Life: publishing, teaching, breathing

First, my humble gratitude to the good folks at Blogmandu / Zenunbound for noting my last blog in their round-up. They have a fascinating blog, gathering stories from Buddhist types like myself. There is an especially poignant one on depression and meditation.

I also noticed that my letter to the Buddhist Channel on “The Buddhist orientation of homosexuality” was published. It was in response to a woman who had written about the Dalai Lama and homosexuality. She has received some literature about the Dalai Lama that misconstrued his place in Tibetan Buddhism and the Buddhist view of homosexuality as a whole. There is an interesting response to my letter as well, called The Buddha and Sexuality.

It looks like I’ll be teaching a class next month for the Missoula Free School. It will be called Buddhism: Philosophy. Religion. Way of Life. Feel free to come down, Thursday nights at Mooncougar Books (1221 Helen I believe) from 5-7pm. I’ll try to keep each class self-contained, but it will last six weeks and explore new chronological developments each week.

I taught one woman some meditation and Buddhism when I was in Bristol. I’m not sure how much it did for her, but I know that just having to communicate things like how to meditate, how to work with emotions and awareness, and other topics that would come up in our talks forced me to really think on them, deepening my own understanding. So I very much look forward to doing it again.

There is great danger in teaching though. Danger in power/authority, the appearance of spirituality or wisdom. So, hopefully with many disclaimers and some humility I will avoid the pitfalls and help others toward a greater understanding and appreciation of Buddhism.

And finally, I finished my dissertation last night. Well, technically this morning at 4am. It still needs ironing out, but it’s there. So a weight is lifted, and I breath a little easier.