A Fistful of Sand

For the past three weeks we've been working with the Medicine Buddha Sadhana. Many people when entering into the Sadhana practice are looking for a magical remedy to their problems. That is not the point of the Medicine Buddha. The point is zeroing in on emptiness and so closer to nirvana. Physical healing becomes incidental. If it happens, well, that's wonderful, but understanding is more valuable - after all, everyone becomes ill, everyone dies. Nothing you can do will avoid these. This reminds me of an apocryphal story in which a man came to the Buddha and explained all of his problems and issues with life. He wanted the Buddha to help him make all of these problems and issues go away. The story goes, the Buddha listened quietly and told the man, "Dharma can help you with sixty-two problems and one it can never help you with. You have this sixty-third problem." "What is this sixty-third problem?" The man was astonished as if e were just g...

For the past 3 weeks the Hongaku Jōdo Sangha in Chicago has been going over the “Short Medicine Sadhana” with a fine tooth comb — not literally, of course. An in depth study of any of the writings or practices making claim to be one advocated or even stated, i.e., taught directly by Siddhartha Gotama, deserves particularly close scrutiny. Both Theravāda and Mahāyāna contain apocryphal sutras; indeed, Mahāyāna is saturated with them. We accept the teachings as being consistent with the intent and spirit of the historical Buddha’s message. We also accept that Dharma is Dharma and it really makes no matter who is teaching it, be it the most unscrupulous teacher imaginable or the noblest human being alive. Truth is truth and truth can be found in the most surprising places. The mature mind does not dismiss the teaching because they disapprove of the source. Today the Internet is saturated with “Fake Buddhist Quotes”. Do we simply dismiss the teaching behind simply because they are n...

Visit the  Hongaku Jodo Website Click here to subscribe to our newsletter. 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 a skillful desire may sound a little off beat, but a mature mind intuitively pursues the desires it sees as skillful and drops those it perceives as not. As the Buddha explains when discussing Right Mindfulness and appropriate attention, a skillful desire is a way of fabricating a better delusion, one that is helpful to us on our journey towards the other shore. Fundamental to all living beings is the desire for happiness and avoid pain. Every other desire can be seen as a strategy for attaining that happiness. You want a new car, a better job, a sexual partner, or even have the desire for inner peace because you probably think it will...

A reader of the Hongaku Jodo newsletter asked me why we rarely – he said “never” – directly wrote about meditation. Honestly, we do all the time, but we do it from the perspective of trained Buddhists. What we write about is usually incorporated into meditation. One who is not familiar with meditation will almost always not understand what meditation concerns itself with. For many in the West, or trained by “cult” leaders who claim to be gurus or meditation masters, the theory is that meditation is used to become more relaxed. This may have been a result of using the term š amatha , usually translated as “tranquility”. In the West we take “tranquility” to mean, “calm”, “blissful” or just “relaxed”. So many meditate to relax. You can see them in meditation halls all over America. They are the ones sitting in chairs, leaning back again it with blankets wrapped around them looking like they are asleep, sometimes they are.   Unfortunately, this is not meditation. Meditation ...