the DharmaRealm

Inspired by a conversation amongst fans on our Facebook page, we take up the issue of vows in Buddhism. Obviously, we need to start with how vows are understood specifically in the Mahayana context, especially Bodhisattva vows. But these aren’t the only types of vows in Buddhism, and we discuss different types of vows. Some are almost future tense (things we’re promising to do) whereas other are definitely past-tense — especially the vows that Dharmakara Bodhisattva made before he became Amitabha Buddha. These vows set up a karmic mechanism by which all sentient beings are able to enter the bodhisattva path and attain Buddhahood. So, where is the vow? It’s the question we try and tackle in this first episode of 2010.

In the final episode of our first live broadcast, we tackle more audience questions. To get things started, we field a question about the BCA’s official position on same-sex marriage (a big shout out to Rev. Briones’ officiating at the wedding of George Takei and Brad Altman!). This bounces us around some questions regarding BCA’s political opinions more generally which is hard to pin down with such a large, internally diverse organization. And from there we segue into a conversation about how we got interested in Buddhism and the religious backgrounds we were raised in. Not surprisingly, this takes us back to the earlier question about basic Buddhism the value basic Buddhism can have when you’re just starting out on the Buddhist path. We’d like to thank everyone who helped up pull off our first live show. And you can be sure that there will be more live events in the new year!

In part of three of the live show series, our first question has to do with Shin Buddhism’s stance on aborted fetuses. Scott cleverly ducks the question but Harry provides some interesting insight into the Japanese ritual of mizuko kuyo (water baby ceremony) and the efficacy of ritual in Shin Buddhist context. Our second question is the ever-popular, if you had shinjin, would you know? Or, more specifically, given our deluded state as foolish beings, is it even possible to attain shinjin in this life. We both say yes (doctrinally, it has to be possible!), but provide some nuance to what shinjin is all about in the first place — a process, a relational state between the self and Amida’s compassion, like being in love — and we round it off with a good discussion of Shin Buddhism being a Buddhism of failure.

In the second installment of our Live Show, we start off talking about the distinctiveness of Shin Buddhism and its difference and similarities to other types of Buddhism. This somehow sets us off on a series of rants against, among other things, The Golden Chain and universalistic Buddhism. (Our apologies to Golden Chain or One Dharma fans out there!) These rants serve a purpose, though, and that is to challenge us to wrestle with difficult questions; it’s this wrestling that allows for spiritual growth, after all. And after these rants, we got our first audience question, a question about stereotypes we come up against as Buddhists. This, of course, sets us off on a couple of new rants about, among other things, Shin Buddhism being not “real” Buddhism and inter-sectarian name calling.

On Friday October 2, we did our first recording before a live studio audience. Setting up in the Kodo of the Jodo Shinshu Center, Harry and I did a little live mixing of our theme music before launching into a regular podcast, this one inspired by a listener question. The question? What’s the Pure Land? No easy task, of course, and our answers — even before a live audience — had our usual meandering quality, touching on such issues as where is the Pure Land, when are we born there, and most importantly, what’s the point of being born in the Pure Land? (Hint: it’s to do Buddha-work here in this world.) This episode’s catch phrase was that the Pure Land has a certain reality which forces us to question our practice and our path. The live recording went on for a good couple of hours, so we’ll have more episodes from this one event. And this was certainly not the last time we’ll be recording before a live audience. So be sure to check the website or our Facebook page for updates.

A listener writes in with an extremely interesting question: if Jodo Shinshu claims that when you go to the Pure Land you come back to this world as a bodhisattva, where are all these bodhisattvas?! This begs a lot of questions and raises a lot of issues about Jodo Shinshu Buddhism with the most obvious being, what is a bodhisattva? We can think of them as “Buddhas in training,” real sentient beings doing specific actions; but we can also think of them as “cosmic” or semi-spiritial beings, maybe working behind the scenes. But Harry points out that according to Shinran, birth in the Pure Land leads not to bodhisattva-hood — but to fully enlightened Buddhahood! That, of course, begs the question of, well, where are all the Buddhas? So we do our best to talk about how we can understand these teachings and put them into practice in our everyday lives in both spiritual and practical terms.

Our first show of the fall season (recorded earlier this summer) was inspired by a bumper sticker of all things: if you want peace, work for justice. Harry and Scott take up the question of what is justice? And what does justice mean in a Buddhist context? Of course never ones to give you a straight answer, we take seriously the notion that there is no “one Buddhism” to which we can turn and recognize that different Buddhists across the world and through history have had different ideas about creating a harmonious society, many of which may raise the hackles of progressive, liberal, American Buddhists. But we do think that justice (in the social, engaged, or ecological senses of the word) is related to three central Buddhist concepts: karma, mindfulness, and compassion. We dig into these pretty deep and leave the question open for future reflection. And don’t forget! If you’re going to be in Berkeley on October 2, we’re hosting a live recording of the DharmaRealm podcast. Check the Facebook page or the blog for more information.

Harry and I are taking a little summer break which, sorry to say, means there’s no new episode this week. But don’t worry. We’ll be back the first Friday in September with more new episodes on Buddhism and the Dharma. We also wanted to make sure all of our listeners know about a special event coming up in October. For the first time ever, the DharmaRealm is going to be recorded before a live audience. You’ll have a chance to ask us all your Buddhist questions in person without having to wait for the next episode. The live event is scheduled for Friday, October 2nd and will be held here at the Jodo Shinshu Center in Berkeley, California. So if you going to be in the area, mark your calendars and come on out. You can find more information about the event on our website at DharmaRealm.com. Or you can become a fan on our Facebook page for more updates. And feel free to follow me on Twitter at twitter.com/djbuddha. Thanks as always for listening and all your support. And we’ll see you in the fall.

Once again, we take our inspiration from you, our listeners! One of our Facebook fans asks about the Seven Pure Land Masters, so we take up the cause with what may be the beginning a seven-part series. In this episode, we talk about Nagarjuna, a seminal figure whose twin concepts, emptiness (shunyata) and the two truths theory, are foundational for the development of Mahayana Buddhism. These conceptions of reality fit squarely within in the wisdom tradition of Buddhism more generally, and we can see a relationship between the ideas of the ultimate truth being beyond language and the inconceivable nature of Amida Buddha. Shinran writes in the Kyogyoshinsho that Nagarjuna was born to “crush the views of being and nonbeing,” which suggests that he was aware of Nagarjuna’s emptiness theories. And of course there is the ever important statement of Nagarjuna that the Pure Land Path is the “easy path” of practice. We talk about all of this and more in this week’s episode. For some background, here’s a list of the Seven Pure Land Masters: Nagarjuna, Vasubandhu ( India) Tan-luan, Tao-cho, Shan-tao (China) Genshin, Honen (Japan) And a some of the works we discuss this week include: Nagarjuna’s MÅ«lamadhyamakakārikā The Collected Works of Shinran

A listener posed a two-part question via our Facebook page about why there aren’t monks in the Shin tradition and how one becomes a minister. We tackle this complicated issue by going back to the beginning with a quick overview of Buddhist monastic history from Sakyamuni Buddha through the rest of Asia. Things get a bit complicated in Japan, especially when Honen and Shinran seem to turn the categories of “monks” and “laypeople” on their heads. This brings us to the second part of the questions, how one actually becomes a Shin minister. So we talk a bit about tokudo, the actual ordination ceremony, and other rites and procedures. And we wrap it with a discussion about the role of ministers in contemporary Shin Buddhism.

Prompted by a listener who asked us to speculate on the next century of Buddhism in America, this time around we talk about some current trends and social issues that will no doubt have an influence on the direction of Buddhist sanghas. We start, oddly enough, in the past and consider the surprising twists and turns that Buddhism took through the 20th century as a result of immigration, war, and racial discrimination — all of which begs the question: what unforeseen historical events will shape Buddhist communities in the 21st century? There is anecdotal evidence to suggest that Buddhist communities are pretty heterogenous. Will that trend continue? Whereas Buddhists are a minority in this country, Buddhist ideas are pretty diffuse in popular culture. What impact will that have on traditional institutions as self-identified Buddhists stop feeling the need for “going to church”?

This time around we respond to a listener question about Shin practice, an issue we’ve tried to tackle before, and one that we’re likely to tackle again. Shin practice raises some complex, doctrinal issues. S we begin with a look at Shan Dao’s Five Practices which include, of course, reciting the name of Amida Buddha. But this issues is not as straightforward as one might expect; is it an exclusionary practice? Or is it alright to do other types of Buddhist practice? Or, as Shinran suggests, is it even possible to practice? Or are we not practicing at all except when we hear the Name being recited by the Buddhas? We meander through all these tricky issues before coming to, of all places, a translation of Shinran’s work by D.T. Suzuki and suggest that Shin practice is to live your life, and in that living reflect on your self, your actions, and your thoughts. Some helpful resources for this episode include our past reflections on Shin practice which can be found here: Podcast episode on practice As well as the Collected Works of Shinran which are available online here: Collected Works of Shinran

This episode was inspired by a listener’s question about the relevance of a “Dharma Punx” model to Jodo Shinshu. We start off talking about how Shin Buddhism and the BCA in particular can be seen as “family Buddhism,” a double-edge sword in that it’s great for families but can be a little off-putting for folks without pre-existing family ties. But this raises the question of what is practice in Jodo Shinshu in the first place? This gets us into everything from the traditional dojo and myokonin stories to contemporary youth groups and bowling. (That’s right. We’re going Dharma Bowling.) All of this may or may not answer our listener’s question directly, but it started a great conversation about the ways that American Shin Buddhism is in transition and makes us think about new and alternative models to engage people in the Dharma.

One of the issues that came up for us in our post-modern conversations was the idea that here in the post-modern world, we’re all free to choose whatever religion we want, to choose whatever we want to believe or practice — which raises the specter of heresy! In this episode, we talk about Buddhist heresy which may be understood simply as “wrong views,” or more appropriately a reflection of the myriad of different ways to approach and interpret the Buddha Dharma. (So heresy really all depends on who you ask!) Our conversation comes back around to Jodo Shinshu and Pure Land Buddhism, a topic rife with different views and interpretations and charges of “divergent views” and heresy. We end by focusing on an important text in the Shin tradition, the Tannisho, a short, pithy but deep and complex work.

It’s been a year since Harry and I started our podcast! But, this episode isn’t really about that — I just thought I’d acknowledge the milestone and take this opportunity to say thank you to all our listeners and fans. In this episode, we continue our discussion of postmodern Shinshu and Buddhism more or less where we left off in historical Japan. Specifically, we talk about how during the Tokugawa period, the government forbade different Buddhist schools from having debate or dialogue. That isn’t the case today in the United States where the diversity of different Buddhist schools, traditions, and viewpoints almost forces us to come to face-to-face with Buddhists who think or act or practice in different ways from our own. This diversity can be a positive challenge, or it can lead to a type of fundamentalism that effects Buddhists as much as any other religious tradition. We explore these ideas, as well as relativism, ethics, and the many mata-narratives within Buddhism and Jodo Shinshu.