Charles Johnson explores our endless capacity to compare ourselves to others, and the Buddha’s antidote to trying to measure up. Every day I lurk and listen to scholars of Eastern religions on the academic forum Buddha-L, taking notes when their exchanges clarify some arcane matter of Pali grammar or touch upon sutras I feel I should study. One day the forum’s moderator, [...]
The King We Need: Martin Luther King Jr., Moral Philosopher
He was more than just the civil rights leader he is remembered as today. Martin Luther King, Jr., was one of America's greatest moral and political philosophers, his life founded on deep, sophisticated and courageous spiritual convictions. Charles R. Johnson looks at King's teachings and example and why they are important to all Americans. "The great problem facing modern [...]
The Meaning of Barack Obama
Even before he was president, Obama was a twenty-first global citizen, helping us to transcend parochialism, tribalism, and that most pernicious of fictions — race. In this essay from the fall of 2008, Charles R. Johnson explains and appreciates the man who would become one of the most historic US presidents. There are many things we can say about the historically [...]
Dr. King’s Refrigerator
Looking for a late-night snack, the young Martin Luther King, Jr., discovers instead the truth of interdependence. A short story by Charles Johnson. Beings exist from food. —Bhagavad-Gita, Book 3, Chapter 14 In September, the year of Our Lord 1954, a gifted young minister from Atlanta named Martin Luther King, Jr., accepted his first pastorate at the Dexter Avenue Baptist [...]
Kamadhatu: A Modern Sutra
A reclusive Zen priest. A bubbly American academic. Illusion falls away and original mind is revealed. A short story by Charles Johnson from the March 2012 Lion's Roar. The body is the bodhi tree; The mind is like a bright mirror standing. Take care to wipe it all the time. And allow no dust to cling. —Shen-Hsiu Not far from Osaka, deep in the forest, there is a [...]
Welcome to Wedgwood
Charles Johnson’s new neighbors had hardly settled in when all hell broke loose — or so it seemed. A new Rasmussen Reports survey finds that 69 percent of Americans think their fellow countrymen are becoming more rude and less civilized. Men are much more likely than women to have confronted someone over their rude behavior, though more women than men think sales and [...]
We Think, Therefore We Are
The Geography of Thought: How Asians and Westerners Think Differently . . . and Why By Richard E. Nisbett Free Press; 288 pp., $15 (paper) In one of the most fascinating, thought-provoking, and scientifically grounded books on cultural relativity in recent years, distinguished University of Michigan scholar Richard E. Nisbett explores the dramatically different thought [...]
Prince of the Ascetics
Mahanama watched and waited, sure the brilliant young ascetic named Siddhartha would eventually make a mistake. But when it finally came, imagines Charles Johnson in this short story, it was the very moment Siddhartha became the Buddha. Once upon a time, my companions and I lived in the forest near the village of Uruvela on the banks of the Nairanjana River. We were known [...]
Dharma for a Dangerous Time
Yes, the world may seem particularly dangerous and uncertain now, says the novelist Charles R. Johnson, but it’s wise to remember that the ways of history—and the dharma’s response—haven’t changed since the time of the Buddha. The painfully perturbing dissolution of familiar forms, which suggests to weaker spirits that the ultimate reality is nothing but a chaos, may reveal [...]
Be Peace Embodied
"And if peace is their goal, they will in the field of politics be themselves peace embodied," Charles R. Johnson on the principles of enlightened politics. During this presidential election year, which many political commentators tell us may prove to be one of the most polarizing, divisive and rancorous in American history, followers of Buddhist dharma will, like all [...]
