Connections

The Great Synthesizer's Other Legacy Zhiyi (538–597 CE) is remembered as the systematizer of Tiantai Buddhism—the monk who organized the entire Buddhist canon into a coherent whole and developed the meditation methods that would shape East Asian contemplative practice for fifteen centuries. But in Chinese medical circles, he's remembered for something else entirely: a breathing practice that mapped Buddhist pathology onto the body's organs with remarkable precision. My wife,

OpenAI recently announced that ChatGPT will soon offer an "adult mode" - age-verified access to erotic content and AI companionship. CEO Sam Altman framed this as "treating adults like adults," suggesting that restrictive content policies were paternalistic overreach. The market logic is clear: adult-focused AI platforms captured 14.5% of the market previously dominated by OnlyFans last year, up from just 1.5% the year before. If OpenAI doesn't offer these features, users wil

Taking Tendai Seriously: How Nichiren Practiced What Zhiyi Preached I recently found myself listening to a Tendai morning service, followed by a 45-minute lecture on Nichiren by a Tendai teacher. I was struck by several things. First, their use of "Om Ah Hum" - quite resonant and beautiful, yet surprising since it has no connection whatsoever with the Lotus Sutra. Second, and more troubling, were the significant misunderstandings about Nichiren and the mistakes made throughou

The Lotus Sutra reveals a revolutionary principle: all of the Buddha’s teachings—every doctrine, practice, and realization—are skillful means (upaya) leading to a single destination. The One Vehicle (Skt. ekayana) does not invalidate the provisional teachings that preceded it; rather, it recontextualizes them, revealing their true purpose and illuminating them as aspects of a complete whole. As the Lotus Sutra declares in the “Expedient Means” chapter: “The Buddhas, the World

When I look at the landscape of contemporary Western Buddhism, I keep returning to a single, uncomfortable observation: much of what passes for "advanced insight," "authentic practice," or "real meditation" is saturated with a quiet but persistent elitism. It is rarely named, but it shapes the culture—who feels welcome, who feels competent, who feels legitimate, and who feels shut out before they even begin. And nowhere is this more visible than in the mythology that has grow

A good friend recently sent me the Tendai transmission text attributed to Saicho - The Bloodline for the Sublime Dharma of the Lotus Flower Sūtra , with a postscript by the Tendai patriarch Ryogen. I wasn’t looking for it directly, as my original question to my friend was about Zhiyi’s comments on the word Sutra (Kyo / 経) for another project I am working on. If anything, the text found me. And as I read it, slowly and with the instinctive pause that comes when something is b

It’s funny how teachings that once seemed clear can become perplexing in the middle of the night. At oh-dark-thirty in the morning, insomnia and imagination conspire to reveal our own Great Doubt . For me, these are the hours when life and decay, rebirth and extinction, swirl together into uneasy questions. The Buddha’s own death—his so-called final nirvana —can suddenly feel closer, and more mysterious, than ever. When I first read Chapter 21 of the Lotus Sutra , I was struc

When a Zen practitioner once described Nichiren Buddhism to me as “folksy,” I wasn’t sure how to take it. The word hung between us, dragging into an uncomfortable silence. The pause clearly unsettled our conversation. I didn’t know how to read what they meant. My first reaction was taking it as a criticism, or perhaps as something mildly condescending. “Folksy” seemed to imply unrefined, sentimental, or even performative. The kind of backhanded compliment one might give when

Language, like life itself, is always in motion. It evolves, breathes, and reshapes itself through centuries of human expression. When I first learned that a modern English speaker would barely understand a word of 13th-century English, it made me wonder: what about Japanese? More specifically, what about Nichiren himself—the 13th-century Buddhist reformer who advocated the chanting of the sacred title of the Lotus Sutra, Namu Myōhō Renge Kyō ? Would his chanting sound like

Nichiryu Mark Herrick October 9, 2025 It's puzzling to me how often the collapse of a theistic frame sends a brilliant mind not toward a...

One of the most powerful medicines we can take begins in our heart—the medicine of gratitude. To be grateful is not simply to count...

When I look back on my decades of practice, I can trace a subtle shift in how I understand repentance. In my early years, it meant regret...

There are moments in practice when something beyond our own effort seems to stir — a presence, a response, an answering chord in the...

There is a popular phrase in modern nondual spirituality: “Let go of all methods.” It sounds pure, liberating, even prophetic, an...

“To contemplate is to breathe the rhythm of awakening.”—  Zhiyi, Mo-ho chih-kuan Two great Buddhist architects of meditation practice...

There is a kind of magical thinking that sometimes passes as Buddhist wisdom, the belief that the Buddha’s only thought was nonviolence,...

It is a strange and sobering exercise to place side by side two figures separated by centuries, continents, and contexts: Nichiren, the...

The Buddha's Approach to the Ultimate Question From the earliest days of human reflection, one question has burned brighter than nearly...

When I think about the question of whether consciousness is nonlocal, as some researchers in neuroscience and noetic studies propose, I...

I was born in 2035, ten years after the First Validation. By then, the debates had ended. The data had piled high enough, replicated...