Please check out my brand new interview with Ven. Bhikkhu Bodhi — the well-known and prodigious translator of Pali Buddhist texts into English, and founder of Buddhist Global Relief, the visionary, Buddhist-inspired humanitarian organization that contributes to relief and justice efforts worldwide — over at Buddhadharma: The Practitioner’s Quarterly Online. In it, we discuss BGR’s efforts in honor of this year’s International Women’s Day. Please do take a look — these are very important matters. Read the full interview here. You can also... Read more

…So I’m not even going to try. Here he is: Read more

Please come to the bone marrow drive at the Dharma Seal Temple in Rosemead, CA, next Sunday, February 26th. It’s an incredibly important cause, as the fliers below indicate. On this subject, see also a past post at my personal website, “Buddhists Represent for Mixed Marrow”. Read more

My home institution, University of the West, will be hosting the great Ven. Karma Lekshe Tsomo on campus for a lecture on the subject of “Buddhist Women and Social Justice.” The event, which is free, will be held on March 1st, from 5:30 – 7:00pm in the Exhibition Hall at University of the West, 1409 N. Walnut Grove Ave., Rosemead, CA, 91770. A PDF flyer is below. For the uninitiated, the Ven. Karma Lekshe Tsomo is an American nun in the... Read more

Joshua Eaton is the editor, writer, and translator who founded the visionary Dana Wiki (www.danawiki.org) — an online resource meant to aid Buddhist Americans in community service work. A graduate of the Master of Divinity in Buddhist Studies program at the Harvard Divinity School, he also served as editor-in-chief of Cult/ure: The Graduate Journal of Harvard Divinity Schoolduring his time at the institution. Today, among other things, he is a contributing scholar at the Journal of Inter-Religious Dialogue’s State of Formation. Joshua is also an active, must-follow Twitterer... Read more

This from the International Campaign for Tibet today: If you live in the United States, please send the following message to your Senators and urge them to cosponsor Senate Resolution 356, which: • mourns the death of Tibetans who have self-immolated; • calls for China to allow unrestricted access to Tibet to journalists, foreign diplomats, and international organizations; • asks for an accounting of Tibetans detained for peacefully protesting, and of monks forcibly removed from Kirti monastery; • requests the... Read more

I can’t say it better than the boilerplate provided by Planned Parenthood… I’m disappointed Susan G. Komen let anti-choice groups pressure them into ending funding for lifesaving breast cancer screenings at Planned Parenthood health centers. Women’s lives can’t afford to be caught up in political battles. I stand with PP and hope you will too. Give to the Planned Parenthood Breast Health Fund right now and Mayor Mike Bloomberg will match your gift. [UPDATE: This morning, Susan G. Komen for the Cure... Read more

Araia Tesfamariam is an independent film and TV producer who has worked with, among others, the preeminent American pastor T.D. Jakes. In addition, Araia is an old and dear friend of mine from college days. Araia is currently at work on a documentary entitled Big Araia. The film will focus on his late father, whom Araia never knew and about whom he knows very little. (In an incredibly powerful gimmick, Araia built the first trailer for the film out of literally... Read more

Over at my website, I just blogged about how last week I had a lot of people on the street stop me to ask me what my shirt said. (You can see it just to the right.) I noted at my website that didn’t do anything about the late Troy Davis and his case there, largely because I was so incredibly busy at the time of his execution by the state of Georgia. (My tweets about him got noticed by The Washington Post... Read more

A video appeared online last Wednesday that shows four U.S. Marines urinating on three corpses in Afghanistan. At least two of the Marines have been identified, according to a BBC report; Reuters was the news organization able to identify their battallion through an anonymous tip. Responses were appropriately swift. Among them, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said: [What this video shows] is absolutely inconsistent with American values, with the standards of behavior that we expect from our military personnel, and... Read more