Mt. Adams Buddhist Temple
Tuyết Sơn Thiền Tự. 雪山禅寺
MARCH 2022
P.O. Box 487, Trout Lake WA 98650 https://mtadamsbuddhisttemple.org/
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ZOOM Temple Services
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/5093952030#success
Monday - Friday at 6:30 am and 5:30pm
Monday at noon
Saturday 8:30 am - service + meditation
LGBTQ+ Group 7:30 pm Sundays
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Thich Nhat Hanh study group on the 2nd & 4th Wednesdays at 6:30 pm
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Basic Buddhist Education
(12 February – 12 March)
Taking Refuge class on ZOOM
Saturdays 10:30 - 11:45 (after Saturday morning service)
ZOOM http://us\02web.zoom.us/j/5093952030/#success
Week 1 - February 12 2022 Taking Refuge, The 4 Noble Truths
Week 2 - February 19 2022 The 8 fold path
droppable-1646135818913
Week 3 - February 26 2022 The 10 Cardinal Precepts
Week 4 - March 5 2022
Bodhisattva Vows & Review
All classes are available on our website with study guides.
Week 5 - March 12 2022
Ceremony & Vows
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METTA & Shinrin Yoku RETREAT
May 7, 2022 one Day retreat. 9am-3pm
Metta practice, meditation, personal journal,
and Shinrin-Yoku (Forest Bathing)
Suggested donation $40.00 no one will be refused participation due to funds..
We'd rather have you here than your money.
A Shinrin-Yoku forest bathing walk consists of a series of activities & sits, designed to help the participants to bathe in the surroundings, the environment and energy of the forest, allowing them to slow down, breathe, and refocus on their body, while connecting to their various senses.
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Dear ones,
Spring officially starts March 20th in our northern hemisphere. May your Spring be filled with growth, new blossoms, warm days, and peace.
I am putting more "buttons" (a link that a user can click on to get to a website) in
our newsletter. Some lead to places to buy items. Neither I nor the temple get any commission for these products. I just think they are good sources of information.
Russia has invaded Ukraine and many people are being killed and damaged. Hearing a 5 year old child say in terror that "I am afraid to die", is heart breaking. My heart goes out to the people of Ukraine. Russia's actions will cause many deaths and great suffering and will result in very real and horrible karma. May this terrible invasion of Ukraine end soon. May there be a quick end to killing, terror, and suffering.
I remember that after the world trade center attacks of 9/11; a man in Arizona, overcome with grief and anger, shot a Sikh man who was wearing a turban. (As you all know Sikhs follow a religion in India and are not Muslim).
It is easy to let our hearts go to a place of anger and judgement towards Russia and Russian people. The lord Buddha told his followers to avoid blame and anger and to wish all beings well. May his message bring light into the dark places of hate and anger. May we send metta to all people of the world, to Ukrainians and Russians alike, may the great sufferings end soon. May each country find peace.
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"We are all going to die and we don't know when. Let us celebrate the joy of life by saying WOW - I woke up this morning.... To change our culture, to change our lives, requires the transformation of consciousness, and few things shift consciousness as quickly as an awareness of death.”
Reverend Bodhi Be, Doorway Into Light and the Death Store, Maui, Hawaii.
I attended Rev. Bodhi Be's wonderful 6 week class, "We're all going to die". He encourages us to live a life filled with joy and hope and without fear. He is an advocate for natural burials (on land and sea), and owns Doorway Into Light, which is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit spiritual, educational and charitable organization in Hawaii providing conscious and compassionate responses to dying and death. I recommend his classes and his commitment to life, death, and nature. Thay Kozen
May we all be well and happy. May we all know love and peace....Thay Kozen
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Study finds increasing discrimination against Asians and Asian Americans
“When COVID hit, we were quickly hearing anecdotes on social media and in traditional media about Asian Americans experiencing a variety of racial abuse,” said Sara Waters, an assistant professor in WSU’s Department of Human Development on the Vancouver campus. Asian Americans report they experienced more discrimination since the pandemic started. From an article by Scott Weybright,
College of Agricultural, Human, and Natural Resource Sciences, Washington State University.
Let us look into opening our hearts in loving kindness to all beings, all races, all religions...Thay Kozen
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Thich Minh Thien, (Thay Z)
Abbot of Budding Dharma Temple
Arlington, Texas thayzzen@gmail.com
Budding Dharma Temple will reopen March 3rd
Masking is your choice and will be honored here. We will also have the air purifier running.
THURSDAYS Zen To Go - 11am-12pm Full Service - 5:30pm-7:30pm
When In Doubt, Love More
In February and March 2022, we find the world embroiled in war on the European continent. There has not been this kind of calamity in Europe since the late 1940s. Just as the Covid pandemic seems to be receding a bit we are now faced with more fear over a conflict between Russia and the Ukraine. With all of this going on, we might come to the conclusion that the first Noble Truth, as taught by the Buddha, is spot on. Life means suffering. This suffering/unhappiness/dissatisfaction just doesn’t seem to ever completely recede. It is a permanent part of the human condition. The Buddha saw this when he made his first foray into surrounding villages from the grand palaces where he had lived his life. He saw sickness, old age and death and knew that through birth, no one escapes these conditions. And throw in reincarnation, and these conditions continue over and over again through lifetimes, maybe too numerous to know. This became Siddhartha Gautama’s search for answers to these age old conditions until he realized his awakening as the Buddha. He offered those he encountered a path of tangible ways to reduce these sufferings; thus the Noble Eightfold Path was given freely to all sentient beings and has spread throughout the world.
Practically the whole teaching of the Buddha, to which he devoted himself during 45 years, deal in some way or other with this path. He explained it in different ways and in different words to different people, according to the stage of their development and their capacity to understand and follow him. But the essence of those many thousand discourses scattered in the Buddhist scriptures is found in the Noble Eightfold Path. The underpinnings of this path in the Mahayana practice that I am most familiar with are Metta (Loving Kindness), Devotion and Meditation.
Years ago, I remember a song that repeated the refrain, “…what the world needs now, is love sweet love; that’s the only thing, that there’s just too little of…”. The world certainly is in such straits now, that those lyrics again provide the answers. No matter how connected you are to the world events of today, this loving kindness, this metta, is the only answer to these wars and tragedies; and it is also necessary to address our own personal sufferings. If your sufferings are mired in attachments, in desire, ignorance, anger, greed or in fear, the first rung of the ladder upwards to a more peaceful and joyful existence is loving kindness. This has been known and taught by great teachers for thousand of years and yet we still struggle bringing this antidote to all of our sufferings forward. We are told that Jesus told his disciples, “…This is my commandment; That ye love one another, as I have loved you…”. Our modern Zen Master, Thich Nhat Hanh said, “The teachings on love given by the Buddha are clear, scientific, and applicable… Love, compassion, joy, and equanimity are the very nature of an enlightened person. They are the four aspects of true love within ourselves and within everyone and everything.”
When life becomes so stark; when war and pandemics fill our daily news sources; when our own personal demons seem to haunt us at every turn and the answers we seek evade us, the simple expression … When In Doubt, Love More … can be the mantra to carry us to the other shore where peace and joy reside. May we all make Metta, this wishing ourselves and others wellness, happiness, joy and peace, an integral part of our practice.
Namo tassa bhagavato arahato samma sambuddhassa
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What Is Spirituality For A Buddhist?
by Rev. Scott See (email Scott@nothingtoattain.com)
I was once at a dharma talk (Buddhist equivalent to a sermon.) and asked, “What is spirituality from the Buddhist perspective?” The monk thought for a moment and answered, “Emotional maturity.” Emotional maturity, what a wonderful answer I thought to myself. Buddhist teachings stress the truth of suffering and the path to alleviate suffering. We’ve all experienced pain and suffering from our emotions getting the better of us. Emotions can grab a hold of us and drag us down. So if spirituality means learning how to regulate our emotions better to help us be happy and at peace, then sign me up.
Listening To Our Intuitive Side
I’ve come to learn that spirituality is more than just regulating emotions. It’s learning how to tackle life by tapping into our more intuitive side. Before learning about Buddhism, I would tackle big life events with pro & con lists. I would Google, “How does one decide about: [big life decision]?” Such intellectually oriented decision making was successful. Successful in making me miserable. After my introduction to Buddhist teachings, I learned that when confronted with big life decisions, setting aside the pro & con lists and quietly sitting with the question and observing what answer surfaces. This approach is much quicker and far less agonizing.
Putting Down Our Judgements and Preconceptions
Spirituality involves having the mindfulness to see things as they really are as opposed to seeing things through the haze of our judgements and preconceptions. We all get caught up in our preferences and our aversions, and both are causes of suffering. We get caught up in passionate Ford vs. Chevy arguments and such strong opinions can lead to discord. Spirituality involves having the mindfulness to see things as they are. To see ourselves as we really are, as opposed to this pile of labels we give ourselves–American, male, Democrat, Buddhist, and so on. Spirituality allows us to let go of these labels which cause division between ourselves and others.
Cessation Of Suffering
Siddhārtha Gautama, commonly known as the Buddha or awakened one, began his spiritual quest to understand suffering–the nature of it, the cause of it, and the path to cessation of suffering. This journey led to Siddhārtha Gautama embracing The Four Noble Truths: 1. The truth of suffering. We suffer. The first step to dealing with this is to see it for what it is. 2. The cause of suffering. Suffering does not exist independently. We cause our own suffering with our attachment and delusions. 3. The cessation of suffering is attainable. 4. The path to the cessation of suffering is the eightfold path.
The Noble Eightfold Path
Right View
Right Intention
Right Speech
Right Action
Right Livelihood
Right Effort
Right Mindfulness
Right Concentration
And how are we to know what is the, “right” view, intention, speech, and so on? That is the subject of much more in-depth study, but if you approach life’s decisions with a heart of kindness and a mind clearly seeing this as they are, without our filters and judgements, then you won’t stray from the path. As the Dalai Lama once said, “My religion is Kindness.” Or as my teacher, Venerable Thay Kozen, often says, “When in doubt, love more.”
Buddhist Spiritual Practices
Three things form the core of our practice at Mt. Adams Buddhist Temple are the following:
Meditation
Devotion
Compassion
Meditation can be done in the traditional seated style, or it can be done while walking, lying down, or even while conducting our day-to-day activities. Meditation allows us to calm the mind and train to observe things without judgements clouding our perceptions. Devotion involves acknowledging and showing gratitude to something outside ourselves. And it comes as no surprise that compassion is a crucial part of Buddhist practice. Our daily practice includes offering Metta (loving kindness) to ourselves, to those who are easy to love, to those we don’t know, and those difficult to love, and then once again, to ourselves.
The Practice Of Letting Go
Buddhist practice does involve studying the teachings of Siddhārtha Gautama as well as many of the teachers that followed him. And yet Buddhist practice is not about accumulating knowledge like a student in school strives to accumulate knowledge. Buddhist practice flourishes when you experience the liberation of letting go. We all cling to our labels–good/bad, right/wrong, American/foreigner, Christian/Jewish/etc., and so on. And labels are not all bad. After all, they keep men from walking into the women’s restroom and vice versa. But attaching to labels can lead to untold suffering. How many wars have started because of people clinging to nationalist or religious pride? How many friends and families have been broken apart by thoughts of, “I am right and you are wrong?” Once we begin letting go of ideas once thought to be sacrosanct, we begin to realize that we all have far more in common than we have differences.
Self Or No-Self
A discussion of Buddhism and spirituality would not be complete without addressing the idea of no-self. In the words of Master Dogen…
To study the Way is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self.
To forget the self is to be enlightened by all things of the universe. To be
enlightened by all things of the universe is to cast off the body and mind
of the self as well as those of others. Even the traces of enlightenment are
wiped out, and life with traceless enlightenment goes on forever and ever.
It’s not that we’re non-existent. Siddhārtha Gautama made it very clear that his teachings are not annihilism. We do exist. But as we become attached to labeling ourselves or categorizing ourselves, we stray further from knowing the self. We are ever changing and impermanent. We do not spontaneously and independently appear. We are interdependent on an infinite number of causes. And in the words of Thích Nhất Hạnh, we interbe with everything else. As we work on letting go of our cherished labels we camouflage ourselves with, think of Bodhidharma, the founder of Zen Buddhism, when asked the question, “Who stands before me?” replied, “I don’t know.”
A Spirituality Of Action
Buddhist practice involves meditation, yes, but it is at heart a spirituality of action. Siddhārtha Gautama tells us to remember, “My actions are my only true belongings. I cannot escape the consequences of my actions. My actions are the ground on which I stand.”
A Spirituality Of Refuge
One of the formal steps a Buddhist practitioner can take is the Three Refuges.
Buddha Dharma Sangha
This is an acknowledgement of appreciation for the historical teacher, Siddhārtha Gautama
Buddhist Spirituality, In Summary
As the Dalai Lama said, “Be kind whenever possible. It is always possible.”
Learn More About Buddhist Spirituality
All are welcome to join us for our services which occur weekdays at 6:30 a.m. and 5:30 p.m. and also on Saturday at 8:30 a.m. The Zoom number is always on the homepage of https://www.mtadamsbuddhisttemple.com/ No experience is needed, and those of all faiths are welcome. And expect much laughter. As Venerable Thay Kozen says, “If you’re not laughing, you may be doing something wrong.”
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Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī
"Rumi’s Guest House metaphor offers a Sufi parallel to the
contemporary Western Zen ideal of Zen as a continual opening,
widening, and acceptance of life as it is. As we sit we create
a space for our full human being — no cutting off, suppression,
or delusion about who or what we are in this moment."
from the Existential Buddhist, dharma without dogma
“Guest House”
by Rūmī
(1207-1273 mystic and poet)
This being human is a guest house
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out for some new delight.
The dark thought, the sham, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.
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Which politician would you vote for?
Here are selected biographies of 3 politicians.
Read A,B,C and decide who you would vote for, then read who you selected.
A: He was friends with corrupt politicians.
He consulted astrologers.
Had two wives.
Was a chain smoker.
Drank 8 to 10 times a day.
B: He was kicked out of office twice.
Usually slept till noon.
Used opium in collage.
Drank whisky every evening.
C: He was a decorated war hero.
A Vegetarian.
Didn’t smoke.
Didn’t drink.
Never cheated on his wife.
Inspired millions.
Choose the best politician (A, B, or C) from above
and then see whom you have chosen below.
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A: Franklin Roosevelt
B: Winston Churchill
C: Adolf Hitler
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While Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill and Adolf Hitler did not find the Dharma, they did go on to do actions that impacted the whole world. Did you judge them by their brief biographies?
Let us remember the story of Aṅgulimāla, an important figure in Buddhism. Depicted as a ruthless brigand who completely transforms after a conversion to Buddhism, he is seen as a wonderful example of the power of the Buddha's Dharma and the Buddha's skill as a teacher. It also helps us to understand that the "now" of a person who has found the Dharma is far more important than the sum of all past actions. No one has done anything that is above redemption and peace. Thay Kozen
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Paleontologist Andrew Knoll
He found new discoveries about Earth's history -- how the planet went from a rock covered in magma oceans buffeted by comets and meteors to a green and blue orb teeming with life. Between those inhospitable beginnings and now, continents formed and were torn apart, mountain ranges appeared and disappeared, ice caps spread and receded. These are the lost worlds that Knoll has explored and shed light on.
"Here you stand, in the physical and biological legacy of 4 billion years," Knoll wrote. "You walk where trilobites once skittered across an ancient seafloor, where dinosaurs lumbered across Gingko-clad hillsides, where mammoths once commanded a frigid plain.
"Once it was their world, and now it is yours," he continued. "The difference between you and the dinosaurs, of course, is that you can comprehend the past and envision the future. The world you inherited is not just yours, it is your responsibility. What happens next is up to you."
Andrew Knoll discovered new aspects of life on our earth. He asks us to look at what has been, where we are now, and what will happen if we do not take good care of our planet. His concepts are well worth reading.....Thay Kozen
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Sun on a snow covered mountain highlights the view from our soon to be built temple.
As we move from Winter to Spring we may feel a renewal of heart and spirit. May we carry compassion for all beings in our hearts.
May we be be the peacekeepers, and an example of the change we want to see
in the world.
Namo tassa bhagavato arahato samma sambuddhassa
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It's not just love that can break your heart
You really can die of a broken heart.
It's rare, but a sudden emotional blow such as the death of a loved one can shock the heart into forming an unusual oval shape, rendering it incapable of doing its job.
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What Will Happen to Your Body If You Walk Every Day
A fun and informative you tube video. Walking has many health benefits for all ages.
Taking good care of our physical and mental health is a happy practice.
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Avalokiteśvara Bodhisattva
This winter has been very cold and snowy. Even our carved stone statues seem cold.
Quán Thế Âm Bồ Tát
觀世音菩薩
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A Miracle of Life
Anna's Hummingbird has survived the winter by the ability to go into a state of torpor/sleep. We keep the sugar water food heated with a small light bulb.
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Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh October 11, 1926 – January 22, 2022
We are still mourning our loss. He lives on in his students and many books. Yet, the world seems a bit emptier without his loving presence and gentle guidance.
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Sa di Minh Tam (Ted) walking in
8° F weather with 4 layers of clothes including 2 coats, burrrr.
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A memory - Thay Kozen and Thich Vinh Minh visiting a temple in China |
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Buddhist Activism
in a whole new way - too fun!! The Buddha encouraged us to avoid conflicts and strife.
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May the Infinite Light of Wisdom and Compassion so shine within us
that the errors and vanities of self may be dispelled;
so shall we understand the changing nature of existence and awaken into spiritual peace.
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Mt Adams Buddhist Temple 46 Stoller Rd., Trout Lake WA 98650 509.395.2030 https://www.mtadamsbuddhisttemple.com/ |
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