“Experience your true self and help this world.” -Zen Master Seung Sahn Compass of Zen is a book that was created to be a handbook for Seung Sahn’s students. Seung Sahn was a Korean Zen Master who founded the Kwan Um School of Zen, one of the largest Zen organizations in the United States. Since that time several of Seung Sahn’s students started their own communities including Furnace Mountain Zen Center, Golden Wind Zen Order, the Five Mountain Zen Order.... Read more
“In my native land waves of attachment to friends and kin surge, hatred for enemies rages like fire, the darkness of stupidity, not caring what to adopt or avoid, thickens – To abandon my native land is the practice of a bodhisattva.” – Togme Sangpo, the Thirty-Seven Verses on the Practice of a Bodhisattva The quote above is the second of the 37 Verses, a guide to how we can awaken unbound compassion in our lives. We could easily... Read more
“Now that I have this great ship, a precious human life, so hard to obtain, I must carry myself and others across the ocean of samsara. To that end, listen, reflect, and meditate day and night without distraction, is the practice of a bodhisattva.” – Thogme Sangpo, 37 Verses on the Practice of a Bodhisattva. Do you think your life is meaningful? If not, what would it take to make it so? At the Rime Buddhist Center we’re about to... Read more
The preliminaries are our support for practice. We need a solid foundation for our mind training practice and this is where it begins. For the preliminaries we contemplate a teaching called The Four Thoughts That Change The Mind. This is a list of things that motivate and inspire us. That’s our foundation. When we feel discouraged, when the path seems like it won’t be for us, reflecting on these things can help us stay on track and remind us why all of... Read more
I was reading a book called “Nectar of Manjushri’s Speech” by Kunzang Pelden and I came across a teaching that I wanted to share. This text, by the way, is a detailed commentary on “Way of the Bodhisattva”. I recommend this book if you’re interested in going deeply into Bodhisattva teachings. The section I’m talking about today is the section on Diligence. This is a teaching called “the Four Forces” which represents four things that help us in the... Read more
In the Mahayana Buddhist tradition we are encouraged to cultivate six transcendent virtues, the paramitas. Paramita is often translated as “perfection” so this teaching is often called “The Six Perfections” In his ‘Letter to a Friend,’ which is an instructional text for lay practitioners, Nagarjuna calls the six perfections the essence of the path. As we train in mindfulness and wisdom, these virtues are reinforced and strengthened. Here’s how Nagarjuna describes them: Generosity and discipline, patience, diligence, Concentration, and... Read more
Rebirth. This is a concept a lot of us struggle with sometimes as western Buddhists. The traditional teachings in Buddhism is that when you die some part of you is reborn based on your actions in this life. If you do good things that generate merit, you’re likely to be reborn in better circumstances. And if you do a lot of really bad things, you’ll be reborn somewhere less pleasant. Not only that, but also you’ve had many many lives... Read more
Generosity is one of the most important virtues in the Buddhist tradition. Generosity helps us cultivate harmony with the world around us and makes people like us. It’s hard to hate someone that’s giving things away all the time. It also helps us in another way. Generosity is one of our antidotes to selfishness. We want to learn to be generous instead of miserly and to be giving instead of covetous. Selfishness doesn’t serve us very well because we can... Read more
In his “Letter to a Friend” Nagarjuna references a teaching called “The Tenfold Virtuous Path.” This text, by the way, was written to a king that Nagarjuna was friendly with. Because it was written to a king, we can take these instructions ourselves as laypeople (a king is not a monk). This text represents an outline of the Mahayana Buddhist Path. Today we’re going to explore Nagarjuna’s teaching on these ten virtues and their opposites, the ten non-virtues. He... Read more
Bodhisattva Road
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