Buddhism

Twenty Zen teachers in the West sent open letters to The Zen Studies Society in New York. With compassion and understanding, their general thrust is to ask that the Society’s former head, Eido Tai Shimano, not be allowed access to students—a strong penalty for a teacher.

Colbert finds his “interconnectedness.”

RD’s weekly review, unafraid to lose Facebook friends since 2010.

The week in religion, poetically.

The week’s religion news.

In this fifth installment of Mark Dery’s cultural critique-cum-“nonfiction novella” about a born-again teen’s transcendent encounter with Ziggy Stardust in the 1970s, our hero Accepts Bowie as His Personal Savior. Delving deep into Bowie’s religious cosmology, we encounter Tibetan Buddhism, Nietzchean existentialism, Crowleyite magick, dimestore occultism, Kabbalistic mysticism, and — mirabile dictu! — Christianity.

As the ‘gods’ of Hollywood descend in designer digs, religion scholars Gary Laderman and Anthea Butler discuss the divinity of celebrity in America.

Two new books, one offering a vision of interfaith, universal religion, the other a model of a radically transformed Judaism, attempt to wrestle God into the everyday. Against the ascendancy of the so-called New Atheism, both writers argue for a God who transcends “god-management systems” and whose primary claim on us is through our own spiritual longing.

The co-editor of a new book on the history of Buddhist violence and warfare explains how the notion of a purely mystical and otherworldly Buddhism—promoted by some of the great interpreters of the tradition—denies its adherents’ humanity.

Tiger could take Brit Hume’s suggestion and get Jesus for his troubles but nobody should pretend that anything Christian is going on here.