Daily Buddhism

[display_podcast] Podcast Update I'm Brian your host, and welcome to the Daily Buddhism podcast for May 23rd, 2008. Please check out the website at www.dailybuddhism.com and sign up for the Daily Buddhism email list on the top right-hand corner of the screen. Subscribers to the list get content not available in the podcast, such as last weeks discussion on the Three Poisons and the worst Buddhist Jokes of the past 2500 years. Sign up, it's free and easy to do. I don't have too much to report this week in the way of announcements, I have changed the dailybuddhism.com blog to allow comments without registration, so you can now make anonymous comments and posts. I'll be watching closely and deleting SPAM and inappropriate posts, but if you had been holding back from asking questions or making comments out of embarrassment, fear no longer and post your comments right there on the blog. Let's see, what else? The companion podcast, “Tao of the Day” is now available on iTunes. Just go to the podcast section and search for Tao, spelled T-A-O. If you don't use iTunes, just go to www.taooftheday.com and listed right there on the page or download the mp3 files yourself. Also, I've changed the lesson plan for this week. I was going to cover all the major branches of Buddhism this week, including Zen on Friday. I have since decided that I will boost Zen up to a full week long lesson. That's where I'm coming from, and I know more about that group than the others. I've also had several requests for more information about Zen and it's concepts like koans, lineage, and so forth. I can't do a good job in a single day, so that will be next week's project. Just to get you warmed up, this week's lesson will be about the other major schools of Buddhism. So let's get started! End of Transcription. See Daily emails or blog posts for the lessons.

[display_podcast] Today's email is a little different; there really isn't a lesson for today, just a song. If you are subscribed to the podcast, you'll get it automatically. Otherwise, go to http://www.dailybuddhism.com and click on the player button to hear it in your browser (or download the mp3 file). This is a really fun song by 3 Feet Up entitled "Buddha Camp." To be honest, the first time I heard it I laughed so much I thought Weird Al Yankovic might have done it. Whoever wrote the song put a lot of thought into the lyrics; it's fun, but the words and ideas are pretty much all important parts of Buddhism. And I do have an update to yesterday's “Buddha jokes” post. I got more comments on that email than any of the serious lessons. Unfortunately, most of the comments were of the “don't quit your day job” variety. Yeah, they were awful but I was going with the more basic jokes to begin with. It's hard to do Zen jokes when we haven't covered Zen yet. Speaking of Zen, next week we'll be covering the different sects or “denominations” of Buddhism. It's good to know the different points of view of various types of Buddhism. Also, please be aware that the www.dailybuddhism.com website is intended to be interactive. We haven't had a lot of questions or comments posted there, but there was finally some activity yesterday, when someone asked a question about Monday's “Five Gifts” posting. That's great; you'll learn more from asking questions than waiting for me to cover everything. Keep on asking!

[display_podcast] I'm Brian your host, and this is the Daily Buddhism Podcast for May 9th, 2008.   Before we get on with this week's lesson, I have a few announcements:   I'd like to welcome the hordes of new listeners from iTunes. The numbers of listeners has skyrocketed since the last episode, and I hope you all enjoy the show and learn a thing or two about the world of Buddhism. I'd like to ask a little favor of you before we get started today; If you are listening through iTunes and you like the show, go to the iTunes listing for the Daily Buddhism and leave a review there. If you don't like the show, send me an email and explain why. If you have any comments, suggestions, or questions, drop me a note at dailybuddhism@gmail.com.   For new listeners to the podcast, the Daily Buddhism is intended as a daily email service with short lessons and texts in Buddhism delivered to your email daily. If you haven't looked at the email list or the website, go to www.dailybuddhism.com and sign up for the mailing list.   Next, subscribers to the email list already know about this, but we're launching a companion website and podcast called ‚ÄúTao Of The Day.‚Äù The Tao and Taoism are not directly a part of Buddhism, but the Tao was very influential on Buddha and his society, and I think it's worthwhile to understand the Tao. The new site will look at one chapter of the Tao every day, both through email and as a podcast. You'll hear and learn a lot of material that still influences Eastern thinking today. The site and email list is set up a lot like this one; there's an email sign up in the top top-hand corner of the site for the daily email. Although the Tao podcast isn't available through iTunes yet, there is a link to the RSS feed that you can plug into iTunes or whatever you use to listen. The main website for this is www.taooftheday.com and there's a link on the Daily Buddhism site as well.   And lastly, this past week I have added a few new things to the dailybuddhism website. There's a page called ‚ÄúBooks‚Äù that contains a bunch of good beginner's level Buddhist books that I recommend. I'll be doing reviews on all of them eventually, but if you are looking for some reading material check out this list. Also, up in the top left-hand corner is a ‚ÄúDonation‚Äù button. I'm pointing out that it's there, but that's all I'm going to say about that.   OK, enough announcements, on with the lesson! [This is the end of the transcript. Listen to the whole podcast or read the past week's entries]  

[display_podcast] Podcast Episode 6: The Eightfold Path And welcome back to the Daily Buddhism. I'm Brian, your host, and today I'm going to introduce you to Buddha's eightfold path. But first, I need to discuss some podcast business. First, I want to welcome all the new subscribers from iTunes. It seemed to take forever, but our podcast is now listed on iTunes and the number of listeners has exploded. Welcome to all of you and keep in mind that this is still a fairly new podcast, and it's still going to be pretty easy to catch up on all the previous shows. Just open iTunes, click on this podcast and click on the “Get All” button to download all the previous episodes. You can still get completely caught up with everyone else in less than an hour. Of course, all the text of everything said in the podcast is available both on the website, www.dailybuddhism.com as well as in the daily emailing. Secondly, this will be the last podcast for a couple of weeks. I'm going out of town until May 5th. Just like before, Internet access is going to be difficult. The daily emails will stop temporarily and so with the podcast. It can't be avoided, but rest assured, this will most likely be the last extended break for the Daily Buddhism. We're mostly through the very basic introductory material now, so when I do return, we'll get back on track and into the interesting stuff fairly quickly. Stay tuned; subscribe to the podcast and sign up for the email list from the website and you won't miss a thing. OK. Last time we talked about the Four Noble Truths, and the fourth Noble Truth told us that the way out of suffering is the eight fold path, Buddha's “cure” for the suffering of this world. (listen for the rest of the show)

[display_podcast] This podcast is essentially a recap of last week's email list concerning the Four Noble Truths for our audio subscribers. If you are not a subscriber to the audio show, click on the "Daily Buddhism" logo on the right-hand side of the page. Open the link in iTunes, and you will be subscribed. Otherwise, just click on one of the buttons above to either download the MP3 version of the show or click on the play button to listen right in your browser (no software required).

[display_podcast] Podcast Episode 4: Current Events In Tibet I'm Brian, your host and welcome to the Daily Buddhism podcast. I have finally returned from Japan, and I'm getting settled in pretty quickly. The regular Daily Buddhism emails will resume on Monday, so watch your mailbox. And this time, I have a very special and timely subject to discuss with you: the situation in Tibet and the developments in the past few days. Tibet OK, this isn't exactly what I would consider to be a basic Buddhist topic, but since it's all over the news, I thought I'd interrupt our regular schedule and do a quick overview of the situation in Tibet. The problems with Tibet are very seriously connected with Buddhism, and in part are caused by Buddhism, so it's worth looking at very closely. If you had not heard the news elsewhere, the Chinese government is killing large numbers of Tibetan protesters. The Dalai Lama has threatened to resign if the violence doesn't stop very soon. The Chinese claim the protesters are terrorists trying to sabotage the Chinese Olympics. So what's this all about? The first question is "What is Tibetan Buddhism?" Tibetan Buddhism is a flavor of Buddhism that originated in Tibet. It's one of the more "religious" forms of Buddhism, and does indeed have gods, rituals, prayers, chanting, and magical occurrences. Beyond this starter information, the specific details aren't really relevant to the political situation, so we can talk about that another time. The traditional leader of the Tibetan Buddhists is known as the Dalai Lama. OK, so the next question is simply: "Who is the Dalai Lama anyway?" The current Dalai Lama's real name is Tenzin Gyatso. The title of Dalai Lama is handed down to the leader of Tibet and the leader of the Buddhists in that country. That's right: He's both the head priest and the "king" of Tibet. He's often referred to as a "god-king," although that's not strictly accurate. The current Dalai Lama is the 14th man to hold the title, although there is only one Dalai Lama. How does that work, you might ask? Simple: Reincarnation. When the current Dalai Lama dies, he is reborn as a baby somewhere and a search goes on to identify this child. There are usually several candidates who must undergo rigorous testing. Eventually one of these candidates is identified as the reincarnated Dalai Lama. What's the Problem in Tibet? So as I said, Tenzin Gyatso is the 14th man to hold the title, so this lineage of one Tibetan leader after another continued and has gone on for centuries. Until 1959, that is. In that year, China invaded Tibet, quickly killing or running off the non-violent Buddhist monks. Since the Buddhists vow to never harm anyone, they weren't able to put up much in the way of defense, and the country was quickly overrun by the Chinese. The Dalai Lama fled to India, but since has travelled the world gathering more and more support for his cause. If you've ever seen one of those "Free Tibet" bumper stickers, this is what they are talking about. The Chinese government has always feared the Dalai Lamas charismatic way of gaining support, and today they consider him to be a terrorist leader. It's only my opinion, but if the Dalai Lama is a terrorist, then well, ... I dunno, but it just seems incredibly unlikely to me. If you've ever seen him interviewed, then you know what I mean. That's not to say that the protesters in China aren't taking advantage of the upcoming Olympics to make their position known. I'm sure they are. But over the past week or so, protests have increased, and so has the severity of the Chinese response to the protests. China, of course, is blaming the Dalai Lama as being the mastermind behind the attacks. Today, the Dalai Lama has stated that he will resign if the violence does not stop. That's really an interesting point: Can the Dalai Lama resign? He didn't choose this position or become elected to it, he was born into it.

[display_podcast] What Buddhists Don't Believe Welcome to Episode 3 of Daily Buddhism. We're obviously still not Daily, but at least we can get the Buddhism part right. I'm your host, Brian, and here we go! At the end of last episode, I said that this time we would talk about what Buddhists believe. That's a huge subject, and there's no way I can get into that in a single show. So instead, I'm going to go about it in a different way; I'm going to talk about what Buddhists don't believe. From stereotypes to misinformation to just plain wrong ideas. Once we get some of this disinformation out of the way, we can move on down the middle way and start talking about the true path of Buddhism. First, let me get some podcast stuff out of the way. First, I'd like everyone listening to subscribe to the podcast. Listening on the website is nice, but if you are subscribed, you will receive new episodes automatically. On the website, www.dailybuddhism.com, click on the logo image on the right-hand side of the screen. A message will come up saying that something or other wants to open a program. If you have iTunes installed, it will talk about opening iTunes. If you listen to podcasts using some other piece of software, open it instead. Just give it your “OK” and the program will open and automatically add Daily Buddhism to your subscription list. Now, every time you update your podcasts, all new episodes will automatically be downloaded. Once we get going at full speed, it might be all too easily to accidentally is an episode if you have to remember to visit the site to listen. Of course, you should subscribe to the email service as well. I'm still not completely decided whether the podcast is going to be daily or weekly, but there is no doubt about the email list; it's going to be daily, and it's the heart of my plans for Daily Buddhism. If in doubt, go with the mail list! We still don't seem to be listed in the Itunes store, but we are listed on Podcast Alley and Feedburner. If you know how to vote or do a review on those sites, please vote for us there. If you don't know how to do that, I'll explain in a future episode. But now, let's get on with talking about “What Buddhists Don't Believe” First of all let me put out a disclaimer: There are hundreds of different varieties of Buddhism. Just like the denominations in Christianity, there are many different competing ideas and schools about Buddhist beliefs. As much as possible, I am going to try to stick to the ideas that are common to all of them, but I will be making some general statements, and in nearly every case, there will probably be some exceptions. As you will soon learn, everything I say is true; not only that, but everything I say is a lie. Buddhism is sometimes insanely difficult to nail down. OK. Do Buddhists believe in God? No. And Yes. Well, maybe. When Buddha was asked about this, he simply stated that no one can know for sure. Since no one can know, it is non-productive to debate or hypothesize about his existence. If there is a god, he is so far above us and removed from us that we cannot comprehend him, so involved guessing and debate on god is a waste of time; if there is no god, then there is no point in wasting our time thinking about him. So maybe there is a god, maybe there isn't, but Buddhists don't concern themselves with him. Buddhists certainly would deny the existence of a personal god that you can pray to for miracles; Buddhists live in reality, and accept what they can see and experience. Another problem with god is that it puts the responsibility for … pretty much everything, in the hands of an outside force. In Buddhism, salvation, if you want to use that word, comes from within. You are responsible for saving yourself. It's your responsibility. If you choose to be a drunken thief, that is your choice and your responsibility, not some outside force such as the devil.

[display_podcast] Welcome back! This is episode 2 of the Daily Buddhism, for February 24th, 2008. For more information, please visit http://www.dailybuddhism.com . I am still here in Japan, so my access to the Internet is a little sporadic; as you have probably figured out, the Daily Buddhism isn't exactly ‚ÄúDaily‚Äù just yet. I'll be doing at least one podcast and blog entry each week until I get back to the States in mid-March. At that point we'll pick up and hit our stride, actually going daily. In the meantime, I am going to be covering the basics of Buddhism in a few background episodes. If you have any specific questions about anything at all, please email me at dailybuddhism@gmail.com. If you send an MP3 recording, I'll play it on the show, otherwise, just ask your question by email. Last time, we briefly discussed the answer to the question, ‚ÄúWhat is Buddhism?‚Äù Today we will cover the story of the Buddha himself. Keep in mind that there are actually several different variations on the story, and we will cover some of them eventually, but this version seems to be the most common one. Who Was The Buddha? By "Dr. Arcane"Around 2500 years ago, King Shuddodana Gautama of the Shakya clan ruled in northern India. He built a great castle and ruled his people well. One night, his wife, Queen Maya, had a strange dream wherein she saw a white elephant enter her womb through the side of her chest. She soon found that she was indeed pregnant. The people of the kingdom were thrilled that there would soon be a royal heir.Planning to have the child at her parent's home, Maya traveled there before the birth. On April 8th, on the way to Queen Maya's ancestral home, she stopped to rest in a garden. Reaching for a blossoming branch in the garden, she suddenly, painlessly, had the child. Unfortunately, a few days later, Queen Maya died.The baby was named Siddhartha, meaning, ‚ÄúEvery wish fulfilled,‚Äù and was raised within his father's grand castle. His father, of course, expected young Siddhartha to succeed him as King at some point in the future.   Fate, however, had other plans for Siddhartha. A wandering holy man came to the castle to see the King. He had a vision concerning the young Prince and had to tell the King. He foretold that the young boy had two possible futures; either as a great King who would rule the entire world, or as a great holy man. The King decided immediately that his son would not leave the castle and learn to be the great future King. Young Siddhartha lived in the castle and grew up inside its protective walls, never seeing anything that would make him think of spiritual or religious things. His father was careful to remove all hints of the real suffering that accompany this world. The Prince lived a perfectly shielded life. His father arranged a marriage, and then Siddhartha had a son of his own. Not long after, on a parade through the city, he spotted three sights. First he saw a sick man. He asked his good friend and charioteer, ‚ÄúWill I become sick?‚Äù The charioteer answered truthfully, ‚ÄúEes, eventually we all get sick.‚Äù They continued through the city, and the Prince spotted a very old man. He asked, ‚ÄúWill I grow old like that man?‚Äù to which the charioteer answered similarly. Lastly, he saw a dead man being carried away. ‚ÄúWill I die?‚Äù he asked, and did not like the answer. Leaving his wife and son behind, Siddhartha abandoned the castle and went off to live in the wilderness as a wandering holy man. He met up with other ascetic mendicants, refusing to eat, spending all day in meditation and denying all pleasures. For years he studied with the ascetics, and nearly starved to death in the process. After six years studying in this manner, he finally decided that he would learn no more following this path. He decided that denying the world was wrong, but that enjoying life too much, as in his younger days, was ad as well.

[display_podcast]   What Is Buddhism? Buddhism is a path of practices and spiritual development which lead to insight into the true nature of life. Practices such as meditation are means of changing oneself in order to develop and perfect the qualities of awareness, kindness, and wisdom. The methods developed within the Buddhist tradition over thousands of years has created an incredible resource for all those who wish to follow the path which ultimately culminates in Enlightenment or Buddhahood.The foundation of Buddhism is the Fourfold Noble Truth: The world is full of suffering and stress. The cause of this suffering and stress is desires of physical instincts. If desire can be removed, then suffering and stress will be ended. Desire can be removed by following the Noble Eightfold Path: Right Views, Right Thoughts, Right Speech, Right Conduct, Right Livelihood, Right Effort, Right Mindfulness, Right Concentration. Because Buddhism does not include the idea of worshipping a God, some people do not describe it as a religion. The basic teachings of Buddhism are straightforward and practical: nothing is permanent; actions have consequences; but change is possible. Thus Buddhism addresses itself to all people irrespective of race, nationality, or gender. It also teaches practical methods such as meditation which enable people to make use of its teachings in order to transform their lives, to be fully responsible for those lives and to develop the desirable qualities of Wisdom and Compassion. Buddhism began about 523 B.C.E., and the historical Buddha, Shakyamuni Buddha was a Hindu from northern India. His birthplace, Lumpini, is now part of Nepal. The ‚Äúbible‚Äù of Buddhism is the ‚ÄúTripitaka‚Äù, or Three Baskets, formed of the Sutta (Sutras of the Buddha), Vinaya (precepts for the Sangha), and the Abhidhamma (higher teachings, or analytical writings about the higher states). The oldest extant manuscripts date to the first century B.C.E. There are approximately 362 million buddhists in the world. There are many different forms of Buddhism, which developed and grew as it spread from India and Nepal throughout Asia. The three main vehicles are Theravada (sometimes known as Hinayana), Mahayana and Tantrayana (also known as Vajrayana). Theravada is the oldest tradition and is practiced predominently in Sri Lanka, Thailand, Burma, Cambodia, and Laos. Theravada practice has the goal of reaching the state of nirvana, becoming an arhat, and achieving liberation from the cycle of rebirth. Mahayana predominates in Northern India, China, Japan, and Vietnam. Tantrayana predominates in Tibet, Nepal, and Mongolia. Both Mahayana and Tantrayana practice is primarily to help all sentient beings reach enlightenment and in doing so achieve both nirvana and buddhahood. In Tantrayana additional tantric practices are used in order to achieve Buddhahood more quickly.

[display_podcast] Daily Buddhism Episode 0