In the opening paragraphs of his new blog post at HuffPo, Zen teacher and author David Loy very accurately spells out the activist burnout many engaged citizens feel, Buddhist or otherwise.
Democracy Now covered a story this week revealed by a Pentagon Report that indicates approximately 26,000 military sexual assaults occurred last year- roughly 70 per day, an increase of 35% from the previous year (19,000).
Mark Sanford, who on Tuesday was elected to Congress by South Carolina voters, reveals he turned to meditation after the spectacular implosion of his political career as governor of that state after the revelation of his trip to Argentina in pursuit...
People consider conscious rap now, in hip-hop circles, to feel condescending or feel like not a part of the mainstream. So the challenge for me is, "How do I be as good or better than these rappers out here?" and "How do I stay relevant with my...
The April 24 building collapse in Bangladesh is now the deadliest garment-factory accident in world history. The death toll as of Friday was 547, the New York Times reports, and was expected to climb. By contrast, New York's Triangle Shirtwaist...
Yesterday, a friend sent me this beautiful poem by Thich Nhat Hanh. You can read the moving intro here, where Thay, as he is affectionately known, writes about a young girl and a pirate, and how there is more to the story than the victim/...
More than 370 people have died and 1,200 were injured when a building that housed garment factories collapsed recently in Bangladesh.
**ETA: The death toll is now over 900.
Time reports:
Following last week's article on the dearth of female teachers in Tibetan Buddhism, it's wonderful to read today's story in the Telegraph, in which the Dalai Lama reiterates his publicly stated support for women leaders and the possibility of a...
Financially speaking, I'm quite poor by many standards. I'm not ungrateful for many extraordinary experiences I've had and some of the unearned privileges I've benefited from (for example, attending top notch public school, being male, White,...
Shortly after starting work as a bike messenger, I learned an acronym from my coworkers: ACAB, or All Cops Are Bastards. I couldn’t suppress a giggle; I’d been living in New York City for only a year...
Two weeks ago I wrote a post about Dharma Art, the practice of making art from a clear and vibrant mind, that may or may not reflect Buddhist concepts or experience.
Buddhist monks in Burma are accused of inciting violence against ethnic Muslims that has killed 43 people, destroyed or damaged 992 buildings, including five mosques, and displaced 12,000 people in a town of 100,000.
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Founder of Creative Commons and Harvard Professor Lawrence Lessig, has a great Ted talk about a fictional country called Lesterland (named after a Simpsons character), where political realities...
In this post, "Maladjusted Buddhism," on Patheos.com, blogger Nathan Thompson argues that Westerners who have converted to Buddhism are too tied to psychology and its focus on bringing everything toward a norm. Psychology, he says, works with...
"When I think about women and Buddhism, the first thing that always comes to mind is the story of Tara’s vow. This story expresses our situation so clearly and applies equally well to both ancient and modern times. It is a story that originated when...
In doing research in order to write a blog post on the concept of sexual consent in a Buddhist framework, I came across many blog posts broadly written about homosexuality in Buddhist circles but not a lot of discussions around the need for consent...
In my life as an educator, one lesson has served me and my students more than any other: in order to provide a good education to students of all backgrounds, a teacher must have high standards and have
Gender is a dimension of ego, Lopon Rita Gross says, and the one we cling to most persistently. It's also one that we're least like to examine. It's not included in traditional Buddhist meditations designed to deconstruct identities and lead to...
I recently read on an Italian blog a quote playfully attributed to God: "'Everybody's depressed because "this pope is also against the gays." Remember, people, he's the head of the church, not the Indian from the Village People."' 1
A few days ago, a Brooklyn teenager died after he was shot eleven times by NYPD officers. His name was Kimani Gray, and according to his sister, he was a good kid who kept his head down.
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Since the decline of Occupy Wall Street as a major social and media phenomenon, the notion of wealth inequality has sort of dropped off my personal political and moral radar...
