So many holidays center around a meal. In our multi-cultural country, it seems as if a festival is always being celebrated by some group, giving us a chance to enjoy so many different customs and foods. Even Satori, the Buddha’s enlightenment remembrance, really begins some days before with his accepting a bowl of sweet rice and…
Category: Buddhist writing
This man has not offended me.
Roberto Keiyo I have been reading about the violence in Myanmar and it makes me sad that Buddhist monks should be committing acts of murder and arson, truly we are witnesses to the decline of the Buddhist Dharma, and I hope that there will be peace there and that monks can somehow go back…
Sacred Space
by Shirleen Soyo What makes a space sacred? Religious use? Blessings? Dedication? Perhaps it’s just a flip of a mind switch. The words about sacred space in Chögyam Trungpa’s Shambala this week spoke to me. I thought, “What if every space was sacred? Home? Everywhere would be filled with peace, unconditional love, and fun. Causes and conditions this past week allowed…
Offering to the Buddhas
Christopher Kakuyo Sensei In his commentary of the Tan Butsu Ge or the Song of the Buddha; a section from the Larger Sukhavativyuha Sutra, Gyomay Sensei writes, “ Ku Yo, of offering is a very important virtue in the Buddha’s Way…Ku Yo is done in relation to someone who is more worthy than oneself…to do Ku…
The Chickadee Path
by Renee Seiyo “I see one on the branch. He sees me. He’ll come.” I said in a whisper with arms outstretched, palms up, and holding several sunflower seeds for the chickadees. That is the scene on the chickadee path. Everyone who walks this path knows this is the posture we take to have a chickadee land…
Compassion & Goodwill
by Dawn Chiyo Sensei. “If you see the Buddha on the road, don’t kill him…give him dry socks.” I went out this week to get some used bowls at Goodwill. Standing in front of me was a man who was buying a coat and some socks. He stood out because his hair and clothes were…
Buddhist Lessons from Screwtape
by William Seiyo Many people have read C.S Lewis’ “Lion, Witch and The Wardrobe.” But, how many have read his other works. You may know that Lewis was once an Atheist who became a Christian and wrote many books on that topic. My favorite book he wrote on the topic is“The Screwtape Letters.” This week…
Common Purple Lilacs
That one spring day when I smelled the sweet fragrance of the common purple lilac,* I became aware of myself in the world and the environment. Before that moment, I have only fuzzy fragments of memories—nursery class at the internment camp at Rohwer, Arkansas; Obon dance music; shaved ice; early morning breakfast in the mess…
Into the Dharma
by Toyo Teru Sensei Into the Dharma, we shall journey, like astronauts or a team of interdependent explorers that make their way through an abyss of un-explored continents, with uncharted rivers, and great divides of lands never traveled before. To me and many new members of the Dharma, we find ourselves delving into this unknown abyss of…
You Don’t Know Shit
by Richard Doyo “You don’t know shit”, stated the Afro-American woman sitting across from a novice therapist. The therapist had said he knew how she felt. He had been well- trained, which meant, in his day, he had been in long-term psychodynamic therapy for years, to make his unconscious conscious. To be an astute clinician…
A Bright Dawn 