Dharma Wheel

Three things: The Lankāvatara should be taken as the definitive sutra on this topic for three reasons: 1) It defines tathāgatagarbha as cittaprakṛtiprabhāsvara aka the natural luminosity of the mind. 2) It defines all sentient beings as tathāgatagarbha and tathāgatagarbha as all sentient beings. 3....

karmanyingpo wrote: ↑Fri Apr 16, 2021 5:50 am
Thank you! Your area of expertise seems to be Japanese and Chinese Buddhism.

KN

I can't claim to be an expert but it is main area of interest.

A lord lolling on his pillows and a peasant plowing their fields are both "already Buddhas" so each just needs to "recognize" his current perfection, and no change to the social architecture is necessary. It's an interesting line of thought. In order to recognize, no change is necessary, but once r...

The most radical forms of 本覚思想 ( Hongaku Shiso or "Original Enlightenment thought") in medieval Japan taught that all beings were already enlightened, just as they are, and that it is only a matter of "realizing" this supposed truth. This kind of thinking is most explicitly set forth in certain Tend...

The Bodhisattva Ksitigarbha has vowed not to enter enlightenment until every single sentient being has entered before him.

He has your back.

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...