This week, the internet was abuzz with firsthand accounts of people using Chat GPT (Generative Pre-trained Transformer), a type of artificial intelligence (AI) model developed by OpenAI that is designed to generate human-like text (Chat GPT can be accessed here). Chat GPT is trained to generate responses that are appropriate and coherent in the context … Continue reading (How) Can AI Help Buddhist Studies?
Public Theologies of Technology and Presence (PTTP) is a three-year initiative, launched in 2018 and funded by the Henry Luce Foundation, that gathers and funds a cohort of leading scholars of religion, theologians, and journalists for their work addressing a pressing concern of contemporary life: the ways in which technologies reshape human relationships and alter … Continue reading (How) Can We Have Meaningful Presence with Technology? An interview with Dr. Steven Barrie-Anthony
This month at the Institute of Buddhist Studies, we wish to celebrate gay pride by highlighting the scholarship of our LGBTQ+ students and faculty, as well as queer theory and queer theology in the wider Buddhist world. We are celebrating both “queerness” in its most basic definition, that is, as a descriptor of people whose sexual … Continue reading Bringing the Dharma to Bear on Life: Buddhism and Social Activism
This month at the Institute of Buddhist Studies, we wish to celebrate gay pride by highlighting the scholarship of our LGBTQ+ students and faculty, as well as queer theory and queer theology in the wider Buddhist world. We are celebrating both “queerness” in its most basic definition, that is, as a descriptor of people whose sexual … Continue reading The “Body” is Not the Enemy of Some Supposedly Separate Mind: Daijaku Kinst on Gay Pride and Buddhism
I’ve often felt that queer feminist theory and Buddhism are quite similar; they are animated by a wish or hope for liberation. The liberation longed for in both Buddhism and queer theory is one that comes from a recognition that our patterned, conditioned ways of relating to self and others need to change if we … Continue reading Desire Lines: Queering Buddhism for Pride Month
We were excited to learn that recent IBS alum Thomas Calobrisi has co-edited a special issue of The Journal of Dharma Studies, along with his colleague Devin Zuckerman, a PhD candidate at University of Virginia. This month, marketing and communications assistant Gesshin Greenwood chatted with the two about the process of curating and editing an … Continue reading Why Histories of Science Matter
A few weeks ago, my mother, who had just received her second COVID vaccination, came over the pick up my dogs for the weekend. As mental health worker, I’d also been recently vaccinated, although my life hasn’t changed much since then; I still rarely leave my house except to go grocery shopping. Before she arrived, … Continue reading Teaching Ourselves that Clouds are Safe: Trauma-Informed Practice for a Post-Vaccine World
Dr. Ira Helderman is a licensed psychotherapist in addition to being a professor of religious studies. His book, Prescribing the Dharma: Psychotherapists, Buddhist Traditions, and Defining Religion, examines the diverse ways therapists incorporate, obscure, or transform Buddhist practices in therapy. In this interview, Dr. Helderman shares his nuanced views on religion and psychotherapy, self-disclosure, ethics, … Continue reading “There is No Exit From Values”: Ira Helderman on the Ethics of Mindfulness
Below, three Zen priests and teachers, Taigen Daniel Leighton, James Ishmael Ford, and Gesshin Greenwood give their individual interpretation of the line “Turning away and touching are both wrong, for it is like a massive fire.” These words are from Hokyo Zanmai (Precious Mirror Samadhi), a sutra chanted every other day in Zen monasteries throughout … Continue reading Three Zen Priests on the Precious Mirror Samadhi
Buddhism considers anger to be one of the “three poisons” that keep us trapped in an endless cycle of samsara. But anger also serves an evolutionary function, and working with anger skillfully (without denying our humanity and woundedness) is incredibly challenging. In the past few weeks, after the murder of George Floyd, our country has … Continue reading Lama Rod on “Love and Rage”
