Ok, let’s take on what might be considered a legitimate critique: isn’t Post-Buddhism (as I’ve described it so far) just “Hipster Buddhism”? Well folks, Hipsterism is a style, a fashion identity, a pattern of conspicuous consumption.  So here’s why post-Buddhism isn’t “hipster Buddhism”: Post-Buddhism involves no conspicuous consumption that identifies me as a hipster or a Buddhist or… Read More Post-Buddhism: Hipster Buddhism?

Post-Buddhism needs some new sutras to illuminate the experience of the dharma in the 21st century. When I want to awaken with a start to the truths of my sensory experience, deconstruct my mental environment, feel the sharp political edges of my everyday life, I read Adbusters. I sometimes wish all the brilliant X-Post-Non-Un Buddhists would get together… Read More Post-Buddhism: The Adbusters Sutra

One  non-Buddhist writer (I can’t remember who) described the Buddha as “a pre-modern post-modernist.” Buddha’s method of inquiry was one of relentless deconstruction. His teachings deconstruct experience, physical and mental phenomena, religious doctrine, philosophical propositions, making the Buddha a consummate post-modernist. One of the key features of post-modernism is the assertion that there is no grand narrative that is the authoritative interpretation… Read More Post-Buddhism: No Grand Narrative

Buddhists teachers will often say that Buddhism is not a religion. But when you enter a temple or join a sangha, what you are confronted with is something that looks and feels very much like a religion. It’s every bit as dogmatic and oppressive as any religion, plagued by rigid narrow-mindedness, fraught with power trips and… Read More Post-Buddhism: No Religion