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Sky and God

Sky and God

My niece Sky started a YouTube channel. You may remember Sky from the videos we did together a few years ago, like this one. Well, now she’s all grown up — she’s 21 — and she’s making videos about God. Actually, most of her videos aren’t about God. But the one I linked to above […]

All Buddhists Must Speak Out About Myanmar… Right?

I got an interesting question from one of my patrons over at Pateron and it went like this: Whenever there is an Islamist terror attack, Muslims are criticized if they do not renounce such actions. Does the Buddhist community have an obligation to speak out about the persecution of the Rohingya people? In case you’re […]

Did a Monk Burning Himself Help End the Vietnam War?

Last week, I put up an article on this blog expressing my opinion that Buddhism is not about politics. Individual Buddhists can be as political as they want, I said. But I do not believe that Buddhism itself should be mixed with politics. Every time I post an article saying something like this, someone inevitably responds […]

My neighborhood.

Politics: A Buddhist Perspective

A fair number of people ask me about the Buddhist perspective on politics or sometimes about Dogen’s perspective on politics. It’s an intriguing question. In Dogen’s voluminous writings I can only recall seeing a couple of very tangential references to anything one might call “political” (unless you’re one of those people who says everything is […]

Straight Outta Zazen

Straight Outta Zazen

I finally watched Straight Outta Compton last night. I’m not sure how I missed it when it was in theaters. I usually go see just about any music related film that comes out. Could be I was on the road during its theatrical run. But anyhow, here I am, two years too late to the […]