Gord's Café

My Photos:My Garden & Travels

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DADA
SOUNDINGS: FROM WITHIN THE JUMBLE JAR
More Teachings Of The Ancient Sage
At The Last Minute
As The Fog Rolls In
Wounded heart New York 9/11
My Photos:My Garden & Travels
Genesis & Evolution of A Blog/Blogger
AMAZED by Gordon Coombes
My POETRY 'As If...'
Poems For Sale : For Charles ( Hank ) Bukowski
Earthbound angel #5 Sensuous Angel or the Rose Of Sharon
For Walt Whitman
PHONY PROPHETS & Visions Of THE ANCIENT SAGE
Homage to H.P. Lovecraft
MY POETRY:NIGHT OF A THOUSAND HOURS
Inside The Jumble Jar : Sharing Our Dreams & Soundings
Being a Child of Raging Fire in the Shadow of Towering Smokestacks
POEM FOR ROBERT BURNS : BLOOD FEUD
My Poetry: Two Variations on Hope And Tragedy
LAO TSU, CRIMSON LOTUS BLOSSOMS ,The Blank Slate
Listen To This...No. 1 & No. 2
INNER CHILD
REQUIEM : AN EPIC FOR OUR TIME:
Dreaming Café Apollinaire
Headless Buddhas
The Masks We Wear
All The Poets Are Gone
Dreaming Love
KADDISH VARIATIONS
Visions of the Subterranean in the Run-down Rooming-house of the Soul
Tales From Café Apollinaire: Variations on Distilled Dreams
Dharma Bumming/ More Of The Dharma
More Of The Dharma- Part II
More Of The Dharma Part III
Waiting In The Snow
Buddha and The Blue Horses
Aphorisms & Haiku II : Stonefish & Tigerlilies
WISDOM IN A CLUBHOUSE SANDWICH
Night Visions & Barbed-Wire Encircled World
No End to Beginnings & Endings
Ah F... Art...
Inspiring Quotes Victor Hugo, Jean Paul Sartre. Edvard Munch
under construction
Film "GLORY" (1989) & ROBERT LOWELL " FOR THE UNION DEAD "& "SKUNK HOUR"
Favorite Books and Authors
Links To Websites Literary & Art
BEAT POETRY & PROSE- JACK KEROUAC,BURROUGHS, BUKOWSKI
ART:POST-IMPRESSIONISM- Van Gogh, Gauguin, Cezanne, Seurat, Lautrec, Gustav Klimt and Henri Rousseau
ART: EXPRESSIONISM Edvard Munch, George Grosz,Marc Chagall et al
LITERATURE: FRANZ KAFKA & SURREALISM
William Blake Poet & Mystic
BAUDELAIRE & RUMI
Chief Seattle :The Web Of Being And The Ghost Dance
DADA SURREALIST MADNESS OF Andre Breton, Rene Magritte ,Yves Tanguay, MAX ERNST & MARCEL DUCHAMP
ART: Frida Kahlo & Diego Rivera
under construction
Art Of Goya & Michael Sowa
Guillaume Apollinaire, SURREALISM & DADA & HANS (JEAN) ARP & HUGO BALL
EXCERPTS FROM: THE BANQUET YEARS: Guillaume Apollinaire etc. By Roger Shattuck
Pablo Neruda - " I'LL Explain Some Things " & " Ode To A Book "
Federico Garcia Lorca ( 1898 -1936 ): " Lament for Ignacio Sanchez Mejias "
Under Construction
POETRY & POLITICS from Robert Burns to Robert Lowell to Ginsberg to Ty Gray EL
Poetry: W. B.Yeats, Pablo Neruda , Dylan Thomas ,
ROBERT BURNS " A MAN's A MAN FOR A' THAT " " SUCH A PARCEL OF ROGUES " & "Scots, wha hae.
ART: JOSEPH CUSINAMO VIVID SURREALISM ZAZIE
ART: SURREALISM, RENE MAGRITTE, CHAGALL,MAX ERNST & DALI
SURREALISM : COMTE LAUTREMONT: SONGS OF MALADOR
SURREALISM: ANDRE BRETON ON DADA & SURREALISM
ART: DADA & WAR
Bukowski 2
Film: DRACULA THE SHADOW OF THE VAMPIRE

Photos of My Garden:

SNOWBALL PLANT IN BLOOM

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RHODODENDRON IN BLOOM

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Butterfly Plant

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ROSES

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Below: HONEYSUCKLE

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My Photos taken at The ROM: Royal Ontario Museum
Special Chinese Exhibit

Photos of The Chinese Display August, 2008
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Another Place I visited on My Journey to USA. Photos below of the Entrance & Reflecting Pond Followed by the Japanese Garden

at Sonnenberg Estate, New York

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A very sweet and generous woman Winni took myself and several others on a tour of the Temple and surrounding buildings.

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BELOW PHOTO: Detail of the outside 

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Buddha inside the Temple 

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Scenes From The Life Of The Buddha

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Below Outside Shrine Edit Text

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Below photos of statues of Laoatian/Chinese  astrological signs: Rabbit, Dragon, Serpent - Vinni & myself are both Serpents . 

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These photos taken at Buddhist Temple- Lao Wat

These photos taken at Buddhist Temple- Lao Wat

 

Wat Pa Lao Buddhadham
135 Martin Road
West Henrietta, New York 14586
Phone: 585-321-3031
Contact person: Mone Inthasone

 

<a href="http://members.andiamo-tel.com/~byblos/watlao.htm">Directory of Lao Buddhist temples (wats) located outside Laos</a>

"Wherever there's a Lao wat, there's a Lao community dedicated to preserving and practicing Buddhist precepts."

Traditionally, the majority of Lao-speaking people have been Theravada Buddhists. In recent years, Lao Buddhist temples (wats) have sprung up around the world to care for the spiritual needs of Lao immigrants. Below is a directory of known Lao Buddhist temples and their locations. Buddhist temples welcome all seekers of knowledge regardless of ethnic background.

<a href="http://www.accesstoinsight.org/">Access to Insight Readings in Theravada Buddhism</a>

The non-doing of any evil,

the performance of what's skillful,

the cleansing of one's own mind:

this is the teaching

of the Awakened. — Dhp 183

 

What is Theravada Buddhism?

by

John Bullitt

Source: Transcribed from a file provided by the author.

Copyright © 2005 John Bullitt

Access to Insight edition © 2005

For free distribution. This work may be republished, reformatted, reprinted, and redistributed in any medium. It is the author's wish, however, that any such republication and redistribution be made available to the public on a free and unrestricted basis and that translations and other derivative works be clearly marked as such.

Theravada (pronounced — more or less — "terra-VAH-dah"), the "Doctrine of the Elders," is the school of Buddhism that draws its scriptural inspiration from the Tipitaka, or Pali canon, which scholars generally agree contains the earliest surviving record of the Buddha's teachings.1 For many centuries, Theravada has been the predominant religion of continental Southeast Asia (Thailand, Myanmar/Burma, Cambodia, and Laos) and Sri Lanka. Today Theravada Buddhists number well over 100 million worldwide.2 In recent decades Theravada has begun to take root in the West.

Many Buddhisms, One Dhamma-vinaya

The Buddha — the "Awakened One" — called the religion he founded Dhamma-vinaya — "the doctrine and discipline." To provide a social structure supportive of the practice of Dhamma-vinaya (or Dhamma for short [Sanskrit: Dharma]), and to preserve these teachings for posterity, the Buddha established the order of bhikkhus (monks) and bhikkhunis (nuns) — the Sangha — which continues to this day to pass his teachings on to subsequent generations of laypeople and monastics, alike.

As the Dhamma continued its spread across India after the Buddha's passing, differing interpretations of the original teachings arose, which led to schisms within the Sangha and the emergence of as many as eighteen distinct sects of Buddhism.3 One of these schools eventually gave rise to a reform movement that called itself Mahayana (the "Greater Vehicle")4 and that referred to the other schools disparagingly as Hinayana (the "Lesser Vehicle"). What we call Theravada today is the sole survivor of those early non-Mahayana schools.5 To avoid the pejorative tone implied by the terms Hinayana and Mahayana, it is common today to use more neutral language to distinguish between these two main branches of Buddhism. Because Theravada historically dominated southern Asia, it is sometimes called "Southern" Buddhism, while Mahayana, which migrated northwards from India into China, Tibet, Japan, and Korea, is known as "Northern" Buddhism.6

and:

Is Buddhism a religion or a philosophy?

The Buddha referred to his teachings simply as Dhamma-vinaya — "the doctrine and discipline" — but for centuries people have tried to categorize the teachings in various ways, trying to fit them into the prevailing molds of cultural, philosophical, and religious thought. Buddhism is an ethical system — a way of life — that leads to a very specific goal and that possesses some aspects of both religion and philosophy:

It is a philosophy.

Like most philosophies, Buddhism attempts to frame the complexities of human existence in a way that reassures us that there is, in fact, some underlying order to the Universe. In the Four Noble Truths the Buddha crisply summarizes our predicament: there is suffering, it has a cause, it has an end, and there is a way to reach the end. The teachings on kamma provide a thorough and logically self-consistent description of the nature of cause-and-effect. And even the Buddhist view of cosmology, which some may at first find farfetched, is a logical extension of the law of kamma. According to the Dhamma, a deep and unshakable logic pervades the world.

It is not a philosophy.

Unlike most philosophical systems, which rely on speculation and the power of reason to arrive at logical truths, Buddhism relies on the direct observation of one's personal experience and on honing certain skills in order to gain true understanding and wisdom. Idle speculation has no place in Buddhist practice. Although studying in the classroom, reading books, and engaging in spirited debate can play a vital part in developing a cognitive understanding of basic Buddhist concepts, the heart of Buddhism can never be realized this way. The Dhamma is not an abstract system of thought designed to delight the intellect; it is a roadmap to be used, one whose essential purpose is to lead the practitioner to the ultimate goal, nibbana.

It is a religion.

At the heart of each of the world's great religions lies a transcendent ideal around which its doctrinal principles orbit. In Buddhism this truth is nibbana, the hallmark of the cessation of suffering and stress, a truth of utter transcendence that stands in singular distinction from anything we might encounter in our ordinary sensory experience. Nibbana is the sine qua non of Buddhism, the guiding star and ultimate goal towards which all the Buddha's teachings point. Because it aims at such a lofty transcendent ideal, we might fairly call Buddhism a religion.

It is not a religion.

In stark contrast to the world's other major religions, however, Buddhism invokes no divinity, no supreme Creator or supreme Self, no Holy Spirit or omniscient loving God to whom we might appeal for salvation.1 Instead, Buddhism calls for us to hoist ourselves up by our own bootstraps: to develop the discernment we need to distinguish between those qualities within us that are unwholesome and those that are truly noble and good, and to learn how to nourish the good ones and expunge the bad. This is the path to Buddhism's highest perfection, nibbana. Not even the Buddha can take you to that goal; you alone must do the work necessary to complete the journey:

"Therefore, Ananda, be islands unto yourselves, refuges unto yourselves, seeking no external refuge; with the Dhamma as your island, the Dhamma as your refuge, seeking no other refuge."

— DN 16

Despite its non-theistic nature, however, Buddhist practice does call for a certain kind of faith. It is not blind faith, an uncritical acceptance of the Buddha's word as transmitted through scripture. Instead it is saddha, a confidence born of taking refuge in the Triple Gem; it is a willingness to trust that the Dhamma, when practiced diligently, will lead to the rewards promised by the Buddha. Saddha is a provisional acceptance of the teachings, that is ever subject to critical evaluation during the course of one's practice, and which must be balanced by one's growing powers of discernment. For many Buddhists, this faith is expressed and reinforced through traditional devotional practices, such as bowing before a Buddha statue and reciting passages from the early Pali texts. Despite a superficial resemblance to the rites of many theistic religions, however, these activities are neither prayers nor pleas for salvation directed towards a transcendent Other. They are instead useful and inspiring gestures of humility and respect for the profound nobility and worth of the Triple Gem.

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