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Our Next Shin Buddhist Service |
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Celebrate the birth of Siddhartha Gautama
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Hanamatsuri Flower Festival
We come together to create the flower Garden of Lumbini where Siddhartha Gautama was born in 563 BCE. See below for details.
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Sunday, April 16, Service:
- 9:45 AM: Today’s silent meditation is to create a Garden of Lumbini. All welcome, especially children. We will decorate our little Lumbini Garden with flowers. Each flower you add will be your focus for this meditation. Flowers will be supplied; bring a few of your own, if you wish.
- 10:30 AM: Shin Buddhist Sangha Gathering and Service: Rev. Anita Tokuzen Kazarian
- Cleveland Buddhist Temple 78th
observance of Hanamatsuri, Birth of Siddhartha Gautama, our annual Flower Festival.
- April Memorial Service: Expressing gratitude to our ancestors who passed away in the month of April.
Following the Service: Following coffee and cake, we will hold a short gathering to discuss a section of text, to be provided. As all things are impermanent, we will remember with joy the 2023 Lumbini Garden and its relevance to our lives today and then, remove all the flowers to take home.
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Dhammapada
Dhammapada, a collection of verses of Shakyamuni Buddha
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Seated Buddha, India, Bengal (?), Pala period, 9th century Cleveland Museum of Art |
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The Rod: 144 |
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Like a fine stallion
struck with a whip,
be ardent and chastened.
Through conviction
virtue, persistence,
concentration, judgment,
consummate and the knowledge & conduct,
mindful,
you’ll abandon this not- insignificant pain.
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Formula 1
How to calculate the approximate base of clouds
Example: If the outside air temperature is 85°F at the surface and a dew point is 71°F at the surface, the difference between the two is 14°F. Divide this difference by 4.4°F (given) to obtain 3.18. Multiply 3.18 X 1,000 (given) = clouds 3,180 feet above ground level.
Formula 2
How to reduce suffering in this life
The Four Noble Truths
- Life is suffering: pain, frustration, agitation, jealousy.
- The origin of suffering is ignorance, selfishness, and craving.
- The cessation of suffering, or perfect peace, can be achieved through the elimination of ignorance, selfishness, and craving.
- The path to extinguish ignorance, selfishness, and craving is the Eightfold Path.
The formula for calculating the base of clouds is pretty much like the formula for calculating how to reduce suffering in this life. They are both based on rational observations, and may be repeated when applied consistently. The work is ours alone to do. The happiness is within us, not anywhere else. We do not change the world by fighting to change it. We change the world by being one person living with wisdom and compassion. We change the world by not adding to its conflicts with our ego centered self.
Is dropping our ego self easy? No. In fact, it is so difficult that we don’t even realize we are doing it. As we enter Spring of 2023, may we begin to awaken to our oneness with one another. May we begin to drop at least one illusion about our ego self perhaps the one about how right I am and how wrong you are. May we begin to use the formula to not only liberate us from our suffering, but to begin to realize nirvana as a state of being in the here and now.
Namo Amida Butsu
Rev. Anita
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Celebrate the birth of Siddhartha Gautama
Hanamatsuri Flower Festival
We come together to create the flower Garden of Lumbini where Siddhartha Gautama was born in 563 BCE. See below for details.
Flowers Provided
Like us, the Garden of Lumbini is different each year…
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Children, and those young at heart, love this Flower Festival and take turns to pour sweet tea over the baby who was to become Shakyamuni Buddha
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Two Ducks and a Turtle
Relax the very still and listen – listen carefully to this tale about a turtle who lived in a very large pond full of cool clear water. That is, until something very strange happened! What could it be? Let’s see if we can find out.
Now… This turtle lived a long long time ago in a faraway land that was very hot. For many years he was quite content swimming lazily around the large pond, or basking in the sun on top of one of the big, rubbery, green lily pads that covered its surface. Sometimes, he would snap at a passing dragonfly, or try to catch a fat, juicy water beetle to eat.
All in all, life was good for the turtle. Until one summer – one scorching hot and dry summer – the rain stopped falling and the sun shone so fiercely that the cool, clear water in the pond began to dry up. Little by little the pond shrank. Every day it became drier and drier, smaller and smaller, until finally there was so little water left that the turtle decided he must take action to find a new home before it disappeared completely but how on earth would he do this?
Early one morning, as the sun took hold of her bright blue sky, the turtle set off to look for help. Before long he heard two ducks quacking loudly to each other as they flew overhead. Quickly, the turtle called up to them. “Ducks! You ducks out there! Please help me! My home pond is drying up. Would you kindly take me to a new pond full of water?”
“But how can we do that? replied the ducks. “We’re flying in the air and you are down there on the ground!” Now, as it so happened, at that very moment the turtle tripped over a long straight stick that lay across his path. “What if you carry the stick between your beaks?” he shouted up. “Then I could hold onto the middle with my mouth and you could carry me to a new pond.” “That’s a good idea,” agreed the ducks landing beside him. “But, if we do, you must promise us that you will not open your mouth.”
And so it was agreed. The ducks placed the stick between them and with the turtle holding on with his mouth, they took off. The ducks carried the turtle across the sky toward a pond full of cool, clear water shimmering in the distance. On the way they flew over the field where some children were playing noisily. Hearing the flapping of ducks wings above them, the children looked up and burst out laughing at the strange sight that met their eyes.
“How ridiculous!” shouted a boy. “Two ducks caring a turtle on a stick, doesn’t he look silly!”
Well… this made the turtle very angry. Even though he probably did look odd, there was a very good reason for it. In his rage, he shouted at the children, “You’re the silly ones. You don’t undest-aaa-and!” As he had opened his mouth to speak, the poor turtle lost his grip on the stick and tumbled down out of the sun filled sky, crashing onto the grass.
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All too often, we open our mouths in anger without thinking about what might happen next. A wise person thinks before they speak, and, if they can’t say something kind, they keep silent.
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Excerpt in gratitude from: Buddha at Bedtime by Dharmachan Nagaraja, London, Watkins 2008 with a nod to Aesop’s Fables.
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Excerpts of Buddhist voices across teachings, across continents, across time.
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A Buddhist View of
Suicide
By Rev. Marvin Harada
One of the greatest tragedies is when a person takes their own life. How should we understand this tragedy from a Buddhist perspective?
First of all, life in Buddhism is looked at as a most noble, precious gift. We are born into this world amidst a myriad of causes and conditions, and of any of those conditions did not occur, we might not have been born. For example, we are the biological products of our parents, but what if parents did not meet, we would not have been born. Any number of circumstances could have prevented their parents from meeting. The same applies for our grandparents. We have four grandparents, and if they did not meet, our mother and father would not have been born, and then we would not have been born.
When we calculate just our parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, and on down the line, in 10 generations there are over a thousand people directly responsible for our life. If we go back 20 generations, that number exceeds over 1 million people!
To take this precious and noble life into ended, is truly a great tragedy from a Buddhist perspective. However, one cannot know the great suffering, anguish, or depression that might lead someone to take their own life. I know of a man who became a quadriplegic after a tragic car accident when he was in the prime of his life, in his early 20s. After his accident, he wanted to commit suicide, but being a quadriplegic, there was no way for him to take his own life. Fortunately he encountered the Buddhist teachings and his life was transformed from anguish and sorrow into a life of meaning and fulfillment.
The Buddha’s teachings were intended for those who are lost, suffering and sorrow filled. His teachings point the whiteout of their suffering. For someone who is on the verge of suicide, for whatever reason, from a Buddhist perspective we would want to reach out to that person to help them find a path out of their suffering and sorrow, to find a solution to their problems other than suicide. No matter how desperate or insurmountable a personal problem might seem to a person, from a Buddhist perspective any negative situation can be transformed into a positive situation.
Of course the solution is not easy. One must seek teachers and teachings. But you must never lose hope. Teachers and teachings are waiting for you. They’re waiting for you to knock on their door, to call them on the phone, to send them a letter seeking their help. When you knock on the door, it will open and the opportunity to turn your life around will begin.
Excerpt from: BCA, Southern Ministers Association Trifold
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In a way meaningful to you... |
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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/
© 2023. Anita Kazarian. All rights reserved.
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