As you may have noticed, there is plenty about me in the blog! Too much, really. Very vain and shallow. What I think about secularism and humanism or the results of religious and political selectors. Hah! If you choose you can read about things such as my hangups or cooking skills. My what an ego! Maybe read a poem I like I like, even one or two I have written myself. Or get my take on anthropology, evolution, the creationism controversy, intelligent design, and odds and ends from the YEC/ID debate. If you like cute pictures, you can check out the ratties.
However, a more practical exercise might be examining my evolving thoughts and attitudes regarding progressive ideas and spirituality and how that is or is not connected to my ongoing spiritual practice. The following lists of selected representative posts will help you to do just that. The order is earlier to later going down within each category...
About my spiritual/religious practice...
- Example of a weekly Buddhist service
- The nature and benefit of practice
- Uhhh...is this thing on?
- What are the refuges & precepts and why take them?
- Form and formlessness and the practice
- Bodhier than thou
- Wisdom from a talking sponge
- The Four Great Vows
- Solo Practice
- Some of my more serious attachments
- Cause it's how you are supposed to feel
- To learn and actualize the teachings of just a single Buddha
- Dharma Dieting
- Waiting for perfection
- Practice makes perfect except when it does not
- Letting go of expecations not efforts
- Overabundant choices for the expression of direct and simple spiritual practice
- Dabbling at the Buddhist Buffet
- Three general kinds of aptitude for spirituality
- Single-pointed focus and the heart
- Context and actualization
- The Unsatisfactory Nature of Non-Committal Dullness
- The Unsatisfactory Nature of Non-Committal Dullness, Part 2
- More on spiritual homelessness
- The me-show
- Mahayana Buddhist (or Mystical Christian) Available. All offers considered.
- More on seeking (or moron seeking?): believe, accept, act
About my attempts to understand or explain Buddhist ideas...
- Contradictions and negations
- An Expression from the Heart Sutra
- The Doubt and the Vow
- Opportunity versus Obligation
- How much must one practice to attain enlightenment?
- Inspirational Admonition
- Why seek rebirth in the Pure Land?
- Transformations
- Mountains and rivers
- Yours, mine, and ours? Not at all
- Give a hoot, don't pollute
- Differences
- 'Breaking' the Precepts and the Grave Offenses
- Dharma talks by the Venerable Shih Ying-Fa
- Differences, again
- Getting to 108
- Don't neglect the subtle nuances
- Buddhism and the Divine
- The toolbox
- A good start is saving all sentient beings from yourself
- Groundhog Day
- Do You Surrender All?
- Contemplating Death Gives Gratitude for Life
- Effortlessness - simple yet challenging
- May the Buddha Find Reguge in Me
- Emptiness and compassion
- Being Buddha, Being "a" Buddha
- What is expected, what is required?
- No mind but Mind? Or are minds incorporated in Mind?
- On not disparaging practices such as Buddha and sutra recitation
- One flower includes everything
- Sitting as surrender
- A little more on sitting as surrender
- What to do when there is nothing to attain?
- Greatly deluded within realization
- Lost in translation? Buddhists need desire
- What does taking the Lotus Sutra seriously look like?
About Buddhism, society, and popular culture:
- "Buddhist" values, social engagement, and political activism
- American Buddhism in Retreat
- Diversity in the Sangha
- Witnessing to Buddhists
- I sometimes wonder
- Tough love, bleeding heart
- Buddhism in Stereo(-type)
- Being Nobody Special and Taking Joy in Dull Tasks
- Christian Buddhists? Buddhist Christians?
- Humanist Buddhists? Buddhist Humanists?
- Bracing for Buddhist Evangelism
- Don't taint my Buddhism with comparisons to Christianity
- Buddhism-informed versus Buddhist-inspired blogging
- Buddhist mags
- What is the point of blogging on topics (sort-of) "about" Buddhism?
- Is the "Buddhist blogisphere" losing steam?
- Is a Buddhism-informed science the same as a science-informed Buddhism?
- Slicing open the goose of tradition to get the golden eggs of enlightenment
- Scratching the surface of devotional practices
- Buddhists and God
- Western Buddhists - stay or go home?
- Who are the false and evil monks/prophets/rules of the age?
- What is the big appeal about wondering/debating over what does or doesn't "make you" a "Buddhist"?
- "Be Now", "Just Be", "Open Up", "Let Go" and Other Western Buddhist Cliches
- "Dharma Wars" and the problems with Buddhists/Buddhism online
- Thich Nhat Hahn, Tenzin Guyatso, Deepak Chopra and the like are all full of it
About Atheism, Agnosticism, Secularism, Fundamentalism, Religion-Based Conflict, etc:
- The rise of the semi-demagogues (anti-religion -v- anti-secular)
- Internet Atheism
- The Battle for Faith
- Cartoons and violence
- To be or not to be secular, a humanist, or a secular humanist
- The term nontheist
- Revisiting secular humanism
- The fundamentalist atheist flap
- Sympathy for the jaded members of the secular left
- Putting us in our place
- Buffers against fear
- On atheists and "disbelief"
- Atheist vs. Christian Intellectual Death Match
- Their knowledge is expressed in other words, or remains unspoken
- When is a cracker "just a cracker"
- Depth but not depth - a look at atheist spirituality
- Why I am not anti-religious
- Sam Harris: appointment to head NIH too religious
- So are atheists getting worse, more numerous, or just more vocal?
About Christian teachings and ideas (or using Christian examples for different lessons)...
- "Faith in" what?
- The Christ Narrative as Metaphor
- Love Your Enemies
- Laying up treasure?
- Verses for comtemplation on 3-12-06
- Who can celebrate Easter?
- Velvet Jesus
- Love, love, love...
- Verse for contemplation on 07-26-07
- Book Review: Manifesting God
- Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani!
- Maundy Thursday
- Hyperbole versus substance
- The beams in our own eyes
- Real Presence as opposed to Ominpresence - a reflection for Advent
- The changing tone of (God as presented in) the Bible
- Book Review: How to Believe in God (Whether You Believe in Religion or Not) by Clark Strand
- Oh, They've Encased Jesus in Carbonite
- Exorcism video exemplifies why many homosexuals don't trust Christianity
- Discovering the CUA - a new voice of Christian Universalism (cross-listed below)
- Thomas Merton on the how to approach the Bible
- The Simple Way, New Monasticism, Ancient Christianity
- Examining the Christian doctrine of salvation inside and outside of the church
- Facing doubt to find genuine faith
- Hang-ups to seeking God, Part 1: What does it mean to know God?
- Hang-ups to seeking God, Part 2: God isn't one of the "gods"
- Hang-ups to seeking God, Part 3: God isn't a superior hypothesis
About UUism and spiritual potpourri ...
- Progressive spirituality and the need for true tolerance
- Interreligious Understanding and the UUA
- Just Making Up My Own Religion As I Go Along
- What light through yonder window breaks?
- Whopper, hold the bun
- Who would want to be UU?
- Keep the G-word out of Church
- Concerns with the i-Religiont/UUA style of spirituality
- Discovering the CUA - a new voice of Christian Universalism (cross-listed above)
- Christian and Buddhist vows of peace and nonviolence
About broader or more general topics concerning religion, spirituality, meaning etc...
- Just who do you think your are, anyway?
- A time to duck, a time to run, a time to stand
- Suggestion for religious and spiritually liberal people for outreach
- Get settled and shake things up
- Just as you are
- Regarding silence
- The Substance of Spiritual Practice
- God, religion, sacred texts and such things
- A few words on prayer
- Worth and possession
- Framing the Relative and Absolute in Spirituality
- Christian, Atheist, Buddhist
- Pondering the Meaning of Liberation from Suffering
- Using dangerous words - talking about religious language
- Critiquing contemporary religious progressives
- An encounter with spiritual death
- You have permission to be happy
- The Power of Gratitude
- Fighting the good fight
- Faith isn't a fix
- The poor, the sick, the criminal, and the outcast
- Signs of spiritual development?
- Amazing grace
- That's not a half-bad prayer
- meaning with a capital "M"
- Where can we find an awareness of the depth of Being?
- Hooray for nonsense and apathy
- Into the great wide open - going beyond materialism
- Into the great wide open, part two - going beyond supernaturalism
- To see with sacred perception
- Holding the mystery of the faith
- The lenses we use to see the world
- Bleeding Heart (Remix)
- Bleeding Heart (Revisited)
- Pondering the Necessity of Suffering
- Book List: A Decade of Spiritual Seeking
- The idol of no form
- The wages of sin, the consequences of karma
- How do you know if God is telling you something?
- Information systems, ambiguity, diversity, grammar and the Divine
- The challenge of grace and gratitude
