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9:45 AM – 10:15 AM: Zen Shin Sangha Meditation: The late May flowers are beginning to bloom as the early spring blooms fade away. Even in this time of renewal we have impermanence. Let us take a moment of contemplation and self-reflection by quiet sitting and guided meditation. We will chant the Heart Sutra, and recite sutras. We sit to calm our mind and body in order to focus on the present moment revealing our profound connection to all beings especially during this season of change. With this calmness we are more prepared to hear the Buddha Dharma in the Shin Buddhist service to follow. All levels, including beginners, and families with children are welcome.

(Check out our Children’s Table, complete with coloring books)

10:30 AM: Cleveland Buddhist Temple: Rev. Anita Tokuzen Kazarian:

• Shin Buddhist Service
• Shin Buddhist Memorial Service to express gratitude to ancestors who passed away in the month of June. Those attending may include the name of a loved one in our Memorial Service. Please provide Rev. Anita with the name by 10:15 AM.

Sangha Sharing:

• Following coffee and our Birthday cake for our Sangha’s May birthdays, we will share time and thoughts by reading and discussing a short passage of a Buddhist text. Handouts of text provided. This is a time for experiencing the 3^rd Jewel of Buddhism, the Sangha.

Dhammapada

Dhammapada, a collection of verses of Shakyamuni Buddha

Folio 348 from a Gandauyuha-sutra Scripture of the Supreme Array 1000-1100s,  Nepal Cleveland Museum of Art

XX: The Path 281

      Guarded             in speech,

well-restrained        in body & mind,

      do nothing unskillful.

                        Purity,

these free courses of action,

                        Bring to fruition

the path that seers have proclaimed.

Prometheus

18-foot-tall, eight-ton, gilded cast bronze sculpture created by Paul Manship, 1934

Rockefeller Center, New York City, NY

    Hesiod (~ 700 BC), was a Greek poet whose writings survived to retell the story of the ancient Greek god Prometheus. Edith Hamilton’s Mythology¹ offers English readers creation stories of many different gods in a version yet to be supplanted.

Prometheus created humans from clay, but didn’t stop there.  Unlike the Hebrew God who places the Tree of Knowledge in the garden with his creation of Adam and Eve and then forbids them to eat of its fruit, Prometheus risks the wrath of Zeus and steals fire (knowledge) from heaven and gives it to his creation for their benefit.  For this crime he suffers eternal punishment, chained to a desolate mountain top with an eagle to eat his immortal liver every day, which grew back every night.

Zeus’ punishment didn’t stop there. He gives Pandora, a beauty with charm and cleverness, another trait, curiosity. She is also given a box, never to open. Sound familiar?  Her curiosity cannot resist the temptation of knowing what is inside the box. She opens it releasing “trouble and woes – sorrow, disease, vice, violence, greed, madness, old age and death to humans bringing an end to earthly paradise.”

The oldest extant creation story, The Enuma Elish, from Babylonia², believed to have influenced the Book of Genesis creation story, goes back the to the late 2^nd millennium BC. Reading these stories we understand that even the earliest humans needed and were willing to believe explanations to understand life, the world we live in and why things happen as they do.

In the 1^st millennium BC, Buddha, the enlightened one, offers simple, logical answers based on reason, observation and reality checks. But we have a part of us that does not want the clear vision that comes from letting go of illusions. We want illusions. We want hope; hope that an omnipotent, omniscient and all-knowing, loving creator will listen, take pity and change course of the cosmos to suit our petitionary prayers. Why is that?

An estimated 30 million Americans say they either self-identify as Buddhists or practice Buddhism with no formal affiliation or have been strongly influenced by Buddhism.³   One would think with such a significant number, more people would question illusions when presented as fact, yet they do not.

Why do we still keep our illusions knowing they are illusions? Of course there are cultural pressures, peer pressures and hesitancy to “be different.” Or have we become such skeptics and pessimists about our world that we even give up on the one person we can change?

Prometheus knowingly stole knowledge from the gods knowing full well the legendary vengeful retributions of Zeus. He gave knowledge to humans anyway because of the compassion and love he felt for the humans he created.

If we liken Prometheus’ gift of knowledge as the Buddha, Dharma, Sangha, a true gift of knowledge not to be feared but embraced, our white path to enlightenment widens to a welcoming path where fear, skepticism and dukkha begin to melt away.

Namo Amida Butsu

Namo Amida Butsu

Namo Amida Butsu

Rev. Anita

¹ https://www.bpi.edu/ourpages/auto/2017/9/1/52154697/Mythology.pdf

² http://public-library.uk/ebooks/32/54.pdf

³ https://tricycle.org/magazine/buddhist-diversity-in-america/

This post was written by a human.

THIS COMPOST

by

Merlin Sheldrake

As a child I loved the autumn. Leaves fell from a large chestnut tree and gathered into drifts in the garden. I raked them into a pile and tended it carefully, adding fresh armfuls as the weeks went by. Before long, the piles grew large enough to fill several bathtubs. Again and again, I’d leap into the leaves from the low branches of the tree. Once inside, I’d wriggle until I was entirely submerged and lie buried in the rustle, lost in the curious smells.

My father encouraged me to immerse myself in the world headfirst. He used to carry me around on his shoulders and bury my face in flowers as if I were a bee. We must have pollinated countless flowers as we shuffled from plant to plant, my cheeks smeared with yellows and oranges, my face scrunched into new shapes to better fit inside the pavilions that the petals made, both of us delighted with the colors and smells and mess.

My leaf piles were both places to hide and worlds to explore. But as months went by, the piles shrank. It became harder to submerge myself. I investigated, reaching down to the deepest regions pulling out damp handfuls of what looked less and less like leaves, and more and more like soil. Worms started to appear. Were they carrying the soil up into the pile, or the leaves down into the soil? I was never sure. My sense was that the pile of leaves was sinking but if it was sinking, what was it sinking into? How deep was the soil? What kept the world afloat on this solid sea?

I asked my father. He gave me an answer. I replied with another “why.” No matter how many times I asked “why” he always had an answer. These games of “why” would go on until I exhausted myself. It was in one of these binges that I first learned about decomposition. I struggle to imagine the invisible creatures that ate all leaves, and how such small beings could have such enormous appetites. I struggle to imagine how they could devour my leaf pile as I lay submerged in them. Why couldn’t I see it happening? If their hunger was so fierce, surely I would be able to catch them in the act if I buried myself in the heap of leaves and laid there quietly enough. They always eluded me.

My father proposed an experiment. We cut the top off of a clear plastic bubble. Into the bottle we placed alternating layers of soil, sand, dead leaves, and finally a handful of earthworms. Over the next few days I watched the worms wind their way between the layers. They mixed and stirred. Nothing stayed still. Sand crept into the soil and leaves crept into the sand. The hard edges of the layers dissolved into each other. The worms might be visible, my father explained, but there are many more creatures that behave like this that you can’t see. Tiny worms. And creatures smaller than tiny worms. And creatures that don’t look like worms but are able to mix and stir and dissolve one thing into another just like these worms can. Composers make pieces of music. These were decomposers, who unmake pieces of life. Nothing could happen without them.

This was such a useful idea. It was as if I’d been shown how to reverse, how to think backward. Now there were arrows that pointed in both directions at once. Composers make; decomposers unmake. And unless decomposers unmake, there isn’t anything that the composers can make with. It was a thought that changed the way. And from this thought, from my fascination with the creatures that decompose, grew my interest in fungi.

Excerpt in gratitude from: Sheldrake, Merlin. 2020. Entangled Life. London, England: Bodley Head.

Photo by Jordon Conner on Unsplash

Eastern District Temples of BCA

• MIDWEST BUDDHIST TEMPLE
• EKOJI BUDDHIST TEMPLE
• SEABROOK BUDDHIST TEMPLE
• NEW YORK BUDDHIST CHURCH
• CLEVELAND BUDDHIST TEMPLE SANGHA
• TWIN CITIES BUDDHIST SANGHA

Midwest Buddhist Temple Live Zoom Service

If you would like to virtually attend services with zoom at Midwest Buddhist Temple in Chicago, please contact office@mbtchicago.org to request the weekly email newsletter with information about upcoming services and Zoom links. Sunday services are held at 10:30 AM, Central Time Zone.

Please contact the organizers to participate in this Cleveland event of Remembrance,

80 Years Ago

Francis Chiappa

To:​chiapski@aol.com​

Cc:​maria.smith9907@gmail.com​

Mon 4/28/2025 10:49 AM

This August marks the 80^th Anniversary of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. To commemorate this unprecedented violence and the advent of the nuclear age, Cleveland Nonviolence Network (CNVN) and Cleveland Peace Action (CPA) propose a Silent Peace Walk from Cleveland Public Square to the waters of Lake Erie.

Eighty people dressed in white, the color of mourning in Japan, would walk silently and meditatively to our Lake, reflecting on the cries of “Water! Water!” in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as victims of the blasts sought relief from their suffering.

That’s what we are proposing. There’s much more to be determined: what will happen at Public Square; what will happen at the Lake; how can we increase participation; effectively publicize; etc. We invite you to join us to plan and participate in the event. The exact date is also to be determined. Hiroshima was bombed on August 6 and Nagasaki on August 9, 1945.

Whether you’ve participated in past commemorations or are newly inspired, please consider contacting us.

Maria Smith, Cleveland Nonviolence Network

Francis Chiappa, Cleveland Peace Action

Supervising Minister:  Rev. Ron Miyamura

Resident Tokudo Minister: Rev. Anita Tokuzen Kazarian

rev.anita.cbt@outlook.com

Buddha Post is published by the Cleveland Buddhist Temple, 21600 Shaker Blvd, Shaker Heights, OH 44122 

The Cleveland Buddhist Temple is an affiliate of the Buddhist Churches of America, founded in 1899: 

https://www.buddhistchurchesofamerica.org/

© 2025 Anita Kazarian. All rights reserved.

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