#buddhism

Many Buddhist temple priests regard their parishioners as possessions and fear their departure as a diminishing of assets. ↗

— Kentetsu Takamori

#japan #religion #temples #religion

It is recorded in the monastic rules that a monk once performed an abortion on a girl; the Buddha judged his action seriously wrong, which incurred him the highest offense in the monastic rule. A monk committing this kind of wrongful deed must be expelled from the monastic community. The Buddha considered the embryo to be a person like an adult, so the monk who killed the embryo through abortion was judged by Buddhist monastic rules as having committed a crime equal in gravity to killing an adult. In the commentary on the rule stated above, it is stated clearly that killing a human being means destroying human life from the first moment of fertilization to human life outside the womb. So, even though the Buddha himself did not give a clear-cut pronouncement about when personhood occurs, the Buddhist tradition, especially the Theravada tradition, clearly states that personhood starts when the process of fertilization takes place. ↗

— Soraj Hongladarom

#bioethics #buddhism #personhood #religion #equality

If scientific analysis were conclusively to demonstrate certain claims in Buddhism to be false, then we must accept the findings of science and abandon those claims. ↗

— Dalai Lama XIV

#science

The heart is what is important." There is nothing more vulnerable, nothing more corruptible than the human mind; nor is there anything as powerful, steadfast and ennobling. ↗

— Daisaku Ikeda

#humanism #corruption

When the mind is exhausted of images, it invents its own. ↗

— Gary Snyder

#dharma #gary #mind #snyder #zen

Too lazy to be ambitious, I let the world take care of itself. Ten days' worth of rice in my bag; a bundle of twigs by the fireplace. Why chatter about delusion and enlightenment? Listening to the night rain on my roof, I sit comfortably, with both legs stretched out. ↗

— Ryokan

#buddhist #hermit #japan #japanese #monk

Where there are humans, You'll find flies, And Buddhas. ↗

— Kobayashi Issa

#flies #zen #zen

A student, filled with emotion and crying, implored, "Why is there so much suffering?" Suzuki Roshi replied, "No reason. ↗

— Shunryu Suzuki

#philosophy #suffering #wisdom #zen #zen-buddhism

Like a lamp, dispelling the darkness of ignorance ↗

— Dalai Lama XIV

#simile #buddhism

The very first noble truth of the Buddha points out that suffering is inevitable for human beings as long as we believe that things last—that they don’t disintegrate, that they can be counted on to satisfy our hunger for security. ↗

— Pema Chödrön

#mindfulness #buddhism