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

Hardcore Shin Buddhist Practice

scifi thai temple

A couple episodes back, we tossed out this idea, off the cuff, of hardcore practice. We finally get to it now, asking directly, what is hardcore Shin Buddhist practice? Of course, this raises the important question of what is Shin practice? What do Shin Buddhists actually do? Is it all the temple stuff, Sunday services,… Continue reading Hardcore Shin Buddhist Practice

Live show part three: abortion and shinjin

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… Continue reading Live show part three: abortion and shinjin

Heresy

One of the issues that came up for us in our post-modern conversations was the idea that here in the post-modern world, we're all free to choose whatever religion we want, to choose whatever we want to believe or practice — which raises the specter of heresy! In this episode, we talk about Buddhist heresy… Continue reading Heresy