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08.14.08
Grasping the Appeal of a Pop Culture Guru
"I came to this interview reluctantly. I read Eckhart Tolle's first book, The Power of Now, years ago and had been struck by its sense and force. But since he appeared on a 10-week online seminar with Oprah Winfrey and became a global best-selling author, his name is everywhere. I'm always wary of hype, or what looks like hype, especially when it surrounds religious and spiritual figures. Often the skepticism is valid. But…"
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08.07.08
There Are No Sins, Only Consequences
"Creating this program was an astonishing reminder of how what is "other" — religious otherness, especially — can become stereotyped and remain stubbornly so. The immediate association most of us have with Vodou, it seems, was invented in the West. It was most indelibly planted in American imaginations by Bela Lugosi's portrayal of an evil, doll-wielding Haitian "voodoo" priest in a 1932 Hollywood film, White Zombie — at a time when the U.S. was in the final throes of a 19-year occupation of Haiti."
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07.31.08
An Evolving Sense of Pragmatism
"This conversation with Jonathan Greenblatt is a bit of a departure in that it veers quite far from any strict discussion of "faith." He inhabits a universe of "pragmatic idealism," of social entrepreneurship. His is a very different model of idealism and philanthropy than that defined by the 1960s, which shaped so many of us. But as I listen to him, and probe at times quite skeptically, I am glad to know that he and his peers are making their distinctive mark on the world."
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07.24.08
Purposelessness and Play: Endemic to Our Human Nature
"Stuart Brown, for his own part, says he spent too many years as a workaholic doctor; and he came to his fascination with play after observing play-deprivation in the lives of homicidal young men he had been given to study. These days, he gives himself three or four hours a day of "rogue tennis," reading, frolicking with his grandchildren."
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07.17.08
China's Ancient and Abiding Pluralism
"I knew far less about the ancient and abiding pluralism of China than I'm happy to admit. I knew far more about Chinese crackdowns on specific traditions, such as the Falun Gong movement, Tibetan Buddhism, and the Vatican's right to appoint bishops. And while Mayfair Yang doesn't in any way excuse or justify repression or brutality, she does help me grasp their roots and reasoning."
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