Refuge

Portland Buddhist Priory Posted on by

(Follow this link to see the January 2019 Priory Newsletter where this was originally published.)

Winter blooming pink viburnum

Refuge is a central principle in the practice of Buddhism and, from earliest times, to become a follower of the Buddha, to become a “Buddhist,” has been a matter of taking refuge in the Three Treasures. We take refuge in the Buddha, take refuge in what the Buddha taught, and take refuge in those who understand and practice what the Buddha taught. Although specifically articulated by the Buddha, these Three Treasures have a universal and fundamental aspect to them. One way of articulating the Three Treasures could be “I take refuge in the Fundamental Truth of Existence, I take refuge in the teaching of and practice of that Fundamental Truth, I take refuge in those who know that Fundamental Truth.”

The dictionary says the word refuge means Continue reading →

Baggage

Portland Buddhist Priory Posted on by

(Follow this link to see the December 2019 Priory Newsletter where this was originally published.)

Enlightenment Day

One of my esteemed teachers, Rev. Master Koten of the Lion’s Gate Priory in British Columbia, once shared an image of practice: practice (or maybe he said life, I can’t remember his exact words so maybe it is best to think of it as “life with practice”) is like getting onto a train platform with all your baggage and realizing that the train you want to catch is leaving the station. You try to run along to catch the train with your mountain of bags and you realize that you have a choice, you can either stay on the platform with all the baggage or you can let it go and get onto the departing train.

Although the “baggage” can be anything that we hold onto from the past, today I am thinking of all those hurts and grievances that we accumulate about our friends and family and co-workers: all those people we come in contact with who have been or are important to us in our lives. When we hold onto some slight or grievance, we are insuring at least two hurts for ourselves, the original barb and the hurt we get for repeating the thing in our mind. Each time we repeat the thing in our minds, we can get a new hurt or, seen another way, we reinforce the tie we are making to the original hurt.

Depending on the nature of the hurt it can be very difficult to let a thing go, but if we do not make the effort to let go (and I am talking about “letting go”, not pushing the thing away) a hurt can just hang around Continue reading →

Spiritual Intuition

Portland Buddhist Priory Posted on by

(Follow this link to see the November 2019 Priory Newsletter where this was originally published.)

Kanzeon sits quietly

One day some time ago – I think I was 25 or so – I was contemplating going to the temple for a Wednesday evening class. That evening, there was some type of social evening planned. Being all social with groups of people has never been my thing, so I didn’t really want to go. I was probably tired from work but on that evening I didn’t have to get up early for work the next day so, if I was honest with myself, I didn’t have a solid practical reason to not go. My usual practice at the time was to recognize this aversion and the quibbling and to try to work against it by defaulting to going to such things, even if I didn’t want to, as a way of training that habitual pattern. (To do things just because we “want” to, or because we don’t “want” to, can very easily become habits contributing to our suffering.)

At the time, I had also begun to work on trying to rely less on the rules of practice (like, if I have an aversion, I do the thing I don’t want to) and more on the process of sitting still Continue reading →