the DharmaRealm

Podcasting while sheltering in place. We’re going to restart the DharmaRealm, recording via Zoom, shorter episodes, and posting here, SoundCloud, YouTube, and, as always, your favorite podcasting service. Send us your questions, subscribe to our feeds, and keep your eyes open for updates. And above all—stay home! Wash your hands!

It’s our second episode with our special guest, Dr. Natalie Fisk Quli. We’re continuing our conversation about authenticity, this time around beginning with a conversation about merit, merit accumulation and transference, in the Mahayana and Theravada traditions. This gets us going into other weird and cool places like economic models for karma, the declining age of the dharma, how texts and monks function as fields of merit, and colonialism and Orientalism. Oh, and because it would be the DharmaRealm without a little nerdiness, D&D. Check out Dr. Quli’s last episode, and stick around! She’ll be back for one more!

In a weird way, this is sort of part-two of our post-truth conversation since we’re tackling a perennial problem in the contemporary study and practice of Buddhism — can we know what the historical Buddha really taught? Can we know what he really said? And should that even matter? As always, by tuning in to the DharmaRealm podcast, you’re not going to get an answer to that question, and will probably walk away more confused than you were before. But, hey, we will tell you something about canonical texts, fake Buddha quotes, buddhavacana.  Image credit: Alles liegt im Auge des Betrachters, jodage https//www.flickr.com/photos/buchenmann/14280945373/ (c) jodage, some rights reserved

Faith! We’re bouncing off a question about faith in our personal experience with Buddhism. Now, we know that having said faith, half of you said “There’s no faith in Buddhism!” And the other half said, “Well, what do you mean by faith?” We’re gonna tell you what we mean by faith and hopefully the other half are still listening as we take a deep dive into different aspects of faith, blind faith, believing in things in the absence of evidence, secularism, and eventually shinjin, a foundational concept for Jodo Shinshu which, apparently, we’re not supposed to talk about. But we do. Because that’s how we roll.

Somewhat in response to a listener question, we dive into the question of practice versus academic study. Is there a difference between academic study and the practice of Buddha? Is one more valuable than the other? Does academic study undermine religious/Buddhist practice? Or can academic study be, in itself, practice? Well, if that’s the case, then what do you mean by “practice”? And that’s really what this episode is about. We do a deep dive into scholar-practitioners (a la Charles Prebish), the multivalent senses of the word “practice” (a la Charles Bielefeld), the role of study-as-practice historically both in the West and in Buddhism, the age of the degenerate Dharma, and, yes, even Star Trek. Bottom line: don’t get stuck in your head. This week’s image is of a photographic reprint of Shinran’s original handwritten manuscript of his Kyogyoshinsho on display at the library of Ohtani University in Kyoto. Who says Buddhists don’t study?

In today’s episode, we respond to a listener question about the possibility, in Shin Buddhism, of reconciling the concept of no-self (anatman) and personal identity (especially in regards to race). To do that, we need to break down the concept of no-self and argue that it’s not necessarily a rejection or negation of any type of self but rather, first, part of a pedagogical strategy of the Buddha and, second, related to a whole mass of complex Buddhist concepts that have very little to do with modern understandings of personality, subjectivity, or identity. A key part of this is the idea that self-ness is defined by our interconnection with the world, and on the social level, this absolutely includes social and cultural ideas about race, ethnicity, gender, and so on; and merely saying, “Hey, there is no self!” doesn’t make all of that go away.

For our first full episode of 2018 we tackle a listener question about Buddhism and social justice, jumping off from the tension between accepting things as they are and the urge to stand up to inequality and social suffering. Of course, it wouldn’t be us if we didn’t unpack those terms and dig deep into the question — isn’t the point of Buddhism not to accept the world as it is but to see the world as it is, from the point of view of compassionate wisdom? And does merely accepting things as they are, and not acting, necessarily follow from this seeing? And it wouldn’t really be us if we didn’t somehow manage to get sci-fi back into this by dragging Ursula K. Le Guin into the conversation. Stay tuned for a second episode later this month! Image credit: (c) the.Firebottle

One more episode recorded in October before the election but on a topic that will most certainly continue to be of importance in the year ahead – race, racism, and American Buddhism. This one’s a bit heavy, wherein we discuss the problems of discussing race in public discourse and the social and legal construction of racial and ethnic categories in American culture generally and in Buddhism specifically. And follow Angry Asian Man; he’s knows what’s what. Image credit: Buddhist service at Manzanar Relocation Center in California, 1943. Photo courtesy the Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division LC-A35-6-M-36.

Announcement: we’re doing a “live” show on Saturday August 20 during the CBE’s Pacific Seminar. Check out the the CBE’s website for more information, and send us your questions via Facebook or Twitter! Picking up from our last conversation, we do our best to stay on topic and not get lost in the pop-culture woods. Our discussion about generations is really about how inter-generational differences play out in the BCA, how they’re reflected in community or institutional structures, their relationship to issues of ethnicity, and the challenges that come with all of that. Image credit: enlightenment, for $6.95 (c) nancy walkman https://www.flickr.com/photos/nuanc/887170272/

Buddhism and Introspection: in which we ramble on for a time about the extent to which Buddhism is introspective, about controlling, watching, or purifying the mind, an extended exercise in trying hard to look inside one’s psychology and recognize our inner habits, shortcomings, and personal narratives. Image Credit: Buddha Land (c) 2008 by John Nakamura Remy

I’ll be honest. We spent the first half of this episode geeking out on Star Trek, talking about how this vision of a utopian future hinges on the civilizing influence of an alien culture and that the Federation, being created by humans, is actually less of a utopia and more of a homogenizing galactic empire. And it isn’t even until the last four minutes that we get around to actually defining the word “utopia.” But, really, we do talk about Buddhism (seriously!) by noting how, in analyzing the causes of suffering and offering a solution, Buddhism posits a kind of vision for a better world. So, this episode is basically all about the cultural and religious narratives that we go to for meaning and value in our lives. And, if not that, then…aliens. (Literally.)

That title should really be “Dungeons and Dragons (and Ethics).” Or “D&D, Star Wars, and Cats (with some Buddhism sprinkled in).” In our first episode for 2016, we wanted to begin a conversation about social ethics — somehow we got sidetracked by Dungeons and Dragons, the classic role playing game that we both grew up with. Seriously, though. Is there a way to reconcile the D&D ethical and moral alignment system with Buddhist ethics? Unsurprisingly, we go off on several tangents before getting to the notion of absolute good and evil that seems implicit in the D&D system and that (some) Buddhist traditions seek to transcend. And we end, of course, talking about cats. Happy new year! Image of Tempel Kenninji in Kyoto, Japan copyright: © 2010, Christian Kaden Licence: Creative Commons BY-NC-ND 4.0 ID: DSC02893

In response to a listener question, we discuss the variety of Pure Land practices outside the Shin and Japanese traditions. We begin by noting that Honen and Shinran set up distinct schools and institutions devoted to a single Pure Land practice (nenbutsu) whereas across the Buddhist world, Pure Land is best understood not as a distinct school but as a cluster of related texts, practices, orientations, and cosmologies that find expression in a wide array of approaches to awakening. Some of these approaches include the recitation of the name, others include contemplative or meditative approaches. Some are focused on Amitabha and Sukhavati, others aren’t. All of which points to the wide dispersal of Pure Land Buddhisms and the diversity of practices. Approaching the Land of Bliss The Contemplation Sutra Pratyutpanna Samadhi Sutra Image: “Dancing flames at Po Lin Monastery, Lantau Island, Hong Kong” by kartografia.