Uncategorized – Gleanings in Buddha-Fields

Ukrainian Verbs

My quest to learn Ukrainian continues, and lately I have been spending a lot of time learning how to use verbs. This post is not an exhaustive coverage of how verbs work in Ukrainian language, but hopefully this will help fellow non-Ukrainian learners make more sense of the patterns based on my limited field-experience. ThisContinue reading “Ukrainian Verbs”

Cats Gone Wrong: Bakeneko

Monsters from another culture are a fascinating window into premodern culture, and how they viewed the world. This includes, of all things, cats. In Japanese mythology, there were variations on monsters, or yōkai, collectively known as bakeneko (化け猫) which means “ghost cats”. Such cats can range from cats who simply died and return as ghosts,Continue reading “Cats Gone Wrong: Bakeneko”

The End of an Era

One historical period that has continuously fascinated me for a long time is the end of the Heian Period in Japan, culminating in the climactic war between the Heike (Taira) Clan and the Genji (Minamoto) Clan, followed by the end of the Imperial bureaucracy and the rise of military government for the next 800+ years.Continue reading “The End of an Era”

The Mantra of Light as a Buddhist Practice

Mantras are a strange beast within Buddhism. The tradition of mantras predates Buddhism as a religion and goes all the way back to the early “Vedic religion”, that is the ancient devotional religion structured around the Vedas (precursors to Hinduis as we know it), but they’ve always occupied an awkward spot. Recitation in Buddhism usuallyContinue reading “The Mantra of Light as a Buddhist Practice”

Chanting the Shiseige / Juseige

Just as the Heart Sutra is chanted by a very wide swath of the Buddhist community in the world, within the Pure Land Buddhist community1 there is another liturgy that’s similar in length and popular in Japanese Buddhism called the juseigé (重誓偈), shiseigé (四誓偈) or rarely the sanseigé (三誓偈). These names mean something along theContinue reading “Chanting the Shiseige / Juseige”

Of Fun Times and Family Losses

Hello Readers, I can’t believe I haven’t posted in more than a week. Although I rarely plan things out anymore,1 but I like to write a post or two weekly. The truth is, the past week has been a very weird one with logs of ups and downs. First, I got promoted at work. ReadersContinue reading “Of Fun Times and Family Losses”

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Meet The Original Triforce: The Hojo Clan!

I was cleaning out old photos from my phone’s camera roll, when I realized that I still had photos left over from this post, including a photo of my omamori charm that I got from Enoshima Shrine way back in 2019. Sadly that was my last trip to Japan, and I haven’t been able toContinue reading “Meet The Original Triforce: The Hojo Clan!”

Introducing the Karoshthi Script, a script of the Silk Road

The Silk Road, especially during the time when Buddhism first propagated out of India into the northwest and then east into China, is a fascinating point in history. Much of this is epitomized in a little-known writing system called Karoshthi. At that time, much of the world from Europe to Asia spoke a language calledContinue reading “Introducing the Karoshthi Script, a script of the Silk Road”

Taking Stock

July has been a rough month for me. The problem started in early July, after attending a Dungeons and Dragons game in person at my local game shop for the first time in over a year. Not long after, I started feeling ill, my head was stuffy, and breathing was sometimes difficult. My heart wasContinue reading “Taking Stock”