I spent the weekend learning about B.R. Ambedkar. What a brilliant man and powerful advocate for social justice for the Untouchables of India, for women, for labour, and the “depressed classes” the world over. I read his treatise “The Annihilation of Caste” [which I downloaded from Verso Books for less than $3], with commentary by Arundhati… Read More Dalit Buddhist Revolution: Dr. B. R. Ambedkar, We Salute You
Noah Levine’s Engaged Buddhism: On Meeting War with Transformation; the war within and collective wars.
This is brutal and tragic and has to stop: Research done by San Francisco State University’s Family Acceptance Project, which studies and works to prevent health and mentalhealth risks facing LGBT youth, empirically confirms what common sense would imply to be true: Highly religious parents are significantly more likely than their less-religious counterparts to reject… Read More Forty Percent of US Homeless Youth Are Gay
As a trans-queer Buddhist, I find that I must walk the path of the outcaste, the radical faerie, the siddha. I practice on the fringes of sangha, always on the margins, never at the core. Siddha practice in liminal, contested and sometimes dangerous spaces with fellow outcastes. The ancient Buddhist siddhas were often monastics who revolted against… Read More A Lone Buddhist Manifesto
Her last words were: “Remember me as a revolutionary communist.” By hir wife, Minnie Bruce Pratt. Leslie Feinberg, who identified as an anti-racist white, working-class, secular Jewish, transgender, lesbian, female, revolutionary communist, died on November 15. She succumbed to complications from multiple tick-borne co-infections, including Lyme disease, babeisiosis, and protomyxzoa rheumatica, after decades of illness.… Read More Remembering Leslie Feinberg, Revolutionary Communist
Tricycle: How do you account for Buddhist monasticism, at least as you experienced it, as having evolved in such a uninspiring way? Sangharakshita: Initially, the Buddha’s teachings had to be preserved through memorization and oral repetition. That was more easily accomplished by full-timers. So the monks inevitably gained a sort of monopoly. The original Buddhism was a… Read More Sangharakshita: Anti-establishment Buddhism
[Developing story: I will be expanding on this article over the next little while, eventually to become part of a book on tantric Buddhism as engaged practice.] Danielle Levitt, photographer, shot the photos of the Radical Faeries of NYC. Go to Daniell’s website below to see a video of the faeries he photographed. http://www.daniellelevitt.com/galleries/27-radical_faeries_nyc Definitively… Read More Radical Faeries: Modern Day Siddhas
