Bonsai Features

Nirvana

Just as fire is not stored up in any particular place but arises when the necessary conditions exist, so Nirvana is not said to be existing in any particular place, but is attained when the necessary conditions are fulfilled.

                                                                                     

                                             
What attains Nirvana? This question must necessarily be set aside as irrelevant for Buddhism denies the existence of a permanent entity or an immortal soul. As right now and here there is neither a permanent ego nor an identical being, it is needless to say there is no "I" in Nirvana.

                                                                                                                                          ~Narada

If any teach Nirvana is to cease,
Say unto such they lie.
If any teach Nirvana is to live,
Say unto such they err.

                               ~Sir Edwin Arnold

Starving-Student Simple Corn Soup

2 tablespoons of butter
2 tablespoons of flour
Minced onion to taste (The first time you make this soup try 1 teaspoon of minced onion. Learn from that, otherwise you might have Onion Soup with Corn.)
2 cups of milk
1 can of corn, drained
Salt and pepper to taste

In a suitable-sized pot, melt the butter over medium heat.

Add the flour and stir well. Allow the butter and flour to cook for 1 minute, stirring frequently. (You want to cook the flour. Otherwise your soup will have a raw flour flavor.)

Gradually add the milk, stirring as you do.

Heat to almost boiling, stirring constantly.

Add the corn.

Again, heat to almost boiling.

Turn off the heat and season with the salt and the pepper.

This soup has a very 'calm' flavor. Serve it with hot sauce. Or add a minced pickled jalapeno slice or two.

Onions Parmesan

3 tablespoons of butter
1 tablespoon of flour
1 medium onion minced
1/3 cup of of milk
Salt to taste
Freshly ground black pepper to taste
1/2 cup of bread crumbs
1/3 cup of freshly grated Parmesan cheese
4 large onions, sliced

Pre-heat the oven to 300 degrees F.

In a large saucepan melt the butter.

Add the flour and mix until well blended. Cook the butter and flour for 1 minute, stirring frequently.

Add the minced, the milk, the salt and the pepper to taste, the bread crumbs, and the cheese. Mix this all very well.

Butter the sides and bottom of a casserole and place the onion slices in the dish.

Pour/spread the cheese-onion mixture over the sliced onions.

Bake for 35 minutes, until the sliced onions are tender.

Sauteed Leeks

Artwork: Leeks by Jennifer Abbot

3 tablespoons of butter
4 medium leeks, thinly sliced
1 tablespoon of minced green bell pepper
Salt and pepper to taste

Melt the butter in a skillet.

Add the sliced leeks, the green pepper, and the salt and pepper.

Cover and saute over low heat until the leeks are just tender.

Remove the cover, raise the heat to high, and cook for a few minutes more, turning frequently, until they are done to your satisfaction.

This is Life

There never was, there never will be, nor is there now, a person who is wholly blamed or wholly praised.

        ~The Dhammapada, verse 228

What Do I Do?

Overcome the angry by non-anger;
overcome the wicked by goodness;
overcome the miser by generosity;
overcome the liar by truth.

                   ~The Dhammapada, verse 223

The Four Worldly Winds

These are the things that usually guide us.

These are the things that should not guide us.

1 . . . Pleasure and Pain

2 . . . Gain and Loss

3 . . . Fame and Disrepute

4 . . . Praise and Blame

The Sage

The Sage has no interests of his own,
But takes the interests of the people as his own.
He is kind to the kind;
He is also kind to the unkind:
For Virtue is kind.
He is faithful to the faith;
He is also faithful to the unfaithful:
For Virtue is faithful.

In the midst of the world, the Sage is shy and self-effacing.
For the sake of the world he keeps his heart in its nebulous state.
All the people strain their ears and eyes:
The Sage only smiles like an amused infant.

                                                                      ~The Tao Teh Ching

Mara

Mara can be said to represent the powerful hold the world—through the only way we experience the world, our senses—can have on our mind.

Mara is the power our experiences have in seducing, ensnaring, and enslaving the unaware mind.

Seduced by Mara we can remain lost in the stimulation of the senses and fail to see the path that leads to the ending of our stress and anxiety.

What Did the Buddha Teach?

The early sutras present the Buddha's teaching as the solution to a problem. The problem is the fundamental problem of life. In Pali the problem is named dukkha; in Sanskrit duhkha. These words can be translated as stress, anxiety, discomfort, dis-ease, or suffering.

In a passage in the Majjhima Nikaya the Buddha says he has always made known just two things; namely dukkha and the cessation of dukkha.

This statement may be regarded as expressing the basic orientation of Buddhism for all times and in all places. The classic formulation is 'The Four Noble Truths': the truth of the nature of dukkha, the truth of the nature of dukkha's cause, the truth of the nature of dukkha's cessation, and the truth of the nature of the path leading to dukkha's cessation.

The temptation to think of these four 'truths' as a kind of Buddhist creed should be resisted. The Four Noble Truths do not represent truth claims that one must intellectually assent to when one makes the decision to follow the Buddha's Teaching, on becoming a Buddhist. Part of the problem is with the word 'truth'. The Pali word sacca and the Sanskrit word satya can certainly be translated as truth, but they can equally be rendered as 'real' or 'actual thing.'

We're not dealing with propositional truths with which we must either agree or disagree, but with four 'true things' or 'realities' whose nature, we are told, the Buddha realized or finally understood on the night of his awakening.

The teachings of the Buddha therefore state dukkha, its cause, its cessation, and the path to its cessation which we fail to see as they are, and this is as true for Buddhist as for non-Buddhist. A Buddhist is one committed to trying to follow the Buddha's prescriptions for coming to see these realities as they are.

One of the earliest summary statements of these truths is from the Samyutta Nikaya:

This is the noble of dukkha: birth is dukkha, aging is dukkha, sickness is dukkha, dying is dukkha, sorrow, grief, pain, unhappiness, and unease are dukkha; being united with what is not liked is dukkha, separation from what is liked is dukkha; not to get what one wants is dukkha; in short, the five aggregates of grasping are suffering.
     This is the noble truth of the origin of dukkha; the thirst for repeated existence which, associated with delight and greed, delights in this and that, namely the thirst for the objects of sense desire, the thirst for existence, and the thirst for non-existence.
     This is the noble truth of the cessation of dukkha: the complete fading away and cessation of this very thirst—its abandoning, relinquishing, releasing, letting go.
     This is the noble truth of the way leading to the cessation of suffering: the noble eightfold path, namely right view, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration.

A Wise Thought

We need only be aware and respond properly to every situation that life places before us. With this wise thought as our guideline, we can strive to act morally, intelligently, sensitively, and compassionately.

~Ajahn Sumano

The Path

The path that leads out of the maze is the one that follows both our spiritual inclination and the laws of nature. So, by design, we are already programmed to seek a way out and to make good our escape.

~Ajahn Sumano

Bertrand Russell's Advice for Future Generations

Starving-Student Tortilla Supper

Vegetable oil
1 large clove of garlic, minced
1 small onion, chopped
1 (15-ounce) can of pinto beans, drained and rinsed
1 (14.5-ounce) can of diced tomatoes (Diced tomatoes with green chilies if you're brave.)
1 1/2 tablespoons of chili powder (Leave this out if you're using the tomatoes with the green chilies.)
Salt to taste
Freshly ground black pepper to taste
1 1/2 cups of your favorite salsa
4 ounces of soft tofu
2 tablespoons of fresh lime juice
12 6-inch flour tortillas
1 cup (Or to taste.) of shredded cheese of your choice

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

Lightly oil a 9x13-inch baking dish.

Heat a tablespoon of oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add the onion and saute for 5 minutes. Add the garlic and cook for 30 more seconds.

Add the pinto beans, the tomatoes, the chili powder (if using), and the salt and the pepper to taste. Lower the heat and simmer until the tomato liquid has cooked away.

Remove from the heat.

In a food processor, combine the salsa, the tofu, the lime juice, and 1/2 cup of the bean mixture.

Spread a thin layer of the tofu-and-salsa mixture over the bottom of the prepared baking dish. Arrange 6 of the torillas on top, overlapping as needed.

Spread the remaining bean mixture over the tortillas and cover with the remaining tortillas.

Top with the remaining tofu-and-salsa mixture and sprinkle with the shredded cheese.

Bake until hot and bubbly and lightly browned on top, about 30 minutes.

Allow it to rest for 10 minutes before serving.

Serve with sour cream, lime wedges, and hot sauce. A sprinkling of chopped iceberg lettuce adds a nice fresh crunch.

A More Enlightened World

It is enlightened to abolish slavery. It is enlightened to attend to the welfare of animals. It is enlightened to create the conditions for world peace. It is enlightened to help others in myriad everyday ways. It is enlightened to recognize others as brothers and sisters. It is enlightened to view yourself objectively and not collude with superstition. Basically, it is enlightened to be kind and to stand up against cruelty. Every enlightened action contributes to the emergence of a more enlightened world.

~David Brazier

A Beacon of Hope

The Dalai Lama's continuing search for peace and reconciliation in circumstances where most other comparable leaders would have opted for guerrilla warfare stands out like a beacon of hope in a dark world and touches the consciences of many.

~David Brazier

Freedom From Superstitious Escapism

Two and a half thousand years ago, in norther India, the tradition we refer to as Buddhism was born. The new socio-religious movement spread rapidly in its early days and has become one of the most enduring and successful of such movements in history. It's older than Christianity or Islam and more international than Judaism, Hinduism, or Confucianism.

Why did the Practice and the Teaching spread so? Because of the depth of inspiration of its founder, the clarity of his message, and the personal and social implications of the Teaching.

Buddhism was an inspired protest against of the oppressive conservatism, the superstition, the greed, the racism, and the belligerence of the world into which it was born.

The word Buddha means "awakened one." Buddhism can therefore be said to mean "the way of awakening." You may call it a religion, a way of life, or a vision of human perfectibility. For twenty-five hundred years it has been a light for those who would live the better life and create a better world with resort neither to superstitious escapism on the one hand nor violent coercion on the other.

To be awakened, or enlightened as some say, is to be compassionate, tolerant, reasonable, moral and engaged in a life that benefits humankind and all life—that contributes to the emancipation of all sentient beings from avoidable stress and exploitation.

Buddhism and Gender Equality

Although the Buddha did allow women into his order, in his day women had to train separately, and this remained the case up until Buddhism came to the West. Zen Buddhism arrived in America at the height of the civil and women's rights movements of the sixties and seventies, and so coeducational Buddhist monasteries were established. They were the first co-ed Buddhist monasteries to exist anywhere. Furthermore, the San Francisco Zen Center added the names of prominent female teachers to the traditional chanting of the Buddhist lineage, which had included only male teachers up till then.

~Brad Warner, in Don't Be A Jerk

Conditioned Arising and Nirvana

It is true that Buddhist orthodoxies often present "conditioned arising" and "nirvana" as subtle and difficult concepts to grasp, yet their definitions in the Pali discourses are not that hard to understand. "Conditioned arising" boils down to the underlying principle of contingency, whereas "nirvana" is simply the ending (for shorter or longer durations) of reactivity. Any difficulty we might have in seeing or awakening to them is not primarily conceptual but existential.

~Stepehen Batchelor, in after buddhism

Meditation

In meditation we learn to neither engage or suppress a thought or an emotion.

We take what we have learned in meditation and apply it to our daily life. We do not engage or suppress a desire. We allow it to pass.

The Sage

Sages do not say they are
    Inferior, superior, or equal [to others].
    Peaceful, unselfish,
    They neither embrace nor reject.

                                      ~The Buddha

Buddhist Discourses

Buddhist discourses are provisional teachings, whose purpose is to promote the alleviation of dukkha through letting go of attachment.

Buddhist discourses are not a means of explaining the universe; they are simply words that may help us find freedom.

Experience

It should be understood that Buddhism is not geared toward explaining the nature of the universe. Buddhism is geared toward explaining experience; the material we have to work with in terms of taking care of human stress and anxiety and suffering, dukkha.

Buddhism tells us we don't know anything that is not filtered through our senses and our experience.

Mind

Voramai Kabilsingh (1908-2003) was the first Thai woman to receive full ordination and take the accompanying 311 Precepts.

A young man ashed her, "How do you keep 311 precepts?"

Voramai Kabilsingh answered, "I keep only one precept."

Surprised, the young man asked, "Which one?"

She replied, "I just watch my mind."

Consciousness

Two monks were debating outside their monastery.

The one said to the other, "The wind is moving."

The other replied, "The flag is moving."

The Sixth Ch'an Patriarch Hui-Neng was walking by and said, "Not the wind, not the flag, mind is moving."

The First Precept

The First Moral Precept: I undertake the training rule to abstain from the taking of life.

Thich Nhat Hanh has reformulate this precept as follows: Aware of the suffering caused by the destruction of life, I am committed to cultivating compassion and learning ways to protect the lives of people, animals, plants, and minerals. I am determined not to kill, not to let others kill, and not to support any act of killing in the world, in my thinking, and in my way of life.

When considering the First Precept, please keep in mind there has to be four factors present to make the action of killing a negative act.

1...There has to be the object of the killing. One must understand the object being killed to be a living being.

2...There has to be the intention of killing. To step unknowingly on an insect is not a negative act. To purposely aim your car at a cat and run it over is a negative act.

3...There has to be the action of killing.

4. The death has to occur.

The First Precept asks us to do two things: to avoid taking a life and to protect life whenever and wherever possible. Buddhism is not a passive tradition. We act when we are able to act. And we guide our actions by Compassion and Wisdom.

In Buddhism the question is not “What is right or wrong thing to do?” The question is “What is the wisest and most compassionate thing to do.”

Think Vegan

Compassion

Compassion, as taught and lived by the Buddhist Tradition, can be summed up as the practice of relieving suffering and giving joy.

Nature

When the causes and conditions exist, the results occurs accordingly. Who has created this? It is just the law of nature. When it break ups, that is also nature.

~Achaan Chah

Thich Nhat Hanh

[He] is a holy man . . . a scholar of immense intellectual capacity. His ideas for peace, if applied, would build a monument to world brotherhood, to humanity.

~Martin Luther King Jr.

Calming Our Emotions and Nourishing Our Joy

Mindfulness is the foundation of happiness. A person who is unhappy cannot make peace. Individual happiness is the foundation for creating peace in the world. To bring about peace, our hearts must be peace.

Mindfulness is the practice of stopping and becoming aware of what we are thinking and doing. The more we are mindful of our thoughts, speech, and actions, the more concentration we develop. With concentration, insight into the nature of our own suffering and the suffering of others arises. we then know what to do and what not to do in order to live joyfully and in peace with our surroundings.

Two important practices that help us cultivate the energy of mindfulness are mindful breathing and mindful walking. Our breath and our steps are always with us, and we can use these simple everyday acts to calm our emotions and nourish our joy.

  ~Thich Nhat Hanh 

The Great Teaching of the Buddha

We are past the moment of being introduced to and amazed by this great teaching. Now we are ready to learn how to make use of it for the lives we are living here in our time.

~Norman Fischer

Help Build a New Temple

The Grand Rapids Buddhist Temple started five years ago in a small store front with twelve people and a teacher.  Within weeks, our weekly services filled up the space, and we had to move to another store front to keep up with this rapid growth. Today, just two years into our new store front, we are bursting at the seams again.  We have grown from 12 to an active Sangha of over 150 and newsletter subscribers of 750.

We have developed a Buddhist-based addiction recovery program that operates six times a week at the temple and other locations in Grand Rapids, Kalamazoo, and Ludington.  We offer an active, growing children's program each week. Our ordained teachers are often invited to discuss Buddhism in schools, churches and other organizations throughout West Michigan.

With the success of these programs as well as our weekly services and class schedules, we have simply outgrown our current 3,000 sq ft location.  

We have many more programs and services we would like to offer, but do not have the right amount and type of space to offer them.

We need the stability of a permanent temple, not a rented store front.  We are the only Buddhist temple that serves Westerners in our area.  

Our goal is to raise $150,000 as a down payment for a permanent structure,  We are strictly a donation-based, all-volunteer 501(c)3 organization.  We have enough income for operational expenses but need to raise funds for a down payment on a building.  It is only with our own building that we can continue to expand our offerings in our community which, as our growth testifies to, wants us here and thriving.  

Any amount you can give is deeply appreciated, Thank you!

I you can help, go to gofundme.com and type in Build Buddhist Temple Grand Rapids.

The Guide

We can dispense with everything involved in ritualized religion simply by listening carefully and following the still, sensitive, compassionate, virtuous inner guide. Be still and know the life within. Do good, refrain from evil, and clear your mind of unworthy distractions.

~Ajahn Sumano