John Peacock has been an academic and meditation teacher for 25 years, including monastic training in both the Tibetan and Theravadin traditions. He currently teaches Buddhist studies and Indian religions at the University of Bristol and leads meditation retreats both in the United States and Britain. How did you first enter the stream of the Dharma? I became interested in Eastern religions and philosophy at about the age of eleven and started reading around Indian thought, … [Read more...]
MIT Meets the Monastery
Rajesh Kasturirangan is a faculty member at the National Institute of Advanced Studies at Bangalore, India. He has a doctorate in cognitive science from MIT. He has taught at BCBS about the overlap between Buddhadharma and cognitive science, most recently in 2009. This month, Insight Journal talks with him about a new online community he is starting to explore these issues further. In addition to the implications of its title, MIT meets the Monastery, he uses phrases like "Wisdom and Science," … [Read more...]
New rivers, new rafts: The Secular Buddhism Conference
Here some clansmen learn the Dhamma—discourses, stanzas, expositions, verses, exclamations, sayings, birth stories, marvels, and answers to questions—and having learned the Dhamma, they examine the meaning of those teachings with wisdom. Examining the meaning of those teachings with wisdom, they gain a reflective acceptance of them. They do not learn the Dhamma for the sake of criticising others and for winning in debates, and they experience the good for the sake of which they learned the … [Read more...]
True & False: Dharma After the Western Enlightenment
Insight Journal: How do Western Buddhists, in spite of our many modern views, take their forms too literally? Rita Gross: Since I often teach in a Mahāyāna setting, let me use an example from that tradition. According to Mahāyāna legend, the Buddha hid his Mahāyāna teachings in the realm of the nāgas, serpent-like creatures who dwell under the sea, because his students were not yet ready to receive them. Eventually these teachings were retrieved by the great 2nd-century master Nāgārjuna. This … [Read more...]