My altar is complete. I brought back my Kuan Yin to Halifax, which I bought about 20 years ago, in downtown Northampton, MA. [This photo does not do her justice; she is a beautiful matte black porcelain.] At the time I wasn’t a Buddhist, didn’t know the first thing about it. All I knew was… Read More Kuan Yin: My Female Buddha

Funny, it always starts this way: Buddhism promoted as a non-religious “science of mind”: “The organization consists of numerous urban ‘study and practice centres’ and a few rural ‘retreat centres’. It is present in 41 countries worldwide, mainly in Western Europe, the United States, Canada and Australia. Its mission is to make ‘the Buddha’s teachings’… Read More When the Iron Bird Crashes: Tibetan Buddhism in the West and “Idiot Devotion”

Shaun, Are those sanghas in Halifax of Ponlop (which it seems you are most familiar with, along with “Shambhala”), Dzigar Kongtrul, maybe Dzongsar Khyentse (and what about Khandro–does she have group there? She’s a real spitfire!)–all of them very respectful and appreciative of what Trungpa Rinpoche had done in the West–as far gone as the… Read More When the Iron Bird Crashes: Tibetan Buddhism in the West and “Idiot Devotion” Pt. 2

The following are excerpts from an introduction to the article, “CRITICAL THINKING, CREATIVITY & THE PROBLEM WITH BELIEFS: THE NKT, RIGPA AND SGI” by Matthew O’Connell, on the Post-Traditional Buddhism blog. I encourage you to go to Matthew’s blog and read the full article. *   *   *   *   *   *  … Read More CRITICAL THINKING, CREATIVITY & THE PROBLEM WITH BELIEFS by Matthew O’Connell

The X-Files: Dharma study from an outsider perspective. X-Post-Non-Buddhism. This is a thing that is happening in Halifax.

X- POST-NON Buddhism—welcome to the aporetic future of ancoric loss and aporetic dissonance in Buddhist thought. There is an explosion (pun) of great writing by multiple authors on post-traditional Buddhism at NON + X http://www.nonplusx.com Consult the nonbuddhist.com wiki of non-buddhist terms for definitions of new and puzzling words in the x-post-non-buddhist literature. Here are a… Read More X-Post-Non: Buddhism from an Outsider Perspective

“To see the truth is the most important [thing]; morality, discipline, even meditation, even so called meditation as precious as it sounds, if your meditation is not making you see the truth, you are basically rotting your butt. You understand? Sitting on something. It’s useless. Okay? Maybe it’s going to relax you a little bit, it may sort… Read More Dzongsar: Meditation is butt rot if you don’t see the truth