Calling All Nerds

Dharma Nerds aims to be a hub for intellectual and creative exploration of dharma themes in Buddhism and related Engaged Contemplative traditions. I welcome submission of your articles, photos, film and other visual art, poetry, creative writing and sound explorations. I love articles on modern and post-modern dharma scholarship, but also heterodox and counter-cultural explorations …

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Nothing and Everything: Buddhism and the American Avant Garde

Nothing and Everything: The Influence of Buddhism on the American Avant Garde How Zen Catalyzed Conceptual Art Daniel LarkinJanuary 24, 2013 in Hyperallergic Ellen Pearlman’s “Nothing and Everything” (Image via North Atlantic Books) So, let’s just go for it. What the hell happened in art history after the 1950s when the real, discrete art movements …

Expanding Mind: New Forms of Dharma and Sangha

Listen to Erik Davis of Expanding Mind podcast in a discussion with Michael Taft of Deconstructing Yourself podcast, about hardcore dharma, Buddhist modernism, shop talk, flattening hierarchies, the soup of the sangha, and the problem of the achievement self and the blind leading the blind. https://www.podbean.com/ei/pb-dfc6d-b3b365 Toward the end of the discussion, Erik and Michael …

Who’s Suffering?

In the Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta*, the Buddha's first sermon on the Four Noble Truths and Eightfold Path, there is no language that specifies that it is only the individual who suffers and only the individual who is the cause of his or her own suffering, which is how it is normally taught. The Buddha presents the …

Twilight Zone in the Dharma Realm

Aliens...Star Trek...X-Files...Flat Earthers...Lizard People...Post-Truth...and Shin Buddhism. This is by far my favorite Buddhist podcast episode. 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! https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-post-truth-episode/id276896060?i=1000426311586 In their Post-Truth Episode …

Too Much Bliss

Editor: There is entirely too much bliss in modern meditation circles, bliss and the pursuit of bliss, the craving and clinging to bliss, the consumerist demand for bliss, for total and permanent release from any sensation of pain, loss, frustration, grief, trauma or stress. Secular meditation and mindfulness have been reduced to a drug that …

Vajra Chandrasekera: A Sinhala Unbuddhist

A (somewhat more personal) thread on unbuddhism: since I speak about Buddhism and monks and whatnot quite a lot lately, I wanted to contextualize that by talking my own relationship with Buddhism. Also brought on by (laughably, I know) considering seriously the things Mangala Samaraweera has been saying lately, such as asserting that he doesn't …

Bill Plotkin’s Wild Mind

Hi. It's been a while but I'm finishing up my Ph.D. dissertation, so I haven't posted anything on any blog for a few weeks, except for a few twitter posts. Despite the crush of trying to finish my thesis, I couldn't help but order Bill Plotkin's book, Wild Mind: a field guide to the human …