Category: Featured Myosho-Ji Post

Contemplating Disease – Part 8a – Religious Ideation – September 17, 2018

Faith can be a wonderful thing and it can also be dangerous.  I’ll write more about the power of faith with regard to managing illness and disease.  For now I would briefly like to stop here and speak of harmful religious ideation, a term that frequently used among chaplains when working with patients and families who would believe something that was harmful to their lives and contrary to the advice of their medical providers. Being…

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Contemplating Disease – Part 7 – Shijo Kingo and Managing Illness – September

In Chih-I’s time, and in fact for most of the time humans have been around until more recent times, the idea of living with long term illness didn’t exist much.  You either recovered or you died in most cases.  With the advances of modern medicine people are living longer, dying at later ages, and living with illnesses that would previously meant death.  This is a wonderful benefit of modern medical science.  We have much to…

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Contemplating Disease – Part 6c – Medicine King Bodhisattva – September 15, 2018

“I shall be able to obtain the golden body of the Buddha because I gave up my arms.”  I think of the many golden body Buddhas I witnessed over the years who through their passion not only gave up their arms, their legs, their minds, their lives doing the compassionate acts of caring for the sick.  “If my words are true and not false, I shall be able to have my arms restored.”  And these…

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Contemplating Disease – Part 6b – Medicine King Bodhisattva – September 14, 2018

Returning again to Medicine King Bodhisattva chapter where the Buddha says: “Star-King-Flower!  Anyone who aspires for, and, wishes to attain Anuttara-Samyak-Sambodhi, should offer a light to the stupa of the Buddha by burning a finger or a toe.”  As I consider this I kept wondering about how it would be possible to burn oneself without catching fire?  The fire and burning I come up with is that of passion.  When I think about the work…

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