“Pour la Vie” (1901): Alexandra David-Néel‘s Forgotten Anarchist Philosophy of Life

Alexandra David-Néel’s importance as an early explorer, student and translator of Sanskrit and Tibetan Buddhism cannot be overstated. Her books remain today some of the clearest and most intimate expositions of Tibetan Buddhism as it was practiced in Tibet at the start of the 20th Century. She was perhaps the first European to write about […]

“Forgetting Self That Man Alone May Gain”

The Dharma of Dyer D. Lum, the First American Buddhist-Anarchist Tonight, on my bike ride home from work, I was visited by the spirit of the forgotten Abolitionist, Anarchist, and Buddhist, Dyer Daniel Lum. According to Tricycle, he was the first American to publicly claim to be a Buddhist, in 1875, which might make him […]

Buddhist Anarchism and Divination Beliefs in Shin Chae-ho’s The Fierce Strife Between Two Dragons

English machine translation of Kim Yong-Ha’s article Buddhist Anarchism in Shin Chae-ho’s “A Tale of Strife Between Two Dragons”

The Aspects of Buddhist Anarchism Reflected in Shin Chae-ho’s “Declaration of the Korean Revolution”

Translation of Kim Yong-Ha’s article about the Buddhist and Anarchist thought of revolutionary Shin Chae-Ho

“Neither Male Nor Female”

Taking Refuge in the Dharma of Gender Dissidence I have been thinking about the idea of “taking refuge”. These days we all need some kind of refuge or another. Those of us who have a little ought to offer more. We should expand the meaning of refuge: Refuge from poverty; refuge from hate; refuge from […]

Circling the Ⓐ: Revolution in a Single Syllable

Let us therefore trust the eternal Spirit which destroys and annihilates only because it is the unfathomable and eternally creative source of all life. The passion for destruction is a creative passion, too. — Mikhail Bakunin 1. Love it or hate it, the “Circle A” — scrawled on walls, carved in bathroom stalls, printed on […]

Nondominational Buddhism

Several years ago I wrote a post about the expected scope of this research project. I wanted to clarify what kind of operation I was performing in studying the intersection of Buddhism and anarchism. In that post, out of a healthy abundance of skepticism, I concluded that a reasonable outcome would be to find an […]

White lotus, red turbans, black flags: revolutionary buddhist heretics

“The bodhisattva practices emptiness, but he does not realize emptiness…He considers peacefulness but does not seek extreme peace.” – Vimalakirti Sutra By way of (re)introduction Hello, my patient readers. Believe it or not, the work continues behind the scenes. It took me some time to come back around, but I am back on this project […]

Working Definitions

Anarchist and buddhist thought are both much too broad to simply slap them together and expect a coherent ideology or practice to emerge. I’m going to attempt a working definition of specifically which anarchisms and which buddhisms I’m using to get a clearer idea of what the resulting buddhist anarchism might look like. For myself, […]