#Buddhism Now

[t-jfh]

Giant Waterlily - Botanicum illustration by Katie Scott

© 2023 Copyright Katie Scott • https://katie-scott.com

You are not a drop in the ocean; you are the entire ocean in a drop.

— Rumi

Ajahn Sumedho reflects on the Buddha’s teaching of The Four Noble Truths.

YouTube video via Buddhism now >> You don't have to believe these Four Noble Truths — but realise them. Asalha Puja Dhamma Reflection by Ajahn Sumedho [Filmed 1 August 2023 / 52mins.+10secs.]:

In this Dhamma talk, Ajahn Sumedho reflects on the Buddha’s teaching of The Four Noble Truths. Filmed on Asalha Puja day (1 August 2023) at Amaravati Buddhist Monastery, England UK.

Amaravati Buddhist Monastery, UK, Thai Forest Tradition of Ajahn Chah

Amaravati website: https://amaravati.org

•

[buddhismnow]

Baby English—sorry! by Tangen Harada Roshi.

Zen teaching, 'Baby English—sorry'! by Tangen Harada Roshi http://wp.me/pFy3u-1jR

Just VisitingBNow Aug 99 Ten years ago Patricio Goycoolea, a Chilean seeker of truth, was permitted to stay at Bukkokuji, a Soto Zen monastery in Obama, Japan, for two weeks. Ten years later he feels it is time to leave! This place which he calls paradise, has been a nurturing environment for him far beyond his expectations.  Now, as Reverend Jiku, a fully ordained monk, he is embarking on a…

[astranauticus]

Director of the False Last Act

[imustbenuts]

Dragons, Snakes, and the Missing Link

tl;dr The Missing Link is the Naga deity from Buddhism/Hinduism. (featuring jesus ichiban)

lowercase bc im tired today...

has anyone ever wondered how similar looking eastern dragons and snakes are?

the eastern dragon originates from china tradition, and is associated with the heavens, rain, thunder, fortune, strength and benevolence. it is also associated with whimsicality, being that the heavens and nature tend to be very whimsical when it came to the lives of people.

(originates from china, kind... of. bc theres more to this chinese origin. more under the cut)

further, it is said that should an emperor witness a dragon, they are guaranteed to be a good ruler and bring an era of peace and prosperity. this is effectively an approval from the heavens, ie, the Mandate of Heaven, and was as useful as the Divine Right of Kings argument for why rulers should rule.

its not too surprising that kiryu ends up also having a say in choosing Daigo or Terada as successors. (although he might have fucked up with terada, but Daigo became someone who is a good fit if not for the overwhelming odds stacked against him... theres also an arguement that kiryu wasn't quite Like A Dragon just yet in y1.)

so dragons are super duper important. and kiryu the character embodies what a dragon is, cool!

but then, we have... majima. who has the snake as a secondary motif of his irezumi, and i think has a secondary possible role that hasnt been pointed out yet in EN afaik

so, ive done some digging for why people think majima has the snake motif, and one possible explanation is that snakes are associated with immortality, a messenger to the heavens, which does fit majima. juxtaposed to the short bloomed sakura in his irezumi, it reads like a very elaborate art piece with layers of too many meaning, majima is fascinating. anyway.

this article goes into even deeper details why snakes are popularly paired up with the hannya mask, but are kind of vague about it:

what i want to zero in is... this word: Naga.

to understand why the dragon is linked to naga, i need to explain 2 things. what the heck is a naga, and how buddhism traveled.

what's a naga?

a naga is this.... not the guy sitting in the middle, that's buddha. but the multi-headed serpent itself:

so okay. this section is a very short summary and are worth reading more on your own, but here's the run down.

nagas are a class of serpent deity originating from hinduism. buddhism came due to a multitude of factors including rejecting hinduism's social caste system. as a result, it shares many deities with hinduism, including naga.

nagas can be depicted as multiheaded or single headed, and can transform between and in-between their snake and human form. nagas are based on cobras. in south and southeast asia, the naga is often depicted with a flap around the neck as characteristic of a cobra. or sometimes without the flap at all even.

this also means in some interpretations, nagas are as dangerous as they are benevolent/beneficial to humans (probably with the correct aptitude). this duality of good but bad if pissed off isn't at all exclusive to nagas, but in fact rather common with this sphere of deities. (sound familiar?)

in buddhism, the most well known one is Mucalinda, who protects and shelters buddha in his meditation to attain enlightenment. hence all those pictures above

interestingly, their abode is the deep, deep waters. :)

they are a very, very important deity in buddhism due to their strong and close role to buddha, but because buddhism frames gods as just other higher beings trying to escape the cycle of samsara, the nagas are seen as a protector rather than be a god to worship. cool? ok.

journey to the... far eastern japan

for how buddhism traveled, its something like this (source):

something to be clear about with this: buddhism did not arrive in japan without alteration. where ever buddhism traveled, it got reinterpreted as it moved on, absorbing local folklore and myth in the process, and then splashed about back and forth before hitting japan's shores. (but the scriptures was imported in its original form to my understanding. so the colloquial understanding is different from india's own.)

and hence why buddhism in japan is specifically called shinto buddhism: its a special blend.

with the case of nagas specifically, they seem to have entered china, and got mixed with the eastern dragon, and then passed onto korea and japan. some folklore of the dragon are also said to originally be stories about nagas, which we can see with the still present association with water and some divine knowledge.

but, the nagas by this point have lost their human form and gained bitty limbs and whiskers and claws and now soar through the skies rather than stay on the ground. or look a little goofy even.

(this dancing toothless dragon took off on douyin. i can attest to and confirm how much the chinese love goofy ass looking dragons)

in the chinese language, the sanskrit word naga was actually translated as dragon as well. hence all this mixing and remixing of things in the colloquial. notably also there was a chinese emperor known as Emperor Wu of Liang who was so fascinated with buddhism that he imported and promoted the religion, and likely appropriated aspects of the naga and mixed it with the dragon.

(i uh had to google in chinese to check and there was more than 1 article using the word dragon for naga. so nice to be a bye-lingual👍)

another important thing, japan already has their own big snake myths such as the yamato no orochi and tsuchinoko, but as for how influenced these are with buddhism is a bit of a toss up. there's definitely an exchange of sorts but its genuinely hard to tell where the line is.

so to summarize it all up

nagas are cobras to snakes to dragons.

both the chinese dragon and naga share similarities of being nasty when upset, and beneficial and benevolent to those they choose.

but, where the dragons are associated with the heavens and rain, the snakes are associated closer to the earth. both share an affinity with water.

effectively, cobras/snakes are the base for nagas, and nagas are the base for chinese dragons. so. majima's snake is like a stealth dragon.

but where the eastern dragon (kiryu) gives approval and disappears willy nilly, the naga (majima) stays and protect to the death.

meaning, kiryu is like a dragon, and majima may have always been like a dragon all along too B). theres also further theming with yin yang with these two, with kiryu being the passionate fire and majima being the naturing water. but thats a whole other detour. this post is getting long and insane enough as it is

oh, but buddhism isnt buddhism without the enlightened buddha. so while i havent played 3-6 yet i bet its this daigo guy whose name literally means Big Enlightenment.

大悟

you cant tell me hes got a irezumi of some buddhism/hinduism deity acala and have a name heavily associated with buddhist wisdom for no reason. and that he got effectively put into the position of the emperor of the kanto yakuza.

and given aaaaaall that ive written about above in regards to the intended function of these mythological deities/creatures, daigo fits the position of either emperor or buddha to a T.

now, a little personal opinion here, but it seems like RGG began rejecting the classism that comes along with the emperor system and really embraced the buddhist roots more as time goes on.

i say this bc even though i mentioned buddhism coming about partially as a rejection of the caste system, the social structure in old and current china and japan still has strong classism, rooted and continuing off old myth and religion (blame those old rulers for this). we see these in the theme of rgg and how even in the yakuza world theres a clear hierarchy, and in 7's civilian theres a clear undesired class of people.

then there's ichiban who keeps rejecting all of those judgey nonsense

ichibannnnn

interestingly theres also the bit where ichiban got handpicked by kiryu as well as a successor of sorts:

and also kiryu telling majima explicitly to support ichiban after hes gone in IW in that scene. theres also some little fun bits about how ichiban is framed as jesus christ:

and that according to some buddhist interpretation, jesus christ qualifies as Big Enlightened buddha material

so. uh. yeah.

majima is going to play a significant role in 9 i think.

idk how to conclude this but. i understand the writer and im going fucking insane as you might have noticed about 7/10 through this long post. anyway thanks for reading. become nuts with me.

[river-in-the-woods]

Karma

I sometimes come across people who say they “don’t believe in karma.” I believe this stems from a misunderstanding of karma as a purely supernatural force.

Karma is not something you believe in: it is cause and effect, as real and insentient as the force of gravity. Karma is a shorthand for everything a being can experience and the causes that lead to these experiences.

You touch the fire and it burns you. That’s karma. Your karma is that you are a being of flesh and your body cannot tolerate certain elements.

Your family has a history of cancer, and you develop cancer. That’s karma. Your karma is that you carry the genetic inclination for certain diseases.

You encounter a challenge and overcome it against all odds. That’s karma. Your karma is that you had the skills and resources to achieve the outcome you desired.

When we observe certain phenomena in the world, we understand that this was possible because there was the necessary karma for it to occur - the necessary causes were present. Sometimes we label this as ‘bad’ karma or ‘good’ karma, purely because of how we perceive that experience. There will have been innumerable factors involved in that experience coming to pass. Hence, karma can be understood in a purely mundane context.

Since we spiritual practitioners tend to get involved with magic, gods, spirits and other realms, then naturally we observe that there are additional ways in which karma can work. Sometimes on a scale that is difficult to comprehend and spans lifetimes.

When we understand karma, that is, cause and effect, we come to understand some of the myriad of influences upon our experience. Sometimes we understand enough that we can change the karma that we have.

In my opinion, karma makes the most sense in the context of rebirth and spiritual inheritance: the idea that there is some continuity after death and the karma of one life can be inherited by another.

The way that I personally understand karma is that it is like an attunement, or a momentum. Every action, every thought, is like a movement that creates a gust of wind that pushes us toward a certain outcome. Repeated actions of a certain nature solidify this momentum, like gathering winds that create a storm, or trails of water that carve a riverbed into the earth.

Across lifetimes, this becomes especially powerful. We may find ourselves repeatedly experiencing certain themes in our lives. The same kinds of fortune and misfortune that come back in different forms, created by the momentum of our inherited karma. It takes persistent effort to escape what has been ingrained into our experience and go beyond what our past has shaped us to be.

Karma must also be understood in the context of interdependence. We do not exist in isolation, our own karma will impact the karma of others, and vice versa. Everything in the world has its own karma, a way it can influence other things: how we navigate these influences determines our fate.

Don’t be daunted by the enormity of it all. A ship that sails across the sea will not encounter every wave on the ocean, only the ones in its path. We have the choice to ride upon those waves, or we can learn to read the winds and waters and try to change our course.

[glimblshanks]

It's unfortunate that religion in Star Trek is so controversial because I think converting to Buddhism would fix Mariner

[wiseabsol]

Yeah, okay, I have encountered a story I fundamentally do not understand, and that story is Houseki No Kuni. I have now read it all because I was told time and again that it's excellent, and while I'm sure that that is true, I also kind of hate it?

[ceylonolivetree]

Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir, a billion layers of In-Yun

I watched this film, 'Past lives' sometime back and the protagonist tells this to her boyfriend Arthur (who later becomes her husband) the first time they meet, in a writers' retreat.

This really tears me up. It goes,

There
is
a
word
in
Korean꞉
인연
In‑Yun.
It
means
providence
or
fate, but
it's
specifically
about relationships
between
people. I
think
it
comes
from
Buddhism
and reincarnation. It's
an
In‑Yun
if
two
strangers even
walk
by
each
other
in
the street
and
their
clothes accidentally
brush
‑
because
it
means
there
must
have been
something
between
them
in their
past
lives. If
two
people
get
married,
they
say it's
because
there
have
been
eight‑thousand
layers
of
In‑Yun
over eight‑thousand
lifetimes.

After 20 years, the protagonist reunites with her childhood sweetheart Hae Sung. But, she's happily married to Arthur for 7 years. It's so heart breaking yet so meaningful when Hae Sung says,

But
in
this
life,
we
don't
have
the In‑Yun
to
be
that
kind
of
person
to each
other.
Because
now
that
we're finally
in
the
same
city
for
the first
time
in
almost
20
years...In
this life,
you
and
Arthur
are
that
kind of
In‑Yun
to
each
other.
You
two have
the
eight‑thousand
layers
of In‑Yun.
To
Arthur,
you're
someone who
stays.

What I wanted say here is that, to Tessa Virtue, Morgan is someone who stays. They have 8000 layers of In-Yun and they are meant to be together. To Scott Moir, Jaclyn is someone whom he has collected 8000 layers of In-Yun with, in his past lives.

Then what about Tessa and Scott? Childhood sweethearts? Platonic soul mates (or should I just say soul mates)? Is it all some insignificant, silly little thing? No.

In Buddhism (I don't want to educate about Buddhism here and you can learn more about it later, if you want to. It's such a beautiful philosophy) they say that you meet your soul mate in so many lifetimes as different beings (Even as siblings, animals and parents) To Tessa and Scott, this life is one of those one in a billion lifetimes which they had shared and will share. In this lifetime, they are meant to be platonic soulmates. It's difficult to find your soul mate in a lifetime even though he/she exists somewhere in that lifetime. But for them, they found each other at such a young age and they literally grew up together in each other's arms. This is so RARE.

You know, when you really think about it, haven’t they shared more than just a dance? They must have collected over billions of In-Yun, not just eight thousand. I mean, how many times have their bodies brushed against each other? How many times have they hugged each other? How many times have they cried and laughed while holding each other? How many times have they pressed their hearts against each other, breathed the same air? It's immeasurable. It's unconditional. It's actually so wonderful when you think of it.

[hussyknee]

I set my kittens on a giant grasshopper that flew onto my bed and wouldn't leave. Méka pounced on it and carried it off, with Moo trailing after her. But now I feel so guilty. That poor fellow was minding his own business, even if it was on my pillow. And I had him murdered. Not even a quick death bc cats are sadistic little fuckers. Can I call myself an animal lover if I feed bugs to cats for my own convenience. What was the grasshopper's crime, other than not being a cute mammal and being on my bed.

Can't tell if this is the result of being raised Buddhist or having OCD.

[thecalminside]

Understanding means throwing away your knowledge.

-Thich Nhat Hanh,

[sovamurka]

FIRST THREE PAGES OF ALTAN'S BACKSTORY

Buryatia, Ivolginsky Datsan Khambyn Sume

*Altan, Yuma, their mother and grandmother speak in Buryatian here, Russian translation is in square boxes and I took them as a base for English translation

Mother: ...now take three sips and pour the rest on your head.

Yuma: Hey, are you finished?

Mom: Not yet. Wouldn't it be a shame to leave without touching the wishing stone?

Altan: Wishing stone? I want to go to the wishing stone!

Yuma: What kind of stone, Mom?

Grandmother: And where did you get this boldness from?

Yuma: From you, grandma, who else?

Grandmother: Well, I guess you are right.

Mother: According to legend, Green Tara touched this stone and left her palm print on it. If a person touches it, asking for the fulfillment of his most cherished wishes, they will surely come true. You need to stand on this line, close your eyes and go straight towards it.

Altan: Will my wishes not come true now?

[popcorn-plots]

To-do list today.... in order of neccesity

eat lunch

clean room/pack (we leave tomorrow)

research Buddhism (i'm going to do a bunch of research on a google doc so I can work on the presentation on the plane)

write (I have ideas and motivation but no timeeeee)

possibly re-do my masterlist again because it's out of date and I want to do it a little differently. I might make separate posts for each section (one-shots, multi-chaps, smut, etc) and then just link them to the big masterlist. idk.

fix cosplays (after we get back, and with my dad's help because finding out the Cloak is not washable due to some details was really discouraging)

[akkivee]

within the first hour of the episode’s release btw, fans were able to figure out that

kuukou’s temple wasn’t far up a mountain as suggested in auxiliary media and more like at a halfway point

found a shop that looks exactly like the one kuukou’s looking into in the same area

written a mini dissertation on what the intended purpose of using that egyptian mural with bat

and man the bat community is cool lol

[eyeoftheheart]

Tulku Lobsang 

[iris-nonsense]

Sukuna og body and it's mummified... there are some rituals in buddhism were monks get mummified to reach enlightenment and it's believed thay they don't die by reaching this state, is that what's going on here?