A leit motif of my writing on the Buddhist path is that it is littered with paradoxes. A really big, annoying one is that awakening, both how to to it and the effects of it, defy description, but the best way humans have to communicate with each other is through…

The new people here may not have seen me write about Red State Vihara. It’s my larger project. A vihara is a Buddhist meditation center, a place where people can learn to meditate and find space to meditate. It may house nuns and monks. I plan to build one in…

People on the Buddhist path often discuss the meaning of “dukkha,” the word the Buddha used in the First Noble Truth to characterize the basic problem of human life. A common translation is “suffering,” which may seem a bit strong for good, middle class people in the United States in…

How do we know? Some time ago, Huffington Post (!) published an article that purported to list the “12 Qualities of an Enlightened Person.” We have discussed the important questions around the use of the term, “enlightenment,” and my reasons for avoiding it. Huffington Post is an absurd vanity rag…

Awareness is key. I apologize. I have said that I would use the term, “consciousness,” consistently, but I now intend to use the term, “awareness,” mostly instead. Ajahn Sumedho uses the two terms interchangeably, and they have pretty much the same meaning. Sumedho also says that we are trying to…

Not your ex, not your parents, not the person who just cut you off on the highway. This comes in two versions, the practical advice and the theoretical explanation. The Buddha clearly said that only harm ourselves with our anger. He said that having anger towards someone else is like…

There is a tendency in the United States to conflate all Buddhism with Zen. I have to wonder if this is not partly a result of the sudden, close contact many in the United States had with Japanese culture as the result of the occupation of that country, where Zen…

Red State Vihara will be a sanctuary of sorts. At least since high school, I have taken the position that, in the event of nuclear war, I want to be at ground zero when the first bomb drops. I want to die immediately. I utterly fail to grasp the mentality…

Smugness is the usually annoying, in other people, supercilious attitude that can stem from believing that one knows important information that other people lack. People on the Buddhist path should be happy to share what they know about the path with anyone else who wants to know. Buddhists do not…