Buddhism and Violence on the BBC

Last updated on: December 13, 2013 at 5:03 pm By Justin Whitaker

On Monday the BBC radio show Beyond Belief debated the place of violence in Buddhism. The host, Ernie Rae, was joined by: Michael Jerryson, Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Youngstown State University, Ohio, who co-edited the book ‘Buddhist Warfare‘; Rupert Gethin, Professor of Buddhist Studies at the University of Bristol, and Soe Win Than, a journalist who was born in Myanmar and who works for the BBC’s Burmese Service as well as, breifly, Maung Zarni, a Burmese dissident and... Read more

The Word ‘Revolution’

Last updated on: August 19, 2013 at 12:30 pm By Justin Whitaker

In which I meander through four philosophers: Weil, Marx, Kant, and Scruton and, somewhat strangely, take up a conservative position regarding the ‘revolution’ in Egypt… The word ‘revolution’ is a word for which you kill, for which you die, for which you send the labouring masses to their death, but which does not possess any content. – Simone Weil, Oppression and Liberty Born and raised as a Jew in France in the early 1900s, Weil was drawn to philosophy, mysticism, and political activism... Read more

Military steps in to halt Parliamentary discussion and other news from Burma

Last updated on: August 16, 2013 at 4:57 pm By Justin Whitaker

In how many countries today could members of the military literally walk in to the parliament and say “stop talking about this. Now.”? While things seem to go from bad to worse in Egypt over similar–though obviously much more exaggerated–circumstances, we cannot help but worry about the parallels at play (c.f. my recent post on Burma, Imperialism, and Buddhist-Muslim Violence) . In Burma, the military has seized thousands of acres over the years, ostensibly to build barracks in its efforts... Read more

We were fighting in Egypt… Leonard Cohen and hope for the future

Last updated on: August 15, 2013 at 7:14 pm By Justin Whitaker

In 1985, Leonard Cohen sang his newly-written song, “The Night Comes On,” for an audience in Warsaw, Poland, then still behind the Iron Curtain slowly crumbling amidst the last death throes of soviet socialism. It came on my radio today and the lyrics, highlighted below, caught my ear. Given recent events in Egypt (Death toll in Egypt crackdown hits 525) it felt timely that this song would play. I remember watching the first days of the ‘Arab Spring‘ from India and then... Read more

Welcome to the Buddhist temple in Japan where you can flush your marriage, or bad habits, down the toilet

Last updated on: August 13, 2013 at 4:13 pm By Justin Whitaker

This comes from a story from 2010, but was revived recently in a list of strange divorce customs around the world at the Huffington Post. According to HuffPo: One Japanese temple lets visitors flush a failed marriage down the toilet… literally. At the Mantokuji Temple, located in Gunma Prefecture in central Japan, visitors rid themselves of bad relationship karma by writing their breakup wishes on a piece of paper and flushing them down the toilet, according to Reuters. The temple was... Read more

Burma (Myanmar) in HD

Last updated on: August 8, 2013 at 4:53 pm By Justin Whitaker

In commemoration of 8/8/88 I thought I’d post a short video showing the grand, beautiful, and peaceful side of Burma, the side I remember most strongly when reflecting on my short time there. This is shot in gorgeous ultra-HD, 4096×2304 resolution, four times greater than regular 1080p HD. Unfortunately, few of us have monitors that can do much with that, but even at the 1080 HD setting, it is stunning. You can follow the photographer, Jason Schwarz, on TWITTER: http://www.twitter.com/jakeschwarz and INSTAGRAM: http://www.instagram.com/jacobschwarz – where... Read more

The globalization of Buddhist anti-Muslim hate? From Burma’s 969 to Australia and the US

Last updated on: August 6, 2013 at 10:37 am By Justin Whitaker

Last month I was contacted, first on this blog and then on twitter, by someone using the name “969 Movement.” Intrigued, I contacted the individual behind the social media postings. I told the individual that I have studied Burmese history and traveled there recently and would love to conduct an interview if possible. In his response (dated July 13) he noted the following: He has had no direct connection with Buddhists in Myanmar, He is an American Buddhist upset with... Read more

Ethnicity, Ideologies, and the unraveling of modern Burma

Last updated on: August 5, 2013 at 3:51 pm By Justin Whitaker

This Thursday marks the 25th anniversary of the 8/8/88 uprising in Burma, which will hopefully spur some much needed discussion about the situation in the country (officially renamed Myanmar by the military junta in 1989, but still called Burma by those who deny the legitimacy of that government). Three articles have already popped up in the last few days that deserve mention, if only for the varying perspectives in them – all dealing specifically with recent Buddhist-Muslim violence. The three... Read more

How Reza Aslan made a book about religion a best-seller and what we can learn from it

Last updated on: August 2, 2013 at 2:40 pm By Justin Whitaker

As an educator in religious studies I was intrigued by Reza Aslan’s book Zealot: the Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth when I first heard about it 2 or 3 weeks ago. I listened to a couple interviews (NPR and HuffPo) and thought, “this is interesting enough, but I don’t know if a) this is really groundbreaking work, or b) this is sound scholarship.” So I asked some scholars closer to the field and received at best lukewarm responses. I’m not... Read more

Quick takes: Technology and why you shouldn’t fly an airplane in a moving car

Last updated on: July 31, 2013 at 3:09 pm By Justin Whitaker

Note: in order to continue sharing and discussing the myriad things that come my way in a given day, I’ll be posting these “quick takes.” Ideally they will be short, topical, and have something to invite thoughtful discussion. Today the topic is technology: a topic I didn’t think too seriously about until around 2004, when I was finishing my BA in Philosophy with my very good friend Ali Tabibnejad. We were both students of Albert Borgmann (in the video below,... Read more