Tag: Buddhist practice

Divine Intervention, Or Lack Thereof

Scotty: Thank heaven!

Spock: Mr Scott, there was no deity involved. It was my cross-circuiting to B that recovered them.

McCoy: Then thank pitchforks and pointed ears.

Star Trek, “Obsession” (s2:ep13), stardate 3620.7

In the host of world religions, Buddhism occupies a strange place. In one sense, it is a world religion because it is followed by many different peoples, cultures, and languages throughout its 2,500 year history.

But unlike other world religions there is no central deity, no creator.

Hold on, you might be thinking, what about the Buddha?

The Buddha is the central figure of Buddhism. He is the teacher, but in the Buddhist tradition he was once a person, just like you and me, who through countless lifetimes as a bodhisattva fully accomplished the path and awakened to the Dharma: the principles of existence. He taught the Dharma to his disciples, and they became the first generation of the Sangha, the community.

Thus, these comprise the Three Treasures of Buddhism.

But why do people pray to the Buddha?

Because the Buddha and all other such figures in Buddhism are not passive. The Buddha taught the Dharma out of compassion and goodwill for all beings, and the countless Bodhisattvas such as Kannon guide any sentient beings who take up the Buddhist path. Amida Buddha provides a refuge for all beings who wish to be reborn there.

Kannon (観音) Bodhisattva in her more motherly form.

The underlying theme isn’t Enlightenment for Enlightenment’s sake. It is to help beings who suffer so that eventually they too may reach Buddhahood (a.k.a. Enlightenment).

One does not have to pray to the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas. The most important thing is to put the Buddhist teachings into practice as one can. But in times of unease, uncertainty or crisis it’s perfectly fine to pray to a Buddha or Bodhisattva that you revere. I do it from time to time myself when I am worried about my kids, on plane flights, before surgery, etc.

But also, in the end, I am responsible for my choices, my words, and my thoughts.

When you plant melon seeds you get melons, and when you plant beans you get beans. [Effect follows causes] like a shadow follows a physical shape, like an echo responds to a sound. Nothing is sown in vain. This is called “believing in the result”.

Ou-yi’s Mind Seal of the Buddhas, translation by J. C. Clearly

I alone bear the fruits of my choices, words and thoughts.

Namu Shakamuni Butsu

Namu Amida Butsu

Namu Kanzeon Bosatsu

Buddhist Practice: Environment Matters

A few years ago, when the family and I visited Japan for my mother-in-law’s funeral, we had a long visit with the temple family who presided over the funeral. Their family and my wife’s have known each other for generations; their kids have grown up with my kids and so on. We are pretty close.

The father, who runs this small parochial Jodo Shinshu-sect temple,1 enjoys sharing Buddhist insights and discussions with me, and in spite of my language limitations, I always look forward to the conversation. He also makes excellent homemade umeboshi in his spare time.

Anyhow, he mentioned that many families in Japan have leftover Buddhist altar goods after grandparents pass away, and so he entrusted us with a statue of Amida Buddha shown below. It had been sitting in storage for a long time, and since such goods are far less common in the West, I think he wanted to help deal with surplus, but also help Buddhism overseas. Needless to say, we were grateful.

The challenge after we came home was that we didn’t know where to put it. It was too big for our altar, so we put it on top of a bookshelf, but the bookshelf was remote so we didn’t see it much. But then, my wife decided to put it near the front door mezzanine like so:

Once we did this I noticed a change in pattern. Because we pass by it constantly, I started reciting the nembutsu more. Since we go up and down the stairs all day, having the Amida Buddha statue there is a nice reminder, and it’s easy to find 30 seconds in the day to recite the nembutsu. Plus we sometimes light incense, and so on.

This is a long-winded post, but this experience made me realize that Buddhist practice doesn’t just depend on willpower and self-discipline, environment matters too. Simple changes in environment or routine can go a long way.

Namu Amida Butsu

1 it might surprise some readers to learn that many Buddhist priests in Japan marry and have kids. There’s a lot of complex, historical reasons that I can’t go into here. Plus, Jodo Shinshu has, since inception, been an exclusively lay-oriented sect anyway. I neither condone nor condemn it, it’s just how Buddhism is practiced there.

Yogacara Buddhism in Daily Life

Recently, I talked a little bit about an old, but highly influential stream of Mahayana Buddhist thought called Yogacara Buddhism (sounds like “Yogaachaara“) also known as “Conscious-ness Only Buddhism”. A lot of modern Buddhism that people practice now from Tibet to Japan is deeply influenced by Yogacara, even if not overtly aware of it.

Anyhow, in the previous post, I provided a very high-level overview of Yogacara Buddhism through an excellent book titled Living Yogacara: An Introduction to Consciousness-Only Buddhism, originally written in Japanese, but translated to English by A Charles Muller.

The book goes on to describe a more down to earth example of how Yogacara Buddhism describes the world:

We touch upon various things every day, meet various kinds of people, and are encountering various situations and events as we carry out our day-to-day living. At that time, it is quite natural for us to think that in regard to the objects of our mental functions of perceiving, thinking, and making judgments, that we are directly seeing, hearing, and making judgements in regard to this and that object. However, according to Yogācāra Buddhism, those cognized objects have already been colored and transformed by our minds in the process of their manifestation.

Page 10, translation by A Charles Muller

In the same chapter, the author uses the example of looking at a clock and recognizing that it is 7:30pm. The raw, digital output from the clock is internalized by our minds and interpreted as “7:30 in the evening” as the initial cognization, with follow up thoughts such as “oh, I am late” or “it’s time to get ready for bed”, and so on, as the followup stream of consciousness.

Elsewhere, Rev. Tagawa, also writes:

We lead our lives surrounded by all sorts of things. We annoyed, we may try to escape them by moving to the quiet and simple life in the middle of the mountains, but the fact of our being surrounded by many things does not change at all. As long as we are alive, there is no way that we can ever sever ourselves from our environment. In managing our daily lives, we have no recourse by to proceed while maintaining some kind of relationship with all those things that surround us. At such a time, there will always be things, people, and events. Rather than seeking to escape from them, what we need to do is examine the way we cognize these things, and the way we understand their content.

Page 11, trans. by A Charles Muller

This harks allllllllll the way back to one of the very earliest Buddhist texts, the Dhammapada, which is a collection of sayings attributed to the Buddha, wherein the opening lines are:

1. Mind precedes all mental states. Mind is their chief; they are all mind-wrought. If with an impure mind a person speaks or acts suffering follows him like the wheel that follows the foot of the ox.

2. Mind precedes all mental states. Mind is their chief; they are all mind-wrought. If with a pure mind a person speaks or acts happiness follows him like his never-departing shadow.

Translation by Acharya Buddharakkhita

Indeed, one cannot escape the mind or its mental states, regardless of whether one is in a mountain retreat, or stuck in the office. Buddhism is, first and foremost, a religion of the mind, not magical phenomena.

In the second Dune novel, there’s a quotation I think about sometimes think about at times like this:

The greatest palatinate earl and the lowliest stipendiary serf share the same problem. You cannot hire a mentat or any other intellect to solve it for you. There’s no writ of inquest or calling of witnesses to provide answers. No servant — or disciple — can dress the wound. You dress it yourself or continue bleeding for all to see.

Dune Messiah by Frank Herbert

In other words, we have to learn to live with ourselves and the environment around us somehow.

Namu Amida Butsu
Namu Shaka Nyorai

Buddhist Altar, Japanese Style

Recently, I was chatting with a coworker who’s a fellow Buddhist and he was asking about how to make a Buddhist altar. It turns out that English-language books usually don’t explain such things, focusing on the more cerebral, dogmatic details. Great if you want to know Buddhist philosophy, but kind of lousy when you just want to know how to practice Buddhism in daily life.

So, that night, I compared books that I own and found some common details in Japanese Buddhism:

  • Where feasible, place the altar in a high place, even if that’s a bookshelf. It works best when it is roughly eye-level if not slightly above. The key is to not place it too high up or too low. A height where you can reasonably face the altar and bow is sufficient.
  • The honzon (本尊) or object of veneration can be either a hanging image or a statue. You can also do both: hang an image and place a statue before it.
  • In addition to the honzon, there are a minimum of 3 things you should have:
    • Candle (shokudai, 燭台) – place this one step below and to the right of the central image. Real candles or LED candles are fine. I use the latter for safety reasons.
    • Incense holder (kōro, 香炉) – place one step directly below the central image. If you can’t get an incense holder easily, a small bowl with baking works well. I have seen Japanese people use this in a pinch.
    • Flower vase (kebyō, 華瓶) – place one step below and to the left of the central image. Real flowers or fake (available at any craft store) are fine.
  • Objects like rosaries (juzu, 数珠), sutra books (kyōten, 経典) and bells (rin, リン) are placed separately in front of the altar when possible.

Try out these suggestions, get to know the tradition and then feel free to adjust according to your circumstances.

If you are absolutely crunched on space or resources, you can even get by by just printing out an image of the Buddha and hanging it on a bookshelf, inside a box lid (which you can then stand up) or fold it so it stands up. From there, gradually build the altar as time and resources permit.

Good luck!

Namu Amida Butsu

P.S. an example of a portable Buddhist altar