Ezra Klein interviews the authors of the book, How Democracy Dies. https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/how-democracies-die/id1081584611?i=1000400956112&mt=2 “How Democracies Dies” comes at exactly the right moment. We’re already awash in public indignation — what we desperately need is a sober, dispassionate look at the current state of affairs. Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, two of the most respected scholars in the… Read More Ezra Klein: How Democracy Dies

AP finds mass graves, latest evidence of Rohingya genocide in Myanmar AP February 1, 2018, 2:52 AM Last Updated Feb 1, 2018 6:39 AM EST BALUKHALI REFUGEE CAMP, Bangladesh — The faces of the men half-buried in the mass graves had been burned away by acid or blasted by bullets. Noor Kadir finally recognized his… Read More Five Mass Graves Evidence of Rohingya Genocide

The Power of Peer-Pressure:  Soft Authoritarianism in Buddhism The theme of ‘awakening’ in The Who’s rock opera Tommy needs to be explored further as an allegory for ‘awakening’ religions in the West. Tommy is a deaf-mute boy who ‘awakens’ through a series of violent experiences, and then tries to share with others his path to enlightenment,… Read More We’re Not Gonna Take It

This is the first of a new podcast I am producing called Meta Buddhist Inquiry. The podcast is actually a series of ‘guided meditations’ or contemplations on what I call ‘the Path of Inquiry.’  The Path of Inquiry is a simple but bold method of turning everything you think you know (or don’t know) about… Read More MBI: No Final Answers

Dear Readers: I posted my first article on this blog on June 10, 2014. This blog has been through as many transformations as I have. Some of you may notice that I have changed the registered domain name of Engage! to http://www.engagedharma.net. This change was a long time coming and I put it off for two… Read More Engagedharma.net

The Broken Buddha; Critical Reflections on Theravada and a Plea for a New Buddhism, by S. Dhammika http://www.buddhistische-gesellschaft-berlin.de/downloads/brokenbuddhanew.pdf This essay was written by S. Dhammika in 2001, published in 2004 in the Maha Bodhi Society journal. The author is an Australian Buddhist monk who reflected on his 25 years as an ordained monk, practicing in… Read More The Broken Buddha