The Dharma, sutras, and commentarial interpretations of interest to American Buddhists of all traditions with news that not only informs but transforms. Emphasis on meditation, enlightenment, karma, social evolution, and nonharming.
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But it's much more than that, as it commemorates when the wandering ascetic Siddhartha became the Buddha (supremely enlightened) and passed into final nirvana, events that all occurred on the full moon day in May (technically on the ancient lunar calendar's month of Vesakha).
It is a massive celebration around the world nowadays. And the party comes to North Hollywood on Sunday, with the tradition lunar observance, free island cuisine, chanting, blessings, devotional activities, and insight/mindfulness meditation known as vipassana.
This is so cool, just wish you were here to be.
This year is special because the Center has asked Wisdom Quarterly to answer questions, lead meditation, and give a Dharma (Dhamma) talk on the attainment of enlightenment in this very life (what Siddhartha did under the Bodhi tree that caused his spiritual awakening) and/or the development of merit for riches, sensual pleasures, and incredible rebirth possibilities as taught by the Buddha.
O, Buddha, what is the true nature of existence?
Theravada Buddhist countries like Sri Lanka off the tip of India celebrate these three amazing events on a single day, sometimes carrying on the holiday season for a week or more.
It is the year's most important all-day lunar observance called the Uposatha("Sabbath" day). If one were only going to do one, this would be it.
Wisdom Quarterly's own teacher, Dharma editor, and meditation guide invites ANY QUESTION on life, the universe, and everything (sex, drugs, rock 'n roll, Zen, existence, koan riddles, even imponderables), addressed from the perspective of the historical Buddha. Wear white as was the ancient custom of the Buddha's day.
EVENT IS FREE (PLEASE RSVP):
Lunch is served at about noon, so feel free to come-and-go for any part of the celebration.
Why Zen is the EASIEST path to enlightenment (but few understand it)
Can we speed this up and just do it? I've got some other things to do after my enlightenment.
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Whatcha doin, SpongeBob? - Just sitting.
(Cinematic Bible Lore) May 16, 2025: 🌿 Is Enlightenment (redefined in Zen as satoriorkensho rather than bodhi) really about effort, rituals, or sutra study, or could the simplest path be the most powerful?
This video dives deeply into the essence of Zen Buddhism — a tradition that goes beyond concepts and leads to direct experience of awakening through simplicity.
Discover the story of Bodhidharma, the teachings of Dōgen Zenji, and why zazen (seated meditation) is not just a technique — but a way of mindfully living in the here and now.
Whether new to Zen or deep in practice, this guide reveals why Zen is the easiest — and most overlooked — path to enlightenment.
🧘 LEARN:
Why Zen rejects dogma, rituals, and intellectual striving
The power of zazen: how “just sitting” (shikantaza) becomes awakening
How Dōgen’s teachings dissolve the illusion of time and ego
Why the present moment holds everything we seek
How to bring Zen into daily acts like washing, walking, or breathing
💬 Question:
Ever felt fully present — free from discursive thought, self, and striving? Share the experience in the comments.
📺 Explore more: 🎥 The Deepest Teaching of Buddha 🎥 The Secret Behind Zazen Meditation 🎥 Buddhism vs. Zen – What's the real difference?
👉 Like, share, and subscribe to join in weekly journeys through the world’s deepest spiritual traditions. 📌 Hashtags #ZenBuddhism #ZazenMeditation #DogenZenji #SimplePathToEnlightenment #PresentMomentPractice #ZenExplained #Mindfulness
Cinematic Bible Lore; May 16, 2025; Dhr. Seven, Amber Larson, CC Liu (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly
It was a massive success with more than 2,000 guests. That means it will be back, and this may become its permanent location. It was formerly held biannually in Altadena behind Oh Happy Days Vegan Cafe and Rhythms of the Village by the secret pot shop that got raided. The Aztec Dancers dazzled as did the drum troop. There was a whole healing area with FREE massage, acupuncture, aromatherapy, reiki, yoga, an Aztec sound bath, and spiritual healing tents all in the service of healing the community. It is a very big campus, and the main stage was not the focus. There was a raw vegan chef and various food trucks spread throughout, with lots of community service agencies and arts and crafts vendors. The dancing was all around the various music acts that followed a long jam by Onochie and Friends. This might be better as a multi-day event that goes deep into the evening like an Asian Night Market.
Event details
FREE: Village Spring Festival (Muir High School, Pasadena) HEALING | JOY | UNITY | LET'S DANCE, EAT, AND SHOP TOGETHER.
The annual Spring Festival is back at a new location to support the Altadena, Pasadena, Sierra Madre, Foothills, and San Gabriel Valley community for a day of healing, joy, and unity.
VILLAGE SPRING FESTIVAL
SATURDAY, MAY 24, 2025, 1:00-7:00 PM
JOHN MUIR HIGH SCHOOL
1905 LINCOLN AVE., PASADENA
✨ 50+ unique vendors: Explore a vibrant marketplace full of art, handmade crafts, clothes by local Altadena artisans
✨ Healing workshops
✨ Discover the magic of Rhythms Family Band led by the legendary Baba Onochie Chukwurah. Experience the magic as music, storytelling, and drama as they unite in a captivating performance
A wandering ascetic (śramaṇa, shramana, shaman) [a] is a person "who labors, toils, or exerts [him or herself] for some higher or religious purpose" [1, 2], a "seeker, or ascetic, one who performs acts of austerity" (tapas) [3, 4, 5, 6].
The śramaṇa tradition includes primarily [the contemporary proto-Indian schools of] Jainism [7], Buddhism [8], and others such as the Ājīvika[9, 10].
The śramaṇa [Dharmic] religions became popular in the circles of wandering mendicant, contemplative, truth seekers after a direct (unmediated by priests) experience of the divine or of the ultimate truth of reality from greater Magadha (where the Buddha chose to live) that led to the development of spiritual practices [11] as well as the popular concepts in all major Indian religions such as saṃsāra (the Cycle of Rebirth and Death) and moksha (liberation from that cycle) [12, Note 1].
The Śramaṇic traditions have a diverse range of doctrines (beliefs) and practices, ranging from accepting or denying the concept of an eternal soul, fatalism to free will, idealization of extreme asceticism to that of family life, renunciation, strict ahimsa (non-violence, harmlessness, kind caring), and veganism/vegetarianism to permissibility of violence and flesh-eating [13, 14].
The Pali (the exclusively Buddhist language) word samaṇa has been suggested as the ultimate origin of the word Evenkiсама̄н (samān) "shaman," possibly via Middle Chinese or Tocharian B; however, the etymology of this word, which is also found in other Tungusic languages, is controversial (see Shamanism § Etymology). More
(Buddhist Audio books) May 17, 2025: Why have our lives always felt incomplete? This video reveals the shocking truth behind why 🌌 Samsara — the Endless Cycle of Birth, Death, and Rebirth — has no beginning.
[Samsara also has no foreseeable end, like a carousel. Like a whirlpool in the ocean, it will not stop, but it is possible to escape get off.]
Drawing from powerful Buddhist sutras like the Anamatagga Samyutta and deep insights from the Abhidhamma(the "Doctrine in Ultimate Terms" or "Higher Teaching"), let's reveal the hidden causes of our suffering and why we keep returning again and again.
🧘♂️ LEARN:
What is Samsara and why does it feel endless?
How our past lives shape our present life
How to escape the cycle according to the Buddha.
📜 Based on the Anamatagga Samyutta and other Theravada sutras (Pali canon) and Theravada Abhidhamma teachings and ancient Buddhist meditation teachings.
(Linked Discourses 15.1, Chapter One, "Grass and Sticks")
Thus have I heard. At one time the Buddha was staying near Sāvatthī within Jeta’s Grove, in millionaire’s monastery. There he addressed the meditators, “Meditators!”
“Venerable sir,” they replied.
Then the Buddha told them, “Meditators, this Samsara (Cycle of Rebirth) has no discernible beginning. No first point is to be found of sentient beings wandering and being reborn, clouded by [the smoke of] ignorance and fettered [and being burned] by craving.
“Suppose a person were to strip all the grass, sticks, branches, and leaves in the Black Plum Tree Land, gather them together into a single pile, chop them into pieces, and lay them down, saying:
“‘This is my mother, this is my grandmother...’ The grass, sticks, branches, and leaves of the Black Plum Tree Land would run out before that person’s mothers and grandmothers were all counted. Why? Samsara has no discernible beginning. No first point is to be found of sentient beings wandering and being reborn, clouded by ignorance and fettered by craving.
“For a long time have we all undergone disaster, disappointment, and agony, swelling the cemeteries. It has been more than long enough for one to become disillusioned, dispassionate, and freed from all conditions.”
🙏 The Buddha realized the endlessness of Samsara through his fully awakened wisdom on the night of his great enlightenment (maha bodhi). With the divine eye (dibba cakkhu) he developed, he gained the recollection of countless past lives, his own and others'.
He saw beings being born and dying over vast aeons (kalpas), across uncountable realms (on 31 Planes of Existence, which are divided into three spheres), with no discernible beginning point to the impersonal, impermanent, and impossible-to-satisfy cycle.
The Buddha taught in the Anamatagga Samyuththa, “The beginning of this continued wandering on is not to be discovered.”
This is stated not based on faith but direct knowledge. Samsara is endless because each life is caused by previous karma (deeds), which are willed and carried out due to ignorance and craving and aversion. These in turn arise from previous conditions, in a chain of 12 causal links beginning with ignorance.
Thus, the Buddha clearly saw that there was no ultimate creator, no first cause [or prime mover], only a wheel of conditional existence turning without beginning. More
ABOUT: 💡 From emotional stories and ancient wisdom to rare teachings of the Buddha, this is a journey through time, karma, and consciousness. Whether one is new to Buddhism or a deep practitioner, this video changes how we see our lives.
🔔 Subscribe for more deep Buddhist wisdom and life-changing insights.
👉 Remember to like, comment, and share if this moved your heart.
#buddhism
#samsara
#WhySamsaraIsEndless
#buddhateachings
#rebirth
#Karma
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#AnamataggaSutta #CycleOfLife #spiritualawakening #PastLives #Theravada #BuddhistMeditation #EscapeSamsara #DeepWisdom #LifeAfterDeath #SpiritualJourney #DhammaTalk #Mindfulness #BuddhistPhilosophy
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Buddhist Audio books, May 17, 2025; Dhr. Seven (trans. based on Ven. Sujato, suttacentral.net), Wisdom Quarterly
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way — in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.
There were a king with a large jaw and a queen with a plain face, on the throne of England; there were a king with a large jaw and a queen with a fair face, on the throne of France. In both countries it was clearer than crystal to the lords of the State preserves of loaves and fishes, that things in general were settled for ever. More
So much of rap is stupid, unbearably so. Rock 'n roll was better, not by much but it was making something new of older Black music (blues, guitar driven gospel, jazz). But we're coming around to this rap thingy after a half century. For all the boisterous bluster, some really has kick (umph), the right beat. We're finally seeing it.
What four young Black men formed and called themselves "Gho$tmane," incorporating death and Black metal into their sound? Here they are:
(Yeah, that guy, Sunny McCalifornia. How could a boy with buckteeth get so groovy he not only develops a distinctive sound but a unique aesthetic from the 1920s?) We have to guess that it's because we mainly hear pop-rap (the cr-p rap the radio plays to death) that rap seems boring and anything but phresh.
But with radio removed, one is now exposed to all the other ways of listening (peer-to-peer sharing, TikTok, underground shows, networks, influencers, curation, recommendations, luck, and social media.
With the censors out and the "filters" on, there's some really good stuff out there. Some recent Buddhist articles we produced got a tremendous response with what looks like hundreds of thousands of views. It's just rap. Rap is old. Hasn't all the hoopla about rap died down already. It might have about the old stuff, but there is much more vital NEW stuff. Who even knew this was rap.
We thought it would be good to hear rap songs done in another genre thanks to the GREAT Richard Cheese (longtime fans since he appearances on the Kevin & Bean Show decades ago). So just tapping in something like death metal rap got an unexpectedly good response on YouTube. What, it's a thing? We thought, what are these suggestions? So clicking on a few of them, not bad. It was just Slipknot when Corey spits bars. We knew about that. We didn't know some of these songs got videos made for them.
Then, skipping down, we tapped the White Album looking suggestion, just to see, and the song that came up was really good or not what we expected. It was rap, not death metal. We were looking for death metal. But then it was metal as rap. Who were these guys? Are there bands of Black youths who listen to black metal (which is called "black" not because of the race of the artists or fans but due to the dark arts discussed by the music, such as Venom, Mercyful Fate, Deicide) and rap about it? No. Who knows? (There's that horrorcore freakshow stuff, but that seems very niche). Everyone listens to everything nowadays. There's no reason to stay in a compartment and limit yourself.
Rock rap with Wes and Limp Bizkit
This was someone smart enough to rap but very dark, but still actual rap, not a parody or imitation. Hey, there's something here. You see, a few months ago, we surfed through a video of Limp Bizkit live in the Netherlands, and before the show, they are getting the crowd amped up and start playing a rap song.
All of the 100% Caucasian audience loves it, starts moving, singing along. "They do know this is not a Limp Bizkit song, right?" was the question that crossed our minds. But it was a rap song, and that was the amazing thing--one that Limp Bizkit knew it, and two that the audience loved it so much. Oh yeah, duh, they are there to see rap-rock. It turns out it wasn't Limp Bizkit but Limp's DJ spinning Ludacris as Wes is standing, holding his guitar, in his briefs, about to noodle.
That's how The Heart Sutra (RAP version) article got written. Real rap is what Ludacris was doing, that old skool yellin and cars and women and other featured rappers on a track.
Who's ever heard of Gho$temane? Apparently, everybody but us because he's already played Coachella, though not with the reception he might have been expecting (during the day, under the desert sun, on the lawn, in the heat, to a smaller audience.
How is this guy not in all our faces or in the manifesto of the teen who takes a shot at Eminem in the future? Didn't Megan Fox's boytoy diss Marshal in a rap only to have it blow up in his face? Who ever heard about MGK? Or Riff Raff featured on Far East Movement's "Illest," Vanilla Ice (aka Rob Van Winkle) or the way mad white rappers The Bloodhound Gang feature him as Robby Winkle, that Australian one-hit-wonder Masked Wolf, where drill (gangsta rap is breaking out) as well as biker gangs.
The rap trap is some fake cr-p
Seth Auberon, Pfc. Sandoval, Dhr. Seven, Sheldon S., Wisdom Quarterly COMMENTARY, The Future of Musick
(Chogyal Rinpoche) 🇬🇧 This rap was composed with the intention of making the daily recitation of the sacred Heart Sutra easily accessible to young people. May it be of benefit. [Don't show it to your grandmother or her head may explode.]
all dharmas [phenomena] are marked with emptiness;
They are neither produced nor stopped, neither defiled nor immaculate, neither deficient nor complete.
Therefore, O Sariputra,
in emptiness there is no form nor feeling, nor perception, nor impulse, nor consciousness;
[There is] no eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, mind; no forms, sounds, smells, tastes, touchables [tangibles], or objects of mind; no sight-organ element, and so forth, until we come to:
[There is] no mind-consciousness element; there is no ignorance, no extinction of ignorance, and so forth, until we come to: there is no decay and death, no extinction of decay and death. There is no suffering, no origination, no stopping, no path.
There is no cognition, no attainment, and no non-attainment.
Therefore, O Sariputra,
it is because of one's non-attainmentness that a bodhisattva, through having relied on the Perfection of Wisdom, dwells without thought-coverings. In the absence of thought-coverings one has not been made to tremble.
One has overcome what can upset, and in the end one attains to Nirvana.
All those who appear as buddhas in the three periods of time [past, present, future] fully awake to the utmost, right and perfect Enlightenment because they have relied on the Perfection of Wisdom.
Therefore one should know the prajna-paramita as the great spell [mantra], the spell of great knowledge, the utmost spell, the unequalled spell, allayer of all suffering, in truth -- for what could go wrong? By the prajnaparamita has this spell been delivered. It runs like this:
gate gate paragate parasamgate bodhi svaha.
(Gone, gone, gone beyond, gone altogether beyond, O what an awakening, all-hail!)
It's a beautiful sentiment to present this timeless classic of the Perfection of Wisdom (Prajna Paramita) literature to youth in an idiom they might appreciate and listen to more than grandmotherly droning and chanting in a temple setting. But it does bring up one minor problematic question: What is rap? Is it like poetry in that anything is if it says it is? The phonebook well-read can be [made to be] "poetic." So drop a beat behind it and any ol' grouping of words is "rapping"? May be. We can ask Weird Al or Justin Timberlake. But it seems to us that real rapping, which is why the young at heart like and relate to it so much, is its brutal honesty, simplicity, and funky @$$ beat.
It's the beat, the beat, the beat propelled by a propulsive lyrical accompaniment consistent with the feel or underlying sentiment of the genre. One has to wonder if N.W.A would have had as much success -- with the exact same musical elements -- if their lyrical content and message were "Officers Is Nice" instead of "F*** the Police." Similarly, what is arguably the greatest rap song ever [if such a thing were possible to accurately determine] might not really be with weaker lyrics. In the case of Ludacris' "Excuse Me, Miss, If I May Just Get Through," or as it is known on internet radio "Move B*tch," where "bitch" refers, of course, to a pregnant dog driving in front of him and his featured artists. Ergo, if we're going to really have a Heart Sutra Rap, methinks we need to get real, gritty, and street, not simply rely on poetic feet.
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