the DharmaRealm

Podcasting while sheltering in place. We're going to restart the DharmaRealm, recording via Zoom, shorter episodes, and posting here, SoundCloud, YouTube, and, as always, your favorite podcasting service. Send us your questions, subscribe to our feeds, and keep your eyes open for updates. And above all—stay home! Wash your hands!

The nerds nerd out about nerdy things! Specifically, a couple of Buddhist Studies scholars (nerds) discuss (nerd out) what it means to be a Buddhist Studies scholar (nerdy things). It's our third and final conversation with the brilliant Dr. Natalie Quli in a conversation that meanders through the academic construction and boundary maintenance of Buddhism-as-religion,… Continue reading Buddhist Studies Scholarship, with special quest Natalie Fisk Quli →

It's our second episode with our special guest, Dr. Natalie Fisk Quli. We're continuing our conversation about authenticity, this time around beginning with a conversation about merit, merit accumulation and transference, in the Mahayana and Theravada traditions. This gets us going into other weird and cool places like economic models for karma, the declining age… Continue reading Merit practices, with special guest Natalie Fisk Quli →

Special guest star! Dr. Natalie Quli discusses Buddhism and authenticity.… Continue reading Authentic Buddhism, with special guest Natalie Fisk Quli →

In a weird way, this is sort of part-two of our post-truth conversation since we're tackling a perennial problem in the contemporary study and practice of Buddhism — can we know what the historical Buddha really taught? Can we know what he really said? And should that even matter? As always, by tuning in to… Continue reading What did the Buddha say? →

I didn't want to talk about flat earth or post-truth or aliens! But Harry made me!  Anyway. If you listen to this episode, you'll get an earful of Star Trek, X-Files, aliens, conspiracy theories, multiple interpretations of reality, and even some Buddhism, Shinran, and the Tannisho mixed in as well. Enjoy!

Faith! We're bouncing off a question about faith in our personal experience with Buddhism. Now, we know that having said faith, half of you said “There's no faith in Buddhism!” And the other half said, “Well, what do you mean by faith?” We're gonna tell you what we mean by faith and hopefully the other… Continue reading Experience and Faith →

A little while back we did an episode on no self and identity — and what do you know? It was wildly popular. Go us. So we decided to come back to the issue. But we're not gonna deal with identity; we're just going to do a deep dive into no self. This deep dive… Continue reading No-self, again! →

Somewhat in response to a listener question, we dive into the question of practice versus academic study. Is there a difference between academic study and the practice of Buddha? Is one more valuable than the other? Does academic study undermine religious/Buddhist practice? Or can academic study be, in itself, practice? Well, if that's the case,… Continue reading Study v. Practice →

Hooray! It's been ten years since we started this show, and this is our 100th episode! We hit the highlights in this one, themes and topics we've touched on several times over the years, including how to practice Shin Buddhism at a distance from a sangha or community. Years ago we tossed out the idea… Continue reading Episode 100 →

In today's episode, we respond to a listener question about the possibility, in Shin Buddhism, of reconciling the concept of no-self (anatman) and personal identity (especially in regards to race). To do that, we need to break down the concept of no-self and argue that it's not necessarily a rejection or negation of any type… Continue reading No-self and Identity →

Scott's still got a cold! And he's a cranky old man who wants to argue with people! So today we'll try to come up with the Buddhist answer to everything. Not really. Long time listeners should know by now that quick and easy answers aren't our stock in trade. We're far more likely to come… Continue reading The Buddhist Answer for Everything →

For our first full episode of 2018 we tackle a listener question about Buddhism and social justice, jumping off from the tension between accepting things as they are and the urge to stand up to inequality and social suffering. Of course, it wouldn't be us if we didn't unpack those terms and dig deep into… Continue reading Buddhism and Social Justice →

We're back! Here's a teaser to wet your appetite. We've got a couple of other episodes in the can that we'll release this month. And we're only a few episodes shy of our 100th episode and this March is our tenth anniversary of doing this show! We're excited to be back in the “studio,” and… Continue reading 2018 Teaser →

One more episode recorded in October before the election but on a topic that will most certainly continue to be of importance in the year ahead – race, racism, and American Buddhism. This one's a bit heavy, wherein we discuss the problems of discussing race in public discourse and the social and legal construction of… Continue reading Race →

Happy Christmas (if that's your thing - if not then Happy Winter Holiday of Your Choosing)!… Continue reading Demographic Shift →

Announcement: we're doing a “live” show on Saturday August 20 during the CBE's Pacific Seminar. Check out the the CBE's website for more information, and send us your questions via Facebook or Twitter! Picking up from our last conversation, we do our best to stay on topic and not get lost in the pop-culture woods.… Continue reading the DharmaRealm: Generations 2 →

Right off the bat, pretty sure I goofed the origin story of the word “meh” and its reference in The Simpsons. I'm sure someone out there will correct me in the comments. If you can get through the first ten minutes of what's basically a therapy session for Harry and the next five minutes of… Continue reading the DharmaRealm: Generations →

Buddhism and Introspection: in which we ramble on for a time about the extent to which Buddhism is introspective, about controlling, watching, or purifying the mind, an extended exercise in trying hard to look inside one's psychology and recognize our inner habits, shortcomings, and personal narratives. Image Credit: Buddha Land (c) 2008 by John Nakamura… Continue reading Introspection, Buddhism (and Bill&Ted) →

Jumping off from our conversation about utopia and Star Trek from our last episode, this time around we're diving deep into questions of belief and interpretation and how to approach the mythological aspects of Shin Buddhism. What do we do with this tradition whose cosmology appears, at face value, to be so far removed from… Continue reading Buddhism, Belief and Interpretation →

I'll be honest. We spent the first half of this episode geeking out on Star Trek, talking about how this vision of a utopian future hinges on the civilizing influence of an alien culture and that the Federation, being created by humans, is actually less of a utopia and more of a homogenizing galactic empire.… Continue reading Buddhism, Star Trek, and Utopia →

Picking up where we left off (in our D&D episode), we wrestle again with the questions and challenges of Buddhist ethics. We begin with the assumption that a basic Buddhist ethical framework is based on compassion and informed by the wisdom of seeing the world clearly, as it is. But this clarity of vision is… Continue reading Buddhist Ethics →

That title should really be “Dungeons and Dragons (and Ethics).” Or “D&D, Star Wars, and Cats (with some Buddhism sprinkled in).” In our first episode for 2016, we wanted to begin a conversation about social ethics — somehow we got sidetracked by Dungeons and Dragons, the classic role playing game that we both grew up… Continue reading Ethics (and Dungeons and Dragons) →

The rumors of deaths have been greatly exaggerated.

In response to a listener question, we discuss the variety of Pure Land practices outside the Shin and Japanese traditions. We begin by noting that Honen and Shinran set up distinct schools and institutions devoted to a single Pure Land practice (nenbutsu) whereas across the Buddhist world, Pure Land is best understood not as a… Continue reading Pure Land Diversity →

Following up on our conversation from last time, we tackle a list of listener questions that we thought would be simple but took us off in really different directions. The first question is whether or not Japanese Buddhist traditions rely on the Pali canon — yes? no? maybe? we don't know! We (well, really, Scott)… Continue reading Diversity of Buddhist Teaching →

In response to a bunch of listener questions that we thought would be pretty straightforward, we bring you several episodes to discuss, first, the differences between Japanese Buddhist schools of Jodo Shu, Jodo Shinshu, and Nichiren. What unites these traditions are their founders' experiences in the Tendai tradition and eventual dedication to a single path… Continue reading Japanese Buddhism →

Reflecting on the sad news of Rev. Dr. Taitetsu Unno's passing this past month, we thought we'd do a special short episode to acknowledge his influence in our own lives as well as appreciating our good Dharma friends and teachers. We'll be back in a couple of weeks with full-length episodes answering listener questions. Thanks… Continue reading Special episode: good dharma friends and teachers →

Okay. Some big questions this time around, none of which we're gonna answer but we have a good time talking around the issues. Does (Shin) Buddhism give us a way to act? Are there guidelines on how to be good and avoid evil? Is it right to even judge persons as good and evil or… Continue reading Good and Evil →

We're doing a post-modern meta show about the show where we talk about the show. It's been six years, this is episode number eighty, and we want to take stock and talk about what we've done and where we're headed. Actually, we have a really hard time remembering what we talk about once we post… Continue reading Meta episode: podcast about the podcast →

We take up the issue from last time, wandering around the historical circumstances of exclusive practice, Kamakura-era Buddhist schools, deal with how the context in which one practices matters, ritual efficacy, heresy, and whether there's really a difference between zazen and nembutsu. We don't really answer the question of whether or not one can combine… Continue reading Shin and Zen Practice, part two →

Hey! Check out that new theme song! We finally get around to doing some recording and answering some listener questions, this one about the possibility of combining Shin and Zen Buddhist practice. We dance around the issue for a while, meandering through the minutia of particular ritual styles, before getting to some of the historical… Continue reading Shin and Zen Practice, part one →

Our third and final episode with special guest Mushim Ikeda from the East Bay Meditation Center. In this show, we use the current popularity of mindfulness based meditation practices (and their secularized off-shoots) to answer the “why Buddhism” question. We discuss what mindfulness means in classic Buddhist terms (satti/smrti as well as Pure Land nenbutsu)… Continue reading Why Buddhism (and mindfulness) part three: with special guest, Mushim Ikeda →

Here's part two of our conversation with Mushim Ikeda of the East Bay Meditation Center. We jump right in from where we left off in the last episode, trying to answer the question of “Why Buddhism?” (Spoiler alert: it's gotta do with the ego.) A lot of our conversation meanders around different experiences in the… Continue reading Why Buddhism, part two: with special guest, Mushim Ikeda →

Today is part one of a three-part series of episodes featuring our very first special guest star, Mushim Ikeda. Mushim is a Buddhist teacher, author, mentor and the community coordinator and a core teacher of Oakland's East Bay Meditation Center. Mushim helps us unpack what may seem like a very basic question: why Buddhism? There's… Continue reading Why Buddhism, part one: with special guest, Mushim Ikeda →

We're not talking about magicians, we're talking about ritual and whether or not there is some efficacious power inherent in Buddhist ritual practice. Ritual is often derided by modern folks or rejected explicitly as not a part of Buddhism, distinct from practice proper. But there's ritual throughout Buddhist history and practice, and ritual serves an… Continue reading Buddhism and magic →

One of the issues that came up in our last conversation was the idea of “original enlightenment,” or the idea that from an enlightened point of view, everything's equal. Today we take up some of the consequences of this view; do we use this idea as a way to minimize, dismiss, or disregard the experiences… Continue reading Social Justice, part two →

Is the BCA silent on issues of social justice? For many, it might seem like there's no Shin Buddhist public voice in the American  discourse on Buddhism and social justice. We've been asked several times about this, so today is part one of a larger conversation about Shin Buddhism and social justice. We start by… Continue reading Social justice, part one →

In prepping for our last episode on how to do Shin Buddhist practice, we started thinking about why people do practice and the question of motivations. The conversation starts with a reflection on a conference paper Scott heard early in the summer about Buddhism, the self-help industry, and BCA's “Zen envy” (hat tip to James… Continue reading Why do Shin Buddhist practice? →

We're back! And we're taking up a listener question about practicing Buddhism when you're not near a Shin community, so we're calling this one “how to do Shin practice?” This is an important question; what is our practice? How do we do the practice? Harry breaks it down into external and internal aspects where the… Continue reading How to do Shin Buddhist practice →

We round out our conversation about music by focusing on Shin Buddhism, starting with Shinran. It's clear chanting was an important part of early Shin communities, and many of Shinran's wasan (poems) have come down to us as songs still sung today. We take a brief detour to talk about Herbie Hancock before getting into… Continue reading Buddhism and music, part three →

In part two of our discussion of Buddhism and music, we talk (mostly) about the potential genre of “Buddhist music.” Genre is a tricky; it raises all sorts of questions about who gets to define an artist or musician and whether or not it further divides people into camps of musical identity. But we definitely… Continue reading Buddhism and Music, part two →

We've got a long-standing interest in music; coincidentally, a listener asked us a question about music on Facebook, so we took the subject and ran with it! This is the first of three episodes dedicated to the subject of Buddhism and music. Today's show is a general overview of the subject, both the question of… Continue reading Buddhism and Music, part one →

“Won't somebody please think of the children!” This week we take up the tension in Buddhism between the ideal of monasticism, the renunciant, the solo practitioner who goes off in search of awakening versus the reality of home life, laity, and family. Our conversation is inspired, in part, by a post last fall over on… Continue reading Renunciation and Family →

Let's pick up where we left off; last time we discussed how contemporary Shin Buddhists can make the teachings and practices applicable to modern life, balancing tradition and change. This raises the important question of how one can determine whether or not a particular interpretation of the Buddha Dharma is in line with traditional or… Continue reading Teachers, Authority, and Community →

Prompted by a listener who's interested in how Buddhist teachings and practices change over time, in this episode we take up the tension between maintaining tradition versus adaptation to new circumstances. Whereas one could argue that we should look to Shinran as the final authority on what the orthodox Shinshu teaching or practice should be,… Continue reading Tradition and Change →

Today we go down the rabbit hole of the Tannisho, the so-called razor text of Shin Buddhism, a text that can cut away misunderstandings, or be extremely dangerous in the wrong hands! Specifically, we're talking about compassion and the question of whether or not great compassion is even possible. In Chapter Four of the Tannisho,… Continue reading Is compassion possible? →

In this episode, Scott complains about the media! Seriously, though, bouncing from the last episode that dealt with the commodification and commercialization of Buddhism, we now deal with the related issue of media representations of Buddhism and Buddhists. How is Buddhism represented in the media, and what we can learn about Buddhism via these representations?… Continue reading Media Representations of Buddhism →

Someone tried to sell some shoes with an image of the Buddha on them. And, boy, were Buddhists mad about it! This is our jumping off point for a discussion about commercialization and the commodification of Buddhism. Should Buddhists be offended or angry when corporate or commercial ventures try to sell products with images of… Continue reading Commercialization →

A couple episodes back, we tossed out this idea, off the cuff, of hardcore practice. We finally get to it now, asking directly, what is hardcore Shin Buddhist practice? Of course, this raises the important question of what is Shin practice? What do Shin Buddhists actually do? Is it all the temple stuff, Sunday services,… Continue reading Hardcore Shin Buddhist Practice →

We've been inspired. A listener wrote in asking for the basics of Shin Buddhism? Could we do a sort of Jodo Shinshu 101 episode? And we thought, well, we can try. This is a great question and in an effort to help clear up misconceptions and to help folks know more about Shin Buddhism, we'd… Continue reading Shin Buddhism 101 →