutually exclusive categories…

Beach leaves

Toward Nirvana and From Nirvana, by Professor Masahiro Shimoda

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The process whereby Buddhism—which first began as the deeply internal experience of just one ascetic practitioner—has over time borne fruit within vastly different races, climates, cultures and histories, might be likened to the way volcanic magma breaks through the earth’s crust and gushes heavenwards then flows down in every direction…

Scene from The Illustrated Sutra of Past and Present Karma. Kamakura period, Japan. © Metropolitan Museum of Art

Purpose and the Search for Happiness, by John Aske

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The parallels with the story of the young Prince Siddhartha 2500 years earlier are clear. As childhood with its certainties (if we are lucky) and its securities, moves into adolescence and then maturity, we are all confronted with the opportunity of opening up to the world (and ourselves) and exploring it, or turning away from it and trying to restore the gilded cage we once lived in…