About the Author
Hello, this blog is about my life as a father, Buddhist and Japanophile / Koreaphile. Any useful information I can pass along will hopefully make the Internets a better place. Thanks for reading!
Category Archives: Buddhism
My (mis)adventures in Ajikan Meditation
Recently, I was invited by reader and fellow blogger “Johnl” to attend a class on the Shingon meditation technique called ajikan (阿字観). This is a meditation technique in Shingon Buddhism that seems pretty similar to other, more familiar, forms of … Continue reading
Posted in Buddhism, Japan, Shingon, Travel
2 Comments
Another Excuse to Argue
I found this comic by XKCD recently and thought it was hilarious: When I first came to Buddhism in 2005-2006, there were many things I didn’t understand. So, I did what any nerd would do: I looked things up on … Continue reading
The Madness of Learning Two Languages
This is kind of like part two of a post I wrote previously. As I continue to study 2 languages at once, I realized that I took on a big project doing this. Contrary to what some people might read … Continue reading
Property, It’s All About Property
Recently I was watching my favorite war movie, The Thin Red Line, which you can see the trailer here (if you’ve never seen the movie before): Although it’s a war movie, the movie is more about humanity and why we … Continue reading
Posted in Buddhism, Politics, Theravada
7 Comments
Beginner Buddhist Part Nine: Buddhist Deities
I’ve been pretty busy these past weeks, but I am happy to report that I have finally finished making a video on Buddhist deities: This is not a complete overview, but shows a lot of the major Buddhist deities, their … Continue reading
Posted in Buddhism, Religion
4 Comments
Beginner Buddhism Part Eight: Example Home Service
Speaking of home services, I coincidentally uploaded another small video I made: This wasn’t what I originally planned for lesson eight, but decided to do this instead. Lesson nine will cover Buddhist deities. This was just a short, somewhat generic … Continue reading
Nembutsu as Self-Reflection
From time to time, when life gets me really flustered or frustrated, or I am just frustrated with myself, I use my special rosary from Kamakura, and recite a full cycle (about 1080 times) of the nembutsu (the Buddha’s name). … Continue reading
Beginner Buddhism Part 7: Conduct and the Precepts
Haven’t done one of these in a while, but I finally got it done: I am getting a little bit better at the video editing, but still need a lot of practice. Anyhow, this episode covers concepts such as the … Continue reading
Japanese Buddhism in the Community
I was inspired by a couple stories from the Japan Times about Buddhist priests in Japan from a few weeks ago. But first a brief explanation of Buddhist clergy in Japan. Usually, the term “monk” in Buddhism or bhikkhu implies … Continue reading
The Trouble With Porn
Kind of a random post, but recently the webcomic, Sinfest, has done a series exploring feminist issues and i wanted to share a few comics in particular. The first one shows the “mental gymnastics” we do in our minds when … Continue reading
Posted in Buddhism, Family
4 Comments
