We’re not done with TRON yet! Well, sort of we are. We use TRON — film, art, music, anything really — as a jumping off point for discussing the suspension of disbelief. What is it about our expectations or preconceptions that sometimes get in our way, that keep us from appreciating certain kinds of films? This is a jumping off point for us get into Abhidharma and Yogacara philosophy, to talk about how our perceptions often determine our reality, and how often times we are unable to see things as they are.
We’re going to talk about Buddhism and sci-fi again! Get ready for several episodes about sci-fi, movies, music, the creative process, and Buddhism.
In this episode we talk about TRON: Legacy, a movie that probably only the two of us and, like, three other people ever saw. But it’s got specific and explicit Buddhist references. And its star, Jeff Bridges, has said he has a Buddhist practice. Does this make Tron a Buddhist movie? What does it even mean for something to be a “Buddhist” movie? We talk about these issues as well as the specific Buddhist elements in Tron, the creative process, Buddhism, art, and music.
Inspired by a listener question, we explore some of the superficial similarities between Pure Land Buddhism and the monotheistic religions. After considering the difficulty of really knowing the historical origins of Mahayana Buddhism and Pure Land Buddhism, let alone what sort of connections may have existed between South Asia and the Near East, we think about the idea of universalism between religions. What lies behind this longing to see similarities between religious traditions? What is our attachment to the idea of a universal religious Truth? Can we live in difference with other traditions, or even other Buddhists? All this and more in this episode!
It’s been six months since our last episode. Where’ve we been? What did we do all summer? Now that we’re back in the “studio,” we recap some of the stuff we’ve been working on and promise to release new episodes this fall. After a short chat about what it’s like to be a professional Buddhist, we talk about some of the projects we’ve been working on including research on Buddhism and the media and encounters between East and West. We want to encourage our listeners to keep sending us their questions, and keep listening for new episodes soon!
This week, we take up our conversation from last time about aspects of American culture and their intersection with Buddhism — this time, talking about freedom. What does freedom mean in an American context? And how is this more political understanding different from or similar to soteriological concerns of freedom from samsara in Buddhism? This conversation leads us into the murky waters of the “happiness industry” and the growing connection in America between Buddhism and happiness. We argue that Buddhism challenges us to go beyond simplistic dualisms between happiness and sadness and critically examine our own selves and our own lives. This sort of radical honesty leads to being truly human. We wrap things up with a discussion of the importance of being critical of own’s own cultural baggage (no matter where that baggage comes from) and being open to having a true dialogue between Buddhism and American culture.
Inspired by a Dharma Talk at the BCA National Council Meeting, Rev. Harry starts us off by suggesting that individualism is a point of contact between Buddhism and American culture. This seems somewhat counterintuitive given that individuality seems at odds with Buddhist ideas of interdependence, no-self, or non-attachment to the ego. But we think there may be a way for Buddhist notions of individualism to engage in dialogue with American ones while finding a balance between a complete denial of the self and egocentric narcism. This conversations takes us into Shin Buddhist philosophy, the Tannisho, and brings us back to Yogacara conceptions of reality itself.
For some reason, we thought we’d start talking about the Seven Masters. But we get immediately sidetracked by Herbert Güenther, a Buddhist scholar who wrote about the Madhyamaka and Yogacara schools of Buddhism. Interestingly, his discussion of the development of these schools isn’t exactly historically accurate from a Western point of view — but it is from a traditional Tibetan scholastic one! This different way of reading history sets us off on a discussion of how our understandings of history itself is colored by our often uncritical acceptance of a Western/European/progressive view of history that suggests human civilization is getting better all the time. But this raises all sorts of ethical and philosophical and even Buddhist problems that we take up in this episode.
In this episode, we also make mention of the Spring 2011 Ryukoku Lecture happening at the Institute of Buddhist Studies. Check out the IBS website for details and the IBS podcast in the coming weeks for audio and video from this event.
In this episode, we continue our conversation on ichinen-sanzen, but take the conversation up a notch. We’re wrestling with some difficult issues in Buddhist philosophy; namely, if we understand samsara to be the realm of delusion and defilements and nirvana to be a purified realm, how do we reconcile this dichotomy with a generally non-dualistic perspective in Buddhism? And what is the mechanism by which we can transform ourselves from one state to another? In Mahayana thought, this issues is dealt with by focusing on the identity of samsara and nirvana; to borrow a phrase, form is emptiness and emptiness if form. In this view, samsara and nirvana are two sides of the same coin. But Tientai takes this even further by suggesting that there aren’t two sides; it’s all the same thing. Thus, both samsara and nirvana totally interpenetrate. This perspective, though, has profound implications on ethics and how we judge whether our actions are good or bad, right or wrong. We suggest that Buddhism at its best is critical, that it forces us to critically examine our subjective perspectives on what we think we know while (hopefully) leading us toward better wisdom and compassion.
Rev. Harry brings up the complex idea of ichinen sanzen — three thousands things in a single thought moment — from Tendai (Tiantai) Buddhism. In short, ichinen sanzen says that each thought moment contains within it all of existence…. wait, what? How does all of existence exist within each thought moment? Whose thought moment? Mine? And how long is a thought moment? Somehow all of this is related to broader Buddhist concepts of interdependence but also reincarnation and the six (or ten?) realms of rebirth — not to mention Shinran’s understanding of birth in the Pure Land. And all of this complex philosophizing is all well and good, of course, but how does it help us with the more visceral experiences of life and death?
Inspired by a listener question/discussion on Facebook, we tackle the issue of belief in (Shin) Buddhism, specifically when it comes to Pure Land imagery. Are we expected to believe in it in some substantive, literal sense? Or do we take it as metaphorical? Symbolic? Symbolic of what exactly? We start by suggesting that wrestling with these questions allows us to think critically about what the point of Buddhist practice is in the first. Why do we practice? Because in some sense we believe it will work. But is this belief in the efficacy of Buddhist practice any different from other forms of religious belief? These are some of the questions we wrestle with in this episode.
The DharmaRealm podcast is a series of conversations about Buddhism, Jodo Shinshu, and Buddhist life in America
between the Rev. Harry Bridge and Dr. Scott A. Mitchell. Episodes are released the first and third Fridays of the month.
