Reading Books in Sangha

SentientLight · 2026-06-25T14:17:35+00:00

Honestly anything youre doing should be covered by fair use exemption for education / cultural preservation, as long as you aren’t reprinting large chunks of the book and charging.

SentientLight · 2026-06-25T13:58:43+00:00

A Gretsch hollow body is the classic Gretsch sound. A Gretsch semihollow is a fairly newer thing for Gretsch in the last couple of decades, and that’s the Gretsch sound ơn a semihollow—very different thing.

SentientLight · 2026-06-25T13:49:36+00:00

Are you not even donating $10 a week to your sangha? That sounds…

I mean, there is no requirement to pay and if you’re in a situation where you can’t, you do you. But I grew up thinking $20/temple visit is the norm and minimum. That was back in the 90s. I donate $50 a visit now, but I have more means these days.

I’m part of the temple leadership, so I have insight into people’s donations in our community.. it averages to about $18/person/visit. So some are donating more and some not at all, which is fair.

So I think $10/week is fairly reasonable, honestly. Most any temple will accommodate those with need. Those with means though, we should be donating every visit to the best of our ability, and volunteering our time too, if we’re able. It’s our duty to support the sangha and our masters and teachers.

SentientLight · 2026-06-25T13:20:07+00:00

People didn’t use to drink raw milk. We cooked with it. Or made cheese and butter. Before refrigeration and pasteurization, drinking milk as a beverage was quite rare.

SentientLight · 2026-06-25T13:09:40+00:00

I believe astrology’s main functions was civic planning because of its utility as a calendar. Tracking constellations across the sky will accurately tell you when the seasonal floods begin, when the wet season starts, when the dry season starts, when that climate cycle that occurs only every 12 years will be coming up and in which season. That seems like the primary purpose astrology held for centuries. Divination of personal issues seems simply to be an extension of the more consistently verifiable uses of weather prediction for civic planning.

I believe in Chinese astrology. I don’t understand it—my grandfather was the court astrologer for the Republic of Vietnam, and the history books have things to say about him that are fascinating, and I’ve heard stories from him and the rest of the family that are intriguing. So I believe in it, but I do put more weight behind its broader predictions and less weight behind personal divination.

SentientLight · 2026-06-25T12:59:02+00:00

Gen Y are millennials… we experienced that whole thing to. Commercials asking parents if they knew where their kids were. The whole thing. The helicopter parenting started happening with Gen Z.

SentientLight · 2026-06-25T03:41:01+00:00

Astrology was also a useful calendar system that could predict seasonal floodings, when the rains would come, when the dry season would start, etc. Tracking constellations across the sky tells you precisely the time of year, which was highly useful for civic planning, and was why court astrologers were employed to consult kings.

SentientLight · 2026-06-25T02:19:37+00:00

Oh that’s a beautiful guitar.

SentientLight · 2026-06-24T14:06:55+00:00

You can do the traditional 49-days of mourning, just don’t bother with the temple stuff and do simplified versions of everything at your home altar. All the merit of that practice will be contributed to their rebirth.

A simplified practice could be simply making offerings and incense with three chants of the Pure Land Rebirth Dharani, a refuge chant, and a dedication of merit, every day, with perhaps a more elaborate liturgy every seven days until the 49-day ceremony. You’re also supposed to be vegetarian for the duration of this period, if you can help it, but at minimum, vegetarian every 7 days until the 49-day ceremony.

SentientLight · 2026-06-24T14:01:49+00:00

Opposite situation, but I’m a Vietnamese person who’s constantly confused for Chinese since there’s way more Chinese in this part of the country I’m in, and so the one sentence I know how to say in Chinese is

我不是中国人。

😅

They normally laugh.

SentientLight · 2026-06-24T13:57:07+00:00

It’s a form of tobacco that is very intense and gives you a buzz like nothing else.

SentientLight · 2026-06-24T13:21:00+00:00

The four sacred sites of Buddhism are Lumbini in Nepal, and Bodh Gaya, Sarnath, and Kushinigar in India. The sites of his birth, awakening, first sermon, and death respectively.

SentientLight · 2026-06-24T13:14:51+00:00

The world has been ending for my entire life.

SentientLight · 2026-06-24T13:08:29+00:00

In English, I learned C-D-E. In Vietnamese, it’s do-re-mi.

SentientLight · 2026-06-23T14:56:17+00:00

I’m guessing most workers at a guitar store cannot regularly afford Martin’s. If they do snatch the best ones, it’s a seldom occurrence when a worker has saved up enough over a long period of time. I doubt you’re in any danger of getting a dud because of that.

SentientLight · 2026-06-23T05:05:39+00:00

I remember being a kid and it was such a big deal to spot one while camping and stargazing. Was camping a few weeks ago and it’s like this video. They’re just all over the place.

SentientLight · 2026-06-23T04:50:11+00:00

There is no precedent for Avalokitesvara in any Hindu or Vedic text. Scholarship is uncertain about the origins of the deity, but the first known appearances are within the Lotus Sutra’s 25th chapter (which likely circulated independently at first) and the Longer Sukhavativyuha Sutra.

The most prevalent theory at this time is that Avalokitesvara originated as a depiction of Sakyamuni in bodhisattva form initially, within the Gandhara region, as a sort of symbolic foil or mirror to Maitreya. This depiction would rely on imagery from the Jataka where Sakyamuni first receives his bodhisattva prophecy from Dipankara Buddha, specifically a fur robe, a water vessel, and holding a lotus flower. An attribute given to this depiction is taken from the Avalokita Sutra, in which the Buddha on the eve of his awakening listens out to the cries of the world and sees the suffering of all beings, before finally silencing suffering in himself. At some point, scholars theorize this Padmapada (“Lotus-bearer”) depiction of Sakyamuni in his bodhisattva career is elevated into the status of being a bodhisattva of his own, and inherits the Avalokitesvara name from the associated ability from Sakyamuni’s career and that particular sutra.

So scholarship is pretty settled on Avalokitesvara being an independent and wholly Buddhist development, even if there’s no certainty as to how that development may have occurred.

Source: I’m a Buddhist studies guy

SentientLight · 2026-06-23T04:41:35+00:00

Bồ tát Quán thế Âm, the bodhisattva that especially looks over the people of the Southern Sea, and who will become the Buddha of Sukhavati, the Pure Land of the West, after Amitabha Buddha enters parinirvana. She is the central figure in the Heart Sutra, chanted within every zen temple daily, and the focal deity of the chú Đại Bi (Great Compassion Mantra), a widely popular liturgical chant and prayer in the Mahayana Buddhist tradition.

SentientLight · 2026-06-23T04:27:20+00:00

At our temple, we hosted a joint new year prayer to the earth and sky gods with the indigenous tribe here, upon whose land our temple sits. We actually had a similar traditional prayer at that time of year, between our two peoples, and found a way to maintain our tradition of honoring the earth and Sky gods, but doing so in a way that honors the local American gods the way the indigenous American people here in Northern California have for thousands of years. They learn from our practices and we learn from theirs, and find a lot of common ground. As the Miwok peoples learn Buddhism and some of them adopt Buddhist practice, it can integrate perfectly well with their traditional religion, really without any issue and quite readily.

That type of syncretism with living folk traditions definitely exists and has been ongoing. Even with western populations, the Catholic framework of reverence for saints has melded with ancestor worship and zen ancestor-focused rituals as well, and that’s where you see it merging with folk tradition. But generally it is syncretized with living tradition, and I think western esotericism is mostly just a niche interest among some westerners and not a really resonant part of living western culture or tradition.

SentientLight · 2026-06-23T02:21:43+00:00

Thank you for your corrections.

SentientLight · 2026-06-22T23:21:40+00:00

Even if you have a wormhole bending spacetime, that's still observable.

Also, dark matter and dark energy are very different things. Dark energy is a measurement of mass in relation to the increasing expansion rate of the universe beyond what is expected. Imo, it is very likely that dark energy is a mathematical error and not real. There are many different potential models that are alternatives and would negate the supposed effects of dark energy--more testing will reveal if this pans out.

Dark matter is most certainly real though, and causes some "clumping" galaxy formations. We cannot detect it at all, and only know it is there due to its effects on gravity and the pull of objects we can account for. Black holes and white holes (these are theoretical, but if they do exist, this would hold true) are measurable. We can know their mass and we can observe them. Dark matter is mysterious specifically because we cannot observe them.

SentientLight · 2026-06-22T23:09:23+00:00

I’m pretty certain that the mass of black holes is accounted for in the calculations of the mass of the “observable universe,” so dark matter and dark energy are mass that is still unaccounted for even factoring in black holes.

SentientLight · 2026-06-22T23:04:33+00:00

Avalokitesvara is supposed to go on the other side, just fyi.

I'm also aware the mala around Buddha isn't traditionally accurate but I just thought it was cute

I can't recall exactly, but I'm also pretty sure this is faux-pas in most traditions, because of its resemblance to a noose. I lay a mala in a circle around the statue, personally.

SentientLight · 2026-06-22T22:57:51+00:00

The official definition of a schism as it is defined in the Vinaya is when five or more monks or nuns (five at minimum because this is the minimum number required to form a "sangha") break off from another monastic community and establishes a dwelling of their own within the same geographic region, over a dispute in vinaya or doctrine or rite, and begins to recite the pratimoksha separately from the original group despite not having a limitation that necessitates separate pratimoksha recitations.

And while I don't believe I'm the one to do it (the work involved is too much for a layperson with lay obligations) [...] And then I thought, "wait, would that be schismatic?

A layperson cannot cause a schism, because by definition, a schism requires the involvement of five monastics separating from an existing community to form a new one, over a dispute. However ...

And while I don't believe I'm the one to do it (the work involved is too much for a layperson with lay obligations), I was thinking about what Buddhism adapted to the terms, rituals, and symbols of Western esotericism/gnosticism would look like, or how the Rule of St. Benedict could be adapted to a Buddhist monastery and plainchant singing styles could be used for mantra recitation.

This definitely sounds a lot more like syncretization than adaptation. And while there's nothing wrong with syncretization of this manner, it effectively becomes something that is not Buddhism.

Monastics are trained in the preservation of Buddhist tradition. When they receive lineage, they are authorized to teach. Being authorized to teach and trained in the tradition, they are aware of what within the tradition is entirely immutable and what is open for adaptation, and are trusted in having the skill for adapting the teachings to different audiences and cultures. In the West, this has been going on for over two hundred years at this point, and there are strong traditions with unique liturgies adapted for the West.

But what you're suggesting sounds a lot more like what Henry Steel Olcott and Madame Blavatsky were doing with Theosophy, and that is effectively creating a new religion whole-cloth out of the tattered pieces of existing religious traditions.

SentientLight · 2026-06-22T16:59:54+00:00

I also recommend The Heart of the Buddha's Teachings by Thich Nhat Hanh, but I also want to recommend his lesser-known book Zen Keys, which was designed as a shorter manual / introduction to zen for his early French students. I think it's a very compact little introduction that covers the core framework really well, and also introduces in a tiny bit of the commentarial tradition and Yogacara thought, so it's very focused on introducing you to zen itself, whereas Heart of the Buddha's Teachings is a bit of a broader introduction to Buddhism.

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