Tabla de contenidos para May 2022 en Lion's Roar

THE WISDOM OF PEMA CHÖDRÖN—OUR NEWEST ONLINE COURSE Celebrate and practice transformative teachings inspired by Pema Chödrön, presented by 10 renowned Buddhist teachers and heart friends of Pema. Explore key themes from awakening our compassion to freeing ourselves from unskillful habits and fears. Practice along with guided meditations and teachings on tonglen, lojong—or training the mind—and more. Hosted by Krista Tippet, award-winning host of On Being, the summit will include archival teachings from Pema Chödrön and recorded presentations from Tsoknyi Rinpoche, Mingyur Rinpoche, Elizabeth Mattis Namgyel, Judy Lief, Fr. Greg Boyle, Tami Simon, Gaylon Ferguson, Margaret Wheatley, Karma Lekshe Tsomo, and Anam Thubten. The summit will be available to watch for free between April 7-11, 2022. lionsroar.com/wisdom-of-pema-summit THICH NHAT HANH’S CALLIGRAPHIES Many years ago, Thich Nhat Hanh gifted a collection…

The Buddha is this man that does many hard things to make it easier for everybody. He helps people make their life happier.—Leif, age 7 He lived a long time ago, but he still lives in spirit. I like that he brings peace to the people and the world.–Edj, age 9 Buddha is a man from India who was a young prince that was kept away from the outside world. So he decided to run away on his own to learn about the world. Something that I like about him is that he is very peaceful.—Xavier, age 9 Some people say Buddha is a god, but Buddha is a normal person with a normal life. He’s a spiritual teacher. I like the Buddha because I like the stories about him.…

I WAS BORN IN 1945 in Washington, D.C. My mother was a writer who became interested in Buddhism through her work translating Korean sijo, which is a form of poetry heavily influenced by Buddhism. Because of my mother, I developed an interest in the spiritual life. In the sixties, I served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Korea, where I spent a lot of time visiting Buddhist monasteries. In the seventies, while in graduate school in Boston, I studied Tibetan Buddhism under Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche. Then I trained in Soto Zen under Robert Aitken Roshi. I developed an interest in Vipassana meditation after doing a retreat with Anagarika Munindra. During the 1990s, I did retreats at Tathagata Meditation Center in San Jose with Sayadaw U Silananda. That prepared me to…

I FIRST MET THICH NHAT HANH in 1987 at the Ojai foundation in California. I don’t think he noticed me much during the retreat, but as we were seeing him off, he looked directly at me and said, “Bring the good buddhadharma back to India. A way of practice that will help people suffer less.” I returned to India a few months later, and on an impulse wrote and offered to host him should he ever want to visit India. To my surprise and joy, he asked if I could organize a Buddhist pilgrimage to India for him and thirty of his students. For thirty-five days we traveled through Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, home to many of India’s most famous Buddhist pilgrimage sites. He’d just finished writing his biography of…

In December 1990, I was among two hundred people who sat with Thich Nhat Hanh at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. We listened to him read poems from the Vietnam War years and reflect on his efforts to share with Americans the suffering caused in both countries by the war. Then we walked silently, reverently, past the Vietnam Veterans’ Memorial. I was deeply impressed by the quality of his presence, the flowing calmness of his words and actions, and the remarkable effect he had on others. At a conference the day before, I had heard him speak softly about love, anger, compassion, and finding peace and joy in each step, in each action. Finding peace and joy in each moment was a lovely idea, but how could I weave…

BY HIS VERY PRESENCE as a man of color teaching about spiritual practice, Thay has always been an intervening force in systems of domination—racism, patriarchy, classism. Unlike many patriarchal Buddhist teachers, he has worked alongside a woman, Sister Chan Khong, for more than fifty years and she has been both his guardian/protector and friend. Concurrently, no one has complained about racial hierarchies in the world of Thich Nhat Hanh. Diversity is about representation, but it is more importantly the groundwork for pluralism. “Pluralism is not just tolerance,” writes Diane Eck of the Pluralism Project at Harvard University, “but the active seeking of understanding across lines of difference.” Thich Nhat Hanh’s work embodies the essence of pluralism. No doubt the pervasive nature of white supremacy has kept scholars and readers alike…

Early Orientalist scholars of Buddhism working under colonialism had little interest in the diversity and vitality of living Buddhist cultures. Instead, they cherry-picked the Buddhist teachings to fit their own modernist, Protestant worldview. This ahistorical perspective on Buddhism—a “Buddhism” created by and for European intellectuals—was then used to criticize living Buddhist cultures. These scholars believed that Mahayana Buddhism in general, but especially the Pure Land teachings, were a perverse distortion of the buddhadharma (as they defined it). Sadly, this attitude is still widely seen. Pure Land Buddhism is arguably the most commonly practiced form of Buddhism in the world. Yet in English-language academic and popular writing it is largely ignored, or wholly misunderstood. The Pure Land teachings are fundamental to Mahayana philosophy, ritual, meditation, art, and scripture. Generally, we could…

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THICH NHAT HANH WORE the simple brown robes of a monk. He walked and spoke mindfully. But the strength of steel lay just below his placid surface. It made him a kind of Buddhist revolutionary. As director of the Buddhist Peace Fellowship, I organized a talk by Thay in April 1991, in Berkeley, in the immediate aftermath of the first U.S. war against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and the police beating of African American Rodney King in Los Angeles. I was struck by Thay’s comments that night. He spoke of his deep anger over the war and the beating of King. Both triggered in him painful memories of the war in Vietnam and the brutal ignorance of U.S. oppression there. He said he had considered canceling his American tour, with all…

SOON AFTER I WAS ORDAINED by Thay as a novice nun in 1999 I began to have difficulties with an elder sister. This nun had gone through a lot of suffering and could sometimes be harsh in her speech. This was quite painful for me, and I struggled with the situation as a new member of the monastic community. As novices we were fortunate to have the opportunity to be Thay’s attendants when he would come to teach at our hamlet of Plum Village every other week. While Thay needed very little, it is customary in Asian culture for students to show care for their teacher as a way to learn from them more closely. So two of us novice monks or nuns would start by cleaning his room before…

when i first met youyou awakened something deep inside of methe wisdom of spiritual and blood ancestorsthe hope of future generations when i came to study with youabsorbing your teachingsin the Dharma hallsi cried every daytears of a heart openingmore than i ever knew possible when i am at my besti imagine youwalking with my bodyspeaking with my voice when i am at my worsti invite you to sit with mebreathe with meand hold the fire of my angerthe weight of my broken heart dear Thay, dear Teacher i know you are in meno you,no me now it is our turnas your studentsto continue youit feels like such a heavy responsibilitybut i know you believe in us dear Thay, dear Teacher may you be freemay we awaken togetheragain and againfor…

PURE LAND PHILOSOPHY HOW TO PRACTICE NEMBUTSU THE HISTORY OF PURE LAND BUDDHISM AMIDA IN AMERICA In a far-off celestial place to the west, Amida Buddha has a Pure Land, a realm where there is no suffering. It is said to be unexcelled—unique and exquisite, everlasting and limitless. In this “Land of Perfect Bliss,” buddhas, bodhisattvas, and sages are all welcome. And so are we.According to Pure Land Buddhist teachings, anyone can be reborn in this Pure Land if they contemplate and entrust in the infinite wisdom and compassion of the primordial buddha Amida. For those reborn in the Pure Land, enlightenment is attained. In fact, birth in Amida’s Pure Land is itself nirvana. The term “Pure Land Buddhism” can refer to the Pure Land teachings and practices that are…

“WHAT HAS THE UNITED STATES ever done to anyone?” This was the question asked by a woman whose back was to me as we stood in the ticket line. It was September 11, 2001, and we were in an overcrowded airport in Tucson, Arizona. I don’t know if her question came out of shock, defensiveness, or real historical and political naivete. Although I was aware of a list of things the U.S. had done, it was another answer to her question that came to me a month later when someone gave me the book Touching Peace, by Thich Nhat Hanh. The first meditation in the book invited me to notice my in-breath and out-breath and visualize myself as the nonhuman aspects of nature. I was anxious about the U.S.’s impending…

THAY DIDN’T SPEAK ABOUT PEACE. He was peace. He didn’t speak about contentment. He radiated contentment. He didn’t speak about love. He embodied love. To be in his presence was a tangible, visceral experience of love. Once Thay’s attendant invited us to tea with Thay. She said there would also be a movie star and his family who wanted to meet him. We were served tea and sat in silence for some time until Thay indicated that it was a time to speak. This gentleman said that he had success, fame, recognition, and a beautiful family, yet he realized he wasn’t happy. Thay nodded his head and sipped his tea. He then asked, “Have you ever watched your children sleeping?” “Yes,” he said, “I love to watch them sleep. They…

I can say that the soft whisper ofhis voice in the dark night of confusion,fear, and violence calls us home toour True Selves. I can say that his Teaching bringsthe dharma rain and I invite allof us to bathe in its healing waters. I can say that his gentle footstepsupon the earth bring the windsof peace, the thunder of compassion,and the powerful moonlight of understanding. I can say that I have been Gracedto enter the stream of awakening,finding the Sun of Love in my heartand the Miracle of Mindfulness in my very breath. I can say that he tirelesslyengages with this whole being in thenoblest of callings, healing andtransforming the breaking waves of our shadows. I can say that I have seenmy teacher because hehas caused the Noble Teacherin me…

IN THE WIDE RESPONSE to Thich Nhat Hanh’s death, I am reminded how immense (and wonderful) the influence of Buddhism has been in North America in recent decades. It’s not easy to quantify, because a lot of people were moved by a talk, a book, a retreat, but don’t think of themselves as Buddhists or wouldn’t be recognized thus by others, but were nevertheless realigned by Buddhist values, teachings, role models, possibilities. Sometimes they didn’t even know from what lineage that liberatory perspective came, but something was let go or welcomed in or reimagined. Nonattachment, perspectives on suffering, compassion, bodhisattva vows, mindfulness let someone be better to themselves or others or understand the world as codependent arisings and constant change. There is a subject I keep coming back to but…

FUNDAMENTALLY, THE PRACTICE of love begins with acceptance—the recognition that wherever we are is the appropriate place to practice, that the present moment is the appropriate time. But for so many of us, our longing to love and be loved has always been about a time to come, a space in the future when it will just happen, when our hungry hearts will finally be fed, when we will find love. More than thirty years ago, when I first began to think about Buddhism, there was little or no talk about Buddhism and love. Being a Buddhist was akin to being a leftist: it was all about the intellect, the philosophical mind. It was a faith for the thinking “man,” and love was nowhere to be found in the popular…

Pure Land Buddhism teaches that there was a monk named Dharmakara who lived in the distant past. Horrified by the defiled nature of the world, he engaged in ascetic practices for many years until he realized enlightenment, becoming Amida, the Buddha of Infinite Light. Amida Buddha used his miraclepowers to create a land of ultimate bliss, which provided its inhabitants with the ideal conditions to realize enligh-tenment. When the bodhisattvas of the ten directions asked how they could enter his pure land, Amida replied, “If you wish to be born in my realm, call me to mind again and again.” The beauty of Amida’s pure land is that it doesn’t just exist in some faraway place; it exists in this present world. The caveat, however, is we must purify our…