In the 1990s the American Zen teacher Bernie Glassman ditched traditional forms of practice and plunged into the poor, black community that surrounded his Center in Yonkers, New York. In 1997 I travelled there to witness this remarkable experiment in Buddhist social...
Mindfulness based approaches use Buddhist methods to address psychological difficulties. But how do they interpret Buddhist practice and how do they adapt it to the needs and problems of modern society? In the last post I described some tendencies in our culture that...
Buddhists are often wary of secular mindfulness training. But Mindfulness Based Approaches are a meeting ground between meditation and modern psychology and we can learn about the psychological issues people face. (1 of two posts) In my last post I said why I think...
We’re in the middle of the Mindfulness Boom as Buddhist-derived meditation practices enter the cultural mainstream. But is this the Dharma touching and transforming western society, or is Buddhism being turned into a self-help technique and a consumer product? Its...
It’s 50 years since Buddhist teachers started arriving in the west in the early 60s and Buddhism crash-landed into the counterculture. So what have we learned about western Buddhism? This piece appeared in The Guardian (Saturday 17 March 2012). These thoughts...
In my last post I wrote about current issues within the New Kadampa Tradition (NKT). As promised, to fill out my attitude to the NKT I am posting an article I wrote in 1996 in the second issue of Dharma Life magazine, just as the dispute over Dorje Shugden was...
