Buddhadharma: Deepen Your Practice & Study of Buddhism
Whether you’ve been practicing for two years or twenty, Buddhadharma is your ideal source for deepening your understanding of and connection to Buddhism. Buddhadharma is a project of Lion's Roar, found at lionsroar.com/buddhadharma/
- “The four foundations of mindfulness offer innumerable skillful methods to examine our experience, providing conditions for our mind to become more open, pliable, workable, happy, and creative.”
- "In Buddhism, the concept of movement bears profound spiritual significance. ...Pilgrims are reminded of the trials and perseverance the Buddha encountered on his path to awakening, inspiring them to cultivate similar qualities in their own lives."
- "While the tulku system may seem unusual from a Western or modern perspective, it is based on a clear inner logic and serves a meaningful and practical role within the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, aimed at preserving authentic teachings and ensuring their continuity."
- "Our freedom to fall willingly into the frightened, blasted, beautiful, tender world, just as it is, is already here."
- "By practicing in this way, our life gradually becomes completely integrated with wisdom and compassion, and even traces of “enlightenment” vanish. We are able to offer ourselves to everyone, like a lighthouse, helping all those who come our way, responding to their needs without contrivance."
- Big update in the Mohsen Mahdawi story today!
- "I am practicing here my constitutional rights, not to call for any destruction of anyone, not to fight anyone. I'm saying we need peace."
- "We let go and see what a burden it is to hold on to things—how heavy and limiting and dark it is to hold on to body, feelings, perceptions, all these aggregates, hoping and praying that they will give us something they can never provide."
- "This is a book that could have been written only by someone like Hinton, whose decades immersed in the poetry, philosophy, and literature of Chan have afforded a unique perspective and understanding." Read Constance Kassor's review:
- The next edition of the Buddhadharma newsletter (free) goes out in a couple weeks. If you're not signed up, please do. Thank you!
- "....shines light on Santideva’s work in new and important ways."
- "Given that our actions are so important and yet so frequently misguided, our wisdom has to be tactical — and strategic — in fostering actions that are truly beneficial. It has to outwit our shortsighted preferences in order to yield a happiness that lasts."
- “I am firmly convinced — beyond even the tiniest dust-mote of doubt — that he is a man of peace, high moral vision, and a firm commitment to the ethics of love, compassion, and forgiveness,” writes Ven. Bhikkhu Bodhi.
- Our dear Cindy Littlefair was a dynamo of action, positivity, and empathy - a beloved mom and community member; a gifted writer; committed dharma person; cheerleader for and exemplar of goodness. Loved ones and sangha will gather for a funeral ceremony of Sukhavati in Halifax today.
- "The event brought together city leaders, Buddhist monastics from Blue Cliff and Deer Park Monasteries, and a large crowd of members of the public to commemorate the life and teachings of one of the world’s most influential spiritual figures."
- "Madhyamaka offers a different way to understand and relate to our experience; it proposes that things arise without being solid and that we are not separate from the environment."
- "His quest for a way to deal with his suffering eventually led him to the Buddha’s teachings," recalls Ven Bhikkhu Bodhi about Mahdawi.
- Rinpoche explains that we can experience the energy of the four elements by noticing the sensations in our bodies. “The Buddha said that to get the direct experience of reality, the best doorway or gateway is sensation,” he says.
- "If you cannot see the buddha within and only see the buddha outside, that is not the real buddha. Just move on quickly and continue practicing. If you truly know liberation and freedom, buddha is everywhere and nowhere."
- Read Constance Kassor's review of the late Jeffrey Hopkins' classic work, Meditation on Emptiness, now in a new revised edition. Plus, an excerpt from the book so you can gain a sense of it for yourself.
- Another new Buddhadharma Deep Dive for you, this one on Taking Refuge. Featuring Br. Phap Huu, Mingyur Rinpoche, Mushim Ikeda, Arisika Razak, Koun Franz, and many more. Check it out at: www.lionsroar.com/buddhadharma...
- New at @lionsroar.com and Buddhadharma: Carlo Carranza watches The White Lotus with a dharma teacher's eye.
- "Of course, Buddha himself did not have a teacher, an oft-repeated fact. It’s a fact that doesn’t apply to me unless I am prepared to match his resolve, urgency, and commitment in my own practice. Let’s be real: I fall far short of the mark." —Karen Maezen Miller
- Check out Buddhadharma's Deep Dive on the teacher/student dynamic in Buddhism, featuring Norman Fischer, Anne C. Klein, Amy Paris Langenberg and Ann Gleig, and more.
- "This is why sangha is one of the Three Jewels. This is why Buddhist centers have evolved boards of directors, codes of ethics, succession plans, and the like. It’s not glamorous work, but it is essential."
- "Listening purifies itself. It’s not that there is necessarily a new interest in what you are saying. I may prefer to dialogue deeply while you want to relate your story or get my attention. When listening comes out of wholeness, an appropriate response happens. That is the wisdom of listening."
- Myanmar has been hit by a 7.7 earthquake, which Amnesty Intl’s Joe Freeman says "could not come at a worse time ... Over a third of the population will need humanitarian assistance this year [while] impacts of US aid cuts are just starting to bite." donate.redcross.org.uk/appeal/myanm...
- The nascent org's initial Call to Action is reproduced in full here, including how to join your name to it.
- "When we live with other monastics who share the same discipline, we help each other to keep good ethical conduct, cultivate our good qualities, and reduce our negative ones. Ultimately this enables us and others to attain liberation and full awakening."
- On April 11, New York City will co-name West 109th Street between Riverside and Broadway as “Thích Nhất Hạnh Way.” Details/RSVP at the link.
- A brief teaching by the late Sensei Sandra Jishu Holmes. The 27th anniversary of her passing will be Thursday, March 20th, commemorated that day with a memorial gathering at 2pm Eastern Time, on Zoom, via Zen Peacemakers. Registration link in comments.
- "One practice that can help free the heart from the compulsions of self-view is to meditate upon your own name. ... Another perhaps even more direct way we can work with listening is to use a form of questioning to approach and dissolve habits of self-view."
- "Voice for the Voiceless is more than a political memoir; it is a declaration of Tibetan identity, nonviolent resistance, and survival."
- Now at Buddhadharma: Women of Wisdom, a new Deep Dive into content by and about women in the dharma.
- "[There is a notion that] once you experience satori through zazen or experience a settled mind through chanting Amida Buddha it is as though a red light has turned green and you become completely refreshed, and the feeling never changes. ...Talk like this is nothing more than a fairytale."
- His Holiness the Dalai Lama has just published this piece with the Washington Post.
- "I invite you to utter these words with conviction and understanding: “To the Buddha, I go for refuge. To the Dharma, I go for refuge. To the Sangha, I go for refuge.” This, at its core, is an act of choosing to be free temporarily and ultimately from the sufferings of confused, cyclic existence."
- "Breathless from traversing the immense space and the physical exertion in the high altitude, we pressed on to — only stopping to jot down notes, video-record a section, or take a sip of water. ...We were following in the steps of great dakinis."
- Updated yet again!at://did:plc:4tughsvitjhhofesi63lm353/app.bsky.graph.starterpack/3lbcmnebpnr2j
- "[Linji's] teaching method was based on his confidence that human beings need only to wake up to their true nature and live as ordinary people. Master Linji didn’t call himself a Zen master. He called himself a “good spiritual friend,” someone who could help others on the path"
- The next edition of our newsletter goes out Monday -- so maybe sign up now, if you haven't already? Thank you!
- "The fact is, having at least a passing acquaintance with the cosmology that informed ancient Buddhist teachings can greatly enrich our understanding and even our practice, both on and off the cushion."
- "The Buddha was not just a philosopher; he was a disruptor of identity and power. [...] Fast forward to today, and the teachers, scholars, and participants of [this conference] are taking up this same mantle of disruption, heterodoxy, and awakening themselves and society through unorthodox means."
- In this new video — part of a year-long ongoing teaching series on Mingyur Rinpoche’s text Stainless Prajña: Stages of Meditation on the Treasury of Abhidharma — Rinpoche leads us to reflect on the qualities of breath, guiding us on a short meditation on the impermanent quality of breath.
- Updated again -- who's joined since you last looked?
- "The Flower Ornament Sutra itself is a very different type of literature. It consists of highly sumptuous visions that offer a systematic presentation of the stages of development and unfolding of the practice activities of bodhisattvas."
