- What Did the Buddha Teach About Love and Relationships?
Does early Buddhism allow for romantic affection and love? We'll look at two ways to understand love, both as universal and as personal, and how the Buddha regarded them.
- "Incredible, Amazing!" The Strange Sutta on the Buddha's First Steps
The sutta on the "Incredible and Amazing" features of the Buddha is the key source for the story of his marvelous birth. It is a strange and problematic sutta for many reasons that we will get into in this video.
- A Couple of Thoughts on "Who was the Buddha" by @ReligionForBreakfast
The engaging and popular YouTube channel @ReligionForBreakfast has put out a number of videos on Buddhism recently. Their video on "Who was the Buddha?" is a good intro to the topic that raised questions around the idea of a historical…
- The Early History of the Bodhisattva Ideal
How did the ideal of the Bodhisattva develop in Buddhism? We'll sketch out the history using a couple of recent scholarly papers as guides. We'll see that "Bodhisattva" meant something quite different in early Buddhism than it eventually…
- Was the Buddha Human or Divine?
We see aspects of both humanity and divinity in the Buddha of the early texts. I'll discuss some of those aspects and propose some ways the historical development might have proceeded.