the buddha is my dj

It seems to me that the word “offended” is thrown around a lot nowadays, particularly in the current Presidential election. It seems to me that there are a good number of folks so quick to be offended by things — and a second group so quick to tell the first to get over it — that the word has lost all meaning. That people are routinely offended by things and getting over them so quick that none of us has the chance to really stop and think about why we’re offended in the first or if it’s something we need to get over or not.

Let’s not forget that no matter how powerful the Executive Branch makes itself, local politics still matter. And also let’s not forget that the ability for any real change to happen will be due in part to what happens in Congressional elections. And of course let’s not forget that in the state of California, we’re going to have to defend what the courts recently, and rightly, put into law.

I’ve posted a series of pictures from the sand mandala creation in Atlanta. All the pictures are over at my wife’s and my other website, PrecariousCat.

Abstract: The academic study of American Buddhism assumes the tradition to be an essentially antinomian and democratic religion devoid of ritual, assumptions that empirical evidence often contradicts. This paper documents the ritual practice of the dharma talk in two California communities exploring how this practice serves as a way to meaningfully express member’s identities as Buddhists within socially constructed Buddhist communities. Moreover, this study suggests that American Buddhist practice is better described as egalitarian, not democratic. While American Buddhists have a half-realized spirit of political democracy, spiritual authority remains in the hands of but a few recognized authority figures.

In talking with the other presenters after the session, I noticed many of them lament the same things I’ve been lamenting; namely, that issues of Buddhism in the West, Buddhism in the contemporary world, and “ethnography” or “ritual,” are sorely lacking in the academic field. So it’s good to know that I’m not alone. It’s good to know that I’m not the only one who’s noticed that the filed is dominated by language specialists and textual analysis. Not that there’s anything wrong with textual studies or language studies — hell, I think they’re both deeply important to the overall study of Buddhism — but to assume that they are the only way to study Buddhism necessarily limits the field. Studies of millennia-old texts and dead languages allows the scholar to retreat to the safety of the library and never study actual, living, practicing Buddhists. So there’s my niche. What Buddhists are up to in the here and now is where I’m staking my professional claim.

I am compelled, by a fellow scholar nonetheless, to blog about my experiences here at IABS in Atlanta. I’ll begin my account by stating that yesterday was just about the longest day of my entire life. (Note to self: you no longer have the constitution for a cross-country, red-eye flight.) So I ended up missing parts of the two panels I had hoped to attend. And, overall, felt rather dissatisfied by the end of the day. Fortunately, this dissatisfaction didn’t last.

It does mean something to be a Buddhist. Every day people make claims about Buddhism. And every day we think of ourselves as Buddhist or not Buddhist in some way. And those claims, ultimately, effect what Buddhism means. Buddhism as an institution, as a socially constructed reality, exists as such because we keep talking about it in very specific ways. Which means (and I think here is my point) that we can change it. The institution of Buddhism can be whatever we want it to be, based on whatever interpretation of the Dharma we think is most apt, or most applicable to our lives today. Which is both terribly liberating and a little unnerving.

The wedding stamped is on out here in California as thousands and thousands of gay and lesbian couples rush to their local county-clerk’s office to tie the knot! Oh, wait. Did I say thousands? It’s really more like hundreds. Which is sort of the point after all. For all the hand-wringing people have about what this abomination is going to do to good-old-fashioned straight weddings, it’s actually been pretty quite around here. I mean, how boisterous can an eighty-year-old lesbian couple really get, after all?

As many of my faithful readers take more of an interest in my personal comings and going than my academic/political/spiritual/etc. ones, I wanted to remind you all that my wife and I have a photo-blog over at PrecariousCat.com. I updated the blog a little while back, and Dana and I really are trying our best to keep it updated. To help in that regard, we posted some pictures of our new apartment — something a lot of my out-of-town friends have been clamoring for. In the coming months, I hope to post more updates over there, especially as we’re doing a fair amount of traveling this summer and fall. Whimsical pictures from such mythical lands as Atlanta and Chicago are sure to follow!