Introducing the dancing wrathful dakinis of the bardo…
When I was five years old, my grandmother gave me a shimmery red scarf with small silver charms attached along the edges. It was the
Sometimes, dance is what philosophy looks like. Only rarely in my long years of dance research has a painted image been so arresting with its
Life is pain. That is the first noble truth. Like most practitioners and scholars of Buddhism, I have given that truth a considerable amount of
The first metaphysical thing I learned about Buddhist Cham dance was that the same monstrous deities appearing in the annual Cham performance will appear again
There is a detail I have been pondering this semester. At least, it appears to be a detail, but it is one that challenges the
Zaharr was a belly dancer from San Francisco who escaped a convent school in Minnesota, named herself Zaharr, and made a pilgrimage to Haight-Ashbury in
Kisa Gotami’s ghost has long haunted me. It has probably haunted many of us in the field of Buddhist Studies. She is the face of
Shravasti was a dynamo of a city in the ancient world, home to nearly 1 million people in the Buddha’s lifetime during the 6th century
As I try to adjust to living in a world dominated by Donald Trump’s presidency and the growing realities of right-wing governments in various parts
The world is beset by what are often called “intractable problems.” Agitation and response seem to run in circles of escalating violence, with little apparent
One of my students killed himself this year. He was 20 years old. A friend of his came by my office to tell me the