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Buddhastate Articles

Screaming in silence

There are those Buddhists (and you know who you are!) who take optimism to a level whereby they avoid watching or reading the news due to the overwhelmingly negative world view it often projects. I can understand this to a point, because after all, none of us can single handedly save the whole world in […]

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Buddhastate Articles

Duality is to capitalism

What non-duality is to communism? If one views capitalism as inherently selfish, and communism as a social utopia, then perhaps this relationship could seem true. But the communism of Stalin or that which led to the Chinese Cultural Revolution were closer to dictatorship or tyranny than anything else. Likewise the rampant, predatory capitalism we live […]

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Buddhastate Articles

The womb of compassion

Nagarjuna, the great Buddhist master of Nalanda, said two thousand years ago, “Voidness is the womb of compassion” – in sanskrit shunyata karuna garbham, it most elegantly encapsulates the most fundamental Buddhist teaching. To anyone who is unfamiliar with Buddhism this statement can be either wildly misunderstood (due to a shallow, dualistic understanding of Buddhism), […]

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Buddhastate Articles

SGI UK – a look back and a look forward

So, it’s now almost 8 months since I made the decision to quit the SGI. My reasons for quitting were primarily my inability to stomach the Ikeda worship, but since that time I have also come to regard the whole Nichiren movement as too entangled with materialism at a fundamental level. It’s pointless trying to […]