Hi Everybody,
Easter Sunday. A time for peace and friendship. Lets hope in the next few months we see peace breaking out in Syria and the pain and suffering of so many people brought to an end.
The ground we've covered in the past dozen or so episodes has been a necesssarily brief account of the many meanings locked up within nam myoho renge kyo. But having a more comprehensive understanding of those meanings isn't really the key to unlocking the value that it embodies. The fact is that it's this practice focused around the chanting of this phrase that is Nichiren's great legacy to all of us. Nichiren was in many ways a great modernist, and he makes it clear in his writings that this practice was fashioned for ordinary people no matter what place or period they inhabit, 13th Century Japan or 21st century Europe. People with busy everyday lives and much else to grab their attention, to enable them to get to grips with the values and the principles of Buddhism, and so to understand that even in the very midst of life's difficulties and challenges, it is possible to build lives filled with hope and optimism and resilience, and yes...great happiness too.
That's it. Done for today. It's shorter than normal I know but it brings us to a neat end for the discussion of nam myoho renge kyo, and next time we can launch off into a discussion about the gohonzon.
Hope to see you then.
All my best wishes,
William
PS The Case for Buddhism is available from Amazon and as a download on Kindle.
Very soon out in Spanish!!!
Sunday 27 March 2016
Sunday 20 March 2016
my buddhist blog number 127
Hi Everybody,
Hope all is well with you.
We're closing in on the end of this chapter and this book. Only half a dozen pages to go.
I've just learned that the Spanish version is about to be published! Which is really great news. It makes the book available to the huge Spanish speaking audience in the US and in South America.
Right well we've been explorign the meaning of the mantra that Nichiren Buddhists chant, nam myoho renge kyo. It is the title of the Lotus Sutra, which contains the key teachings of Mahaayna Buddhism in classical Japanese. Over the past few episodes we've looked in detail at the underlying meanings of nam, and myoho and renge. So you can revisit those episodes if you wish to refresh your memory, and in this one we're talking about kyo.
So justas with myoho and renge, the word kyo embodies many meanings. It is literally translated as ' sutra' or the voice or teaching of the Buddha. But it also measn vibration or sound, so can be taken to represent the vibrations that spread out from someone in the process of chanting. Indeed there is a well-known Buddhist saying that ' the voice does the Buddha's work,' and there is no question that the sound or the vibration that is created by a group of people chanting, even quite a small group, can be very powerful.
I can still recall with great clarity for example, the very first Buddhist meeting I went to, some time before I actually started practising. It was a dark cold winter's evening I remember and we were walking along this street of narrow Victorian houses in West London, with me thinking not particularly positive thoughts such as, ' Oh well, it can't last much more than an hour this meeting!' And then, as we turned up the short garden path to the house, coming through the closed front door was this wonderful resonant sound. Strong. Confident. Vibrant. It actually made the hair tingle on the back of my neck I recall. A sound produced by just a dozen or so ordinary people, chanting nam myoho renge kyo.'
Enough for today I think.
I have to say re-writing that passage I can still recall that first meeting. And I've been chanting every day since then. When I say that this practice has profondly changed my life, I mean precisely that. It has changed my life in more ways than I can recount, all of them immensely beneficial.
See you next time,
William
The Case for Buddhism is available in paperback from Amazon and as a download on Kindle.
Hope all is well with you.
We're closing in on the end of this chapter and this book. Only half a dozen pages to go.
I've just learned that the Spanish version is about to be published! Which is really great news. It makes the book available to the huge Spanish speaking audience in the US and in South America.
Right well we've been explorign the meaning of the mantra that Nichiren Buddhists chant, nam myoho renge kyo. It is the title of the Lotus Sutra, which contains the key teachings of Mahaayna Buddhism in classical Japanese. Over the past few episodes we've looked in detail at the underlying meanings of nam, and myoho and renge. So you can revisit those episodes if you wish to refresh your memory, and in this one we're talking about kyo.
So justas with myoho and renge, the word kyo embodies many meanings. It is literally translated as ' sutra' or the voice or teaching of the Buddha. But it also measn vibration or sound, so can be taken to represent the vibrations that spread out from someone in the process of chanting. Indeed there is a well-known Buddhist saying that ' the voice does the Buddha's work,' and there is no question that the sound or the vibration that is created by a group of people chanting, even quite a small group, can be very powerful.
I can still recall with great clarity for example, the very first Buddhist meeting I went to, some time before I actually started practising. It was a dark cold winter's evening I remember and we were walking along this street of narrow Victorian houses in West London, with me thinking not particularly positive thoughts such as, ' Oh well, it can't last much more than an hour this meeting!' And then, as we turned up the short garden path to the house, coming through the closed front door was this wonderful resonant sound. Strong. Confident. Vibrant. It actually made the hair tingle on the back of my neck I recall. A sound produced by just a dozen or so ordinary people, chanting nam myoho renge kyo.'
Enough for today I think.
I have to say re-writing that passage I can still recall that first meeting. And I've been chanting every day since then. When I say that this practice has profondly changed my life, I mean precisely that. It has changed my life in more ways than I can recount, all of them immensely beneficial.
See you next time,
William
The Case for Buddhism is available in paperback from Amazon and as a download on Kindle.
Saturday 12 March 2016
my buddhist blog number 126
Hi Everybody,
On this beautiful spring day. Well it is in southern England. Clear skies. Soft slightly hazy sunshine. Birds everywhere kicking up a spring-type fuss. Beautiful. Runnning in the park with Gatsby early this morning and we even suprised a few spring baby rabbits back into their burrows! We're in the middle of the detailed explanation of the meaning of the mantra Nichiren Buddhists chant morning and evening, nam myoho renge kyo. We've talked about nam at asome length, and myoho at even greater length, and we're into renge, which means essentially cause and effect.
Basically Buddhism argues that every cause we make, good bad or indifferent, plants a balancingeffect in our lives. Thus there is for all of us an on-going chain of causes and effects. That is if you like the fundamental dynamic of our lives. Good causes good effects. Bad causes bad effects.
I think it's pretty easy to see how even a superficial understanding of this principle can have a powerful effect on our behaviour, on our awareness of the kind of causes that we are making. And since that process of linked causes and effects is going on all the time, you can see that where we are now in our lives, who we are now in our lives, is the sum of all the causes we have made in the past, that have planted effects in our lives.
By the same token the causes that we are making now, Buddhism reminds us, contain the seeds of our future. So you might say, the key factor in shaping our on-going lives is how we respond to the situations and events and encounters that face us now, today and tomorrow and the next day.
What that is saying so powerfully is that however much we might feel it to be the case, we are not simply subject to chance and accident and encounter that come at us out of our environment. The decisive factor is how we respond to those situations. The causes that we make and therefore the effects that we plant in our lives.
The basic message is therefore on eof immense hope and optimism. Whateverhas happened in the past good positive causes made now, will plant good positive effects, into our future.
Enough to absorb for one go I think.
Next time we will be looking at kyo.
All my best wishes,
William
PS The Case for Buddhism is available as a paper back on Amazon and as a downlaod on Kindle.
The good news is that the Spanish version is about to be launched for all those Spanish speakers in US and South America.
On this beautiful spring day. Well it is in southern England. Clear skies. Soft slightly hazy sunshine. Birds everywhere kicking up a spring-type fuss. Beautiful. Runnning in the park with Gatsby early this morning and we even suprised a few spring baby rabbits back into their burrows! We're in the middle of the detailed explanation of the meaning of the mantra Nichiren Buddhists chant morning and evening, nam myoho renge kyo. We've talked about nam at asome length, and myoho at even greater length, and we're into renge, which means essentially cause and effect.
Basically Buddhism argues that every cause we make, good bad or indifferent, plants a balancingeffect in our lives. Thus there is for all of us an on-going chain of causes and effects. That is if you like the fundamental dynamic of our lives. Good causes good effects. Bad causes bad effects.
I think it's pretty easy to see how even a superficial understanding of this principle can have a powerful effect on our behaviour, on our awareness of the kind of causes that we are making. And since that process of linked causes and effects is going on all the time, you can see that where we are now in our lives, who we are now in our lives, is the sum of all the causes we have made in the past, that have planted effects in our lives.
By the same token the causes that we are making now, Buddhism reminds us, contain the seeds of our future. So you might say, the key factor in shaping our on-going lives is how we respond to the situations and events and encounters that face us now, today and tomorrow and the next day.
What that is saying so powerfully is that however much we might feel it to be the case, we are not simply subject to chance and accident and encounter that come at us out of our environment. The decisive factor is how we respond to those situations. The causes that we make and therefore the effects that we plant in our lives.
The basic message is therefore on eof immense hope and optimism. Whateverhas happened in the past good positive causes made now, will plant good positive effects, into our future.
Enough to absorb for one go I think.
Next time we will be looking at kyo.
All my best wishes,
William
PS The Case for Buddhism is available as a paper back on Amazon and as a downlaod on Kindle.
The good news is that the Spanish version is about to be launched for all those Spanish speakers in US and South America.
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