Joshua Eaton

Dana Wiki Fundraising Report, Part 1

Joshua Eaton — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 00:52:27 +0000

AS I have written about here before, Dana Wiki is a website that I started in 2008 to help Buddhist organizations get involved in social service. Toward the end of last year Dana Wiki’s DNS registration expired and I did a small WePay fundraiser to re-register its domain name.

I’m happy [...]

Joshua Eaton on CBS Evening News Talking About Occupy Boston

Joshua Eaton — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 16:00:38 +0000

I WAS interviewed about Occupy Boston and student loan debt by Elaine Quijano of the CBS Evening News on Friday 14 October. You can see the full interview here. (Unfortunately, embedding is disabled on the video, so you’ll have to watch it at YouTube.)

Buddhism and Class

Joshua Eaton — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 16:34:05 +0000

ON 18 July 2011, Sam Mowe wrote about diversity within American Buddhism for Tricycle: The Buddhist Review‘s blog in an article titled “Tell Us Your Story.” One of the comments to that post led to another post on Tricycle‘s blog by Monty McKeever, “Why Is Buddhism So Damned Expensive?” That comment read, [...]

Huff Po’: Why I’m Boycotting the Huffington Post

Joshua Eaton — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 03:20:15 +0000

IN THE classic song “God Bless the Child,” Billie Holiday sang “Them that’s got shall have. / Them that’s not shall lose.” That’s certainly true of Ariana Huffington, the founder of the ubiquitous news website Huffington Post. In February 2011 AOL bought the Huffington Post from Ms. Huffington for $315 million, also naming [...]

Underground Fire: Some Thoughts on the Riots in England

Joshua Eaton — Fri, 12 Aug 2011 03:31:43 +0000

TODAY I’ve been reading Naomi Klein’s No Logo, which has already proven incredibly insightful and productive. It opens with this epigraph, from Y. B. Mangunwijaya:

You might not see things yet on the surface, but underground, it’s already on fire.

Of course, I could not help but think of this week’s [...]

Why Temping Is a Racket

Joshua Eaton — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 00:35:46 +0000

Let’s not kid ourselves. Temp is a euphemism for day laborer. George and Lennie are no longer merely ranch hands. They work in law firms, banks, insurance companies and in your own workplace.

—Studs Terkel

TEMPING is discouraging for many reasons. There’s the low pay, the insecurity, the menial tasks, the [...]

What Is Buddhist Ministry?

Joshua Eaton — Fri, 10 Jun 2011 17:57:31 +0000

THE question of Buddhist ministry has been on my mind almost constantly since attending a friend’s ordination to the Unitarian-Universalist ministry earlier this month. Traditional Buddhist societies had monastics and teachers—with the exception of Japan and Tibet, which also had non-celibate ordination lineages. Now five schools in the United States are offering graduate-level programs for [...]

Prayer to Avert War by Khenpo Gangshar Wangpo

Joshua Eaton — Thu, 02 Jun 2011 22:04:04 +0000

LAST night, I finished translating the Prayer to Avert War by Khenpo Gangshar Wangpo (gang shar dbang po, 1925-1959). Khenpo Gangshar resided at Shechen (zhe chen) and, later, Surman (zur mang) Monastaries, both in eastern Tibet. He was also one of the primary teachers of both Thrangu Rinpoche (khra ‘gu) and the controversial Chögyam Trungpa [...]

Vimalakirti and Engaged Buddhism

Joshua Eaton — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 04:05:23 +0000

LEWIS RICHMOND has been kind enough to cite me in his most recent article for the Huffington Post, “An Ancient Buddhist Model For Today’s World,” which I helped him research. In it, he discusses Vimalakirti as a model for practicing Buddhism in everyday life.

Even More Class Consciousness

Joshua Eaton — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 00:20:08 +0000

MY LATEST article for State of Formation has been re-posted at TheReligiousLeft.org: “Class Consciousness: The Spiritual Cost of Unemployment.” It’s based on an earlier article that is available here and at the Zen Peacemaker’s Bearing Witness Blog.