the DharmaRealm

We’re back! And we’re taking up a listener question about practicing Buddhism when you’re not near a Shin community, so we’re calling this one “how to do Shin practice?” This is an important question; what is our practice? How do we do the practice? Harry breaks it down into external and internal aspects where the external is related to intellectual, doctrinal, historical studies as well as critical analysis of the teachings and the internal is personal or subjective critical self-reflection. Often times the internal is related to ritual and practice, saying the name or hearing the dharma. But it is important to note the connection between the two and the importance of living a Shin Buddhist life in community — both explicit Shin Buddhist communities and all the other communities in your life. In this episode we also touch on ritual and magic, vajrayana and tantra, and institutional aspects of the Buddhist Churches of America.

Some resources mentioned in this episode:

We round out our conversation about music by focusing on Shin Buddhism, starting with Shinran. It’s clear chanting was an important part of early Shin communities, and many of Shinran’s wasan (poems) have come down to us as songs still sung today. We take a brief detour to talk about Herbie Hancock before getting into contemporary music in the American Shin context. If we expand our view beyond the traditional gathas, we can find all kinds of really interesting music within Shin communities, opportunities for creative and personal expression of the Dharma.

Also in this episode, Scott plugs his current research project which is devoted to American Shin Buddhist music. Check out his website and take part in his research.

In part two of our discussion of Buddhism and music, we talk (mostly) about the potential genre of “Buddhist music.” Genre is a tricky; it raises all sorts of questions about who gets to define an artist or musician and whether or not it further divides people into camps of musical identity. But we definitely think there’s Buddhist music out there worth talking about, and we meander around such different artists as Hiroshima, Toshiro Mayuzumi, the Beastie Boys, Lou Harrison, and eventually come back to our own Buddhist musician — Harry himself — who’s written some Buddhist music of his own, including various versions of this show’s theme song.

Here’s just some of the names we drop in this episode:

Stanley Lighthead (Harry’s new band)

IBS Symposium where we talk about music

Beastie Boys

Toshiro Mayuzmi

Esperanto Heart Sutra

Hiroshima

We’ve got a long-standing interest in music; coincidentally, a listener asked us a question about music on Facebook, so we took the subject and ran with it! This is the first of three episodes dedicated to the subject of Buddhism and music. Today’s show is a general overview of the subject, both the question of what is music — how is it used and performed and why we listen to it — and how is music used in a Buddhist context, both ritually and as a form of practice.

“Won’t somebody please think of the children!” This week we take up the tension in Buddhism between the ideal of monasticism, the renunciant, the solo practitioner who goes off in search of awakening versus the reality of home life, laity, and family. Our conversation is inspired, in part, by a post last fall over on the Dharma Dialogue blog about revisiting the biography of the historical Buddha and being attentive to how this narrative can be re-read to highlight Shakyamuni’s connections to his home life and family rather than his rejection of it. We eventually come back to Shinran and the Tannisho, and Harry starts to say some pretty profound stuff about twenty minutes in. It’s worth sticking around just for that!

Also, the Dharma Dialogue blog seems to be no more since it was created for a specific class down at University of the West last fall. The author of the post linked to above, however, can be found on his site, here, Family Dharma.

Let’s pick up where we left off; last time we discussed how contemporary Shin Buddhists can make the teachings and practices applicable to modern life, balancing tradition and change. This raises the important question of how one can determine whether or not a particular interpretation of the Buddha Dharma is in line with traditional or authoritative understandings. In short, how can we trust our teachers and Dhrarma friends? Our conversation today covers a lot ground through personal and institutional authority, the importance of education and community, and familiar topics such as the dojo and kalyanamitra.

Prompted by a listener who’s interested in how Buddhist teachings and practices change over time, in this episode we take up the tension between maintaining tradition versus adaptation to new circumstances. Whereas one could argue that we should look to Shinran as the final authority on what the orthodox Shinshu teaching or practice should be, we can also look to Shinran as inspiration, as a thoughtful practitioner who, in his own time, creatively interpreted the tradition to meet the needs of those around him. But how much change is too much? When does reinterpretation so alter the tradition that it becomes something new? And who’s to say what counts in the first place? Who are the authority figures who decide what is and is not an acceptable teaching or practice?

Today we go down the rabbit hole of the Tannisho, the so-called razor text of Shin Buddhism, a text that can cut away misunderstandings, or be extremely dangerous in the wrong hands! Specifically, we’re talking about compassion and the question of whether or not great compassion is even possible. In Chapter Four of the Tannisho, Shinran seems to imply that, due to our lack of true wisdom, it’s extremely difficult, if not impossible, to be compassionate and help other people. But if there’s nothing you can do, why do anything? Shinran and Shin Buddhism push us to ask deeper questions, to challenge feel-good Buddhism and shake up our expectations and assumptions about the path to awakening. We go to some pretty complex places in this one; enjoy!

And if you’re interested in reading the Tannisho, one translation is available here.

In this episode, Scott complains about the media! Seriously, though, bouncing from the last episode that dealt with the commodification and commercialization of Buddhism, we now deal with the related issue of media representations of Buddhism and Buddhists. How is Buddhism represented in the media, and what we can learn about Buddhism via these representations? Are they helpful to people in actually understanding what Buddhism about? Similarly, how are individual Buddhists represented? Who isn’t represented in the media and what are the consequences of these representations or lack thereof?

We reference Jane Naomi Iwamura’s book, Virtual Orientalism, in this episode which can be found here.

And Harry makes reference to a weird Ikea ad that can be found here (and talked about by the Angry Asian Man here).

Someone tried to sell some shoes with an image of the Buddha on them. And, boy, were Buddhists mad about it! This is our jumping off point for a discussion about commercialization and the commodification of Buddhism. Should Buddhists be offended or angry when corporate or commercial ventures try to sell products with images of the Buddha on them? Should Buddhists resist capitalism even in their attempts to spread the Dharma? We want to take these issues seriously and move beyond vague platitudes about non-attachment to really engage the question of what the proper Buddhist response is to commercialization and capitalism.

One of the books referenced in this episode is Selling Spirituality: the silent takeover of religion, by Jeremy Carrette and Richard King.

And offending shoes that started off this episode can be seen here.