Photo by John Thomas on Unsplash The Four Noble Truths compress the problem, solution, and techniques of Buddhism into what is considered to be the simplest doctrinal summarization of Buddhist teachings. The First Noble Truth says that human existence is characterized by dukkha, meaning suffering. It says that while there is joy along the way, each […]

Photo by Chris Chow on Unsplash In David Chidester’s Authentic Fakes: Religion and American Popular Culture, he uses the metaphor of the Church of Baseball to connect secular (non-religious) activities to religious practices and sentiments. Let’s examine some of the bases on which he makes his claims: Baseball creates rituals. Baseball is rich with rituals parallel to those

Photo by Baran Lotfollahi on Unsplash Creation myths are core narratives found across cultures that explain the origins of the universe, the Earth, life, and humanity. These myths are crucial for exploring how different societies and cultures conceptualize the world and their place within it. American philologist David Leeming, throughout his work The World of Myth

Photo by Julie Ricard on Unsplash In Buddhism, the problem is suffering (dukkha), and the solution is nirvana. Nirvana literally means “blowing out” and refers to the notion of extinguishing, or eliminating, suffering. The technique for achieving nirvana is the Noble Eightfold path, which is derived from the Four Noble Truths. It touches on well-known Buddhist

Photo by Ali Köse on Unsplash I’ve previously written on Durkheim’s take on the sacred versus the profane (click to read). Therein we explore Durkheim’s take on religion as a social institution and his views on life’s major delineations: the sacred and the profane. With that base in mind, we can go a level deeper and

Photo by Alok Verma on Unsplash Jennifer Knust, an American Biblical scholar out of Duke, posits Esther and Jezebel as two archetypal female figures—models of the feminine—in her writings on female figures in the Bible. In the Bible, Esther and Jezebel were both queens. Esther was a Jewish woman who married the Persian King Ahasuerus and convinced

Photo by Sonika Agarwal on Unsplash Diana Eck, Harvard theologian, explores the significance of visual perception in Hindu worship through the concept of Darsan in her book Darsan: Seeing the Divine Image in India. Darsan refers to the act of seeing or being seen by a deity through idols or sacred images in Hindu worship. Darsan itself

Photo by Dibakar Roy on Unsplash The late anthropologist Jill Dubisch popularized purity as a driving theme across religious belief, social boundaries, and gender roles. We’ll explore purity as an inteprlay to the domains that Dubisch presents: pilgrimage, gender, physical, and social. Across these domains, she notes how purity is a requisite to many pilgrims across many

Photo by Pauline Lu on Unsplash In a previous article where we detailed Jane Iwamura’s Oriental Monk figure, we touched on her work Virtual Orientalism. We’ll detail her core premise in this article. Essentially, Iwamura describes how Western media has simplified and “made palatable” complex Eastern spiritual religions, practices, and groups into highly idealized and simplified symbols.

Hey! Jon here. I’ve worked in self-publishing for a solid eight years now. I recently released this three-hour guide to the whole self-publishing process (useful whether you’re at $0 or $10,000 per month) on my youtube channel. Check it out here—I guarantee you’ll find it helpful 🙂 Now, here’s a quick rundown of my top tips,