#dharmavinaya things

You can meditate anytime, anywhere. You can meditate sitting, standing, laying down, walking. You do not need anything aside from yourself to meditate. Genuinely, that is the only essential.

The smell of rain. The singing of the windchimes. The falling of the rain against the old roof. The brief reprieve from the thick humidity. The heavy branches of the maple trees swaying in the wind.

Diary of a JewBu: a Jewish Buddhist's mood board (as requested)

"...at the table, Shabbat candles; in the living room, incense; at the doorway, a mezuzah; in the meditation room, a five-foot-high Buddha. If he glanced at the bookshelf, he would have seen dharma and kabbalah competing for space, and one was as likely to find Pali as Hebrew." -Kamenetz — the Jew in the Lotus (1994); ch. 1, pg. 10

Tonight, he started playing his music again. It went on for hours. I decided I was still going to try and meditate tonight regardless.

I often just meditate without candles or anything for my nightly meditations, but, since I was already a little aggravated, I decided to just calm myself and make my space feel welcoming and comfortable despite what was happening outside. I opened the doors of my butsudan, opened the panels of my antique Buddhist triptych, lit a mantra candle of mine. I sat down, mala beads in hand. I took my handwritten sutra book down from its shelf (I love to recite sutras before sitting in silent meditation).

And then, before I even vocalized the first line of the first sutra, my neighbor turned off his music, cut his truck engine, and went inside.

Buddhists don't "worship" Buddha and he is not seen as a deity (in fact, Siddhartha Gautama made it very clear that he should not be worshipped or deified), but rather as an enlightened human being whose teachings can help others also find enlightenment, peace, and the cessation of suffering. So, no, Jewish Buddhists are not worshipping any idols, and many of them maintain their religious Jewishness and their relationship with and reverence for G-d whilst also practicing Buddhism. Some others may maintain Jewish culture and philosophy while favoring Buddhism as their sole religion. Others may view Judaism as their religion and Buddhism as their philosophy, their ethos, or their spiritual path. Jewish Buddhists come in many shapes and forms, but none of them are "idol worshippers."