Archive for February 2016
"Buddha vs. Faust": Responding to Ronald Lindsay
Ron Lindsay’s recent blog post “On the Pursuit of Meditation: Buddha vs. Faust” begins as a mild critique of Sam Harris’s recent book Waking Up, and then segues into a skeptical review of meditation. Lindsay is President of the secularist/skeptic Center for Inquiry.* Although I dealt with many relevant topics at some length in my review of…
Read MoreEpisode 241 :: Stephen Batchelor :: After Buddhism: Rethinking the Dharma for a Secular Age
Stephen Batchelor Stephen Batchelor returns to speak with us about his newest work, After Buddhism: Rethinking the Dharma for a Secular Age. As we think about the historical veracity of the Buddhist tradition, we may have an accidental tendency to miss some of the more compelling human elements of the story. We forget that these…
Read MoreEpisode 240 :: Karma Yeshe Rabgye :: Ripples in the Stream: A Pragmatic Journey Through Gautama Buddha's Teachings
Karma Yeshe Rabgye Yeshe Rabgye joins us to speak about pragmatic aspects of Buddha’s teaching. What’s it like to be a monastic in a Tibetan tradition, teaching secular mindfulness in India? Oddly enough, this combination does exist, and a secular approach to Buddhism is of more interest than traditional Buddhism, even when the teacher is…
Read MoreMeditating With and For Each Other
While meditation retreats have always been challenging, rewarding, and in some ways, deeply moving experiences for me, I believe that they don’t sufficiently foster two key aspects of our practice: our ethical, socially-conscious engagement in the world and our active participation in sanghas. In a previous blog post I raised concerns about the negative effect…
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