the buddha is my dj

new blog

scott — Sun, 28 Aug 2011 19:21:56 +0000

Don't say I didn't warn you.

podcast updates

scott — Mon, 23 May 2011 16:23:50 +0000

Because you're an ardent fan of the DharmaRealm podcast, breathlessly waiting on the edge of your proverbial seat for any information, you've probably noticed that there hasn't been a new episode in some time. Oh? You haven't? Well, keep reading for more info...

impending fatherhood

scott — Wed, 16 Mar 2011 16:20:33 +0000

Big exciting news!

some things

scott — Mon, 14 Mar 2011 23:44:33 +0000

I know. I never write. I never call. It's like I don't even exist anymore. A longer, more personal post is in the works. But for now, a couple of quick things:

digest: outrage edition

scott — Fri, 11 Feb 2011 16:51:39 +0000

In case you've been living on Mars, in a cave, with your fingers in your ears, here's some stuff that might get your blood boiling.

online offline: some brief reflections on bad behavior

scott — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 20:19:56 +0000

Some folks believe that the Internet is somehow different from the "real world." Some folks believe that, because of the anonymity of the Internet, people will invariably behave worse online than off, that they will say and do things that in the "real world" they would never consider saying or doing, morals and ethics be damned. I believe that's a crock of shit. Sometimes (a lot of times) people behave badly. Period. Where and when that happens is most likely a factor of specific circumstances. And to the extent that I've seen people behave spectacularly poorly in a wide array of circumstances, both online and off, I cannot sustain the belief that people behave quantitatively or qualitatively worse on the Internet than they do in real life.

monday morning dharma: nothingness

scott — Mon, 07 Feb 2011 16:25:25 +0000

"Whenever I am asked to give a Dharma talk, I have to struggle to work out a Dharma message. I often feel I have nothing to offer. In a sense, that is natural because the Dharma is about naturalness, nothingness and emptiness, which means the Dharma refers to things as they are. You cannot talk about the air while in the air, and you cannot talk about water while in water."

monday morning dharma: who am i?

scott — Mon, 24 Jan 2011 16:00:22 +0000

Today's bit of Dharma comes from my good friend Rev. Harry Gyokyo Bridge. This is a talk he gave last fall at the San Francisco Zen Center. Not only is it a good overview of Jodo Shinshu Buddhism, he spends a good bit of time answering questions from those in attendance. Your browser does not support the audio tag. Click here to listen.

close encounters

scott — Sat, 22 Jan 2011 16:33:38 +0000

digest: around the internets

scott — Fri, 21 Jan 2011 16:00:38 +0000

Here's a bunch of stuff that you've probably already seen (and some you might not have) around the Internets.

disembodied quote: true lies

scott — Wed, 19 Jan 2011 17:12:53 +0000

"Although the hyperreal operates as its own type of reality, this does not mean that its provenance is divorced from the material conditions in which we live. The fact that the images that the media project can be readily identified as "representations," rather than the truth of the matter, works to further mask the political, social, and cultural interests involved. At the same time, these images have the force of reality and serve as a conduit of meaning. No doubt, viewers can recognize the Arab terrorists in the Arnold Schwarzenegger film True Lies (1994) as fictional characters ("It's just a movie!"), but these images undoubtedly reinforce, if not substantively inform, American viewers' notions of Islam and the U.S.-Middle East conflict."

monday morning dharma: buddhist women

scott — Mon, 17 Jan 2011 16:00:55 +0000

Doing something a little different around these parts. It's Monday, and we could all use a little Dharma. So, here's a quote from Rev. Patti Usuki on two important Buddhist women from the Jodo Shinshu school of Buddhism: Eshinni and Kakushinni. Her whole piece is worth a read.

bodhi day

scott — Wed, 08 Dec 2010 16:35:11 +0000

bodhisattva, superstar

scott — Fri, 03 Dec 2010 15:45:35 +0000

Bodhisattva, Superstar is an interesting movie. A self-described "allegorical documentary," it's got all of the talking heads one would expect, but it also has the documentarian himself, Michael Trigilio, right in there along with a few scripted characters who find themselves at various places along the path, struggling with what it means to be a Buddhist in America. America is a place and a time where Buddhist ideas, terminology, images -- indeed Buddhists themselves -- can be co-opted in any number of ways that often make the purists (for lack of a better word) among us cringe. There's a lot in this film. At 83 minutes, it's practically a feature-length movie, so I don't think that it would be right of me to try and sum up all of my thoughts on it in a blog post of all places. I find myself at a place in my life where I'd very much like to get off the information superhighway and resist its demand that we always comment on everything and anything that happens, immediately offering up our opinions and criticisms and acting as if those opinions and criticisms aren't what they truly are -- knee-jerk reactions to information overload; no, I'd rather hop off the twenty-four-hour comment-athon from time to time, thank you, and allow for things to sink in, give myself permission and time to reflect on things before coming up with My Definitive Word on the Subject. But, clearly, that's a different rant for a different day.

thankful

scott — Thu, 25 Nov 2010 00:14:41 +0000

Be thankful for what you got.

silence

scott — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 15:14:23 +0000

tariki, corpses, t-shirts

scott — Tue, 19 Oct 2010 00:22:00 +0000

Over the past couple of months, I have not felt a particularly strong urge to blog. I've been compelled to write. Some of that has ended up in other places, but most of it has ended up in stuff that I hope to have published in that old-timey medium called "books" (all fingers and toes crossed). So my writerly impulses have been satiated elsewhere, offline. Moreover, to paraphrase Grandpa Simpson, I used to pay attention to the news and read blogs, but they angry up the blood. So, in an effort to be self-compassionate, I've been keeping my head down a lot lately.

disembodied quote: any scholarly attempt

scott — Wed, 13 Oct 2010 19:26:20 +0000

"Any scholarly attempt to describe groups should at least consider how members describe themselves. Our descriptions must be nuanced to account for exceptions, parallels, blends, and developmental processes. They also must pay attention to the history and ongoing effects of racism in the United States. As a white scholar, I have tried to use my own privilege to draw attention those effects, in support of efforts to dismantle them. If we cannot do this, then as Jan Nattier cautioned, 'there will always be "two Buddhisms" in America: Us and Them, however we define each other.'"

digest: all self-promotional-y

scott — Thu, 30 Sep 2010 15:30:54 +0000

I know I know. I never call. I never write. But it's not for a lack of productivity. Here's some stuff I've been working on (or care about) that I can share with y'all.

debate

scott — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 23:24:16 +0000

disembodied quote: dunning-kruger

scott — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 14:43:06 +0000

"In German study, eighty per cent of those surveyed described themselves as confident in their answers on a questionnaire, yet only forty-two per cent got even half the questions rights. This is known as the Dunning-Kruger effect: people who don't know much tend not to recognize their ignorance, and so fail to seek better information."

criticism

scott — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 16:19:17 +0000

to what end

scott — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 19:09:05 +0000

The Angry Asian Buddhist is Angry. Again. This week, the target of his ire is an article by David Nichtern on the Huffington Post, an article that wasn't all that interesting (to me anyway) and raised the same issues and questions that Arun has raised time and again for years now. A lively discussion, with accusations of racism flying this way and that, has flared up on the Angry Asian Buddhist blog (and also on a not-exactly-related post on Dharma Folk). I was going to make a comment over there, but after I filled in the little comment field, I selected the wrong account, the comment vanished, I got a phone call, and stopped caring about whatever it was that I was going to say. But let me tell you this: whatever I was going to say was going to be brilliant! Anyway. Whatever I was going to say is not what I'm about to say. I've been feeling frustrated lately with the whole project of blogging, truth be told. And, as my long-time readers will attest, ordinarily I'd jump on the Angry Asian bandwagon, champion diversity, rail against systems of oppression, act like the Feminist Hulk (or his [her?] Buddhist counterpart), and SMASH. But I just can't seem to get riled up about this stuff. I can't help thinking to myself, to what end? What is the point of all of this?

time machine

scott — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 15:53:17 +0000

little help?

scott — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 01:42:04 +0000

I'm looking for some dharma tattoos.

irony award

scott — Sat, 31 Jul 2010 16:52:57 +0000

Today's irony award goes to Mr. Abraham H. Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League.

up

scott — Sat, 31 Jul 2010 00:20:26 +0000

disembodied quote: institutions

scott — Sat, 31 Jul 2010 00:00:39 +0000

"Our habit of treating institutions as second-order elements that "mean" less than such first-order categories as doctrine and belief is not purely a Eurocentric imposition, but has been encouraged in part by the discursive frameworks that East Asian Buddhists have formulated to inspire religious effort. An example is the Buddhist notion of the Two Truths. This conception pits the ultimate truth of buddha nature, which is what the Buddhist must grasp to attain salvation, against the conventional truth that institutions represents (Faure 1991, 18). The Chan religious imagination chose to distinguish the phenomenal realm, where the senses give rise to the illusion of permanence, from the realm of the impermanent and absolute, bracketing the one with the other. Being of the former, institutions are vulnerable to the charge of contributing to the illusion of permanence rather than working to dispel it. Institutions are left to "mean" less than they "are." And yet, institutions — the customs, usages, practices, and organizations that shape the lives of Buddhists — are what provide and perpetuate the very possibility of the Buddhist life, furnishing the rituals, gestures, stories, and training through which people have access to an understanding of the Buddha."

parting shots

scott — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 18:32:19 +0000

Gonna be away from the Internets for a bit. In my absence, may I suggest joining this and reading that? (And contributing to both.)

silently shaking fist

scott — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 18:19:30 +0000

There is a scene in J.D. Salinger's Raise High the Roof Beam Carpenters where the enigmatic Seymour Glass suggests that, instead of delivering the Gettysburg Address, a more appropriate response to the death 50,000 people would have been if Lincoln walked to the podium, silently shook his fist, and sat back down. Which pretty well sums up my feelings this morning after the Johannes Mehserle trial and the subsequent highjacking of an otherwise peaceful rally by anarchists. I've got nothing else to say.

disembodied quote: nonblackness

scott — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 17:00:07 +0000

"The fundamental black/white binary endures, even though the category of whiteness — or we might say more precisely, a category of nonblackness — effectively expands. As before, the black poor remain outside the concept of the American as an "alien race" of "degenerate families." A multicultural middle class may diversify the suburbs and college campuses, but the face of poor, segregated inner cities remains black. For quite some time, many observers have held that money and interracial sex would solve the race problem, and ,indeed, in some cases, they have. Nonetheless, poverty in a dark skin endures as the opposite of whiteness, driven by an age-old social yearning to characterize the poor as permanently other and inherently inferior."

two sentence tuesday: issei buddhists

scott — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 16:00:05 +0000

"American Buddhism began in the mid-to-late-nineteenth century with the transmission of ideology, artifacts, and people: Buddhism, Buddhist art, and Buddhists. These ideas and objects found their way to the Americas as part of transnational exchanges of translated texts or transported statuary made possible by the process of modernity and colonialism."

venn diagram 2

scott — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 15:00:03 +0000

smart people: an allegory

scott — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 15:00:26 +0000

A little while ago, my wife's car died in the parking lot of a video store. It's an older car, a hand-me-down from her grandfather who pretty much drove it to the store and back once a week for a decade. It had been making all sorts of funny noises for a while, so its not starting all of a sudden wasn't particularly surprising. But my wife had just gotten dental surgery and half of her face was numb; she didn't particularly want to deal with calling the tow truck or finding a mechanic to figure out what was wrong with the car. She walked home, and along the way called me. The car became my responsibility.

center, periphery, community

scott — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 21:18:53 +0000

A rather classical way to describe civilization and society is to use a center-periphery model. This is the "all roads lead to Paris" idea wherein Paris is understood to be the cultural, economic, and political center of the nation-state. Anything that happens in the periphery is understood to be happening in relation or reaction to the center, and it is only deemed "high culture" or "important" once it has reached and been accepted by the cultural elites in the center. Otherwise, it remains hidden and obscured in the world of "folk."

disembodied quote 3: flow

scott — Sun, 20 Jun 2010 16:58:11 +0000

Things will go where they're supposed to go if you just let them take their natural course. Despite your best efforts, people are going to be hurt when it's time for them to be hurt. Life is like that. I know I sound like I'm preaching from a podium, but it's about time for you to learn to live like this. You try too hard to make life fit your way of doing things. If you don't want to spend time in an insane asylum, you have to open up a little more and let yourself go with life's natural flow.

i’m number one?

scott — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 20:24:05 +0000

What if the Blogisattvas turn us all into this?

digest: what have i done

scott — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 22:53:40 +0000

One shouldn't mistake a lack of blogging for a lack of productivity. This little Buddhist blogger has had one helluva productive month. Many things are happening. Some, I can't reveal just yet. But here's some stuff that I can.

disembodied quote 2: the cult of the private

scott — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 15:30:18 +0000

"As for the dust and powder of individuality: it resembles nothing so much as Hobbes's war of all against all, in which life for many people has once again become solitary, poor and more than a little nasty."

venn diagram 1

scott — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 15:00:12 +0000

disembodied quote 1: mind

scott — Wed, 26 May 2010 01:59:46 +0000

"But I think it is very useful, and indeed more accurate, to call it 'the mind' instead of 'my mind.'"

another way

scott — Wed, 19 May 2010 02:12:06 +0000

I've been thinking. Which is never good. And I've probably been reading too much stuff over at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. I may have the ol' tin foil hat on too tight. But I also think that the following conversation, that the following set of questions, is worth having.

digest: a retreat into gated communities and private cars

scott — Thu, 13 May 2010 23:33:47 +0000

Here's some stuff going on.

new digs

scott — Sun, 09 May 2010 16:16:28 +0000

Welcome to the latest iteration of the buddha is my dj blog. If you're a long-time reader, you'll no doubt have already noticed that I've moved everything to a new subdirectory which means, sorry, you'll have to update your bookmarks and subscriptions, etc., etc

experienced ommmmers are better at ommmming

scott — Mon, 03 May 2010 22:30:17 +0000

If there's one thing (modern western American whatever) Buddhists love is to make the claim that not only is Buddhism freakin' awesome but we've got the science to prove it. Here, let us show you these monks with electrodes taped to their heads; let's conveniently ignore two millennia of ghost stories and karma theory because we're uncomfortable with stuff that isn't readily explained by science; and, here, check this out — chanting the divine syllable makes you a better person, and we've got the science to prove it!

this is not my last blog post

scott — Mon, 03 May 2010 16:00:38 +0000

This is not my last blog post. But consider this a warning. In the coming months, I am going to be expending more energy on other projects and less energy on long-winded blog posts. Some big things are coming in over the horizon, positively diverting my attention. And as a consequence, this blog will be moving. I'll give y'all fair warning on when you'll need to update your bookmarks.

the eshinni honen connection

scott — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 19:14:20 +0000

Last month, Shin Buddhist scholar Dennis Hirota delivered the Ryukoku Lecture at the Institute of Buddhist Studies. Prof. Hirota is rather well known in both the academic and practitioner communities largely due to his translation work, much of which is used on a near daily basis in North American Shin Buddhist communities.

misquoted

scott — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 16:55:57 +0000

Over the weekend, thanks to the miracle that is the Internets, I found out that I was quoted in the Winnipeg Free Press in an article about a newly opened Buddha Bar in that fair city. Funny, I thought to myself, I don't recall having been interviewed by anyone from the Winnipeg Free Press, or ever having traveled to Winnipeg, let alone to any Buddha Bar. But, there I am. Waxing philosophically about the evils of capitalism and everything that's wrong with a drinking hole named after the founder of my religion.

digest: live show and other stuff

scott — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 00:26:21 +0000

I have absolutely nothing new to say. In point of fact, I have many many old things to say. And some questions, of course, but I don't expect anyone to have any answers.

some dhamma music

scott — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 17:52:58 +0000

Over the weekend (in addition to everything else) I received a "press copy" of a new, compilation CD from a company called More than Sound (that, oddly, has something to do with George Lucas): "Dhamma Gita: music of young practitioners inspired by the Dhamma." While the fellow who sent me the copy didn't say so explicitly, I suspect he sent it to me under the assumption that I'd do what I am currently doing — blog about it. And I do have a couple of things to say about this album. One, I fear, may be more the purview of the Angry Asian Buddhist, but I think that it's nevertheless important to say. So, if you're of the opinion that these are just nut-job, guilty liberal tirades, feel free to skip the later half of this post. If, on the other hand, you've got an open mind to alternative points of views (not to mention music), by all means, read on. But the other thing I want to say about this compilation album is actually about the music which, on the whole, is quite good, Angry Asian-esque asides notwithstanding. So, without further ado, I think I'll start with the good news.

no borders

scott — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 21:33:26 +0000

This past weekend, the Institute of Buddhist Studies hosted a conference on Buddhism in the West called Buddhism without Borders. It was, by most accounts, wildly successful. (I say "the Institute" hosted it, but let's be honest — myself and my good friend Natalie did most of the work organizing it. I sometimes have a hard time accepting compliments and often feel more than a little uncomfortable boasting my own accomplishments, but I think in this case I can be allowed to sing our own praises. This conference was the coolest thing I've ever done as a scholar.) One of the panelists presented a paper about about Buddhism on blogs, a study that focused on issues of identity and race within the popular discourse of Buddhist practice. While her paper was not directly related to this blog, she did mention it. And by mention it I mean that in her accompanying Power Point presentation, she showed a screen shot of this blog and pointed out that it's mine, that's right, me, the same Scott who helped put together this conference. So, whatever illusions (or delusions) I may have harbored about no one ever reading this blog, whatever illusions (or delusions) I may have that no one in my academic community is aware of this pretty shabby looking blog, well, those illusions have been shattered. I think I've been effectively outed. And I wouldn't be surprised if my readership around here didn't just jump by a dozen or two. (Hi there!) How narcissistic is it of me that I've even brought this up? It's completely irrelevant. Like I said, the paper in question really had very little — let's be honest, nothing — to do with this blog or my little blogging hobby. But then again, aren't most blogs at least a little narcissistic? Even if we honestly believe that we're in it for the sharing of knowledge or other high-minded altruistic reasons, we're still interested in contributing our own opinions and perspectives to some particular conversation — here are my ideas, my opinions, me me me, blah blah blah.

parenthood and class

scott — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 19:51:41 +0000

My wife and I have started watching a new show called Parenthood, (very loosely) based on the 1989 movie of the same name. The television version is set in Berkeley — though clearly some alternate reality Berkeley who's had its progressive-liberal claws removed — and it looked like the pilot, at least, was actually filmed here in the Bay Area, so it's local connection was an immediate hook. I find myself wanting to like the show more than I actually do. It's leaning toward being good, but hasn't quite gotten there yet. Sarah Braverman, the Diane Wiest character, played here by former Gilmore Girls mom Lauren Graham, has an interesting story line. She's clearly being written as the plucky, down on your luck, possibly working-class character in juxtaposition to her upper-middle class siblings and parents. Her sister is a high-powered attorney and one of her brothers seems to own his own business. Her other brother (the Tom Hulce character from the film) seems to be a screw-up, but he also lives on a houseboat, has a wealthy girlfriend, and works in a recording studio. Unlike his movie character, I don't see him getting thrown out of a moving car in front of his parent's house any time soon. Sarah, on the other hand, never went to college. She'd been a bartender in Fresno before leaving her alcoholic husband and taking her two teenaged kids with her back to Berkeley where they have to live with her parents while she looks for a new job. In last week's episode, she enrolls her kids in the local high school; but because of some transcript or bureaucratic mix-up, her daughter is being forced to repeat the 10th grade. When the mom finds out, she goes to the principal's office to plead her daughter's case. Now, this show is a mellow-drama, so this scene is full of heavy-handed music and platitudes while the mom bravely holds back tears and the principal wear a stern yet compassionate expression. In one of the subsequent scenes, we see the principal taking the daughter out of her class, ostensibly escorting her to the 11th grade. Mom won.

thoughts on social media

scott — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 01:40:54 +0000

One of my earliest forays into the world of online social media or networking was a site called Tribe. I got involved with Tribe in late 2003 or early 2004, quickly made a lot of online friends that turned into real-world friends, and after a year or two, lost interest in the site, became distracted by other interests, and let my profile collect digital dust. Tribe's social networking model was very different from Facebook's or Twitter's. Whereas the lion's share of what one posts on the later is public (or "public" to the people within your circle of friends), the vast majority of what you could do within Tribe was constrained to "tribes" — discussion-forum-esque groups one could join and engage in conversation with others. Over time, one's personal profile became more elaborate and, like a Facebook profile, they, too, became a locus of activity. But, back when I was active, nearly all activity happened within tribes. And tribes had various levels of openness, from completely private and invitation-only to completely open to everyone on the network. The hey-day of my activity on Tribe was during the 2004 United States presidential election. As you can imagine, there were dozens of tribes dedicated to the topic where people from all over the political spectrum debated the issues, defended their chosen candidates, and attacked the minutia of others' opinions. In this midst of all this debate emerged one fellow who took up an extreme, right-wing position on just about anything. He attracted a lot of attention, both negative and positive, and along with some other conservative friends started other tribes dedicated to their causes and points of view. (One of these folks was particularly fond of what could only be described as low-brow humor. I believe he started a tribe dedicated to "camel toes," for example, a tribe that successfully overlapped a racial slur for people of Middle Eastern descent with with various photos of women's below-the-waist wardrobe malfunctions and was thus both deeply misogynistic and racist.) One of my Tribe-friends was a left-leaning, Stanford graduate student in the sciences. And one day he announced to us in private that the conservative rabble-rouser wasn't a real person. My Stanford friend had made him up, created a false account, created an elaborate back-story for this person, and then went around Tribe starting arguments with people with the express purpose of challenging other liberals to defend and explain their positions more clearly. On the one hand, it was a brilliant ruse. On the other, it exposed one of the fatal flaws and best features of Tribe: anyone could make up an account, a personality, an identity, a whole person completely divorced from reality. In short, a "person" who existed only within the network of Tribe.

digest: shameless self (and other)-promotion

scott — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 20:20:23 +0000

Here's a quick, digest-y post, full of all sorts of shameless self-promotion.

the file of forgotten blog posts

scott — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 19:48:17 +0000

The frequency and quantity of posts here at the buddha is my dj certainly fluctuates over time. But I feel as though I have written considerably less since September than I have in the past. No. Wait. Check that. I've written a ton; what I haven't done is post any of it.

announcement: prapaÃ±ca

scott — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 00:58:47 +0000

So this year I am getting involved in a new project, once the hectic first couple of months of the new year settle down (after seminars, classes, conferences, vacation). It's a project I'm feeling extremely optimistic about, one that touches on a topic near and dear to my heart, and one that I hope will be of value to the larger Buddhist community. Along with the help of some friends, we're launching PrapaÃ±ca, a quarterly, online Buddhist journal featuring both original reporting and opinion pieces on a wide variety of Buddhist topics, but also fiction, poetry, and the arts. The co-founders/editors and I are passionate not only about bringing a wide diversity of Buddhist voices to our future readers, we're also passionate about creating a venue for writers of Buddhist fiction and poetry to showcase their work. The journal is set to go live in June of 2010. I recognize that a more than three-month lag between announcement and launch is a near eternity in Internet time, but I wanted to make this announcement now as a way to solicit contributions. We're taking this project seriously, which means that we want to create something of real value, something of substance, and that means we want to give folks plenty of time to write their hearts out before the official launch. Please check out the submission guidelines here and contact us with any questions, with your ideas, with your feedback, with offers of help. We're all ears! And of course there will be occasional updates leading up to the launch. We've set up a Twitter account and Facebook page for just this reason. Feel free to follow, become a fan, etc., etc., and stay tuned for further announcements.

contexts

scott — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 21:25:54 +0000

I was in a board meeting yesterday for a committee at the GTU (to protect the innocent, I'll leave out the name of said committee) during which one of the members mentioned something about contextual theology. Now, the GTU is by design an interdisciplinary and multi-faith institution, which means that folks routinely drop discipline-specific terms in ways that folks from their same discipline understand while leaving others, like me, sort of scratching our heads. Not that I'm bothered by that; each of us uses language in this contextually specific way. Were I to say "Critical Buddhism" at a meeting of the International Association Buddhist Studies, I'm sure the folks the room would immediately get the reference while, sitting here, decontextualized in this paragraph, it may not be immediately clear to others. But what this person said about contextual theology struck me, so I thought I'd do some quick digging. Unfortunately, there's no Wikipedia page about it (which may mean that it doesn't really exist), and the few articles that did pop up in my one-and-only Google search were pretty specific to a Christian theological context and, as a result, were either over my head or not interesting enough for me to really want to spend the afternoon doing any further research. If I'm going to spend an afternoon doing further research, chances are it's gonna have the word "Buddhism" in it!

a skimpy-looking post

scott — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 01:03:00 +0000

When I am asked what attracted me to Buddhism, one of my stock answers is a story about a community college course I was in and an instructor who told us that the first Noble Truth of Buddhism is that life is suffering. And my response, as an angry, confused, seventeen-year-old ne'er-do-well was, "Hell yeah." It was that sense of existential uncertainty, of pent-up frustration, that attracted me, like a lot of other young men and women for more than half a century, to J.D. Salinger's Catcher in the Rye. And then, over the next decade or two, everything else he published that was still available in print or, in one case, at my university library in microfiche form. J.D. Salinger passed away yesterday at the young age of 91, forty-five years after his last published short story and spending most of his life in "a little cabin somewhere" in New Hampshire, away from "any goddam stupid conversation with anybody."

digest: invisibility, parenting

scott — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 15:00:37 +0000

Some random, but no less important, digest-y thoughts for the waning half of January.

Brit Hume: part two

scott — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 17:30:46 +0000

In my last post on this issue, my overall point was two-fold: (1) there are real differences between Buddhism and Christianity that aren't being discussed in the Brit Hume kerfuffle; and (2) that Brit Hume exposes a deeper religious double-standard in our country that may be the better target of our discontent. In this post, I'd like to talk about a related but separate issue, that is, how the mainstream media represented Buddhists in their response to Brit Hume's comment.

Brit Hume: part one

scott — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 17:00:25 +0000

I've wavered back and forth quite a bit about whether or not I wanted to weigh in on the whole Brit Hume thinks Tiger Woods should be a Christian thing. But I think there are a couple of points in all of this that are worth bringing into the spotlight, so, albeit a little late, here goes. First, some disclaimers. For starters, I think Marcus is right. Our outrage is no doubt better served by protesting actual atrocities committed against Buddhists the world over rather than the vacuous comments of one talking head on a network not generally known for being particularly fair or balanced. Moreover, I think that we're right in spending our energies on real human suffering, such as that in Haiti right now, and that, in the grand schemes of things, Pat Robertson deserves far more ire than Mr. Hume. But I also think that some of the commenters on Marcus' post are, at least partly, also right. This was something of interest to us here in the States, and it is worth talking about to the extent that, to borrow a phrase, media matters (it is the message, after all). So, while I respect the fact that we should all be doing Other Things right now, I'm going to talk about some of the buried messages in this little event, take it as a teaching moment, a way to shed some light on how the media operates, and what it has to tell us about the state of religion and religious discourse in the good ol' U.S. of A.

the problem with now

scott — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 17:18:24 +0000

I hate it when I'm right. Way back in 2005, before anyone thought we'd elect an African American to the highest office in the land, folks were convinced that Hillary Rodham Clinton would the forty-fourth president. And I said then, in a glib, off-hand post, that that was a terrible idea. The reason I thought Hillary Clinton in 2008 was a terrible idea was not because I have anything against the woman. I'm fairly ambivalent about her as a politician, truth be told. The reason I thought it was a terrible idea was actually because I have a fair amount of respect for her. I knew that whoever got elected in 2008 would be inheriting a political and economic mess of gargantuan proportions. I was short on specifics in that post, but I talked about the economic mess, about two wars, about global crises, and, most importantly, how the spin doctors and talking heads in the media are so wrapped up in the Now that they have no sense of history or causality. Americans in general are so consumed with the present that they blithely ignore how it is that we got into this mess in the first place, and they seem to want to pin all their hopes, all their fears, all their blame on whomever happens to be sitting in the Oval Office regardless of who's fault this disaster actually is.

i love oakland

scott — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 22:00:56 +0000

Just after the new year, Jerry Kolber contacted me to ask if I wanted to write a guest post over on the One City blog. I have deeply ambivalent feelings about this. I have ambivalent feelings about this because One City has been criticized by people whose opinions I deeply respect. So, part of me feels like a sell out. On the other hand, I have to respect the fact that the editors of that blog are reaching out to a ne'er-do-well such as myself which suggests that they're willing to entertain alternative viewpoints, an idea I want to support. I wrestled with the piece that I ended up submitting to Mr. Kolber. And I'm not 100% satisfied with it, truth be told. Part of me wanted to write a massive take-down critique of the whole thing, a snarky, sarcastic "everyone's wrong but me" sort of post complaining about my usual irks (privilege, diversity, commercialism, the "Buddhism isn't a religion" crap). But lately I've found myself feeling less irritable. Or, more to the point, I find myself tiring of complaining in those terms about issues that I've been complaining about for over six years in this space. If my readers really want to know why I think Buddhism is a religion, I've covered that territory. And I'm tired of being a critic for the sole purpose of being a critic. There are, at present, other bloggers out there who are better, wittier, and possibly hotter than me. Let them have that lime-light. So, in the end, while I'm not 100% satisfied, with the piece, I've got to keep it in perspective and remember that it's (a) only a blog piece and (b) does fulfill my primary aim, one that I doubt I'll grow tired of any time too soon, i.e., reminding everyone that there really is diversity within the broader (American) Buddhist community, that this is a good and necessary thing, an idea that I'll defend till I'm blue in the face. But in the interest of space (I got the impression from Mr. Kolber that shorter was better) there was something I ultimately cut out of that piece that I really wanted to leave in. I cut it out because it was only tangentially related, not directly and obviously related, to my main point. And every attempt I made to make it more directly related seemed forced. And I loath (my own) forced writing. What I really wanted to include was the following: I love Oakland.

dealing with others

scott — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 02:19:04 +0000

In preparing for a talk I'm giving at the San Jose Buddhist Church Betsuin next week, I'm reviewing the classics, the Kyogyoshinsho, the Tannisho, and so on. And I came across the following passage from the latter:

Supposing that followers of other schools ridicule us by saying that the Name is meant for those of low intelligence and that this teaching is shallow and inferior, we should avoid any dispute and reply: "As we are convinced that the ignorant who are poorly gifted and illiterate like ourselves will be delivered by Faith, for us this is the supreme doctrine, even though it may seem contemptible to those of higher ability. Although other teachings may be superior, we cannot practice them because they are beyond our powers. Since the original intention of all the Buddhas is to free everyone from birth-and-death, we request those of other views not to interfere with us." If we treat them without malice, who then will harm us?

digest: deep fried dharma

scott — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 18:43:46 +0000

As the first official the buddha is my dj post of 2010 (feel free to pronounce it twenty-ten or two-thousand-ten), I give you the following digest post.

I'm not sure which is worse, the stupid things that people say on Fox News or people actually being upset about the stupid things that people say on Fox News. I mean, yes, I agree, Brit Hume's fifteen-second rebuke of Buddhism was both offensive and ignorant. But being surprised and offended by the stupid things that people say on Fox News makes about as much sense as expecting to loose weight while eating deep-fried butter. You know it's not going to end well, no matter how good it tastes. My advice, fellow Buddhists (and left-leaning bloggers everywhere): ignore them. Every time you click that video, Fox News has one more reason to shill patently offensive schlock and boost their ratings.
In self-promotion news, I'll be attending (parts of) this year's BCA National Council Meeting in San Jose at the end of February, specifically for the BCA's Shinran Shonin 750th Memorial Observance. (Remind me at some point to talk more about this important event.) I've been asked, among other things, to do a presentation of Shin Buddhists on the Internets from around the world. If all goes well, I hope to take this information and start up a new web project, something of an online directory of Shin resources. There's a lot out there, and it would be good to help folks sort through it all and better connect with one another. That's the hope, at any rate, and details remain fuzzy, to be sure. But keep your eyes on this one in the weeks and months to come, and I'll let you know how it's coming along.
On that note, and in carrying on my desire to present less-obvious, less Zen-centric Buddhist bloggers, today I'd like to point your attention to OneInchBuddha. Written by Wamae Muriuki, a PhD candidate at the Ohio State University (I'm told by my mother-in-law that it really is the Ohio State), OneInchBuddha hasn't been updated in the last couple of months, but what's there is worth reading. It's more on the academic side, buyer beware, but oftentimes academic stuff is downright necessary. And if more folks show up, maybe we'll see more posts from OneInchBuddha in the year to come.
Planning continues for the Institute's March conference on Buddhism in the West. If you haven't already made your spring plans and want to spend the weekend in beautiful, sunny Berkeley, California, register now. Oh, and apart from the weather, the conference promises to bring together some of the best thinkers on American Buddhism around which would probably be worth it even if the IBS was located in a yurt in Alaska or something.
Rumor has it you may be seeing my rambling shenanigans elsewhere on the Internets in a week or two. I don't wanna tip my hand too much on that one, but I'll pique your curiosity by telling you to look for my by-line in an unexpected place. And while I have your curiosity piqued, look for a more formal, bigger, exciting announcement of Things to Come early February. Along with the help of some friends, something new and exciting is coming to the Internets, and you, dear readers, writers, artists, and ne'er-do-wells, may be playing a role in it.

last post of the year

scott — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 19:16:50 +0000

I had hight hopes. I had hoped to write a grand and sweeping assessment of 2009 (perhaps this whole decade), a look back at the terrifying highs, the dizzying lows. But to hell with it. I don't have time. And, really, I'd rather look ahead, to 2010, to a year for which I have even higher hopes than I do for writing a reflective blog post. In lieu of that, I give you the following paragraph, in full and without (much) commentary. It's from Jeff Wilson's book, Mourning the Unborn Dead. I'm quoting this paragraph because, it seems to me, incredibly appropriate in the context a good number of conversations we've had in this blog (and elsewhere) in 2009. If it's appropriateness to this blog is lost on you, you must be new or weren't really paying attention (which, in some cases, was probably pretty smart!). But I'd also like to point out that, despite this decontextualized paragraph, this book doesn't really have anything to do with the conversations on this blog over the past year, at least not directly. The book is really about a post-pregnancy loss ritual, mizuko kuyo, and how it is being practiced in American Zen Buddhist communities (both the Japanese- but especially the non-Japanese varieties). It's an engaging read, one I recommend (especially the footnotes), and Dr. Wilson is certainly going to be someone to keep an eye on in years to come. So without further ado:

Stories from these communities suggest that acculturation of Buddhism (and perhaps other religions as well) in America is a never completed project, a process that continually slides back and forth along a spectrum rather than one that moves confidently forward from a beginning point called "tradition" toward a destination called "American innovation." One reason for this is that transnational ties continually introduce foreign innovations and practices to American religious communities, even those that settled in the United States prior to the twentieth century. These stories also reveal that Americanization is often the product of ignorance rather than conscious adaptation, and that the Buddhist contribution to rituals and ideas in some Zen communities is rivaled or even bested by influences from psychotherapy, feminism, and other elements of white middle-class American culture. This points to potential weaknesses in our typologies. The "ethnic" in the category "ethnic Buddhism" seems justifiable when it refers to how certain practitioners understand themselves: as Buddhists by ethnicity, rather than by individual belief. But when it becomes a racial signifier — as in "ethnic" versus "white" Buddhism — it breaks down, for how can we allege that Japanese ethnic influences are greater in Japanese-American Zen than European-American ethnic influences in convert Zen? What is whiteness if not yet another ethnicity? Convert Zen is not a return to the Buddhism of Shakyamuni (or Dogen) as some scholars have suggested but yet another flavor of ethnic Buddhism, one created largely by and for Americans of white cultural background.

dear future self

scott — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 20:48:42 +0000

Dear Future Self,

I'm writing to you from the end of 2009. For Christmas this year, someone gave you Michael Chabon's Manhood for Amateurs. I haven't finished reading it, yet, but let me say this up front: I love it. I have a feeling it's something I'll come back to time and again. But, last night, reading a couple of essays about childhood here in the 21st century (a.k.a, The Future), I detected the familiar stench of the bitter old man, just beneath the surface. You may remember the bitter old man. Many years ago now I wrote about him when he popped up in an article on Wired.com. Those there dark days, to be sure. A couple of weeks ago, I thought I saw bitter old man's snarky female cousin in an essay by Barbara Ehrenreich (more on that later). So perhaps I'm just overly sensitive. To be sure, whereas Mr. Chabon (rightfully) laments the loss of what he dubs the wilderness of childhood and the move from sterile, minimalist Lego blocs to recreations of George Lucas' memory, there are real gems in here, too. There is the acknowledgement that not all hope is lost, that children, as they always have, will find new avenues of creativity and imagination; they will transcend the crap of mainstream media.

shin buddhist dharma war

scott — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 18:10:27 +0000

I'd like to make a comment about something I wrote in my last post, something (wait for it...) hyperbolic. In pointing your attention to Prof. Toshikazu Aria's blog, Echo of the Dharma, I made an off-hand remark about his being involved in a sort of "Dharma War" with Josho Adrian Cirlea. I am probably overstating the issue. As far as I can tell, there are (largely academic or scholastic) disagreements among what we may call "modernist" Shin Buddhist thinkers who downplay certain aspects of strict Shin doctrine and up-play the symbolic or psychological or purely spiritual aspects of the tradition. This tendency among modernist Buddhist thinkers is nothing new; David McMahan in his The Making of Buddhist Modernism discusses at length the characteristics of Buddhist modernism, among them the trend of "psychologizing" traditional Buddhist cosmology. Shin modernists will quickly downplay the supposed reality of Amida's Pure Land and cast the experience of birth in said land as a psychological or purely spiritual experience, not a literal one. This is something that a host of Buddhist modernists have done since Anagarika Dhamrapala and D.T. Suzuki at the turn of the last century right on down to, oh, just about every prominent Buddhist who writes for an English-speaking audience today and has had their work published in the so-called mainstream Buddhist press. So, it's not surprising that there would be modernists in the Shin school. And it should not be surprising that where there are modernists there are traditionalists — folks who are more conservative in their beliefs and are reluctant to change or reinterpret centuries-old doctrines, practices or rituals to suit the whims of contemporary practitioners who, no doubt, will be easily distracted by the next shiny thing coming out of Cupertino. Religion, for the traditionalist, is the last bastion of stability in a constantly changing world. So let's not go changing anything.

my awkward summary post

scott — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 00:50:51 +0000

I'd like to switch gears here for a moment, away from all that sardonic snark of earlier this afternoon. (I'm not sure if sardonic is the right word, here. Sure it was mocking, but not really grim. Oh well. Let's let it ride.) The Bottom of Heaven, one of my favorites, routinely posts short summaries of random media or links. I like this idea. It seems to me a good way to deal with something I struggle with; namely, how do I share information with my readers without resorting to the restrictions of 140 characters which, it seems to me, often get lost or go unnoticed? So, without further ado or explanation, I'd like to draw your attention to the following...

adrift on a post-modern sea of relativity and uncertainty

scott — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 23:24:11 +0000

I just wrote, and deleted an exceptionally long and self-reflective post about, among other things, my lack of critical posts over the past few months and a central question of mine of late: why the hell am I blogging? Then I got up, went to get some coffee, and, having returned to the computer, realized that that post was really the kind of thing I should have written for a private journal, were I the kind of person who still kept a private journal. (This may be a subconscious plug that I should start keeping a journal again like I did when I was younger.) And I'm guessing that no one wants to read that. Or, maybe more likely, that I don't know if I want to share that much with you. Nevertheless, there were a couple of things in that post that I think are worth putting out there. But they come with the following disclaimer. In my now deleted post, I wrote at length about how I don't know anything. About how I've come to see the world not in terms of absolutes, of rights and wrongs, but instead as a series of complex and nuanced issues that have no right or wrong answer, and that at the end of the day we're going to have to live with uncertainty, we're going to have to live with inadequate, crappy answers that make one or two people, if not happy, at least less irritable, and leave the rest of us more or less in a bummed out state of resignation. A state of, "Well, I guess that's just how it is. And how it is sort of sucks."

last words

scott — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 16:53:48 +0000

It is now Friday, December 4, 2009. It's been a couple of weeks since I last posted anything, here at the end of a surprisingly quiet autumn for the buddha is my dj. I realize that I've been posting less lately. (And, my god, there's been so much that I could have (should have?) written about!) There are real reasons for the scarcity of posts, to be sure, but rest assured the following: the primary reason I've been posting less is that I've been deeply engaged with some other projects this fall; and you can expect more from these parts in the new year.

on writing

scott — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 20:32:01 +0000

Via the ever-wonderful RMS at the Worst Horse, I have discovered, downloaded, installed, and am now using Ommwriter. As my long-time readers know, I have a complicated relationship with all things marketed as "Zen" or "Buddhist" or in any way a part of the spirituality business to the extent that it rubs my leftist leanings the wrong way, raising my quiet indignation against the system, the market-saturated culture of oppression in which we often find ourselves. But. I digress. I digress because I may be a convert here. The experience of actually using Ommwriter is, to put it bluntly, pretty freakin' cool. I think part of the reason I'm enjoying it is because I was reminded yesterday about an article I read some years ago — one of those articles written by a linguist or a statistician at MIT back when the Internet was still called ARPANET, the kind of paper that gets shuffled from hard drive to hard drive before ending up in some dusty corner of the web to be found by the likes of me. I can't now recall where I found that article, but I do recall that its author claimed that word processing programs are evil. They are evil because they force users to become two fundamentally different types of people simultaneously: typists and typesetters. The art of writing, of typing, is something that requires focus and dedication. And word processing programs, to the extent that they distract you with auto-spelling corrections and troubling you with type face and fonts and margins and so on, get in the way of writing. A good writer, the author suggested, should just write — and only once she's finished, should she worry about Helvetica or Times New Roman, single or double space.

response to a sociopath

scott — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 03:54:38 +0000

I lieu of anything more profound, on a general interest or even, dare I say it, Buddhist topic, and in lieu of a long-winded diatribe about the general hypocrisy and double standard in American media whenever a Muslim, a person of color, a non-Chrisitian — in short, a non-white heterosexual middle-class male — does anything, I offer the following. I've been thinking about the tragedy at Ft. Hood, and I've been actively boycotting the media ever since I heard an interview on NPR — NPR of all places! — of an Army chaplain who happens to be a Muslim. They were interviewing him and asking him asinine questions because another person who also happens to be a Muslim went on a sociopathic shooting spree, as if there's something about being a Muslim that makes one predisposed to being a sociopath or that there's something about being a Muslim that makes you able to relate to all other Muslims. And I found myself thinking, after another sociopath who happens to be a Christian gunned down an abortion doctor earlier this year, did NPR seek out the nearest Christian clergy member and ask similarly inane questions about Christianity? Or did they just assume, rightly, that that one lone sociopath was indeed a sociopath, nothing more and nothing less, who happened to use his religious views as justification for his behavior? It's a fine line. But it's a line worth keeping in our minds. I'd like to call that line: "Sociopathic behavior is bad no matter what; but just because said sociopath happened to belong to marginalized group X does not mean that all members of marginalized group X are sociopaths."

legos and rebirth

scott — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 17:00:10 +0000

Hello all. I have returned from my travels to annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion in the beautiful city of MontrÃ©al, Canada, a little wiser, a little more burdened with books, and a little older (I celebrated a birthday while there). I have very intention of writing a much longer post on some thoughts I've been having in regards to my chosen career path, but those will have to wait. Suffice it to say, there are 69 unread emails in my inbox right now (and not all of them are Facebook notifications!) so I should probably dig myself out of my out-of-office hole first, before I do anything else. But, in lieu of a more formal post, I wanted to share the above XKCD comic with you. The Buddhists in the audience will get the reference almost immediately.

more love

scott — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 18:28:19 +0000

So I'm heading to the annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion on Friday. Apart from that, busy. I've been fairly, thoroughly, busy. I keep having random thoughts about what I'd like to write about, responses to various things that have crossed my desk, so to speak, in regards to the Internets and Buddhism and politics, blah blah blah. But I don't particularly have time for that. Or, to put not to fine a point on it, I don't particularly feel like ranting or commenting. I feel like investing my energies elsewhere. Perhaps all that love from my last post has take hold of me, firmly, and just. won't. let. go. So, in lieu of anything more formal and thoughtful, I'll leave you with this lovely video until my return. It says what I'm feeling much better than I possibly could.

bitter, with a splash of loving-kindness

scott — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 23:30:34 +0000

Via @claudia_m, I came upon this brief bit about Facebook (and promptly posted the article to my Facebook page where a couple of folks commented on it — ah, irony!). The article is provocatively titled "Quit Facebook" and is about the obsessive amount of time we spend constructing our online identities. Next Friday we'll be releasing the second installment of the live podcast. And in this episode, someone in the audience (you know who you are) asks about the stereotypes or assumptions people make about Buddhism that really bug us. When Harry reminded me of this question (I'd completely forgotten about it (they say the mind's the fist thing to go) and Harry's in the process of editing it), I got to thinking about where this question may be coming from. I'm sure I'm projecting my own egotistical shit onto the questioner (sorry about that), but I can't help but wonder if my own online identity prompts people to think I'm little more than a rabble rouser, bitter and angry. Not infrequently, people I consider to be very good friends (in one or two cases, people I've known since I had Flock of Seagulls hair), will call me up or send me an email asking if I'm okay. They're wondering what the backstory is to whatever travesty must have inspired some random thing I Twittered/blogged/Facebooked about. And my usual response is, "what?" I have no idea what they're talking about. Whatever travesty of injustice got me so riled up on the Internets was a fleeting concern, something that really chapped my hide during a lunch break, but now that I'm home, now that I'm with three dimensional people, now that I'm sitting on my sofa listening to music or hanging out with my wife — I'm sorry, what were we talking about?

the economics of academia: an open question

scott — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 20:45:32 +0000

This post is about language and about travel. And this is a post directed more toward my readers who have served time, as it were, in academia, either professionally or as a student. But, of course, it is certainly not limited to those folks. Whatever your background, feel free to chime in! In the days of yore, when Buddhist Studies was just emerging as a distinct discipline in European and American higher education, it was more or less expected that if you wanted to do Buddhist studies work, you were going to have to learn the traditional Buddhist languages: Pali and Sanskrit. Probably some classical Chinese and maybe even Tibetan. Serious east-Asian scholars would need to learn Japanese as well and to the extent that 99.9% of academics back in the day were well-educated white men with a classical education, they were no doubt coming to their fields having learned Latin and French and/or German in secondary school or college. Polyglots ruled the school. To this day, there remains a certain breed of scholar who believes that real Buddhist Studies work requires language study. Real Buddhism is to be found in the texts, in the words of the Buddha, and to read those texts you need to know the language. And these folks will be quick to tell you what a travesty it is that the number of mono-linguists seems to be outpacing the number of polyglots.

the last of me

scott — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 00:08:39 +0000

I had a morning meeting today wherein I was reminded of the importance of my task — blurring the boundaries between "scholar" and "practitioner." Also today, when other meetings I (thought I) had scheduled didn't actually happen, I slacked off and went through over six years of blog posts looking for things that might be controversial. I was thinking about this blog project of mine, my transitional state between grad student and full-time academic, and whether or not this blog may have deleterious effects on the later. I do occasionally look back, of course, at what I've written. But not in such a systematic way. Looking over almost everything I've written in this space all at one, I am left with the following conclusion: I write a lot of really pointless dribble.

theravada, podcasts, kids, and cancer

scott — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 16:11:58 +0000

The most recently released IBS Podcast episode is a lecture by UC Chico's Daniel Veidlinger, and it's quite good. His overall project is to examine how changes in technology effect the way Buddhism is practice, and, in this case, he's looking at the transition from a predominately oral and aural culture to a culture dominated by the written word in ancient South and South East Asia. In other words, the basic question is, what effect did this new invention of writing have on the early Buddhist communities? The answers may surprise you. Or, maybe they won't, but either way the talk is well worth watching. In other, completely unrelated news, my lovely and talented wife, a force of unrelenting good in this world, is doing a 10K run to raise money for St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. For those who don't know, St. Jude's hospitals do research to prevent childhood cancer and other catastrophic diseases. So, you know, also damn good work but of a different sort than historical/textual scholarship.

thoughts on teaching

scott — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 19:14:35 +0000

So a few weeks ago I tried writing a post about teaching. We're about half way through the fall semester right now which means that teaching is the one thing that's occupying most of my time. But what I tried to write didn't come out right, so I threw it in the old File of Forgotten Blog Posts that seems to be rapidly filling up my hard drive. I thought I'd revisit the issue because two of my favorite blogs, Angry Asian Buddhist and Enlightenment Ward, both posted commentary about a recent Brad Warner post over on Hardcore Zen. It seems everyone's favorite punk rock Zen master has closed the comments down on his blog, and in the process he's added to a litany of critiques about the value of the Internet in the practice of Buddhism.

news and updates galore

scott — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 00:24:02 +0000

First and foremost, my dear readers, it is the second Friday of the month which means you're all being treated to a new episode of the DharmaRealm podcast. And not just any new episode — but the first episode recorded before a live studio audience! Actually pulling this event off was pretty rewarding, I gotta say. Between you and me, we kind of threw it all together without much foresight (a consequence of a more-than-insanely-busy late summer, early autumn). Harry and I learned a lot from the experience, though and are looking forward to recording more stuff with an audience. And next time we'll do it on a Saturday so more people can attend (and maybe I'll look into live-streaming — but don't hold your breath!). Apart from all that behind-the-scenes stuff, the content of this episode is, in my humble option, actually quite good! We were inspired by a question about the nature of the Pure Land, and to the extent this is the kind of question us Shin Buddhists get asked a lot, it was good to hash out our ideas. Harry's perspective, that the idea of whether or not the Pure Land is really real and how that forces us to question the reality of our mundane world, is something worth considering. Needless to say, he blew my mind once or twice.

thoughts on service

scott — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 00:38:12 +0000

Shortly after I posted my last entry, wherein I talked about the Buddha's compassion embracing everyone without distinction, I received an email forwarded to me from my lovely and talented wife. A friend of ours' daughter recently married, and her husband is now serving in the Army Reseve. In point of fact, he is right now at boot camp somewhere in the South. Without revealing too many personal details, he is not currently a U.S. citizen. Turns out that one way to fast-track your citizenship is to join the Army Reserve. (Add that to my list of things I'd never thought about and was surprised to learn.) The gist of the email was to ask folks to send him letters, postcards, care packages. Something about being in boot camp means not having regular access to the Internet or email. And something about being a newlywed far from home means missing your family.

buddha's wish

scott — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 16:50:59 +0000

Back in August, I took a too-short trip to New York. On the plane, I had a copy of The Buddha's Wish for the World to keep me company (and only now do I have the time to write about it). It's a new book written by the Monshu Koshin Ohtani. "Monshu" is usually translated as "abbot," in this case, the abbot of the Nishi Hongwanji, the head temple of the denomination of Shin Buddhism under which the Buddhist Churches of America falls. So, in a sense, he's the head guy of our denomination. But "abbot," of course, is a lousy word that does not quite capture the nuanced nature of this inherited position or its responsibilities both symbolic and administrative. Be that as it may, the Monshu has written a cogent and accessible account of Shin Buddhism. The recurring theme is all about heightening our awareness of our inherent interconnectedness to the whole of the universe and, of course, gratitude. On the one hand, it's a series of reflections on the spiritual path and the Buddha Dharma. And it's filled with little bits of wisdom such as "If you never question what you are doing, the process of spiritual rebirth cannot begin."

Bat Nha Monastery (again)

scott — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 21:13:47 +0000

Early this morning, from a variety of places, I found out about Bat Nha Monastery in Vietnam which is, at present, the subject of some sort of oppression from either the government or local population or both. What's happening on the ground, in Vietnam, is obviously a little outside my area of expertise, I will freely admit. Regardless of what I know, don't know, or think I know about Vietnamese Buddhism or the various organizations under Thich Nhat Hanh's umbrella, it seems pretty clear to me that monks and nuns being forced from their monastery is an event that should give us pause, that we should take notice. I decided to write something, very briefly, as a way of alerting people to what's happening in the hopes that they would take the ball and run with it however the chose, whatever their prerogative. I wasn't planning on taking a particularly strong stand, one way or the other, because, like I said, this isn't my area of expertise. But, then again, knowledge is power.

bat nha monastery

scott — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 17:02:23 +0000

This is what I get when I post first thing in the morning before checking the Interwebs. Whereas that silly little comic may be noteworthy, it's pretty clear the big story on the Buddhist web today is Vietnam. This is a breaking story, but it seems to be a long-time coming. From what I can tell (and forgive me if I've gotten facts wrong), the government was prepared to evict monks and nuns from Bat Nha Monastery (Prajna Monastery) on September 2. That deadline passed but over the past twenty-four hours, a mob has descended on the monastery and has used violent force to evict its resident monks and nuns. Arun has posted a series of videos on his Angry Asian Buddhist blog. Help spread the word.

non sequitur

scott — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 15:40:08 +0000

expanding my horizons

scott — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 00:51:57 +0000

Star Wars Episode I pretty much sucked. I think we can all agree on that. But there was a throw-away line by Qui-Gon Jinn that went, "your focus determines your reality." I think there's a bit of truth in that. I've been thinking lately about our little corner of the Buddhist blogosphere. I've been reflecting on how, very often, we comment on one another's blogs, how we write posts in reaction to posts on other blogs, endless chains of back-and-forth criticism. If you follow a chain of links from my blog to, say, Dharma Folk, to somewhere else, I wouldn't be surprised if you didn't end up back here pretty quick. That's what I mean about our little corner of the Buddhist blogosphere.

live show

scott — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 16:00:27 +0000

In case you haven't heard, Harry and I are going to be doing a live recording of the DharmaRealm podcast at the Jodo Shinshu Center in Berkeley on October 2, at 5 p.m.

large-scale systems of poison

scott — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 00:19:27 +0000

[Engaged Buddhist social theory] holds that the traditional "three poisons" — greet, anger, and ignorance — do not apply only to individuals; these behavior patterns must also be analyzed and combatted as large-scale social and economic forces.

— Kenneth Kraft, "Looking Ahead," from Engaged Buddhism in the West I've been thinking a lot lately about engaged Buddhism not only in the more obvious, social justice, Buddhist Peace Fellowship sense of the term, but also in the more everyday sense of remaining engaged with the world outside the hondo, temple, or off the cushion. I think I often take for granted that my continual harping on social justice issues around these parts is an expression of engagement. Reading the article quoted above just now, though, some explicit connection was made in my brain.

end of summer

scott — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 16:00:32 +0000

We got some weird weather in these parts in September. September in the Bay Area is usually a late summer, dry and hot. Instead, we got thunder storms. A somewhat fitting end for a summer of contentious, Buddhist blogging about the politics of race and representation. Over the last couple of days, I have tried to write a blog post about these issues, some sort of summary post, or some sort of recap of the issues, or even a response to some of the more slanderous things that been said out there. But I can't seem to get the right tone, get my thoughts in order. I keep getting distracted.

hiatus

scott — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 01:45:25 +0000

I'm exiling myself from the Internets until further notice while I take care of some very pressing matters out here in that funny place called "the real world." Perhaps you've heard of it? It's beautiful. In the mean time, read this surprisingly pertinent article. Or watch Pres. Obama indoctrinate his socialist agenda to schoolchildren. (If socialism is all about staying in school and working hard to make a better life for you and your family — sign. me. up.) But, above all, be good to each other. Don't forget that precept about refraining from false and malicious speech.

definitions

scott — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 16:09:10 +0000

This post has been updated.

This much I know. No one likes their identity to be defined or described by a third party, particularly when that third party is an anonymous total stranger. No one likes to be labeled or defined or described by someone else; and when they are, they're understandably upset by it. Here's a couple more things I know. I have absolutely no problem, in principle, with white folks "remaking" Buddhism to suit their particular cultural needs. I have no problem, in principle, with Buddhist teachers reinterpreting Buddhist doctrines or practices to better serve the needs of some group of practitioners, regardless of ethnicity or cultural background. (I say "in principle" because the Buddhist apologist in me has concerns about some of these changes, but that's beside the point. Or, rather, beside the point of this particular post.)

the buddha at the met

scott — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 18:05:10 +0000

socialism and racism

scott — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 18:57:46 +0000

One of my favorite moments from last year's presidential campaign was when Former Secretary of State Colin Powell endorsed Barack Obama. Not because I particularly cared who Mr. Powell thought we should vote for, and not because I agree with the man or thought his endorsement, that late in the game, was really going to change anything. What I liked about that moment was what he had to say about the Tin-Foil Hat Brigade's claims that Mr. Obama was a Muslim. To which Mr. Powell said, "So what?" "Is there something wrong with some seven-year-old Muslim-American kid believing that he or she could be president?" And I've been having the same reaction lately in this health care debate as the Tin-Foil Hat Brigade marches to town halls to scream about Pres. Obama being a socialist. I had that same reaction, thinking to myself, if Pres. Obama's "socialism" is little more than the type of health care enjoyed by most of Northern Europe and Canada, who cares?

coming out again

scott — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 02:10:46 +0000

Earlier this summer, I started a little research project based on this post. I asked folks to submit their own coming to Buddhism stories. While the project is still on-going, I wanted to report some initial thoughts as well as where I'm thinking of heading with it. First and foremost, an update and hearty thank you! I received a number of responses from my initial post from Buddhists who had either converted or had rediscovered a forgotten family tradition. Much thanks to everyone who contacted me; you're willingness to share your experiences, I believe, will go a long way in helping us understand the nature of the American Buddhist landscape.

compassionate health care

scott — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 23:30:25 +0000

Ethan Nichtern wrote a compelling, thoughtful, and all-around lovely post over on the Huffington Post about the current health care debate, Whole Foods, and (as is his m.o.) interdependence. It reminded me of some political commentator I read in the paper the other week. (Can't recall now where or who; you'll just have to take my word for it.) He mentioned that one of the reasons that the Democrats and Pres. Obama may be loosing the fight over health care is that they're not telling people "what's in it for them"; that people are worried about losing coverage they already have and can't see what benefit they have in covering the millions of uninsured people in this country. I don't know the merits of this claim. That is, I don't know if that's really true or not, that health care reform is going to fail because of the "message" of the DNC and its spin doctors. It seems pretty obvious to me that if health care fails it will be because the Tin Foil Hat Brigade was loud enough to scare anyone in Congress who might have stood their ground into giving up on the whole thing, as if those in the Tin Foil Hat Brigade are the only ones whose votes matter. But that's beside the point.

new digs

scott — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 17:54:28 +0000

I've been mulling over the design of this blog for a few weeks now, maybe even months. Part of the reason is that this site is something of my hobby, so tinkering is in order. But over the last couple of weeks, thinking more about the "big picture" issues of my life, work, career, future, whatever — well, sometimes it helps to rearrange the furniture. To whit. Welcome to the fourth incarnation of the buddha is my dj. I wanted to maintain the simple design that highlights the writing (it is a blog after all); but I also wanted to highlight some of my many projects — the podcast, the Buddhaworld directory, academic stuff — stuff that gets lost in the shuffle of a traditional blog where only the most recent posts show up on the front page.

editors and producers

scott — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 18:46:14 +0000

It started with a short bit I read (via Loden Jinpa) about the demise of publishers due to the rise of e-book readers. It suggests that in five year's time, Amazon, Apple, whomever, will cut out the "middle-man" of traditional publishers and work with authors directly to deliver content to our devices of choice. It really is a short bit, and I didn't have time this week to read the article it's referencing. And, let's be honest, this is an an area of expertise that's a little far-afield for me. (Like, for example, the article suggests that the iTunes Music Store is circumventing music labels. That's not actually true, is it?) Nevertheless, it raises some interesting questions for me.

gonzo scholarship

scott — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 15:59:37 +0000

I am having something of a crisis of faith around here. I recently received some harsh but appropriate criticism of this pretty shabby looking blog in a private communique. That coupled with the increase in traffic to the site along with some other conversations I've had in comments and elsewhere have made me painfully aware of the fact that I can no longer blunder my way through this blog as if no one is watching. Because the fact of the matter is, people are.

part three: work to be done

scott — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 19:00:56 +0000

So there are problems. There really is discrimination, poverty, sexism, and homophobia in this country, no matter how much we would like to believe that these things are nothing more than ephemeral prapaÃ±ca, illusory delusions of the unenlightened. The fact that they are real means that there is suffering out there, that people cope in a variety of ways. Some of us write exceedingly long blog posts about it. And this one attempts to answer the question of why you should care. There are those who wish this conversation would go away, who staunchly claim that "race is a construct" and that we, especially as Buddhists, should be "better than that." I want to address that point of view. I want to answer the question of why I think that having this conversation is important — for Buddhists, for Buddhists of a certain political persuasion, and for people in general.