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Actor Orlando Bloom has “come out” as Buddhist.  Eventually, I’m sure we’ll start seeing comparisons to Richard Gere, but Bloom is following the Soka Gakkai branch of Buddhism, whereas Gere, who began with Zen, is a follower of the vajrayana form, a subset of Tibetan Buddhism.

A few years ago, NPR did a piece about Soka Gakkai in the United States (by Mandalit del Barco, whose name I just love saying!).  If you’re interested in Gere’s Buddhist experience, you can go to Shambhala Sun’s interview with the actor in 1999.

Interestingly, NPR points out that Soka Gakkai has been called “prosperity Buddhism” because of its emphasis upon the material world.  One difference to know between these traditions is that Vajrayana Buddhism is part of the Tibetan tradition, wheras Soka Gakkai arose from Mahayana, from a Japanese monk who “perfected” the Buddha’s teachings.

Broadly speaking, Mahayana, which is most Buddhism today, emphasizes the laity’s ability to obtain enlightenment and their already-existing “buddha-nature.”  They have a larger set of scriptures than Theravada (another major vehicle) that they consider authoritative.  There’s no direct theological parallels in Christianity, but you could think of it in terms of the Eastern Orthodox / Roman Catholic split, or the Roman Catholic / Protestant split.

So, while it’s true to say that Bloom and Gere are both Buddhists, it’s kind of like how Mel Gibson and Stephen Baldwin are both Christians.

Image: Statue of Vajrasattva, Tibet © Marcel Nies

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Last night I watched two installments of PBS’s series, America at a Crossroads.  I highly recommend it.  The episodes that were airing on my station included Irshad Manji’s “Faith without Fear” and an investigation of Indonesian Islam, “Struggle for the Soul of Islam.”  I do think there could be a little bit more theological exploration–just what separates the moderates from the fundamentalists in why they read the Koran differently? Pointing out that they differ is useful, but limited in educational value. 

Still, I’m thinking about using online excerpts of the second episode with my students when we get to Islam.  It’s a good introduction to non-Arabic Islam (which many will assume is the minority, rather than the majority), to questions of women/gender and the state’s role in religion.  We’ll be doing a few comparative, topical lessons, so it could be a good transition.

The only problem in using this series in a classroom is that it is politically charged.  There is analysis of the Bush administration’s actions, mention of the war in Iraq–topics which, while relevant, are not the focus of my class.  It’s a fine line to walk, between keeping your students engaged in ideas that are reflected in current events and turning the classroom into a debate about political ideology.  What’s essential, I think, is to constantly bring the focus back to the religious beliefs and practices underlying those questions.

Turning to policy debate from educational approaches, this is, I think, a central problem: how much should religious reasons be infilitrating public discourse about policy?  A few days ago, I interviewed Kathleen Kennedy Townsend for The Vital Voice, about her new book, Failing America’s Faithful.  I’ll have a full book review on Arbitrary Marks with a link to the article, when it appears.  Without scooping myself, I can say that this is one of the questions I asked her.

It was a tough question to answer.  (You’ll have to wait until next Friday to see what she said–about that and comparisons between her father, Robert Kennedy, and Barack Obama).

Anyway, my first vlog went well enough (note to the commenters coming from BlueGal–I do teach, which is why it sounded a bit like a lecture) that I think I’m going to do another on Sunday, with this as the topic.  Stay tuned–and let me know what you think about public discourse and religion.  Should we frame our arguments to avoid referring to underlying theologies?  Or is that disingenuous?  Can we ever expect agreement if we do explicitly include our religious presuppositions?  Or will that inevitably lead to polarization and drastically different languages about the same issues?

Image from: http://pow.reonline.org.uk/islam.htm
(I provide originating links to all images and will gladly remove them if asked.)

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Liberal religion, by which I mean Unitarian Universalism and mainline Protestantism, grapples with the same criticism as political liberalism–that it emphasizes the individual to the point of being reductionist.  As well, it can fall prey to a hyper-rationalism that excludes the role of emotions in knowing.  Our brains are built in such a way that emotions are part of our perception of the world.  Rather than being something additional, to scrape off before building a syllogism, they are part of what we must interpret as we take stock of how to act.

But our emotional response is to a large extent automatic and conditioned, whereas our rationality feels freer.  Practically speaking, however, as much as we are individuals, we are part of society, adopting categories for ourselves and others that impact the way we think. Born into a community, we develop our self-understanding in tandem with the way others view us.

The recent massacre at Virginia Tech has made me reflect upon some of what I’ve written in this series.  Liberalism has an optimistic view of human rationality and capabilities.  While not blind enough to think that providing space for these to thrive will result in a utopia, there is, at bottom, a hope that humans can rise to top (rather than sinking to the lowest common denominator).  But this optimism cannot neglect the importance that community has in cultivating capabilities and a rational imagination.

Several of Nussbaum’s human capabilities naturally draw us towards this: Read the rest of this entry »

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This is my first attempt at a vlog, so let me know what you think. It’s just shy of ten minutes. At the end, I call Rabbi Siegel “Spiegel”, unfortunately. Too, I conflated Paul’s Mars Hill speech and a verse in the Old Testament which has God speaking. Oops. Bad former seminary student, bad! If you want to hear the NPR segment I reference, go here. It’s about six minutes long. The collection of Blog against Theocracy links is at this blog, which will continue to be updated throughout the weekend.

Click on image to open video.

Update 4/19: Blue Gal has linked to this post, calling me the “Anti-Pammy”, which I am guessing is a compliment.  She is the originator of the Blog Against Theocracy blogswarm.  I’m re-opening comments here in case anyone has anything to say about my thoughts.  Below are a few posts on “theocracy” in Southern Asia, in case that’s interesting to you, too.

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How many of you might purchase a book version of Arbitrary Marks?

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A few days ago, I intended to complete my promised post (which has been in progress) on rationality, emotions and humanity, but with Monday came news of the massacre at Virginia Tech.  I thought that it was a good opportunity to reflect more before releasing the essay.  After all, the incident begs all kinds of questions about whether the gunman was rational, about his view of himself as a person, about how emotions and imagination are connected to rationality, and of what happens to human capabilities when they cannot thrive (for whatever reason, which is still under investigation).

So I will soon be releasing a few concluding essays laying out my basic “worldview”, if you want to use that term.  I’d just like to take time to refine them.

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The recent calls for Thailand to adopt Buddhism as its national religion have gotten me wondering if there are the parallels between the conservative Christian movement in this country.  Today, The Bangkok Post ran an editorial by Phra Paisan Visalo, a Buddhist abbot.  He argues that Thailand is undergoing a crisis, fueled by crime, corruption scandals, the disintegration of the family, and the sex trade.  Connected to these ills is a decay in the training of Buddhist monks and their ethical practice.

Below, I’ll excerpt a few sections from Visalo’s editorial–I think you’ll be able to see connections to some of the themes in US policy debate.  There are some subtle (and not-so-subtle) differences, however. Read the rest of this entry »

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As I write this, the number one emailed article on NYTimes.com is “Hopes for a Renaissance After Exodus in St. Louis.”  Reading this story was bittersweet for me, as I realized just how much I’ve grown to love the city, and how short a time I have left here.  The gist of the piece is that Saint Louis has been struggling to draw people back to the city, after some significant drops in population. 

I found myself annoyed that the Times characterized my city as spiralling “from one woe to the next”, and that embarassments which were previously local news are now national: “In the past few months, the public schools were stripped of accreditation and taken over by the state; the city was designated the most dangerous in the country in a national crime survey; and 15 police officers and supervisors were disciplined for giving World Series tickets seized from scalpers to friends and family.”

Thankfully, they didn’t analyze the racial component to these stories.  Or perhaps they should have, for that is what I’m most embarrassed about in Saint Louis.  The police scandal, for example, has generated outcry in the black community.  Why were these men only given a slap on the wrist when black policemen would have been fired, without a moment’s hesitation, had they committed these crimes? Read the rest of this entry »

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The slaughter continues.  Can we mourn the deaths of our neighbors across the world, too?

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