BOOK NOTICE: Buddhist Monasticism

I’m always thrilled to find another exceptional rare Dharma book for free online. The latest treasure for me came  as I was looking to answer a question I had about what ethical advice we might find for our secular lives within Asian monastic traditions. Buddhist Monasticism in East Asia - Places of Practice ; Edited by James A. Benn, Lori Meeks, James Robson is an anthology of scholarly essays loosely tied together around the theme of monasteries and monastic life in mediaeval Japan. The book would be invaluable for the opening summary alone - Neither Too Far, Nor Too Near: The Historical and Cultural Contexts of Buddhist Monasteries in Medieval China and Japan, Robson reviews the various critical perspectives on Japanese Buddhism, especially the distinction between the New Kamakura Buddhism and the Esoteric-Exoteric Establishment theories. He covers the developments of ideas of monasticism in Europe and Asia as well.


Other essays included are:
 1. Taking a Meal at a Lay Supporter’s Residence: The Evolution of the Practice in Chinese Vinaya Commentaries; Koichi Shinohara
2. Monastic Spaces and Sacred Traces: Facets of Chinese Buddhist Monastic Records; James Robson 
3. Pictorial Program in the Making of Monastic Space: From Jing’aisi of Luoyang to Cave 217 at Dunhuang ; Eugene Wang
4. The Monastery Cat in Cross-cultural Perspective: Cat Poems of the Zen Masters; T.H. Barrett
5. The Monastic Institution in Medieval Japan: The Insider’s View ; William Bodiford
6. Vows for the Masses: Eison and the Popular Expansion of Precept-Conferral Ceremonies in Premodern Japan;  Lori Meeks
7. Koen and the “Consecrated Ordination” Within Japanese Tendai; Paul Groner

All of the titles are equally high quality from some of the finest Buddhologists around. For those of us in the Tendai line, Paul Groner is one of our clearest and most important English voices. Not all of the essays are equally captivating (for me at least), however, they all provided rare contributions tor my understanding of Japanese Buddhism. I recently re-read Suzuki’s 1934 classic on Zen monasticism, and the contrast between it, and its many romanticized and narrow notions of monastic life and this anthology is refreshing. This book brings a balance and realism to the forms and functions of Japanese monastic life.

I could not track down the exact download link, but I can send you a copy (PDF, 1.0 MB).

Yours in the Dharma,                          
Innen, doshu
om namo amida butsu                        
      
                  
  
  
           

GOOD VESAK

This is the period when we celebrate Vesak, the birth of our lineage ancestor, Shakyamuni, the historical Buddha. At this time each year, dharma practitioners all over the world recall his life and his teaching.
How could we imagine our world without the arrival and presence of this person? Consider how many nations have built their identity on his life and teaching, how many people have set their live-course from his inspiration.  No less than any other tradition, nation or Dharma practitioner, we in the Tendai family offer great bows and gassho for his life!





 

Milestones:
 

We mark the passing of one of our beloved sangha members. Kojun Janet Sciba passed away April 23rd, after a year and a half of treatments for a brain tumour. Kojun was a rare person, dedicated to the Dharma, especially her loving Kwan Yin. I had the honour of co-leading the memorial on May 9 and it was very moving to be part of the remembrances of her family.

 



We also mark the passing of Keisho V K Leary, the founder and abbot of the California Tendai Monastery in Cobb, California. I had the pleasure of meeting Keisho and completed several gyo-trainings with him. He was dedicated to promoting the esoteric practices of our tradition and created a goma-dan ( building for performing the goma or Fire Ceremony) on the precincts of the monastery. A huge loss to Tendai and Western dharma. There is a lovely memorial on the Tendai websites Shingi posting.
http://www.tendai.org/

Yours in the Dharma,                          
Innen, doshu
om namo amida butsu   

THE GREAT MATTER

    Let me respectfully remind you:
    Life and death are of supreme importance,
    Time swiftly passes by and opportunity is lost.
    Each one of us should strive to awaken -
    Awaken!
    Take heed.
    Do not squander your life.

We’ve had much cause to reflect on this famous verse over the past few weeks. We have had two sad and painful losses in our small and large sangha. These remind us that the dharma we study and practice is more than a moral guide for our day to day lives. Too often people reduce religious life to “being a good person”. This is certainly good advice but the teaching which makes up our religious life is more than that. It is exactly this matter of supreme importance - life and death.
Our practice calls us to come face-to-face with our mortality and the inescapable fact of that “ticking clock” in the lives of everyone we care about. As Buddhists, we toss around the term “impermanence” and it can become a philosophical abstract unless we come back again and again to it as the fact of our own lives.
As these past few weeks have reminded us, we will experience the passing of so many of the people who inhabit our lives - we will observe the decline and unraveling of our own lives. Watching a beloved sangha member fade into silence was a complex and wonder-filled experience. It brought me back once more to this great matter of life and death.
I gassho to all those who presented this teaching.

Yours in the Dharma,                          
Innen, doshu
om namo amida butsu   

PRACTICE IN RENFREW AND RETREAT ANNOUNCED

1. RENFREW WEEKNIGHT SERVICE
We’ve decided to initiate a bi-monthly meditation service in Renfrew. Our first session will take place on Thursday, April 30, from 7.00-8.30pm at Innen’s home, 92 Lorne Street N, just behind the Metro in the West end of town. (A few doors away from Tracey’s Dairy). The program will be a familiar service format. We’re experimenting with this location and format to evaluate if we will establish a regular service back in Renfrew.
No experience is necessary and we welcome people of all faiths. Cost is $10.00/session or free for members.

2. VESAK RETREAT
We will hold our annual Vesak Retreat on Saturday, May 16, 9.00am-1.00pm at the RMML site in Pembroke. Vesak is the worldwide celebration of the birth of Shakyamuni, the historical Buddha and the founder of all Buddhist traditions.
This retreat will combine sitting and walking meditation, as well as some EASE movements and contemplations. We request pre-registration so we can provide adequate food for snacks and lunch. Please confirm with me by May 14.
Cost is $30.00

Yours in the Dharma,                          
Innen, doshu
om namo amida butsu                      

       

HIGAN RETREAT

Just back from an excellent retreat at our New York state head temple. This was the Higan event and we joined some 15 others for a 2-day event with the theme of Buddhist Mindfulness. Participants were all ages and levels of experience and, for the first time, Red Maple brought 4 participants. It wasn’t the nicest weather, with lots of unseasonably cold and snowy days, but nobody seemed disappointed (even if a little weary of the cold). Even the Saturday kokordo walk up Barnaget Road, as chilly as it was, had a nobility and restfulness to it.
We did several structured practices:

• a four viharas reflection
• a contemplation on the Four Foundations
• a walking recitation

and we had several lovely services. Monshin designed a lovely Amitabha service on the Saturday night with a number of unfamiliar gathas that made it interesting.

On the Saturday evening we watched a captivating documentary on the kaihogyo practice of an extraordinary Tendai priest who did that legendary walk of 26 miles, daily for nearly 10 years. I have seen it before but found it no less astounding what dedication an ordinary person can cultivate.
Deep bows to

• Judy B, Jiho and Liz for their companionship and efforts
• Monshin for his leadership
• Shumon for taking such good care of us
• Gyo-sho, the temple assistant for his tireless support. I was especially taken with his drumming during the Heart Sutra.                       

Yours in the Dharma,                          
Innen, doshu
om namo amida butsu

O-HIGAN

Its exciting to be preparing for this year’s Spring o-Higan at our Dharma-home in New York. I haven’t done this retreat for a few years and it’s always a relaxing and restoring experience - especially nice to be going with 3 sangha members from here, Jiho, Judy and Liz. We (Canadians) haven’t participated in this retreat that much over the years, so to get four of us at once is great.
This celebration is focussed on the equinox (there is a twin retreat held in September as well). This is identified as the unique period of the solar year when hours of daylight and night are balanced. It marks a point of equipoise in the realms of birth and death, the worlds of the living and the spirit world. The word "higan" means "the other shore," referring to the Buddhist ideas of nirvana, awakening or any kind of spiritual conclusion. During higan, people visit family graves to comfort the spirits of ancestors.
For us in the Great White North, its more about celebrating the conclusion of yet another season of cold and darkness. This has been an extraordinarily challenging winter for us, and for our hosts in New York, so the time to practice outdoors in Spring clothes will be part of this transition from hunkering down to opening up.


Yours in the Dharma,                           
Innen, doshu
om namo amida butsu   

GHOST BOY

Over my recent vacation I started reading Ghost Boy: The Miraculous Escape of a Misdiagnosed Boy Trapped Inside His Own Body which provides an autobiographical account of the experience of South African,  Martin Pistorius , who, at age 12, descends into a near-death coma. At 18, he re-awakens to the world  and, with the help of several caring and insightful helpers, re-discovers his life, his body and his place in the physical world. Instead of being frightening, as with books like Brain on Fire, this is an immensely uplifting, positive and inspiring tale, told simply by the man who lived and lives it. I strongly recommend the book.

At our last mindfulness practice we tried to recreate a ghost-boy experience. We sat completely unmoving, with eyes open. I instructed everyone to block out rather than reach deep into their physical experiences. As people did this, I moved about the room emulating a mildly disinterested care-giver, as Pistorius experienced repeatedly.
In the debrief, some found the experience re-affirmed the safety and richness of their mental space. Others grew impatient and annoyed with their bodies. Myself, as the caregiver, it brought an indifference to the presence of others, a tendency to view them as lumps of flesh, as Pistorius’ helpers often did.

in the Dharma,
Innen