Today, the two high school football players accused of raping a classmate, “in a case that drew wide attention for the way social media spurred the initial prosecution and later helped galvanize national outrage over the episode,” were found guilty in Steubenville, OH. At the same time, another horrific gang rape occurred in India — this victim a Swiss tourist to the country. In addition, South Africa has just announced an “unprecedented” investigation into “an alleged campaign of politically motivated mass... Read more

One of the great things about being a student on or faculty working for Antioch Education Abroad’s Buddhist Studies in India program — and I’ve been both — is that you get to know Sisters Molini and Dhamma Vijaya of the Dhamma Moli Project. They are two brilliant, spunky, funny, and wise nuns, and their project does a tremendous bit of good. So I was thrilled to see “Sister D” interviewed by my Patheos blogging colleague Erik Campano at his spot here,... Read more

This from Emma Varvaloucas at Tricycle‘s Awake in the World blog: We American Buddhists like to think of ourselves as free from all of these ugly -ists that afflict the rest of the United States and the world. We don’t like to talk about our sanghas being sexist. We don’t like to talk about our sanghas being racist. We don’t like to talk about our sanghas being agist or homophobic or ableist, because we can’t possibly reconcile the idea that... Read more

…Or, rather, let’s talk about sexual assault. In case you’ve missed it, another sex scandal has come to light in Buddhist America, this time at the Mount Baldy Zen Center here in Southern California. The New York Times first reported the story in the press, and others followed shortly thereafter, including The Los Angeles Times. In a nutshell, according to an investigation by members of the American Zen Teachers Association, the Zen Center’s abbot, Joshu Sasaki Roshi, “groped and sexually harassed female students... Read more

Today we present a guest post written by my friend Joshua Eaton, who will tell us about his exciting new journalism platform Tibet on Fire. At this point, Joshua should require no introduction at this blog. But just in case: Joshua is the editor, writer, and translator who founded the visionary Dana Wiki (www.danawiki.org) — an online resource meant to aid Buddhist Americans in community service work. A graduate of the Master of Divinity in Buddhist Studies program at the Harvard Divinity School, he also served... Read more

Tricycle blogger Emma Varvaloucas has the link, and a heck of a good post about it (with links to subject relevant Trike articles). Take a look! Read more

The title says it all!  I’m incredibly psyched by this: two of very favorite modern Buddhist thinkers and heroes in conversation. Dig it. In addition, Bhante has a new essay at Parabola, and you can read that in its entirety here (h/t to Alex Caring-Lobel at Tricycle‘s Awake in the World blog for the pointer). I’ve interviewed Bhante many times before, and you can find those interviews here, here, here, here, here, and here. I’ve also interviewed Joshua twice — once for Shambhala Sun Space, and once for this very blog. I hope you’ll... Read more

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I’m very pleased to tell you that I’ll be a keynote speaker at this weekend’s winter conference of the Association for Humanistic Psychology. I’ll be speaking on social justice as it relates to both Humanistic Psychology and Buddhism. If I can make a recording easily, I may post it here in the future. Find out more about the AHP here. Read more

[UPDATE: Well, folks, I’m sad to say that the 2013 Tet Parade proceeded without the participation of the Partnership of Viet Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) Organizations. I very much appreciate Tricycle: The Buddhist Review giving this letter and the cause a push at their blog. To see other letters of support, you can download a full dossier here.] Last night, one of our remarkable students in the Buddhist Chaplaincy Department at University of the West asked for my... Read more