Collaborating to Support the Wider Dharma Family

Taking refuge has always meant more than just becoming a Buddhist. Along with the personal commitment of taking vows to live by the precepts, taking refuge includes a broader commitment to the sangha, our dharma family.

In the Buddha’s time, this family not only included the monks who gathered locally but those who had wandered afar, who were rarely seen in any particular community. However over time, as Buddhism spread throughout Asia, it began assimilating local flavors, philosophies, and cultural nuances that have evolved into a rich variety of schools and cultural traditions. In turn, these schools and traditions have developed into local sanghas whose membership often sees their sangha as being somewhat separated from all other sanghas.

But as…

Vancouver. B.C. Thai Community Growing Temple

Just a year after opening the new Atammayatarama Buddhist Monastery hall in Woodinville, Wash., Abbot Ajahn Ritthi is working on growing a second monastery in Vancouver, B.C.

But he’s doing in it a somewhat less-driven way, having learned from the nine-year campaign to build the $2 million temple building at Atammayatarama, often referred to as Atammma.

“With so much money we were thinking about fund-raising all the time. We don’t want to do that, just go slowly,” he said. “I am tired with building this one…it took a long time.”

He adds that he’s also gained more faith that if the dharma comes first, wherewithal to build facilities will follow. “We want to do more teaching to the people,” he…

Sitting on the Cushion, Not Behind Bars

Five women meditating around the table in a small Seattle conference room are getting a second chance – an alternative to incarceration.

They’re also getting a chance to know themselves better through meditation practice, and perhaps avoid the choices that got them in trouble with the law in the first place.

I think people are touched by it…but it’s hard to measure. Even under the best of circumstances, meditation is easy in theory, but challenging in practice. The barrel is filled one drop at a time.

The five, sitting in the relatively stark surroundings of a government building, are participating in the King County Community Center for Alternative Programs, or CCAP. The program requires convicted people to participate in weekly…

Walking the Tiger’s Path:
A Soldier’s Spiritual Journey in Iraq

Paul Kendel, a former Georgia National Guardsman who served in Iraq from 2005 through 2006, through the depth of his view and compassion turned that harsh experience into a profound spiritual journey.

He talked about his experience, and his transformation, during a visit to Portland on April 14.

He also shared from “Walking the Tiger’s Path: A Soldier’s Spiritual Journey in Iraq,” the memoir he wrote detailing his experiences of applying meditation principles in a combat zone.

Kendel spoke at the Portland Shambhala Center, in an intimate setting of people with a wide range of ages and experiences; some veterans and many first-time visitors to the center.

I noted, when I introduced Kendel, that this visit was coming on the…

Dalai Lama Calls for Global Environmental Care

His Holiness the Dalai Lama spoke urgently of the climate-change dangers facing our planet on May 11 in Portland, but with the same sense of gracious and loving humor he always demonstrates.

His presentations, alone and with regional environmental leaders, capped off three days of public appearances in Portland and Eugene, all focused on climate change.

The event, “His Holiness the Dalai Lama: Environmental Summit,” was hosted by Maitripa College of Portland. It was followed by a Sunday group audience with Tibetan people living in the Northwest.

About 11,000 people attended the Saturday event, nearly filling the Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Portland.

In a panel on May 11, the Dalai Lama likened humanity’s plight with his own, in 1959, when…

A Nalandabodhi Pilgrimage to Theravadan Asia

There are some moments in life when you say yes and figure out the details later. That’s just what happened on a soggy day last November, when I opened an email inviting 30 members of our Nalandabodhi sangha to join our teacher, Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche, on pilgrimage to Burma (Myanmar) and Sri Lanka.

Reply. Yes. Send.

A pilgrimage by definition is a journey undertaken for paying homage to holy sites or as a quest for understanding or discovery. Though our sangha is rooted in the Vajrayana tradition of Tibetan Buddhism, our pilgrimage was to visit sacred places in Southeast Asia and to learn about Theravada Buddhism, as it exists in Burma and Sri Lanka.

Fast forward past cumbersome details and…