Archive for December 2015
Keeping Your Meditation Resolution
Is starting a regular meditation practice on your list of New Year’s resolutions? Congratulations! Making time for daily meditation is powerful act of self-compassion. As the Dhammapada tells us, not even one’s mother or father can be of greater help than one’s own well-cultivated mind. However, if starting a daily practice were easy, we wouldn’t…
Read MoreEpisode 237 :: Molly Hahn :: Buddha Doodles: Imagine the Possibilities
Molly Hahn Molly Hahn returns to speak with us about the growth of Buddha Doodles, her upcoming book Buddha Doodles: Imagine the Possibilities, and thriving after trauma. Hi, everyone. Before we get started with today’s episode, I want to remind the listeners that we’ve started a new podcast which may also interest you. It’s called…
Read MoreOn Materialist Disenchantment
In Buddhism there are two main unskillful approaches we may have towards the world: greed and aversion. Most contemporary dhamma discussions tend to revolve around mitigating aversion. To do that, we practice mettā, the other Brahmavihāras, and learn to accept and embrace the world with kindness and compassion, just as it is. So for example…
Read MorePali Intensive Course Offered Online
There are some exciting things happening in the world of Buddhist studies. There is one in particular I’m familiar with that I thought you might like to know about, because – especially at this moment in time – you don’t need to be either a monastic or a student at a university, or a big…
Read MoreEpisode 236 :: Jay Forrest :: Pentecostal Preacher to Secular Buddhist
Jay Forrest Jay Forrest speaks with us about his evolution from a Pentecostal preacher to Secular Buddhist. Many of you listening to this podcast may have had a deep faith practice before becoming Buddhists, let alone Secular Buddhists. But what’s that look like when you’ve become a teacher, a leader in that tradition, and find…
Read MoreThe Importance of How We Translate: The End of Suffering
How readers understand Buddhism depends a great deal on how it is presented to us. This should be obvious. Though Buddhism teaches us to see for ourselves whether what we learn applies to our lives, how we practice, and what we look for when we practice is going to be affected by how…
Read MoreIs Donald Trump a Psychopath and Should We Love Him Anyway?
Religious Buddhists are serious about universal love. Even Psychopaths Need Love, Lodro Rinzler writes. Lama John Makransky writes in Awakening Through Love: “Those who point to Hitler as reason not to cultivate all-inclusive love, insisting that people who are that evil should never be included in such a wish, do Hitler honor by imitation. To believe that…
Read MoreBatchelor's "After Buddhism": A Review
With After Buddhism, Stephen Batchelor continues his project of cultivating a secular dhamma. Batchelor’s book is structured as an exegesis of the Pāli Canon, focusing almost exclusively on this early material to reconstruct what might be termed a secular Buddha. This is a Buddha who followed a kind of Pyrrhonian skepticism about truth, who declined…
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