Dharma Wheel

thank you for posting this, how interesting, going to read the links asap!
gassho
Rory

This has always been one of my favorite texts; thanks for sharing. Zhiyi (Chih-I, Chigi) the founder of the Tiantai school made the practice of this sutra one of the 4 samadhis; he wrote about it in his masterwork , the Great Calming and Contemplation, ( Mohe Zhiguan, Maka Shikan ) it still practic...

this was a fascinating read and I went over also to the linked article and read the interview. Thank you for posting this! The photos of the Lotus Sutra were beautiful as well as seeing again how important a sutra it is!
gassho
Rory

So it should follow that our practice has far reaching merit for all beings, and that's my understanding of the Mahayana view... I'm sure you are more familiar with this than I am, but the "seven generations" thing seems to be a Vedic or Brahmanical legacy, a convention from the Buddha's time that ...

I remember reading a Tiantai text that did teach it, I don't remember if it was by Zhiyi or someone else though. It recommended Zhiyi's six sounds as well as the movement of Qi around the body. Zhiyi taught the six sounds? They feature quite prominently in various texts about nourishing life practi...

Bhikshu Dharmamitra translated: Zhiyi: Six Dharma Gates to the Sublime: A Classic Meditation Manual on Traditional Indian Buddhist Meditation The dissemination came from China, Martin Collcutt writes in "Five Mountains: Rinzai Zen Monastic Institutions in Japan" Harvard University Press,p. 33 that J...

It will be not surprising if one may find some similarities within taoist practices or indian or tibetan yoga. they do not have to be exactly very same but similar, yes. However the aim might be very different. Finally taoism or indian non-buddhist yoga have different agenda. Moreover they have not...

As I mentioned above, esoteric sensibilities, along with other influences that would seem foreign to our materialistic assumptions about reality, permeated pre-modern Japanese culture. Its hard to delineate what is Buddhist, what comes from the native shaman traditions, what is Daoist, etc. In this...

It may not be weird Japanese religion as I recall that Chinese meditators travelled via Daoist landscape paintings bother I think it may have been in one of Livia Kohn's books, it quite interested me no end. Rory Agreed! I want to hear more about this. Rory, do you remember what book Kohn says this...

In the case of the subject of my wife's work, the term "mandara" was appended recently - 1960s, IIRC. They are maps of sacred space and largely symbolic... its not clear if people traveled through the images... there are similar paintings relating to the Kasuga Shrine where we have diaries of peopl...

According to Elizabeth ten Grotenhuis in "Japanese Mandalas", the Taima Mandara is not really a mandala, but rather a "Transformation Tableaux". In Japan, the term mandala or rather mandara has been appropriated to describe many objects and images that are not technically mandala. For instance, che...

My pleasure! Here is an wonderful example from Japan, the famous Taima Mandala:
https://web.archive.org/web/20131215142 ... con-ex.htm
and there is a nice explanation of each section.
gassho
Rory

Hosso Do you have any recommendations for a Hosso primer? I'm working my way through Living Yogacara by Tagawa Shun'ei. Pretty accessible read, but not sure how its received generally. Any comments? That's a great book, Rev. Tagawa is the head of the Hosso sect in Japan. here is a link to a 2009 un...

there is a famous mandala used in many exoteric schools: the Pure Land mandala
gassho
Rory

Hosso Do you have any recommendations for a Hosso primer? I'm working my way through Living Yogacara by Tagawa Shun'ei. Pretty accessible read, but not sure how its received generally. Any comments? That's a great book, Rev. Tagawa is the head of the Hosso sect in Japan. here is a link to a 2009 un...

Dear Rev. Jikai; thank you for all the work! you have put into the outlines. Please do not take my long silence for disinterest rather the material is complex and difficult... This passage at the end is causing me some confusion: The Middle is the perfect integration of the three principles, such th...

Been trying to track down this description of Genshin's elaborate Pure Land ceremonies that aristocrats often took part in. Lost it when my hard drive crashed recently. There's some mention of it in Living Buddhist Statues in Early Medieval and Modern Japan By S. Horton, p 66. Do you mean the Mukae...

Rhodes teaches at Otani a Shinshu sect University, he also critiques Andrews reading and understanding of Genshin, in his book pp. 138-9 and more. Finally from Ojoyoshu : Even while remaining mindful (of the buddha) by reciting his name and seeking the Pure Land, contemplate (it in the following way...

I've started a new thread. For those who would like to read Genshin's Ojoyoshu Rev. Josho Cirlea researched and found an old translation by E.Reichauer and kindly posted it on academia.edu for free download here: https://www.academia.edu/6310675/Ojoyoshu_-_Collected_Essays_on_Birth_in_the_Pure_Land_...

Such an interesting discussion. I was taught by a Jodo monk and attended a Shinshu temple, I have so much to be grateful for and am very appreciative, but for me I never could agree that vocal Nenbutsu was the supreme way, I felt drawn to early strains of Pure Land that to engage in many Mahayana pr...