Sixty-five years ago, today, the 14th of October, 1965, Dr B. R. Ambedkar shook India when he converted to Buddhism. I try to note the major events of his life. Partially because he deserves to be celebrated. But, also to let people who might not otherwise be aware of him, to know a bit about this remarkable figure of Twentieth century Buddhism. He well may provide a signifiant part of the puzzle as to what Buddhism will... Read more
On the 13th of October, in 1282 the Japanese Buddhist priest, controversialist, and founder, Nichiren died. In 1253 by our common reckoning Nichiren had his realization that the Lotus Sutra was the epitome of all Buddhist teachings. This was a commonly held view. But, he took it one step further, saying that simply calling upon the title of the Sutra can bring about liberation. He went one step beyond that as well, saying this was the... Read more
Aleister Crowley was born on this day, October 12th, in 1875. He is one of those figures I visit in this blog from time to time. The last time looks to be five years ago. What follows is an updated version of that last entry. I believe the first time I became aware of Aleister Crowley was when I was living in a Zen monastery in Oakland, California. The writer Alan Watts handed on a copy of... Read more
SECOND THURSDAYS WITH JAMES at the First Unitarian Church of Los Angeles October through June, 2021, we will be exploring the religions and other related topics that have particularly caught our consulting minister Rev. James Ishmael Ford’s imagination over the years. These conversations are not meant to be comprehensive, but lightly touching some of the world’s great traditions. James will be following two principles in these conversations. He says that all religions are false. But, at the... Read more
景教 Nestorian Christianity A Survey of materials and scholarship concerning Nestorianism / East-Syriac Christianity in China From the Digital Dictionary of Buddhism (shared here with permission of the author) Jeffrey Kotyk (I have a long fascination with the Nestorian mission to China. And the hybridization of that tradition with indigenous Chinese culture and religion. My imagination was fired particularly by the work of Martin Palmer‘s The Jesus Sutras: Rediscovering the Lost Scrolls of Taoist Christianity. (Sadly, it... Read more
DO YOU REMEMBER? A Buddhist Reflection Robert Aitken Ordinary memory is affected by the meditation practiced in Zen Buddhism, and perhaps in other Buddhist traditions as well. As you sit on your meditation cushions, you forget everything that ordinarily presses on your consciousness, and focus exclusively on counting your breaths, facing your koan, or on the practice of sitting in pure vacancy. After it is imprinted, the theme of your practice in the meditation hall comes up naturally... Read more
Today, the 9th of October is celebrated in the liturgical churches of the West as the feast of Dionysius the Areopagite. He is venerated in the Eastern churches on the 3rd of the same month. In the Acts of the Apostles, the second half of the text that we know as the Gospel According to Luke, there is someone named Dionysius who is converted by Paul’s sermon at the Areopagus, a famous rock outcropping at the Acropolis in Athens.... Read more
I first ran across this story in a Patheos blog by a very conservative Protestant theologian. I googled the relevant terms and found a half dozen articles about a textbook “developed for use in Chinese schools” published by the University of Electronic Science and Technology Press. It takes an old and frankly challenging story about Jesus and sets it on its head. If you’re not familiar with the story of Jesus and the woman taken in adultery, it’s in John’s... Read more
Thor Heyerdahl was born today, the 6th of October, in 1914. it isn’t going to be easy to convey to a current generation just how much his grand adventure could set young hearts beating in the 1950s. In 1947 he and his crew aboard the raft Kon Tiki made it to the reefs of Raroia in the Tuamotu Islands, following a one hundred and one day voyage covering some four thousand, plus miles. He had a reason for... Read more
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