Buddhist Temple Quotes

I like the relaxed way in which the Japanese approach religion. I think of myself as basically a moral person, but I'm definitely not religious, and I'm very tired of the preachiness and obsession with other people's behavior characteristic of many religious people in the United States. As far as I could tell, there's nothing preachy about Buddhism. I was in a lot of temples, and I still don't know what Buddhists believe, except that at one point Kunio said 'If you do bad things, you will be reborn as an ox.' This makes as much sense to me as anything I ever heard from, for example, the Reverend Pat Robertson.

Once in Hawaii I was taken to see a Buddhist temple. In the temple a man said, "I am going to tell you something that you will never forget." And then he said, "To every man is given the key to the gates of heaven. The same key opens the gates of hell.

I could never myself believe in God, if it were not for the cross. The only God I believe in is the One Nietzsche ridiculed as 'God on the cross.' In the real world of pain, how could one worship a God who was immune to it? I have entered many Buddhist temples in different Asian countries and stood respectfully before the statue of the Buddha, his legs crossed, arms folded, eyes closed, the ghost of a smile playing round his mouth, a remote look on his face, detached from the agonies of the world. But each time after a while I have had to turn away. And in imagination I have turned instead to that lonely, twisted, tortured figure on the cross, nails through hands and feet, back lacerated, limbs wrenched, brow bleeding from thorn-pricks, mouth dry and intolerably thirsty, plunged in Godforsaken darkness. That is the God for me! He laid aside his immunity to pain. He entered our world of flesh and blood, tears and death. He suffered for us. Our sufferings become more manageable in the light of his. There is still a question mark against human suffering, but over it we boldly stamp another mark, the cross that symbolizes divine suffering. 'The cross of Christ ... is God’s only self-justification in such a world” as ours....' 'The other gods were strong; but thou wast weak; they rode, but thou didst stumble to a throne; But to our wounds only God’s wounds can speak, And not a god has wounds, but thou alone.

Many Buddhist temple priests regard their parishioners as possessions and fear their departure as a diminishing of assets.

Our hunters come from a diversified set of beliefs, but work together toward one goal. And we’re the best at what we do.” “But you guys were at the church.” Jayden shrugged. “Father Bancroft is an area leader, so the church is our base, but elsewhere it could be a synagogue, mosque, Buddhist temple. Any holy place will do. We fight demons, not each other.

All my life I’ve pursued the perfect red. I can never get painters to mix it for me. It’s exactly as if I’d said, “I want Rococo with a spot of Gothic in it and a bit of Buddhist temple” – they have no idea what I’m talking about. About the best red is to copy the color of a child’s cap in any Renaissance portrait.

Westereners often think that the East is one vast Buddhist temple, which is rather like thinking the West is one vast Carthusian monastery. If the [Western people who like Buddhism] were to visit the East, he'd certainly experience many new things, but he'd find first, that the food is under lock and key and second, that humans are considered to be a miserable, destructive, greedy lot, just as they are in the West.

In the meantime, prominent British pastor John R. W. Stott, who acknowledged that suffering is “the single greatest challenge to the Christian faith,” has reached his own conclusion: I could never myself believe in God, if it were not for the cross. . . . In the real world of pain, how could one worship a God who was immune to it? I have entered many Buddhist temples in different Asian countries and stood respectfully before the statue of Buddha, his legs crossed, arms folded, eyes closed, the ghost of a smile playing round his mouth, a remote look on his face, detached from the agonies of the world. But each time after a while I have had to turn away. And in imagination I have turned instead to that lonely, twisted, tortured figure on the cross, nails through hands and feet, back lacerated, limbs wrenched, brow bleeding from thorn-pricks, mouth dry and intolerably thirsty, plunged in God-forsaken darkness. That is the God for me! He laid aside his immunity to pain. He entered our world of flesh and blood, tears and death. He suffered for us. Our sufferings become more manageable in light of his. There is still a question mark against human suffering, but over it we boldly stamp another mark, the cross which symbolizes divine suffering. ‘The cross of Christ . . . is God’s only self-justification in such a world’ as ours.25

It is very possible (and perfectly okay) for someone who is Catholic, Muslim, Atheist or Jewish, for example, to still find the Buddha’s teachings inspirational. You can love Jesus, repeat a Hindu mantra, and still go to temple after morning meditation. Buddhism is not a threat to any religion, it actually strengthens your existing faith by expanding your love to include all beings.

Truth changes with the season of our emotions. It is the shadow that moves with the phases of our inner sun. When the nights falls, only our perception can guess where it hides in the dark. Within every solar system of the soul lies a plan of what truth is--- the design God has created, in our own unique story. This is as varying as the constellations, and as turning as the tide. It is not one truth we live to, but many. If we ever hope to determine if there is such a thing as truth, apart from cultural and personal preferences, we must acknowledge that we are then aiming to discover something greater than ourselves, something that transcends culture and individual inclinations. Some say that we must look beyond ourselves and outside of ourselves. However, we don’t need to look farther than what is already in each other. If there was any great plan from a higher power it is a simplistic, repetitious theme found in all religions; the basic core importance to unity comes from shared theological and humanistic virtues. Beyond the synagogue, mosques, temples, churches, missionary work, church positions and religious rituals comes a simple “message of truth” found in all of us, that binds theology---holistic virtues combined with purpose is the foundation of spiritual evolution. The diversity among us all is not divided truth, but the opportunity for unity through these shared values. Truth is the framework and roadmap of positive virtues. It unifies diversity when we choose to see it and use it. It is simple message often lost among the rituals, cultural traditions and socializing that goes on behind the chapel doors of any religion or spiritual theology. As we fight among ourselves about what religion, culture or race is right, we often lose site of the simple message any great orator has whispered through time----a simplistic story explaining the importance of virtues, which magically reemphasizes the importance of loving one another through service.

Along with the greening of May came the rain. Then the clouds disappeared and a soft pale lightness fell over the city, as if Kyoto had broken free of its tethers and lifted up toward the sun. The mornings were as dewy and verdant as a glass of iced green tea. The nights folded into pencil-gray darkness fragrant with white flowers. And everyone's mood seemed buoyant, happy, and carefree. When I wasn't teaching or studying tea kaiseki, I would ride my secondhand pistachio-green bicycle to favorite places to capture the fleeting lushness of Kyoto in a sketchbook. With a small box of Niji oil pastels, I would draw things that Zen pots had long ago described in words and I did not want to forget: a pond of yellow iris near a small Buddhist temple; a granite urn in a forest of bamboo; and a blue creek reflecting the beauty of heaven, carrying away a summer snowfall of pink blossoms. Sometimes, I would sit under the shade of a willow tree at the bottom of my street, doing nothing but listening to the call of cuckoos, while reading and munching on carrots and boiled egg halves smeared with mayonnaise and wrapped in crisp sheets of nori. Never before had such simple indulgences brought such immense pleasure.

In temples you find religion, but in hearts you find God.

At a wat temple in the mountains of Northern Thailand, a Buddhist teacher once reminded me of a simple truth. "Life," he said, "is offered as a means of self-expression, only giving us what we seek when we listen to the heart." The highest forms of this expression are acts of kindness.

Our Butkara ruins were a magical place to play hide-and-seek. Once some foreign archaeologists arrived to do some work there and told us that in times gone by it was a place of pilgrimage, full of beautiful temples domed with gold where Buddhist kings lay buried. My father wrote a poem, “The Relics of Butkara,” which summed up perfectly how temple and mosque could exist side by side: “When the voice of truth rises from the minarets, / The Buddha smiles, / And the broken chain of history reconnects.

Mumbai is the sweet, sweaty smell of hope, which is the opposite of hate; and it's the sour, stifled smell of greed, which is the opposite of love. It's the smell of Gods, demons, empires, and civilizations in resurrection and decay. Its the blue skin-smell of the sea, no matter where you are in the island city, and the blood metal smell of machines. It smells of the stir and sleep and the waste of sixty million animals, more than half of them humans and rats. It smells of heartbreak, and the struggle to live, and of the crucial failures and love that produces courage. It smells of ten thousand restaurants, five thousand temples, shrines, churches and mosques, and of hunderd bazaar devoted exclusively to perfume, spices, incense, and freshly cut flowers. That smell, above all things - is that what welcomes me and tells me that I have come home. Then there were people. Assamese, Jats, and Punjabis; people from Rajasthan, Bengal, and Tamil Nadu; from Pushkar, Cochin, and Konark; warrior caste, Brahmin, and untouchable; Hindi, Muslim, Christian, Buddhist, Jain, Parsee, Animist; fair skin and dark, green eyes and golden brown and black; every different face and form of that extravagant variety, that incoparable beauty, India.

You may look for God in sacred places like churches, mosques, synagogues, buddhist or hindu temples, but you can only find it in your heart, 'cause it is supposed to be your most sacred place.

Over mochi ice cream, Grandma tells us about all the places she wants to take us in Korea: the Buddhist temples, the outdoor food markets, the skin clinic where she goes to get her moles lasered off. She points at a tiny mole on Kitty’s cheek and says, “We’ll get that taken care of.” Daddy looks alarmed, and Trina’s quick to ask, “Isn’t she too young?” Grandma waves her hand. “She’ll be fine.” Then Kitty asks, “How old do you have to be to get a nose job in Korea?” and Daddy nearly chokes on his beer. Grandma gives her a threatening look. “You can never, ever change your nose. You have a lucky nose.” Kitty touches it gingerly. “I do?” “Very lucky,” Grandma says. “If you change your nose, you’ll change your luck. So never do it.” I touch my own nose. Grandma’s never said anything about my nose being lucky.

In what is now known as Bodh Gaya…a Buddhist temple stands beside an ancient pipal, descended from that bodhi tree, or “enlightenment tree,” and I watched the rising of the morning star and came away no wiser than before. But later I wondered if the Tibetan monks were aware that the Bodhi tree was murmuring with gusts of birds, while another large pipal, so close by that it touched the holy tree with many branches, was without life. I make no claim for the event: I simply declare what I saw at Bodh Gaya.

Tea first came to Japan in the sixth century by way of Japanese Buddhist monks, scholars, warriors, and merchants who traveled to China and brought back tea pressed into bricks. It was not until 1911, during the Song dynasty, that the Japanese Buddhist priest Eisai (also known as Yosai) carried home from China fine-quality tea seeds and the method for making matcha (powdered green tea). The tea seeds were cultivated on the grounds of several Kyoto temples and later in such areas as the Uji district just south of Kyoto. Following the Chinese traditional method, Japanese Zen monks would steam, dry, then grind the tiny green tea leaves into a fine powder and whip it with a bamboo whisk in boiling water to create a thick medicinal drink to stimulate the senses during long periods of meditation.

Cleaning the temple is part of Buddhist training, but tidying the temple is not. With cleaning, we can let our minds empty while our hands keep moving, but tidying requires us to think—about what to discard, what to keep, and where to put it. You could say that tidying orders the mind while cleaning purifies it.

It seems to begin before dawn with the Muslims, when a mosque at the edge of the mangrove forest softly announces, in a lullaby voice, the morning call to prayer. Not to be outdone, the local Christians soon crank up pop-sounding hymns that last anywhere from one to three hours. This is followed by cheerful, though overamplified, kazoo-like refrain from the Hindu temple that reminds Less of the ice cream truck from his childhood. Then comes a later call to prayer. Then the Christians decide to ring some bronze bells. And so on. There are sermons and live singers and thunderous drum performances. In this way, the faiths alternate throughout the day, as at a music festival, growing louder and louder until, during the outright cacophony of sunset, the Muslims, who began the whole thing, declare victory by projecting not only the evening call to prayer but the prayer itself in its entirety. After that, the jungle falls to silence. Perhaps this is the Buddhists' sole contribution. Every morning, it starts again.

What if all things in our imagination exist somewhere?" he said. "What if dreams are real?" "It would be nice to have black wings," Emily admitted. "But it would be our fears, too. Our worst nightmares. Perhaps the dark things are balanced by the sexual imagination, the nightmares tempered. The place of dreams, of suppressed consciousness, ceases to be merely the repository of the bad things we can't face, as we build, instead, a paradise, because we fuck." "There are Buddhist sects that say so. There are temples in Asia with very shocking carvings.

The person who makes God his Beloved, what more does he want? His heart becomes awakened to all the beauty there is within and without. To him all things appeal, everything unfolds itself, and it is beauty to his eyes, because God is all-pervading, in all names and all forms; therefore his Beloved is never absent. How happy therefore is the one whose Beloved is never absent, because the whole tragedy of life is the absence of the Beloved, and to one whose Beloved is always there, when he has closed his eyes the Beloved is within, when he has opened his eyes the Beloved is without. His every sense perceives the Beloved; his eyes see Him, his ears hear His voice. When a person arrives at this realization, then he, so to speak, lives in the presence of God; then to him the different forms and beliefs, faiths and communities do not count. To him God is all-in-all; to him God is everywhere. If he goes to the Christian church or to the synagogue, to the Buddhist temple, to the Hindu shrine, or to the mosque of the Muslim, there is God. In the wilderness, in the forest, in the crowd, everywhere he sees God.

And so, by means both active and passive, he sought to repair the damage to his self-esteem. He tried first of all to find ways to make his nose look shorter. When there was no one around, he would hold up his mirror and, with feverish intensity, examine his reflection from every angle. Sometimes it took more than simply changing the position of his face to comfort him, and he would try one pose after another—resting his cheek on his hand or stroking his chin with his fingertips. Never once, though, was he satisfied that his nose looked any shorter. In fact, he sometimes felt that the harder he tried, the longer it looked. Then, heaving fresh sighs of despair, he would put the mirror away in its box and drag himself back to the scripture stand to resume chanting the Kannon Sutra. The second way he dealt with his problem was to keep a vigilant eye out for other people’s noses. Many public events took place at the Ike-no-o temple—banquets to benefit the priests, lectures on the sutras, and so forth. Row upon row of monks’ cells filled the temple grounds, and each day the monks would heat up bath water for the temple’s many residents and lay visitors, all of whom the Naigu would study closely. He hoped to gain peace from discovering even one face with a nose like his. And so his eyes took in neither blue robes nor white; orange caps, skirts of gray: the priestly garb he knew so well hardly existed for him. The Naigu saw not people but noses. While a great hooked beak might come into his view now and then, never did he discover a nose like his own. And with each failure to find what he was looking for, the Naigu’s resentment would increase. It was entirely due to this feeling that often, while speaking to a person, he would unconsciously grasp the dangling end of his nose and blush like a youngster. And finally, the Naigu would comb the Buddhist scriptures and other classic texts, searching for a character with a nose like his own in the hope that it would provide him some measure of comfort. Nowhere, however, was it written that the nose of either Mokuren or Sharihotsu was long. And Ryūju and Memyoō, of course, were Bodhisattvas with normal human noses. Listening to a Chinese story once, he heard that Liu Bei, the Shu Han emperor, had long ears. “Oh, if only it had been his nose,” he thought, “how much better I would feel!

As my grandmother discovered long ago, the Japanese excel in cultivating nature. Their gardens come in numerous styles, including paradise gardens, dry-landscape gardens, stroll gardens, and tea gardens. Although each type has its own goal, tray all share the same principle: nature is manipulated to create a miniature symbolic landscape. A paradise garden is meant to evoke the Buddhist paradise through the use of water dotted with stone "islands." Dry-landscape gardens, usually tucked away in Zen temples, use dry pebbles and stones to create minimalist views for quiet contemplation. Stroll gardens offer changing scenes with every step, a pool of carp here, a mossy trail there, and a small bridge to link them both, while a tea garden provides a serene path to take you from the external world to the spiritual one of the teahouse.

Even when I thought, with most other well-informed, though unscholarly, people, that Buddhism and Christianity were alike, there was one thing about them that always perplexed me; I mean the startling difference in their type of religious art. I do not mean in its technical style of representation, but in the things that it was manifestly meant to represent. No two ideals could be more opposite than a Christian saint in a Gothic cathedral and a Buddhist saint in a Chinese temple. The opposition exists at every point; but perhaps the shortest statement of it is that the Buddhist saint always has his eyes shut, while the Christian saint always has them very wide open. The Buddhist saint has a sleek and harmonious body, but his eyes are heavy and sealed with sleep. The mediaeval saint's body is wasted to its crazy bones, but his eyes are frightfully alive. There cannot be any real community of spirit between forces that produced symbols so different as that. Granted that both images are extravagances, are perversions of the pure creed, it must be a real divergence which could produce such opposite extravagances. The Buddhist is looking with a peculiar intentness inwards. The Christian is staring with a frantic intentness outwards.

On a break from the tour, I went south to Bali, a place the choreographer Toni Basil, whom Eno and I had met during the Bush Of Ghosts sessions, had recommended as being transporting and all about performance. I rented a small motorcycle and headed up into the hills, away from the beach resort. I soon discovered that if one saw offerings of flowers and fruit being brought to a village temple compound in the afternoon, one could be pretty certain that some sort of ritual performance would follow there at night. Sure enough, night after night I would catch dances accompanied by gamelan orchestras and shadow-puppet excerpts from the Hindu Ramayana--epic and sometimes ritual performances that blended religious and theatrical elements. (A gamelan is a small orchestra made up mainly of tuned metallic gongs and xylophone-like instruments--the interplay between the parts is beautiful and intricate.) In these latter events some participants would often fall into a trance, but even in trance there were prescribed procedures. It wasn't all thrashing chaos, as a Westerner might expect, but a deeper kind of dance. As In Japanese theater, the performers often wore masks and extreme makeup; their movements, too, were stylized and "unnatural." It began to sink in that this kind of "presentational" theater has more in common with certain kinds of pop-music performance that traditional Western theater did. I was struck by other peripheral aspects of these performances. The audiences, mostly local villagers of all ages, weren't paying attention half the time. People would wander in and out, go get a snack from a cart or leave to smoke a bidi cigarette, and then return to watch some more. This was more like the behavior of audiences in music clubs than in Western theaters, where they were expected to sit quietly and only leave or converse once the show was over. The Balinese "shows" were completely integrated into people's daily lives, or so it seemed to me. There was no attempt to formally separate the ritual and the show from the audience. Everything seemed to flow into everything else. The food, the music, and the dance were all just another part of daily activity. I remembered a story about John Cage, who, when in Japan, asked someone what their religion was. The reply was that they didn't have a strict religion--they danced. Japanese do, of course, have Buddhist and Shinto rituals for weddings, funerals, and marriages, but a weekly thing like going to church or temple doesn't exist. The "religion" is so integrated into the culture that it appears in daily gestures and routines, unsegregated for ordinary life. I was beginning to see that theatricality wasn't necessarily a bad thing. It was part of life in much of the world, and not necessarily phony either.

Bagan, Myanmar On the banks of the Ayeyarwady River in Central Myanmar lies the truly extraordinary area of Bagan. It is home to the largest collection of Buddhist pagodas, temples and ruins anywhere in the world. Some of the structures are almost 1000 years. Although none are as impressive as those at Angkor, the sheer number is what is remarkable. The town itself is a fairly laid back affair. If you're an early riser you might just catch some of the rituals that the monks and monkettes (yes there are female monks, shaved head and all) go through each morning or even a novice monk initiation ceremony.

Yogyakarta, Indonesia (Java Island) Known as Jogja to locals and a small but steady flow of backpackers that fill up the budget accommodation in alleyways close to the town's main train station. The town itself has always had a reputation for attracting arts dealers from across Asia and is home to many impressive galleries and several significant palaces and monuments that show off different aspects of Islamic and Javanese culture and history. It is also very close to two of Indonesia's most important and impressive religious sites. Firstly the magnificent Borobodur, the worlds largest Buddhist monument outshines even Angkor Wat in terms of its size and grandeur. At sunrise especially it is a truly awe-inspiring sight. The other one is the Hindu temples at Prambanan which are equally important and it is easy to visit both Borobodur and Pramabanan on the same day although prepare for some fairly hefty entry fees of around US$20 at each site.

Emergent Religion Emergents say religion is what we make of it. If it is not working, we must reinvent it. To work successfully, it must be a global one-world religion.   “I foresee a resonance, ‘a rebirth based on a spiritual initiative …This new birth will cut through all cultures and religions and indeed will draw forth the wisdom common to all vital mystical traditions in a global religious awakening I call ‘deep Ecumenism,’” Matthew Fox, The Coming of the Cosmic Christ, p. 5   “In the emerging culture darkness represents spirituality. We see this in Buddhist temples, as well as Catholic and Orthodox churches. Darkness communicates that something serious is happening.

To practice the Way single heartedly is, in itself, enlightenment. There is no gap between practice and enlightenment and daily life.” This stripped-down Buddhist aesthetic pervades all aspects of St Zen. Most St Zen temples eschew the fantastic sculptures of bodhisattvas with their jewelry and fluttering robes. Instead, Zen emphasizes rock gardens, green-tea caffeine-infused meditation, and single-mindedness.

During an illustrative lunch at one of the restaurants, a Rego Park deli called Ben’s Best Kosher Delicatessan, which is known for its pastrami, Matsil asked the owner, Jay Parker, the original Ben’s son, a white-haired, trim man who had just returned from climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro, what he thought of the QueensWay. “I love it, it’s a no-brainer,” he said. “It’s like bingo. You can put bingo in a Catholic church, a Jewish synagogue, a Muslim mosque, a Buddhist temple—doesn’t matter. Bingo works for everybody, QueensWay works for everybody.

Upon reaching Nanking, he paused to visit the Chinese Emperor Wu, a man known to be a particularly devout Buddhist. The emperor was delighted to receive his famous Indian guest and proceeded immediately to boast of his own accomplishments. "I have built many temples. I have copied the sacred sutras. I have led many to the Buddha. Therefore, I ask you: What is my merit: What reward have I earned?" Bodhidharma reportedly growled, "None whatsoever, your Majesty." The emperor was startled but persisted, "Tell me then, what is the most important principle or teaching of Buddhism?" "Vast emptiness," Bodhidharma replied, meaning, of course, the void of nonattachment. Not knowing what to make of his guest, the emperor backed away and inquired, "Who exactly are you who stands before me now?" To which Bodhidharma admitted he had no idea.

There lies a paradox for a dedicated lover of art such as David or me: we devote a great deal of time and energy in the pursuit of art, diligently visiting museums, galleries, churches, mosques, temples and ruins where it is to be found. But of course much of what we look at was made for completely different reasons by pious Buddhists, Christians, Hindus and Moslems.

There is no greater work of minimalist art than the dry garden in the Zen Buddhist temple of Ryōan-ji, Kyoto. This comprises fifteen rocks of various sizes set in a sea of white, raked gravel; almost nothing, but you could look at it for hours. It was made about 500 years before the modernist architect Mies van der Rohe remarked that less is more.

With the aid of advisors, the Meiji administration set up schools in Buddhist temples,

down the Buddhist temple built by his rival and cast the Buddha statue into the river,

modern Japan, one can easily see a Shinto shrine placed side by side with Buddhist temples.

After staying a fair while in Bodhgaya, we returned to Calcutta for a short stay at the Nalanda Square Buddhist Temple. I then took my leave of all my good friends there and got on the boat at the Calcutta docks. This was March, 1940. The fumes of the coming World War were growing thick and nearing the combustion point in Germany. I saw a lot of battleships in the Indian Ocean as our boat passed by.

No, emptiness is not nothingness. Emptiness is a type of existence. You must use this existential emptiness to fill yourself.” His words were very enlightening to me. Later, after I thought about it a bit, I realized that it wasn’t Buddhist philosophy at all, but was more akin to some modern physics theories. The abbot also told me he wasn’t going to discuss Buddhism with me. His reason was the same as my high school teacher’s: With my sort, he’d just be wasting his time. That first night, I couldn’t sleep in the tiny room in the temple. I didn’t realize that this refuge from the world would be so uncomfortable. My blanket and sheet both became damp in the mountain fog, and the bed was so hard. In order to make myself sleep, I tried to follow the abbot’s advice and fill myself with “emptiness.” In my mind, the first “emptiness” I created was the infinity of space. There was nothing in it, not even light. But soon I knew that this empty universe could not make me feel peace. Instead, it filled me with a nameless anxiety, like a drowning man wanting to grab on to anything at hand. So I created a sphere in this infinite space for myself: not too big, though possessing mass. My mental state didn’t improve, however. The sphere floated in the middle of “emptiness”—in infinite space, anywhere could be the middle. The universe had nothing that could act on it, and it could act on nothing. It hung there, never moving, never changing, like a perfect interpretation for death. I created a second sphere whose mass was equal to the first one’s. Both had perfectly reflective surfaces. They reflected each other’s images, displaying the only existence in the universe other than itself. But the situation didn’t improve much. If the spheres had no initial movement—that is, if I didn’t push them at first—they would be quickly pulled together by their own gravitational attraction. Then the two spheres would stay together and hang there without moving, a symbol for death. If they did have initial movement and didn’t collide, then they would revolve around each other under the influence of gravity. No matter what the initial conditions, the revolutions would eventually stabilize and become unchanging: the dance of death. I then introduced a third sphere, and to my astonishment, the situation changed completely. Like I said, any geometric figure turns into numbers in the depths of my mind. The sphereless, one-sphere, and two-sphere universes all showed up as a single equation or a few equations, like a few lonesome leaves in late fall. But this third sphere gave “emptiness” life. The three spheres, given initial movements, went through complex, seemingly never-repeating movements. The descriptive equations rained down in a thunderstorm without end. Just like that, I fell asleep. The three spheres continued to dance in my dream, a patternless, never-repeating dance. Yet, in the depths of my mind, the dance did possess a rhythm; it was just that its period of repetition was infinitely long. This mesmerized me. I wanted to describe the whole period, or at least a part of it. The next day I kept on thinking about the three spheres dancing in “emptiness.” My attention had never been so completely engaged. It got to the point where one of the monks asked the abbot whether I was having mental health issues. The abbot laughed and said, “Don’t worry. He has found emptiness.” Yes, I had found emptiness. Now I could be at peace in a bustling city. Even in the midst of a noisy crowd, my heart would be completely tranquil.

Everybody needs time alone. When you’ve spent the whole day at work being harassed by others, and then return home to find your family won’t leave you in peace, you can easily become annoyed and angry. At such times, do not blame yourself for getting annoyed. Instead, take some time for yourself by stopping by your favorite bookstore, coffee shop, or temple. Go for a quiet walk alone and listen to your favorite songs. Being alone makes the world pause for a moment and helps to restore harmony.

become angry. Weeding is one of the main jobs of Buddhist priests in Japanese temples, especially in the summer, and the weeds grow so quickly!

But I’d give the art to any artless soul so that they exchange it For a pair of Gucci sunglasses and a cheque I could use it to ride in Disney Land or worship in front of the Siddhartha sleep in a Buddhist temple or scream my heart out with the wolves in a North Atlantic forest

Gyo 行 ('practice' and also 'to practice') is what monks undergo in their training inside the temple; it's an ordeal, a trial to be mastered. And it never ends. You practice; you reach a new level; and then you practice again.

I consider myself as a Muslim, Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, Hindu, Zarathust etc. but foremost as a ''Human. One that visits mosques, synagoges, churches and temples of all kinds with the most sacred being my own temple. Now to exclude one piece of puzzle of the whole is to exclude the whole entirely. For the whole is always more than the sum of its parts.

Zen funeral rites typify both the promise of universal salvation characteristic of Japanese Buddhism and the dominance of funeral services in the activities of Japanese Buddhist temples. In fact, Japanese Buddhist funerals—the single most important Buddhist ritual still observed by the vast majority of Japanese—largely derives from rites that were introduced and popularized first by Zen monks.

By then I was sick of everything. I packed a bag and went to a Buddhist temple deep in the mountains somewhere in southern China. Oh, I didn’t go to become a monk. Too lazy for that. I just wanted to find a truly peaceful place to live for a while. The abbot there was my father’s old friend—very intellectual, but became a monk in his old age. The way my father told it, at his level, this was about the only way out. The abbot asked me to stay. I told him, “I want to find a peaceful, easy way to just muddle through the rest of my life.” The abbot said, “This place isn’t really peaceful. There are lots of tourists, and many pilgrims too. The truly peaceful can find peace in a bustling city. And to attain that state, you need to empty yourself.” I said, “I’m empty enough. Fame and fortune are nothing to me. Many of the monks in this temple are worldlier than me.” The abbot shook his head and said, “No, emptiness is not nothingness. Emptiness is a type of existence. You must use this existential emptiness to fill yourself.

The foundation of the Chosŏn dynasty (1392- 1910), with its pronounced Neo-Confucian sympathies, brought an end to Buddhism's hegemony in Korean religion and upset this ideological status quo. Buddhism's close affiliation with the vanquished Koryŏ rulers led to centuries of persecution during this Confucian dynasty. While controls over monastic vocations and conduct had already been instituted during the Koryŏ period, these pale next to the severe restrictions promulgated during the Chosŏn dynasty. The number of monks was severely restricted—and at times a complete ban on ordination instituted—and monks were prohibited from entering the metropolitan areas. Hundreds of monasteries were disestablished (the number of temples dropping to 242 during the reign of T'aejong [r. 1401-1418]), and new construction was forbidden in the cities and villages of Korea. Monastic land holdings and temple slaves were confiscated by the government in 1406, undermining the economic viability of many monasteries. The vast power that Buddhists had wielded during the Silla and Koryŏ dynasties was now exerted by Confucians. Buddhism was kept virtually quarantined in the countryside, isolated from the intellectual debates of the times. Its lay adherents were more commonly the illiterate peasants of the countryside and women, rather than the educated male elite of the cities, as had been the case in ages past. Buddhism had become insular, and ineffective in generating creative responses to this Confucian challenge.

Zen is Buddhism made simple again. The robes worn by Zen priests are plain black affairs (unlike the colorful getups favored by the Tibetans and their other Buddhist cousins), and even after receiving Transmission, the Zen master's daily dress is a dull brown robe. You can sit anywhere; Dogen Zenji said that the heart is the real zendo. This informs temple architecture. Plainness here is neither false humility nor a facade. It is true to the bone. Skeletal beams and rafters are seamlessly joined; they are not nailed or screwed into place; they are made to fit together. Inside a zendo, there is mostly open space, dimly lit, with a small central altar and a tan, a two-foot-high wooden platform built around the perimeter, where meditators sit on plain black cushions, facing the wall. There are few ceremonial objects—the teacher's staff, a stick of incense burning in a bowl—and it is rare to run into more than one or two bronze or wooden Buddhas. Zen rituals are spare, too. Music is reduced to an isolated ding or bong of a bell, the flat report of a mallet tapped against a slab of wood, and a thrumming bang from a giant bass drum. Even the chanting is monochromatic; students pitch their voices toward the deep, dark end of the register and grumble in unison.

In Japanese Buddhist temples the presiding monk watched the stick of incense burn to tell when it was time to stop meditating and begin the next communal activity.

Despite worries about idolatry, images have been important in multiple traditions. For Hindus, worship includes darśan (pronounced dar-shan), which means seeing and being seen by a deity at a temple, and followers of other traditions have venerated many gods. To glimpse the astonishing variety of supernatural beings imaged in material form you might tour a museum near you, or search a museum's online collection for keywords like "religion" "god," or "goddess." At the British Museum, for example, you can find images from Hindu, Buddhist, Jain, and Christian traditions, as well as everything from a bronze Egyptian cat representing the goddess Bastet made about 30 BCE to a fifteenth-century Aztec eagle from Central America carved in volcanic rock and associated with the solar god Tonatiuh.

The training of the Zen monk takes place at the Semmon Dōjō which is the "seat of perfect wisdom" (bodhimanda) specifically built for the purpose. While Dōjō has lost its original meaning and is nowadays used to designate any place of training, it still retains its primary connotation when it is applied to the Zen monastery. Attached generally to all the principal Zen temples in Japan we find such a training station for the monks. A Zen monk is no Zen monk unless he goes through at least a few years of severe discipline at this institute.

In his earlier writings Dōgen is adamant that Zen practice and realization is available to anyone, regardless of whether they are monastics or laypeople, male or female, old or young, clever or stupid. He was extremely progressive in his attitude toward women, which in Japan is woefully behind the egalitarian ideals of the West, even today. Yet in his later writings Dōgen seems to have changed his mind and started to believe that only temple-bound monks — male and female, so at least he didn't change his mind about that part — could possibly attain the Buddhist truth.

When coins go out of circulation, after all, the metal doesn't simply disappear. In the Middle Ages-and this seems to have been true across Eurasia-the vast majority of it ended up in religious establishments, churches, monasteries, and temples, either stockpiled in hoards and treasuries or gilded onto or cast into altars, sanctums, and sacred instruments. Above all, it was shaped into images of gods. As a result, those rulers who did try to put an Axial Age-style coin­ age system back into circulation-invariably, to fund some project of military expansion-often had to pursue self-consciously anti-religious policies in order to do so. Probably the most notorious was one Harsa, who ruled Kashmir from 1089 to nor AD, who is said to have ap­ pointed an officer called the "Superintendent for the Destruction of the Gods." According to later histories, Harsa employed leprous monks to systematically desecrate divine images with urine and excrement, thus neutralizing their power, before dragging them off to be melted down.9 He is said to have destroyed more than four thousand Buddhist estab­lishments before being betrayed and killed, the last of his dynasty-and his miserable fate was long held out as an example of where the revival of the old ways was likely to lead one in the end.

I remembered a story about John Cage, who, when in Japan, asked someone what their religion was. The reply was that they didn’t have a strict religion—they danced. Japanese do, of course, have Buddhist and Shinto rituals for weddings, funerals, and marriages, but a weekly thing like going to church or temple doesn’t exist. The “religion” is so integrated into the culture that it appears in daily gesture and routines, unsegregated from ordinary life. I was beginning to see that theatricality wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. It was part of life in much of the world, and not necessarily phony either.

Shakyamuni Buddha recommended that his monks plant and see to the care of five trees during their lifetimes. Throughout the Buddhist world the practice of reforestation and revegetation has been followed around many temples and monasteries.

The situation in which a native spirit becomes more highly venerated than Buddhist gods by a Sōtō temple supposedly dedicated to the practice of zazen, and yet still is recognized as having a malevolent potential requiring exorcism, becomes a focal point for rethinking the function of syncretism in Zen.

While not inherently "green" in the current sense of ecology, Zen evidences quite a number of core qualities and values that can be considered ecofriendly and help it serve as a model for new theories that address problems of conservation and pollution control. Traditional Japanese society is characterized by an approach based on healthy, efficient, and convenient living derived from a mental outlook that makes the most of minimal natural resources. Zen particularly endorses the values of simplicity, in that monks enter the Samgha Hall only with robes, bowls, and a few other meager possessions; thrift, by making a commitment to waste nothing; and communal manual labor, such that through a rotation of chores everyone contributes to the upkeep of the temple. The image of dedicated monks sweeping the wood floors of the hallways by rushing along on their hands in a semi-prostrate position is inspiring. Furthermore, the monastic system's use of human and material resources, including natural space, is limited and spare in terms of temple layout, the handling of administrative duties and chores, and the use of stock items. The sparse, spartan, vegetarian Zen cook, who prepares just enough rice gruel for his fellow monks but not a grain too much or too little, demonstrates an inherent—if not necessarily deliberate—conservationist approach. The minimalist aesthetic of rock gardens highlights the less-is-more Zen outlook that influenced the "Buddhist economics" evoked by E. F. Schumacher in Small Is Beautiful.

Miidera, also known as Onjōji, an important Buddhist temple established in the seventh century on a hill overlooking Lake Biwa, in what is now the city of Ōtsu, just east of Kyoto, is the setting of “The Carp of My Dreams.

Which way do we go?” “Left,” said Ike. He was so sure. “But Walker went right with the boats, I saw him,” Ali said. “That could work,” Ike allowed. “But it’s backward.” “Backward?” “Can’t you feel it?” Ike asked. “This is a sacred space. You always walk to the left around sacred places. Mountains. Temples. Lakes. That’s just how it’s done. Clockwise.” “Isn’t that some Buddhist thing?” said Pia. “Dante,” said Ike. “Ever read the Inferno? Each time they hit a fork, the party goes left. Always left. And he was no Buddhist.

When coins go out of circulation, after all, the metal doesn’t simply disappear. In the Middle Ages—and this seems to have been true across Eurasia—the vast majority of it ended up in religious establishments, churches, monasteries, and temples, either stockpiled in hoards and treasuries or gilded onto or cast into altars, sanctums, and sacred instruments. Above all, it was shaped into images of gods. As a result, those rulers who did try to put an Axial Age–style coinage system back into circulation—invariably, to fund some project of military expansion—often had to pursue self-consciously anti-religious policies in order to do so. Probably the most notorious was one Harsa, who ruled Kashmir from 1089 to 1101 AD, who is said to have appointed an officer called the “Superintendent for the Destruction of the Gods.” According to later histories, Harsa employed leprous monks to systematically desecrate divine images with urine and excrement, thus neutralizing their power, before dragging them off to be melted down.9 He is said to have destroyed more than four thousand Buddhist establishments before being betrayed and killed, the last of his dynasty—and his miserable fate was long held out as an example of where the revival of the old ways was likely to lead one in the end.

It is also true that, quite literally, death is the business of Buddhist temples in Japan, including Zen temples. Most of their income comes from conducting funerals and memorial services. Yet, while the term "funerary Buddhism" (sōshiki bukkyo) is usually used in a pejorative sense, by sincere Buddhists as well as by secular critics, these services undoubtedly do provide real comfort and community to grieving families. Doctrinally speaking, they are thought to transfer karmic merit to the departed person so that he or she goes to a better place.

He continued his writing and scholarship as he moved here and there in Kyoto, depending on friends for support, until his death in 1809 on the twenty-seventh day of the Sixth Month (August 8, in the Western calendar), in his seventy-sixth year. His grave is at the Buddhist temple Saifukuji, near the Nanzenji monastery.

Arts of energy management and of combat are, of course, not confined to the Chinese only. Peoples of different cultures have practised and spread these arts since ancient times. Those who follow the Chinese tradition call these arts chi kung and kungfu (or qigong and gongfu in Romanized Chinese), and those following other traditions call them by other names. Muslims in various parts of the world have developed arts of energy management and of combat to very high levels. Many practices in Sufism, which is spiritual cultivation in Islamic tradition, are similar to chi kung practices. As in chi kung, Sufi practitioners pay much importance to the training of energy and spirit, called “qi” and “shen” in Chinese, but “nafas” and “roh” in Muslim terms. When one can free himself from cultural and religious connotations, he will find that the philosophy of Sufism and of chi kung are similar. A Sufi practitioner believes that his own breath, or nafas, is a gift of God, and his ultimate goal in life is to be united with God. Hence, he practises appropriate breathing exercises so that the breath of God flows harmoniously through him, cleansing him of his weakness and sin, which are manifested as illness and pain. And he practises meditation so that ultimately his personal spirit will return to the universal Spirit of God. In chi kung terms, this returning to God is expressed as “cultivating spirit to return to the Great Void”, which is “lian shen huan shi” in Chinese. Interestingly the breathing and meditation methods in Sufism and in chi kung are quite similar. Some people, including some Muslims, may think that meditation is unIslamic, and therefore taboo. This is a serious mis-conception. Indeed, Prophet Mohammed himself clearly states that a day of meditation is better than sixty years of worship. As in any religion, there is often a huge conceptual gap between the highest teaching and the common followers. In Buddhism, for example, although the Buddha clearly states that meditation is the essential path to the highest spiritual attainment, most common Buddhists do not have any idea of meditation. The martial arts of the Muslims were effective and sophisticated. At many points in world history, the Muslims, such as the Arabs, the Persians and the Turks, were formidable warriors. Modern Muslim martial arts are very advanced and are complete by themselves, i.e. they do not need to borrow from outside arts for their force training or combat application — for example, they do not need to borrow from chi kung for internal force training, Western aerobics for stretching, judo and kickboxing for throws and kicks. [...] It is reasonable if sceptics ask, “If they are really so advanced, why don't they take part in international full contact fighting competitions and win titles?” The answer is that they hold different values. They are not interested in fighting or titles. At their level, their main concern is spiritual cultivation. Not only they will not be bothered whether you believe in such abilities, generally they are reluctant to let others know of their abilities. Muslims form a substantial portion of the population in China, and they have contributed an important part in the development of chi kung and kungfu. But because the Chinese generally do not relate one's achievements to one's religion, the contributions of these Chinese Muslim masters did not carry the label “Muslim” with them. In fact, in China the Muslim places of worship are not called mosques, as in many other countries, but are called temples. Most people cannot tell the difference be

Christian church, a Muslim mosque, a Buddhist monastery or a Sikh gurudwara are spaces designed to bring the community together and focus on a common goal—confess sins, reaffirm submission, awaken to desires and delusions and learn from the songs of the sages, as the case may be. But a Hindu temple is the house of a deity. We go to see them and be seen by them,

[Ellora] is one of the finely crafted marvels of the real, transcendent Artisan [i.e., God]. —Aurangzeb describing the Hindu, Jain, and Buddhist temples at Ellora

Whilst in Penang, Malaysia, My mom was out visiting me over Christmas and we walked to the top of Kok Lek Si Buddhist Temple, dating back to1890. Take your Mom on tour.

Seneca: ‘You need not raise your hands to heaven; you need not beg the temple keeper for privileged access, as if a near approach to the cult image would give us a better hearing. The god is near you – with you – inside you.

Gujarat's temple of Somnath [...] had been fortified in 1216 to protect it from attacks by Hindu rulers in neighbouring Malwa. Recorded instances of Indian kings attacking the temples of their political rivals date from at least the eighth century, when Bengali troops destroyed what they thought was the image of Vishnu Vaikuntha, Kahsmir's state deity under King Lalitaditya (r. 724-60). In the early ninth century Govinda III, a king of the Deccan's Rashtrakuta dynasty (753-982), invaded and occupied Kanchipuram in the Tamil country. Intimidated by this action, the king of nearby Sri Lanka sent Govinda several (probably Buddhist) images that the Rashtrakuta king then installed in Śiva temple in his capital. At about the same time the Pandya King Śrimara Śrivallabha (r. 815-62) also invaded Sri Lanka and took back to his capital at Madurai, in India's extreme south, a golden Buddha image -- a symbol of the integrity of the Sinhalese state -- that had been installed in the island kingdom's Jewel Palace. In the early tenth century, King Herambapala of north India's Pratihara dynasty (c.750-1036) seized a solid-gold image of Vishnu Vaikuntha when he defeated the king of Kangra, in the Himalayan foothills. By mid-century the same image had been seized from the Pratiharas by the Chandela King Yasovarman (r. 925-45), who installed it in the Lakshmana Temple of Khajuraho, the Chandelas' capital in north-central India. In the mid eleventh century the Chola King Rajadhiraja (r. 1044-52), Rajendra's son, defeated the Chalukyas and raided their capital, Kalyana, in the central Deccan plateau, taking a large black stone door guardian to his capital in Tanjavur, where it was displayed as a trophy of war. In the late eleventh century, the Kashmiri King Harsha (r. 1089-1111) raised the plundering of enemy temples to an institutionalized activity. In the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, kings of the Paramara dynasty (800-1327) attacked and plundered Jain temples in Gujarat. Although the dominant pattern here was one of looting and carrying off images of state deities, we also hear of Hindu kings destroying their enemies' temples. In the early tenth century, the Rashtrakuta monarch Indra III (r. 914-29) not only demolished the temple of Kalapriya (at Kalpi near the Jammu river), patronized by the Rashtrakutas' deadly enemies the Pratiharas, but took special delight in recording the fact.

He invited the Indian scholar Paramartha to come and set up a Translation Bureau for Buddhist texts, and the scholar stayed for twenty-three years. He invited the great Bodhidharma, the twenty-eighth patriarch after the Shakyamuni Buddha, to come from Kanchipuram in India, near the Temple of the Golden Lizard, but their meeting was disappointing. The Emperor asked Bodhidharma what merit he had accumulated by building monasteries and stupas in his kingdom. “No merit” was the reply. He asked what was the supreme meaning of sacred truth. “The expanse of emptiness. Nothing sacred.” Finally, the Emperor pointed at Bodhidharma and said, “Who is that before Us?” “Don’t know,” said Bodhidharma. The Emperor didn’t understand. So Bodhidharma left Ch’ien-k’ang and wandered until he came to the Shao-lin Monastery, where he sat motionless for nine years facing a wall, and then transmitted his teachings, the origin of Ch’an in China and Japanese Zen.

Buddhists sharply distinguished Zazen from Yoga, and have the method peculiar to themselves. Kei-zan[FN#244] describes the method to the following effect: 'Secure a quiet room neither extremely light nor extremely dark, neither very warm nor very cold, a room, if you can, in the Buddhist temple located in a beautiful mountainous district. You should not practise Zazen in a place where a conflagration or a flood or robbers may be likely to disturb you, nor should you sit in a place close by the sea or drinking-shops or brothel-houses, or the houses of widows and of maidens or buildings for music, nor should you live in close proximity to the place frequented by kings, ministers, powerful statesmen, ambitious or insincere persons. You must not sit in Meditation in a windy or very high place lest you should get ill. Be sure not to let the wind or smoke get into your room, not to expose it to rain and storm. Keep your room clean. Keep it not too light by day nor too dark by night. Keep it warm in winter and cool in summer. Do not sit leaning against a wall, or a chair, or a screen. You must not wear soiled clothes or beautiful clothes, for the former are the cause of illness, while the latter the cause of attachment. Avoid the Three Insufficiencies-that is to say, insufficient clothes, insufficient food, and insufficient sleep. Abstain from all sorts of uncooked or hard or spoiled or unclean food, and also from very delicious dishes, because the former cause troubles in your alimentary canal, while the latter cause you to covet after diet. Eat and drink just too appease your hunger and thirst, never mind whether the food be tasty or not. Take your meals regularly and punctually, and never sit in Meditation immediately after any meal. Do not practise Dhyana soon after you have taken a heavy dinner, lest you should get sick thereby. Sesame, barley, corn, potatoes, milk, and the like are the best material for your food. Frequently wash your eyes, face, hands, and feet, and keep them cool and clean. [FN#243]

It is clear to me that we need both, that we need a balance of light and dark, just as we need a balance of flavors and a balance between discipline and abandon.

Monastery work reminds us that no person exists in isolation. Each sound is a signal instructing the community, and often three or four people are involved in a sequence of drums, gongs, and bells. Making a mistake at any point can throw off the whole sequence. Over the years of participating in these sequences, you learn to pay attention to your actions and understand the consequences they have on others. You begin to embody the truth that we are at all times interconnected with the world around us.

Masumi Kimura (her maiden name) was ten years old and living with her parents in Madera, California, when the Japanese planes attacked Pearl Harbor. More than sixty years later, she still vividly recalled the tension and fear that gripped her family and hometown that December day. Word had quickly spread that all the Buddhist priests at the nearby Fresno Buddhist Temple had been arrested, and white teenagers had shot up the temple’s front door.

Perhaps the first or dominant adjective that scholars of comparative mysticism use to describe what they mean by mystical experience is unitive. There’s no one way to unpack what they are getting at. To have a mystical or personal religious experience is to feel oneself connected with, part of, united with, aware of, one with, Something or Some-activity larger than oneself. One feels transported beyond one’s usual sense of self as one grows aware of an expanded self, or a loss of self, in the discovery of something beyond words. Philosopher of religion John Hick describes mystical experience as the shift from self-centeredness to Other-centeredness or Reality-centeredness. Certainly, our description of Buddhist Enlightenment squares with this unitive characteristic of mysticism, even though Buddhists, while strong on loss of self, use deliberately slippery terms for what they’re connected with: Emptiness, Groundlessness, InterBeing. Christian mystics, on the other hand, are very clear about what they are united with. Christian mystical literature abounds with expressions such as “one with Christ,” “temples of the Holy Spirit,” “the Body of Christ,” “Spouses of Christ,” the “Divine indwelling,” “participants in the divine nature.

Consider undertaking the vows and practice of a Bodhisattva. In taking these vows you will join with the hundreds of thousands of Buddhists in the west and millions in Asia who have done so. As is traditional, you might seek out a Buddhist center or temple and take the Bodhisattva vow in the presence of a teacher. Or, if you cannot do so, you can take them at home. Create a sacred space and place there the images of Bodhisattvas or Buddhas who have gone before you. If you wish, invite a friend or friends to be your witness. Sit quietly for a time and reflect on the beauty and value of a life dedicated to the benefit of all. When you are ready, add any meaningful ritual, the lighting of candles, the taking of refuge. Then recite your vows. Here is one traditional version, but there are many others: Suffering beings are numberless, I vow to liberate them all. Attachment is inexhaustible, I vow to release it all. The gates to truth are numberless, I vow to master them all. The way of awakening is supreme, I vow to realize… You can modify the language of these vows so that they speak your deepest dedication. Then you can repeat them every time you sit in meditation, to direct and dedicate your practice.

Absorbed totally, absorbed in whatsoever she was doing… He understood for the first time: this is what meditation is. Not that you sit for a special period and repeat a mantra, not that you go to the church or to the temple or to the mosque, but to be in life – to go on doing trivial things, but with such absorption that the profundity is revealed in every action. He understood what meditation is, for the first time. He had been meditating, he had been struggling hard, but for the first time meditation was there, alive. He could feel it. He could have touched it, it was almost tangible, and then he remembered that closing one eye and opening the other is a symbol, a Buddhist symbol.

For a moment, all that remained lit was a solitary gold lotus flower—the Buddhist symbol of transcendence, renunciation, and hope—on the front of the temple. It floated on the unseen surface of an ocean of shadow.

The destruction of the temples in Kyoto or the Buddhist statues in Nara wouldn’t bother us in the least, but we’d be in real trouble if the streetcars stopped working