Date: Thursday, 02 February 2012 Time: 5:00 – 7:00 PM Place: Room 120, C.K. Choi Building, 1855 West Mall

If your centre is one of the 440+ who have not yet submitted your completed survey, please visit our page with complete information about the initiative and downloadable survey packages: http://www.sumeru-books.com/2011/11/canadian-buddhism-survey/

Among the plenary sessions are:

From the publisher… Dharma Brothers: Kodo and . . . Read More.]]> Dharma Brothers: Kodo and Tokujoo, A Historical Novel Based On The Lives Of Two Japanese Zen Masters (Volume 1)
Arthur Braverman
CreateSpace, December 2010
592 pages, 6 x 9
ISBN-13: 978-1453861530
(Also available in a Kindle digital edition)

From the publisher…
Dharma Brothers: Kodo and Tokujoo is based on the lives of two Japanese Zen Masters, how they grew from two ordinary boys, walking very different paths to become extraordinary men, and the deep spiritual bond between them. It is also the story of Japan from 1880 to 1965, of two personal accounts of Zen journeys to enlightenment, and of love and friendship. The story follows the lives of these two Dharma brothers, set against a backdrop of the Japanese-Russian War of 1905, and the rise of fascism in Japan in the 1930s. Kodo was an orphan, brought up in a harsh environment, while Tokujoo was the son of a well-to-do businessman. They both spent years studying in the most stringent Zen monasteries and became life-long friends. Each struggled to find his way clear of the circumstances in which he had been reared. Each sought a way of life offering more meaning and truth, ultimately becoming a different exemplar of Zen practice and living Buddhism.

About the author…
Arthur Braverman is author of Living and Dying in Zazen and translator of Mud and Water: A Collection of Talks by the Zen Master Bassui; Warrior of Zen: The Diamond-hard Wisdom Mind of Suzuki Shosan; and A Quiet Room: The Poetry of Zen Master Jakushitsu. He studied Zen at Antaiji Temple in Kyoto, Japan under Zen Master Kosho Uchiyama (Kodo Sawaki’s Dharma heir). He lives in Ojai, California.

The Sumeru review…

I read a lot of books, and they fight for space on my table. Good books get finished, while the not so good ones languish half-read. Dharma Brothers quickly became my book of choice and yesterday I finished it, after a few weeks of stolen moments.

What was the pull? It’s very simple – I could see myself mirrored in the story and I wanted to know what happened next. Braverman’s novel, based on the true stories of two well-known Japanese roshis, illuminated the day-to-day path of zen practice with grace and wit in a narrative story format. That is not a topic which would appeal to a broad audience (which is why it is self-published), but for practitioners, it is one of immense import.

It is not easy to write a novel. It is not easy to write a historical novel that portrays another culture credibly. And it is not easy to write convincingly of a spiritual journey, without tumbling into either hagiography or maudlin melodrama.

Braverman does a very good job of walking the middle way. That’s not to say the book is without structural flaws, but those flaws are matched with vignettes that soar. My biggest complaint is that a lot of the book is spent in setting up the early practice of Kodo Sawaki Roshi and Tokujoo Kato Roshi. Braverman’s choice to focus on the intimate details of their daily lives comes at the expense of our learning more about their public activity, teaching and dharma work later in life. I would have liked to know more about their sermons and teaching methods in the public sphere, since they were such influential teachers in the 20^th century.

Similarly, I would have liked to know more about Japan’s social, cultural and political evolution over the period covered in the book. Braverman spent a number of years practicing in Japan with Kodo Sawaki’s dharma heir, Kosho Uchiyama. That experience has allowed him to portray Japan at the turn of the century with riveting accuracy. It would have been fascinating for him to include more of that context in the book, since it was such an important part of world history and since it was so integral to the transformation of all schools of Japanese Buddhism.

On the other hand, Braverman has captured perfectly the nuances of monastic practice and the “one taste” of zen. His accounts of zazen, koan study, dokusan, shikantaza, kinhin, physical labour as practice, temple architecture and routines, hermit practice, life for hereditary priests, and so on, all ring true without a false note.

Dharma Brothers steers clear of describing Kodo or Tokujoo’s satori experiences in any great detail, and even goes so far as to downplay those awakenings by placing them within the context of life’s ongoing challenges and emotional waves. Failure and uncertainty are recognized as teachers too. As Tokujoo’s teacher notes at one point in Tokujoo’s middle practice – the early student tries to control everything in his environment; the advanced student lets nature unfold and responds appropriately.

Zen is a Buddhist tradition that relies much more heavily on experiential learning through meditation than on study of sutras and commentary. It also places great value on everyday living. But it would be disingenuous to imply that one can progress along the path without knowing what that path is. Which leads us to some of the deeper issues raised in this excellent book:

• priests, monks, hermits and laypeople in Japan’s Buddhist landscape
• operation and maintenance of Buddhist institutions in Japan after 1880
• lives and prospects of non-eminent monks
• marriage as part of the dharma path, rather than antithetical to it
• zen versus bushido
• tradition versus modernity
• real practice versus going through the motions

Dharma Brothers: Kodo and Tokujoo, A Historical Novel Based On The Lives Of Two Japanese Zen Masters (Volume 1) tackles all of these topics, to greater or lesser degrees, in the context of a story that makes you want to keep turning pages. You will as likely be left with more questions than answers, but that is a good thing.

Braverman never gives any explanation of why his first novel is tagged as volume one, but we can only hope he keeps writing fiction along with his other endeavours.
Karma Yönten Gyatso

A  PRECIOUS  COLLECTION  of  THE  BUDDHA’S  SACRED  RELICS from SRI LANKA

After His Nirvana 2500 years ago, the Supreme Buddha’s precious relics were preserved by gods and kings. In Sri Lanka, they . . . Read More.]]> From the organizing committee at the Montreal Buddhist Monastery & Cultural Center:

A  PRECIOUS  COLLECTION  of  THE  BUDDHA’S  SACRED  RELICS from SRI LANKA

After His Nirvana 2500 years ago, the Supreme Buddha’s precious relics were preserved by gods and kings. In Sri Lanka, they were royal gifts, venerated for centuries in holy stupas. For the first time in the world, we are blessed to receive (tentatively) in Canada, from the renowned

• Thuparamaya stupa, the JAW relic
• Seruwavila stupa, the FOREHEAD relic, and
• Thiriya stupa, the HAIR relic

This is a once in a lifetime opportunity to worship, pray, and be blessed as in the presence of THE BUDDHA

You are invited to contemplate and worship this unique collection of the Buddha’s Relics thanks to the generosity of the Government of Sri Lanka, the dedication of Ven. Dodampahala Vipulasiri Thero, with blessings from the International Council for Buddhist Development in Sri Lanka (ICBSL).

CANCELLED

From the publisher: Knowing Body, Moving Mind investigates ritualizing and learning in introductory meditation classes at two . . . Read More.]]> Moving Body, Knowing Mind:
Ritualizing and learning at two Buddhist centres in Toronto
Patricia Q. Campbell
Oxford University Press, 2011
ISBN 9780199793815   $39.95 paperback
Hardcover also available

From the publisher:
Knowing Body, Moving Mind investigates ritualizing and learning in introductory meditation classes at two Buddhist centers in Toronto, Canada. The centers, Friends of the Heart and Chandrakirti, are led and attended by Western (sometimes called “convert’) Buddhists: that is, people from non-Buddhist familial and cultural backgrounds. Inspired by theories that suggest that rituals impart new knowledge or understanding, Patricia Campbell examines how introductory meditation students learn through formal Buddhist practice. Along the way, she also explores practitioners’ reasons for enrolling in meditation classes, their interests in Buddhism, and their responses to formal Buddhist practices and to ritual in general.

Based on ethnographic interviews and participant-observation fieldwork, the text follows interview participants’ reflections on what they learned in meditation classes and through personal practice, and what roles meditation and other ritual practices played in that learning. Participants’ learning experiences are illuminated by an influential learning theory called Bloom’s Taxonomy, while the rites and practices taught and performed at the centers are explored using performance theory, a method which focuses on the performative elements of ritual’s postures and gestures. But the study expands the performance framework as well, by demonstrating that performative ritualizing includes the concentration techniques that take place in a meditator’s mind.

Such techniques are received as traditional mental acts or behaviors that are standardized, repetitively performed, and variously regarded as special, elevated, spiritual or religious. Having established a link between mental and physical forms of ritualizing, the study then demonstrates that the repetitive mental techniques of meditation practice train the mind to develop new skills in the same way that physical postures and gestures train the body. The mind is thus experienced as both embodied and gestural, and the whole of the body as socially and ritually informed.

Features

• An expansion of the usual conception of ritualizing beyond physical postures and gestures.
• A focus on ritualizing rather than formal ritual.
• Repetitive mental acts in meditation are shown to train the mind to develop new skills in the same way that physical postures and gestures train the body.

An exploration of the ways in which the body-mind learns. The study regards the mind as embodied and gestural and the whole of the body as a knowing entity.

About the author:
Patricia Campbell is currently Assistant Professor, Eastern Religions, Mount Allison University, NB. She is a long-time practitioner associated with the Zen Buddhist Temple in Toronto. Knowing Body, Moving Mind is her first book, and it was her PhD dissertation, completed in 2009.

The Sumeru review:
As a technological design teacher, I am very familiar with the application of learning theory, and explain Bloom’s taxonomies to students on a regular basis. In fact, Campbell’s overview of how we westerners learn is entirely congruent with the current literature and direction of western pedagogy. In other words, it could be applied equally congenially to Buddhist centres, air cadets, drug rehabilitation centres, bar mitzvah classes for adults, dance and yoga academies, etc.

In the context of understanding how a specific demographic segment of westerners come to Buddhism, within the western paradigm of “classes”, Campbell does a great job of drawing out the underlying processes and relating them to the larger schema of Bloom’s work, to researchers in the field of performative ritual, and to the Three Jewels of Buddha, Dharma and Sangha.

As a western Buddhist practitioner and community organizer for more than 40 years, I have had the opportunity to visit many Canadian Buddhist centres. I found myself repeatedly looking for myself and other Buddhist practitioners in Campbell’s book, and found it difficult to do so. The focus is entirely on those beginning practice, who may not even identify themselves as Buddhist. The venues of Campbell’s research are two western Buddhist centres that are not mainstream, as she herself notes. Given that there are approximately 500 Buddhist centres in Canada at this time, much more study needs to be done into the wide spectrum of other rituals, practices, and learning pathways that those organizations or loosely-knit groups offer.

I was surprised that negative aspects of ritualization never came up in Campbell’s book. Cults share many of the same techniques in capturing the identities of converts, and that should have been addressed in the text. Canadian Buddhism has had its share of cults over the years. Tendencies by some groups toward re-literalization of Canon material as a legitimizing stance are touched on briefly, but not the deeper implications (such as fundamentalist trends in right-wing Protestant Christianity and other faiths).

By the same token, syncretizing influences, such as t’ai ch’i classes, are mentioned, but not explored in any depth. I spent many years practicing t’ai ch’i as an adjunct to my Buddhist practice, because I was not able to find a similar benefit within our received Dharma tradition. The interpenetration of different philosophical traditions here in Canada would also be a study of some value in assessing where Canadian Buddhist organizations have yet to broaden their foundations.

Lastly, as Charles Prebish and many Asian Buddhists have pointed out, meditation is hardly the sine qua non of Buddhist practice.

In short, I’d give Moving Body, Knowing Mind a qualified thumbs up: Great for what it included, but frustrating in what it left out.

The film documents the life of Sister Elaine MacInnes, age 87, her journey, and her current activities with her Freeing The Human . . . Read More.]]> Victoria’s CHEK TV will air the award-winning 2005 documentary, The Fires That Burn, as part of their Docs from the Edge series.

The film documents the life of Sister Elaine MacInnes, age 87, her journey, and her current activities with her Freeing The Human Spirit Foundation, that aims to promote spiritual understanding and bring meditation and yoga instructors into prisons across Canada.

Read more: http://www.timescolonist.com/entertainment/movie-guide/CHEK+award+winning+documentary/5453407/story.html#ixzz1Z9PGdt9Y

For more information about the film, click HERE.

For more information about the Freeing the Human Spirit Foundation, click HERE.