In the second installment of our live show, we answer two listener questions. First, we received a question about Shin Buddhist nembutsu practice and the concern that chanting the nembutsu might be something of a crutch, that while making one more calm it might distract us from very real world social problems. We frame this in a conversation about the middle way, the path between extremes of self-doubt and self-indulgance, and how difficult it is to actually walk that path. Our second question came in via Twitter during the live broadcast and was about, generally, the appropriateness of translating Japanese gathas, songs, or chants into English. We focus mostly on the music side the question, exploring the appropriateness of ease of setting English language songs to traditional Japanese musical styles (or vice versa).

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 26:13 — 30.0MB)

Our second live recording — actually live this time and broadcast via webstream across the Internets — was recorded in the lobby of the Jodo Shinshu Center. This is the first installment of that day’s recording. Our jumping-off point is our previous conversations about science fiction and Buddhism, focusing here on the issue of cosmology and world view. There are all sorts of ways that we form world views, many different types of cosmology in pop-culture or music. And certainly Buddhism has a distinctive cosmology itself. We suggest, though, that there’s a big difference between the world view of Star Trek fans and Buddhism in part because the later actually challenges us to question our assumptions about cosmologies and world views. We circle around a bit before getting back to some of the concrete ideas within traditional Buddhism cosmology (such as multiple Buddhas, the six realms of rebirth, and so on) and ask, is any of this relevant in our modern world? We make a strong case for its continued relevance regardless of whether or not you take it as literally or merely symbolically true.

Stay tuned for future releases from our live show in the coming weeks!

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Picking up from where we left off, this week we ask what does any of this sci-fi stuff have to do with Buddhism?! On the one hand, while there may be parallels between sci-fi and Buddhism, often they deal with similar issues in very different ways. How movies like Alien or Starship Troopers deal with otherness, for example, is to suggest that the other is completely alien and dangerous and must be completely destroyed. But in (Shin) Buddhism, otherness is the compassion of Amida, something that completely embraces us. In our further explorations of the genre, we recognize how sci-fi forces us to think differently about simplistic ideas such as good and evil or what we assume reality is, pushing us to question our own motivations or preconceptions. Harry makes the mistake of asking Scott about time travel (don’t get him started on time travel!) which takes us off into a conversation about karma, free will, and predestination. All of which we wrap up with a question about whether or not our mediated experiences are taking us away from reality or are just a reflection of a different type of reality.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 35:59 — 41.2MB)

This week, Harry and Scott take up the topic of Buddhism and science fiction, inspired in part by our off-hand conversation about Cthulhu from a couple weeks back and in part by Harry reading Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, the novel that in turn inspired the movie Blade Runner. (Spoiler alert! We give away the ending and lots of plot points, so, you know, listener beware.) This gets us talking about several themes in several seminal sci-fi works that are relevant to Buddhism and Buddhist philosophy including the nature of the self, what it means to be human/a sentient being, what is reality, and, of course, “who am I?” Dick’s story seems to suggest that empathy is the defining characteristic that sets humans apart from artificially created replicant androids. In Blade Runner, memory serves a similar function. But in both the book and the film, empathy and memory can be artificially generated which highlights the way that sci-fi is able to force us to question reality or to see reality in a different way. This of course gets us into Star Trek, The Matrix, Starship Troopers, and Star Wars, among other things. Scott unapologetically calls the original 1977 Star Wars film a “pretty cheesy movie” (break out the fan-boy hate mail!) before we wrap it all up with the question of what any of this has to do with Buddhism — a conversation that is continued in part two.

Don’t forget to check the website for information on our live recording next month and, as Harry recommends at the start of this episode, follow him on Twitter.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 28:37 — 32.8MB)

Continuing on in our meandering diversion from a conversation about the Shinshu Seven Masters, this episode starts right where we left off last time in a conversation about the promises and pitfalls of “one Buddhism” or a universal religion. The underlying issue here has to do with problems of difference or “otherness,” something that we somehow manage to relate both to post-colonial theory and Mahayana philosophy. (No. Really.) In post-colonial theory we find the urge to both deify and demonize the other (which has particular implications for Buddhism’s transmission to the West); and in Mahayana we find a tension in the perennial debate between the complete otherness of nirvana from samsara versus the form-is-emptiness stance of the simultaneity of nirvana and samsara. And believe it or not, all of this actually brings us back to Genshin — one of the Seven Masters of Shin Buddhism! But don’t worry, we don’t linger there too long; we’re still pretty caught up on Cthulhu and Aliens.

Speaking on Aliens, don’t forget to check out our website for more information on our upcoming live recording in April.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 23:19 — 26.7MB)

Some time ago, a listener asked us to talk about the Seven Masters and we dutifully responded with an episode on Nagarjuna. We thought we might take a stab at the other Masters, but this post quickly veers off topic — but the diversion is well worth a listen! The conversation begins with a discussion of how the various Shin Seven Masters are common to a lot of other Buddhist schools suggesting a common denominator or point of contact for intra-Buddhist dialogue. But we acknowledge that each school interprets these great Buddhist teachers in its own way thus highlighting the differences. This leads to a conversation about language and the tendency among some to reduce the whole of the Buddhist tradition down to an easy essentialism and the dangers (as well as potential benefits) of this type of behavior. Be sure to listen to part two in a couple of weeks for the continuation of this conversation.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 26:46 — 30.7MB)

Inspired by a conversation amongst fans on our Facebook page, we take up the issue of vows in Buddhism. Obviously, we need to start with how vows are understood specifically in the Mahayana context, especially Bodhisattva vows. But these aren’t the only types of vows in Buddhism, and we discuss different types of vows. Some are almost future tense (things we’re promising to do) whereas other are definitely past-tense — especially the vows that Dharmakara Bodhisattva made before he became Amitabha Buddha. These vows set up a karmic mechanism by which all sentient beings are able to enter the bodhisattva path and attain Buddhahood. So, where is the vow? It’s the question we try and tackle in this first episode of 2010.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 31:27 — 36.0MB)

In the final episode of our first live broadcast, we tackle more audience questions. To get things started, we field a question about the BCA’s official position on same-sex marriage (a big shout out to Rev. Briones’ officiating at the wedding of George Takei and Brad Altman!). This bounces us around some questions regarding BCA’s political opinions more generally which is hard to pin down with such a large, internally diverse organization. And from there we segue into a conversation about how we got interested in Buddhism and the religious backgrounds we were raised in. Not surprisingly, this takes us back to the earlier question about basic Buddhism the value basic Buddhism can have when you’re just starting out on the Buddhist path.

We’d like to thank everyone who helped up pull off our first live show. And you can be sure that there will be more live events in the new year!

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In part of three of the live show series, our first question has to do with Shin Buddhism’s stance on aborted fetuses. Scott cleverly ducks the question but Harry provides some interesting insight into the Japanese ritual of mizuko kuyo (water baby ceremony) and the efficacy of ritual in Shin Buddhist context. Our second question is the ever-popular, if you had shinjin, would you know? Or, more specifically, given our deluded state as foolish beings, is it even possible to attain shinjin in this life. We both say yes (doctrinally, it has to be possible!), but provide some nuance to what shinjin is all about in the first place — a process, a relational state between the self and Amida’s compassion, like being in love — and we round it off with a good discussion of Shin Buddhism being a Buddhism of failure.

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In the second installment of our Live Show, we start off talking about the distinctiveness of Shin Buddhism and its difference and similarities to other types of Buddhism. This somehow sets us off on a series of rants against, among other things, The Golden Chain and universalistic Buddhism. (Our apologies to Golden Chain or One Dharma fans out there!) These rants serve a purpose, though, and that is to challenge us to wrestle with difficult questions; it’s this wrestling that allows for spiritual growth, after all. And after these rants, we got our first audience question, a question about stereotypes we come up against as Buddhists. This, of course, sets us off on a couple of new rants about, among other things, Shin Buddhism being not “real” Buddhism and inter-sectarian name calling.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 25:57 — 29.7MB)