I’ve blogged before in the past about my friend and inspiration Charles S. Prebish. I interviewed Chuck and John Harding about the late Leslie Kawamura for Buddhadharma: The Practitioner’s Quarterly Online; did a roundtable conversation with him, my buddy Justin Whitaker and Sarah Haynes for Ted Meissner’s The Secular Buddhist Podcast; and reviewed his memoir An American Buddhist Life: Memoirs of a Modern Dharma Pioneer in the last issue of The Journal of Global Buddhism. Chuck wrote to me recently and sent along the pictured patch, explaining to me that it was part... Read more

Awesome news: my dear old college friend Dan Ewen, the noted screenwriter and comedian, and his friend Tom Richner (a longtime artist for The Simpsons) have designed an amazing T-shirt that both honors the Buddhist connection to The Big Lebowski and benefits Buddhist Global Relief with 10% of each sale. You can buy one right here. Dan wrote to me awhile back asking me what one Buddhist charity I would make a donation to if I had a bunch of money, and I... Read more

Shodo Spring, the Soto Zen priest who leads the Compassionate Earth Walk — “a physical walk through the heart of North America, a moving spiritual community dedicating our energy to nourishing the earth, and an invitation to all humans to wake up, end the destruction, and return to our home in the community of life” — has contributed a guest post to our friend Maia Duerr’s blog The Jizo Chronicles. The subject is “finding an appropriate response to climate change.”... Read more

Faithful America — an online community dedicated to “reclaiming Christianity from the religious right and putting faith into action for social justice” — has a petition on their website today entitled “Tell ESPN: Don’t Use the Bible to Gay Bash Athletes”. It reads: When Jason Collins became the first openly gay player in the NBA, he emphasized the importance of his Christian faith in accepting himself and deciding to come out. But within hours, ESPN sportscaster Chris Broussard characterized coming out as... Read more

A few days ago, I made mention of Burma’s “mad” Buddhist monk Wirathu. A former prisoner, put behind bars for nine years on the charge of inciting violence against his country’s Muslim population, he is referred to as the “Burmese Bin Laden” and has called for a boycott of Muslim businesses, made baseless claims about the Muslim minority, and used explicitly racist and Islamophobic language in his social media work. The Associated Press has just published a careful, clear, and absolutely... Read more

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I’m very pleased to share with you all that three days ago, on my birthday, with a little help from the incredibly heroic and very dear New York Times columnist Nick Kristof, (see above), I proposed to my partner Steph and she said “yes.” For the whole story, visit my official website here. I’ve blogged twice before — here and here — about the book Nick co-authored with his wife Sheryl WuDunn, Half the Sky: Turning Oppression Into Opportunity for Women Worldwide.... Read more

All is revealed in my new post at University of the West’s Dharma Dialogue blog! For the uninitiated, Dharma Dialogue began last fall with a course taught by UWest’s Chair of the Religious Studies Department, Dr. Jane Iwamura. That course was “Buddhism in the U.S.”, and the posts from the students generated much conversation in the Buddhist blogosphere. This semester, it has been handed off to myself (representing the Buddhist Chaplaincy Department at UWest) and the students in my “Spiritual Leadership”... Read more

Tricycle‘s Awake in the World blog has been doing an absolutely marvelous job of following news related to Burma’s Rohingya minority, and continues this week with a post by Alex Caring-Lobel, who puts the spotlight on the “mad” Buddhist monk Wirathu. A former prisoner, put behind bars for inciting violence against Burma’s Muslims, and who refers to himself (!!!) as the “Burmese Bin Laden,” he has called for a boycott of Muslim businesses, made baseless claims about the Rohingya, and used explicitly racist... Read more

I’ve already said in words everything I have to say about guns…months ago. You can read that here. As to the news this week from the Senate, I’ll let the following memes do all the speaking. They capture all the things I’m thinking and feeling… * * * Read more