Moral laziness, vegetarianism, and government intervention

This month Thomas Wells, a philosophy professor at Tilburg University in the Netherlands, offered a plea for more active government intervention in our lives. He couches his request in the language of ethics: particularly his own moral laziness. He writes: Some years ago, for instance, I worked through the arguments around animal rights and decided […]

Dharma Dispatch, 1-12 October 2018: A Great Rinpoche’s Passing, Amazing Calligraphic Sutra, and Karmapa Resolution

Good morning! The respected Dzogchen master and founder of the Merigar Community, Chögyal Namkhai Norbu Rinpoche, has passed away at the age of 79. He breathed his last breath on the evening of 27 September at his residence, Gadeling, at Merigar West Buddhist Center, Italy. Chögyal Namkhai Norbu Rinpoche was one of the pioneering Buddhist masters […]

Dharma Dispatch, 17-21 September 2018: Mindfulness in Kenyan Prisons, Vietnamese Reconciliation, and Maharashtra Development

Good morning! Naivasha GK, Kenya’s largest maximum-security prison located just north of the capital Nairobi, is using a mindfulness training program to control violence and bring inmates and guards closer together.  Dr. Inmaculada Adarves-Yorno, a lecturer in leadership studies at Britain’s University of Exeter, introduced the idea to the prison’s management. The mindfulness program seeks to improve prison culture […]

Dharma Dispatch, 3-14 September 2018: The Great Cleanup, Refuge for Broken Hearts, and Softer Indian Stance on the Karmapa

Good morning! After five years of tests and trials, scientists on Saturday launched a revolutionary new marine waste collection system from San Francisco Bay aimed at tackling the growing environmental crisis of plastic waste accumulating in the Pacific Ocean—the now-infamous Great Pacific Garbage Patch. The ultimate objective of the project—its initial incarnation has been dubbed System […]

Dharma Dispatch, 20-31 August 2018: New 84,000 Initiative, 6th International Buddhist Conclave, and Saving Cambodian Forests

Hello! The Khyentse Foundation, founded by the renowned Bhutanese lama, filmmaker, and writer Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse Rinpoche, has announced the undertaking of an ambitious new initiative to translate the Tibetan Buddhist canon of sutras and shastras into the Chinese language over the next 100 years—a task that Rinpoche views as the next major translation undertaking following his […]

China’s Harmony and Freedom from Fear

Amid the turmoil and scandal of the contemporary political world, many eyes are turning toward China as a natural counterbalance to the stumbling United States. The continued growth, both internally and externally in influence, trade, new ports and infrastructure around the world should give pause to any China skeptics still remaining out there. The political […]

Transitions

“All compounded things are impermanent,” we are taught by the Buddha. Yet how often do we cling to this or that manifestation of reality, or a particular manifestation of politics, or our religion, or the dispositions of our loved ones or ourselves? Spring has arrived fully in my city of Seattle. With it comes a […]