Michael Haederle profiles the Naropa University, and Buddhist secondary education institute in Boulder, Colorado. When the Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado, offered its first summer program in 1974, no one expected more than a few hundred people to register. But when Barbara Dilley arrived there to teach dance, she found 1,300 people eager to listen to talks by spiritual [...]
Women in Buddhism Study Initiative, University of Hamburg
Michael Haederle profiles the Women in Buddhism Study Initiative being conducted by University of Hamburg. Bhikkhu Analayo spent many years poring through the voluminous discourses of the Pali canon, trying to unravel an enduring mystery. What, he wondered, was the Buddha’s true view on the ordination of female monastics, or bhikkhunis? For followers of the Theravada [...]
Profile: The New York Buddhist Church
Michael Haederle profiles the New York Buddhist Church. The weathered bronze statue of Shinran Shonin, the thirteenth-century Japanese religious reformer, gazes watchfully across Riverside Drive toward the Hudson River, greeting visitors arriving for Sunday-morning services at Manhattan’s New York Buddhist Church. Taking their seats in rows of chairs, they will spend the next [...]
Profile: Sanshin Zen Community
Michael Haederle profiles the Sashin Zen Community, led by Shohaku Okumura Roshi and based in Bloomington, Indiana. The last thing he wanted to do was speak English. Shohaku Okumura had studied Buddhism and the thirteenth-century writings of Eihei Dogen at Tokyo’s Komazawa University, then taken priest’s vows and entered training at Antaiji, a Soto Zen temple in Kyoto [...]
Profile: Mangala Shri Bhuti
Growing up in rural northern India amid the Tibetan diaspora, Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche was always fascinated by America, but he never dreamed he would one day wind up living there, leading a vibrant sangha of dedicated practitioners. Yet by his early twenties he had met and married an American, Elizabeth Mattis-Namgyel, and the two were living in Nepal, where she was teaching [...]
Sesshin with Sasaki Roshi
At 101 years of age, Joshu Sasaki Roshi is still teaching his unique brand of Zen. Michael Haederle offers us a rare look at this enigmatic master. “You may hear bursts of gunfire or explosions during this sesshin,” the sign read. That gave me pause. Formal Rinzai Zen practice with Joshu Roshi was always intense, but gunplay had never before been part of the equation. As I [...]
