Last week a friend of mine, a fellow Buddhist Ph.d. student, emailed me with a question. She wondered if I might explain how I find being a Buddhist and an Atheist to be compatible. She sent me a link to an old debate on reincarnation published by Tricycle between Stephen Bachelor, author of Confession of a Buddhist Atheist, and Robert Thurman, the Je Tsongkhapa Professor of Religious Studies at Columbia University. Both are brilliant scholars of the highest rank, so if... Read more

There are many faces to Buddhism in China today. But this is surely one of the most astonishing, not only for one gets from seeing a monk praying over and holding the hand of a dead stranger in a public place, but for the faces of the curious onlookers behind him. What is the story of each of these people? What must their lives be like? And the man who had died? The monk’s face elicits a sense of calm... Read more

Following up on my friend Danny’s recent post announcing Charles Prebish and Damien Keown’s new ebook offerings, I’d like to expand a bit and discuss ebooks more broadly. A few years ago, I bought my first ebook, Revisioning Karma, which compiled papers from the 2005 Journal of Buddhist Ethics online conference on karma. Interestingly, I had most, if not all, of the articles contained in the book, but the notion of having them all together in one source and the... Read more

Tonight was my last night in Montana for a while. Tomorrow, my sister and I drive to her place in Denver, CO, and then I’m heading back to the good ol’ UK on Tuesday the 17th. Five weeks in the US, with family, friends, and the most beautiful skies in the world; it just flies right by. After many hours spent playing cards, telling and hearing stories, and plotting out our own little hopes for the future, tonight’s sunset provided... Read more

They say the oldest profession in the book is… Well, you know. But if you had to put a bet on what the second oldest is, you would do well to guess that the title would be something like “smooth talkin’ salesman.” (or perhaps pretty-talkin’ product pimps) And salesmen aren’t always selling stuff. They’re often peddling views and spiritualities and hopes of this sort or that. Their particular manifestations are many: some are showy, some are cunning, some are charming,... Read more

#1: a run around the neighborhood with a bird-dog puppy. As long as her head was up, she was fine. But once her instinct kicked in and her nose went down, there was little I could do to control her. She’s a hunter, a tracker, and a pointer, but most definitely not a heeler. Perhaps it was my funny shoes, but she didn’t seem to have any interest in hanging around me for long. We made one lap around the... Read more