Jushoku’s Meanderings – November 2022
On the 22nd of this month there will be an Interfaith Thanksgiving Service at Saint James Roman Catholic Church in Chatham, NY. The local sangha is encouraged to attend. As an interfaith service this is very important because it brings together faith communities from...
Jushoku’s Meanderings – October 2022
A person recently asked me exactly what merit means in a Buddhist context. I had to stop and think about how to answer. From an Asian perspective it is more or less obvious and doesn’t need much explanation. So, it has been with not a little misgiving that we have...
Jushoku’s Meanderings – September 2022
Walking into the hondo (the main building) is a sensory and serene experience. Taking off one’s shoes in the genkan (entryway) and walking up the few steps, stepping over the sill into the sanctuary, one travels from the realm of the mundane to the realm of the sacred...
Jushoku’s Meanderings – August 2022
Tendai Buddhist Institute is in a beautiful rural area nestled in the Berkshire foothills. The bird feeders are always packed with goldfinches, barn finches, blue jays, red winged blackbirds, mourning doves, red breasted grossbeaks, and many more, while the barn...
Jushoku’s Meanderings – July 2022
There are a handful of science and social science research papers that have had a profound effect on the way I see the world. A few will illustrate the point; a group of research articles on the effect of different spectra (colors) of light on human behavior by John...
Jushoku’s Meanderings – June 2022
This month the Tendai-shu New York Betsuin, Tendai Buddhist Institute, will host a Public Tokudo (Ordination) Ceremony. What makes this different from the Betsuin tokudo ceremonies you may have witnessed, why is this important and why is ordination, as a concept,...
Jushoku’s Meanderings – May 2022
First – Thank you everyone who attended and participated in the Spring cleanup day on April 30th. We got a lot done, spruced up the grounds, and enjoyed a sangha activity. There will be another clean-up day on June 18th, the weekend before the Public Tokudo ceremony...
Jushoku’s Meanderings – April 2022
The March one-day O-Higan retreat was a reset in several ways. It was the first retreat in over two years. It addressed resilience in a Buddhist context. Resilience is the ability to recover or adjust easily to misfortune or change. To survive the last few years we...
Koshin’s Meanderings – March 2022
By the end of this month, the Spring Equinox will be upon us, although it does not currently feel like it outside in Upstate New York. The equinox is when there is equal light and dark to our day and is meant to be a representation of balance between extremes. The...
Jushoku’s Meanderings – February 2022
We will start this Jushoku’s Meanderings with a remembrance of Thích Nhất Hạnh, who died on January 22nd. He was a Vietnamese monk, prolific author, poet, translator and influential contributor to Buddhism outside Asia. He said of his own imminent death, “I am a...
Jushoku’s Meanderings – January 2022
End of Year Thoughts - Tora Doshi - Year of the Tiger – is upon us. In short, the tiger represents energy, strength, protection, altruism, leadership, purposefulness, respect, revolutionary ideas, but also vulnerability, sensitivity, selfishness, overestimation, and...
Jushoku’s Meanderings – December 2021
The Background: Over the last 20+ months Tendai Buddhist Institute has adapted to the pandemic identified as COVID-19. Never in the history of human infectious disease has a virus been studied more intensely within such a short period of time. The mobilization was a...
Jushoku’s Meanderings – November 2021
Each day we are all confronted by choices about which we must make decisions. The choices may be about practical matters, or they may be ethical, moral, even existential. We like to think that the decisions we make are rational. More often than not our decisions are...
Jushoku’s Meanderings – October 2021
There is no entry this month done by Abbot Monshin Naamon. Instead, you can read the entry by Koshin Bower for this month here
Koshin’s Meandering – October 2021
Koshin’s Meandering With the equinox just past, the onset of October brings chilly winds and the change in leaves around the Northeast. The feeling of fall is definitely setting in. The shift echoes the recent changes in my own life. A lot has changed....
Jushoku’s Meanderings – September 2021
It must be September; the barn swallows have begun their migration to Central and South America, apple cider doughnuts, fresh juicy peaches and apples call to me from the local farm stand, the field corn is taller than the car when I drive on the road through the...
Jushoku’s Meanderings – August 2021
The Provisional World Have you heard the phrase ‘Delta Whiplash’ yet? We are in the midst of a surge, and not just any surge, this is with a variant, Delta, that is more communicable, more deadly, and has more breakthrough cases, cases that affect people already...
Jushoku’s Meanderings – July 2021
July 2021 Note: This is a rewrite of an earlier essay. Within the Buddhist community there are those who contend that polishing oneself (purifying oneself of transgressions) to be free from obscurations is the superior way to improve society, one person, one spirit,...
Jushoku’s Meanderings – June 2021
Part One: Sometime in the mid 1990’s Dr. Victor Hori, a professor (now retired) at McGill University and a Zen Buddhist priest, paid a visit to Karuna Tendai Dharma Center (now Tendai Buddhist Institute). I was pleasantly surprised to meet him. He had heard about our...
Jushoku’s Meanderings – May 2021
Freedom and its relationship to saṃsāra, nirvāṇa, and duḥkha In an undergraduate course, maybe an anthropology, sociology, or political science class, I remember reading a journal article on a cross cultural study of what the word freedom meant to different cultures...
Jushoku’s Meanderings – April 2021
From The Black Death and the Trans-formation of the West, David Herlihy, writes of the, “death” as a liberating force, pushing European society forward, destroying it, but at the same time transforming it, spurring new growth and possibilities. There is a reason...
Jushoku’s Meanderings – March 2021
In December of 2017 we had to demolish the cow barn on the Tendai Buddhist Institute’s main property. The barn itself was over 250 years old and sat about 50 meters from the main house. Originally it was attached perpendicular to the horse barn which we took apart...
Jushoku’s Meanderings – February 2021
Recently I felt as though I had awoken from a year's long nightmare. Unfortunately, the last five years were not a nightmare, not a dream, but a reality that cost over 400,000 lives, has decimated our economy, exacerbated our environmental challenges, emboldened, and...
Jushoku’s Meanderings – January 2021
Do you know anyone who does not feel that 2020 was the worst year in our lifetime? Do you know anyone who is not looking forward to 2021 with hope and longing for a return to normal? My guess is that your answer is NO. As I started writing this essay, I was thinking...
Jushoku’s Meanderings – 12-1-20 – Dec 2020
The last month of 2020 caps a disjointed period that began last March. We were simultaneously subjected to a once in a century pandemic resulting in death, disabilities and torn hearts - economic upheaval for the average person that will be takes years for recovery -...
Jushoku’s Meanderings – 11-1-20 – Nov 2020
Shumon, Kairen and I spent an hour and a half on the morning of October 24th standing in line and voting at the Columbia County Board of Elections early voting site in Hudson, New York. Standing in line, forfeiting our time (a small sacrifice to be sure), seemed...
Jushoku’s Meanderings – 10-1-20 – Oct 2020
As the header of this Shingi states - we are now in the 'neo-normal' phase under the corona pandemic. New York State was the epicenter of the COVID 19 pandemic in the States for several months early on. We suspended all our in person gatherings at the temple, stayed...
Jushoku’s Meanderings – 9-1-20 – Sept 2020
An Afternoon Musing In the last 25 years about six to eight Barn swallows usually appeared around the temple compound in May and several dozen departed in mid-August. This year they appeared when expect, but only three or four showed up. It is now August 30th. Around...
Jushoku’s Meanderings – 8-1-20 – Aug 2020
Adapted from an August Dharma Talk We may all feel as though we have been taxed beyond our ability to cope. The Covid 19 pandemic, economic crisis, racial inequality, those who are supposed to protect society have been seen in video taking the lives of those who are...
Jushoku’s Meanderings – 7-1-20 – July 2020
Our environment is manifesting in some strange ways in the middle of this pandemic. That is not to say it is a result of the plague; maybe coincident, maybe totally unrelated. For the first time since we have been in East Chatham, NY there are no migrating bats making...