Reading Time: 10 minutes Actor Orlando Bloom recently visited Ukraine as UNICEF’s Goodwill Ambassador. During a meeting with President Volodymyr Zelensky, he decided to read Zelensky something written by Ikeda Daisaku, leader of a Japanese religious movement called Soka Gakkai International (SGI). That’s certainly one way to spend a very limited amount of time with a world leader. Let’s […]
Buddhism
Posted inPsychology
Sports are for losers: On unavoidable suffering and learning to flourish
Reading Time: 5 minutes The recent Olympic Games, the ensuing NCAA March Madness Tournaments, and all other competitions produce an exorbitant amount of one category of athlete: losers. All told, the 2022 Winter Olympic Games alone sent home more than 2,000 losers. Sports and competition itself is a uniquely unforgiving institution. It’s designed so a large majority of participants lose […]
Posted inComedy
Diary of Buddha recently discovered
Reading Time: 3 minutes Here is a translation from the recently discovered Diary of Buddha, originally scratched onto leaves of grass by an exact and lavish hand. This entry seems to come just shortly before a historic decision to allow females into the Sangha. North India, Fall 503, Tuesday Dear Diary, I discovered that people can see through the monks’ […]
Posted inBooks
A nutshell review of Buddha’s Tooth
Reading Time: 2 minutes Hasn’t every third person you know read “Buddha’s Tooth” by now? The book is somewhat about a mislaid molar of the historical Buddha—a forgotten tooth, found and duly deemed a dentine relic, so much so that an actual Temple was built over its final resting place. The bones of St. Stephen (ample enough to reconstruct […]
Posted inEthics and Morality
Buddhist Bhutan is better at sex ed than Christian America
Reading Time: 5 minutes The tiny Himalayan Buddhist nation of Bhutan in some important ways has, so to speak, outstripped majority-Christian United States in throwing off the dogmatic religious shackles that have traditionally constrained its sex ed policies. Despite the two nation’s very different religious traditions, the holy corruptions of sexuality have been much the same for both. The […]
Posted inGeneral
Is Zen Enlightenment Real?
Reading Time: 3 minutes I wonder whether anyone finds enlightenment – or whether the quest is self-deceptive, a fantasy leading nowhere?
Posted inSpirituality & Ritual
What Constitutes an Awakening?
Reading Time: 3 minutes Here is another look at spiritualism from a nonreligious point of view, another guest post from Dana Horton: What Constitutes an Awakening? (5 minute read) It is said that soon after his enlightenment the Buddha passed a man on the road who was struck by the Buddha’s extraordinary radiance and peaceful presence. The man stopped […]
Posted inFilm/TV, Philosophy, Religion
Groundhog Day According to Rita
Reading Time: 7 minutes Groundhog Day has become like a personal religious holiday for me. Around this time every year, I break out my well-worn copy of the Bill Murray classic by the same name and watch it again to relive my most consistent fantasy: Going back in time to undo the mistakes of the past and learn from […]
Posted inNews
Jet-setting Thai monk makes a bumpy landing … in prison
Reading Time: 2 minutes Back in 2013, Buddhist monk Wirapol Sukphol caused outrage when he appeared in a YouTube video that showed him enjoying the high life. He was pictured in his monk’s robes aboard a private jet wearing aviator sunglasses with a Louis Vuitton bag. Today Sukphol is behind bars, having been sentenced to more than 100 years […]
Posted inPhilosophy, Religion
Buddhism and the (No-)Self
Reading Time: 4 minutes As I have expressed many times before on this blog, I am a conceptual nominalist. This means that I deny the ontic existence of abstract ideas – they exist only in the minds of conceivers. Of course, one of the great abstract ideas is the self. Personal identity is a fascinating area of philosophy. Indeed, I […]