And we’re back! After a long winter’s break, the DharmaRealm podcast launches its second year “on the air,” so to speak.

Prompted by a listener question about why Buddhism “works” for us, we talk about how we each came to discover Buddhism and Shin Buddhism in particular. Harry talks about his experiences growing up in Japan and later the East Coast and his encounter with Shin Buddhism through a friend’s grandfather’s memorial service. Scott recounts his experience in a community college history class where the truth of suffering was confirmed for him. By and large, our first experiences were primarily intellectual, but over the years of bumming around different Buddhist paths, and even different countries, we both came to find the Shin path, and through graduate school, befriended one another.

Thanks for your patience over the winter break. We’ll be returning to our regular first and third Friday schedule from here on out. Happy New Year!

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In part two of our episode on American Buddhism, our conversation meanders from such topics as: How does one become a Buddhist? What is the relationship between becoming a Buddhist and intellectual study? How import is taking the three refuges? How important is community? We also discuss the important role that Buddhist art and images can play in introducing people to Buddhism, and our ambivalent feeling about “tourist Buddhism” and Buddhist commercialism.

In a separate post, we’ll be adding links to some of the resources discussed in the podcast.Thanks for listening!

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