No title available
tumblr dot com
I'd rather be in outer space 🛸
★
@theartofmadeline
2025 on Tumblr: Trends That Defined the Year
Lint Roller? I Barely Know Her
cherry valley forever
Cosmic Funnies
The Bowery Presents
No title available
EXPECTATIONS
One Nice Bug Per Day
𓃗
#extradirty
h
No title available
blake kathryn
Noah Kahan
occasionally subtle
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Russia
seen from United States
seen from Netherlands
seen from Malaysia
seen from Italy
seen from Mexico
seen from United Kingdom
seen from United States
seen from Türkiye
seen from Brazil
seen from United Kingdom
seen from Colombia
seen from Georgia
seen from Belarus
seen from Mexico
seen from Türkiye
seen from Brazil
seen from United States
@gleaningsinbuddhafields
Should A Foreigner Learn Mandarin or Hokkien?
I am about to start my second semester in learning Tai-gi (Taiwanese Hokkien), but I had an interesting experience while in Japan, which ties into a common question: if you plan to live or visit Taiwan is it better to learn Mandarin or Hokkien? While in Japan, we went to the famous Chinese district in Yokohama called Yokohama-Chukagai (横浜中華街),1 and had some lunch there. The waitresses spoke…
View On WordPress
The Cat Train Station!
Mind and the World
I had this post drafted before the July trip to Japan, but after coming back, I find that I appreciate this passage is at the very end of The Hojoki, a 12th century Japanese-Buddhist essay, more and more: I do not make claims for these pleasures to disparage the rich. I am simply comparing my past life with my present one. The Triple World is solely Mind. Without a peaceful mind, elephants,…
The Aizu Code
Fascism and the soldiers of the Byakkotai
Take Three: Tendai Buddhist Home Liturgy
Tendai Buddhism has long been a fascinating sect for me, but I’ve struggled to understand how the home liturgy (a.k.a. otsutome, おつとめ) works. I posted some explanations here and here, but I wasn’t entirely confident in my research. Luckily, during my latest trip to Japan, I found some helpful books on Tendai for beginners, and this additional set of resources helped clarify how Tendai liturgy…
The Fall of Aizu
Who Are The Four Guardians and Five Elements?
Japan has been a neighbor of China, a much larger and older civilization, for centuries so it’s not surprising that it picked up some cultural aspects in addition to writing system and religion. One concept that pops up from time to time is a concept that I’ve briefly touched on before : the Five Elements Theory, and related to this the Four World Guardians. Photo taken at Yokohama-Chukagai…
Tending the Garden
During a recent visit to Ueno Park in Tokyo we visited a Tendai-Buddhist temple named Kan’ei-ji (picture above), whose property used to comprise the entire park. Anyhow, I’d love to talk more about that another time, but while there I picked up a small newsletter: The periodical is a collection of short essays, but the first one was particularly good. I wanted to share one passage, with my rough…
Dog Days of Summer in Japan
View On WordPress
Aizu-Wakamatsu
One's Legacy
View On WordPress
Old Stuff in Japan
View On WordPress
A Land Under Siege
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…
View On WordPress
Fireflies in Summer
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 Parable of the Burning House
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…
June 2026 Updates
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…