the DharmaRealm

Just gonna say it up front: Harry’s on fire in these episodes, saying some profound stuff! In this final installment of our reflections on Shin and Zen practice, we take up the issue of other-power/self-power. We dive right into the deep and complicated issues about the nature of the self, what’s at stake in the distinction between these paths of practice, and whether or not it’s even possible for the self to negate the self.

Photo credit: Japanexperterna (CC BY-SA)

We take up the issue from last time, wandering around the historical circumstances of exclusive practice, Kamakura-era Buddhist schools, deal with how the context in which one practices matters, ritual efficacy, heresy, and whether there’s really a difference between zazen and nembutsu. We don’t really answer the question of whether or not one can combine Zen and Shin practice; ultimately, that’s for you to decide!

Hey! Check out that new theme song!

We finally get around to doing some recording and answering some listener questions, this one about the possibility of combining Shin and Zen Buddhist practice. We dance around the issue for a while, meandering through the minutia of particular ritual styles, before getting to some of the historical and institutional justifications used for why Shin Buddhists should only do this practice and not this other thing. Stay tuned for more episodes on this topic. We’re not done yet!

Our third and final episode with special guest Mushim Ikeda from the East Bay Meditation Center. In this show, we use the current popularity of mindfulness based meditation practices (and their secularized off-shoots) to answer the “why Buddhism” question. We discuss what mindfulness means in classic Buddhist terms (satti/smrti as well as Pure Land nenbutsu) and in what ways secularized practices diverge from these forms. One area of concern is the commodification of Buddhist practice and the lack of attention paid to how our actions perpetuate systems of injustice and inequality. Rather than merely talking about the positive (often secular-focused) benefit of mindfulness practices, we jump into the deep end to discuss the political and social consequences and limits of Buddhist practice in the modern world.

Part One and Part Two of our conversation with Mushim Ikeda.

Beyond McMindfulness

Mindfulness in Plain English

Here’s part two of our conversation with Mushim Ikeda of the East Bay Meditation Center. We jump right in from where we left off in the last episode, trying to answer the question of “Why Buddhism?” (Spoiler alert: it’s gotta do with the ego.) A lot of our conversation meanders around different experiences in the Zen Buddhism and Shin Buddhist traditions, but in a really cool twist, we find common ground in the Golden Chain, a reading all of us have had some experience with. Mushim has some fantastic insights into its resonance with broad Buddhist ideas of interconnectedness and compassion which grounds this conversation in the realm of ethics, the bodhisattva path, and the challenges inherent in trying to discern “right” from “wrong.”

Part One and Part Three of our conversation with Mushim Ikeda.

Today is part one of a three-part series of episodes featuring our very first special guest star, Mushim Ikeda. Mushim is a Buddhist teacher, author, mentor and the community coordinator and a core teacher of Oakland’s East Bay Meditation Center.

Mushim helps us unpack what may seem like a very basic question: why Buddhism? There’s a lot of directions this question could take us in, from questions of motivation, why people engage in Buddhist practice, why people are attracted to Buddhism, and so forth. And our conversation meanders from existential questions about the meaning of life as well as how to compassionately engage the world while knowing that we can never live up to our highest expectations. We find a lot of overlap between Mushim’s experiences in the Zen tradition and our own experiences with Shin Buddhism, an opportunity for substantive intra-Buddhist conversation. The conversation will continue…

Part Two and Part Three of our conversation with Mushim Ikeda.

East Bay Meditation Center

Buddhism: A Way of Life and Thought, by Nancy Wilson Ross

We’re not talking about magicians, we’re talking about ritual and whether or not there is some efficacious power inherent in Buddhist ritual practice. Ritual is often derided by modern folks or rejected explicitly as not a part of Buddhism, distinct from practice proper. But there’s ritual throughout Buddhist history and practice, and ritual serves an important function in human social life. Scott spends a lot of time riffing on ritual theory and anthropology. Harry spends some time waxing nostalgic for the loss of the Elves. And somehow we keep it all related to Shin Buddhism. It’s magic!

One of the issues that came up in our last conversation was the idea of “original enlightenment,” or the idea that from an enlightened point of view, everything’s equal. Today we take up some of the consequences of this view; do we use this idea as a way to minimize, dismiss, or disregard the experiences of others? Just because, from the Buddha’s point of view, everything’s already enlightened, do we ignore the lived reality of social injustice and the suffering it creates? And does this attitude preclude the possibility of effecting change? These are just a few of the deeper questions we ask this time around and suggest that Shin Buddhism in particular has some tools and advice for the culture at large on how to engage with the world both personally and socially.

Don’t forget to check out our last episode if you missed it and the resources listed on that page.

Is the BCA silent on issues of social justice? For many, it might seem like there’s no Shin Buddhist public voice in the American  discourse on Buddhism and social justice. We’ve been asked several times about this, so today is part one of a larger conversation about Shin Buddhism and social justice. We start by focusing on the historical and cultural contexts in which Shin Buddhist thought and practice develop both in Japan and in the U.S. In the U.S., of course, we need to be attentive to history of anti-Japanese sentiment and Japanese American internment that shapes how we talk about our tradition and engage with the world. The subtext, of course, is the question of whether our institutions are living up to a Buddhist ideal of equality and the extent to which Buddhism can be used and exploited to use and exploit others.

Some of the reference and resources mentioned in this episode:

In prepping for our last episode on how to do Shin Buddhist practice, we started thinking about why people do practice and the question of motivations. The conversation starts with a reflection on a conference paper Scott heard early in the summer about Buddhism, the self-help industry, and BCA’s “Zen envy” (hat tip to James Dobbins for that awesome phrase!). We talk about what the purpose of Shin and Buddhist practice is in the first place: is it to help create a better self, or a project in radical self-transformation? We meander through questions of ethics, self-critical awareness, and how all this fits into BCA communities today.