12 posts tagged “buddhism”

Saturday was the first in a series of day workshops at The Maitri Project, our pastoral care project in Leicester. It was a Buddhist Christian Exploration Engaging with Faith. Partly the day was valuable to me, because it gave me the impetus to interrogate my own faith journey, and to see that I'm now in a position to begin to understand the spirit of faith that underlines religions other than Buddhism: To see religion as a journey towards something ineffable, and that by following the Buddha - we are making the same journey that he made towards the infinite, and to the deathless.

I think that we might all be making this journey, or encountering the infinite in moments, and that it is only the way we clothe this that differs, it is in our descriptions of the unborn, in our mechanical, human, words and ideas that we begin to diverge and it is in clinging to these deadly structures that danger lies.

One day, all interfaith conversations will be like this...
Participant - Buddhist Christian Dialogue.

From the BBC

The key to a happy relationship could be accepting that some miserable times are unavoidable, experts say.

Therapists from California State University, Fresno and Virginia Tech say accepting these problems is better than striving for perfection.

And they blame cultural fairytales and modern love stories for perpetuating the myth that enjoying a perfect relationship is possible.

The report was published in the Journal of Marital and Family Therapy.

The pursuit of relationship nirvana can be potentially damaging Jan Parker

The authors, Dr Diane Gehart and Dr Eric McCollum say it is a "myth that, with enough effort we can achieve a state without suffering.

The pursuit of any nirvana, if by which you mean perfection in this world, can be damaging. Sound familiar? This is the First Noble Truth, that all the discomfort in life is ultimately unavoidable and that running away form this causes even more suffering.

For more on the noble truths see:

The Feeling Buddha

David Brazier

Taima Mandala

What's this desire for contact?
This yearning in my heart?
To turn away from silence,
Not to stay apart.

'Surround yourself with voices'
The voice inside me cries.
'Support yourself with bodies,
'A friend on every side'

If I rest in silence,
The only voice is mine,
And all its pained echo's
Across the fields of time.

So here is where the hurt is
And where I see my face
Stripped of every makeup,
In the quiet place.

Where screams are whispered softly
Across an endless sea,
Of all my karmic passions,
Here the dragons be.

This darkness seems unending;
No hope for me unless
There's something that's much greater
Something holy; blessed.

And light breaks through the darkness,
Golden threads of love;
A grace full of compassion,
Falling from above.

And though I cannot see its face,
Or know its truest name,
I hear the sound of Dharma
That sings, and sings again.

A symphony of melodies
From heavenly abodes,
Sweeter than the Deva's song,
The music that unfolds.

So now, in silent places,
Where still the pain lives on,
I know that I am held
By something from beyond.

Namo Amida Bu

Began both this morning and yesterday with pre-service Sutra Chanting a wonderful way to start the day. Each time I chant something different stands out. Yesterday it was the spirit in which a group of us chanted - very much a community practice, a shared communion of faith in the same direction. Today, after a sleepless night, I struggled with the pace and the rhythm of the text, and what stood out in the narrative of the Sutra was that Dharmakara spent many-millions of years, many life times, practicing the Dharma, forging a path for us to follow. I'm sure that this wasn't easy, but eventually he became enlightened as Amida Buddha - and offered us a much easier path to follow.

Remembering the path that others have taken, and are still taking, gives me some ease with my own journey.

Yesterday we hosted the Faith in People with HIV group, which is run by an Anglican Chaplain - we simply offer a place of refuge, and a space to be with other people who have some sense of what each of the others struggles and journey's might be like.

One of the group mentioned how lucky a friend thought she was to be able to come to The Buddhist House, and be in such a peaceful space. Moments like this always remind me how fortunate I am to be here.

namo amida bu  

Not simply mowing the lawn, knee high and home to some frogs.
But raking away and then thinking, 'What can I write in my blogs?'

Something that's very mindful, first rake one way, then the other
watching my breath as the grass piles up, piles up like cattle fodder

Mind starts to wonder, as does my rake, jumping from thought to thought
I'm raking the grass, but I've got a feeling I'm not doing something I ought.

And so on and so forth, in the heat of the Sun  - thinking that maybe
my day's just begun....

Or something along those lines anyway - actually my day had begun much earlier with morning service, which always presents many chances for learning, whether it's in the reflective practice, or in simply meeting your own foolish nature - The recent psychotherapy course block was called One Foot in the River,  the idea that you have to keep a part of yourself outside the flow of events, in order to process what's going on. The same is true of the Bell Master's role in morning service - it's all to easy to get caught up in the rapture of the service and loose count of the number of prostrations, or which line of the liturgy you're supposed to recite next. Excellent training in many ways.

I remember when I first took on that role a few months ago, being absolutely terrified of making a mistake, ringing a bell at the wrong time or forgetting an offering verse.  Each of which I did, (and still do although less frequently).

Part of the training is in learning how to run a service, with the correct attitude and style, essential when it comes to big events like the recent wedding, but a big part of the training for me has been in learning and accepting that I'm not perfect, and that I'm unlikely (impossible I suppose, but I still don't like to admit it) to ever be; I'm simply bonbu an ordinary foolish being.

But I can look to and be inspired by perfection, I can sit at the feet of Amida, the infinite Buddha, trying, and vowing not to mess up, and then messing up and still feel loved and accepted. This is the life of faith.

This afternoon I worked on the Running Tide website, our order's journal. And I emailed an Erhu (Chinese Violin) player, who I'd like to play at an event we're holding later this year - partly to celebrate the release of two new books, Who Loves Dies Well, and The Other Buddhism.

I'm just about to head over to the main house for dinner, where I hear Dr Elizabeth Harris (Methodist Secretary for Inter-Faith Relations) has arrived, so I'm sure the dinner conversation will be interesting. Dr Harris and our Rev. Dharmavidya are co-hosting a seminar day in June, a Buddhist/Christian inquiry into faith.

二泉映月

China Central Chinese Orchestra perform Er Quan Ying Yue (二泉映月) with erhu soloist Song Fei (宋飞) conducted by Chen Xieyang (陈燮阳).

Monday mornings we don't usually have a service at The Buddhist House, which means that I can have a somewhat later start to the day - despite this it was still a struggle to pay heed to my alarm clock, and I was later than I intended going down to breakfast, which on Monday's tends to be a make your own affair.

All of which used to give Monday mornings a rather welcome lazy feel, but since January, on Monday's we've been running a multi-faith listening project - the Maitri project - in the centre of Leicester, which means we have to be up and about at a reasonable hour.

The idea for the drop in is pretty simple, we have free tea and coffee, and anybody can drop by and speak to one of our volunteers, who come from many different faith backgrounds. Some people come in because they don't have anybody else to talk to, some because there is something weighing on their minds, and for some it's become a regular event in their weekly schedule - a chance to share ideas with people from different backgrounds, and to make new friends.

The overarching aim of the project is one of community building, and so it's wonderful to see people coming in and now, after weeks of only speaking to perhaps one volunteer, beginning to have conversations with each other.

This afternoon, after a visit to Leicester Market to pick up groceries, I fixed a broken light, found a supplier of educational licences for software and sorted out some email issues.  After a wonderful dinner cooked by Sudhana, we had our regular Sutra Study class, which is open to the public, we began reading the collected works of Shinran, and had lots' of interesting questions around issues of karma, particularly about taking harmful actions to prevent further harm - all fascinating stuff.

Whatever action you take, even if you refrain from action, there will be karmic consequences The very act of living is one which causes harm - the best we can hope for is to live in faith, and eventually, to attain Ojo, rebirth in the Pureland.

Namo Amida Bu

To here: Days in the Life…

I wanted to make a fresh start, and not to pay for hosting So please update your bookmarks and rss readers…

See you there!

I’ve glimpsed a few reports recently that suggest that neurologists are coming to the same conclusions as many Buddhists, so it shouldn’t have surprised me to see an article reporting these in the popular press. A couple of weeks ago TIME Europe ran a cover story on the brain, and one of the articles was Stephen Pinker’s The Mystery of Consciousness:

ANOTHER STARTLING CONCLUSION FROM the science of consciousness is that the intuitive feeling we have that there’s an executive “I” that sits in a control room of our brain, scanning the screens of the senses and pushing the buttons of the muscles, is an illusion. Consciousness turns out to consist of a maelstrom of events distributed across the brain. These events compete for attention, and as one process outshouts the others, the brain rationalizes the outcome after the fact and concocts the impression that a single self was in charge all along.

There is nothing called ‘me’ that calls the shots, nothing other than body/brain and environment. This thing we call ourselves is a simply manifestation of all these causes and conditions, and perhaps in some ways we’d be better off letting it go.

Why does this I appear? Well some people think they have the answer…

During evening service, we have a meditation - not unusual for a Buddhist service.

We chant Junien*, which is a set of ten nembutsu, four times, and then have a silent period, followed by one more set of nembutsu. There is a visualisation practice that you can use with these, that some people find helpful, but I often forget to do this.

Instead today I chose to try part of the visualisation practice that the Buddha gives to Ananda and Queen Vaidehi in The Contemplation Sutra. I tried the practice as I recalled it…

Contemplate the setting sun, over a vast expanse of water. Clouds move across the sun, and the water freezes. A glacial landscape empty of life lies before you. But a wind rises and the clouds move on, the sun begins to melt the ice, little by little, and underneath the foundation of a Pureland is revealed. Jewelled trees push up through the ground, and wonderful pools form of cool silver water, life returns and as the wind moves through the trees the sound of the Dharma is heard…

And so finally I sat contemplating the Pureland.

And my mind was quiet, and I put down even this image.

And then the chatter returned, that crazy monkey mind, jumping from thought to thought.

So I returned to the garden.

Unbidden the image changed, like a dream I had no control over. Another wind blew across the land, a hot wind that whipped at the ground and tore at the trees. A sandstorm that dried up the world until the sun beat upon only the shell of a Pureland, an empty, arid desert.

And the winds that had once frozen and then thawed the meditator, ripped away his flesh, and the sun bleached his bones. Leaving only empty holes in a white skull to watch over the desert.

A sobering thought. Death comes to us all - and the Pureland I had seen was one full of life, and vibrancy. But life is not apart from death. And perhaps as Dogen zenji said:

The most clear thing for Buddhists is to get a clear appreciation of birth and death. Buddha is not apart from birth and death…Nirvana is not apart from birth and death.

Namo Amida Bu

*Ju, from the japanese for ten - and nien from nienfo, japenese for nembutsu

Many years ago, I had a strong faith in God. In an omnipotent concious something outside the Universe that I knew, that I could pray to and that could speak to me (not verbally, I think) and have the power to influence the world that I knew.

I lost that - but the idea still fascinates me, and Christianity is still the largest religion here in the UK, and the Abrahamic religions form a big chunk of the different religions across the Globe. And I’m fascinated by these sorts of beliefs - and having just come off the back of an Interculteral training course my interest is particularly acute at the moment.

So I was very pleased to find Humprys in Search of God on the BBC radio 4 website. Conversations with the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams; Professor Tariq Ramadan, Muslim academic and author; and Sir Jonathan Sacks, Chief Rabbi.

As I write this I’m listening to Dr. Williams try to answer the difficult questions of Humphrys - and wondering at how Pureland some of his answers sound, and how different they are to some of the answers I have heard Christian speakers give before.

There are many differences of course, but - to me - Pureland has much better answers to some of these questions. My faith is supported by reason.

Yesterday I wondered if I could really call myself a Buddhist, if I only take on board the teachings that appear true in my experience (and I wonder if this is what Dr. Willimas is doing?).

But this is what Buddhists have been doing for centuries; searching for truth, and liberation.

Namo Amida Bu