Experience and Faith

Faith! We’re bouncing off a question about faith in our personal experience with Buddhism. Now, we know that having said faith, half of you said “There’s no faith in Buddhism!” And the other half said, “Well, what do you mean by faith?” We’re gonna tell you what we mean by faith and hopefully the other… Continue reading Experience and Faith

Tradition and Change

Z?j?-ji Temple and Tokyo Tower

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

A Buddhist view of History

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… Continue reading A Buddhist view of History