Reverend Abbot Monshin Paul Naamon and his wife, Reverend Shumon Tamami Naamon, founded the Karuṇā Tendai Dharma Center in 1997, and oversee its growing number of officially recognized Sanghas.

In addition, there are a number of priests (soryo) and priests-in-training (doshu), aspiring to share the Dharma and spread the teachings of the Tendai Buddhist tradition.

Revs. Monshin and Shumon trained for six years in Japan under Rev. Abbot Ichishima Shōshin, Professor Emeritus of Taisho University and Abbot of Tamon-in Temple in Chiba Japan. The Tendai Buddhist Institute works closely with Rev. Ichishima and Enryakuji on Mt. Hiei, the head temple of the Tendai Buddhist tradition, to promote Tendai Buddhism internationally.

The authorization to teach and take students was granted in 2002, being designated the New York temple a Betsuin, indicating branch temple status, of the head temple on Mt. Hiei. This designation permits the NY Betsuin to train and ordain practitioners who have demonstrated a serious commitment, understanding, and an advanced level of practice.

Ask Alexa for “Why Meditate?”

A Transcription of our Conversation:

Hello today. I’m talking to Reverend Monshin Paul Naamon Abbot of the tendai Buddhist Institute out of East Chatham, New York and welcome. Thank you. Thank you. I really appreciate you giving me the time. I’m just going to jump right into it and.

The question the first question is why meditate?

Yes. I think there’s a there’s a couple of ramifications to the question, but I’ll just go answer most directly. I think that we meditate. And let me preface everything that I say that I’m speaking as a Buddhist monk, you know, I as you know, I’ve taught at University at Albany and I’ve taught at Bard College Simon’s Rock for many years old.

Oh now I’m retired and in that situation, I might answer it a little bit differently, but I’m going to answer as a Tendai Buddhist monk and we meditate first of all too. Dispel some of the sufferings that we all experience in our lives second of all to make ourselves more human to make ourselves a greater contributor to our society meditation isn’t just about oneself.

It’s about oneself in relation to other sentient beings the Earth Etc. And if we think that we can make things better by meditating that means just the meditation itself is going to make us feel better. We can’t do that without changing the world around us at the same time, right? That’s what makes us feel better.

That’s what makes the world a little bit better and that’s ultimately what reduces human suffering overall. I mean that’s a pretty direct answer to address. Right right. That’s that and that’s what I’m looking for because I want the guy I’m looking at differences between each of the reach of everybody.

Like everyone has a little bit of a different answer to the question. Sure. The other the next thing is how do you define mindfulness and how would it look like to live a mindful life? Mindfulness is, to begin with, I think you know, there’s the found the four foundations of mindfulness were the first are considered.

One of the first discourse is given by the historical Shakyamuni Buddha. And the four foundations of mindfulness talk about recognizing the body as the body the sensations as Sensations and then the emotions which arise from Sensations and then the thoughts that arise from the emotions so that it all goes back to the body and remember that’s the four foundations of mindfulness.

So taking you. From you know,