Dharma Wheel

How popular is Zen in Japan, Chan in China? I know that great damage has been done to the Dharma in mainland China by the CCP, but the Dharma persists there to some extent, tightly overseen by the Communist Party. In Taiwan and among Chinese abroad in other nations, Buddhism is in a healthier and m...

Nothing uplifts me like studying the Dharma.

Buddhism is necessary...for me. I can't speak for others.

南無阿弥陀仏

Out of curiosity, why are you required to do this? What is the practice?

Actually, as a lay person, one has a choice to follow it or not. In the Tibetan tradition we purify all vows with the practice of Vajrasattva. Also, bodhisattva and Vajrayana vows take precedence. This is fascinating to me because it is not the way it is generally presented to laymen in most of Eas...

Lord Guatama Buddha designated refraining from intoxicants as one of the five vows for laymen, and thus a core vinaya vow for monks as well. It's one of the most basic parts of being Buddhist. No, it’s not a core vinaya vow. It’s one of the 90 or minor Vinaya vows. The core vows are the four defeat...

Ahh I see...it’s like untaught Wisdom? One way I think of it personally is like being toasty warm in your home and looking at your thermometer reading for outside as being below zero. "Gee its cold out there!" you mutter. This is conceptual cognition: you know it, but only on one level. Non-concept...

Lord Guatama Buddha designated refraining from intoxicants as one of the five vows for laymen, and thus a core vinaya vow for monks as well. It's one of the most basic parts of being Buddhist. One argument used is that it causes heedlessness and the breaking of other vows. There is an old tale to su...

I like the terminology that Dr. Alexander Berzin uses :"conceptual cognition" versus "non-conceptual cognition." Of course "perception" and "cognition" are not the same thing so you might be talking about something different, but he uses these terms to contrast "knowing something intellectually," li...

Shinran Shonin was one of the 163 disciples of Honen Shonin who signed the Shichikajo-kishomon declaration, along with Master Honen, in the year 1204. It should be noted that Master Shinran considered himself to be a loyal disciple of Master Honen throughout his whole life. The doctrinal differences...

Very nice! Thank you indeed.
南無阿弥陀仏。

Exquisite. Thank you for posting this.

Matter and material particles are Samsaric in nature. The elements that make up matter and physical energy are empty of intrinsic self-existence. In Buddhist cosmology, Buddha fields are generally outside of even the highest heavens and formless realms. They are (to my knowledge) not "made of" matte...

Correct. But then again something might just be the exactly right thing for someone to hear at a given time, discursive though it may be. There were only 14 questions that the Buddha refused to answer. The nature of the atman was not one of them, and he taught on this quite a bit. And believe it or...

Here is what I think: DharmaWheel, as much as I love it, spends far too much time bogged down in Metaphysical fretting about whether this or that aspect of the Dharma is "Hinduistic." The Historical Buddha famously looked askance at metaphysical musings and his teachings were largely soteriological....

1-Kasuga-Deer.jpg Deer-shaped reliquary from the early-medieval Nara Period, Japan. The Buddha-relics are encased in the flaming Jewel atop the deer and you can make them out a bit Owned by Kasuga Shrine, a Shinto institution that once, in that era, practiced a form of Hybrid Shinto-Buddhism and th...

"Are there any precedents that allow for 'developments' of Buddhism after the Buddha?" Of course... The doctrine of upaya or "skillful means." The Bodhisattva uses whatever is at hand -- whatever it takes --to trigger awakening. Each moment calls for its own unique upaya . This, of course, includes ...

Greetings Dharma brothers and sisters. As you know we live in politically sensitive times. Old assumptions are being upended, controversies about "cancel culture" abound. When I was a young man growing up, it was seen as a positive thing to take an interest in another culture. "Cross cultural pollin...

Is this in the Northeast USA?

So a Christian monk who just went on a contemplative mode all the time, a Jain or Advaita who just meditated their whole life, are these counted as pratyekabuddha-yanist? I would guess that deep contemplation or meditation per se is not what makes a pratyekabuddha, but rather it would hinge on what...

They are "solitary realizers," sometimes outside the field of formal Buddhism all together. Given this definition, it is not surprising we don't hear much from those on such a solitary path. The Khaggavisāṇa sutta is sometimes said to be a teaching of this path: https://www.dhammatalks.org/suttas/KN...