I wish to join an online Sangha of a Buddhist community, is there one available?

I wish to become a Buddhist, but in Lincoln Nebraska there are no Pure Land or similar sanghas available. Is there an online sangha I can join?

I wish to join an online Sangha of a Buddhist community, is there one available?
http://www.ymba.org/index.html





http://www.amtb-dba.org/English/links.ht...





http://www.amtb-usa.org/eindex.htm





maybe you can email these websites for more info.


with metta.
Reply:Buddha said there were no sacraments, that ceremonies are arbitrary and exist for the psychological value. Hence, in America Buddhists the kind of things that other other religionists kill and die for are trivia to Bhuddists. Buddhist services and holidays are moved to the nearest Sunday. For instance, Buddha was born in the month of Kartikka which runs October--November. But his birthday was moved to April 9 with symbolism that shows it borrowed from existing spring festivals. Now it's the Sunday nearest April 9. Similarly Bhuddists cooperate with colloquial English and use terms like "temple" and "congregation".





I used to go to a Buddhist Temple's church suppers. They were quite nice. The last time I was there there was a buffet by a downtown Japanese restaurant because the owners were parishioners.





So the search term you needed was "temple". Here are the first few links that [WARNING: ADVT] Yahoo Search! [WARNING: PRODUCT PLACEMENT] gave me.





This is the Cleveland Buddhist Temple's site:


http://samsara.law.cwru.edu/~cbt/





The Seattle Bhuddist Temple has a list of temples:


http://www.seattlebetsuin.com/sites.htm





But these don't directly answer your question. However at the bottom of one site I found:


http://u.webring.com/hub?ring=dharmashan...





That is the Dharma Link web ring. You can go from there.





Another clue: I notice that one site had "sangham" instead of "sangha". That's possibly the Sanskrit/Pali problem with Buddhism. Sanskrit was the accepted ecclesiastical version of Old Vedic. But Buddha spoke Pali. In European terms that's like the difference between Latin and Portuguese. Hence you will find variants on the same word when discussing Buddhism. So you will find some writers referring to the Dharma Path as Dharmapada (Sanskrit) and others referring to it as the Dhammapada (Pali). And a sermon is referred either as "sutra" (Sanskrit) or "sutta".
Reply:LOL. If I recall correctly, America ia a pre-dominantly Christian country. For Buddhism, I'm afraid you'll have to visit either Tibet or China, if you really are interested. I'm afraid the internet is constituted as part of the "worldly desires" thing and hence all monastries are still without computers, unfortunately.
Reply:try check www.buddhanet.net ... i don't know if there's online sanghas but hey do have good books in library section.