James Roberts
James Roberts has spent a good deal of time pondering the mysteries of the universe and human existence, but lately he’s been focusing his attention on the inward rather than the outward, and he’s finding that living at CTTB is a great opportunity for this. Just like trees, people have roots as well as leaves and branches -- our roots are the inward aspects of our lives that aren’t seen directly, but they still have outward consequences that are expressed in various ways in our lives. James is spending some time paying attention to his roots.
A couple months ago, during a conversation about DRBU planning, Professor Mark Mancall from Stanford University posed a question: “What does contemporary Buddhist architecture look like?” He said he’d been asking people this question lately whenever he has a conversation about Buddhism, and so far, he said, no one he’d talked to seemed confident that they had an answer. [...]
I’ve been wondering to myself, what does the name Earth Store mean? Earth Store (Chinese: 地藏 Dìzàng) session started on Sunday, and just like in other retreats, we will be spending a good deal of time reciting Earth Store Bodhisattva’s name. Partly because of this, and partly due to my own curiosity, I’ve been wondering [...]
Last Friday was a full moon, and a lunar observance day in all Buddhist traditions. Thanks to last week’s Monastic Immersion Program at DRBU, I was lucky enough to spend some time at Abhayagiri Monastery, a Thai Forest monastery just a short distance north of the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas (CTTB). The monastery is [...]
The Monastic Immersion program has just kicked off with last Tuesday night’s orientation. The idea of the program is to learn Buddhism by living and practicing in a Monastery and maintaining the monastic schedule. Thirty participants from a wide spectrum of religious and educational backgrounds will come to CTTB to participate in the program for [...]
We tend to think of good things as being positive, of positive things being good. When things are perfect, for example, that’s something positive, right? Everything is just how you want it; everything is just so. [...]
It was a slow, calming but also energizing practice. We did about five hundred bows every day, which took about six hours. Shortly after classes ended in May, the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas hosted a bowing session for twenty-three days. During the session we bowed to the ten thousand Buddhas that our community gets [...]
Bestow kindness and aid the poor, so that they can be at peace. When you witness people killing, have thoughts of compassion. – The Shramanera Vinaya I’ve been noticing…. One is that people seem to always have some kind of interpersonal conflict going on, and a second is that there’s always news of violence and [...]
Forty-eight days after my stepfather passed away, I had a dream. In the dream I am in the house I grew up in, the house where my mother still lives. My mother and two of my uncles are there, and also several people from the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas. People are standing around the [...]