Project Michelle

This post has little to do with Buddhism, except that Michelle Maykin is a temple kid. She participates in Thai dance at the Berkeley Thai Temple. She also has acute myeloid leukemia.
For a couple years now I’ve been aware of Project Michelle through various emails in the Vietnamese American community. Michelle is an incredible 27-year [...]

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I am a Western Buddhist

“Dude, I just heard we’re not Western Buddhists!”
I’m at it again. I am sure that Kyle Lovett was entirely without ill motive when he wrote that he is not ashamed to be a Western Buddhist. He should not in any way be ashamed to be a Western Buddhist. But he should be ashamed of writing [...]

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Those hopeless Cambodian heathens

Over the past week I haven’t made much time for blogging. But I still read the feeds, and I saw a post on Cambodia: Details are Sketchy this morning, which really touched my (Angry Asian Buddhist) heart.
They sure are lucky the white people are here to save them.
“After 24 hours of travel – starting in [...]

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Honest Scrap Award

djbuddha was kind enough to award us the Honest Scrap Award a few weeks ago, but it’s taken us some time to communicate and post about this ourselves. There are three rules that go along with this award: (1) brag about it, (2) chose a minimum of seven blogs that we find brilliant, and (3) [...]

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Western Buddhists to the Rescue!

The emergence of Western Buddhism has long been chronicled, and I have no doubt that should “Western Buddhism” ever coalesce into a coherent tradition, it will stand apart from all other Buddhist lineages by the phenomenal level at which its early members were so perpetually enthralled in talking and writing about what their new tradition [...]

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European Buddhists

Ven. Shravasti Dhammika has an interesting recent post about Europe’s native Buddhists. If you’ve never heard of the Kalmyks, well guess what: they’re also Tibetan Buddhists!

Western Buddhist literature is most likely to focus on majority-Buddhist regions of the world, such as Thailand and Burma, but there are in fact many countries where there are large [...]

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Happy Vesak!

Today is the day we celebrate Lord Buddha’s birth, enlightenment and parinibbana. This holiday is often accompanied by plenty of temple visits and merit making. (Temple hopping?) You’ll find me over at Dharma Vijaya this evening and Metta Forest Monastery tomorrow. Great events and lots of great food!

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Ariyasavaka

A while back, Ashin Sopaka and I had some discussion about what the best English translation of ariyasavaka should be. We were each influenced by different experts. He preferred the translation “Noble Disciple,” while I preferred the translation “disciple of the Noble Ones.” It’s important to keep in mind that these translations are not mutually [...]

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Befriend the Thai Temple!

So for now the Berkeley Thai Temple is safe. Thank you all for your support during the campaign and for your help in letting the Berkeley municipal officials understand how important the temple is to the community. Some of you joined the Save the Thai Temple on Facebook, so you probably already got this message [...]

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Departure of the Angry Asian Buddhist

I’m going to start posting less here. It’s probably not a stretch to say that my posts on this blog overwhelm the contributions of my very worthy co-bloggers. In addition to writing a lot, my tone and subject matter is also very different. Since the Angry Asian Buddhist post in December, my writing has shifted [...]

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