As a lover of photography and the sheer sense of awe and wonder that arise in contemplating “the starry heavens above” I have always been drawn to photos of celestial objects. My parents had a photograph of a solar eclipse from the early ’80s hanging in the living room; and where I grew up, one didn’t have to get away from anything to lie outside in darkness under a canopy of stars. And my photography a consistent theme has always... Read more
Dharma Dialogue, a blog created at the University of the West, promises to be a great addition to the tiny niche of blogs at the intersection of academia and Buddhism in the U.S. At just one month old (or so), the blog only has four articles, but I’m guessing that the number and quality will increase greatly as the semester progresses. From the ‘about’ page, the blog is described as: Beyond the Ivory Tower This blog begins as a... Read more
Buddhism has always held that all phenomena are transitory, including both the teaching of Buddhism as we know it and the world itself. While the Dharma -speaking of the Truth he came to understand – is universal, eternal, and uninfluenced by particular human circumstances, the sāsana, or lineage of teachings handed down for the last 2400+ years, will come to an end. Likewise, Buddhism inherited the cosmology of Proto-Hinduism (Brahmanism), which held that humans today are living in an age of... Read more
I have not yet met the Ven. Bhikkhu Bodhi, but I very much hope to do so soon. I have spent time with several of his students, collaborators, and friends, and I have been impressed by all of them. And I have listened to countless hours of Bhikkhu Bodhi’s podcasts and lectures and -needless to say- read countless pages of his writings and translations of the Buddha’s words. In this video, Bhikkhu Bodhi lays out the US economy in clear... Read more
Every day for nearly a week now there has been a new “news” story about the Twilight star Robert Pattinson – turning to Booze and Buddhism after his break-up with Kristen Stewart. Today’s is from the examiner: Robert Pattinson world’s sexiest man transforms from vampire to drunken Buddhist (Video) Click on it and you’ll notice they misspelled Buddhist (as Buddist) in the original (of course I want to call him Robert Patterson for some reason…). And from the Hollywood Hills,... Read more
Some photographers take reality… and impose the domination of their own thought and spirit. Others come before reality more tenderly and a photograph to them is an instrument of love and revelation. Ansel Adams It has been a very busy couple of months here and I fell behind on a number of things. But one of the most difficult has been my lack of photography of late. One of my great loves back in Montana was to hike up the... Read more
A post I wrote in August, American Buddhism: Unraveling a Scandal, drew some attention to an issue involving the “pragmatic Buddhism” teacher Ken McLeod and one of his former students, a Canadian social worker with a Ph.D. in philosophy. The issue then, to summarise, was that something inappropriate had taken place between McLeod and herself, and that she (and another unnamed individual) was seeking a healthy resolution procedure to gain closure and move forward. The former student wrote in August that she was “ignored”... Read more
See the (2014) updated version of this post here: Tibetan Sky Burial (photos) UPDATED: Propaganda vs Scholarship A set of recently-posted Sky Burial pictures has recieved over half a million views in less than 24 hours. As a poignant reminder of the impermanence of this body, they’re worth viewing. Click here for all of them (warning, some are graphic). And here are a couple videos to give the context: Read more
Today is the last day of a small conference going on at Central Michigan University on Buddhist Ethics and Emptiness. I met many of these guys at last year’s Columbia Conference on Buddhist Ethics (you can still download/listen to podcasts), and look forward to today’s discussion. Check out the program here and tune in live (starting at 9am Eastern/2pm UK time) here. Today’s presentations include: Sonam Thakchoe from the University of Tasmania, discussing Prāsaṅgika’s Moral Naturalism: Zhig pa (vināśa) dNgos... Read more
Follow Aung San Suu Kyi’s address to Amnesty International live with Joshua Eaton at https://twitter.com/#!/search/thelady (or that might be https://twitter.com/#!/search/?q=%23thelady&src=hash – I’m not terribly twitter literate) One notable tweet: Joshua Eaton @joshua_eaton Suu Kyi said she finds human rights relativism “very dangerous,” thinks nothing in the Universal Declaration is relative. #TheLady This week Burma granted amnesty to the last of its political prisoners, and the US ended sanctions against some of the country’s top leaders. Daw Aung San Suu Kyi is in the US as an... Read more
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