BWA Chirashi Sale
The VHBT BWA is having a Chirashi Zushi fundraiser on Saturday, October 4, 2025… Read More »
Author Archives: Ron Gee
2025 Film Festival
The theme for this year’s Film Festival is Occupation/Resistance. Light refreshments will be available and a short discussion will follow each film. Cost is free, donations gladly accepted. For more information about the Venice Hongwanji Buddhist Film Festival, contact Richard Modiano or Judy Hopfield. September 28, 12:00 PM The Wind That Shakes the Barley (121 minutes) Set in… Read More »
Amida’s Gold Light
The body of Amida is in color like a mountain of gold The radiance of his features and marks illumines the ten quarters Only people of the nembutsu are grasped by the light Know that the Primal Vow is the decisive cause. Kyogyoshinsho 3.95 The phrase above is from Shinran Shonin’s third chapter of the… Read More »
Happy 65th Birthday, Venice Hongwanji Buddhist Temple!
Gassho and congratulations! Thank you to everyone who made this occasion possible. This celebration has been long overdue. We were a little broken-hearted when we had to postpone our 60th anniversary celebration and then eventually canceled because of the happenings in the world. When I look to the past, I see that our temple has… Read More »
Odori Practice
Learn the dances for this year’s obon festival.… Read More »
This is Why We Have a Temple
If, when I become Buddha, the sentient beings in my land do not decidedly attain the equal of perfect enlightenment, so that they realize great nirvana, may I not attain enlightenment. Kyogyoshinsho 3.3 Although there are initially nine grades among those aspiring for birth, now [in the Pure Land] there are no distinctions whatsoever. It… Read More »
Are you going to the Bonbu Lounge?
All that we are really capable of doing is to consider ourselves as separate from others, and take life and death to be two distinct things. Thus, we cannot help but form attachments to our selves and become estranged from others, or cling to life while rejecting death. We are afflicted by love and hatred,… Read More »
Odori Practice
Learn the dances for this year’s obon festival.… Read More »
2024 Film Festival
The theme for this year’s Film Festival is “Race Hatred – Where Did It Come From? Why Does It Persist?” We will be screening all four episodes of the docudrama “Exterminate All the Brutes,” which is an exploration of the exploitative and genocidal aspects of European colonialism, from America to Africa, and its impact on society today.… Read More »
The Year is 64!
Hello and Happy New Year! I have sat in front of this computer writing over and over again. I think about what the next 10 years will look like for our Buddhist Sect of Jodo Shinshu. What kind of hopes do I have for our temple community? I would hope that everyone will continue to… Read More »