We take up the issue from last time, wandering around the historical circumstances of exclusive practice, Kamakura-era Buddhist schools, deal with how the context in which one practices matters, ritual efficacy, heresy, and whether there’s really a difference between zazen and nembutsu. We don’t really answer the question of whether or not one can combine… Continue reading Shin and Zen Practice, part two
Hey! Check out that new theme song! We finally get around to doing some recording and answering some listener questions, this one about the possibility of combining Shin and Zen Buddhist practice. We dance around the issue for a while, meandering through the minutia of particular ritual styles, before getting to some of the historical… Continue reading Shin and Zen Practice, part one
We're back! And we're taking up a listener question about practicing Buddhism when you're not near a Shin community, so we're calling this one "how to do Shin practice?" This is an important question; what is our practice? How do we do the practice? Harry breaks it down into external and internal aspects where the… Continue reading How to do Shin Buddhist practice
We round out our conversation about music by focusing on Shin Buddhism, starting with Shinran. It's clear chanting was an important part of early Shin communities, and many of Shinran's wasan (poems) have come down to us as songs still sung today. We take a brief detour to talk about Herbie Hancock before getting into… Continue reading Buddhism and music, part three
In part two of our discussion of Buddhism and music, we talk (mostly) about the potential genre of "Buddhist music." Genre is a tricky; it raises all sorts of questions about who gets to define an artist or musician and whether or not it further divides people into camps of musical identity. But we definitely… Continue reading Buddhism and Music, part two
We've got a long-standing interest in music; coincidentally, a listener asked us a question about music on Facebook, so we took the subject and ran with it! This is the first of three episodes dedicated to the subject of Buddhism and music. Today's show is a general overview of the subject, both the question of… Continue reading Buddhism and Music, part one
Prompted by a listener who's interested in how Buddhist teachings and practices change over time, in this episode we take up the tension between maintaining tradition versus adaptation to new circumstances. Whereas one could argue that we should look to Shinran as the final authority on what the orthodox Shinshu teaching or practice should be,… Continue reading Tradition and Change
Harry and I will be heading back into the recording studio soon (i.e., the kodo at the Jodo Shinshu Center) to record some new episodes to be released in December and January. We've got some ideas rolling around our heads for podcast topics, but we really want to know — what's on your mind? Got… Continue reading Give us your best shot
We've been inspired. A listener wrote in asking for the basics of Shin Buddhism? Could we do a sort of Jodo Shinshu 101 episode? And we thought, well, we can try. This is a great question and in an effort to help clear up misconceptions and to help folks know more about Shin Buddhism, we'd… Continue reading Shin Buddhism 101
We pick up our conversation from last time about the attrition problem in American Shin Buddhism, its possible causes, and solutions. This time we focus on our listener's suggestion that there is an essential anti-institutionalism within Shin Buddhism. We're on the fence on that one; we want to be cautious about reading too much of… Continue reading Institutionalism, anti-institutionalism
