Tue, 22 Nov 2005
Catalog Season
Christmas may originally be a Christian holiday, but it's morphed into an opportunity for merchants to sell more stuff. That includes Buddhist merchants, who aren't shy about sending out catalogs this time of year. Today I got the catalog from Zen Mountain Monastery. The most interesting part of the catalog for me is the picture of the staff in the front. I wish it were larger. It looks like the staff is mostly male. I have the feeling that Tibetan Buddhism attracts more women and Zen attracts more men. The stuff the catalog is pretty standard, so I don't think I'll be ordering anything.
There are several interesting articles on the web. Furst, there's this story about Dharma Drum Monastery in Taiwan, which recently held its opening ceremony.
Master Sheng Yen dubbed the site Dharma Drum Mountain, and took that name for his organization as well, because he perceived it as resembling the cosmic Dharma Drum described in a chapter of the Lotus Sutra devoted to Guan Yin, sometimes called the Guan Yin Sutra. Ever since he was tonsured at the age of 14 at Guangjiao Monastery in China's Jiangsu province, Master Sheng Yen has had a strong spiritual liaison with Guan Yin.
Huston Smith, one of the leading scholars on world religions, was interviewed by Beliefnet. His viewpoint is universalist and inclusivist, and I happen to agree with it.
Do you think it matters what religion we practice?
Matters in what sense? I think it matters almost infinitely that we practice one of the authentic religions. But if you mean does it make any difference which. The answer is no, as long as each is followed with equal intensity, sincerity, dedication.
Mother Jones has a good article about the controversy at Baylor University, where academic freedom collided with Baptist orthodoxy and freedom won.
In May 2001, things heated up. Baylor's faculty and its administration clashed publicly over the school's direction and mission. David Lyle Jeffrey, a literature and humanities professor and onetime provost who acted as Sloan's lieutenant (though the two did not always agree), proposed an amendment to the faculty's academic-freedom policy. Until then, Baylor's policy had mirrored that of the American Association of University Professors, which protects professors' right to free inquiry and free speech. Jeffrey's amendment circumscribed that liberty by stipulating that no research or teaching advocating "practices that are inconsistent with Baptist faith or practice" would be permitted at Baylor. Jeffrey says the move was inspired by concerns over accreditation and allocation of teaching resources; it was interpreted by the faculty as an effort to limit truly free intellectual inquiry and impose community standards--standards that even the larger Baptist community, splintered as it was, couldn't agree on.
