Buddhist News

Monthly Archives: December 2010

New Year’s resolutions

From Bhante Bodhidhamma

Resolution comes from the Latin which means literally to ‘solve again’. And that’s what the New Year offers us. An opportunity to reflect on the past year, indeed our lives and consider how we can do better. The key is in that reflection. One of the Buddha’s constant exhortations is ‘wise reflection’.

There are many ways in which we can and indeed should reflect on our lives. The meaning of our work and our leisure time, our relationships and our community, city life and nature. How we spend our wealth and our time. Some of our reflections may be pragmatic, artistic, social and so on. Here we are concerned with the spiritual life. Read More »

Rev. James Ford’s open letter regarding Eido Roshi

James Ford, a Soto Zen priest and Unitarian Universalist minister, has sent an open letter to the board of the Zen Studies Society regarding Eido Roshi, advising the board to “dismiss the Reverend Eido Shimano from any position of authority in the Zen Studies Society or its affiliates.” Click here to read the letter, as well as Eido Roshi’s letter to the New York Times.

Bernie Glassman’s Montague Farm is closing

From Bernie Glassman, Zen Peacemakers Newsletter

I wish to share with you that after three months of careful consideration and discussion, the Board of the Zen Peacemakers has decided to sell the organization’s Montague Farm campus in Western Massachusetts and move its operations to a smaller neighboring location.

The vision for developing the Montague Farm was to make its beautiful 34-acre campus a motherhouse for the Zen Peacemakers, a family and lineage of Zen practitioners integrating meditation with social action and service. ZP’s original focus of activity was in Yonkers, New York. Over the years, members expanded this work, serving in different countries around the world, and often voiced the need for a home and central headquarters. So when the Montague Farm came to our attention in 2002, we decided to make that our base for socially engaged Buddhism, incorporating multifaith work, a training institute (named after my teacher, Maezumi Roshi), a zendo, and service projects. Read More »

“Never Give Up!” An update on filming in Bodhgaya

“Never Give Up” is the working title of a forthcoming documentary by James Gritz and the Kagyu Monlam documentary team. The film centers on Kagyu Monlam and the 900th-year celebration of the First Karmapa, Dusum Khyenpa.

The latest update on the film says that it will integrate the stories of three women connected with the Karmapa who are engaged in significant social action in Bodhgaya.

To see pictures and to read more about the film project, visit James Gritz’s Blog.

Remembering Gene Smith

Message from His Holiness the Seventeenth Gyalwang Karmapa, Ogyen Trinley Dorje

From the time the Buddhadharma arrived in Tibet, the translation and production of texts formed a key area of activity, mobilizing and shaping Tibetan culture. During the mass exodus into exile in the mid-20th century, Tibetans could easily carry the meaning of the texts written in their hearts but had to carry the books on their own backs. In this process, and in the subsequent years of exile and during the Cultural Revolution within Tibet, texts and wood blocks were scattered, and painfully many were lost. In such an era, to dedicate one’s life to seeking out, preserving, publishing and digitizing Tibet’s vast textual heritage, as Gene Smith did, is a kindness that cannot be expressed in words. I do not believe it unfair to say that his life’s accomplishments follow in the example of the great Dharma kings of Tibet. Read More »

Wisdom Publications’ Tim McNeill on the life and work of E. Gene Smith

As reported here this past Friday, the Tibetan Buddhist world and the Buddhist world at large are mourning the December 16 passing of E. Gene Smith, who dedicated his life to preserving and sharing vital Tibetan Buddhist texts.

At Wisdom Publications in 2000. Front row: Tim McNeill, Gene Smith, and David Kittelstrom. Rear: Rilbur Rinpoche, Geshe Tsulga.

A full obituary by Smith’s colleague Janet Gyatso will appear in the next issue of Buddhadharma. Here, another close contemporary — Timothy J. McNeill, board member for Smith’s Tibetan Buddhist Resource Center and publisher at Wisdom Publications, where Gene spent time as an acquisitions editor and trusted adviser — remembers the man who lived his life among Tibetan texts: Read More »

E. Gene Smith, Tibetologist: 1936 – 2010

E. Gene Smith (Photo by David Kittelstrom)

E. Gene Smith, who through his life and work — and particularly his creation of the Tibetan Buddhist Resource Center (TBRC) — strove to make the literature of the Tibetan people available to all, has died.

After a thirty-year overseas career in the Library of Congress, Smith became Executive Director of the TBRC, which quickly became the world’s most comprehensive collection of Tibetan literature. (Smith and the TBRC were profiled in the second [Winter 2002] issue of Buddhadharma; click here to read this profile.) He also served as an acquisitions editor and adviser to Boston-based Wisdom Publications.

The TBRC Blog has a posting about Gene’s passing, here.

Reflections on renunciation

From Bhiksuni Thubten Chodron

For centuries, Buddhists from the various Buddhist traditions seldom met each other due to geographic distance, different language, and different cultures. Now they can, and for sixteen years Western Buddhist monastics from the diversity of traditions have gathered together to learn about each other’s practices, education, and communities. The result has been the development of beautiful friendships and mutual respect as we support each other in living the simplicity of monastic life in a society preoccupied by the complexities of consumerism. Last month 36 of us from the Theravada, Chan and Zen, and Tibetan Buddhist traditions gathered at Vajrapani Institute, a Tibetan Buddhist center in California, for four days to share “Reflections on Renunciation: The Practice of Vinaya in the 21^st Century.”