Jumping off from our conversation about utopia and Star Trek from our last episode, this time around we’re diving deep into questions of belief and interpretation and how to approach the mythological aspects of Shin Buddhism. What do we do with this tradition whose cosmology appears, at face value, to be so far removed from what we take for granted in a scientific/secular/modern world? Should believe all this Pure Land stuff literally or is all metaphorical? Somehow we manage to get through fundamentalism, Star Wars, the Grateful Dead, and the Big Lebowski in all of this. Enjoy!
Image Credit:
Offerings, Great Buddha of Kamakura, Kotokuin Temple, Kamakura, Japan, 1980
(c) 2013 Terry Feuerborn

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Podcasting while sheltering in place. We’re going to restart the DharmaRealm, recording via Zoom, shorter episodes, and posting here, SoundCloud, YouTube, and, as always, your favorite podcasting service. Send us your questions, subscribe to our feeds, and keep your eyes open for updates.
And above all—stay home! Wash your hands!

DharmaRealm 2.0


The nerds nerd out about nerdy things! Specifically, a couple of Buddhist Studies scholars (nerds) discuss (nerd out) what it means to be a Buddhist Studies scholar (nerdy things). It’s our third and final conversation with the brilliant Dr. Natalie Quli in a conversation that meanders through the academic construction and boundary maintenance of Buddhism-as-religion, the role of scholars and teachers vis-a-vis Buddhism, and how we participate in authenticity discourses about what is and what isn’t Buddhism. 



We want to thank Dr. Quli for joining us! Check out our other episodes here. And the “someone” Scott couldn’t remember in-episode is Stephen C. Berkwitz, “Textbook Buddhism: Introductory Books on the Buddhist Religion.”

Buddhist Studies Scholarship, with special quest Natalie Fisk Quli


It’s our second episode with our special guest, Dr. Natalie Fisk Quli. We’re continuing our conversation about authenticity, this time around beginning with a conversation about merit, merit accumulation and transference, in the Mahayana and Theravada traditions. This gets us going into other weird and cool places like economic models for karma, the declining age of the dharma, how texts and monks function as fields of merit, and colonialism and Orientalism. Oh, and because it would be the DharmaRealm without a little nerdiness, D&D.;



Check out Dr. Quli’s last episode, and stick around! She’ll be back for one more!

Merit practices, with special guest Natalie Fisk Quli


We’ve got a special guest today! Dr. Natalie Fisk Quli is a teacher at the Institute of Buddhist Studies, author, and co-editor of a couple of books with Scott. She’s joining us today to discuss the idea of authenticity, building off a post on the website Fake Buddha Quotes that sort of maybe possibly suggests that Pure Land (and all of Mahayana?) contradicts the authentic teachings of the Buddha. So in our usual fashion, we meander through the ideas of canonicity, discourse, power, boundary construction and maintenance, and how all of these things co-create this thing we conveniently think of as “Buddhism.” 



Dr. Quli’s going to be joining us for a couple more episodes, so stay tuned!



Image credit:



Buddhism with Lord Buddha
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Buddhism_with_Lord_Buddha.jpg
(c) Priyanka250696, some rights reserved


Authentic Buddhism, with special guest Natalie Fisk Quli


In a weird way, this is sort of part-two of our post-truth conversation since we’re tackling a perennial problem in the contemporary study and practice of Buddhism — can we know what the historical Buddha really taught? Can we know what he really said? And should that even matter? As always, by tuning in to the DharmaRealm podcast, you’re not going to get an answer to that question, and will probably walk away more confused than you were before. But, hey, we will tell you something about canonical texts, fake Buddha quotes, buddhavacana. 



Image credit:
Alles liegt im Auge des Betrachters, jodage
https//www.flickr.com/photos/buchenmann/14280945373/
(c) jodage, some rights reserved

Buddhism, Belief and Interpretation

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