Posts by Mark Knickelbine
Sister Cece Teaches Qi Gong: Intrasubjective Resonance and the Possible Function of God
It was 7 a.m. on the last morning of the retreat, and Sister Cecily, a 70-something Franciscan nun in exercise togs – Cece, as everyone called her – was teaching us qi gong. Though the retreat itself was sponsored by the integrative medicine department at UW Health, we were invited to participate in the regular morning yoga…
Read MoreIntroducing the Practice Circle
Many people come to the Secular Buddhist Association website with the same question: “Where can I find a place to practice?” Whether they live where there are no dharma centers at all, or the traditional practice centers available make them feel uncomfortable, they seek a place where they can share their practice with others without…
Read More"This World or the Other": The Contradiction at the Heart of Buddhist Tradition
In my review of Thanissaro Bhikkhu’s book on rebirth, I observed that there is a contradiction at the heart of traditional Theravadin orthodoxy regarding the goal of practice. In some of the Pali suttas, we encounter a Gotama who avoids and discourages metaphysical speculation, is ambiguous about the afterlife, and who emphasizes practice to gain…
Read MoreFear and Love
If you’re like me, you work with fear a lot. Fear comes at us in all kinds of ways, from nagging anxiety over the petty annoyances of life, to worry about difficult relationships and troubling outcomes, to terror in the face of physical danger, serious illness and death. Fear is a survival mechanism — it keeps…
Read MoreReligion and Dukkha
When atheists speak up about the harmful effects of religion, we’re often asked, in effect, what our problem is. How are we so sure we’re right? What about our own dogmatic beliefs? Isn’t it enough for us to reject religion, without actively opposing it? Why are we, as even Stephen Batchelor says, so “humorless’? These charges are even more pointed for those of us who are secular dharma practitioners. When we inveigh against the religious trappings of Buddhist traditions, we are accused of disrespecting the tradition and its teachers, indeed even of threatening the survival of the dharma in the West (see the interview with Tim Olmsted in the Fall 2010 Tricycle for a good example of this). Why don’t we just relinquish this fixed view and be more open-minded?
Read MoreThanissaro Bhikkhu's "The Truth of Rebirth" : A Review, Part 3
This is the final installment of my three-part review of Thanissaro Bhikkhu’s 2011 e-book, The Truth of Rebirth and Why it Matters for Buddhist Practice. You can read it online here. “One reason the Buddha recommended conviction in rebirth as a useful working hypothesis is that, as we have noted, he had to teach that skillful…
Read MoreThanissaro Bhikkhu's "The Truth of Rebirth": A Review, Part 2
This is the second in my three-part review of Thanissaro Bhikkhu’s 2011 e-book, The Truth of Rebirth and Why it Matters for Buddhist Practice, which you can read here. You can read Review Part 1 here. “. . . Many modern Buddhist teachers have argued that the teaching on rebirth should be treated [as an out-of-date…
Read MoreThanissaro Bhikkhu's "The Truth of Rebirth" : A Review, Part I
This is the first of a three-part review of Thanissaro Bhikkhu’s new e-book, The Truth of Rebirth: and Why it Matters for Buddhist Practice.
Read MoreThe First Watch of the Night
I recollected my manifold past lives . . .: There I was so named, of such a clan, with such an appearance, such was my nutriment, such my experience of pleasure and pain, such my life term; and passing away from there, I reappeared elsewhere; and there too I was so named, of such a…
Read MoreWhat's Burning in the Fire Sermon?
Perhaps Gotama’s most famous discourse among Westerners is the one we call the Fire Sermon. It is included in most anthologies of “the Buddha’s sayings”; in that quintessential summary of Consensus Buddhism, the PBS documentary The Buddha, it’s one of the few discourses quoted at any length. On the show, professor of Asian cultures D. Max Moerman explicates it this way:
Read More