(Barre Center for Buddhist Studies)Kirjoittanut Ayya Anandabodhi

Scholars of religion have mostly abandoned the concept of "syncretism" in which certain apparent deviations from "standard" practice are believed to be the result of a mixture of religions. This is particularly relevant to Thailand, in which ordinary religious practice was seen by an earlier generation of scholars as a mixture of three religions: l…

(Barre Center for Buddhist Studies)Kirjoittanut Ayya Santacitta

(Barre Center for Buddhist Studies)Kirjoittanut Ayya Santacitta

(Barre Center for Buddhist Studies)Kirjoittanut Ayya Anandabodhi

(Barre Center for Buddhist Studies)Kirjoittanut Ayya Anandabodhi

(Barre Center for Buddhist Studies)Kirjoittanut Ayya Anandabodhi

(Barre Center for Buddhist Studies)Kirjoittanut Ayya Anandabodhi

(Barre Center for Buddhist Studies)Kirjoittanut Ayya Santacitta

(Barre Center for Buddhist Studies)Kirjoittanut Ayya Santacitta

Glenn’s latest, Non Buddhist Mysticism: Performing Irreducible and Primitive Presence (Eyecorner Press, 2022), presents a radical reorientation to “spiritual” practice. Drawing from François Laruelle’s concept of future mysticism and the author’s own previous work on non-buddhism, Glenn Wallis galvanizes a materialist spirituality for the twenty-fi…

(Barre Center for Buddhist Studies)Kirjoittanut Chris Crotty

(Barre Center for Buddhist Studies)Kirjoittanut Chris Crotty

(Barre Center for Buddhist Studies)Kirjoittanut Chris Crotty

(Barre Center for Buddhist Studies)Kirjoittanut Chris Crotty

(Barre Center for Buddhist Studies)Kirjoittanut Chris Crotty

(Barre Center for Buddhist Studies)Kirjoittanut Chris Crotty

In Buddhist cosmology, pretas make up one of several categories of rebirth. They are best known as "hungry ghosts," pitiful beings with miniscule mouths and bloated stomachs whose state of extreme starvation is a result of stinginess and immorality in a former life. But they were not always portrayed in this way. Of Ancestors and Ghosts: How Preta …

Nāgārjuna (c. 150-250), founder of the Madhyamaka or Middle Way school of Buddhist philosophy and the most influential of all Buddhist thinkers aside from the Buddha himself, concludes his masterpiece, Fundamental Verses on the Middle Way, with these baffling verses: For the abandonment of all views He taught the true teaching By means of compassio…

In this episode Dr Pierce Salguero sits down with Ruth Westoby a scholar, teacher, and practitioner of yoga. We discuss Ruth’s work on the body in early hatha yoga texts. We talk about the broad diversity of approaches to the material body in these sources, including their ideas about gender, the cultivation of powers, and approaches to liberation.…

Today’s globalized society faces some of humanity’s most unprecedented social and environmental challenges. Presenting new and insightful approaches to a range of these challenges, Beacons of Dharma: Spiritual Exemplars for the Modern Age (Lexington, 2019) draws upon individual cases of exemplary leadership from the world’s Dharma traditions—Hindui…

Shodhin Geiman is Sensei & Abbot at Chicago Zen Center and recently retired Senior Research Professor at Valparaiso University. He has written on aspects of the Dharma and on points of interface between Buddhist and Christian spirituality. His book, Alone in a World of Wounds: A Dharmic Response to the Ills of Sentient Beings (Cascade Books, 2022).…

What is the right way to live? This is an old question in Western moral philosophy, but in recent years anthropologists have turned their attention to this question in what has been called, a “moral turn”. In this original ethnographic study, Pursuing Morality: Buddhism and Everyday Ethics in Southeastern Myanmar (NUS Press, 2024), Justine Chambers…

In this episode, Dr Pierce Salguero sits down with Dr Theodora Wildcroft, a researcher, anthropologist, and long-time teacher of what she calls “post-lineage yoga.” We discuss Theo's ethnographic research on yoga in the UK, focusing on its connections with animism, paganism, and other somatic practices. We also dive into Theo’s personal approach to…

A number of converts to Buddhism report paranormal experiences. Their accounts describe psychic abilities like clairvoyance and precognition, out-of-body experiences, near-death experiences, and encounters with other beings such as ghosts and deities, and they often interpret these events through a specifically Buddhist lens. Paranormal States: Psy…

In the late fifth century, a girl whose name has been forgotten by history was born at the edge of the Chinese empire. By the time of her death, she had transformed herself into Empress Dowager Ling, one of the most powerful politicians of her age and one of the first of many Buddhist women to wield incredible influence in dynastic East Asia. In th…

An influential eighth-century Buddhist text, Śāntideva’s Bodhicaryāvatāra, or Guide to the Practices of Awakening, how to become a supremely virtuous person, a bodhisattva who desires to end the suffering of all sentient beings. Stephen Harris’s Buddhist Ethics and the Bodhisattva Path: Śāntideva on Virtue and Well-Being (Bloomsbury Academic, 2024)…

Saving the Dead: Tibetan Funerary Rituals in the Tradition of the Sarvardurgatipariśodhana Tantra (WSTB, 2024) explores Tibetan funerary manuals based on the Sarvadurgatipariśodhana Tantra (SDP), focusing on the writings of the Sa skya author Rje btsun Grags pa rgyal mtshan (1147–1216) and the diverse forms of agency—human, nonhuman, and material—a…

Around the turn of the millennium, Pentecostal churches began to pepper majority-Buddhist Sri Lanka, setting off a sense of alarm among Buddhists who saw Christianity as a neocolonial threat to the nation. Rumors of foul play in the death of a Buddhist monk, as well as allegations of proselytizing in the aftermath of the 2004 tsunami and during the…

How is Buddhism seen and practiced in Taiwan? And how do neighbouring countries influence Taiwanese Buddhism? In this episode we explore the religious landscape of Taiwan in conversation with Dr. Yushuang Yao, a leading expert on religion in contemporary Taiwan. Yushuang Yao is an Associate Professor at Fo Guang University, Taiwan, specializing in …

Tibetan Magic: Past and Present (Bloomsbury, 2024) focuses on the theme of magic in Tibetan contexts, encompassing both pre-modern and modern text-cultures as well as contemporary practices. It offers a new understanding of the identity and role of magical specialists in both historical and contemporary contexts. Combining the theoretical approache…

In this episode, Dr Pierce Salguero sits down with Naomi Worth, a scholar and practitioner of Tibetan Buddhism’s postural yoga tradition. We dive into Naomi's experiences in yogic retreats, highlight the vigorous movement and intense visual elements of the practice, and explore yoga’s role in the Nyingma contemplative path. Naomi also shares how sh…

Xuanzang (600/602–664) was one of the most accomplished and consequential monks in the history of East Asian Buddhism. Celebrated for his sixteen-year pilgrimage from China to India, his transmission and translation of hundreds of Buddhist texts, and his training of a generation of masters in China, Korea, and Japan, Xuanzang’s life and legacy are …