2023
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Reborn to the Pure land
Reborn to the Pure landFeb /25/ 2023–Feb/ 26/ 2023 Hello everyone, welcome to our Dharma talk at Great Thunder Meditation Center. How to reborn to the Amitabha Pure Land? It is a question that every being should consider. When I was talking about our topic of pure land, some people thought about the pure land school immediately, today I would like to talk a little bit about the history of the pure land school. Just like Zen, the pure land school also came from India; however, it did not become a sectarian religion in ancient India. In China’s Buddhist scriptures translation, there are nearly 100 sutras mentioned as pure land…
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Guiding All Beings Reborn to the Amitabha Pure Land
Guiding All Beings Reborn to the Amitabha Pure LandFeb /18/ 2023–Feb/ 19/ 2023 Hello everyone, welcome to our Dharma talk at Great Thunder Meditation Center. Why Shakyamuni Buddha recommended and guided people to reborn in the Sukhavati AKA Amitabha Pure Land. How exactly is the Amitabha Pure Land? We’ve read a short description of Buddha Expounding Amitabha Sutra; you must be impressed by the world which ground is made of gold however you may still be confused by the meaning or function of the things like ponds made of seven kinds of jewels and filled with water with eight types of merits, what are those for except fitting our human…
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The Western Pure Land of Amitabha
The Western Pure Land of Amitabha Feb /11/ 2023 – Feb/ 12/ 2023 Amitabha Pure Land, we also call it Western Paradise. We saw many Buddhism practitioners who start their greetings with saying: “Namo Amitabha”; we also saw some people who cultivate Buddha Dharma by reciting the name of Amitabha, they think it is a simple but efficient way of cultivation. When we talk about where should we reborn after this life after decades of cultivation, most people would say “reborn in the ultimate bliss pure land”. This “ultimate bliss pure land” here means Western Pure Land of Ultimate Bliss. Amitabha Pure Land is so popular and influential in our…
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Buddha Pure Land
Buddha Pure Land Feb /04/ 2023 – Feb/ 05/ 2023 At the beginning of this chapter, let’s figure out the relationship between the “Zen”, “pure land” and “esoteric dharma”. There are some connections between the “Zen”, “pure land” and “esoteric dharma”. Last month, we understood the importance of “seeing “self-nature from Zen study, which is not only the ultimate goal of our cultivation but also the essence of our dharma practice. The “pure land” is the directions or places that we are heading to after this life. As we know, most people practice Buddha’s Dharma for specific goals, like to reborn in the Western Land of Ultimate Bliss. I…
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Zen Cultivation
Zen CultivationJan /28/ 2023 – Jan / 29/ 2023 After the previous 3 introduction of Zen history, I believe we had a better understanding of of Zen now, which is not rely on words or letters but a special transmission outside of the scriptures. It is amazing, but how to cultivate in Zen? We actually got some ideal from couple weeks ago; we call it investigating a Zen topic. Take an example for it, when Bodhidharma had a meeting with emperor Wu, the emperor asked the Bodhidharma, “Who am I talking to?” Bodhidharma knew that the emperor Wu was still struggling about the phenomenon, so he answered him as “I…
