Buddhism
I was raised without religion. My parents are rational, intellectual, and basically atheist – one comes from a vaguely Christian family, the other from a slightly Jewish one, and they never really made anything of it. They are both professors; they don’t believe, they think. So I had to wonder what they would make of [...]
On our way back from a visit to Dharma Realm Monastery in Liugui, a rural district of Kaohsiung, Taiwan, our local host took us to visit another Buddhist establishment in the vicinity. This particular monastery sits half-way up one of the many hills in this mountainous region in Southern Taiwan, and like many other hill-side [...]
I thought that, because of the focus on meditation and introspection, Buddhists aspired toward a relatively passive, detached way of experiencing the world. When I knew very little about Buddhism, I misunderstood it in a way that is not uncommon in the West. I thought that, because of the focus on meditation and introspection, Buddhists [...]