Vassa Begins
Tuesday July 31, 2012
(Image credit: Eddie Crimmins, flickr.com, Creative Commons License)
Theravada monastics are about to begin the annual three-month "rains retreat," Vassa. I understand Vassa begins officially with the first waning moon day ... Read More
Not Speaking of Buddha Nature
Monday July 30, 2012
I've been working all week on an article on Buddha Nature. Buddha Nature is a Mahayana doctrine that defies explanation. English language syntax, the whole subject-verb-object thing, makes it very ... Read More
Are We Logical?
Thursday July 26, 2012
I've been working on an article on the Three Turnings of the Dharma Wheel. The Three Turnings are a Mahayana thing, if you haven't heard of them. The article is ... Read More
Skillful Teaching
Tuesday July 24, 2012
The historical Buddha taught in different ways for different audiences. Of course, what he taught was, in many ways, radically different from anything the people of his time had heard ... Read More
Dharma and the Aurora Shooting
Monday July 23, 2012
This week 12 people were killed and 58 wounded by a gunman in an Aurora, Colorado movie theater. Random mass shootings are not limited to the United States, but we ... Read More
New Pew Survey on Asian-Americans and Religion, and an Old Controversy
Thursday July 19, 2012
The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life has come out with a new survey, this time focusing on Asian-Americans and religion. I haven't had time to look through it ... Read More
Tolerating Public Religion
Tuesday July 17, 2012
The recent "Help the Advice Columnist!" post describes a Nichiren Shu Buddhist who was heckled and ridiculed while chanting in a public park. Some of the commenters to the original ... Read More
The 11th Avenue Buddha
Sunday July 15, 2012
Here's a wonderful story that I heard this morning, about a couple who solved a problem with a Buddha.
Dan and Lu Stevenson of Oakland, California, wanted to do something to ... Read More
Help the Advice Columnist!
Thursday July 12, 2012
The Salon.com advice columnist, Cary Tennis, has a new question from a Nichiren Shoshu Buddhist who says she was ridiculed for her chanting practice. So let's play "Dear Abby" and ... Read More
We Are Not Complacent
Wednesday July 11, 2012
Continuing on the theme of why Buddhism is not about detachment -- Brad Warner found a graphic on his Facebook wall that said "Buddhism, a Religion Based on Not Giving ... Read More
Practice as Tenderizer
Tuesday July 10, 2012
I said in the last post that I was going to write about no escape. And I am, but a funny thing happened on the way to the "no escape" ... Read More
A Great Surpassing Non-attached Love
Monday July 9, 2012
"A buddha is someone who sees the way things really are. When we see the way things really are, we see that we're all in this together, that we are ... Read More
The First Disciples
Thursday July 5, 2012
I've been writing biographies of the Buddha's major disciples. I haven't gotten to them all yet. As I research, I keep running into new ones.
The biographical information we have about ... Read More
Tibetans, Science, and Swimming
Wednesday July 4, 2012
I got a kick out of this Washington Post story about Tibetan monks and nuns learning science. The Tibetans had no science education before beginning the program, which is being ... Read More
Skillful Means With Both Hands
Tuesday July 3, 2012
Last week I posted a quote that described traditional Zen monastic training as teaching "mystical insight by means of ritual formalism." This is described a bit by Koun Franz ... Read More