Category: Uncategorized
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Have You Ever Felt That a Text Was Reading You Back?
For some time I have had a quiet feeling about this. When I sit with the Lotus Sutra, reading it, holding it in my mind, returning to it, something happens that I cannot quite name. A sense of being held. Of being placed in a particular kind of attention. As though the sutra knows me…
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What If No One Is Hopeless? | The Awakened State (Part I) #Shorts
The Nirvāṇa Sūtra reverses the early Buddhist map: even the being written off as hopeless is a burned seed that still contains life. Part I of IV — The Maps and the Territory — from The Awakened State: What Buddhist Enlightenment Actually Means by William Altig.
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The Flower That Blooms Once in Three Thousand Years — and the Two I Saw
I want to tell you about something I saw. I’m still not entirely sure what to do with it, which is part of why I’m telling you. It was a flower. A single white petal, smaller than a fire ant, on a stem like a black thread—a little thicker than the silk a spider lets…
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Why the Buddha Stopped Lecturing and Started Telling Stories
Post 7 of the Awakened State series. The third of the volume-bridge posts—this one into The Skillful Means (Vol III of The Lotus Sutra for the Modern Reader). About a seven-minute read. The most important pedagogical moment in the Lotus Sutra is one in which the Buddha says nothing at all. Chapter 2 is called…
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The Hellhounds Have Stopped Chasing: “Hellhounds and the Void” Accepted for Publication
There’s a phrase I’ve come back to for years, sitting with the Heart Sūtra on my own porch, guitar within reach: form is emptiness, emptiness is form. Easy to say. Harder to live. Hardest of all, maybe, to explain to someone who’s actually running from something—a debt, a diagnosis, a hellhound on their trail, in…
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The Sutra Promises “Protection.” Here’s What It Actually Means.
Post 6 of the Awakened State series. The second of the volume-bridge posts—this one into Protection as Bloom (Vol II of The Lotus Sutra for the Modern Reader*). About a six-minute read. The word “protection” is doing a lot of work in Buddhist writing, and most of it is the wrong kind. When a Western…
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Who Counts as a Student of the Lotus Sutra? (The Bar Is Lower Than You Think)
Post 5 of the Awakened State series. The first in a new set of single-book bridge posts—this one into The Ongoing Assembly (Vol I of The Lotus Sutra for the Modern Reader*). About a six-minute read. Most people, when they hear the phrase “student of the Lotus Sutra,” picture a monk. A scholar. Someone with…
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Book Release: The Awakened State: What Buddhist Enlightenment Actually Means
What is enlightenment? Not how to get it. Not how long it takes. Not whether you are getting closer. Just—what is it? What actually happens? What changes, and what stays the same? The Awakened State addresses this question directly, drawing on the Nirvāṇa Sūtra, the Lotus Sūtra, Zhiyi’s Tiantai synthesis, Zen, and the esoteric body doctrines…
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Digging for the Truth
This deeply introspective song uses the metaphor of digging for water in a barren land to represent the journey of seeking truth and self-discovery. The lyrics paint a vivid picture of the challenges and rewards of this internal quest, ultimately leading to a wellspring of wisdom and awakening. With a moving melody and inspiring message,…
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Why Two Buddhism Books Disagree About Everything (and Both Are Half Right)
Post 4 of the Awakened State series. Adapted from “The Gap” and “Four Perspectives” in The Awakened State: What Buddhist Enlightenment Actually Means. About a seven-minute read. Walk into the Buddhism section of any bookstore and you will find two kinds of book. The first kind tells you that enlightenment is a neurobiological event—a shift…
Buddhist Wisdom for the Long Night 