Religion Dispatches
…a 40-year-long road engaged with the brokenhearted and the dying. Speaking about this during one of his public readings of Breaking the Drought, he says: There is no time in which we have a higher opportunity of wisdom and freedom than in aging. We have perspective, a time to see things we have loved fallen away. We can protect nothing from death and impermanence. [It’s] a place of surrender in which surrender is not defeat. We don’t even know we…
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…er a persuasive reading of history in a country where traditional forms of Buddhism are now in steep decline. But in that case, how are we to understand such terrifying events as the triple misfortune of an earthquake, followed by a tsunami, followed by a nuclear disaster of previously unimagined proportions? In response to a catastrophic earthquake that struck Japan in his own day, Zen master Ryokan (1758–1831) offered a haunting but uncharacteri…
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…’s never really or fully through their eyes, but only my eyes seeing through them. Like the life of a parent, Tree of Life offers a necessarily mature perspective, even if we are forced into that maturity kicking and screaming like a baby. It’s not about childhood, though it is that too. It’s not about choosing one side over the other, though the temptation is there. We parents/audience remain in the middle—in between microcosmos and macrocosmos,…
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…image to better align with our more secular views. Westerners are drawn to Buddhism precisely because of its liberating qualities: As Walpopl Rahula wrote in What the Buddha Taught, arguably the most influential piece of Buddhist literature in the West, the “freedom of thought allowed by the Buddha is unheard of elsewhere in the history of religions.” We do not have to commit to the religion: no tedious rituals, no mandatory congregations. We don’…
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…10-by-20-foot low-income housing apartment in Laguna. “I don’t really care about anything. I have my room there and that’s it. I don’t need anything else. I’ve had a good life.” Christine Casey. Photo by Jari Kinnunen. Casey is Roman Catholic but also has an affinity for Buddhism. “I don’t see that there’s any dichotomy there. I have that on my refrigerator—a picture of Thomas Merton and the Dalai Lama,” she said while a few feet away two clutches…
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…ened and the U.S. invaded Afghanistan, I remembered as a young man hearing about an associate of Gandhi named Ghaffar Khan. So I thought I’d write about him. Through a series of contacts I was able to actually speak to his family in Peshawar, where they control a political party. They are not exactly living up to his ideals—they claim to, but it’s dubious. His grandson was happy to speak with me. I wrote an article about him, and that is how I got…
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…gious significance in the article nonetheless. Protestants consuming media about substance use a century ago similarly saw significant religious implications whether journalists wrote about it that way or not. The antidrug campaigns of Rear Admiral Richmond Pearson Hobson, an influential Prohibitionist, short-term congressman, and Spanish-American War hero, worked to mediate the relationships between antidrug media, public opinion, and law. They w…
Read More…ere hasn’t been a greater backlash from religious folks. Heffernan’s ideas about science may be ignorant, but the way she talks about religion is downright offensive. Heffernan ends with a quote in which Yann Martel, author of the pretty-but-inspid Life of Pi, summarizes his novel’s message: “1) Life is a story. 2) You can choose your story. 3) A story with God is the better story.” Heffernan, who has a PhD in literature from Harvard, has opted f…
Read More…resence, and the serenity of meditative well-being. William James, a century later, remains a dazzling writer on religion, but I wouldn’t want to build a science of religion—or, a neuroscience of religion—around his fascinations alone….
Read More…b site that not only promoted “academic freedom” bills, but provided sample wording for writing the legislation. Stein held press conferences and showings of the movie—which tries to make the argument (poorly) that academic freedom is under attack because science professors are being persecuted for believing in intelligent design—in states where the bills had been introduced. Expect more of these bills to be introduced in other states. The blog st…
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