Gleanings In Buddha Fields

The hit Nintendo game Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild has a very simple plot, but a very rich world to explore. The kingdom of Hyrule, where most (if not all) Legend of Zelda games take place, is a civilization with a very long, rich history stretching millenia. But in Breath of the Wild, the kingdom has at last been destroyed. This incarnation of Link awakens after sleeping for 100 years to…

Poem 45 of the Ise Stories is an unusual anecdote, and includes some great poetry about summer. According to the story, there was a young woman who was hopelessly in love with someone (probably the protagonist of the Ise Stories, it is unclear), but she endured this unrequited love alone. In time, she fell very ill, and confessed to her parents her love for the young man. The parents called the…

The Lotus Sutra is a large, very influential text in the Buddhist tradition, and includes many similes, parables, and symbolic imagery. It’s not a simple read, speaking from experience and maybe not the first sutra I would recommend if you’re brand new to Buddhism. And yet if you do read it, there are parts that will stay with you for a long time. For example, the Parable of the Burning House in…

Hello dear readers, just a few odds and ends I wanted to post about. As always thanks for reading! First, I have been busy recovering some old translations of the Three Pure Land Sutras from the obscurity of the Wayback Machine: The Larger Sutra on the Buddha of Immeasurable Life The Amitabha Sutra The Contemplation Sutra When I first got into Buddhism 20+ years ago, it was easy to find such…

Recently, I came upon a cool website with excellent Buddhist art: https://www.shoujuji.com/post/%E7%95%A5%E4%B8%89%E5%AE%9D%EF%BC%88%E3%82%8A%E3%82%83%E3%81%8F%E3%81%95%E3%82%93%E3%81%BC%E3%81%86%EF%BC%89 The link above shows a monk chanting the Ryakusanbo, a short liturgy used in Soto Zen, but other links show for example: Esoteric Buddhism – explaining esoteric Buddhism (密教, mikkyō) Prince…

Recently I came upon this awesome poem by the Tang-Dynasty Chinese poet Du Fu,1 under the title of “Spring Views” (春望, chūn wàng) in the year 757 while visiting the capital city of Chang’an during the chaos of the An Lushan rebellion. ClassicalSimplifiedPinyinTranslation國破山河在国破山河在guó pò shān hé zàiThe country is broken, though hills and rivers remain,城春草木深城春草木深chéng chūn cǎo mù shēnIn the city…

Rev. Kasahara’s book Journey to the Pure Land mentions a Jodo Shu Buddhist text I had never heard of called the Sanmai Hottokuki (三昧発得記) which is a personal record by Honen of Pure Land visions he had from 1198 to 1206. The title can be roughly translated as “A Record of [Pure Land] Samadhi Experiences”. There’s very little information about this text in English. The fact that Honen had visions…

Something cool that I randomly found on Wikipedia (source): This is a 18th century Chinese depiction of the Pure Land of Amida Buddha, currently at the National Museum in Taiwan. The artist, Ding Guanpeng (丁觀鵬. 丁观鹏) was a painter for the Imperial court in Beijing and even studied oil painting under a Jesuit named Giuseppe Castiglione. There’s a few things I find really interesting about this…

The fourth section of the Shushogi, a 19th century lay-Buddhist text of the Soto-Zen tradition has a paragraph that I enjoy reading from time to time. Tenderness means viewing all beings with compassion and addressing them with kind words. Tenderness is to speak while bearing in mind the words: “I love all living beings as my children.” Praise the virtuous and pity the virtueless. Through…