Roger Jackson reviews Heart of the Great Perfection: Dudjom Lingpa’s Visions of the Great Perfection, Vol. 1 by B. Alan Wallace. From the Spring 2017 issue of Buddhadharma: The Practitioner's Quarterly. The first Tibetan Buddhist retreat I attended, right out of college, was an intensive weekend at Tarthang Tulku’s Nyingma Institute in Berkeley in the fall of 1972. The [...]
The Path of Solidarity
Doshin Nathan Woods considers what it means to stand arm in arm as part of our Buddhist practice. From the Spring 2017 issue of Buddhadharma: The Practitioner's Quarterly. There is a meme I often see these days, at times attributed to Suzuki Roshi or to Aitken Roshi, that runs something like this: “Renunciation is not getting rid of the things of the world but accepting [...]
The Choice Is Yours
There are two ways to understand dependent origination, teaches Ajahn Buddhadasa. But only one leads to liberation. From the Spring 2017 issue of Buddhadharma: The Practitioner's Quarterly. In the Pali suttas there are two descriptions of what occurred under the Bodhi tree at the time of the Buddha’s great awakening. In one version, appearing in various texts, the Buddha [...]
Buddhist Ethics in the 21st Century
In the Spring 2017 issue of Buddhadharma: The Practitioner's Quarterly, Ajahn Amaro, Rev. angel Kyodo williams, Pema Khandro Rinpoche, and Noah Levine explore the relevance, social context, and blind spots in our practice of sila today. Koun Franz introduces the forum by sharing what ethics has meant in his own practice. When I first came to Buddhism as a teenager, I [...]
Buddhadharma Book Briefs for Spring 2017
One of the oldest examples of Buddhist writing is the Book of Eights, or Atthakavagga, a short collection of poems preserved in the Pali Canon. In The Buddha Before Buddhism: Wisdom from the Early Teachings (Shambhala 2016), Gil Fronsdal explores this ancient anthology, arguing that it is remarkable in that it presents “the Buddha’s teachings pared down to their most essential [...]
Inside the Spring 2017 Buddhadharma magazine
The Spring 2017 issue of Buddhadharma is available now. Preview the magazine contents and sample articles below. Buddhist Ethics in the 21st Century The relevance, social context, and blind spots in our practice of sila today. The Heart of This Moment The practice of metta doesn’t require an ambition to save the world, says Christina Feldman. It just requires us to bring [...]
Let’s Stand Up Together
In this commentary from the Spring 2017 issue of Buddhadharma, monk-scholar Bhikkhu Bodhi urges Buddhists to become "more visible as advocates of peace, basic sanity, and social justice" — and explains why doing so transcends party politics. I recently came across a news report stating that 2,500 religious leaders had signed a petition urging Congress to reject Donald [...]