welcome to banji wa yume.

The phrase banji wa yume (万事は夢) is a Japanese Buddhist expression that may reasonably be translated as “all phenomena are but mere dreams” (or, perhaps more literally, "the ten-thousand things are merely dreams"). Echoing the Buddha's many remarks that appearing phenomena are dreamlike, illusory, devoid of the kind of substantiality we deluded folk readily perceive them to possess, the phrase captures what I take to be a subtle but crucial element of the Buddhadharma. (It's also got an aesthetically pleasing sound to which I've always found myself drawn, but probably that's just me.)

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Most of the essays you’ll find here will be the products of my ongoing attempt to clarify and cultivate my own meager understanding of Buddhist doctrine. Some essays will be largely expository, functioning in a sense like “pseudo-commentaries” on texts with which I’m engaged at the time of writing. Others will be inspired by questions commonly asked, in my experience, by newcomers to Buddhism, or will offer a Buddhist perspective on some issue of contemporary concern; others yet will be more academic in nature—I am, after all, an academic by profession—and a few will be more lyrical, exploratory, and poetic, perhaps exercises in prose more so than precision. Some essays, of course, will be a mixed-bag.

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Needless to say, I’m no realized being; I am a mere student of the Dharma, nothing more. In no way, then, do I intend anything written herein to be taken as definitive. I write these essays primarily for the purpose of increasing my own understanding of the teachings, and secondarily because I like to write. It is nevertheless my hope that my work here will be of some benefit to others, however small, and that those who are more knowledgeable than I am on matters of Dharma will kindly correct me wherever I’ve gone wrong.