Pilgrimages to sacred Buddhist sites led by experienced Dharma teachers. Includes daily teachings and group meditation sessions. A local English–speaking guide accompanies and assists.
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Mind On-Line: The First Noble Truth of Cyberspace
In a course I teach at MIT on democracy and the Internet, we were talking about the social impact of migrations in cyberspace (i.e., the capacity to move freely into networks and services that had previously existed as unconnected, self-contained islands). For example, America Online (AOL) had been a self-contained cyberspace continent whose users were confined within its borders. However, with the immense growth in popularity of the Internet, service providers have hastily constructed bridges… More » -
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Beyond Rangoon
Burma is, in its way, a kind of shadow Tibet, Tibet without the glamour or mystique, as devoutly Buddhist a country as the land of 6,000 monasteries to the north. The charms of its pre-modern culture have been preserved from the modern world by a policy of inwardness. Its people have a good nature and gentle strength that instantly convert every visitor to their cause. And for thirty years now, it has been suffering a… More » -
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The Science of Enlightenment
My introduction to Tibetan psychotherapy (lojong) occurred during an encounter with the late Serkhong Rinpoche, His Holiness the Dalai Lama's philosophy tutor. Serkhong's brow wrinkled up in a smile that made him seem like a giant, red-faced Yoda, the gnome-like teacher in The Empire Strikes Back. When I brought him home to meet my family, the Rinpoche was visibly moved upon meeting my mother, who greeted us at the door. When he lifted her outstretched hand up to his cheek, tears filled his eyes as if she were a long-lost child. For years I’d been inspired by the Buddhist teaching of recognizing every living thing as kin, but what had seemed a great idea suddenly hit home as a profound way of being. More » -
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The H Word
In 1987, the Zen Buddhist Temple of Ann Arbor, Michigan, sponsored a conference on “World Buddhism in America.” The title was meant to convey the fact that representatives from various Buddhist traditions had gathered to talk about the current problems and prospects for their respective traditions in the United States. There were representatives from the Buddhist Churches of America, the Friends of the Western Buddhist Order, and the Vajradhatu Buddhist Church, in addition to various… More » -
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On The Academy: Buddhism(s)?
Everybody knows there is really no such thing as Hinduism. The name isderived from an ancient word for sea,“sindhu,”used also for the Indus River. Persians living to the west of the Indus modified it to“hind,”and used it to refer to the land of the Indus valley. Eventually, Muslims used hindu to refer to the native peoples of South Asia. It was not a term that "Hindus," however, used to refer to… More » -
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GenNext: Reborn in the U.S.A.
Recently I was sitting in a musty old church in Cambridge, Massachusetts, waiting for Jack Kornfield to arrive for an evening dharma talk. As I looked out over the packed pews, I surveyed the sea of graying hairs and found only a handful of young adults. Where were the rising tides of GenNext Buddhists? I had the uncanny feeling of sitting with three hundred versions of my parents: middleaged Buddhist practitioners. And I had to ask myself, When the baby-boom Buddhists are meditating in their wheelchairs, will there be anyone left to be my dharma teacher? Since then, I’ve been wondering where I, a 23-year-old raised for eight years in a small Zen community, fit into the grand scheme of Western Buddhism. Reflecting on the counter-culture my parents adopted in the early seventies, what am I inheriting from them and how is Buddhism in America changing in my generation? More »
