New Buddhist Blog and Post Roundup

Buddhist publisher Wisdom Publications has a new blog. My understanding is that they intend to begin linking to us bloggers, as well as sharing teachings, book excerpts, and Buddhist news related items. It's a nice looking website, but since they've just started the blog, the content is fairly sparse at this point. Here's an interesting essay from Bhikkhu Bodhi about the Pali Canon from over there. I invite any interested bloggers or readers of Dangerous Harvests to contact them with suggestions.

My new post over at Turning Wheel covers Obamacare and practicing with hot button issues. Head over there and check it out! Also, Buddhist Peace Fellowship is running it's annual fundraising campaign. This year, one of their goals is to finance a national gathering of engaged Buddhists in 2014. You know I'm totally excited about that!! If you're excited about the work BPF is doing, and/or want to thank them for supporting and featuring my writing this summer and fall, offer a donation or spread the Indiegogo link.

Readers are often asking me for suggestions on good reads. If you're looking for books on zen check out the link included.

There's been a lot of discussion about this post about Zen teachers and money over at Sweeping Zen. I contributed to the comments section, which has several interesting perspectives. One of our regular readers, Mumon, offered a whole post on the topic as well.

Finally, Kobutsu Malone of the Engaged Zen Foundation is trying to raise funds to help pay for the medical expenses of a Thai Buddhist monk from Oklahoma who was brutally assaulted during a robbery in late August. Please share his story with your networks.

Buddhist Blogosphere Round Up

There are a lot of interesting posts floating about right now. I have a few things I could write about, but will today offer you a taste of some other blogs instead.

First, here's a piece by our head teacher at zen center touching on Huineng’s Platform Sutra. Byakuren has been posting writing about once a week now, and yesterday during her morning dharma talk, referenced how she's loving blogging. So, go take a look.

Arun reports that Ven. Hong Yuan, the Buddhist nun who was recently wrongfully arrested in New York, will now not be charged by the Manhattan DA's office. My understanding is that a number of Buddhist bloggers and readers sent various forms of messages to the DA office about her case, and although there's no way to tell if that had any impact on the case, I personally think it probably did something. Having numerous voices from around the nation (world even) writing in about an obscure case lifts some of the obscurity, and maybe makes those involved think again about the situation simply by bringing it to mind.

The perspectives on what constitutes Right Action around food and diet seem to be endless. Debates about vegetarianism swirl round and round, while the world's Buddhist populations are all over the map in their eating habits. Here are a few lines from a post on the blog Zen Mirror:

The Vinaya, then, is quite clear on this matter. Monks and nuns may eat meat. Even the Buddha ate meat. Unfortunately, meat eating is often seen by westerners as an indulgence on the part of the monks.

I have been vegetarian for almost half my life now. However, I still don't view it as the only way, and feel that issues such as geographical location and body make up need to be taken into consideration when it comes to diet.

And here is an interesting piece by Tom Armstrong recalling the Buddhist economic ideas of E.F. Schumacher and considering the current state of things here in the U.S. Personally, I think we are at a major crossroads. While too many people are still wooed by a mishmash of beliefs derived from the capitalist market fundamentalism gospel, the actual structures and landscapes that have been built through such views are crumbling all around us. I had a wonderful conversation with a friend from the zen center board yesterday about what might be called the "two Detroits": crime ridden, falling apart former auto empire on the one hand, and wildly creative and re-inventive collection of communities on the other. To me, the "two Detroits" symbolizes the general status of our entire nation. And so, while there is a lot of misery to be found, there's also an abundance of opportunity and possibility to reshape how it is we live together.


* Photo of urban farm projects in Detroit, Michigan.

4 Buddhist Posts For U

You ever ask yourself that question?

Anyway, here are a few posts for you all to enjoy. First off, take a trip over to Dean's blog The Mindful Moment, where he's promoting a worldwide hour of silence and meditation to be held on June 18th. He writes:

"The Moment of Peace" is a very simple idea; that we as individuals can make a difference if we stop for a while, be mindful, be quiet, and be still, and enjoy the experience of living. Through this, an innate happiness becomes present and we allow for a more sustainable and lasting peace within us and with those around us.

See his blog for more details.

Over at My Fair Isle, Robyn has some thoughts on the Bolivian movement to grant the Earth equal rights to humans in the nation's legal system. While it's hard to know if this will have an impact on corporate Earth exploitation in Bolivia in the near future, the symbolism of the law may help shift human attitudes towards the planet we all live on in the long term.

Katie, over at her blog Kloncke, has an excellent post considering anti-war movements and American Buddhist responses war. Specifically, she considers the divide between mainstream anti-war protesters and U.S. soldiers who desire to organize around GI health issues, and getting out of Afghanistan, Iraq, etc.

And finally, Daishin shares a good poem by an old Zen favorite.

Have an excellent weekend!

Buddhist Blogger Round Up

While I have been fixated on natural disasters - maybe you all missed the recent earthquake in Burma - there's been other things going on in the blogosphere.

Please keep Jeanne, from over at the blog The Dalai Grandma in your thoughts and prayers. She has had a lot of health challenges in recent years, and currently is struggling.

Over at Open Buddha is a post about the continued game playing of Genpo Roshi. Is he a Zen teacher or not? Is he stepping down or not? Is anyone going to do anything or not? The whole thing has gotten tiring, but if you're interested, there's also an excellent analysis here that includes some pointed remarks about the persistence of sexism in convert Zen circles.

Algernon has a good post on the U.S. role in Lybia, and particularly how it's being framed by the Obama Administration.

Maia Duerr's new blog, The Liberated Life Project, has been a treat to see unfold. Her current article takes lessons learned while being a non-profit executive director and applying them to one's life in general. It's worth a read.

Daishin offers a good reminder to us all that you'll have to check out if you are curious.


And finally, Nate over at Precious Metal takes up the dicey question "Is rebirth relevant?"

Happy Wednesday! Enjoy!

Groundhogs and Blogosphere Round up

Well, the most famous groundhog in the world is predicting an early spring.
Phil and friends have turned a sleepy town in Pennsylvania into a tourist attraction. Even if you find the whole thing foolish, you have to love a place that has it's own groundhog club. In other news, the copycat New York city groundhog, Chuck, is also predicting an early spring. It can't come soon enough if you ask me.

Around the blogosphere, there are some posts of interest. Eco-yogini writes about some of the barriers to getting more men into active yoga practices. As a long time yoga student, I've found that even with a male teacher, women still outnumber men 2 to 1. And magazines like Yoga Journal, totally catering to middle and upper class women, don't help. I've subscribed to it for about 5 years now, mostly for the asana sequences, anatomy, and wisdom columns. It's got some good stuff in it, but in five years, there has been exactly ZERO men on the cover of the magazine, and only a few articles focusing on men practicing.

Arun has a post about a young adult conference being held at the Berkeley, CA Jodo Shinshu Center. Seems to me that we need more of these kinds of events, to support the practice of young folks, who are often a small minority in their sanghas.

Yoga Dork has a post about an interesting yoga program started by a taxi driver and tailored to the unique issues of taxi drivers. Considering how stressful it is to drive around crowded cities all day, this seems to be a smart idea. Although focused primarily on supporting "good health," one side benefit of the program is an increased sense of community amongst some of the drivers in the classes.

Algernon has a good post considering the second precept and people who pirate music, movies, and other works of art. A side discussion broke out in the comments about how crappy a lot of the systems are that artists and writers plug into to make a living, but the thrust of the post is offering us an opportunity to consider ways in which we might be stealing.

There is a provacative post over at No Zen in the West considering the history of slavery and Buddhism. Another good reminder that no tradition is unstained.

And finally, here's a hot potato post from Brad Warner about literal rebirth that has over 200 comments attached to it. I have nothing much to offer on the subject because I really don't know what happens after death.

Touring the Buddhoblogospehere

Time for a round of link sharing, and not of the golf variety, although there might be a bit of "putt, putt" along the way (see above).

First off, I added a bit of reflection to the posts I did a little while back on children and Buddhism. You can find the post, and an active discussion over at Buddhist Geeks.

Jaye over at Digital Zendo has an excellent post about the teacher/student relationship in Zen. I was especially moved by this paragraph:

It was at this point I had been feeling so powerless that a lot of anger was surfacing, In an email to me Genjo Osho wrote to me; “Sounds like a hard day in a difficult position. In regards to your temper, it is fully yours, no one else is responsible. I sometime lose my temper (thankfully much less than before!), but I know that when this happens there is usually some sane action that I am not taking. My temper is nearly always projected onto others, but really it arises from my own folly of not taking some action that in hindsight I should have taken. In other words, most often my temper flares when I fail to do something that in the moment is too hard to do.” He was seeing something, from a position that I could or would not see, not based on superiority but due to effort, experience, practice and unification with his own heart-mind. Since I was blinded by circumstances, he was seeing for me, since I could not and so that I would not only survive but live.

I'm really interested in investigating this "folly of not taking some action" comment more deeply.

Over at Alan Senauke's new blog, he is chronicaling the current hearing for Jarvis Masters, an African-American Buddhist and author who is on death row for a murder he probably didn't commit. Whether or not he's guilty, I firmly stand against the death penalty, and believe it is long past due time to abolish it's use once and for all.

At the trial, Alan observed:

all the principles in court, except for Jarvis (and one corrections officer there for security) are white. Mostly white men. Some on one side, some on the other. This includes all the police officers seen over the last two days. I draw no firm conclusions from this, aside from noting where power and authority appear to rest in the legal system and in this country as a whole.

The legacy of institutional racism in the U.S. "Justice" system is very long and awful, and so when seeing this kind of dynamic, it's very difficult not to think "here we go again."

Over at her new blog, Maia has a post about Maha Ghosananda (1929 – 2007), a Cambodian Buddhist who has been compared to Gandhi. Like the experiences I have been reading about in Chan Khong's book, the ways in which Maha Ghosananda worked with the great suffering of Cambodians during and after the Khmer Rouge period are totally inspiring and absolutely humbling.

Genju has a good post examining equanimity, which I think many of us mistakenly think means being calm, cool, and detached in all circumstances.

And finally, Algernon brings up the old what's flapping koan, which is always worth flapping with in my view.

Enjoy!

A Short Wild, Cranky Ride - Complete with Mild NY Yankees Bashing

Well, I just got back an hour ago from watching another loss to the New York Yankees, the best team money can buy. Sure, they've got 27 championships and oodles of Hall of Fame candidates, but really, after a certain point, being one of the biggest and the best most of the time is a sure fire ticket to hell. Just ask the good folks at Bear Stearns or the Lehman Brothers.

Anyway, since I'm in a jovial, but slightly cantankerous mood, let's take a jaunt through the blogosphere together.

Nella Lou has a good post taking aim at those who argue that the internet is a terrible breading ground for bad behaviour and general meanness. Frankly, anyone who is worried about the horrors of the internet might best check themselves in the mirror as they crank down the highway, cussing out every last driver in their way. Or perhaps, if road rage isn't your fare, you might consider the latest gossip you shared about your relatives, or how you tore political candidate X a new asshole over lunch with your co-workers. I mean really, anything you see on Twitter or Facebook is just a mirror for what's going on in the "real world" folks.

Speaking of politics, Kyle over at Reformed Buddhist asks whether the political "center" is disappearing in the U.S., to which I'd say, yes. The same goes for the "left," the "progressives," the "Greens" and anything else not associated with a conservative, right wing agenda. Sure, plenty of us still hold ideas that fit into the "center" or "left" politically, but the power and control - right now - are firmly in the hands of right wing, corporate conservatives. And really Obama supporters, it's time to get over the apologies and recognize that the Obama Administration is mostly invested in maintaining the status quo.

Perhaps, enough of us will collectively take a hint from someone like Jodo Shinshu Minister Toshikazu Arai, who writes:

It is high time that humans mobilized their wisdom. They should all sit down together and solve existing territorial issues by establishing ways to share natural resources and dropping territorial claims for peaceful coexistence.

Or maybe more of us will start to feel that we have had enough, as Barry asks over at his blog, and begin to wonder what happens once you have burned through "enough" accumulated things and experiences that you thought would bring you happiness.

It seems to me that, at the very least, bringing about shifts in the world we live in begins with, as bookbird points to, fully accepting ourselves.

And if you aren't there yet, you can always take a seat and do some zazen, even if, as Petteri suggests, it might be good for nothing.

Bike Buddhas, Car Buddhas, Weebles, and Soccer

I have a new post over at Life as a Human webzine. It's about the World Cup, sports economics, and a bit of nostalgia. Check it out.

Continuing with the tangentally related posts, here is a wonderful post about biking and all the excuses people make for not biking. I don't expect everyone will suddenly become bike commuters from reading stuff like this, but maybe, as Barry from Ox Herding said recently, everyone could shift their behavior 1%. Maybe you'll bike that 6 block drive to the store you are currently making. Or you'll skip the drive to the gym and take a ride through the park on the weekend instead. It's one way to address oil spills, at any rate.

Here's a cool little post about meditation and Weebles. You may remember playing with Weebles as a kid. Maybe not. Either way, you might be asking what does a kids' toy have to do with zazen? Read Lawrence's post to find out.

And finally, here's a short announcement about Buddha figures for use in people's cars. I've seen people place many objects, including Buddhas, on their dashboards in a sort of alter style. As someone who wants to dismantle the car-centric culture we have, I kind wonder what to make of such displays. On the one hand, it's very true that people often spend a lot of time in their cars, and that such space is just as "sacred" as anywhere else. Yet, I also wonder what it means when millions of folks adorn their cars in ways that make them more central to their lives than even their homes.

Buddhist Bloggers Digging In

There are some powerful posts hanging around out there in the Buddhoblogosphere today.

Tom Armstrong has a fascinating post examining the languaging on homelessness in a newsletter for a branch of Loaves and Fishes in Sacramento. The newsletter opens with a quote from Buddhist teacher Jack Kornfield, and then goes on to make a decidedly Christian statement about homeless people:

They may look like humble clay as they trudge along 12th Street towards Loaves & Fishes but the stress of shared homelessness cracks open their humanity and gives us glimpses of the spark of divinity within them.

Tom goes on to comment, "Catholics, like other Christians, see people as essentially sinful. The Buddhist view is the opposite: People are essentially noble and good."

Check out the whole article for more; it's worth looking at partly because I think some convert Buddhists, who were immersed in Christian traditions before becoming Buddhists, really struggle to flip over the narrative that people are "sinful by nature."

Algernon, over at Notes from a Burning House, writes in his current post about the narratives banging up against each other in the Middle East, and the power beneath them.

Among his points, I found the following insight most important:

When truly committed and honest negotiators appear on both sides of this conflict, they will necessarily begin talking about concessions and compromises. In other words, there will be a discussion about conceding and sharing power.

On the rare occasions that people speak that way and mean it, what happens to them?

If you don't know the answer to that question, you'll have to read the rest of his post. And even if you do, read it anyway.

Barry, over at the Ox Herding blog, has been burning brightly lately. I've felt inspired by his posts recently, and am glad for his presence amongst us bloggers. his current post continues on the theme of making small shifts in one's life, and how this is often the way our life really opens up, contrary to the idea we often have lurking under the surface that we must give up everything, join a monastery, and forget about worldly life all together.

"Often the urgencies of life requires only the smallest action, such as a gift of flowers or a simple Thank You. And yet often we fail to make that gesture.

I've seen in my own life how hard it is to stay present to the requirements of the moment. It takes more than attentiveness to the shifting phenomena of feelings, impulses, thoughts and perceptions.

It takes a genuine commitment to love this world, no matter how it appears. It requires us to set aside our self-centered stories, to expose ourselves to the real.

Please go over to his blog to read the story behind these words.

And finally Maia, over at Jizo Chronicles, posted a dialogue between bell hooks and Thich Nhat Hanh that is definitely worth considering. Maia's blog is often a source of access points to socially engaged practice, something sorely needed in this day and age.

Here is a striking snippet from the dialogue for you.

bell hooks: And lastly, what about fear? Because I think that many white people approach black people or Asian people not with hatred or anger but with fear. What can love do for that fear?

Thich Nhat Hanh: Fear is born from ignorance. We think that the other person is trying to take away something from us. But if we look deeply, we see that the desire of the other person is exactly our own desire—to have peace, to be able to have a chance to live.

I've been reflecting on how Thay's comments about fear point to what I've been experiencing with my career life. This struggle with the director I dislike has a lot to do with fears that what I want the organization to do, or what I and others are already doing, will be struck down by the desires of this director, who currently holds much of the power.

May we all be liberated a bit through each others' words.