Although he is highly critical of a hybrid culture in which Westernized values are on the ascendant and traditional Asian/Thai values wane, he is by no means hostile to the building of a hybrid culture of resistance where Buddhism and Christianity join hands in confronting injustice.

It examines how the fascination with marble, which is vernacularly categorized as ‘white jade’ in Chinese, motivated such endeavors and how these icons shaped the perception of a developing Buddhist cosmopolis among Chinese Buddhists by helping them locate Burma in the Buddhist world in a spiritually and materially meaningful way.

We Buddhists must recognize the complexity of contemporary issues and call on our compatriots to resist simplistic and emotional responses to events and situations. It means we must call on our leaders to consider issues in their full context and not seek politically expedient solutions.

The debate that we staged among the monks in our very last activity session about whether to edit the human genome was outstanding, and demonstrated how effective the monks are as thinkers once I had presented the underlying science and issues involved. And despite the fact that when they come to the West, they often seem very quiet and serious, in the monastery, they are very boisterous and willing to try anything.

In June 2018, I traveled to India to teach in a Tibetan Buddhist monastery under the auspices of the Emory-Tibet Science Initiative, a program that brings aspects of science education to the three major Tibetan monastic universities in exile. My role was to teach developmental biology to the monks over a 9-day period, and I found zebrafish development to be an excellent vehicle for introducing them to both the wonder of embryonic development and to some of the most advanced findings in the field of developmental biology. I describe here my experiences, observations, and thoughts about how the monastic system will need to change if the monks are really to develop the ability to think like scientists.

Even as groups like the International Network of Engaged Buddhists are attempting to frame a unified Buddhist position on environmental issues, Buddhists in different places are interpreting and adapting Buddhist teachings in ways specific to and meaningful in each society. Can the efforts of Buddhists to develop and implement an environmental ethic or activism in one location be translated into other Buddhist societies?

Daryl Morey, the general manager of the Houston Rockets, tweeted something a bit outside his lane as a sports guy but fundamentally banal in the context of American public opinion: “fight for freedom, stand with Hong Kong.” […] But Morey turns out to have stepped onto a much bigger landmine — Chinese politics.

A global civilization is in the process of formation. This book is the result of that kind of fermentation. It focuses on the spiritual and ethical foundations and contours of such a civilization when and if genuine global dialogue is pursued. It has taken us eight years, frequent meetings, and continuous correspondence to arrive at this point. We share it with you, dear reader, in the belief that something is to be gained by learning that human experience and ideas are inevitably varied around the world, but when two persons of good will enter into a sincere conversation about their own truths, a more universal truth emerges.

Despite their shared goal of spreading the Dharma to bring about world peace, Japanese and American Buddhist youth groups largely accommodated imperialism, while those in British colonies became fiercely anti-imperialist.

The mind of man is capable of anything.

A British novel about the “horrors” of colonialism and what Europeans thought about them.

For more about this classic novel, see (for example) the Writ Large Episode on the book and its history.

The country’s rapid and recent economic integration into global agro-food systems and consumer markets spurred new quality-of-food safety concerns, health issues and distrust in food distribution networks which have become increasingly obscured.

Dhammaloka’s life is a window into the relationships at the heart of empire, a glimpse into alternative possibilities of the struggle against colonialism. It is a way of thinking about the meaning of “Buddhism” at the start of its modern globalization. It is also, of course, a remarkable tale

The biography of a turn-of-the-century, plebeian agitator against the British colonial establishment and one of the first, Western monks.

You can hear an interview with Alicia Turner talking about the book on the New Books Network.

Like an object circling the sun, the visitor senses she is within the gravitational pull of a powerful entity.

An analysis of the Fo Guang Shan Buddha Museum’s immense Buddha statue and its rich dàochǎng 道場: a bodhimaṇḍala for the (postmodern) human realm.

Deepa’s Russian pens pals were obsessed with Bollywood

On the cultural exchange between newly-independent India and the U.S.S.R.

… the belief that we humans occupy a realm of being separate from the rest of nature encourages what he all-too-politely refers to as “environmentally irresponsible behavior.”

A history of modern conceptualizations of “nature” and an early defense of the so-called “first/second nature” split—a concept we now call “the anthropocene.”

… tourism is a highly political phenomenon, the implications of which have been only rarely perceived and almost nowhere fully understood. […] If tourism policy does not integrate or anticipate its political component, then policies and the people affected by them will suffer.

A monograph to help tourism development planners to avoid disasters like Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s 2012 “Maitreya” debacle. If only he had read this book!

I can have more economic opportunity and can therefore cultivate this generosity

The role that remittances play in international development—spiritual as well as economic.

… a history of the future of the Maitreya Project 2.0, a non-existent statue that nonetheless has touched many lives around the world, for better and for worse

… this paper aims for a philosophically more nuanced discussion of the case for and against eating locally. I assess, in turn, locavore arguments based on environmental preservation, human health, community support, agrarian values and political concerns

The law of sacred centers imagines space from the inside out.

A fascinating meditation on the way modern culture thinks about space and sovereignty and what is lost, even by the state, when local communities are disrupted.

In which the hacker tourist ventures forth across the wide and wondrous meatspace of three continents, acquainting himself with the customs and dialects of previously unknown and unchronicled folk … and other material pertaining to the business and technology of Undersea Fiber-Optic Cables, as well as an account of the laying of the longest wire on Earth

A riveting account of what it takes to make the internet work.

Sprawling industrial complexes where armies of thousands [of workers] manufactured products from start to finish gave way to smaller, more specialized plants that shipped components and half-finished goods to one another in ever-lengthening supply chains. […] Once the world began to change, it changed very rapidly.

The remarkable story of how a metal box changed the world.