Presented as a rational, scientific, and practical religion, modern Buddhism appears to have all the answers. Even the secular forms of mindfulness promise ever-increasing practitioners that Buddhist meditation will provide the solutions to all their mental, emotional, and spiritual issues. But is there a problem with all of this?
The Harvard Divinity School Buddhist Community (HBC) hosted the Fifth Annual Buddhism and Race Conference: Centering Intersectionalities, on March 8, 2019 at Harvard Divinity School, Cambridge, MA.... Read more about Video: 2019 Buddhism and Race Conference
In the United States, the end of the year swells with charitable and giving occasions: clothing and food drives, Hanukkah and Christmas gifts, and end-of-year charitable appeals are all opportunities to be generous.... Read more about Why Give? Religious Roots of Charity
Phakchok Rinpoche and Erric Solomon are authors of the recently released book Radically Happy: A User’s Guide to the Mind. These two meditation experts—a seasoned Silicon Valley entrepreneur and a traditionally trained Tibetan Rinpoche— discussed their efforts to make meditation, mindfulness, and Buddhist thought accessible to a secular and modern audience.... Read more about Video: Radically Happy: Meditation and Mindfulness Based in Ancient Wisdom
“Recently, I have realized that, at the bottom of everything, I came to the study of South Asian religion and Indian philosophy because I couldn’t imagine not reading Sanskrit every day.”—Eliot Davenport, MTS '18... Read more about Humans of HDS: Serendipitous Encounters
The latest episode from the Ministry of Ideas podcast deals with religious and philosophical ideas of nothingness, and features Hershey Professor of Buddhist Studies Janet Gyatso speaking about the Buddhist concept of shunyata.
Francisca Cho proposes that Buddhist epistemic frameworks regarding the nature of ritual apparitions offer an account of the religious possibilities of film that is absent in Western phenomenological conversations on the same topic.
After teaching in the Department of Theology at Loyola University of Chicago, the University of Wisconsin, and in the Committee on the Study of Religion at Harvard University, Charles Hallisey joined the faculty of Harvard Divinity School in 2007 as the Yehan Numeta Senior Lecturer on Buddhist Literatures.... Read more about Poems of the First Buddhist Women: Q&A With Charles Hallisey
Based on personal study and experience, Anne Waldman speaks on the refuge and Bodhisattva vows, the Six Realms of Existence, “co-emergent wisdom” and a parallel vow to poetry, and the joys and contradictions therein. She integrates her own poetry, particular writers associated with the Beat Literary Movement, and Giorgio Agamben’s notion of being contemporary with one’s time as “looking into the darkness.”
