djbuddha

Author: Scott

  • Failure

    I’m writing a book. Well, I’m actually writing two books, sort of, but I’m not ready to talk about any of that right now. Mostly, I want to talk about failure. In the process of looking through notes of projects past for one of these books I’m working on, I came across the second revision…

  • Harumph

    The internet is outraged. There’s always something. Perhaps it’s a celebrity that has said something sexist. Or a minor public intellectual who’s made a bad joke or used a racist slur. I don’t know. But I do know this: first and most importantly, it’s okay it be pissed off and to call people out on…

  • Chart

    A couple of weeks ago, I was invited to give a talk to a group of BCA folks about Buddhism in the United States that is not Jodo Shinshu. An easy task, sure. No. Wait. Not an easy task. There is a dizzying diversity and variety of Buddhist tradition in the US; assuming it can…

  • Non-ethnic

    Everyone is ethnic. Let’s start there. The Angry Asian Buddhist’s most recent post critiques another blogger’s use of the word “ethnic.” In many discourses about race and ethnicity, the use of the term is in juxtaposition to some “non-ethnic” category, though rarely is this made explicit. In this case, the blogger in question explicitly uses…

  • Flight

    On a plane over Nebraska earlier this week, I wrote a really good post. It started on an idea somewhere between Fred Phelps and Meiji-era Japanese Buddhist socialists. It was about ethics. And karma. It was deep and philosophical and profound and you would have loved it. I deleted it accidentally, and Fred died, and it…

  • Imaginary

    So there’s this thing called Medium, and I thought I’d use it to see if it’s a good, well, medium. I’ve posted a couple of things there, and I’m not planning on deleting them or anything, but I’m not planning on writing anything else there. A lot of what I’ve seen up on Medium (or,…

  • Tranquility

    My article, “The Tranquil Meditator: Representing Buddhism and Buddhists in US Popular Media,” has been published by Religion Compass. You can download it from the website if your school has access to the journal. (I’m looking into other ways to distribute this one.) This paper was based, loosely, on a paper I gave in Chicago…

  • Criticism

    I am very late to the non-Buddhism/x-Buddhism party, let alone the post that inspires what I’m about to say. So the following isn’t mean to comment on, one way or the other, that ongoing discourse. Something written on the Speculative Non-Buddhism Blog that I happened to read over this past weekend triggered some other memory…

  • Reopen

    Reopen

    I’m resurrecting the blog. My faculty blog (this-a-way) will remain up and will post institute-related news. To the extent that this blog is my personal blog, neither supported nor endorsed by the Institute, the views and opinions expressed are mine. This site has ads because when you hear about people getting their advanced degrees with…

  • Nebraska

    Next week, I’ll be presenting some of my recent research on US Shin Buddhist music at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. I’m very grateful to Courtney Bruntz (recently minted PhD from the GTU) and her colleagues for the invitation. More info can be found here, and if they record the event in any way, I’ll update…