23rd-27th October 2024
ITZI CONFERENCE
COLLOQUIUM ON BUDDHIST PSYCHOLOGY
We are aiming to bring together fifty people with an interest in Buddhist psychology, its nature, development & application. You may attend and participate or present your work & ideas. If you would like to attend and make a presentation we would like to hear from you now as this will assist us in planning the event. It will be a residential conference held in northern Spain in an excellent venue, secluded in the mountains, that we have used before and know well. This is a good place for a colloquium. Previous conferences in this series have been very enjoyable gatherings and have included a wide variety of presentations on aspects of Buddhist psychology and its applications in various forms of therapy, personal development, spiritual practice and social life & organisation. The event will be limited to fifty places, so early booking is advisable. The cost for early booking is 320€ fully residential.
For information & bookings contact Sonia via Jisshas <
jisshas@googlegroups.com>
Monday to Friday 06:30
DAILY NEMBUTSU
Geeta Chari: Let’s do some Nembutsu every weekday morning at 6:30 am Rome time. We begin to chant straightaway, without social talk, for 20 minutes, in chain-style. There is a bell rung at the end. People who wish to stay and talk afterwards are welcome to do so. Saturdays and Sundays are rest days. Namo Amida Bu
Every Thursday there is a half-hour reading and discussion of the Summary of Faith and Practice from 06:00 to 06:30, followed by Nembutsu as usual.
ESPAÑOL
Practicamos Nembutsu todas las mañanas (excepto fines de semana) a las 6:30 hora de Roma. La práctica consiste en recitar el nembutsu en cadena durante veinte minutos. Al finalizar se escuchará el sonido de la campana, y posteriormente, los que lo deseen podrán conversar. Namo Amida Bu
Join Zoom Meetinghttps://us02web.zoom.us/j/84997972011?pwd=NFVGZDhBTy95NTJlalJYWHZaYVJtUT09WhatsAppThere is now a WhatsApp group for those who would like to attend Daily Nembutsu. Please contact jisshas@googlegroups.com to be added.
EGO SELF-DEFEATER
The four noble truths tell us that life includes many afflictive situations, collectively referred to as dukkha. They include birth, aging, disease & death, parting, confinement, failure and all the little shocks of daily life as well as its bigger disruptions. With these comes samudaya, the uprising of passion, which can then be deployed in various different ways, some of which, called nirodha, open doors to the spiritual path, but many of which are self-defeating. Sometimes Buddhism is interpreted as being about the elimination of these existential challenges, but I suggest that it is really about how we respond to them, how we direct our passion. If we meet them with sincere and profound faith, equanimity & compassion, which is to say, wisely, then there opens up a spiritual life described in the texts as an eightfold path. We walk in the tracks of the wise. If, however, we respond, as we commonly do, from ego, then samudaya just leads to more dukkha. Often enough, the dukkha that it leads to is precisely the situation that the ego was supposed to avoid. Ego has two sides. On one side, one wants to be something. On the other side, one is struggling to avoid something. Really the second side tends to be the influence that creates the first side. One, maybe, wants to be a winner because one dreads becoming a loser, but one's repeated attempts to outdo everybody else then lead to one being rejected so that one inevitably becomes a loser in the end.