August was a difficult month for many in the Western Buddhist world. Two esteemed Tibetan teachers have stepped down from leading their organizations after students came forward with allegations of sexual and physical abuse, among other things. For many, hearing about a teacher being accused of such acts will bring confusion. Isn’t this teacher awakened? […]
ethics
Buddhist Masculinity: Living a Well-Weathered Life
Our musings on gender in Buddhism rightly focus on the feminine, underrepresented voice that it is. However, Buddhism’s gentle values and ethics often seem to be in (apparent) conflict with the toxic masculinity of today’s pop culture, where men are caricatured as avatars of explosions and gods of war, their churning inner lives spitting out […]
Musings on Mindfulness and Metta
Graham Lock Last December, I took part in an 8-day metta meditation retreat at the Hong Kong Insight Meditation Society’s meditation centre at Fa Hong Monastery on Lantau Island. The retreat was led by Visu Teoh, an experienced and well-respected teacher of vipassana and metta meditation based in Penang, and well known in Hong Kong […]
On Killing People
Graham Lock Watching scenes of barbarity on the news or reading about them in the newspaper, I have sometimes wondered whether there are any circumstances in which I would be willing to kill someone, or more realistically in my case (if I had a gun in my hand I would probably shoot myself in the […]