Is White Buddhism Cultural Appropriation?
The other day I posted this on Facebook: Buddha isn’t just the historical Buddha (aka Siddhartha or Gotama or Shakyamuni — the guy had a lot of names). We are all Buddhas. It’s just that only a few of us notice it and even fewer of us ever really manifest our own Buddha-ness. So Buddhism […]
What’s So Great About the Truth?
Yesterday I attended the annual Hare Krishna Festival of Chariots on Venice Beach in sunny So Cal. The Festival of Chariots is where the Hare Krishnas drag a bunch of gigantic decorated carts down to the beach and set up a big party with delicious snacks and music and lots of questionable philosophy. Regular readers […]
The Age of Reality
Nishijima Roshi: If Buddhism pervades throughout the world, religions will vanish. That is my idea. Religion is a kind of belief, but Buddhism is believing in the fact in front of us. So the attitude is different. I think human history is going to enter into the age of reality. Q: And the age of […]
Godzilla and Reality
The new Godzilla movie (titled Shin Gojira or “New Godzilla”) premiered in Japan about 24 hours ago. The reports I’m hearing from fans over there whose opinions I trust are pretty bad. I actually happen to like their new Godzilla design. It’s kind of creepy in a cool way. Godzilla hasn’t been genuinely scary, at […]
God and Ultraman
Last night I watched episode 45 of Ultraman 80, “The Endlessly Challenging Soul of the Baltan Alien” on Crunchyroll. Ultraman 80 was the 1980 entry in the long-running Ultraman TV series produced by Tsuburaya Productions, the company I worked at for 15 years. In this episode, a young boy takes a photo of a UFO, […]
