From their site: The Science, Religion, and Culture Program at Harvard Divinity School (SRCP) announces the second annual graduate student conference on religion. In our inaugural conference, held in October 2012, eighty students and early career scholars representing twenty-five different graduate programs from across the United States and the world gathered to present their research. Following the success of last year’s conference, this multi-day event will be comprised of thematic panels that cross religious traditions, academic disciplines, and intellectual and theological commitments. The conference aims... Read more

This year I submitted the above photograph to Freedom House’s 2013 Photography and Art contest. Yesterday I found out that it has been chosen as one of the top 30 finalists and it will be featured in the Images of Repression and Freedom Auction. It will be printed and framed with other finalists and winners to be auctioned in support of Freedom House, an independent watchdog organization dedicated to the expansion of freedom around the world. All we need now is a title... Read more

Sri Lanka, Japan, and (often most of all) Bhutan often elicit images of peaceful monks in flowing robes walking peacefully by. In Sri Lanka they go on orderly alms-rounds in villages, In Japan their temples are often sanctuaries in the midst of the chaos of an advanced industrialized economy, and in Bhutan the scene behind the monk is often a towering mountain, blue skies, and prayer flags releasing merit into the breeze.  However many wonderful images may be conjured up... Read more

One of the recurrent issues in my own writing is the misconception that “crazy theories” come from the fringes: on the contrary, in Buddhism, the craziest theories can (and often do) come from the pinnacle of prestige, influence and academic authority (sometimes from the centers of religious authority, too).  I dealt with this question generally in my (still-unpublished) lecture, “The Opposite of Buddhism”, and I discussed a (stunning) particular example in my earlier work on the “standard misinterpretation” of the 12 links... Read more