Sylvia Boorstein shares an exciting update regarding ordination of bhikkhunis in the Theravada tradition

You may recall that the Summer 2010 issue of Buddhadharma — along with a heated and productive online discussion on Shambhala SunSpace — focused on a new call to end the second-class status of Buddhist nuns.

Now, Sylvia Boorstein — a friend and a frequent contributor to our magazines — provides us all with an exciting update via Huffington Post. The article begins:

“At 6:15 p.m. on August 29, 2010, at a secluded mountaintop hermitage overlooking the Pacific Ocean in Sonoma County, California, four women, all long-time dedicated practitioners, were declared fully ordained as bhikkhunis, Buddhist nuns, in the Thai Theravada tradition. It was the first such ordination ever in the Western hemisphere, and it was epochal since their preceptors were nuns in their same tradition.”

For more details and photos of the ceremony see Sylvia’s Huffington Post article, here.

Introduction to Yantra Yoga in Santa Fe New Mexico September 24-25, 2010

With Naomi Zeitz, Authorized 2nd Level Instructor by Chögyal Namkhai Norbu

www.yantrayoga.org

A Course in the Eight Movements
24-26 September 2010
at Studio Nia Santa Fe
(www.studioniasantafe.com)
$90 for all five sessions
Information/Registration: jmdeis@yahoo.com or 505.670.1116

Talk on Yantra Yoga
& the Teachings of Chögyal Namkhai Norbu
18 September 2010, 4-6 p.m.
at the Ark Bookstore
(www.arkbooks.com)

Introduction to Yantra Yoga in Berkeley California September/October 2010

With Carolina Mingola, Authorized Yantra Yoga Instructor by Chögyal Namkhai Norbu

Introduction to Yantra Yoga—Five Monday nights at Rudramandir
September 20 and 27, October 4, 11, 18– 7:15pm – 9:15pm
Cost per session: $15

Beginners’ Yantra Yoga Course at Dondrubling
Friday, September 24— 6:30pm – 8pm
Saturday, September 25—9:30am – 12noon, 4pm – 6:30pm
Sunday, September 26— 9:30am – 12noon, 4pm – 6:30pm
Cost for weekend course: $130

For more information and to register,
please contact Logan Mclellan at logan.mikyo@gmail.com Read More »

Consecration of the Great Bon Stupa for World Peace

Great Bon StupaPosted by Darlene Sessions

On December 4, 2010, Bon students and others from around the world will gather in Valles de Bravo, Mexico, to celebrate the Internal Consecration of the Great Stupa for World Peace.  Yongdzin Tenzin Namdak Rinpoche, the most senior teacher of the Bon Buddhist tradition of Tibet, and Geshe Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche, founder and spiritual director of Ligmincha Institute, will be presiding.

The Stupa for World Peace is dedicated to the Venerable Lopon Sangye Tenzin Rinpoche and symbolizes enlightened mind.  It is an architectural representation of the entire path to liberation and every aspect of its form and content is alive with symbolic meaning.

For the practitioner, the function of the Stupa is to support faith by encouraging the aspiration to acquire the qualities of enlightened mind.  For all people, it supports a connection to the Buddha mind and the expression of devotion.  Anyone who sees or otherwise comes into contact with a stupa has a seed planted in their stream of consciousness and eventually, their suffering will be relieved, obscurations cleared away, and continuity of Buddha mind will develop.

Garuda Mexico has planned a program of activities surrounding the consecration.  Click here for more information about the stupa and to view the invitation. Click here for information about Yongdzin Rinpoche.

Dü Khor Choe Ling: The Land of Kalachakra Study and Practice

By Mary Gilliand

Namgyal Monastery Institute of Buddhist Studies in Ithaca, NY, is pleased to announce construction under way of a second residential monastery. His Holiness the Dalai Lama visited the site to bless the projected 5-building facility and named it Dü Khor Choe Ling (DKCL), ”The Land of Kalachakra Study and Practice.” The design of DKCL is the shape of a Kalachakra 3-D Mandala.

Built around a central courtyard, the complex will provide a private residence for H.H. the Dalai Lama, a 120-seat Shrine Room, housing for monks and students, and facilities for classrooms, offices, dining, and meeting rooms. Read More »

Buddhist Global Relief at White House task force meeting

Buddhist Global Relief recently received a unique honor in being requested to join a task force on interfaith action to alleviate poverty around the world. The first meeting of the task force took place at the White House on July 26. The task force is intended to spearhead the Global Initiative for Faith, Health and Development, organized by the Center for Interfaith Action (CIFA), and launched in response to President Obama’s call for the world’s religions to collaborate on issues of shared humanitarian concern. Its objective is to produce a strategic framework for advancing and multiplying inter-religious cooperation on action against global poverty and illness.  Read More »

Zen Studies Society announces new ethical guidelines and launches investigation

Today the Zen Studies Society (ZSS) publicly announced on its website that Eido Shimano Roshi and his wife, Aiho-san Shimano, resigned last month from ZSS’s board of directors amid allegations of an “inappropriate relationship” between Eido Roshi and a student. The ZSS says it is “committed to fully investigating, clarifying and bringing resolution to this matter.” Eido Roshi will stay on as abbot until he retires in April 2012; however, he will not be seeing new students for dokusan. Shinge Roshi Roko Sherry Chayat will be installed as Vice Abbot on Dec. 31, 2010, and will begin offering dokusan in January. Click here to read the full announcement, including the ZSS’s newly revised ethical guidelines.

Submit your own Peace Flag!

Posted by the Rubin Museum of Art

In celebration of the International Day of Non-Violence, and the Rubin Museum’s Peace Lab Family Day, people of all ages are invited to create and submit their own peace flag. The completed flags will be strung together and hung throughout the museum during Family Day on October 2, 2010.

The International Day of Non-Violence marks Mohandas “Mahatma” Gandhi’s birthday, and his philosophy of satyagraha, or nonviolent resistance. The peace flags hung at the Rubin Museum will reflect peoples’ personal interpretations, feelings, and thoughts about satyagraha and what peace means to them.  Read More »

Wonderful pith advice on meditation

Posted by Mangala Shri Bhuti

Khyentse Yangsi Rinpoche responds to a question about meditation and mind from one of the young teens at the Young People’s Audience, Boulder Shambhala Center, August 13, 2010.
Click here to watch.

Long-life empowerment at the Boulder Theater

Posted by Mangala Shri Bhuti

Last night, Khyentse Yangsi Rinpoche gave the Pema Tse Nyingtik to a sold-out crowd of 750 people at the Boulder Theater. Much like the long-life empowerment in New York, where over 800 people packed the Symphony Space theater on an intensely humid and hot night, the crowd sat with focused anticipation, singing the Seven Line Supplication to Guru Rinpoche and the Vajra Guru Mantra in two traditional melodies while Rinpoche prepared the mandala.  Read More »

Eight things to abandon to cultivate a good heart

Posted by Mangala Shri Bhuti

To cultivate a good heart, one should stop the following eight activities. This came to my mind:

1. hypocrisy
2. judging
3. gossiping
4. hurting others’ feelings on purpose
5. being narrow-minded
6. taking advantage of people’s kindness
7. giving with the hope of getting something in return
8. invading people’s personal space and life

–Khyentse Yangsi Rinpoche

Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche to begin three-year retreat in 2011

Tibetan meditation master Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche, author of The Joy of Living and Joyful Wisdom, has announced that he will begin an extended retreat in May, saying in a written statement, “Since this year marks the end of ten years spent teaching the Dharma around the world, I have decided to begin another three-year retreat next spring.” Click here for his full statement and accompanying video clip.

Proud new parents

Sakyong Wangmo, wife of Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche, gave birth to a baby girl this morning in Halifax, Nova Scotia. This is the couple’s first child. According to their personal physician, Mitchell Levy, there were no complications during the delivery and both mother and child are healthy and resting well. The couple have given their daughter the name Drukmo Yeshe Sarasvati Ziji Mukpo. Plans are under way to celebrate the baby’s arrival with a gathering at the Halifax Shambhala Center.

Updated: Memorial service for Robert Aitken Roshi announced; official Diamond Sangha obituary released

The blog of the late Robert Aitken Roshi has now announced an August 22 memorial service in Honolulu. Click here for details.

And Roshi’s Diamond Sangha has now released an official obituary. It follows here.

Robert Aitken Roshi (1917-2010)

Aitken Gyoun Roshi, beloved teacher and founder of the Diamond Sangha, died August 5 in Honolulu at the age of 93. Although he had been in declining health for many years and was confined to a wheelchair, he continued to be active, attending weekly zazen at Palolo Zen Center, where he lived his final years, and working virtually to the minute his caregiver drove him to the hospital emergency room. Read More »

Dilgo Khyentse Yangsi Rinpoche at Pema Osel

Posted by Mangala Shri Bhuti

“If you put all the Buddha’s 84,000 teachings into one word, it’s to have a good heart.” — Khyentse Yansi Rinpoche, in his morning talk “Lineage of a Good Heart”

Teachings of Robert Aitken Roshi (and a guide to his works)

In memory of the late and much-beloved Zen teacher, Robert Aitken — click here for a brief obituary — we present two of his teachings from the pages of Buddhadharma. (Links open in new windows).

”What’s the Meaning of This?“ — Robert Aitken Roshi on Blue Cliff Record Case 20: Lung-ya’s “The Meaning of the Ancestor’s Coming from the West”

Caught in Indra’s Net — If you want to understand the full truth of “form is emptiness; emptiness is form,” Aitken Roshi said, you must go beyond the Heart Sutra to philosophical texts like the Huayan Sutra, which unpack and elaborate this profound paradox.

Click through for additional links related to Aitken Roshi, and an extensive bibliography of his written works. Read More »

Robert Aitken Roshi (1917-2010): His story and legacy

James Ishmael Ford tells the story of the great teacher Robert Aitken — who died on August 5th at age 93. Adapted from Ford’s book, Zen Master WHO? A Guide to the People and Stories of Zen, with permission from Wisdom Publications.

Robert Aitken was, without doubt, one of the most truly venerable elders of the Western Zen way.

Aitken was born in Philadelphia in 1917. When he was five years old, his father accepted an appointment as an ethnologist at the Bishop Museum in Honolulu. Except for a year and a half in California during high school, he was raised entirely in Hawai’i. Before the outbreak of World War II, he spent two and a half years at the University of Hawai’i. Then, taking a break from his university career, Robert took a fateful job in Guam.

In 1941, the day after Pearl Harbor was bombed, he was captured by the invading Japanese Army and spent the entire war in various civilian internment camps in Japan. Fortunately, at some point a guard loaned him a copy of R. H. Blyth’s Zen in English Literature and the Oriental Classics. Read More »

Remembering Robert Aitken (1917-2010)

Robert Aitken, one of American Zen’s great pioneers, has died.

Aitken was brought to Zen in great part thanks to time detained in Japanese internment camps (due to his presence as a worker in Guam at the start of World War II). In one such camp he met R.H. Blyth, whose presence and scholarly work would have a life-changing influence on Aitken.

Aitken would go on to become a Zen teacher in the Harada-Yasutani lineage of Zen Buddhism, and to co-found Honolulu, Hawaii’s Diamond Sangha. His influence, as seen in books on Zen practice and ethics like Taking the Path of Zen, Encouraging Words, and The Mind of Clover, would become widespread. Aitken also dedicated himself to social justice throughout his life and work, as one of the co-founders of the Buddhist Peace Fellowship and a stalwart voice of social tolerance and healing.

As of today, Aitken Roshi’s website reads “Aitken Roshi passed away today, Thursday, August 5, 2010, at around 5:30 pm at Straub hospital in Honolulu. He was 93.” More telling is the wording of the title of that post: “Goodbye Dad, Grampa, Papa, Friend, Teacher, Scholar, Educator, Author, Roshi…” Our thoughts go out to all the many who knew Aitken Roshi in any of these capacities.

Please feel free to share your thoughts about Aitken Roshi here.

See also: James Ishmael Ford on Aitken’s life and legacy

The future of Buddhism: Online symposium

Posted by Gary Gach

As part of a summer-long Future of Religion series, the new multifatih site Patheos.com* has launched an online symposium on the future of Buddhism.

What  are  major trends in Buddhist thought and practice in the years ahead? What major challenges and opportunities will  Buddhism encounter in the twenty-first century? How to assess the changing landscape of Buddhism?  Read More »

School for Compassionate Action: Yoga and Meditation for Communities in Need

New York, NY – In Fall 2010, the School for Compassionate Action (SCA) is launching a groundbreaking training that is changing the landscape of mental and physical healthcare.  The program starts on September 18 at the Tibet House, 22 West 15th St., NYC.

The School for Compassionate Action: Yoga and Meditation for Communities in Need is a nonprofit group of highly skilled yoga and meditation teachers, clinical psychologists, social workers, and contemplative Buddhist psychotherapists.

Read More »

No Better Reality

Khyentse Yangsi Rinpoche teaching at Lerab Ling, France

Posted by Mangala Shri Bhuti

“There is no better reality than the one we live in –- where a good heart can be realized.”

Dilgo Khyentse Yangsi Rinpoche
Croatia, 2010

The Dharma Bum Life Program

Posted by The Dharma Bums

Six Paramitas, eight weeks, twelve Dharma Bums, and a summer’s vow to explore how to weave Dharma practice into our everyday lives.  The Second Annual Dharma Bum Life Program brings together twelve San Diego residents from a variety of backgrounds for eight weeks of meditation and community service.

Between July 1 and August 31, participants meet twice a week to meditate, plan community service projects, and discuss how to live a simple life in a fast-paced American culture.  In addition, participants attend four meditation and work retreats at various Zen centers and cultural Temples in southern California. Read More »

Khyentse Yangsi Rinpoche arrives in Croatia

Posted by Mangala Shri Bhuti

After days of moist heat and and humid air, the skies opened up and cool summer rain descended on a parched city. A small caravan of cars adorned with Dilho Khyentse flags made its way through downtown traffic toward the airport.

About twenty people were at the Zagreb airport to greet and receive Khyentse Yansgi Rinpoche, Rabjam Rinpoche, and the party with khatags in hand all aglow. It was a historic moment in Zagreb, Croatia, where dharma is beginning to truly blossom. Yangsi Rinpoche greeted everyone warmly and seemed quite at home. Two days of teachings and wangs to come….

Buddhist king and queen expecting first child: Birth to take place at IWK Health Centre, Halifax, NS

Via Shambhala International

The king and queen of Shambhala, the hereditary sovereigns of the legendary Himalayan kingdom, are expecting the birth of their first child in August in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada.

Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche and his queen, the Sakyong Wangmo Khandro Tseyang, are holders of the Shambhala Buddhist lineage, whose forefather was the Tibetan king, Gesar of Ling, hero of the epic story told in song and dance throughout Asia.

The couple have decided to have the birth in their adopted home of Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada — the spiritual capital of the worldwide Shambhala community.  Read More »

Dilgo Khyentse Yangsi begins tour of the West

Dilgo Khyentse Yangsi Rinpoche at Lerab Ling in France

Photo: Elea Sevestre

Posted by View Magazine

Dilgo Khyentse Yangsi Rinpoche has begun his first visit to the West with a fortnight of celebrations in France.

Khyentse Yangsi Rinpoche, who turned 17 last month, is taking part in a two-month tour of Europe and North America to mark the centenary of the birth of Kyabjé Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, his previous incarnation.

Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche was one of the great spiritual figures of the last century. He was the teacher of many of the Tibetan masters teaching around the world today, and Khyentse Yangsi Rinpoche has been invited to teach and give empowerments at some of the centres that they established. Read More »

The Great River of Blessings

The Sakyong Foundation is pleased to announce it is hosting The Great River of Blessings, a new downloadable book by Walker Blaine. This book is an account of the Rinchen Terdzö that was conferred by His Eminence Tertön Namkha Drimed Rinpoche on the Kongma Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche in the winter of 2008-2009. The Rinchen Terdzö is a three-month-long presentation of some of the most vital practices and instructions held by the Nyingma lineage. For more information or to download the book, go to The Sakyong Foundation. The e-book is offered free of charge with a request that people donate to humanitarian work in Asia.

Ajahn Amaro heads back to England

From the Ukiah Daily Journal

Ajahn Amaro, the founding abbot of California’s Abhayagiri Buddhist Monastery in Redwood Valley, will be moving to England this month to fill the role as abbot of Amaravati Monastery near London.

Since moving to Redwood Valley in 1996, Amaro has been generous in sharing the teachings of the Buddha with our local community. He has offered many classes, guided meditations, and daylong mini-retreats at the monastery as well as at Yoga Mendocino in town. Larry Restel, an investment adviser from Ukiah, first met Amaro in 1990 in England: Read More »

“Dueling Dalai Lamas”? China ups the ante on reincarnation within Tibetan Buddhism

The New York Times reports:

Reincarnations of Tibetan spiritual leaders, including the Dalai Lama, must be approved by the Chinese central government, a senior Communist Party official said. The remarks were among the clearest indications yet that China will appoint a reincarnation of the Dalai Lama after the current Dalai Lama dies, setting off a struggle with exiled leaders of the Chinese territory over Tibetan Buddhism.

Click here to read the full Times report.

What is an empowerment?

Posted by Mangala Shri Bhuti

In this short video clip, Elizabeth Mattis-Namgyel — author, teacher, wife of Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche, and editor of his books — explains what is the essential purpose of an empowerment. Clear and thoughtful, her comments inspire us to go deeper into our own intention to wake up. This summer we have the opportunity to receive two empowerments from Dilgo Khyentse Yangsi Rinpoche as part of Celebrating the Return.

Mingyur Rinpoche: Happiest man in the world?

Mingyur Rinpoche

Daniel Goleman writes, in the New York Times: “Richard Davidson, who heads the Laboratory for Affective Neuroscience at the University of Wisconsin, has found one distinct brain profile for happiness. As Davidson’s laboratory has reported, when we are in distress, the brain shows high activation levels in the right prefrontal area and the amygdala. But when we are in an upbeat mood, the right side quiets and the left prefrontal area stirs. When showing this brain pattern, people report feeling…’positively engaged, goal-directed, enthusiastic, and energetic.’ ”  Read the whole article.