September of 2022 will be here soon and we are trying to gear up for  A BIG EVENT  that combines the 75th Northwest District Convention AND the 75th Anniversary of Idaho-Oregon Buddhist Temple .  The theme for our event is " Reflecting on the Past; Looking to the Future . "   This is our poster announcing the event.  It has pictures of all our IOBT resident ministers from our first minister in the upper right to our current minister in the upper left.  Can you name them all?!? As we begin the planning stages of this event, we are filled with a sense of uncertainty.  There is so much we don't know about what the world will be like in 2022.  Will the corona virus continue to challenge the safety of large gatherings?  Will our conference need to be virtual, like the Oregon Buddhist Temple's convention was this year?  If we have a face-to-face conference, will the switch to a fall convention schedule (it used to be winter) affect how many ...

  The first thing that comes to mind for the month of October is Halloween, along with costumes, candy, and masks. It’s fun to walk along the store aisles stocked with Halloween costumes and candy and think about how you’d like to disguise yourself. However, my attention is always on the candy since I’m not much for getting into costume. I say that I don’t like to dress up in costume, but I can say that I have a number of masks that I wear. I’m sure that all of us have occasion to wear a mask or two. The masks I’m talking about are ones that we use in our everyday lives to present various faces to those around us.  Before retirement, I had a teacher mask. That’s the one that my students saw in the classroom.  It was important to remove that mask when I returned home so I wasn’t being a teacher with my spouse. I guess my teacher mask does come in handy during a golf round, though. I talk to my golf ball, saying, “Go, go, go!” or “Sit, sit!” If the ball behaves, th...

My mother's health hasn't been too great this year.  She's spent a lot of time in hospitals and skilled nursing facilities and, to be honest, it's been a hard year for our family.  In this process we've met hundreds of healthcare providers and I know that each one of them is trying their best to take care of us, but there are a lot of stresses and not everything goes smoothly.  Reflecting on these stresses reminded me of something that happened about 3 years ago. My mother had heart surgery to replace her aortic valve. The  surgery was pretty new and very high tech. The team of about 20 professionals were nothing short of amazing. They were skilled, organized, dedicated, thoughtful, generous, and kind. We really couldn’t have imagined a better group of people to work with and we always felt our mother’s heart was in good hands. (here I am with my mom a few years ago) They were so good that we started to see them as super-human, but one incident reminded us that this...

  It's been a rough year for many of us. Rev. Kathy shares these thoughts on dealing with adversity:  We have all endured a difficult 18 months. Many of us have witnessed a wide range of reactions to life circumstances. Some of these reactions make us cringe, and others make us smile. We might even judge others for how they deal with life’s bumpy road, forgetting that we, ourselves, have made missteps.  I reflect on this quote when I think about my own actions and thoughts and responses to difficulties: “The Buddha, in the causal stage, made the universal Vow. When beings hear my Name and think on me, I will come to welcome each of them. Not discriminating at all between the poor and the rich and wellborn. Not discriminating between the inferior and the high gifted. Not choosing the learned and those upholding pure precepts. Not rejecting those who break precepts and whose evil karma is profound. Solely making beings turn about and abundantly say the nembuts...

  "Persons of the Pure Land tradition attain birth in the Pure Land by becoming their own foolish selves."     --Honen Shonin, as quoted by Shinran Shonin in " Lamp for the Later Ages ." It’s hay season here in Southwest Idaho and Northeast Oregon.   As I drive around the countryside, I see hay bales in 3 shapes/sizes.  First, there’s a smaller rectangular kind, that weighs about 55 pounds—this is the kind a grew up with, the kind that I can actually lift up and stack on my own . Then there’s a larger rectangular shape that needs a machine to lift: And, finally, there are enormous circular bales that weigh about 1000 pounds each! Seeing these bales as I drive around Idaho reminds me of an incident that happened a few years ago at the Monastery of St. Gertrude, a community of Catholic nuns just outside Cottonwood, ID.    The nuns own land, including a tree farm, a small orchard, garden plots, and farm land that they lease out to a neighboring farmer. ...

by Rev. Kathy Rev. Anne, Mike Iseri, and I completed the 2021 Obon cemetery visitations last week. Visiting the different cemeteries is a reminder of how much I owe to so many people. Because we are all interdependent and interconnected, it is mind-boggling to consider how many people have touched my life. Each one of us owes a debt of gratitude to a multitude of beings throughout our lives and beyond. We are lucky to live at this time as a human being, having the ability to listen to the Teachings of the Buddha and our founder, Shinran Shonin. Here is a short story to illustrate how precious our lives are. This story comes from the website www.davidmichie.com . “…Buddha’s own words from the  Sutra Containing the Excellent. ‘If there were a huge, deep ocean as big as this entire world with a golden yoke floating on its surface, and, at the bottom, there were a crippled, blind turtle who surfaced only once in a hundred years, how often would that turtle raise its head through ...

Our annual Obon cemetery visits and services start tomorrow, July 27, 2021. Obon cemetery visits are an important part of our Jodo Shinshu Buddhist tradition and something I look forward to every year.   (For full schedule and a link to the map, scroll to the bottom of this post) Bonye No Uta* Lanterns aglow from the house to house, Lighting the path of the Dharma Those who live and those now gone All come together this festival day. Time that flows shall not return, But deep within the cemetery’s moss Hearts beckon each other, every year, And loved ones meet, this Festival Day. *(Original version in Japanese by S. Shibutani and Kiyomi Fujii)   The tradition of Obon is a reminder of the sadness of loss. Obon traditions remind us that missing our loved ones is a  normal part of human life.  The traditions reassure us that grief is normal and nothing to be ashamed of.  But that is just a small piece of what Obon is. At the heart of Ob...