Buddhist Geeks

An old friend, @, recently described Palestine as both a flash point and a litmus test. I think that's basically correct.

You see, roughly half of my friends, mentors, & colleagues stopped speaking to me after I became (even more) vocal about Palestine, post-October 7th.

I often contemplate why some people ghosted me, while others hung in there. Here...

In “Social Metta Works!”, Vince Fakhoury Horn traces the origin story and practical mechanics of practicing loving-kindness out loud and together, making the case that metta—a fundamentally pro-social practice—works better when it stops being something we do silently, alone in our own heads.

Emily Horn teaches equanimity as upekkhā, using Thich Nhat Hanh’s preferred translation—inclusion—exploring:

How befriending pain and steadying over and over earns back your own trust

Why non-preferencing is an engaged state rather than a passive one

Why acc...

Brian Newman opens a twelve-week jhāna course by parsing five lines of sutta into a whole curriculum—a first month of falling in love with the breath, the jhānic arc where less effort brings subtler pleasure, and the claim that any jhāna, even boundless consciousness, can be ent...

I wonder how many people backed off from engagement in the Insight Meditation tradition, or in other convert Buddhist traditions in America, because of the silence around the genocide in Gaza? I wonder how many just straight-up left? And what happens to a culture when many of its people of conscience quietly walk out the door?

We’re watching the same thing happen politi...