Ban Sukhawadee helps raise funds for massive Issan Buddhist center

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Pattaya, Thailand -- Saha Farms’ Ban Sukhawadee and the Phra Yai Chaiyaphum Foundation organized a merit-making ceremony to raise funds for a 20 billion baht Buddhism center in Thailand’s northeast.

Saha Farms Managing Director Punya Chotithewan welcomed Banglamung District Chief Sakchai Taengho, Nongprue Police Superintendent Col. Somnuk Janthages, and Thipakorn Rinthaisongh, president of the Phra Yai Chaiyaphum Foundation, to the grandiose Pattaya mansion May 10.

Guests donate funds for the new Buddhism center in Thailand’s northeast.Guests donate funds for the new Buddhism center in Thailand’s northeast.

Guests donated funds that will go toward construction of a religious center slated to host the world’s largest Buddhist statue, among other attractions, in Chaiyaphum’s Nafai Sub-district.

The 20 billion baht project calls for a biography of Buddha’s 500 lives, four pagodas, models of important Buddhist destinations around the world, a 2,500-person sermon hall, a pavilion to accommodate 5,000, lotus swimming pool, 500-rai sake-head statue, parking for 1,000 cars, waterfalls, accommodations for monks and more.

Construction is scheduled to begin this year.

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Oprah Store Taken Over by Buddhist Center

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WEST LOOP, Chicago (USA) -- A North Side meditation center plans to take over the old Oprah Store.

<< A group meditating at the Shambhala Meditation Center in Rogers Park. The center plans to occupy the old Oprah Store on 31 N. Carpenter St. by late summer.
(Facebook/Chicago Shambhala Meditation Center)

The Shambhala Meditation Center, currently at 7331 N. Sheridan Rd., will soon make its home at 31 N. Carpenter St. ideally by the end of summer, according to Gina Caruso, a chair in the center's governing council.

The Buddhist-inspired organization, which has been in Rogers Park since 1995, provides lessons in meditation as well as open meditation sittings with community gatherings.

The large front room of the former Oprah store will be used as the main meditation area and could fit about 50 to 60 people for events, Caruso said. She also said that the center would provide community services and offer classes ranging from yoga to flower arranging.

"It's definitely a place where people can feel at home…and be creative and do things they might not normally get a chance to do," she said.
Shambhala is also working with Harpo Studios to provide a 30-space parking lot about a block away from the center at the corner of Carpenter and Randolph streets.

"We were so happy to find the space," said Thomas Golz, the vice chair of the center's governing council. "As soon as we walked in and saw the neighborhood, we loved this location."

The meditation center also wants to rezone the basement — previously a storage area — to have classes and community activities. That hearing will take place Friday at city hall.

The Oprah store had offered show souvenirs, infant products, books and magazines and "Oprah's Closet," which sold clothing once worn by the talk show host. The store closed in June of 2011.

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Buddhist Meditation Center is an oasis of peace next to former Temple Mt. Ski Area

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Hudson, NH (USA) -- Meditation is peaceful and inwardly focused, but occasionally it requires a lot of noise and outward effort, such as when you’re bringing a 4-ton statue of Buddha from Vietnam to the edge of Peterborough.

<< Staff photo by William Wrobel
Kien Tan stands in the meditation temple at Temple Mountain Buddhist Meditation Center in Peterborough, NH where he and other monks meditate three times a day and hold classes for local residents every Saturday.

“This was very difficult to get here,” said Kien Tan, one of two monks in residence at the Temple Mountain Buddhist Meditation Center, on Route 101, as he gazed at the huge seated Buddha. It greets you as you drive up to the house just west of what was once Temple Mountain Ski Area.

This Buddha is one of a number of statues placed along mediation pathways that wind through several acres of the property, depicting Buddha in several stages of his life as well as other figures important in his story. Along with a beautiful, 1-ton gong hanging in a pagoda, and touches of lighting and stonework near a small pond, they help create a space that is unique in the region, where people come each Saturday to learn how to meditate from two monks who have spent their lives at the practice.

The center was founded by Tue Man, 35, who lives at the center with Kien Tan, 75, both of whom originally came from near Ho Chi Minh City in southern Vietnam. It follows the teaching of Vietnamese monk Thien Thanh Tu. (Note: The Telegraph’s typography cannot reproduce some punctuation marks used in Vietnamese names.)

The meditation center, which is registered as a nonprofit with the state, has been operating for about three years in a small, one-story house adjacent to what is now the Temple Mountain State Reservation, opposite Miller State Park and Pack Monadnock.

Many people became aware of it only last year when a large, ornate gate was built at the bottom of the driveway, visible to passing cars on Route 101.

When it received permission to operate as a “church/meditation center” from the Peterborough Planning Board in June 2011, the only stipulation was that it could not host overnight retreats.

The center was founded by about 10 Vietnamese families throughout the Boston area and New Hampshire, said Kien Tan, who, like Tue Man, speaks heavily accented and halting English. They came to New Hampshire to be on a mountain and yet still close to Boston, they said. The nearest similar temple is in Braintree, Mass.

The 11-acre property includes a small, one-story house at the end of a steep, 100-yard-long driveway. The house has not been altered from its domestic function except for the former living room, which has been turned into an open meditation center. A ceiling skylight illuminates a large sitting Buddha on an altar, surrounded by fruit and flowers, while the floor is lined with rugs.

The house is surrounded by trees and offers a beautiful view to the west, toward Peterborough and Mount Monadnock. The property is full of winding paths that have been painstakingly created over the years, often with flat stepping-stones that lead to statuary or small grottos.

In winter, after trees have lost their leaves, some traffic noise can be heard from Route 101, but otherwise it is still and quiet – except for when the occasional snowmobiler comes through.

Such peace is key the monk’s daily meditation, from 4-6 a.m. and 7-8 p.m., a practice that is key to their lives.

“It can make my mind awaken, (so) we have to know what we are,” Kien Tan said.

“You can know what is going on inside yourself,” Tue Man said.

Meditation is surprisingly difficult, they say. One of the draws of the center is the guidance that the monks can provide to a loose class that gathers Saturday afternoons.

“In a group it is easier – on your own self, it is not so easy,” Kien Tan said. “We have practiced. We can meditate anywhere and anytime.”

To help others approach this state, the center opens at 2 p.m. Saturdays. The men say various numbers of people show up from week to week for the free sessions, including a few regulars. Practitioners sit on floor rugs, in full-lotus or half-lotus position, or just kneeling if their joints aren’t up to it, for meditation and chanting.

Kien Tan says he came to the U.S. among the “boat people” who fled the Communist takeover at the end of the Vietnam War and has been associated with several Buddhist monasteries on the West Coast, the Southeast and most recently Michigan, before coming to New Hampshire to be part of the Temple Mountain Meditation Center.

Tue Man comes from the same area, although it was known as Ho Chi Minh City by the time he grew up.

“You prepare your mind with a vision of the Buddha,” he said of the work they do. “Those who come to learn, we can help them.”

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An unusual Buddhist center spreads a West Coast author's teachings to Middle Tennessee

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Nashville, Tennessee (USA) -- It's all fun and games until the bell rings, as Against the Stream Nashville founder and meditation teacher David Smith would say. Prior to propping himself on the cushion promptly at 7 p.m., at a spiritual center housed in an eerily beautiful old restaurant-equipment facility on Charlotte Pike, Smith is just one among several cronies participating in a raucous scene of chatter and bear hugs that would burst any newcomer's bubbles of Buddhist preconceptions.

Maybe punk Buddhism sounds like a contradiction in terms. Yet despite Smith's shaved head, tattoo sleeves and affinity for the F-bomb, he has found a path to enlightenment that places its own rough-hewn spin on the Enlightened One's 2,500-year-old doctrines. It's affiliated with the Santa Monica and Los Angeles centers founded by spiritual teacher and Dharma Punx author Noah Levine, who visits Nashville 7 p.m. Friday as a fundraiser for Smith's local outpost.

Teaching mindfulness meditation four times weekly at his Sylvan Park center, Smith encourages his students — some of whom, like him, have histories of addiction — to explore their inner horizons instead of checking out through a cocktail, Klonopin, or cruising the Internet.

"You go sit in a room full of people and do some breathing and you feel better," Smith says. " 'This feels almost familiar' is what a lot of people say."

While the Nashville area has a number of established Buddhist organizations (like the Nashville Zen Center, founded in 1982), Smith's unorthodox lectures — coupled with events like Levine's first Nashville appearance this weekend — suggest that the city's spiritual life is taking on new complexity. An offshoot of Levine's California-based Mind Body Awareness Project, his center is in essence a church for people typically turned off by churches, or by the very idea of following.

"Dave looks like he could teach you as much about how to survive a mosh pit as he could about how to cultivate compassion and mindfulness," says Jeff Browning, an alcohol and drug counselor who works as an instructor with Mind Body Awareness Project. "That's what people respond to when they meet him. When we take meditations into the jails, those guys don't want to be preached at for the thousandth time, they want to hear about somebody who understands suffering and has a way out of that suffering."

First introduced to Buddhism by the family of Emotional Intelligence author Daniel Goleman, Smith divided his teenage years in western Massachusetts between retreats at the Insight Meditation Society and a street-punk lifestyle of drugs and debauchery.

"I didn't know what they were doing up there, I just knew the place seemed pretty cool and that the people were friendly," Smith says. "And then I got in this really bad car accident where my girlfriend was killed, and to cope with my PTSD I started doing mindfulness meditation."

Yet Smith acknowledges that at the same time he was still doing drugs. "It was just a big mess," he says. Seeking out recovery at the age of 28, Smith renounced his full-time music career and his hardcore excesses to start his own construction business and delve back into the study of Buddhism. While attending a three-month meditation retreat, he first heard about Levine's 2003 memoir Dharma Punx and found the book paralleled his own sex-drugs-and-rock-'n'-roll past.

Relating to Levine's rebellion against his spiritual roots — his father is famed poet and author Stephen Levine, one of the pioneers to popularize Theravada Buddhism in the West — Smith struck up an email correspondence with him. The more they communicated, the more the two saw they shared a desire to redirect their arrested-adolescent angst into a journey "against the stream" — a struggle to cultivate compassion for their faults.

Opting to follow in Levine's footsteps, Smith signed up for the teacher's San Francisco-based Meditation Instructor program. He met with Levine five times over the course of a year for guidance in how to facilitate his own group.

Inspired to share the serenity derived from his practice and dedication to the Four Noble Truths — the creed that essentially suffering is inevitable, and it is actually our resistance to unpleasant emotions that causes us pain — Smith sought out a prospective center where he could conduct his own teachings on "more of a street rather than college level." Approached by Smith in early 2011, the founder of 12South's One Dharma Nashville, Lisa Ernst, agreed to let him teach his Sunday-night guided-meditation class at their facility.

"Against the Stream is a very friendly place to begin a meditation practice for people of all backgrounds, as well as those who are interested in developing a practice and studying Buddhism more in depth," Ernst says. "I respect Dave's sincerity and commitment to his own practice, as the best teachers are those who never stop studying and have the most to give."

Despite Against the Stream's popularity on the West Coast, where the L.A. and Santa Monica centers attract nearly 1,800 visitors per week, Smith's arduous first year of no-show nights and skeptical attendees told him Nashville wouldn't be a pushover. But from his work with the Mind Body Awareness Project, for whom he currently teaches meditation to incarcerated youth, Smith says he's grown accustomed to tough audiences. Eventually he attracted a loyal crew intrigued by his standup-worthy witticism and no-bullshit Buddhist wisdom. Among his adherents is Belmont University student Luke Mayton, one of Smith's first pupils and an occasional substitute for his Wednesday night class.

"I had been interested in Buddhism since I was a kid and had been meditating on and off over the years in a very unorganized and unguided way without a teacher or community to support my practice," Mayton says. "When I attended Against the Stream for the first time, I knew it was something I would come back to many times. The group is approachable, laid-back and has a come-as-you-are feel that's always made me totally comfortable with being myself."

Confident that meditation's psychologically proven benefits will appeal to an overworked and saturated society, Smith believes Buddhism's fluid "question everything" philosophy will universally appeal to both New Age and ex-children-of-the-church crowds. Currently attracting between 150 and 200 people per week, Smith plans for a series of sliding-scale workshops (for instance, the upcoming Saturday Morning Series will deliver a diagram and historical detail-driven study of Buddhism) to finance the center, which like the entire ATS umbrella is nonprofit-certified and relies 100 percent upon attendee donations. Eagerly anticipating Levine's sanction of approval for the country's third official center, which coincidentally aligns with the group's fifth anniversary, Smith admits how surreal it seems to be at the forefront of the Southern division of Levine's burgeoning Buddhist movement.

"I remember being on retreats and watching the Dharma teacher and thinking, 'I wanna do that,' " Smith says. "It was always something I wanted to do at some point, but when I was like 60. When I was old and shit and couldn't play rock 'n' roll music anymore, maybe then I would teach. Never did I think it would happen this quick."

Noah Levine speaks 7 p.m. Feb. 1 at Against the Stream Meditation Center, 3816 Charlotte Ave., and conducts a Kind Awareness Day-long 10 a.m. Feb. 2. Sliding-scale donations range from $20 to $200. For more information, see againstthestreamnashville.com.

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Shooting victims focus of service at Buddhist center

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Palm Springs, California (USA) -- A Buddhist center will dedicate its monthly service for those who have recently died to the victims of last week’s shooting rampage at a Newtown, Conn., elementary school.

“I decided as soon as I heard,” said Saundra Young, resident teacher at the Dharmachakra Buddhist Center. “I was as shocked as everyone else. I was so happy we already had this powa scheduled.”

The ceremony is set for 7 to 8 p.m. Friday at the center, 1445 N. Sunrise Way. The center has offered such ceremonies around the end of each month since it opened in February.

Powas offer a series of prayers for people who have passed away, but according to Buddhist beliefs, their soul may not have completely departed the body.

“Buddhists believe that when consciousness leaves the body, it can take up to 49 days to happen,” said Jack Todd, another teacher at the center.

Powa participants use prayer to help those souls complete that journey.

“The main part of the ceremony is that we imagine the minds of the dead going on to a better place, and we meditate on that,” Young said. “It’s very moving.”

The services are conducted in English and accompanied by Westernized music, and prayer booklets are handed out to guide newcomers through the ritual. The size of the crowds attracted vary widely, and she’s not sure what to expect Friday.

“Sometimes there’s 50, sometimes there’s six. It all depends on who has a need,” she said.

The center also has prayers for world peace every Sunday, Young said, and last week’s drew quite a few people shaken by the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre, which left 20 children, six adult staffers, gunman Adam Lanza and his mother, Nancy Lanza, dead.

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Eido Shimano to lead sesshin at Providence Zen Center in 2013?

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The Kwan Um School of Zen has offered an official statement on the matter of Eido Shimano booking a rental at their Diamond Hill Zen monastery in 2013. We are happy to announce that they have decided to decline renting out the space to Shimano and his followers.

<< Providence Zen Center (the international headquarters of the late Zen master Seung Sahn’s Kwan Um School of Zen) has reportedly offered Eido Shimano to lead a sesshin in 2013. They have since officially retracted the offer.

Here is the statement from Jason Quinn, the abbot of the Providence Zen Center, that we just received:

Adam Tebbe

October 4, 2012

Dear Jason,

I understand that the Providence Zen Center would like to offer an official statement on the May 2013 booking of Diamond Hill Monastery by the followers of Eido Shimano. I look forward to hearing back from you and wish these were more fun times. Thank you.

Warmly,

Adamj (typo)

Jason Quinn

October 5, 2012

Hello Adam,

Thank you for the message and respect to contact me directly. We have many people interested in renting space at both the Providence Zen Center and the Diamond Hill Zen Monastery. Our director is the contact person for exchanging information to rental groups about price and availability. After the exchange, the potential rental is discussed with the management team. The management team then evaluates each group to see if it is a good fit for the current situation. In this specific case, we decided not to rent to this group in 2013.

Hapchang _/l\_

Jason Quinn

Original October 2, 2012 posting

One must really pause to question the wisdom of any Zen institution that would offer Eido Shimano a place to teach and lead sesshin, knowing about his long and well-documented history of sexual and ethical misconduct that began when he first came to the United States in 1960. From where I am sitting, for any Zen institution to offer Shimano a place of teaching authority on their grounds is unconscionable. According to a letter from George Zournas to the Trustees of the Zen Studies Society dated 9/14/1982, one Dr. Tadao Ogura (then Senior Psychiatrist of the South Oaks Hospital) agreed, saying of Shimano: “Wherever he goes, he s[h]ould never again be given a position of primary authority.” That was the opinion of a highly respected psychiatrist dating as far back as 1982!

And yet, the Providence Zen Center (the international headquarters of the late Zen master Seung Sahn’s Kwan Um School of Zen) has knowingly done just that. In an email from Ekyo Ursula Sapeta to Eido Shimano’s remaining group of followers, Sapeta writes:

“Eido Roshi kindly agreed to lead sesshin in USA in May 2013.The sesshin will be four and half days, starting Friday evening May 24th and finishing Wednesday May 29th, after lunch.

We have a reservation in beautiful place Diamond Hill Monastery at Providence Zen Center (http://www.providencezen .org).”

Fair enough. The assumption would be that the Providence Zen Center mistakenly booked the reservation for May of 2013, not knowing that the sesshin was to be led by Eido Shimano. This, sadly, is not the case. In an email exchange between the Providence Zen Center’s director Jeff Partridge and Rev. Kobutsu Malone dated October 02, the Kwan Um School of Zen’s head temple confirmed that Mr. Shimano would indeed be leading sesshin at Diamond Hill Monastery in 2013.

Kobutsu Malone:

Dear Friends,

I am writing to inquire if the Providence Zen Center has actually booked a reservation to host a sesshin conducted by Eido Shimano in May of 2013 as per the attached email?

Thank you in advance for your prompt reply,

Rev. Kobutsu Malone

Jeff Partridge:

“Hello!

Yes I’m working with Ekyo now on the details. Please let me know if I can help with anything else.

Thank you,
Jeff Partridge
Director
Providence Zen Center”

Unreal…

Source: http://sweepingzen.com/eido-shimano-to-lead-sesshin-at-providence-zen-center-in-2013

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Arunchal Pradesh gets fourth Buddhist center in India from government

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Arunchal Pradesh, India -- After Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir, Arunchal Pradesh becomes the fourth state in India to receive the next fully fledged Buddhist Center by the allocation of funds by the  Central government of India.

Its founder Tsona Gontse Rinpoche announced The Central Institute of Himalayan Culture Studies at Dahung in West Kameng District will now attain the status due to New Delhi’s recognition.

In the West Kameng District, where the institute is located, the majority of people, and 13 percent of the population of the people of Arunchal Pradesh follow Buddhism. India’s largest monastery Tawang is also in Arunchal Pradesh.

The institute, conceived by Rinpoche in 2000, had received the approval of the Union Cabinet on May 26, 2010 with a project cost estimated at Rs 9 crore and recurring annual cost of Rs 124.86 lakh.

"It began with a central government grant of Rs 97 lakh and has since grown into a good institute to fill the vacuum in imparting education on Buddhism," Rinpoche said.

"I had pursued the Centre to establish such an institute considering the large number of Buddhist population residing in the Northeast," he said.

He pointed out that with only 25 faculty members and limited infrastructures, the institute has so far produced two batches (18 each) of Shastri (equivalent to BA in Buddhist Philosophy) degree holders.

Besides teaching arts and crafts for self-sufficiency and sustainable development and preservation of ethnic identity to foster national integrity, the institute has been inculcating an awareness on the ecological balance and preservation of natural resources, he said.

He said the other three institutes are: Nava Nalanda Mahavihara, a deemed university, Central University for Tibetan Studies, Sarnath, Varanasi, and Central Institute for Higher Buddhist Studies, Leh.

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Renaming event set for Zen Center

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Buddhist Temple of Toledo label to clarify purpose of site, leader says

Toledo, Ohio (USA) -- The Toledo Zen Center, a popular spot for local Buddhist events and services, is to be renamed the Buddhist Temple of Toledo in a dedication ceremony Sunday.

<< Jay 'Rinsen' Weik leads a service at the Toledo Zen Center in Holland. The center is changing its name to better reflect its growth as a spiritual home for Buddhism as well as to address confusion about what Zen is. THE BLADE/LORI KING

The reason for the name change is to better reflect the center's growth as a spiritual home for Buddhism as well as to clarify its purpose, according to Jay "Rinsen" Weik. who said, "There's a lot of confusion in the culture about what Zen is."

Mr. Weik, 43, an ordained Zen Buddhist priest, Aikido martial arts instructor, and jazz guitar teacher at the University of Toledo, runs the Toledo Zen Center/Buddhist Temple of Toledo with his wife, Karen "Do'on" Weik, also an ordained Buddhist priest.

Edward Espe Brown, a well-known Soto Zen priest and gourmet cook from California, will preside at the ceremony to be held at 10:30 a.m. at the center/temple, 6537 Angola Rd., Holland.

"One of the things that really motivated [the renaming] was that people were seeing the word 'Zen' used to sell digital devices," Mr. Weik said in an interview at the spacious facility this week.

"They see it used to sell shampoo, to sell furniture. … It's really confusing in the culture. The word has almost no usable meaning. It's come to mean a relaxed, slightly Asian-esque lifestyle.

"When we say it's a Buddhist temple and that we're actually serviced by priests and that we're a community, it much more readily communicates what is actually going on."

Mr. and Mrs. Weik have been studying Buddhism for more than two decades, having met when Mr. Weik, a Toledo native, was a student at the Berklee College of Music in Boston.

The couple moved to Toledo in 2001 to be closer to Mr. Weik's family, and shortly afterward opened the Zen Center and the Shobu Aikido of Ohio in a business mall in Holland. (Aikido, a martial art, means "the way of harmony.")

The Zen Center attracts different "concentric circles" of participation, Mr. Weik said, from college students who visit one or two times for class credit in world religions, to devotees who become part of the close-knit Buddhist community.

This year, 16 members of the Zen Center/Buddhist Temple will formally be initiated into Buddhism.

"We have everything from 19-year-old undergrads to people in their mid-70s, and pretty equal gender distribution," Mr. Weik said.

One of the distinctions of the Buddhist Temple of Toledo is that it is thoroughly American, even Midwestern, in its culture.

People who visit Buddhist centers often expect to see a Zen master with a strong Asian accent teaching or leading the services and are surprised that a new generation of Buddhist sensei, or teachers, are as American as the Protestant clergy person next door, Mr. Weik said.

He credits the Americanized form of Buddhism available today to the labors of his predecessors, who sifted the Asian cultural influences from the essence of the religion.

Buddhism, which has 350 million adherents worldwide, was founded by a young prince born more than 2,600 years ago in the India-Nepal border region.

The prince attained enlightenment, becoming the Buddha, whose teachings flourished in China, Korea, and Japan before arriving in the United States.

"Among my 'Gen X' generation of Buddhist teachers, there's a great thankfulness that the generations that preceded us did the work translating things," Mr. Weik said.

"Their teachers were all hard-pressed to speak English coherently, and so there's been this struggle -- actually it's been the work of their lives -- to translate this into discerning what is actually the teachings of wisdom and compassion and what is of Japanese culture."

The new crop of Zen teachers don't need to sift the culture from the precepts because that task has already been done, he said. "Our work is actually taking the real heart of wisdom and the heart of compassion and finding a way to make that accessible to middle America," Mr. Weik said.

The Zen Center, which started with just a handful of people 11 years ago, now draws about 30 on a typical Sunday morning.

Services include a time of meditation and a Dharma talk by Mr. Weik (the talks are available online at thedrinkinggourd.org).

The center offers a Dharma school for children during the 10:30 a.m. Sunday services and a prayer service every Wednesday at 7:15 p.m.

Practitioners come from a variety of spiritual backgrounds, Mr. Weik said, and because Buddhism has no religious tenets, some Zen Center members remain active in Christian churches, Jewish synagogues, and Islamic mosques.

Buddhists consider their founder to be "a guy, a teacher," Mr. Weik said. "So it's not like he's a deity figure. We honor him as the original teacher. … Buddhism is nontheistic. It's not atheistic at all, but it's not theistically oriented, either.

"It basically says the development of wisdom and compassion and the ease of suffering in life is not tethered to a particular belief system in some essentially unknowable thing," he said.

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Emory's Carlos Museum finds its center with 'Mandala: Sacred Circle in Tibetan Buddhism'

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Atlanta, GA (USA) -- Emory University's Michael C. Carlos Museum, an often-overlooked gem for local art and culture, is exhibiting Mandala: Sacred Circle in Tibetan Buddhism through April 15. Mandala brings to Atlanta many rare and beautiful Buddhist thangkas, or paintings, along with other objects intended for initiation and meditation.

<< Kimbell Art Museum
Four Mandalas of the Vajravali Series, c. 1429—56, Central Tibet, Tsang (Ngor Monastery), Sakya order, Thangka, gouache on cotton, KKimbell Art Museumimbell Art Museum

Mandalas are a kind of technology for meditation, meant to work with personal practice to achieve spiritual insight and liberation. The most common mandalas in Tibetan Buddhist art place a deity at the center of a palace filled with other deities and iconography. This palace is an individual and a cosmological map that lines up with a highly proscribed set of meditational practices so that an individual may see him or herself as the central deity. In fact, Buddhist philosophy describes individual and deity as one and the same.

Mandalas act as visual tools for meditators. The basics of mandala practice are fairly easy to imagine - think about a golfer on the green visualizing Arnold Palmer putting in order to perfect his own stroke.

Although intended for monks, religious art in Tibet touched nearly every aspect of society. For many centuries, Tibet was at the center of a vast Empire, trading with Nepal, India, Persia, China, and Central Asia. In addition to bringing technology and high-level artisans, this trade delivered to Tibet a fantastic range of artistic styles. The painted mandalas on display at the Carlos Museum are fantastically detailed, including myriad deities, monks, and symbols. Their arrangement in circular forms adheres to iconographic conventions, from the colors used to the placement of elements.

A mandala from Dallas' Kimbell Museum is so meticulously painted that even on closest inspection it’s difficult to discern irregularities; It looks as thought it was printed using modern technology, rather than being created by hand 600 years ago.

The exhibit features rare forms of the mandala: The 18th-century Mahakala (Tibet’s protector diety) is unusual for its large central triangle and absence of central deity. Instead, objects symbolic of deities and practice are present, placed with unusual, lotus-shaped palaces. The mandala’s minimalistic design includes some gruesome imagery: flayed human skin, skulls, and intestines, all designed to remind the viewer how transient and unsustainable human life is.

A mandala beautifully decorated with flowers also elides deities, showing instead empty thrones to connote the “thus gone” aspect of the historical Buddha Shakyamuni and his 16 Arhats (acolytes). Tucked away amid the blossoms are wish-fulfilling jewels and ducks in ponds, while deer, traditional symbols for Shakyamuni adorn the four gates.

In addition to painted mandalas, the exhibition includes cosmological paintings, sculptures, and a fantastic, one-of-a-kind three-dimensional wooden carved model of the Guhyasamaja Mandala.

In association with this exhibition, Oglethorpe's Museum of Art has another kind of mandala on display: images created by patients of the psychoanalyst C.G. Jung. Jung used art as therapy, instructing his patients to create images as a means of expressing the conscious and unconscious, and clarifying mental obstacles.

----------

Mandala: Sacred Circle in Tibetan Buddhism runs through April 15 at Emory's the Carlos Museum. The Sacred Round: Mandalas by the Patients of C.G. Jung runs through May 6 at Oglethorpe.

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Landmark Dogen Symposium this summer at Upaya Zen Center

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Santa Fe, New Mexico -- This July at Upaya Zen Center, a team of renowned Buddhist teachers and scholars will lead a three-day exploration and celebration of the works of Eihei Dogen, the founder of Soto Zen.

During the Dogen Symposium, July 12 – 15, acclaimed artist and translator Kazuaki Tanahashi explores being a “clumsy student” of a great master through his passion for poetry, practice, and painting.

Taigen Dan Leighton, who has co-translated many Dogen fascicles with Tanahashi, offers his insights into the work of a teacher he has spent much of his life studying. Writer Natalie Goldberg invites us to sit, write, and walk in the spirit of Dogen. Poet and Zen teacher Peter Levitt touches the heart of practice through Zen Master Dogen's life and work.

Roshi Pat Enkyo O’Hara, abbot of the Village Zendo in New York City, will share her love for Dogen’s works. Sensei Irene Kyojo Bakker, founder of ZenSpirit in the Netherlands, helps to lead practices. Shohaku Okumura Roshi, founder of the Sanshin Zen Community and world-renowned Dogen translator, will join the weekend as well.

Dogen (1200-1253), also known as Dogen Kigen or Dogen Zenji, was a Japanese Buddhist monk who may be best known for his collected written works, Shobogenzo, considered to be a masterpiece of the world's religious literature. His teachings and style of writing, characterized by paradox and subtlety, has been beloved by generations of Soto Zen students. One of the most famous passages from Dogen’s writing comes from Genjokoan:
“To study the Buddha Way is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be actualized by myriad things. When actualized by myriad things, your body and mind as well as the bodies and minds of others drop away. No trace of enlightenment remains, and this no-trace continues endlessly.”
If you go

WHAT: Dogen Symposium

WHEN: July 12 – 15, 2012
WHERE: Upaya Zen Center, 1404 Cerro Gordo Road, Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501

COST: $320 (plus lodging). CEUs for counselors, therapists and social workers are available.

INFO: http://www.upaya.org/programs/event.php?id=770

Tel: 505-986-8518 x12;

Email: registrar@upaya.org

ABOUT UPAYA

Upaya Zen Center is one of the most respected Buddhist centers in the world in the area of socially engaged Buddhism. Founded by Roshi Joan Halifax in 1990, Upaya is a place for new and seasoned practitioners to explore how the contemplative life forms a basis for social action and service.

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Buddhist Meditation Center grows in size influence in Adelanto

ADELANTO • After searching far and wide for a quiet, peaceful place to build an expansive meditation center, a Vietnamese Buddhist monk purchased a 15-acre lot in the barren desert on Adelanto’s outskirts about seven years ago.

Many admired the ambitious vision of the Venerable Thich Dang Phap, but they questioned whether he could raise the money and support to see it through.

“I thought this one poor monk and he has such big plans and he’s old,” said Charles Serena, an American-born practicing Buddhist of Oak Hills who started visiting the Adelanto center in 2005, when it was little more than an 8-foot-tall statue and a few trailers. “And he’s made it all happen.”

Now approaching age 70, the soft-spoken monk, nicknamed “Tom,” has quietly built up a Buddhist worshipping place that draws visitors from throughout California and beyond.

He’ll tell you he’s far from done — he hopes eventually to expand to 50 acres — but he’s pleased to see his support base growing. He has put about $2.3 million in cash donations into the center so far, mostly through support from outside the High Desert, such as Buddhists in Orange County.

“I want to do this good for the community,” Phap said. “I want somebody having the happiness, the beauty.” He hopes after meditating at his temple, “you walk easy” and “heal, feel peace in your mind.”

On Saturdays and Sundays, up to 100 visitors will stop by, hailing from Orange County, San Diego, Northern California, Arizona and Nevada. On a recent Friday, families visited from Louisiana and Texas. Special occasions will draw monks from around the world.

Phap expects a special celebration to draw more than 2,000 to his temple on Sunday.

“It’s amazing to see something like that grow out of the desert,” said Eric Reed of Adelanto, a photojournalist who’s watched the temple grow and tries to track the High Desert’s Buddhist community. “I think there’s a pilgrimage aspect to it. People want to see how the faith is growing in other places.”

The Buddhist Meditation Center, on Highway 395 about 10 miles northwest of Victorville, is anchored by a 24-foot-tall, white marble statue of Quan yin, a Buddhist saint known for her infinite compassion and healing powers. Lily pads float atop a small pond around the 60-ton statue’s base.

Leading up to Quan yin are two rows of smaller white statues of various saints lining a concrete pathway, on which Phap leads 5 a.m. meditation walks on Sundays.

The center’s most recent addition was unveiled last month: a 6,700-square-foot main hall, most of which is occupied by a large temple with high-rise ceilings and a red carpet leading up to a shrine adorned with colorful orchids and offerings of assorted fruits.

Serena, a 59-year-old Vietnam War veteran, tries to visit the center a few times a month. He was introduced to Buddhism through his Vietnamese wife, Thao Serena, and he said the faith has helped him find inner peace.

“I’ve seen too many wars, and there was a lot of hostility that was within me that I’ve learned to put aside,” he said. “It’s a religion of peace and tolerance.”

Nash Munes, of Petra Engineering in Victorville, who took on the unusual project back in 2004, said he’s been surprised to learn how closely the Buddhist traditions and values align with his Christian beliefs.

The Buddhist population is small in the High Desert, but there are patches of both American-born and ethnic groups embracing the faith.

At the opposite end of the Victor Valley, some 35 miles east, a cluster

of small white buildings painted white with red trim house a different kind of Buddhist center in Lucerne Valley.

Here, an Americanborn group of about 80 to 100 regular members meet for ceremonies, meditation practice and retreats. There are no massive statues at the Desert Zen Center, just simple pathways alongside a few rose bushes and trees, and a vegetable and flower garden.

“We’re a humble little temple,” said Sande Simpson, 57, a Santa Monica native whose Buddhist name is Su Co Tam Huong.

“Buddhism is a lot like any religion, there’s all sorts of flavors, but the basic tenet is that there was a man, 2,500 years ago, who woke up and discovered that you don’t have to live in dissatisfaction,” she explained. “That’s the goal, to try and follow and understand what he figured out.”

As Phap, too, tries to teach people about Buddha’s enlightenment, he envisions adding to his center a kitchen, meditation hall, classroom/library and living quarters that can sleep up to 30 monks. He’s hoping to acquire more of the nearby land and overcome some of the obstacles he’s had during the San Bernardino County permitting process.

“At one time I would’ve said, ‘Yeah sure.’ At this point, seeing what he’s accomplished, I wouldn’t put it past him,” Serena said. “It’s really something special to see. It’s a place where you will find peace.”

For more information on the Adelanto center, visit http://ThienVienChanNguyen .org/tvcn.html.

For more information about the Lucerne Valley center, visit www.DesertZenCenter.org.

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Zen Buddhism Center offers study and meditation

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Austin, TX (USA) -- The head teacher at the Austin Zen Center referenced Kurt Vonnegut and the Christian creation story in the Saturday morning Dharma Talk - a signal that the center embraces the mixed cultural and spiritual identities that shape most Austinites.

<< Charley Tucker cleans the altar as part of the soji ritual at the Austin Zen Center Saturday morning. During soji all members of the community clean the inside and outside of the temple.

Charley Tucker cleans the altar as part of the soji ritual at the Austin Zen Center Saturday morning. During soji all members of the community clean the inside and outside of the temple.

Members of the sangha - community - include individuals who have studied Zen for decades and those who have come to it in recent weeks. Some people who cross their legs on the black cushions have left other religions, while others want to supplement their faith practices or are seeking spiritual community for the first time.

East Asian countries have practiced Zen Buddhism since the seventh century, and it became popular in the United States in the 1950s and ‘60s. Zen focuses on the attainment of self-realization and enlightenment through meditation and study of the dharma, the natural order of things.

Colin Gipson is the teacher’s assistant at the center, where he started practicing in 2000. He said Buddhism attracts people from many corners because Zen “doesn’t pick and choose.” College towns like Austin frequently have centers because the populations tend to be open-minded, he said.

“Buddhism is the only thing that ever made sense to me,” Gipson said. “It’s about sitting down and not running from my suffering.”

The center offers three meditations, called zazens, on weekdays as well as Saturday morning and Wednesday evening programs, weekend retreats, volunteer opportunities and individual training.

The sangha at the center is supportive of each other and welcoming to new practitioners, Gipson said. The center holds a beginner’s meditation every Saturday morning to teach the physical and mental aspects of zazen.

The silent form of meditation most common in Zen can be intimidating, as it requires a focus on breath and self that doesn’t enter into most people’s daily life. Pat Yingst, one of the practice leaders, said it can be hard at first to avoid thinking about daily tasks in the midst of meditation.

However, the Saturday morning program of a shorter meditation, a dharma talk and tea and cookies, provides a comfortable atmosphere for exploring meditation and Buddhism for the first time.

The main facility is warm and open, with wooden fixtures and large windows in the zendo, where most meditation takes place. The kitchen is a common space for members and guests. A large tree in the front yard almost begs to be sat under.

Leah Collier travelled to Austin from San Angelo to visit the zen center after studying Buddhism on her own for a few years. She attended the beginner’s meditation and dharma talk - the Buddhist equivalent of a sermon - Saturday morning with her spouse, Arlene Harbison.

“It was emotional but very enlightening,” Collier said. “I have a better understanding from just one talk about how to deal with emotions in a grounded way, how to react instead of overreact.”

Member Collin Whites started visiting the center regularly in June after receiving a medical discharge from the United States Navy.

“Something had changed, and I wanted to move forward in a new way,” Whites said. “I wanted a place of community, healing and growth. I find practicing meditation in the morning helps me be more present and be at attention, or to change my attention when I need to.”

As the zendo cleared out after the morning program, that sense of peace and clarity remained.

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