July 1, 2014

The Telegraph has a new interview with His Holiness the 17th Karmapa, Ogyen Trinley Dorje, who is visiting Europe for the first time. His environmental work receives special focus in the piece. Author Mick Brown writes: In recent years, he has taken a particular interest in the environment, establishing his own environmental organisation, Khoryug, which last year hosted a conference in Delhi on water supply. Many of the world’s great rivers flow out of the Tibetan Plateau — the Yellow River,... Read more

July 1, 2014

The latest issue of Helping Hands, the newsletter of Buddhist Global Relief, features a piece by Ven. Bhikkhuni Santussika, on the upcoming People’s Climate March. In the article, in which she explains the intention of the gathering to “bend the course of history,” Ayya Santussika writes:  As our Dharma practice deepens, it begins to inform and influence everything we do, including how we engage with the important moral and social issues of our times. At this moment in human history, the... Read more

July 1, 2014

Not long ago, a user posted a video to YouTube of the great Buddhologist Donald Swearer giving a talk for School of Advanced Research on the subject “Buddhist Economics: An Oxymoron?” The talk, initially delivered on March 18th, 2010, at the New Mexico History Museum Auditorium, is described by the SAR this way: We usually associate Buddhism with meditating monks and temple rituals, rather than the mundane realities of day-to-day economic and political life. This notion, however, belies a historical... Read more

June 30, 2014

This via Ayya Tathaaloka Bhikkhuni’s YouTube channel: In February of 2013 in Petaluma, Northern California, Ven. Tathaaloka Theri was asked to share her knowledge of the History or Her-story of Women in Buddhism. Ayya Tathaaloka is one of a few monastic scholars who have studied this subject deeply, but in the texts and epigraphy. Her knowledge of the subject is fascinating and inspiring, different from what we may commonly read, shedding light on both the environment for women in which... Read more

June 23, 2014

As I mentioned in a past post, I was one of the speakers at this year’s Myanmar Muslims Genocide Awareness Convention 2014, which was held at the Los Angeles Convention Center this past Saturday. (As regular readers may remember, I wrote a special report for this blog about the Myanmar Muslims Genocide Awareness Convention 2013. You can read that post here.) I spoke alongside a variety of excellent and helpful folks, including Dr. Gregory H. Stanton (President of Genocide Watch), Matthew Smith (Executive Director... Read more

June 23, 2014

I’m pleased to share the news that my breakfast has been featured on Academic Breakfast, and you can see it here. What is Academic Breakfast, you ask? Oh, I’m so glad you did. This article from Inside Higher Ed will introduce you. Here’s the bit: The website invites academics to post a photograph of their breakfast, and to answer six quick questions: where they live, their institution, their job, their research in five words, their breakfast in five words, and... Read more

June 22, 2014

This from Al Jazeera English: A Buddhist leader and fierce critic of hardliners blamed for attacks on Muslims, is in hospital after reportedly being abducted, stripped naked, and beaten. Watareka Vijitha Thero, the leader of the Jathika Bala Sena who opposes the actions of Sinhala Buddhist hardliners Bodu Bala Sena (BBS), was abducted and assaulted in the outskirts of capital Colombo on Wednesday night. Thero was found by a roadside in Panadura town. He was stripped naked, and his arms and... Read more

June 20, 2014

Nick Kristof, who, as we previously mentioned, recently visited Burma and has devoted a lot of column and blog space to the trip. This week, he released a special video report from the trip on the New York Times‘ YouTube Channel, which they describe this way: Nick Kristof travels to Myanmar, where the Buddhist majority confines a million Muslims to camps and villages — deprived of jobs, schools, doctors, and even life itself. Why is the world silent? You can... Read more

June 20, 2014

Buddhist teacher and author Martine Batchelor appeared on the most recent episode of The Middle Way Society Podcast to discuss Buddhist ethics. At their YouTube Channel, The Middle Way Society describes the episode this way: In this episode, Martine Batchelor, a Buddhist teacher and author, talks about ethics from a Buddhist perspective and to what extent it differs from more rule-based ethical positions. We also explore such topics as absolutism versus relativism, karma, “engaged” Buddhism, the precept of non-harming, laying people off,... Read more

June 12, 2014

Oh, my… This from Buddhadharma: The Practitioner’s Quarterly Online: Actor, activist, and humorous social media powerhouse George Takei is scheduled to be the keynote speaker at “Being Gay, Being Buddhist – The LGBTQ Community and Shin Buddhism,” a seminar being organized by the Buddhist Churches of America on Saturday, June 28, 10 am – 3 pm, at the Jodo Shinshu Center in Berkeley, California. Other speakers will include Pieper and Lois Toyama on “Parenting our LGBTQ Children,” and Rev. Kiyonobu... Read more

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