People usually go on with their everyday activities without God fear until they reach up in a situation where nothing else other than prayer can ….

Rep. Hank Johnson, a U.S. Congressman from Georgia and long-time member of Soka Gakkai International (SGI), is profiled by Bob Keefe in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. In "Hank Johnson Won’t Back…

Last year I asked readers what they did about Christmas — ignore? go all out? minimalize? — and got some interesting answers. So I’ll ask again — what do you…

From Barbara’s Buddhism Blog on About.com

Via James Shaheen at Tricycle blog –Vern Barnet, a Unitarian Universalist minister, writes a column for the Kansas City Star, and his most recent work fits nicely with my earlier post, “Wherever You Go, There You Are.” In “Focusing on Our Relationships,” the Rev. Barnet pulls together the Buddhist teaching of anatta and neuroscience, and concludes,

The Buddha’s point was not to deny the conventional self, the model, but not to be deceived by it or enslaved to it.

Rather than a narcissistic and futile focus on self-esteem, we can put our attention on relationships. We can be freed of the trouble to prove we are worthy by acquiring wealth, power or prestige. Unfettered by the model’s limits, in whatever circumstance we find ourselves, we can simply do the right thing.

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Related articles about Buddhism

• Impossible Illumination (timesunion.com)
• The Art of Worship (timesunion.com)
• Stretched Finances Has Missouri Taxing Yoga (blogs.wsj.com)

Via the Worst Horse, we learn that Michael Roach — someone I have crabbed about in the past — has a new book out called Karmic Management — What Goes…

In the current issue of Tricycle, Pema Chodron explains that developing compassion for others requires “unlimited friendliness” toward ourselves.  “When we wish to benefit others, we start by developing warmth…

Image by jpellgen via Flickr

Barbara O’ Brien discusses Buddhism for Beginners on her Barbara’s Buddhism Blog

John Sojun Godfrey spent eight years living as a monk in Daitoku-ji, a Rinzai Zen monastery in Kyoto. He says he spent most of that time in silence. There were few discussions of philosophy and doctrine within the monastery, he said.

“I think the assumption is that if you are interested enough in Buddhism to become a monk that you are going to do this (learn the philosophy) anyway,” he said. “I also really feel that they (other monks) don’t think it’s important. I don’t feel that it is necessary to be able to explain what we are doing in able to do it

I understand that in Japan, people who want to learn Zen practice are given little direction except how to sit zazen. I once read an autobiography by a Japanese Zen nun, who said that on her first day in the monastery she was told only to go to the zendo and sit with Mu. So she went into the zendo, completely baffled, and finally asked someone which monk was Mu.  (Mu is not a person but the name of a koan.)

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Related articleson Buddhism

• Moving Out of Emotional Captivity: Are You the Driver or the Driven? (psychcentral.com)
• Dalai Lama visits town near Tibet (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• Buddhist Sutra Chanting Distribution On Cellphone (asiajin.com)

There are several altered types of Buddhism, but Zen is apparently one of the best accepted about the world. The convenance is fundamentally geared about ….

Podcast from the US-China Business Law Conference at UCLA held on October 24, 2008.

Robert Buswell, who once dropped out of college to become a monk in Asia, directs the UCLA Center for Buddhist Studies.