Chapter I: Part 1 – Leading Up to the Opening of Your Lotus Sutra

This chapter opens with the Buddha seated in meditation. As I think about this, I am reminded that we all began our practice of Buddhism from some place in our lives. Before our first exposure or our first acceptance, we were living in various ways. We had different approaches and understandings of life. We possibly had different emotional feelings about life in general. Perhaps we were unhappy, or discouraged, or maybe depressed. Maybe everything was…

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The Story of the Lotus Sutra of Your Life

(I apologize in advance for this long post. I belive the content could not be broken up into multiple posts.) What follows is the beginning of a new study program that will take at least two years to complete. The framework will be the examination of one chapter of the Lotus Sutra per month. The one per month seems most likely workable from this viewpoint of beginning, it may look different as it unfolds towards…

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Rituals

(Revised from a blog post originally appearing January 20, 2013) In Nichiren Shu, there are rituals as part of the practice. For some these rituals can seem to be limiting. There may come times when we ask why do we do the same thing over and over? Nothing to changes, and it is annoying. Why don’t we do something different? Buddhism talks about a path to enlightenment. The Buddha revealed the destination through his personal…

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New Year’s Greeting – 1 January 2016

Good morning. Happy New Year 2016. I suppose I could end my greeting here and have said perhaps the most important thing I could say. Somehow though it doesn’t seem enough. So I’ll just keep going. I received an email New Years message from a Sangha member today. In the email, the individual shared with me their feeling of being in the right place in their life. Being in the right place is a profound…

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