For the past eight days, my wife Cathy and I have been rushing – or better, have been gently rushed – around the peninsula of South Korea as part of a project aimed at promoting a more fruitful dialogue between Buddhists and Christians. The seed of this venture was planted, and then nurtured, by my [...]
Posts under ‘Buddhism’
What is the “Something” that does not die?
Every day, the Tibetan school of Buddhism that I practice sends a “Glimpse of the Day” – a word from Buddha, you might say. The Glimpse for Oct. 14 deals with death – with the big question of what happens when I die: The fear that impermanence awakens in us, that nothing is real and [...]
Where the Heck Am I?
In a deep sense, that may be considered the key religious question: not so much, “Who am I?” but “Where am I?” The first question asks about the very nature of the self. The second seeks to understand the positioning of the self, suspecting that if we know where we fit in, or what we [...]
Niebuhr and Buddha – and Obama
With this blog, I’m jumping into water over my head. I may need someone to rescue me, or set me straight. I want to say something about Reinhold Niebuhr and Walter Rauschenbusch (about whom I am in no way specialized, whereas two of my colleagues here at Union, Jim Cone and Gary Dorrien, are) and [...]
A Buddhist-Christian Take on the Financial Crisis II
“If you want to find the causes of the financial crisis that we are in, and if you want to come up with solutions for it, you’re going to have to deal with GREED.” That was the opening Buddhist contribution to our conference here in Chiang Mai, Thailand on Buddhist-Christian dialogue about the global economic [...]
A Buddhist-Christian Take on the Financial Crisis
I’m here in Chiang-Mai, Thailand, at Payap University for a rather extraordinary – some would say strange – gathering. We are a group of some 30 Buddhist and Christian scholars, leaders, and activists from around the world (mostly Asian; I’m one of two Americans). We’ve come together to talk about the financial tsunami that moved [...]