the DharmaRealm

A couple episodes back, we tossed out this idea, off the cuff, of hardcore practice. We finally get to it now, asking directly, what is hardcore Shin Buddhist practice? Of course, this raises the important question of what is Shin practice? What do Shin Buddhists actually do? Is it all the temple stuff, Sunday services, oshoko, retreats, hearing the Dharma, saying the name? Or is it something more? Hardcore suggests something out of the ordinary, maybe participating in an all-night nembutsu recitation. But there’s gotta be more! There’s gotta be something deeper than all of this. Maybe all of this temple stuff supports the real practice, the real hardcore stuff. We get to it, we promise! We get pretty fired up in this episode, so enjoy the ride!

We’ve been inspired. A listener wrote in asking for the basics of Shin Buddhism? Could we do a sort of Jodo Shinshu 101 episode? And we thought, well, we can try. This is a great question and in an effort to help clear up misconceptions and to help folks know more about Shin Buddhism, we’d love to take this on! In this episode, we deal with some of our listener’s questions — what’s the difference between Shakyamuni and Amida? is the Pure Land a real place? — but you can bet we’re gonna revisit this topic. We’re pretty fired up about the idea of doing a series of talks on these and many other questions. So stay tuned!

We pick up our conversation from last time about the attrition problem in American Shin Buddhism, its possible causes, and solutions. This time we focus on our listener’s suggestion that there is an essential anti-institutionalism within Shin Buddhism. We’re on the fence on that one; we want to be cautious about reading too much of our own cultural and historical biases into very different cultural and historical contexts. Was Shinran’s understanding of “institution” the same as ours? Or was he advocating for a completely different kind of community? Of course, we’ve inherited centuries of temple bureaucracy and hierarchy, and it’s absolutely important to be self-critical and question how we do things as an institution. Can we think of new ways to envision Shin community in contemporary America?

A listener wrote in to ask about the problem of attrition in the Buddhist Churches of America (or Jodo Shinshu more generally) and suggested a few possible doctrinal reasons for declining membership including Shinran’s seemingly anti-institutional and anti-ritualistic understandings of Buddhism. Harry and Scott tackle these questions starting with the assumption that membership is declining. It brings up some important sociological questions about who is and who isn’t “a Buddhist” or who is “religious”? (Not to mention how the BCA counts and tracks members.) We also discuss the important question of how Shinran’s doctrinal understandings of Buddhism translate to the motivations behind lay members coming to temple (or not). The question is a good, deep, important one, giving us an opportunity for personal and institutional self-reflection.

Inspired by conversations in our last two episodes, today we discuss creativity, art, and love. What does Buddhism have to say about the creative process? Is it merely a kind of desire? Or attachment? And what about familial and romantic love? (It is almost Valentine’s Day, after all!) Classical Buddhism suggests that we ought to remove all attachment and desires; but the flip side is the compassion of the Buddha, often spoken of in terms of a sort of universalized familial love. Believe it or not, we still find room in all of this to talk about art, music, film, and — of course — Star Trek!

We’re not done with TRON yet! Well, sort of we are. We use TRON — film, art, music, anything really — as a jumping off point for discussing the suspension of disbelief. What is it about our expectations or preconceptions that sometimes get in our way, that keep us from appreciating certain kinds of films? This is a jumping off point for us get into Abhidharma and Yogacara philosophy, to talk about how our perceptions often determine our reality, and how often times we are unable to see things as they are.

We’re going to talk about Buddhism and sci-fi again! Get ready for several episodes about sci-fi, movies, music, the creative process, and Buddhism.

In this episode we talk about TRON: Legacy, a movie that probably only the two of us and, like, three other people ever saw. But it’s got specific and explicit Buddhist references. And its star, Jeff Bridges, has said he has a Buddhist practice. Does this make Tron a Buddhist movie? What does it even mean for something to be a “Buddhist” movie? We talk about these issues as well as the specific Buddhist elements in Tron, the creative process, Buddhism, art, and music.

Inspired by a listener question, we explore some of the superficial similarities between Pure Land Buddhism and the monotheistic religions. After considering the difficulty of really knowing the historical origins of Mahayana Buddhism and Pure Land Buddhism, let alone what sort of connections may have existed between South Asia and the Near East, we think about the idea of universalism between religions. What lies behind this longing to see similarities between religious traditions? What is our attachment to the idea of a universal religious Truth? Can we live in difference with other traditions, or even other Buddhists? All this and more in this episode!

It’s been six months since our last episode. Where’ve we been? What did we do all summer? Now that we’re back in the “studio,” we recap some of the stuff we’ve been working on and promise to release new episodes this fall. After a short chat about what it’s like to be a professional Buddhist, we talk about some of the projects we’ve been working on including research on Buddhism and the media and encounters between East and West. We want to encourage our listeners to keep sending us their questions, and keep listening for new episodes soon!

Hey! This is our fiftieth episode!

This week, we take up our conversation from last time about aspects of American culture and their intersection with Buddhism — this time, talking about freedom. What does freedom mean in an American context? And how is this more political understanding different from or similar to soteriological concerns of freedom from samsara in Buddhism? This conversation leads us into the murky waters of the “happiness industry” and the growing connection in America between Buddhism and happiness. We argue that Buddhism challenges us to go beyond simplistic dualisms between happiness and sadness and critically examine our own selves and our own lives. This sort of radical honesty leads to being truly human. We wrap things up with a discussion of the importance of being critical of own’s own cultural baggage (no matter where that baggage comes from) and being open to having a true dialogue between Buddhism and American culture.