#mahayana

[witchqueennicolette]

A Buddha Is Reborn on the High Line

Tuan Andrew Nguyen’s sandstone and brass take on the destroyed Bamiyan Buddhas reminds passersby that history repeats.

Excited about this! The next time I'm on the East Coast I need to see this! :)

[restorativeluciferian]

I have been using the Heart Sutra as a banishing spell for the last couple of weeks—ranging from general feelings of nihilism to unhealthy attachments—and I LOVE it! There are so many good YouTube videos of it either being changed or put to music (my favorite embedded) and it makes the banishing fun, like I'm jamming out. The joy I get from singing it over and over reminds me that the true banishment of suffering is joy (though without attachment via hopes that it will persist forever). I feel so empowered that I can turn my own suffering around with something so simple :) Plus I love Chenrezi and all his faces!

[flowercustodian]

i saw your post about mahayana/pure land and as a mostly secular/theravada buddhist who hasn't ever quite grasped pure land, i was wondering if you had any resources for learning more about it? like articles/books/papers/etc, i'd really like to learn more about that tradition

Hello!! sadly at this very second, I typically don't have many sources since I have a horrible habit of just not keeping track of or remembering things like that, but I'll definitely see if I can get some together for you! is there anything specifically about the Pure land tradition/Mahayana as a whole you'd like to learn about? oh also while not a source like you described I do know of some people on social media who make Mahayana Buddhist content that I can confirm is accurate IF you'd be interested in something like that (:

[bodhi-devotee]

mahayana is like the biggest, longest, oft frustrating but always fulfilling group project in the world.

[bodhi-devotee]

“Once a growing plant, the kernel of corn may no longer be recognizable as its sign, its original appearance, but that does not mean that it isn't there anymore. When we were conceived, we were also a little seed— much smaller than the kernel of corn. That seed became a little child, but where is that little child now? Are they still alive? When those of us who practice meditation look at the plant of corn, we can still see the kernel. It is there, alive, although it doesn't appear in its familiar form. Do you think that the little child in you has died, or do they continue in you? Do you talk to them, or are you too busy?”

— Thich Naht Hanh, ‘Reincarnation’

[the-flesh-is-willing]

this is the kind of desire they talk about in the lotus sutra

[alivepet]

I cant fuckinnn find the post to reblog but I have a lot of thoughts about it. It's been mostly dismissed as a spectacle, but it actually raises some super swag theological questions that I am certain these Korean Buddhist literal monks knew about, and did intentionally. I also really like that they made him bald.

I am not a Korean Buddhist monk, so I'm generalising a lot about Seon and Cheontae from my general esoteric mahayana knowledge.

One of the most famous Tientai little like quips (koans) is: “who recites the name of the Buddha?”

At first, the answer seems obvious: the monks do. Walk into any Buddhist temple in East Asia, and you will hear monks chanting Amitabha Buddha’s name.

However, one of the more important aspects Buddhism is often defined as is the doctrine of non-self. Buddhists hold that there is no soul—no consciousness that has any form of inherent or independent reality. The self is an emergent pattern that arises from our thoughts, emotions, actions, etc. (skhandas, btw), and therefore it is always changing.

The next obvious answer to the question then becomes: no one. There aren’t any monks chanting any names at all. It’s all just an illusion.

However, this brings us to the truth at the centre of emptiness: walk into any Buddhist temple in East Asia, and you will hear monks chanting Amitabha Buddha’s name. These two frames are not contradictory, and they are called the Two Truths.

This robot is like a theological performance piece. Obviously, an insentient robot cannot pray to the Buddha, or do whatever the hell monks do—but neither can the monks. Neither of them has a soul they could even pray with.

Yet, here they are, practicing dharma.

This is exactly the same logic on which prayer wheels work, btw. Spinning the sutras inside counts as “reading” in a metaphysical sense. A prayer wheel could not be made and spun if the majority of people didn’t know its content and function. Slapping those things around proves that the dharma is still present, even today. A world without Buddhism is a world without prayer wheels, by necessity.

Anyway, I just think it’s a really cool, high level piece of public outreach. It catches the attention, but does so purposefully to shock you into having insight. At least for the monks. Idk who made the robot and why.

[hkunlimited]

To be Reborn in the Spirit of the Buddha 

Every day should be a re-Birth day, in spirit, not DNA. And, as much as I hate to get involved in the Buddhist rebirth debates and disputes, I’ll have to say that I probably like the Christian use of that term ‘reborn’ more than I like the Buddhist flirtation with Hindu reincarnation. Because the Christian usage is almost always phrased as ‘reborn in the spirit of the Lord’ or something like…

To be Reborn in the Spirit of the Buddha