Results reveal a compassionate culture towards this marginalised group, for which Buddhist lesbians, gays and bisexuals (LGBs) cultivate self-acceptance through Buddhist teachings, such as the clarification of nature and manifestation, Buddhist equality, and proper interpretation of precepts. These teachings also encourage inclusiveness.
]]>Consistent with predictions, Monitor+Accept training reduced daily-life loneliness by 22% and increased social contact by two more interactions and one more person each day, compared with both Monitor Only and control trainings.
Both present moment awareness AND acceptance are critical for effective mindfulness.
]]>Our findings indicate that dehumanization enables violence that perpetrators see as instrumentally beneficial. In contrast, dehumanization does not contribute to moral violence because morally motivated perpetrators wish to harm complete human beings who are capable of deserving blame, experiencing suffering, and understanding its meaning.
]]>Here we report data supporting the broader claim that shame is a basic part of human biology.
We conducted an experiment among 899 participants in 15 small-scale communities scattered around the world. Despite widely varying languages, cultures, and subsistence modes, shame in each community closely tracked the devaluation of local audiences (mean r = +0.84). The fact that the same pattern is encountered in such mutually remote communities suggests that shame’s match to audience devaluation is a design feature crafted by selection and not a product of cultural contact or convergent cultural evolution.
See also this group’s similar article on pride.
]]>Bhikkhus, it is good for a bhikkhu from time to time to review his own failings. It is good for him from time to time to review the failings of others. It is good for him from time to time to review his own achievements. It is good for him from time to time to review the achievements of others.
Devadatta’s downfall was from not overcoming the eight worldly winds.
]]>The hard part of having a secret doesn’t seem [to be] those moments when we’re in conversation. That turns out to be the easy part. It’s having to live with the secret alone, and being unsure whether you’re doing the right thing.
]]>Even when the conversation doesn’t “matter” in a traditional sense, perhaps that’s part of the joy: a small escape from the serious, a reprieve from the heavier matters …
A defense of polite “nothings.”
]]>Surely, venerable sir, we are living in concord, with mutual appreciation, without disputing, blending like milk and water, viewing each other with kindly eyes.
The Buddha comes across three mendicants practicing diligently and harmoniously, and asks them how they do it. They explain how they skillfully deal with the practical affairs of living together. Only when pressed by the Buddha do they reveal their attainments.
]]>We asked a total of 1,368 people from five [European] countries to reveal, using an Internet-based topographical self-reporting tool, those parts of their body that they would allow relatives, friends, and strangers to touch.
]]>While sipping coffee in my mother’s Toyota, we hear the birdcall of two teenage boys in the parking lot…
]]>Following is a summation of the extraordinary story, as explicated in the Aitken letters, of a Zen master teaching in America for some 35 years, who has been accused of sexual misconduct numerous times and yet was never called to task nor properly investigated.
]]>In 1911, a Native American man, the only member of his community to survive a genocide, encountered the new Anthropology department at the University of California, Berkeley.
]]>Comparative analysis shows that the extent of segregation for different religions is much higher than that for different races and slightly higher than that for different political parties. Furthermore, we study the few cross-religion links and find 46.7% of them are probably related to charitable issues.
]]>… the appearance of three people is rare in the world…
]]>I do not perceive another single factor so helpful as good friendship…
Friendship with admirable people is the prime external factor to help those in training.
]]>There is a person who is not to be associated with…
You should associate with people who are equal or better than you.
]]>90 percent of Canadians [say they] will tell the truth in court. Whereas in other places, it would be crazy to tell the truth. Aren’t you a good friend? How you trade those virtues off has a big effect
On parochialism versus universalism in human societies and how Western culture became so WEIRD.
]]>… these four people similar to vipers are found in the world
]]>… four things are born of love and hate
And how to not be burned by them.
]]>Their design ideas were radically different but the reaction was the same: people hated it.
On the importance of autonomy and power in interior design.
]]>Friends I am here to modestly report
seeing in an orchard
in my town
a goldfinch
and then there are times
that both sides seek to disown
to cut my cords
let me fall…
Targeted groups came to be attributed a biological or timeless essence, not because this was inevitable, we argue, but because of these failures to historicize inequality.
]]>… these six are conditions that are conducive to amiability, that engender feelings of endearment and respect
Six warm-hearted qualities practiced among the mendicants.
]]>I found him on the porch that morning…
]]>The whole idea that all of this can be locked up in a little box and say ‘Oh, nothing much happened before the invention of farming,’ is just beginning to look kind of silly.
An archeologist responds to Sapiens and points out that history is always more variegated and contingent than our neat stories let us believe.
]]>Phil kept all this to himself, though there was another person who noticed there was something different about the new guy…
An hour of stories of people failing to see what is right in front of their faces.
]]>Onions are fallible, only
pretending to be infinite…
Today, thanks to a Canadian passport, I’m entering my father’s homeland for the first time.
A documentary about Tibetans and the struggle to preserve their culture under Chinese occupation.
]]>The point of Metta is not what we feel about a person, at least not in the beginning, but rather what we aspire to
A thorough account of love and relationships from a Buddhist perspective.
For a free physical copy of this book, contact the Corporate Body of the Buddha Educational Foundation.
]]>A mysterious letter shocked Britain in 2014, alleging an Islamist plot to take over one city’s general schools. But who wrote it?
An eight-part miniseries in which two journalists attempt to expose an eight-year-old conspiracy in Birmingham’s public schools. The Trojan Horse Affair shows how minor racial biases and stereotypes, multiplied across society, ignited into a full-blown, moral panic and, along the way, they uncover state secrets, an ominous cucumber, and serious questions about the role of journalism in a biased world.
]]>In the morning when the Sun returns, it’s possible for us to hope.
]]>We have been through such hardship and danger together. Now we must love one another.
]]>I found the world so new
]]>Sometimes I get a little bit Genghis Khan
]]>Thailand has long been known to be friendly to the queer community. However this is not always the case for gay monks
]]>With its tropical climate, lower costs and culture of respect for the elderly, Thailand is attracting families dealing with dementia and Alzheimer’s from as far away as Europe.
]]>Mahānāma, why do you say that they will make it as Vajjis?
How to cimb the social ladder the Buddhist way.
]]>A spiritual community is nothing if it cannot take care of its most vulnerable.
A spirited defense of the anitiya rules of the Bhikkhu Pātimokkha which require monks to take allegations of sexual impropriety seriously: a responsibility many Buddhist monks and leaders today have failed to live up to.
]]>In recent years the community of Tibetan Buddhists has been agitated by an intense dispute concerning the practice of a controversial deity, Gyel-chen Dor-je Shuk-den. Several Tibetan monks have been brutally murdered, and the Tibetan community in general and the Geluk tradition in particular have become profoundly polarized. […] Why is Shugden so controversial?
An excellent explainer of the Dalai Lama’s antipathy towards this peculiar Gelug protector.
]]>How does one say “what if” without reproach?
A kaleidoscopic meditation on race, identity, culture, and deep listening.
]]>You don’t care for someone because you love them, you love them because you care
A far-reaching conversation about childhood.
]]>… madness itself is not a role that can be played any old how. In every generation are quite firm rules about how you should behave when you are crazy.
A meditation on the impact of biotechnology on society.
]]>This decision is about business. Just not exactly in the way he meant.
On why there are so few actors with disabilities.
]]>Like power, gender is everywhere, running through our relationships with ourselves, each other, and the earth, and the relations between nations, classes, and cultures. And like power, it is not a problem in itself but instead a question of how we do it.
]]>