As everyone should know by now, the U.S. government officially shut down earlier this week. House Republicans are refusing to submit a spending bill that does not include provisions to delay and/or cripple the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (H.R. 3590). Since the passage into law of what they derisively call “Obamacare,” the GOP has been collectively engaged in the throes of an increasingly overbearing and consistently unsuccessful tantrum; they have tried and failed to repeal it a whopping 41 times, despite not only the law’s... Read more

As many of you probably know by now, S.N. Goenka, the preeminent lay teacher of Vipassanā meditation in the tradition of U Ba Khin and founder of the Dhamma Giri Meditation Centre, passed away a few days ago. Some of the best write-ups about his life and work are those by Erik Braun for the Tricycle blog, Sharon Salzberg for The Daily Beast, and Justin Whitaker for American Buddhist Perspective. I recommend that you take a look at each of them. In... Read more

Buddhadharma: The Practitioner’s Quarterly Online has more on this meeting of the two great engaged Buddhist icons here. Read more

Adam Kō Shin Tebbe is the director, producer and cameraman of currently-in-production documentary film Zen in America. In addition to his work on that production, Adam is also editor of Sweeping Zen, a popular Zen community website he founded in 2009. He also blogs for the religion section of The Huffington Post. Ko Shin has held an interest in North American Zen history for many years, and has been approached by James Ishmael Ford Roshi to co-edit a future 2nd... Read more

The terrible shooting rampage at the Washington Navy Yard, perpetrated by a disturbed young Buddhist named Aaron Alexis, has certainly been cause for a lot of reflection about Buddhism and violence in the last two days. “[Is this] the first American Buddhist terrorist?” my dear friend and Patheos colleague Justin Whitaker asked provocatively over at American Buddhist Perspective. The post inspired a response from Shambhala Sun‘s editor-in-chief Melvin McLeod, and was also discussed quite a bit in this Washington Post article. More... Read more

Two conversations about sex scandals in American Buddhist sanghas took place recently: one during the 2013 Buddhist Geeks Conference, and one in the pages of latest issue of Tricycle: The Buddhist Review (in which I also have an interview with Somaly Mam). You can follow the links provided for full video and full transcript, respectively. The Tricycle piece is a conversation between Jack Kornfield, Myoan Grace Schireson, Lama Palden, and Shinzen Young, moderated by Emma Varvaloucas. The Buddhist Geeks discussion, entitled “Getting a... Read more

Join Jack Kornfield in telling President Obama to reject the climate-destroying, Keystone XL tar sands pipeline and lead the way to a clean energy future instead — just click this link. Read more

This semester, as part of my fall course load at University of the West (where I am an associate professor and Chair of the Buddhist Chaplaincy Department), I’m co-teaching a brand new course with my fellow associate professor and Chair of the Religious Studies Department, Jane Naomi Iwamura. This is has been an exciting development, not only because of a great group of enrolled students and the opportunity to work with a most admired friend in Jane — whose recent... Read more

Douglas Penick is a 30 year practitioner of Tibetan Buddhism, a former research associate at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and at The Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies. He wrote the National Film Board of Canada’s award-winning two-part series on the Tibetan Book of the Dead and the libretti for the operas King Gesar and Ashoka’s Dream (with composer Peter Lieberson). Douglas has also written pieces to music by Philip Glass, for choreographer Katsura Kan, and... Read more

…So begins Japanese cultural anthropologist Noriyuki Ueda’s amazing interview with His Holiness the Dalai Lama, recently translated into English and posted on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review‘s blog. Seriously — don’t miss this one! Here’s just a snippet of His Holiness in their conversation: When faced with economic or any other kind of injustice, it is totally wrong for a religious person to remain indifferent. Religious people must struggle to solve these problems. Read the rest here. (And speaking of good... Read more