A Fistful of Sand

I received this question through an email. It seemed like a reasonable question and points that there are teachings in Buddhism that are not terribly Buddhist at all. These distortions of what the Buddha taught are so common that we often take them for granted without question. This emailer question the standard distorted teaching.  How does a Bodhisattva save sentient beings when there are no beings to save. From a practical position this seems like quite a tricky paradox. I mean in your studies you at some point realise that you don't actually exist from the perspective of being interdependent from other things, yet of course you do....paradoxes abound eh! One question that might need to be answered is where do these vows come from. That may help us understand their meaning. Then I will discuss some of the more obvious problems with the vow as it is presented today and offer a solution to the apparent paradox. Origins of the Vow Current wisdom has it that the Bodh...

  Kumarajiva America, as with other “religiously” oriented cultures, such as the Islamic oriented countries, one is seen as either this or that. You either are this or you are that. Some individual churches in the US have tried to “buck the system” and claim to be their own religion, the Unitarian Universalists, for example, which cloaks itself in the robe of “deism” but seems very much Christian or Jewish depending on the religious holiday. The same might be said of the Unity Church, which in the 1960s and 70s was very much a New Age organization, but over time has managed to become more mainstream and eclectic within the guidelines of the Judeo-Christian Tradition, whatever that might mean to you. The trend to be “something” and not another “thing” is overwhelming in our culture. The sentence, “You’re not a true Buddhist” or “You’re not a true Christian” fill the air all the time. We have expectations of our religious people to behave in one way only – our way. We claim we...

It had been a few years, maybe 20 of them, since I read the Mahayana version of the Brahma Net Sutra. It is very different from the Pali Canon’s version although they touch on similar subjects. That brief touching and the name are the things they actually have in common aside from the claim that they were both taught by the Buddha. The odds that the Buddha spoke both are slim. The two teachings are not actually related. There is so much wrong with the Mahayana Brahma Net Sutra that one hardly knows where to start. Of course, the answer to any criticism might be, “You don’t understand the Sutra” or “You don’t appreciate the Mahayana teachings” or even “You don’t grasp the significance of the bodhisattva.” These are all standard defense of those who actually like the Sutra and want it propagated. As a matter of fact, I do appreciate the bodhisattva teachings but only when they are correctly portrayed. I appreciate the Mahayana as I have gained much from it. As to whether I under...