Tag Archives: Applied Buddhism
Buddhism Without a Buddha
In spite of it being the currency of the Mahayana Movement, getting a strong and hard definition of “emptiness is very difficult. If one asks fifty teachers one gets roughly fifty answers. The word is as vaguely applied as are … Continue reading
People In Vain
Visit the Hongaku Jodo Website Click here to subscribe to our newsletter. People in Vain ____________________________________________ Quite often in the West we use the words “awakening” and “enlightenment interchangeably. This is a misinterpretation on our part. They are not synonyms … Continue reading
Growing Up Human
Visit the Hongaku Jodo Website Click here to subscribe to our newsletter. The experience of stress, pain, suffering is not a simple thing. The Buddha once observed, we respond to its complexity in two ways: And what is the … Continue reading
Growing Up or Growing Old?
“Deny the passport, throw it away and make a great decision that you will not leave this shore until and unless you have liberated all the human beings.” — The Buddha This quote is all over the internet, usually without … Continue reading
Age Is No Guarantee of Wisdom — Unskillful & Skillful Desires
We observe reality from a point denied by our species (and cultural, and individual) makeup, our observations can only be made through representations, and representations always both add to and subtract from what they represent. —Derek Bickerton The idea of … Continue reading
How to Create a Better Delusion
If the ways of the mind were simple, its problems would be simple too and therefore easy to fathom. In showing how to end its problems, the Buddha might have opted for simple and short instructions. He probably would have … Continue reading
What’s Wrong With Buddhism?
Traditional versus Secular Buddhism? Do we need secular Buddhism and what does that mean? We have to make a decision on what “Buddhism” means. It’s a shame that the word Buddhism was not copyrighted because now everyone can put the … Continue reading
It’s Still True — No One Purifies Another
It is easy to think that Mahāyāna has made it pretty clear that they distinguish between ‘the Buddha’ and ‘Buddha’ as a state of being per se. The problem with referring to ‘Living Buddhas’ and people becoming a Buddha in … Continue reading
One Motif — No Clinging
‘Indeed, the Blessed One is worthy and rightly self-awakened, consummate in knowledge & conduct, well-gone, an expert with regard to the world, unexcelled as a trainer for those people fit to be tamed, the Teacher of divine & human beings, … Continue reading
Living a Short Distance From Our Body
Click here to receive or newsletter or Check out our Website When I was young, my fondness for reading the great literature of our culture was not something I enthusiastically embrace. I found it tedious and unmanly, certainly not the most macho … Continue reading
Fists Full of Sand 