Friday 12 January 2018

My work on Buddhism: how is it perceived by (non-scholarly) white Buddhists?


This is a link from 2016 I stumbled upon (when googling my own name to find the link to an article that I know I uploaded somewhere).

http://newbuddhist.com/discussion/24451/articles-on-buddhism-by-a-former-pali-scholar

You see the religious mentality at work here: one contributor to this website is saying that my articles (and videos) about Buddhism are "honest scholarship" and raise important questions for Buddhists to consider.  And the other members of the forum reach for whatever excuse they can find to dismiss the articles without reading them (one explicitly says that he made his decision on the basis of the titles of the articles being too cynical).  ;-)

Thursday 11 January 2018

I finally discarded the jacket I got married in.

A certain black jacket that you may have seen in my photos and videos many times has finally been put into a garbage bag.

This was, in fact, a Canadian military jacket (sometimes recognized as such by veterans and government officials, in various places around the world) that I had a tailor modify in Vientiane (to make it slimmer).  The original cut of the cloth was very bulky, to be worn over a harness or other (military) equipment.  The material was ("bullet-proof") aramid (Nomex 3 aramid fiber, as I recall).

I was wearing this jacket on the day of my legal marriage (shown in the pictures above) and on the day when my wife and I were separated (legally, we still aren't divorced!).