Rev. Danny Fisher

Just a Buddhist Minister Trying to Benefit Beings

A Gift of Dharma for 10.28.09

2474112735_df2b5ce8d8Today’s quotes comes to us from Kyabje Kalu Rinpoche (1905-1989).

At age fifteen, Rinpoche began studies at Palpung Monastery–the major center of study and practice in the Karma Kagyu tradition of Tibetan Buddhism.  After ten years of study at Palpung, he was a solitary yogi for fifteen years. 

He eventually found his way back to Palpung, where he resumed studies with the meditation master Drupon Norbu Dondrup, who “entrusted him with the rare transmission of the teaching of the Shangpa Kagyu.”

Rinpoche went on to become abbot of the meditation center at Palpung and also served as the meditation teacher of His Holiness the Sixteenth Gyalwa Karmapa.  His tenure in this role ended when he was forced to flee to India after the Chinese occupation of Tibet.

In exile, he established the first three-year retreat center (in the Shangpa and Karma Kagyu lineages) for Westerners in France, and taught widely.  He also authored many books, including The Dharma: That Illuminates All Beings Impartially Like the Light of the Sun and the Moon, Excellent Buddhism: An Exemplary Life, Foundation of Buddhist Meditation, Foundations of Tibetan Buddhism, Gently Whispered, Profound Buddhism: From Hinayana to Vajrayana, Secret Buddhism: Vajrayana Practices, and Luminous Mind: The Way of the Buddha.

Here’s the quote–from Luminous Mind: The Way of the Buddha (Wisdom Publications, 1996), pg. 5:

All spiritual traditions, whether Buddhist or non-Buddhist, differ in their forms in order to adapt to the abilities and faculties of different kinds of people; all of them, however, work towards establishing beings on the path of well-being and liberation.  Since they all derive from perfectly enlightened activity, without exception they merit our trust.

[Photo via emptyness0.]

Color of Compassion

Visit http://www.sarvodayausa.org.

Helping Hands Newsletter Now Available for Download at Buddhist Global Relief’s Website

BGR_logo_smallerThis from MahaSangha News

Helping Hands, the newsletter for Buddhist Global Relief, is available for download from BGR’s Web site. Included in the issue, readers will find a message from BGR chair Ven. Bhikkhu Bodhi on “Reversing the Crisis of Our Age.” There is also information on BGR’s new projects. If you are interested in subscribing to receive the the newsletter by email, you may sign up at BGR’s Web site.

I’ve previously mentioned Buddhist Global Relief in this post and this post.

Buddhist Poet D.H. Maitreyabandhu Awarded Keats-Shelley Prize

This via our friends at Shambhala Sun Space:  Buddhist poet D.H. Maitreyabandhu has been awarded the Keats-Shelley Prize.  The award, given annually for “the best poem on a Romantic theme,” has never gone to an explicitly Buddhist poet before.

This year’s prize asked for poems on the theme of “find”. Maitreyabandhu’s, “The Small Boy and the Mouse”, sees a boy look inside himself to see an egg, within which lies a garden where a mouse sits holding a picture of a boy. Chair of judges Professor Janet Todd called it “a wonderful evocation of the nature of childhood” which “questions the power of imagination”.

Read the poem and the rest of the story here.

Global Day of Protest Against China’s Burma Project

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