the DharmaRealm

Inspired by a Dharma Talk at the BCA National Council Meeting, Rev. Harry starts us off by suggesting that individualism is a point of contact between Buddhism and American culture. This seems somewhat counterintuitive given that individuality seems at odds with Buddhist ideas of interdependence, no-self, or non-attachment to the ego. But we think there may be a way for Buddhist notions of individualism to engage in dialogue with American ones while finding a balance between a complete denial of the self and egocentric narcism. This conversations takes us into Shin Buddhist philosophy, the Tannisho, and brings us back to Yogacara conceptions of reality itself.

For some reason, we thought we’d start talking about the Seven Masters. But we get immediately sidetracked by Herbert Güenther, a Buddhist scholar who wrote about the Madhyamaka and Yogacara schools of Buddhism. Interestingly, his discussion of the development of these schools isn’t exactly historically accurate from a Western point of view — but it is from a traditional Tibetan scholastic one! This different way of reading history sets us off on a discussion of how our understandings of history itself is colored by our often uncritical acceptance of a Western/European/progressive view of history that suggests human civilization is getting better all the time. But this raises all sorts of ethical and philosophical and even Buddhist problems that we take up in this episode. In this episode, we also make mention of the Spring 2011 Ryukoku Lecture happening at the Institute of Buddhist Studies. Check out the IBS website for details and the IBS podcast in the coming weeks for audio and video from this event.

In this episode, we continue our conversation on ichinen-sanzen, but take the conversation up a notch. We’re wrestling with some difficult issues in Buddhist philosophy; namely, if we understand samsara to be the realm of delusion and defilements and nirvana to be a purified realm, how do we reconcile this dichotomy with a generally non-dualistic perspective in Buddhism? And what is the mechanism by which we can transform ourselves from one state to another? In Mahayana thought, this issues is dealt with by focusing on the identity of samsara and nirvana; to borrow a phrase, form is emptiness and emptiness if form. In this view, samsara and nirvana are two sides of the same coin. But Tientai takes this even further by suggesting that there aren’t two sides; it’s all the same thing. Thus, both samsara and nirvana totally interpenetrate. This perspective, though, has profound implications on ethics and how we judge whether our actions are good or bad, right or wrong. We suggest that Buddhism at its best is critical, that it forces us to critically examine our subjective perspectives on what we think we know while (hopefully) leading us toward better wisdom and compassion.

Rev. Harry brings up the complex idea of ichinen sanzen — three thousands things in a single thought moment — from Tendai (Tiantai) Buddhism. In short, ichinen sanzen says that each thought moment contains within it all of existence — wait, what? How does all of existence exist within each thought moment? Whose thought moment? Mine? And how long is a thought moment? Somehow all of this is related to broader Buddhist concepts of interdependence but also reincarnation and the six (or ten?) realms of rebirth — not to mention Shinran’s understanding of birth in the Pure Land. And all of this complex philosophizing is all well and good, of course, but how does it help us with the more visceral experiences of life and death?

Inspired by a listener question/discussion on Facebook, we tackle the issue of belief in (Shin) Buddhism, specifically when it comes to Pure Land imagery. Are we expected to believe in it in some substantive, literal sense? Or do we take it as metaphorical? Symbolic? Symbolic of what exactly? We start by suggesting that wrestling with these questions allows us to think critically about what the point of Buddhist practice is in the first. Why do we practice? Because in some sense we believe it will work. But is this belief in the efficacy of Buddhist practice any different from other forms of religious belief? These are some of the questions we wrestle with in this episode.

In this episode, we wrap up our conversation about humanism and Buddhism and what the two might have to say to one another, starting off with a question about what Buddhism might say regarding the value or importance of humanity. Humanism seems to suggest that humanity is rather important. But in Buddhism we find ourselves, at best, one kind of sentient being among many. At worst, especially in Shin Buddhism, we’re foolish, unenlightened beings caught up in a web of messy karma that challenges the positive idealization of humanity and makes tough work of morality and ethics. We want to thank our listeners once again for sending in such thought-provoking question — keep ’em coming!

Even though this week’s episode isn’t really about humanism per se, we pick up where we left off last time, allowing Scott a moment to clarify what he meant when he said that Buddhism doesn’t care about the individual. This week is really all about individual practice versus community practice, what does it mean to practice, and what do you do when you don’t live anywhere near any other Buddhists? This is a question we get asked a lot by folks who are “distant members” or “solo practitioners,” and it’s an especially important and difficult one for Jodo Shinshu which seems to place so much emphasis on community-based practice. But perhaps in these isolated and new communities we can see glimpses of the future, individual practitioners who are unencumbered by older and rigid communities, folks who are more engaged in multi-yana perspectives. All this and more in this week’s episode. Enjoy!

We’re back! Using a couple of related listener questions as a jumping off point, we start a conversation about what Buddhism might have to say about (secular) humanism or what humanism might have to say about Buddhism. Apart from anything humanism may have to say about the rejection of a supernatural or religious foundation for ethical behavior, humanism also has something to say about about humanity’s place in and our relationship and responsibility to the world. So what does Buddhism have to say about humanity’s place in relation to other sentient beings? We don’t stop there, of course, and discuss the issue of whether or not Buddhism really is a rational and scientific religion as many claim (or want) it to be. All of this leads Scott to close the episode by saying some terribly silly things that he’ll no doubt recant in some future episode. So stay tuned!

It’s summertime. So here’s an important announcement and a hearty thank you!

In the second installment of our live show, we answer two listener questions. First, we received a question about Shin Buddhist nembutsu practice and the concern that chanting the nembutsu might be something of a crutch, that while making one more calm it might distract us from very real world social problems. We frame this in a conversation about the middle way, the path between extremes of self-doubt and self-indulgance, and how difficult it is to actually walk that path. Our second question came in via Twitter during the live broadcast and was about, generally, the appropriateness of translating Japanese gathas, songs, or chants into English. We focus mostly on the music side the question, exploring the appropriateness of ease of setting English language songs to traditional Japanese musical styles (or vice versa).

Our second live recording — actually live this time and broadcast via webstream across the Internets — was recorded in the lobby of the Jodo Shinshu Center. This is the first installment of that day’s recording. Our jumping-off point is our previous conversations about science fiction and Buddhism, focusing here on the issue of cosmology and world view. There are all sorts of ways that we form world views, many different types of cosmology in pop-culture or music. And certainly Buddhism has a distinctive cosmology itself. We suggest, though, that there’s a big difference between the world view of Star Trek fans and Buddhism in part because the later actually challenges us to question our assumptions about cosmologies and world views. We circle around a bit before getting back to some of the concrete ideas within traditional Buddhism cosmology (such as multiple Buddhas, the six realms of rebirth, and so on) and ask, is any of this relevant in our modern world? We make a strong case for its continued relevance regardless of whether or not you take it as literally or merely symbolically true. Stay tuned for future releases from our live show in the coming weeks!

Picking up from where we left off, this week we ask what does any of this sci-fi stuff have to do with Buddhism?! On the one hand, while there may be parallels between sci-fi and Buddhism, often they deal with similar issues in very different ways. How movies like Alien or Starship Troopers deal with otherness, for example, is to suggest that the other is completely alien and dangerous and must be completely destroyed. But in (Shin) Buddhism, otherness is the compassion of Amida, something that completely embraces us. In our further explorations of the genre, we recognize how sci-fi forces us to think differently about simplistic ideas such as good and evil or what we assume reality is, pushing us to question our own motivations or preconceptions. Harry makes the mistake of asking Scott about time travel (don’t get him started on time travel!) which takes us off into a conversation about karma, free will, and predestination. All of which we wrap up with a question about whether or not our mediated experiences are taking us away from reality or are just a reflection of a different type of reality.

This week, Harry and Scott take up the topic of Buddhism and science fiction, inspired in part by our off-hand conversation about Cthulhu from a couple weeks back and in part by Harry reading Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, the novel that in turn inspired the movie Blade Runner. (Spoiler alert! We give away the ending and lots of plot points, so, you know, listener beware.) This gets us talking about several themes in several seminal sci-fi works that are relevant to Buddhism and Buddhist philosophy including the nature of the self, what it means to be human/a sentient being, what is reality, and, of course, “who am I?” Dick’s story seems to suggest that empathy is the defining characteristic that sets humans apart from artificially created replicant androids. In Blade Runner, memory serves a similar function. But in both the book and the film, empathy and memory can be artificially generated which highlights the way that sci-fi is able to force us to question reality or to see reality in a different way. This of course gets us into Star Trek, The Matrix, Starship Troopers, and Star Wars, among other things. Scott unapologetically calls the original 1977 Star Wars film a “pretty cheesy movie” (break out the fan-boy hate mail!) before we wrap it all up with the question of what any of this has to do with Buddhism — a conversation that is continued in part two. Don’t forget to check the website for information on our live recording next month and, as Harry recommends at the start of this episode, follow him on Twitter.

Continuing on in our meandering diversion from a conversation about the Shinshu Seven Masters, this episode starts right where we left off last time in a conversation about the promises and pitfalls of “one Buddhism” or a universal religion. The underlying issue here has to do with problems of difference or “otherness,” something that we somehow manage to relate both to post-colonial theory and Mahayana philosophy. (No. Really.) In post-colonial theory we find the urge to both deify and demonize the other (which has particular implications for Buddhism’s transmission to the West); and in Mahayana we find a tension in the perennial debate between the complete otherness of nirvana from samsara versus the form-is-emptiness stance of the simultaneity of nirvana and samsara. And believe it or not, all of this actually brings us back to Genshin — one of the Seven Masters of Shin Buddhism! But don’t worry, we don’t linger there too long; we’re still pretty caught up on Cthulhu and Aliens. Speaking on Aliens, don’t forget to check out our website for more information on our upcoming live recording in April.

Some time ago, a listener asked us to talk about the Seven Masters and we dutifully responded with an episode on Nagarjuna. We thought we might take a stab at the other Masters, but this post quickly veers off topic — but the diversion is well worth a listen! The conversation begins with a discussion of how the various Shin Seven Masters are common to a lot of other Buddhist schools suggesting a common denominator or point of contact for intra-Buddhist dialogue. But we acknowledge that each school interprets these great Buddhist teachers in its own way thus highlighting the differences. This leads to a conversation about language and the tendency among some to reduce the whole of the Buddhist tradition down to an easy essentialism and the dangers (as well as potential benefits) of this type of behavior. Be sure to listen to part two in a couple of weeks for the continuation of this conversation.