American Buddhist Net

07/07/08

As a member of a new generation of Tibetan Buddhist high teachers, His Eminence Gyana Vajra Rinpoche is coming to Seattle to give a teaching on "The Four Thoughts that Turn the Mind to the Dharma" at 7:30 p.m., Friday, July 25, 2008; and a Long Life Initiation at 10 a.m. on Saturday, July 26. The teaching and the blessing ceremony will take place at the Sakya Monastery of Tibetan Buddhism in Seattle.

...The Four Thoughts are: to appreciate the opportunity of the preciousness of this human birth; to recognize our own mortality, as well as the impermanence of all phenomena; to recognize that our behavior is going to shape our experience in this life and future lives ("karma"); to recognize our confusion and the difficulties of this worldly life ("samsara").

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You don’t need to be a monk to enjoy a uniquely Japanese experience

Rory Moulton
Vail CO, Colorado

JAPAN —Startled awake by lurking footsteps delicately approaching my room, I sprang upright in the plush down bedding.

Amazingly, the translucently tan, paper walls (shoji ) had kept my room warm throughout the freezing mountain night. Unfortunately, the paper walls were paper thin, so I heard every snore, sniffle and footstep that reverberated down the pine-floored hallway of the 30-room Muryoko Inn, a shukubo Buddhist temple in Koyasan, Japan.

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Friday, July 04, 2008

Last week I had the opportunity to attend a Zen Sesshin (meditation retreat) on Samish Island in Washington. A number of people have asked me what it was like so I thought it might be useful to share my experience.

The eight day retreat was organized by Red Cedars Zen Center in Bellingham, WA and attended by practitioners from across the US. The majority of the attendees were affiliated with Soto Zen Centers in the Pacific Northwest...

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07/04/2008
By DENNIS TAYLOR

About 20 priests, students and residents maintained battle lines Thursday in the Ventana Wilderness area of Los Padres National Forest to defend the oldest Buddhist monastery in the Western Hemisphere against flames that were about 1½ miles away.

The Monterey County Sheriff's Department evacuated about 75 guests from the Tassajara Zen Mountain Center on June 23, and another 33 chose to leave two days later, said David Zimmerman, director of the monastery and resort.

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Temple members will maintain vigil for three days and celebrate the Dalai Lama's birthday

07/04/2008
Peggy Fletcher Stack

The red-robed members of Salt Lake City's only Tibetan Buddhist temple walked two by two Thursday evening around its west-side Salt Lake City block, one carrying a large Buddha statue, another protecting it with an umbrella and the rest waving incense, while ringing bells. It was a ritual signifying the sacredness of their sanctuary, and it was the opening ceremony of the 2nd Annual Prayers for Compassion event that the temple sponsors.

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Impressive. Something not seen often. ABN
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July 03. 2008
By Molly Rossiter
The Gazette

CEDAR RAPIDS — Eleven-year-old Brittany Gatewood helped her school raise money for victims of Hurricane Katrina and the tornado that leveled part of Parkersburg.

On Thursday, she said, volunteers at the Taiwan Buddhist Tzu Chi Foundation told her that "what goes around comes around."

Gatewood's extended family was one of 300 families among the first to receive debit cards from the Buddhist organization Thursday at its temporary service center at Westdale Mall. The family — seven members of three generations — received $800, the most the organization is giving displaced families.

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TURTLE FEET: The Making and Unmaking of a Buddhist Monk,
by Nikolai Grozni.
Riverhead Books. 326 pages. $24.95.

BY BETH TAYLOR
Special to the Journal
Sunday, July 6, 2008

Nikolai Grozni, who lives in Providence, was a gifted pianist from Bulgaria who, in the midst of absorbing Coltrane, dope, and booze at Berklee College of Music, suddenly decided to leave behind materialist, “finish line” careerism and head to India to train as a Buddhist monk.

His Bulgarian parents were not pleased, having nurtured his musical genius as a ticket out of Communism and the limits of a childhood reading Das Kapital. But Nikolai had always resisted institutional thought and he believed the monks would teach him how to live a life liberated from frivolous and mindless habits.

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Tuesday July 1, 2008
By Barbara O'Brien

Latest word from California is that wildfire has not yet touched Tassajara Zen Mountain Center, although the threat is still very real.

Tassajara is the oldest Japanese Soto Zen monastery in the United States, possibly the oldest Buddhist monastery in the Western Hemisphere, and for the past several days wildfires have threatened it on three sides. The guests and most of the residents evacuated nearly a week ago. However, a crew of monks, priests and students remain behind to fight fires.

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June 30, 2008

CAMDEN, MAINE: The Camden Philosophical Society will present Greg Fahy for a lecture titled Buddhism and the Concept of Dependent Origination on Thursday, July 10 at 4 p.m. at the Camden Public Library.

Many Buddhist philosophers emphasize the concept that nothing exists independently of the web of causation. Fahy said this has important implications for personal identity as well as for Buddhism’s ethical prescriptions for relieving suffering by eliminating craving.

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June 30, 2008
By Kim Burgess

When the Buddha gained enlightenment roughly 2,500 years ago, he didn’t have to contend with the distractions of iPods, DVDs and cable television.

But even in this hectic, modern world, inner peace is still accessible, according to a Thai Buddhist monk who visited Utah State University as part of the Mountain West SongFest & Symposium.

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June 30, 2008

...The walk, organized by American Indian Movement activist Dennis Banks and other Native leaders to draw attention to environmental destruction and Native issues, is made up of Native and non-Native people, including several supporters from Japan, some of them members of the Buddhist Nipponzan Myohoji order. Commemorating a 1978 walk that was organized to protest the abrogation of Indian treaties by the U.S. government, it contains some of the walkers who took part in the original walk.

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The cars zip up and down Nine Mile Road, stopping at youth baseball fields, fast-food restaurants, big-box stores.

It’s suburban America, so much like Anytown, USA. But turn down a little side street east of U.S. 29 and you’ll find a hidden gem.
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Dieu De Temple on Nims Road is not only a spiritual center for nearly 100 Buddhist worshippers, it’s a reminder of another culture and of the past. It links to roots long left behind in South Vietnam as the country was overrun by communist forces in the 1970s.

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...One of the few new trouble spots arose early this morning when a blaze that has burned for a week jumped a fire line south of the Tassajara Zen Mountain Center monastery. Firefighters were able to contain the burn after it consumed 10 acres, Rose said.

The remote Zen enclave on Big Sur's forested backside has been threatened by wildfires on three sides. Buddhist monks there have prepared to fight the fire, if necessary.

The fires threatening the retreat were among more than 1,200 blazes in the state from Nevada to the Pacific Ocean, strapping resources in Northern California.

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Paul Gerhards charts the master's concepts with "Mapping the Dharma" to guide

Saturday, June 28, 2008
NANCY HAUGHT

Twenty-five centuries ago, the Buddha taught with lists: The Four Noble Truths, The Five Precepts, The Eightfold Path. These numbered lists helped his followers memorize and pass along his teachings orally for about 500 years before they were written down.

For the curious observer, a beginning Buddhist or an experienced one such as Paul Gerhards of Vancouver, the myriad lists often are confusing. Gerhards has practiced Buddhism for 12 years but still struggles to remember every concept on most of the lists and how one relates to another.

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June 29, 2008
Interview by DEBORAH SOLOMON

DS: As a professor of Buddhist studies at Columbia University and the first American to be ordained as a Tibetan monk, you don’t need to be reminded that the people of Tibet want to reclaim their country from China. Why won’t the Chinese give it back?

RT: The Chinese have been brainwashing their people into thinking that Tibet is an inalienable part of their territory. No Chinese people lived in Tibet before 1950. Zero. It’s absurd they claim that they were there.

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Each Wednesday at 7pm and Sunday at 3pm, Geshe Ngawang Gedun will be teaching classes at the Tibet Gift House. Come join us!

June 27, 2008

...A former gang member who turned his life around, only to see his brother die in 2004 after a brutal beating, Luna has sought to teach teens in Aurora and elsewhere about the dangers of gang culture. The soft-spoken 37-year-old now practices Buddhist philosophy and teaches kung fu to local kids, and he credits both disciplines with bringing peace and stability to his life.

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Thursday, June 26, 2008
By Ben Preston

...At 40 years old, Namkha Rinpoche is a relatively young Tibetan Lama, who bases his spiritual and Tibetan freedom efforts out of Switzerland. After organizing a series of prayer festivals for the Dalai Lama in 1998, Rinpoche narrowly escaped being jailed by Chinese police. A relative who worked for the police informed him that he was going to be arrested, and he fled to Nepal. In recent years, Rinpoche said that thousands of Tibetan students have been jailed by the Chinese government for their participation in protests against Chinese repression of Tibetan language and culture. One of Rinpoche’s cousins was imprisoned for his role in the demonstrations. “When he was in jail, the Chinese police cut off his arms and legs in front of his friends and family to scare people and make sure they don’t do the same,” he said.

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REMINDER TO REGISTER NOW FOR UPCOMING Four Immeasurables & Buddhist Mind Training Retreat July 19 - 26, 2008

Alan Wallace with B. Alan Wallace

Old Mission Santa Barbara, CA

His Holiness the Dalai Lama has often commented that the essence of spiritual practice is cultivating a good heart. As important as meditative quiescence and insight meditation are within the Buddhist tradition, it is crucial to balance such practices with the cultivation of altruism. In this retreat, Alan Wallace will teach a sequence of meditations for the cultivation of the "Four Immeasurables," namely loving-kindness, compassion, empathetic joy, and impartiality. These will be followed by teachings and practice of Buddhist Mind-Training, or "Lojong."

25 June 2008
By Mike O'Sullivan

The U.S. Agriculture Department says organic farming is one of the fastest growing segments of the nation's farm economy. The government says organic growers rely on ecologically-based practices in cultivating fruits and vegetables and they virtually exclude the use of synthetic chemicals. VOA's Mike O'Sullivan reports from Muir Beach, California, where one farm combines organic methods with meditative techniques from Asia.

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06/26/2008
PASCKIE PASCUA

...As the 20th century came to a close, 40 percent of all Buddhists in America resided in Southern California. The Los Angeles Metropolitan Area has become unique in the Buddhist world as the only place where representative organizations of every major school of Buddhism can be found in a single urban center.

The City of Ten Thousand Buddhas in Northern California and Hsi Lai Temple in Southern California are two of the largest Buddhist temples in the Western Hemisphere. It also has a growing Hindu population; California also has more Temples of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints than any state except Utah.

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June 25, 2008
BY PETER B. BRACE INDEPENDENT WRITER

Harvard University's Buddhist chaplain, Lama Migmar Tseten, was 3 years old in 1956, when he fled hi s bi rthplace in Gy antse, th e central region of Tibet, and crossed the Himalayas by foot with 100,000 Tibetans, led by the 14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso.

The Chinese invaded Tibet in 1951, killing more than 1 million Tibetans.

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Americans' religious beliefs and political opinions are linked in complex ways, a survey finds.

By JEFF STRICKLER, Star Tribune
Last update: June 23, 2008

...Nearly half of the Jewish respondents (49 percent) and more than half of the Buddhist (56 percent) and Hindu respondents (57 percent) said that religion causes more problems in society than it solves. Similar feelings weren't limited to the religious respondents.

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SpiritualityFeature: Completing the circle: Minnesota women who want to change how we die are at the forefront of the Conscious Dying movement

by Jeanne Bain

Our culture treats birth as a joyous event. A woman who creates her birth plan has a myriad of options. She gets to choose who is present at the birth, and how and where she gives birth, creating a sacred, self-directed event. We've come a long way in choosing to honor that part of the circle of life. Those involved in the conscious dying movement think we ought to treat death the same way.

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