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Sit Down and Shut Up: Pulling Mindfulness Up By Its (Buddhist) Roots

By Max Zahn

…Buddhism,” he added. “But that’s more about me and my politics than it is about Buddhism.” The Buddha wasn’t mindfully coding apps—but he wasn’t scrawling lefty placards, either. Loncke acknowledges that concerns over cultural appropriation in engaged Buddhism are “hella real,” adding that “it’s not very helpful” when practitioners “look back to the life of the Buddha or his teachings for . . . guidelines about what policy choices to make.” Such…

For Buddhism, Science is Not a Killer of Religion

By Paul Wallace

…experience and your reason. And His Holiness repeated his oft-quoted maxim about what to do when science conflicts with Buddhadharma: adjust or throw out Buddhadharma. After all, this is the only way to be true to Buddhadharma itself. This is Enlightenment thinking worthy of Kant himself. This is scientific rationality in all its rigor. But the truth is, Buddhism does part ways with the pure reason of Kant and his ilk. That is because there is som…

Top Ten Peacemakers in the Science-Religion Wars

By Paul Wallace

…n the blasted-out battleground of science and religion. 10. Karl Giberson, science & religion writer and former physicist, for reminding evangelicals that science is not the enemy This has been a big year for Giberson. In February his book, The Language of Science & Faith, co-written by Francis Collins, was published; October saw the release of The Anointed: Evangelical Truth in a Secular Age, which Giberson penned with Randall Stephens. In both b…

The Problem with Pew’s Science & Religion Poll

By Andrew Aghapour and Michael Schulson

…se of medical advances OR is it taking medical advances too far?” We write about science, religion, and ethics for a living, and neither of us has a concrete answer to this question. Assuming that most participants haven’t already thought this through, the answer they choose after mere seconds of consideration isn’t likely to reflect any longstanding, steadfast belief. “Polls are hastily done by telephone rather than in person,” Princeton sociolog…

Religious, Spiritual, and “None of the Above”: How Did Mindfulness Get So Big?

By Nalika Gajaweera

…. Moreover, the inviolable truths of Dharma embraced and surpassed Western science, making Buddhism superior to the colonial religion of Christianity. The popularity that mindfulness enjoys today is therefore, in part, a testament to the success of these early Asian Buddhist reformers—from places as disparate as Sri Lanka, Burma and Japan. Their innovative efforts positioned the Dharma as consistent with “reason” rather than superstition, “empiric…

Dalai Lama’s ‘Suck My Tongue’ Controversy Reveals Centuries-Old Christian Distortion of Tibetan Buddhism

By Geoffrey Goble

…s a global religion or even of Tibetan Buddhism as a regional iteration of Buddhism. Tibetan Buddhism consists of multiple schools, but the Dalai Lamas aren’t even the head of their own school of Tibetan Buddhism known as the Geluk (or Gelug). The Dalai Lamas are tulku, each identified in their youth as a reincarnation of the previous Dalai Lama and raised and trained accordingly within the monastic institutions of the Geluk school of Tibetan Budd…

American Buddhism: Beyond the Search for Inner Peace

By Joshua Eaton

…ls and teachings with which I am acquainted.” You also wrote that “engaged Buddhism still remains tangential to the hard core of Western interest in Buddhism, which is the dharma as a path to inner peace and self-realization.” Have you seen that change since 2007? I have not made an extensive survey of the current American Buddhist scene, but I did attend the Conference on Engaged Buddhism, organized by the Zen Peacemakers in 2010. I learned much…

After Michael Jerryson (1974-2021) Nobody Will Ever Look at Buddhism the Same Way

By Mark Juergensmeyer

…g their houses on fire and burning the innocent victims alive. This too is Buddhism. In writing about such matters, Jerryson makes clear that he is not out to trash the tradition. Quite the opposite. Because Jerryson lived and worked with Buddhists in Mongolia, Thailand, and elsewhere, he felt a kinship with the Buddhist community and an admiration for its tradition. But Jerryson was also a scholar with enormous intellectual curiosity. As he expla…

Don’t Worry, Be Happy: How Amazon, Google & Neuroscience Threaten American Buddhism

By Curtis White

…the world we mean by the word “happiness,” there’s the anterior fact that Buddhism isn’t about becoming happy. Happiness and unhappiness are what the Buddha called “Worldly Winds,” like success and failure, gain and loss. Buddhism’s interest is in the Middle Way, between happiness and unhappiness. As the Thai forest monk Ajahn Chah taught: If we cut a log of wood and throw it into the river, and if it doesn’t sink or rot, or run aground on the ri…

Buddhism And Politics in Myanmar: An Author Interview

By Matthew Walton

…tings and speeches of the period—when she was attempting to weave together Buddhism, democracy, rights, etc. Hearing about these discussions fascinated me, and while the retreat was sort of my “conversion” moment to practice as a Buddhist myself, it was also the event that got me started on this intellectual path of trying to better understand the ways in which Buddhist teachings, beliefs, practices and identities affect the ways in which people u…