djbuddha

Category: Notes

  • Unconnected updates

    Several things, unconnected to one another. It’s been well over a month since I posted something. The blog’s been on my mind. I am interested in fulfilling my desires from the beginning of the year to write more and write more often. But the last few months have been unexpectedly challenging. Full. Full is a…

  • The book: the Making of American Buddhism

    So I wrote a book. A book about Japanese American Buddhists in the 1950s & their possibility-making labor that helped make American Buddhism a thing. I came up with a title that’s exceedingly clever. And that title’s been nixed by my editor. A thread 🧵 and a plea for help 1/ — scott mitchell (@djbuddha)…

  • bookshop

    I am fairly convinced that Amazon is, or will become, Buy-n-Large. When Wall-e first came out, my sense was that the filmmakers were not-so-subtly critiquing big-box chains like Walmart. But, let’s be honest. If the future were anything like that movie (and to be clear, it wouldn’t be, because if there was no ongoing photosynthesis…

  • the ride

    the ride

    I have officially signed up to participate in the AIDS LifeCycle ride from San Francisco to Los Angeles in June 2023. Participating requires me to raise at least $3500. And one of these things they tell you to do is to let people know why you’re riding, what the ride and the cause means to you.…

  • Kisa Gotami

    Kisa Gotami

    One of my favorite contributors to the Berkeley Bussei is Hiroshi Kashiwagi. I don’t talk about him nearly enough in The Book, but only because I don’t talk about anyone nearly enough. (Turned out to be not that kind of book, but that’s a different story.) But lucky for us, I can talk about him…

  • Everything is awful

    Everything is awful

    Everything is awful. Here are some things that aren’t. For starters, here are my cats. It’s my unbiased opinion that there still are not enough cat pictures on the internet. We have yet to reach peak cat-picture internet. So here is my contribution. I want to point out that the black-and-white, Beezus, is the newer…

  • The Book: Mid-Century Modern Buddhism

    The Book: Mid-Century Modern Buddhism

    As I’ve hinted at in several posts over the last six months, I wrote a book. (If anyone can find that version of the “this is fine” dog meme but he’s saying “I wrote a book,” please drop a link in the comments.) And I’ve promised more details. So, here they are. I wrote a…

  • Some thoughts on social media

    [update: given the ongoing train wreck that is the bird site under its new management, I’ve updated my “how I use social media” post.] [update number 2: it’s a slow-sinking ship to be sure; regardless I seem to have fallen out of the social media habit so here’s another update post.] Over the past several…

  • Dispatch from Hawai’i (Oahu actually)

    Dispatch from Hawai’i (Oahu actually)

    Some brief reflections on my time so far in Hawai’i as the 48th annual Buddhist Studies Center Summer Session speaker: I am learning so much. Being in another part of the world, talking to real live three-dimensional people, engaging in conversation — this is all good stuff. The most important thing I am learning —…

  • Summer plans

    Summer plans

    I’m honored to be the invited speaker for this year’s Summer Session at the Buddhist Study Center in Honolulu. The Center was founded in 1972 when Rev. Kanmo Imamura was bishop of the Honpa Hongwanji Mission of Hawai’i. This is the 48th year in a row they’ve hosted a Summer Session, and the first one…