Dharma Studies

When the great universal teacher Shakyamuni Buddha first spoke about the Dharma in the noble land of India, he taught the four noble truths: the truths of suffering, the cause of suffering, the cessation of suffering and the path to the cessation of suffering.

Siddhartha Gautama’s story, across its many forms and translations, is remarkably consistent in the details. Like all stories of great teachers, some details have become mythologized as they cross cultures. Stories change to fit cultures, times, and populations as quickly as they arrive. But when trying to weave together the historical and mythological elements of Siddhartha Gautama (more familiarly known as the Buddha)’s story, we quickly learn that truth (that which is historically verifiable) and reality (living and lived traditions) are different; yet at the same time, completely inseparable.

By examining the Gita alongside the Enlightenment-era philosophy of Immanuel Kant, I argue that we can illuminate both texts’ relationship to ethics, aesthetics, and violence.

When you say, “I love you unconditionally,” even the syntax betrays you. You are using love here as an active verb, one with a direct object, and establishing yourself as the agent in the exchange

Material reality is an illusion; our attachment to form and possessions is the obstacle to happiness, and in order to know the Truth we must participate fully with no expectations or attachments to the all too human process that got us into this situation of suffering (dukha) to begin with.

These basic ideas I call myth, not using the word ‘myth’ to mean simply something untrue, but to use the word ‘myth’ in a more powerful sense. A myth is an image in terms of which we try to make sense of the world.

Devi was woman who reinvented herself numerous times over the course of her life, who was present at many of history’s most important moments and who studied with some of the spiritual world’s most important teachers.

We women apologize too much, and we need to rescue ourselves from it.