Evil incarnate, looming apocalypse, the heroic team-up of a magic-wielding princess and a pure-of-heart knight. It’s a tale as old as time—or at least as old as 1986, when Nintendo released the first Legend of Zelda game, marking the start of what would become one of the most widely recognizable and critically acclaimed video game franchises to date. This May, Nintendo released the highly anticipated nineteenth installment in the franchise, titled Tears of the Kingdom—and, more or less, the plot remains unchanged from the previous eighteen. Some may call it lazy rehashing. I call it a mark of samsara.

Tears had some big shoes to fill. Its 2017 predecessor, Breath of the Wild, was heralded as a near-perfect game, and Tears recycles both Breath’s engine (the coding framework that the game runs on) and its map of Hyrule, a sprawling kingdom that is as much of a character as Link—the game’s protagonist and sworn protector of Hyrule’s princess, Zelda. As the game opens, Link and Zelda are exploring ancient ruins beneath Hyrule Castle and accidentally stir an ancient slumbering evil. Link is knocked unconscious, awakening some time later with Princess Zelda nowhere to be found and a dusty old mummy-ghost arm in place of his own.

But it ain’t just dusty, old, and mummy-ghost-y—the spirit of the arm’s original owner, who happens to be the first King of Hyrule, bestows Link with some nifty magical powers to aid him on his quest. They’re not quite what you’d typically expect from a fantasy game—they’re more like tools for interacting with the game’s physics-based world. One lets you telekinetically grab almost any object in the game and fuse it to something else. Another lets you reverse an object’s passage through time. Need to get across a chasm? Try breaking some trees and fusing a couple of logs together. Or move one log across, bring it back, jump on it, and reverse its pathing.

After a brief tutorial section to introduce players to the new bag of tricks, Link is told to visit four major Hyrulian cities. But it’s more of a suggestion, really—at this point, you’re pretty much free to do as you please. And damn is it fun.

It’s hard to describe how expansive and alluring the game’s world is, but imagine being dropped in an interactive Miyazaki film—that pretty much sums it up. Hyrule is just as gorgeous as it was in the last game, with stunning environments that vary from rolling dunes and sand-swept ruins to frigid, mountainous expanses; from lush green plains to volcanic crag. But with Tears’s additional two maps—one below Hyrule and one above—what was already a massive game world to begin with has been tripled. Sky Islands dot the horizon, while below Hyrule lie The Depths—a nearly pitch-black, sprawling void that curiously mirrors the terrain of the surface world (mountains become valleys; valleys, mountains).

Given the open-world, nonlinear format of the game, you can easily ignore the game’s main story and spend hours simply wandering. But in a way, that is the main point of the game: every mountain, every cave, every lake is fully explorable, and you are intentionally given tools to do just that—climbing, swimming, hang gliding. The game rewards you for treating its world with the same care that it was crafted with—for taking the time to investigate and appreciate all of your surroundings, no matter how unimportant they may seem. All sorts of hidden treasures, puzzles, and whimsical side characters can be uncovered by the inquisitive and attentive player. 

That feeling of adventure—of a world filled with mystery and awe and the simple urge to explore and appreciate it—is the core of the game. Creator Shigeru Miyamoto says that the series is imbued with his childhood memories of adventuring through the forests, caves, and “secret doors and pathways” of his hometown, Kyoto.

Perhaps our heroes are just as responsible for the apocalypses they continually avert.

The world we explore in Tears is also directly modeled on Kyoto: “I took a map of Kyoto and overlaid it on the game world, and I tried to imagine going to places that I know in Kyoto,” director Hidemaro Fujibayashi said about designing Hyrule for Breath of the Wild. “You have all of these famous temples and shrines and whatnot. . . . [I]t made it really easy to envision how that would translate to the game map,” art director Satoru Takizawa added.

The exploration is almost necessary. In order to increase Link’s maximum health, players must find Shrines of Light—of which there are a whopping 152 scattered across the map. When I ran into my first group of tougher enemies, I quickly realized that I needed more health to stand a chance. So I made my way up to the highest nearby vantage point, opened up my hang glider, and charted a course for all the shrines that I could see. It was hard not to feel like Basho, wandering the countryside from shrine to shrine on my own pilgrimage of sorts.

Resembling real-life Shinto rock shrines, each Shrine of Light transports players to a puzzle. Some are trickier than others, but all put your perception, creative problem-solving, and mastery of the game’s core mechanics to the test. Because there are so many ways to approach the game, it can be tough to find the appropriate solution. I’ve caught myself stubbornly throwing one method at the wall over and over again, trying to force the puzzle into submission. But when I notice that frustration, I can take a step back, clear my head, and try it a different way—and voilà! The solution is right there, clear as day—a stark reminder of Suzuki Roshi’s beginner’s mind: “If your mind is empty, it is always ready for anything; it is open to everything. In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities; in the expert’s mind there are few.”

It’s a concept that applies to the game’s combat too. Every weapon has a set durability, meaning that they’re bound to break after felling just a few baddies—a mechanic that reeks of impermanence. But you can also fuse items to your weapons on the fly for different effects. Sure, you can fuse plenty of stuff onto your weapons to just make them hit harder. But for the creative player, this mechanic provides endless ways to approach combat. If there are monsters standing in water, try attaching a Shock Fruit to an arrow to stun them. Or put an Ice Fruit on a spear to freeze enemies and keep them at bay. 

And then there’s one of the game’s most compelling new features: robotic engineering. Man and machine convene—players can collect various basic components (a steering wheel, a fan, a flame emitter) and combine them however they please. If you’re resourceful, you don’t even have to fight at all—you can just build a giant mech to do it for you. Or if you’re in a rush to explore a cave, you can just barely see partway up a mountain, build yourself a hot air balloon, or maybe a hovercraft.

Though Tears excels in its gameplay and environmental storytelling, its plot is by far its weakest point. Yes, there are fun characters and a couple of unexpected turns, and the plot is certainly enjoyable enough, but overall it’s much the same as the other installments: Link and Zelda fight the big bad to save Hyrule.

But if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. (Or if it is broke, fuse it back together.)

And there’s a reason the series can get away with it: the games aren’t really telling the story of Link and Zelda, but rather a Link and a Zelda—two entities stuck in samsara, doomed to repeat a never-ending battle between light and dark, good and evil. 

Skyward Sword, the series’s 2011 installment, follows the pair’s first iteration. They battle the demon king Demise, an “eternal being” that has “conquered time itself.” Having previously been defeated by the Goddess of Light—who we learn Zelda is the mortal incarnation of—Demise is out for vengeance. When the duo finally best him at the end of the game, he utters the curse:

My hate . . . never perishes. It is born anew in a cycle with no end! I will rise again! . . . An incarnation of my hatred shall ever follow your kind, dooming them to wander a blood-soaked sea of darkness for all time!

In a 2021 paper titled “I Coveted That Wind: Ganondorf, Buddhism, and Hyrule’s Apocalyptic Cycle,” University of Pennsylvania professor Kathryn Hemmann dissects the lines in their original Japanese. The word translated above as “hatred” originally reads as on’nen, a Japanese Buddhist term “used to refer to the effect of lingering hatred within the cycle of samsara”; the word “incarnation” was translated from gonge, a term used by the heavily syncretic Shugendo sect to describe Shinto deities as “temporary manifestations that a Buddha or bodhisattva takes in order to save living beings.”

The “curse” is more of a warning: the karmic repercussions of striking down hatred—of hating hatred—ensure that it will rise again, just as its return ensures that our heroes (or iterations of them) will be around to usher in a new era of peace. Perhaps Demise and his gonge are indeed bodhisattvas, for without the apocalyptic decline that they bring, there is no great renewal—and perhaps our heroes are just as responsible for the apocalypses they continually avert.

It’s a profoundly Buddhist metanarrative that mirrors the cyclical cosmologies found in various schools: from kalpa to kalpa, the “good” perpetuates samsara just as much as the “evil” does. I say bring the kalpas on—so long as Nintendo keeps delivering these delightful Zelda games.

The post Link in Samsara appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

At the turn of the millennium, Ivonne Prieto Rose was practicing law in northern California and Christopher Rose was studying literature at Pomona College. Now known as Karma Yeshe Chödrön and Karma Zopa Jigme, respectively, the two have since spent three years in retreat, received authorization as teaching lamas in the Karma Kagyu lineage of Tibetan Buddhism, and cofounded the Prajna Fire online sangha—all as a married couple.

They met in Kathmandu while studying at the Rigpe Dorje Institute (RDI), an international program rooted in traditional Tibetan Buddhist philosophy, meditation, and translation. Though they both came to RDI looking to deepen their Buddhist practice, neither one anticipated finding both a life path and a life partner.

“I was a lawyer in Silicon Valley right around when the tech bubble was mushrooming and about to implode. When I had a chance to leave that position, I figured I’d take a year or two off and study in Asia—I had just encountered the Tibetan buddhadharma a couple of years before, and I was in that stage where I just couldn’t get enough of it,” said Yeshe.

Zopa, a New Mexico native, was exposed to Buddhism at a young age through Lama Karma Dorje’s residency in Santa Fe. He met several Tibetan lamas and took refuge with Kyabje Bokar Rinpoche (who would become Prajna Fire’s root guru), but he didn’t get serious about the dharma until graduating from college in 2000. “My parents got me a plane ticket to Asia to go on a pilgrimage, and that kind of just hooked me—it really wasn’t my initial plan.”

After hitting it off at RDI, the two planned a three-year retreat together—together but separate, that is. “We were so looking forward to separate male and female wings and being in retreat as individuals,” Zopa said.

Yeshe added that as a married couple “you end up with each being half of a couple all the time. So it was a nice idea to not be that for a little while.”

But apparently karma had other plans. Vajra Vidya Retreat Center only had one wing and a total of five retreatants, and when the pair drew numbers for rooms, they wound up next door to each other. They ended up happily working closely together throughout the retreat and jokingly called themselves the “Dharma Marines” because they took their work so seriously.

In 2016, soon after completing the three-year retreat, Yeshe and Zopa founded Prajna Fire as “an offering of gratitude and respect to their teachers and a portal for Western students to access time-tested methods for studying and practicing the buddhadharma.” Through a variety of channels, Prajna Fire seeks to balance “traditional methods for cultivating experiential understanding of buddhadharma with a modern inflection”—the gray area that many contemporary Western teachers must navigate.

Yeshe describes their teaching style as an “integrative” approach—a shorthand adaptation of their Kagyu background that emphasizes “listening, contemplating, and meditating” as a practice framework. “It’s a way of bringing the dharma from out there somewhere into your head and then down into your heart, where it becomes almost like the operating system for your life. . . . When you get down to the nitty gritty, it’s about teaching us how to have this inner dialogue with the Buddha and the lineage masters so that we can examine our own assumptions.”

♦

Visit prajnafire.com to access their calendar, teachings library, podcasts, and other features.

The post Meet a Teacher: Karma Yeshe Chödrön and Karma Zopa Jigme appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

Nothing is permanent, so everything is precious. Here’s a selection of some happenings—fleeting or otherwise—in the Buddhist world this week and next. 

Thai Designers Fashion Buddhist Amulets From Recycled Materials

During Bangkok Design Week 2022 (February 5–13), two Thai companies unveiled co-designed recycled Buddhist amulets. The amulets, made of nine different types of recycled materials ranging from plastic bottles to nylon fishing nets, are blessed by monks and available in exchange for one kilogram of plastic or 100 baht ($3.07 USD). All proceeds are donated to charitable organizations. “The idea of the plastic amulet is a result of finding a connection between the environment and Thai culture,” said Krit Phutpim, a director at Dots Design Studio, one of the companies behind the project launched at Bangkok’s Design Week exhibition.

Magha Puja Day Celebrated in Southeast Asia

On February 16, Theravada Buddhists observed Magha Puja Day, a holiday that is particularly important in Southeast Asia. Magha Puja commemorates several important events in the Buddha’s life, including the announcement of his death. Observers visit temples to accumulate merit, observe the eight precepts, recite prayers, and release lanterns into the sky. Read more about Magha Puja Day, also known as Sangha Day, in Tricycle’s Buddhism for Beginners section.

Parallax Press Offers a Limited Time eBook Bundle Honoring Thich Nhat Han

Parallax Press, the book publisher founded by Thich Nhat Han, and Humble Bundle, an e-commerce platform that puts together bundle promotions and supports charity, have released a collection of books by Nhat Han and his disciples called The Art of Happiness. The bundle features over 25 titles and is available until March 5. Read an excerpt from No Mud, No Lotus, one of the books in the collection, here.

Soka Gakkai International Publishes the English Translation of Daisaku Ikeda’s 2022 Peace Proposal

Every year, the president of Soka Gakkai International publishes a peace proposal, and this year’s, which came out in late January, has just been fully translated into English. Titled Transforming Human History: The Light of Peace and Dignity, the paper focuses on the inequalities heightened by the pandemic, the climate crisis, and the abolition of nuclear weapons. Read the full proposal here.

A Khmer Buddhist Foundation Donates $1 Million to Buddhist Digital Resource Center

A Khmer Buddhist Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to preserving the culture of the Khmer people, announced last week that it has provided one million dollars in grant money to the Buddhist Digital Resource Center (BDRC). The donations have helped BDRC restore and digitize the largest collection of Cambodian Buddhist palm leaf manuscripts in the world — over 1.5 million pages in total. After two years of locating, cleaning, organizing, digitization, and scanning fragile palm leaf texts, the BDRC has made a total of over 7,600 manuscripts freely available on their website. The remaining 2,500 will be processed and released online in the coming months. 

Palm leaf manuscripts have been the main medium for Cambodian literature for hundreds of years. The dyed and hand-etched palm leaves, bundled together and tied with colorful strings, are used to transmit Buddhist rituals and teachings from generation to generation. Over 95 percent of palm leaf texts were lost to the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia between 1975-1990. Lyna Lam, the founder and executive director of A Khmer Buddhist Foundation, said the restored manuscripts “offer a snapshot of the fascinating cultural and spiritual landscape that existed in Cambodian society before the country was ravaged by war.”

Coming Up:

February 24: The Shin Buddhist Path of Boundless Compassion

Fourteenth-generation Shin Buddhist minister Mark Unno joins Tricycle editor-in-chief James Shaheen for a virtual conversation on the concept of compassion in Shin Buddhism, collective karma, balancing formal practice with freedom and creativity, and more. Register here.

February 26: Sutra and Bible, an Exhibit on Faith and the Japanese American Internment, Opens with a Virtual Curator’s Preview and Gallery Talk

On February 26, an exhibit at the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles titled Sutra and Bible: Faith and the Japanese American World War II Incarceration will open with a virtual preview and talk by curators Duncan Ryuken Williams and Emily Anderson. The exhibit, sponsored by the Museum and the USC Shinso Ito Center for Japanese Religions and Culture, features never-before-seen artifacts that showcase the role faith played for Japanese Americans during incarceration. The preview runs from 10 am to 11am PT, and the museum doors open to the public at 11 am. On April 2, the museum will host an in-person grand opening program and reception, and on August 13, a procession of interfaith clergy, mainly Buddhist priests, will carry the Ireicho Book of Names, a book containing the names of the victims of incarceration, for a formal installation in the museum’s atrium as an addition to the exhibit. Williams has been compiling the list of names for the book, which are meant to be chanted as a form of remembrance. Sutra and Bible runs until November 27, 2022. Stay tuned for more coverage.

The post <i>Sutra and Bible</i>, a New Exhibit on Faith and the Japanese American Internment, Opens with a Virtual Preview appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

Nothing is permanent, so everything is precious. Here’s a selection of some happenings—fleeting or otherwise—in the Buddhist world this week.

Activists Protest and Call for Boycott of Beijing Olympics Opening Ceremony

The Opening Ceremony of the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics commenced on Friday, 7 a.m. ET and 8 p.m. in Beijing, amidst protests and calls for a boycott. In New Delhi, India, hundreds of protesters marched by the Chinese Embassy, holding Tibetan flags and chanting, “No Rights, No Games” and “Say No To Genocide Games.” 

In the weeks leading up to the ceremony, Students for a Free Tibet arranged for groups of Tibetans, Uyghurs, and Hong Kongers to travel to Olympics qualifying events and other athletic competitions to ask athletes to boycott the games, or, as the bare minimum, to boycott the Opening and Closing Ceremony. Activists also shared guidance and resources to educate athletes about the human rights abuses perpetrated by the Chinese government. Two days before the Opening Ceremony, the Washington Post published an article stating that athletes from multiple countries, and some from at least two Western teams, would not be attending as their personal form of protest. 

Activists are also calling upon NBC, the US broadcaster of the Games, to go beyond business as usual and include equal coverage of the victims of China’s human rights abuses. On January 20, the International Campaign for Tibet posted an open letter to NBCUniversal CEO Jeff Shell, asking him and the network to report on the human rights abuses against Tibetans. 

Thousands Gather for the Final Memorial Service for Thich Nhat Hanh 

Thousands gathered on January 29 at Tu Hieu Temple in Hue, Vietnam for the final memorial ceremony and cremation of the late Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh, who passed away on January 22 at the age of 95. The week-long funeral in Hue was one of the biggest in recent decades, as tens of thousands of mourners visited the temple to pay their final respects to the beloved teacher. Following the final ceremony—which included guided meditation, chanting, and tributes from senior disciples—a formal funeral procession led Nhat Hanh’s coffin through the funeral grounds and finally to the crematorium at Paradise Garden Cremation Park. In the early morning of January 30, Nhat Hanh’s ashes were carried by his disciples and close venerables back to Tu Hieu Temple. 

The Plum Village Community recently shared a eulogy for Thich Nhat Hanh from his disciples, expressing their gratitude and love for Thay. “It is the greatest fortune of our life to have been able to become your students, to receive your guidance, and to belong to your Beloved Community,” the eulogy begins. “You are our Teacher, and you have taught and nurtured us with boundless love, patience, and care. The dewdrops of your compassionate nectar have refreshed our thirst. You have been the torch guiding us through the forest of confusion; the hand reaching out to us when we fall; the ladder rescuing us from our darkest moments. You have given us a path to walk, so that we no longer have anything to fear.” 

One-Year Anniversary of Myanmar Coup Marked with Even More Deaths and Arrests

Tuesday, February 1, marked the one-year anniversary of Myanmar’s military coup. Over the course of the year, the junta has imprisoned thousands of civilian protesters—hundreds of which died in custody, often from torture, and thousands more have been killed in the junta’s effort to stamp out rebel units, which has at times involved artillery and airstrikes.

Dozens of civilians were arrested on Tuesday for commemorating the anniversary with a “silent strike,” during which protest leaders urged people to stay at home and close their shops. At the same time, during a pro-military gathering in the town of Tachileik, an explosion killed two people and injured 30 others. On Monday, Britain, Canada, and the United States imposed new sanctions against military leaders and supporters.

Buddhist Communities Celebrate the Lunar New Year, Ringing in the Year of the Tiger

Though Lunar New Year is a secular holiday, many of the rituals have religious origins, and many Buddhists around the world celebrate the occasion. Tuesday, February 1 marked the beginning of the year of the tiger, and though the pandemic meant less travel and smaller celebrations, observers still gathered all across the globe, many of them returning home to celebrate with family in what is one of the world’s largest annual migrations. In China, even though COVID-19 restrictions have increased in the lead up to the Olympics, the Ministry of Transportation estimated 1.8 billion trips would occur around the holiday. Outside the home, observers lit incense and offered prayers at temples. Dozens gathered at Lama Temple in Beijing, AP News reports, while members of Duc Vien Buddhist Temple in San Jose gathered to celebrate Tết Nguyên Đán, the Vietnamese name for the holiday.

The post Beijing Olympics Commence Despite Protests and Calls for Opening Ceremony Boycott appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

Nothing is permanent, so everything is precious. Here’s a selection of some happenings—fleeting or otherwise—in the Buddhist world this week and next.

Soka Gakkai International President Daisaku Ikeda Releases 40th Peace Proposal 

On the 47th anniversary of the founding of Soka Gakkai International (SGI), the world’s largest and most influential sect of Nichiren Buddhism, SGI president Daisaku Ikeda released his 40th peace proposal, which is titled “Transforming Human History: The Light of Peace and Dignity.”  The full translation in English will be available here on February 11. Ikeda focuses on the inequalities heightened by the pandemic, the climate crisis, and the abolition of nuclear weapons. 

Emphasizing that vulnerable people—especially, women, the elderly, and children and young people who have suffered because of school closures, loss of family members, and unemployment—have become even more vulnerable during the pandemic, Ikeda says, “I firmly believe that the key factor determining the direction of history will prove to be we humans ourselves, and not a virus.” Joan Anderson, a representative of SGI, adds, “President Ikeda draws on the wisdom of an episode from the Vimalakirti Sutra illustrating the bodhisattva spirit of empathy and the sense that our own individual security cannot be realized in isolation from the conditions of privation faced by others.”  

Ikeda also reiterates his longtime support of youth participation and leadership in social issues by calling for a post-COVID youth summit to reimagine the world after the pandemic, and by continuing to call for participation in addressing the climate crisis. This year, he specified the need for a youth council on protecting environmental resources. “Listening to the voices of young people is not optional; it is the only logical path forward if we are genuinely concerned about the future of our world,” he said at the COP26 UN climate summit in Glasgow last year and repeated in the peace proposal.

Finally, as a leader in the movement to abolish nuclear weapons, Ikeda shared his support for the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW). “As more countries that presently feel they cannot sign or ratify the TPNW begin to positively acknowledge its true value and significance, I am confident that this will catalyze the energy and political will needed to put an end to the era of nuclear weapons,” he writes in the proposal.

SGI, which was founded in 1975 to support members of Soka Gakkai outside of Japan, has become the most diverse Buddhist organization in the US. Today, 8.27 million households in Japan are part of the Soka Gakkai, with 2.8 million members participating in SGI outside of Japan, including 354,000 in North America, 325,000 in Central and South America, 162,000 in Europe, 51,000 in Africa, and 1.9 million members in Asia and Oceania. 

Memorial Ceremonies and Tributes Continue for Thich Nhat Hanh

Practitioners around the globe continue to share tributes and remembrances since the passing of the beloved Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh, who died on January 22 in Hue, Vietnam, at the age of 95. The Plum Village Community, Nhat Hanh’s sangha, shared a selection of tributes from notable figures who expressed their gratitude for Nhat Hanh’s teachings on peace, love, and compassion. President Nguyen Xuan Phuc and Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh of Vietnam shared their wishes for the Plum Village Community to “continue the Zen master’s vision and aspiration for engaged Buddhism. . .   and, together with the wider Buddhist community in Vietnam and abroad, promote peace in the world.” Hundreds of thousands, Buddhist and non-Buddhist, have participated in online memorial services hosted by the 11 monasteries Nhat Hanh founded in the US, Europe, and Asia. Following a week of livestream memorial services from Tu Hieu Temple in Hue, Vietnam, the final funeral and cremation ceremony took place on January 28 at 6 p.m. EST. Find a schedule of worldwide memorial services here. Read a practitioner’s remembrances from a 1993 retreat in West Virginia led by Nhat Hanh, and read Nhat Hanh’s full obituary here. 

Kyabje Dodrupchen Rinpoche Passes Into Parinirvana

On January 26, Dodrupchen Chorten Monastery in Sikkim and Tashi Choling Center for Buddhist Studies in Oregon announced that Kyabje Dodrupchen Rinpoche—a master in both the Nyingma and Dzogchen school of Tibetan Buddhism and key holder of the Longchen Nyingtik teachings—passed into parinirvana. It is believed that the rinpoche is now in a state of thukdam, during which his body will be preserved as his mind becomes luminous awareness.

Keanu Reeves Facing Backlash in China for Pro-Tibet Stance

Actor Keanu Reeves recently agreed to perform in this year’s Tibet House US Annual Benefit Concert, a virtual fundraising event that will be hosted by The Dalai Lama’s New York-based Tibet House organization in March. Reeves’s support for Tibet has ruffled the feathers of some Chinese nationalists, who are calling for his newest movie, The Matrix Resurrections, to be banned in China.

Coming Up

Saturday, January 29: The newest issue of Tricycle magazine goes up online. Find the issue here.

Monday, January 31: On the final day of Tricycle Meditation Month, Myoshin Kelley, a teacher at Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche’s Tergar Meditation Community, hosts a live Q&A on Zoom where participants can ask questions about their practice. Register for the 1pm ET Q&A here.

The post Soka Gakkai International President Daisaku Ikeda Releases 2022 Peace Proposal appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

TIME magazine has Japanese monk, makeup artist, and LGBTQ activist Kodo Nishimura on its 2021 list of Next Generation Leaders. Though both of his parents are Buddhist clergy, Nishimura was not interested in following in their footsteps when he moved to New York City to study at Parsons School of Design. In college, he learned to embrace both his LGBTQ identity and his Buddhist roots. At the age of 24, Nishimura began splitting his time between makeup-artist work in America and monastic training in Japan. At 32, the monk, who once again resides at his family’s temple, now boasts such celebrity clients as actress Christina Milian and the musical duo Chloe x Halle. An outspoken LGBTQ activist challenging discriminatory legislation in Japan, Nishimura feels that simply expressing his most authentic self is also part of engendering change. He told Tricycle in a 2017 interview, “By doing what I love, I want to inspire people to know that they can be themselves.”

♦

Each Friday, Buddha Buzz looks back at the events of that week in the Buddhist world. Read the full Buddha Buzz article here.

The post <i>TIME</i> Honors Makeup Artist Monk appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

If you’ve ever been to Thailand, you’ve probably noticed how prevalent tattoos are among Thai natives. These hand-poked sacred designs, called sak yant, are inked by Buddhist holy men and charged with their blessings. In recent years, they’ve become increasingly popular souvenirs for Western tourists—a quick Google search reveals scores of travel bloggers documenting their experiences, often waiting at temples for hours on end for their turn under the needle. No doubt some of the recent interest has been inspired by Western celebrities like Angelina Jolie, who sported her first sak yant in 2003, and Brad Pitt, whose sak yant supposedly bound him to his soon-to-be ex-wife Jolie. Even the New York Times published an article on sak yant in its travel section in October 2021, noting that some people “worry that, as international interest in the practice grows, sak yant’s spiritual elements are being lost, leaving only the shell of its aesthetic appeal.” What some sak yant seekers may not realize, however, is that receiving the markings is not necessarily a casual undertaking, and it can come with karmic strings attached.

Most of the tattoos follow centuries-old sacred designs called yant, the Thai form of the Sanskrit word yantra, referring to the sacred spiritual diagrams that originated in India (sak means “to tap”). Yant range from geometrically organized writing—sometimes lines from the Pali Buddhist canon, sometimes a cryptic mix of Khmer, Thai, Pali, and the Northern Thai language Lanna—to images of animals, human genitalia, spirits, and Hindu deities. Their accompanying blessings differ, too—some are geared toward spiritual or sexual endeavors, some offer physical protection or good luck, and others (like those often worn by the country’s ferocious Muay Thai fighters) bring out personal qualities like strength, bravery, and courage.

Sak yants must be inked by qualified masters called ajahns, who—unlike the Buddhist masters with the same title—can be either monk or layman. These tattoo masters need not only to be well-versed in the yants and their relevant incantations but also to possess the level of ethical and spiritual cultivation necessary to channel them. Once a tattoo is finished, the ajahn will activate the yant with the proper blessing (Pali, katha), thus imbuing the wearer with their spiritual potency.

What some sak yant seekers may not realize is that receiving the markings can come with karmic strings attached.

Here’s where things get messy—many of the blessings that are chanted incorporate taking refuge in the three jewels (the Buddha, dharma, and sangha), a rite that some consider to function as a formal conversion to Buddhism. This raises the question: are Western sak yant wearers unknowingly converting to Buddhism?

There’s no black-and-white answer. Putting aside debates about what exactly constitutes a Buddhist conversion, Thai Buddhists disagree about whether or not sak yants even belong to their Buddhist tradition. The practice of magical tattooing predates the widespread acceptance of Theravada Buddhism in many parts of Southeast Asia. While plenty of Thai Buddhist monasteries are now renowned for their resident tattoo-poking monks, sak yants are more closely tied to Thailand’s tradition of ruesi—mystical hermit-sages thought to trace back to India’s rishi—than they are to mainstream monastic Buddhism. And though sak yants draw from a mix of Buddhist and folk religious iconography and power, some still consider the esoteric art to be a mere remnant of an unsophisticated (read: “un-Buddhist”) bygone era.

There may be more at stake, however, than just reciting the refuge chant and offering the standard fare of cigarettes, incense, flowers, and cash. Ajahns are spiritual teachers first and foremost, and receiving their blessing binds you to them. Depending on the tattoo’s ajahn and design, sak yants may come charged with only a limited battery life, after which the blessing must be recharged by the ajahn. And in order for the blessings to stick at all, the wearer must adhere to various Buddhist ethics and follow certain restrictions—typically some combination of the first five Buddhist precepts; the more powerful the yant, the longer the terms of the user agreement.

Failure to uphold your end may result in a weakening or negation of the blessing’s effects, but depending on the particular blessing and level of transgression, pact breakers are purportedly liable to incur such ill fates as insanity, loss of livelihood, a slow and painful death, or rebirth in a hell realm. In other words, whereas a normal tattoo may last a lifetime, a sak yant may last longer.

Many of these details can get lost in translation for Western wearers—myself included. During a 20-hour layover in Bangkok in 2016, I met with an ajahn who agreed to bestow a sak yant on me. Although I had read about sak yants and discussed them with a Buddhist studies professor, I realize in retrospect that I should have taken more time to contemplate exactly what I was getting myself into.

At the time, I was a college student who had just studied with a weikza in Myanmar (the country’s ruesi equivalent) for a fieldwork project to cap off a semester abroad in India. I wanted to make the most of my brief stopover in Thailand—I had been warned that my weikza practices could attract the attention of malevolent spirits, and part of me (superstitious blood from my Burmese side, I think) was starting to believe it. I figured a little extra protection wouldn’t hurt.

One of my professors had several sak yants of his own and recommended that I call his ajahn. But when I did, he told me he was busy and directed me to another ajahn, who was also busy and directed me to a small Bangkok temple. I was running on very little food and even less sleep, and I was in such a rush, apparently, that I hadn’t even taken the time to remember the name of the temple or the ajahn. Still, I presented him with a pack of menthol cigarettes, some flowers, and an envelope of cash, and after an hour or two of excruciating pain and a quick blessing, I emerged, the yant freshly inked on my upper back.

I was aware that there were conditions attached. But the unidentified ajahn with whom I was now spiritually linked spoke very little English, so the exact terms of negotiation were left vague at best. When I asked the ajahn what my yant meant, the best answer I could get was “good fortune and protection.” Don’t get me wrong—who wouldn’t want either of those boons?—but I wish I had hired a translator to parse all the details. Before I left, we shared one of the menthol cigarettes I had offered him, and he left me with one very simple instruction: “Do good.”

I don’t regret my decision, but the circumstances were not ideal. I traded blood and ink and am now karmically bound to an ajahn whose name and resident temple I don’t remember. If I could go back, I would want to put a little more intention into my choice—as far as I know, laser treatment has yet to be proven effective on one’s karma.

The post The Fine Print on Thai Tattoos appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

Nothing is permanent, so everything is precious. Here’s a selection of some happenings—fleeting or otherwise—in the Buddhist world this week and next.

Aung San Suu Kyi Faces Two-Year Prison Sentence

Aung San Suu Kyi, Myanmar’s ousted civilian leader who was arrested when the country’s military seized power in February, has been sentenced to two years in prison for charges of incitement and non-compliance with COVID-19 restrictions during the 2020 election campaign. Originally set for four years but quickly halved, the sentence marks the first verdict on almost a dozen charges. “This proceeding should not be confused with an actual trial—it is theater of the absurd and a gross violation of human rights,” said Tom Andrews, United Nations Special Rapporteur for human rights in Myanmar.

Vietnamese Nun Opens Second Temple in Japan to Help Immigrants Affected by COVID-19

Last month, Vietnamese nun Thich Tam Tri opened a new temple called Tochigi Daion-ji in Nasushiobara, a city in Japan’s Tochigi Prefecture. Like the temple she previously opened in the city of Honjo in 2018, Tochigi Daion-ji will house and support Vietnamese nationals who came to work in Japan, but who have faced hard times, especially since the pandemic. Because of Japan’s strict COVID-19-induced travel rules, many workers who wish to return home are stuck in the country, and struggling to find work. As of 2019, Vietnamese immigrants represent the largest group of foreigners living in Japan. Read more about Thich Tam Tri and her work here. 

Two Thai Buddhist Leaders Pass Away

Mae Chee Sansanee Sthirasuta, a well-known Thai Buddhist nun, died on Tuesday from cancer. She was 68 years old. Sansanee founded the Sathira-Dhammasthan Buddhist learning center in Bangkok in 1987 to provide classes on dharma and meditation for people from all walks of life. She also established Ban Sai Samphan, a shelter for women, and Savikasikhalai Mahavichalaidhama University. 

The revered monk Somdet Phra Maha Ratchamangalacharn, known as Somdet Chuang, died on Thursday at the age of 96 years old. He had been receiving kidney dialysis treatment for five years but had no other underlying health conditions. Since 1965, Chuang served as abbot of Wat Pak Nam Phasi Charoen in Bangkok’s Phasi Charoen District. He also founded the Luang Phor Sod Wat Pak Nam Foundation to promote Buddhist teachings. 

Coming Up

December 11: Nonprofits Better Burma and Support the Democracy Movement in Burma host a live, virtual event to conclude an art exhibit and auction titled Artists Against Tyranny. Funds from the three-part event will go toward humanitarian aid in Myanmar. Learn more here.

December 11-12: The Garrison Institute holds a multidisciplinary, two-day workshop titled “Nurturing Relationship Sensemaking: An Ideas and Practice Festival,” focused on interconnectedness. Register here.

December 15: The American Buddhist Study Center celebrates its 70th anniversary with a free online event. Learn more about the event here and register here.

The post Myanmar’s Military Sentences Aung San Suu Kyi to Two Years in Prison appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

Nothing is permanent, so everything is precious. Here’s a selection of some happenings—fleeting or otherwise—in the Buddhist world this week and next.

Annual Kimchi Festival in South Korea Donates to Elders in Need

After a two-year hiatus caused by the pandemic, the Seoul Kimchi Festival took place this week at Jogyesa, the chief temple of the Jogye order of Korean Buddhism. Over 150 volunteers joined monks from the temple in ​​kimjang, the act of coming together to make and share kimchi, turning eight thousand kilos, or 17,638 pounds, of cabbage into the national dish. Half the kimchi went to low-income families and elders affected by the pandemic, and half went to the monks at Jogyesa and other Buddhist organizations. Watch a video of the kimchi-making here. 

Phra Maha Praiwan Worawano, the Controversial Thai Monk Known for Using Humor and LGBTQ Terms, Leaves the Monkhood

The Thai Inquirer reported that followers took to social media this week to lament the disrobing of Phra Maha Praiwan Worawano, the Thai monk who amassed thousands of views on his casual and humor-imbued livestream teachings. In September, Worawano and his co-host, Phra Maha Sompong Talaputto, testified before a parliamentary committee on religion, art, and culture and agreed to use less humor in their live Facebook show. Since then, Worawano announced on Facebook that he would leave the monkhood “in recognition of his guilt in bringing trouble to and for the failure to save Phra Ratchapanya Suthee,” his teacher who was recently passed over for the position of abbot at his temple, Thai BPS World reports. 

Chökyi Nyima Rinpoche’s Sangha to Develop Europe’s First Buddhist University

The Gomde Germany-Austria dharma center, founded by the Tibetan Buddhist teacher Chökyi Nyima Rinpoche, announced plans this week to establish a private university for Buddhist studies. Guided by Rinpoche’s vision, the center aims to build a “Wisdom Temple” on its grounds in Scharnstein, Austria, to house the university, which would be the first Buddhist university in Europe. In the email announcement, the team at Gomde stated that “both authentic study and practice will be taught and applied [at the university], so that—according to Rinpoche—the dharma can be preserved and passed on for countless generations.” 

Shambhala Mountain Center Announces Independent Governance

Colorado’s Shambhala Mountain Center (SMC)—established in 1971 by Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche—has announced its independence from the Sakyong Potrang, the nonprofit entity that holds the assets of the lineage of Sakyong, the spiritual leader of Shambhala International. The Sakyong Potrang has held a seat, and veto power, on SMC’s governing board for many years. “Both the Potrang and SMC Boards recognized this arrangement to be no longer necessary,” said Michael Gayner, executive director of the Boulder center, “and after much discussion, the Sakyong Potrang graciously agreed to relinquish the veto powers and its seat on the SMC Governing Council.” Read more about the decision here in an email from SMC.

Tibetan Writer and Activist Tenzin Tsundue Completes 103-Day Walking Campaign to Raise Awareness for Tibetans

Tibetan writer and activist Tenzin Tsundue, who has been on a 103-day walking campaign to raise awareness for Tibetans, arrived at his final destination of Itanagar, Arunachal Pradesh on Monday. Tsundue announced the campaign “Walking the Himalayas” on his Instagram account back in August, stating that he aimed to travel from Ladakh to Arunachal Pradesh to rekindle the cultural and political relationship between Indian Himalayan states and Tibet. Traveling with a projector and a copy of the documentary Escape of the Dalai Lama from Tibet, Tsundue also highlighted the plight of Tibetans under increasing military pressure from China. 

 

 

 

 

 

View this post on Instagram

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A post shared by Tenzin Tsundue (@tenzin_tsundue_tibet)

Meditation Teacher José Reissig Passes Away

Meditation teacher José Reissig passed away on November 9 at the Lutheran Care Center in Poughkeepsie, New York. He was 95. Read a 1996 Tricycle article by Reissig here and read a full obituary here. 

Coming Up

December 4: Valerie Brown—a dharma teacher of Afro-Cuban descent in the Plum Village tradition founded by Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh—leads this month’s Dharma Talk series with Tricycle. In “How to Fight Injustice Without Hating,” Brown offers practices to help ground ourselves amid the negativity and injustice that we face.The first of four videos goes up here on Saturday.

December 4: Renowned Korean Buddhist monk, author, activist, and Zen master Pomnyun Sunim hosts a free livestream dharma talk as part of his 2021 Live Dharma Talk Series. 

December 7: The Mind & Life Institute hosts a conversation titled “Embracing Hope, Courage, and Compassion in Times of Crisis,” featuring His Holiness the Dalai Lama. (Read a just-published interview with the Mind & Life Institute and the Dalai Lama’s longtime English translator on Tricycle.) 

Now through December 8: Dharma centers nationwide are holding online retreats in the leadup to Bodhi Day (known as Rohatsu orJodo-e in Japan), the anniversary of the Buddha’s Enlightenment, which falls on December 8.

December 10: “Living The Eightfold Path: A Live Virtual Workshop with Andrew Olendzki,” begins. The online workshop will include a dharma talk, a guided reflection on one step of the eightfold path, and an audience Q&A session. Participants will receive a special discount on Dhamma Wheel, Olendzki’s year-long daily contemplative study email program.

The post Seoul Kimchi Festival Returns and Donates to Elders in Need appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

Nothing is permanent, so everything is precious. Here’s a selection of some happenings—fleeting or otherwise—in the Buddhist world this week.

Headspace Health Announces Nonprofit Initiative to Provide Free Access to Headspace for All US Teens Ages 13-18

Almost three months after Headspace merged with mental-health service Ginger to form Headspace Health, the company announced on Tuesday that it would launch a nonprofit initiative to provide Headspace app access to all US teens ages 13 to 18 via affiliation with select non-profits. The “Headspace for Teens” initiative is a partnership with youth-focused nonprofits Bring Change to Mind, co-founded by actress and activist Glenn Close, and Peer Health Exchange, and they expect to bring more nonprofit partners into the fold. Headspace will also work with teens to create content on the app. The “Headspace for Teens” press release cited a 2020 CDC study that showed an increase in mental health emergencies for children under 18 that year, including a 31 percent increase in mental health-driven emergency room visits for children ages 12 to 17 years old. “Even though many teens have an awareness of and vocabulary for mental health issues, this doesn’t always translate to action,” said Alice Nathoo, Head of Social Impact at Headspace. The new initiative will focus on acceptance, access, and action to change that.

Aung San Suu Kyi Faces Electoral Fraud Prosecution

On Tuesday, November 16, Myanmar’s military-run state election commission announced that it is prosecuting deposed civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi and 15 other political figures for electoral fraud and abuse of power. Myanmar’s junta stated that electoral fraud during last November’s election was the main justification for their seizure of power on February 1, when Suu Kyi was arrested. In May, the military appointed a new head of the election commission; now, the commission has declared November’s election invalid with many of its former members being prosecuted alongside Suu Kyi.

Suu Kyi is already involved in 11 other criminal cases totalling over a century of jail time in maximum sentences. The election commission’s new prosecution could result in the National League for Democracy—Suu Kyi’s party that saw a landslide victory in November’s election—being dissolved and unable to be represented in a new election that will supposedly take place within two years of the military’s takeover.

According to an anonymous source for AP News, on November 30, a court in the capital city of Nyapitaw will give its verdict on a case in which Suu Kyi, former president Win Myint, and former Nyapitaw mayor Myo Aung stand trial for incitement. This would mark the first verdict in any of Suu Kyi’s current cases.

The Mindful of Race Institute Launches Its Online Learning Academy

The Mindful of Race Institute, founded by meditation teacher Ruth King, recently launched its Online Learning Academy, which features a selection of racial awareness programs based on the Mindful of Race framework. King told Tricycle that plans for the online academy began about a year and a half ago at the start of COVID-19, when many turned to online activities. “My workshops were primarily offered to teams and organizations, but I had so many individuals expressing their interest in accessing my work,” she said. So King began to transfer her training workshops to an online platform so that individuals could take part and deepen their understanding of racism and race. She shared that many of the courses are intended for consultants, coaches, practitioners, and people creating cultures of care who would like to enhance their impact on racial wellbeing. The academy currently offers 13 courses, including “Mindful of Race 101,” “Thoughts on Structural Racism and Leadership,” “Brave Space,” and “A Beginner’s Guide for Meditating with Race.” King will be leading a free webinar on January 8 at 12:00 p.m. ET to share an overview of the academy’s programs and answer any questions. Interested participants can register for the webinar here. 

Shin Buddhist Minister and Tricycle Contributor Kenji Akahoshi Discusses His Retirement in the San Diego Union-Tribune 

Rev. Dr. Kenji Akahoshi, the former minister at the Buddhist Temple of San Diego, has retired, the San Diego Union-Tribune reported in a feature on the almost 80-year-old. As the Tribune says, Akahoshi became a minister at age 71, when most people are retiring, after running a dental practice in San Jose. He and his wife, Karen, are now relocating from San Diego back to San Jose to be closer to their two grandsons and Karen’s 101-year-old mother. Read the full feature here and an article by Akahoshi in Tricycle’s most recent issue: “Finding Spirit in the Ordinary.”

Massive Fire Destroys Buddhist Temple in Berks County, Pennsylvania 

Firefighters responded to a massive fire at Mituo Village, home of the Amitabha Buddhist Society of Philadelphia, in Berks County, Pennsylvania on Saturday. By the time firefighters arrived, 40-foot flames had already torn through a large part of the Mituo Village complex, including a library, classrooms, and dorms. Everyone in the temple evacuated without injuries prior to the firefighters’ arrival, though one firefighter was hurt and transported to the hospital for treatment. State police are currently investigating the cause of the fire, which caused an estimated $500,000 in damage. 

The post Headspace Health Announces Nonprofit Initiative to Provide Free Meditation for All US Teenagers appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.