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, the role of scholars and teachers vis-a-vis Buddhism, and how we participate in authenticity discourses about what is and what...

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 of the dharma, how texts and monks function as fields of merit, and colonialism and Orientalism. Oh, and because it would be the...

We’ve got a special guest today! Dr. Natalie Fisk Quli is a teacher at the Institute of Buddhist Studies, author, and co-editor of a couple of books with Scott. She’s joining us today to discuss the idea of authenticity, building off a post on the website Fake Buddha Quotes that sort of maybe possibly suggests that Pure Land (and all of Mahayana?) contradicts the authentic teachings of the Buddha. So in our usual fashion, we meander through the ideas of canonicity, discourse, power, boundary...

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 the DharmaRealm podcast, you’re not going to get an answer to that question, and will probably walk away more confused than you were before. But, hey, we will tell you something about...

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 half are still listening as we take a deep dive into different aspects of faith, blind faith, believing in things in the absence of evidence, secularism, and eventually shinjin, a foundational...

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 goes through no self, emptiness, Sarvastivada, Pudgalavada, Madhyamaka, Yogacara, the store-house consciousness, killing the Buddha, Shinran, the Jodoron, the Pure Land, karma, and rebirth. (No Star Trek, though. Sorry.)

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, then what do you mean by “practice”? And that’s really what this episode is about. We do a deep dive into scholar-practitioners (a la Charles...

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 that someone should have a “starter kit” for Shin Buddhist practice – and, what do you know? The BCA Bookstore’s new online store sells one now! We also tackle a listener question about Buddhist...

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 of self but rather, first, part of a pedagogical strategy of the Buddha and, second, related to a whole mass of complex Buddhist concepts that have very little to do with...

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 up with complicated answers that point to the messiness of life rather than the simple and comfortable. And that’s really what we’re on about today, coming up with responses to the oft-asked “Doesn’t...

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 the question — isn’t the point of Buddhism not to accept the world as it is but to see the world as it is, from the point of view of compassionate wisdom? And does merely accepting things as...

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 now is the time for you to send us your questions. Really. Ask us literally anything (except about flat earth) and we’ll do our best to answer it. Really. I promise. Welcome back, DharmaRealm.

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 racial and ethnic categories in American culture generally and in Buddhism specifically. And follow Angry Asian Man; he’s knows what’s what. Image credit: Buddhist service at...

Happy Christmas (if that’s your thing – if not then Happy Winter Holiday of Your Choosing)! So, head’s up. We recorded this episode way back in early October and are only just now getting around to posting it. Between then and now a lot has happened — well, one thing happened, but it’s a pretty big thing — so what we talk about here is both a little “off-topic” and actually oddly prescient. After traveling to Denver for the Tri-State Denver Buddhist Temple’s centennial celebration, Scott...

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. Our discussion about generations is really about how inter-generational differences play out in the BCA, how they’re reflected in community or institutional structures, their...

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 us talking about Godzilla, we get to our point: generations are complicated. There’s a seemingly easy correlation of Japanese-American generations and the Shin Buddhist experience in the US, but after the...

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 Remy

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 what we take for granted in a scientific/secular/modern world? Should believe all this Pure Land stuff literally or is all metaphorical? Somehow we manage to get through...

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. And it isn’t even until the last four minutes that we get around to actually defining the word “utopia.” But, really, we do talk about Buddhism (seriously!) by noting how, in analyzing...

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 necessarily an attribute of an awakened being, a Buddha. The challenge posed by Shinran’s experience is the question of whether or not we, as unenlightened beings, can know good from...

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 with. Seriously, though. Is there a way to reconcile the D&D ethical and moral alignment system with Buddhist ethics? Unsurprisingly, we go off on several tangents...

The rumors of deaths have been greatly exaggerated.