Buddhist Apologetics: A Blog

This is the home page of the Buddhist Apologetics blog, a [very, very] slowly developing set of discussions concerning contemporary Buddhism largely as practiced in the United States.

Hey, what do you mean”apologetics”??—we’ve got nothing to apologize about!!

Uh, Apologetics? Dudes, just Google it. But here’s a nice explanation: 

In its most basic sense, apologetics refers to systematic argumentative discourse. Breaking that definition down further, it means that an alternative view of a topic is offered in an organized fashion. It doesn’t have to be argumentative in the sense of being quarrelsome.

The word ‘apologetics’ itself stems from the Greek word apologia, which means simply an answer given in reply. … Put simply, it is the rational response against the objections people bring up about Christianity. And over the course of 2,000 years, there have been a few objections. So if you value having a reasoned response over a frustrated folding of arms and a refusal to engage, then apologetics has something to offer you.
https://seminary.grace.edu/what-is-apologetics/ 

While the form started as Christian explanations to pagan objections to their new religious movement—an elegant weapon for a more civilized age when Christianity spread by rhetorical persuasion, rather than the power of global empires—it re-emerges in unexpected places, perhaps most famously in Protestant contemplative circles in the Quaker Robert Barclay’s 17th centuryAn Apology for the True Christian Divinity—generally more modestly known simply as Barclay’s Apology. 

And here we simply turn the tables, with an apologetic directed towards Christians (and assorted rationalists, materialists, skeptics, and angry atheists. Even if angry atheists are sooo 1990s and no longer cool. And worse, Boomers.

About the Blogger

Posts

Introduction to Buddhism in the United States

These are an extended series of talks originally presented in Winter-2025. At present, I’m planning to primarily do this blog as—gasp!—text, but who knows, that could change. I will not be doing video…

Link to slides from the Cloud Floating Free presentation

Just a link in case the Zoom connection went down: nothing to see here, move along, move alone…

A metta meditation

The text of the metta practice that I use to conclude guided meditations, and an assortment of remarks on the history and practice of metta meditation more generally.