Ames Buddhist Mahasangha

09/04/2026

"Your true self is always shining and free." Poem by Zen Master Seung Sahn. See more quotes: https://bit.ly/3OP52C3

08/03/2026

07/27/2026

Congratulations to Venerable Dr. Shimji (Julie Tabor), our newest authorized Zen Teacher!

07/26/2026

All set up and ready for Inga Ceremony this afternoon!

07/15/2026

"True confidence is completely accepting your not-knowing." Quote by Zen Master Bon Haeng. See more quotes: https://bit.ly/4tkKPT8

07/13/2026

On person can make a difference.

In Thailand, a woman is not allowed to become a fully ordained Buddhist monk. The official religious authority has refused it for decades. So one Thai woman found another way, and quietly changed history.

Her name is Dhammananda. In her earlier life she was Dr Chatsumarn Kabilsingh, a respected university professor of religion, married, with three sons and a successful television career. Then she gave it all up for a spiritual calling that her own country's Buddhist establishment told her she could not pursue.
The reason is a rule dating back centuries. Thailand's governing Buddhist council still cites a 1928 order forbidding the ordination of women. So in 2003, Dhammananda travelled to Sri Lanka, where the female monastic lineage had been revived, and was fully ordained there instead. She returned home a monk, whether the authorities recognized it or not.

She faced ridicule and fierce opposition. But she didn't back down. Today, more than twenty years later, there are around 270 fully ordained Thai women, spread across more than 30 provinces. In 2019, the BBC named her one of its 100 most influential women in the world.
Sometimes the most profound act of faith is refusing to accept that a door is truly closed.
What do you think, should tradition or conscience win when the two collide?

06/08/2026

JOAN HALIFAX On vows, from her essay on The Architecture of Goodness: "Vows are not simply promises to try harder to keep or ideals we hold in the abstract. They are enduring moral and spiritual orientations or principles that arise from our deepest values, insight, and the understanding of interdependence. A commitment may ask for our best effort, but a vow reaches deeper. It becomes a way of life, an embodied expression of how we aspire to live in relationship with all beings.
Living by vow reflects our capacity to be guided by conscience, compassion, and wisdom. Our vows orient us toward what is most life-affirming and help us recognize the morally significant dimensions of our actions, relationships, and choices. They awaken moral sensitivity: the ability to perceive harm, connection, and consequentiality. They also call forth moral courage, the willingness to respond to suffering, whether the harm before us is immense or seemingly insignificant.
From a Buddhist perspective, vows are not rigid commandments imposed from outside of ourselves. They are expressions of awakening itself. They are a grammar of values reflected in our attitudes, thoughts, speech, aspirations, and actions. They shape how we meet others, how we care for ourselves, and how we inhabit and respond to this tangled world. And living within the embrace of our vows gives ballast and meaning to our lives as we navigate the inner and outer storms of being human."

05/19/2026

Congratulations Rev. Haengum Prakasa on receiving your M. Div. from Naropa University!