Via Tricycle Talks Religion As We Know It

Tricycle Talks 

Religion As We Know It

Defining religion with scholar Jack Miles

By Tricycle

Oct 28, 2020

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What is religion? Is Buddhism a religion? How about democracy? And how religious (or not) do you have to be to ask?

In the latest episode of Tricycle Talks, Tricycle’s Editor and Publisher James Shaheen speaks to Jack Miles, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author and scholar of religion, about what we mean when we say something is a religion and how Miles’s own life has led him back to this question time and again. 

Miles’s latest book, Religion As We Know It: An Origin Story, was released in 2019. In it, he explores the commonsense understanding of religion as one realm of activity among many, and how this definition serves and fails us. Miles is also the author of God: A Biography, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1996, as well as the general editor of the Norton Anthology of World Religions and professor emeritus of English and religious studies at the University of California, Irvine.

Tricycle Talks is a podcast series featuring leading voices in the contemporary Buddhist world. You can listen to more Tricycle Talks on Spotify, iTunes, SoundCloud, Stitcher, and iHeartRadio.

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I Left My Heart in San Francisco

Via Daily Dharma: Keep Your Hope Alive

 Hope is a flame that we nurture within our hearts. It may be sparked by someone else—by the encouraging words of a friend, relative, or mentor—but it must be fanned and kept burning through our own determination. 

—Daisaku Ikeda, “On Hardship & Hope”

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Via Daily Dharma: A Task for Us All

 I encourage you and me to ask ourselves how can each of us find our way to compassion and connection; maybe through spiritual practice, compassionate work for others and our world, or connection with trees, mountains, and the Earth?

—Radhule Weininger, “Practicing in a Pandemic”

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Daily Dharma: Fall in Love with Silence

 I no longer sit because I long for awakening. I sit because I have fallen in love with the silence.

—Nina Wise, “The Psychedelic Journey to the Zafu”

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Via JoeMyGod // Brazil’s Bolsonaro: “Stop Being Fags” About COVID

Brazil’s Bolsonaro: “Stop Being Fags” About COVID

Agence France-Presse reports:

President Jair Bolsonaro drew criticism Tuesday for telling Brazilians not to deal with Covid-19 like “a country of fags,” the far-right leader’s latest controversial outburst on the pandemic.

Bolsonaro, who has consistently downplayed the virus even as it has killed 163,000 people in Brazil,  made the comment during a meandering speech at the presidential palace in which he also appeared to threaten US President-elect Joe Biden.

“All anyone talks about these days is the pandemic. We need to stop that,” said Bolsonaro during the speech, which was ostensibly on tourism. “I regret the deaths. I really do. But we’re all going to die someday. There’s no use fleeing reality. We have to stop being a country of fags. We have to face up to it and fight. I hate this faggot stuff.”

Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro answers @JoeBiden’s threat of economics sanctions if Brazil doesn’t stop deforestation in amazon rainforest:

“Diplomacy isn’t enough. When the saliva (dialogue) is over, you must have gunpowder” pic.twitter.com/Qcqf4DPPLs

— Samuel Pancher (@SamPancher) November 10, 2020

During a speech, President Jair Bolsonaro hit out at U.S. President-Elect Joe Biden’s comments about deforestation in the Amazon, saying that “when the saliva runs out, there must be gunpowder.”pic.twitter.com/F70QbGALO6

— The Brazilian Report (@BrazilianReport) November 10, 2020

Via Ram Dass - Love Serve Remember Foundation // Words of Wisdom - November 11, 2020 💌

 

 

If you meditate regularly, even when you don't feel like it, you will make significant gains, allowing you to see how your thoughts impose limits on you. Your resistances to meditation are your mental prisons in miniature. 

- Ram Dass -

Via Daily Dharma: Feeling in Healthier Directions

 We need to learn ways of expressing the pure energy of our feelings—anger and hate feelings especially—in a healthier direction that’s beneficial to the world.

—Interview with Maxine Hong Kingston by Trevor Carolan, “Helping Veterans Turn War into Art”

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Via Daily Dharma: Develop a Balance

 Just as meditation requires ... determination to carry it out, likewise it requires a sense of balance to determine when to push ourselves harder and when to step back and relax where we are.

—Lama Dudjom Dorjee, “Heartfelt Advice”

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Operation Warp Speed: Planning the distribution of a future COVID-19 vac...

Via Daily Dharma: Recognizing Our Dependence

 There is no self-grounding inner core of the individual. Our lives are entirely dependent processes.

—William S. Cobb, “The Game of Go”

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Via Tricycle // The Third Harmony

The Third Harmony
Directed by Michael Nagler

Nonviolent resistance is more effective—and now more frequently applied—than violent resistance. The Third Harmony takes a look at the peaceful path to humanity’s transformation in the 21st century.

Watch now »

Via Daily Dharma: Guard Your Mind’s Door

 Mindfulness is said to protect the mind from the intrusion of unwanted elements—whether they be from the senses or from thoughts—like a guard at the door.

—Robert E. Buswell, Jr. and Donald S. Lopez Jr., “Which Mindfulness?”

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Mushim Patricia Ikeda Responds to the 2020 U.S. Presidential Election

 

Today, November 6, 2020, the United States, my home, is a nation divided against itself, with all sides striving to win. This is the karma of white supremacy and colonization manifesting in the midst of a global pandemic and climate crisis. I live in California, a state that is, literally, on fire.

The Buddha said this:

Winning gives birth to hostility.
Losing, one lies down in pain.
The calmed lie down with ease,
having set
winning & losing
aside.

“Winning gives birth to hostility.” Another translator more colloquially put it this way: “The winner sows hatred because the loser suffers.”

I believe in strategic political action and liberatory movement-building. I have cast my vote. And these are my Bodhisattva vows as I move with you into the coming months and years: What actions can I take to lessen hostility and extreme reactivity, and to encourage civil discourse and respectful democratic process?

May we all complete the great journey of awakening together.

Via Ram Dass - Love Serve Remember Foundation // Words of Wisdom - November 8, 2020 💌

 

 

You took birth here because you had certain work to do. This is your curriculum. It's not an error. Where you are now with all your neuroses and your problems, you're sitting in just the right place. 

- Ram Dass -

Via Mushim Patricia Ikeda EBMC Sangha

 

From #EBMCOakland teacher Sean Feit-Oakes: 

 

Like the Gospels, the teachings of the Buddha turn on a luminous moral vision: that dedicating our lives to wise action and reducing harm in the world is the path to liberation. Greed, which destroys beings in its insatiable hunger, is to be transformed into generosity. Hatred, that most bitter drink, abandoned for the cool water of kindness. And delusion, the failure to see how our actions create the world, polished into clarity.

 

The most inspiring moments this week have been the moral ones. Authorities on both sides committing to fairness and transparency instead of lies and deception. Regular people demanding that the process unfold in a nonviolent, ordered way, and celebrating the fundamental virtues of democracy, as flawed as ours may be. This is the real victory. 

 

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