Acharya Sujatin (temple host)

Dharmavidya:

Buddhism praises awareness, especially awareness of presently arisen states. There is a value in being aware of what is arising, being aware of what is persisting, what is fading away. Thus I might notice that a feeling of sadness is arising, or that sadness is persisting, or that the sadness is fading, or that happiness is arising,…[Read more]

Dharmavidya:

October 4th:

I have just come back from the conference of Buddhist teachers in Europe. While I was there I heard much discussion about secularisation and how it is necessary to secularise the Dharma in order to make it palatable to modern people. Personally, I am resistant to this idea. The Dharma is, in essence, a faith that lodges…[Read more]

Dharmavidya:

QUESTION: What is shunyata?

SHORT ANSWER: Shunyata is the completion of learning

LONGER ANSWER: The important thing is to have the Dharma in your heart. How does this come about? There could be a million different ways. Perhaps something happens in life that shakes one’s complacency. One sees this with many of the great figures – b…[Read more]

Dharmavidya:

Amida Shu is a form of Pureland Buddhism. It derives from a tradition of Buddhist teaching that started in India, matured in China and flowered in Japan. In all probability to derives mostly from teachings that Buddha gave to lay people. There is, therefore, relatively less emphasis upon renunciation, meditation and the monastic…[Read more]

https://mailchi.mp/37ce35b0edfe/amida-in-scotland-mid-september-newsletter

Dharmavidya:

THE GOAL

Most people have little or no idea about the goal of Buddhism. When I realised this, I published the book “Not Everything is Impermanent”. Most people said, “But I thought that Buddhism taught that everything is impermanent.” Only those who really knew Buddhism said, “Yes, of course, nirvana is not impermane…[Read more]

Dharmavidya, on his Eleusis network:

Dragons also take refuge in Amida Buddha. The dragons are proud of their role as defenders of the Dharma. They roar around on their motorbikes and scare off ghosts, demons and anyone who seems to represent a threat. However, all these threats only exist in the relative world of conditions. Amida is the Buddha…[Read more]

SHARING: SOME INITIAL POINTS

Recently I was involved in a discussion about “oneness”. Clearly, to some people in the Buddhist world, oneness is a big number. However, it is not always that clear what people mean by this idea and it may be that different people take it to have different implications. Nonetheless, this particular discussion hel…[Read more]

Dharmavidya writes:

This morning my homily to the dragons was on kindness. After all, dragons must learn kindness too and they have their special contribution. The Dharma is not just about kind folk remaining kind nor just nice people being nice. Buddha nature will always be so in any case. Nor is it about beings changing their nature, really. It…[Read more]

Much of what I have learnt as Buddhism over the years appears to be topsy-turvy. Although there is a well established idea of what Buddhism is, this is deceptive. There is a hidden meaning within Buddhism that most do not see. The hidden meaning is more obvious than the commonly accepted one, but as people are blind, they do not see what is…[Read more]

Dharmavidya:

EMPTINESS

Buddhism talks a good deal about shunyata, emptiness. What is this emptiness? The earliest Buddhist texts provide a psychology of what we could call the point mind – a mind without content. Our modern (and later Buddhist) psychologies speak a lot about the content of the mind and much therapy and education is devoted to…[Read more]

Dharmavidya:

I could have called this ZT Skills, but I don’t like the idea of reducing therapy to a set of skills, as though you could build it up like a set of lego bricks. Rather it is an art. To play music you might need certain abilities with a keyboard or set of strings, but good music is not primarily technical in that way. It requires a f…[Read more]

Buddhist Psychology has what we in the West might call behavioural, cognitive, humanistic and analytical aspects all together in a single system. In other words, it deals with all aspects of the process of internalising experience and turning it into future action. This is called the skandha cycle about which I have written elsewhere.

This makes…[Read more]