Don’t Buy This Book!

My good friend Justin Whitaker and I have a paper in the recently published Oxford Handbook of Buddhist Ethics. I’ll discuss some aspects of our paper, how it relates to Buddhist ethics, and some other interesting points before getting to the meat of the matter: why you shouldn’t buy this book! Justin Whitaker’s blog (highly…

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Guardians of the World

Two emotional states play a key ethical role in early Buddhism. We’ll look at these states that the Buddha called “the guardians of the world”, and discuss how awareness of them can help our practice and our life. Check out my new Patreon page!

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The Five Precepts

The five precepts are the basis of Buddhist ethics, particularly as practiced in a lay context. What are the precepts, how should we think of them, and how should we use them as practice?

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Practice Circle: The Antidote to Hatred

In this world Hate never yet dispelled hate. Only love dispels hate. This is the law, Ancient and inexhaustible. Dhammapada As a mother watches over her child, willing to risk her own life to protect her only child, so with a boundless heart should one cherish all living beings, suffusing the whole world with unobstructed…

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Radical Dharma: A Review

America’s racial sickness has become especially vivid in recent months. Whether it’s the execution of unarmed black people by police, retaliatory violence against police, the disruptive resistance of the Black Lives Matter movement, or the appearance of an openly racist demagogue as the presidential nominee of a major party, anyone who may have supposed that…

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On Some Criticisms of Modern Mindfulness

Is the contemporary mindfulness movement a kind of “fad” that misconstrues the essential message of the Buddha? Pieces by Edwin Ng and Ron Purser (2016a, 2016b) and Stephen Schettini (2014), not to mention the earlier “McMindfulness” critique by Purser and Loy (2013) argue that this is so. Ng and Loy take an overtly “anti-capitalist stance” in their…

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Sati and Sociopolitics: Throwing the Buddha Out with the Bathwater?

With Anderson Cooper’s enthusiastic endorsement on 60 Minutes last night, mindfulness practice is well into the mainstream. Cooper’s segment included interviews with mindfulness gurus Jon Kabat-Zinn and Chade-Meng Tan, Google employee with the job title “Jolly Good Fellow”. As the movement has grown, there has been pushback. Some has focused on the scientific claims, but…

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Practicing Non-Self, III: Cultivating the Heart

All beings tremble before violence. All fear death. All love life. See yourself in others. Then whom can you hurt? What harm can you do? . . . For your brother is like you. He wants to be happy. (Dhp 129 – 130, Byrom) This happened to me last Sunday afternoon. I had just returned…

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On Gutting on Happiness

What really makes us happy? In a New York Times online post, Catholic philosopher Gary Gutting looks with a somewhat jaundiced eye on the nascent discipline of “happiness studies”.* He gives four conditions for happiness, which make for interesting reading and contemplation, particularly from a Secular Buddhist perspective. They are: good luck, fulfilling work, sense…

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Buddhist Global Relief

We should all be looking for ways to help alleviate the dukkha of the world on a larger scale than just our own minds. But doing so is a much bigger program than sitting on the cushion, one that requires money and coordination. As secularists we would prefer that these projects be done without sectarian…

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