John Lee Pendall is a featured columnist, editor, podcast host, and co-owner of the Tattooed Buddha. He’s also a poet, composer, multi-instrumentalist (He’s recorded five albums so far), an amateur photographer/graphic designer and pen & ink artist, and he has a B.S. in psychology. He currently lives between two cornfields in rural Illinois. His errant knowledge base covers astronomy, theology, philosophy, music theory, and quoting lines from movies.
John Lee practices Chan Buddhism as a Novice Chan Priest. He’s also a lay Buddhologist (Buddhist scholar), and frequently translates and writes commentaries on Buddhist texts.
Feel free to check out John’s Facebook page and his blog, “Salty Dharma.”
Which Seeds Do I Water? Yogacara and Connecting It All
By Johnathon Lee I sat on break, broken by emotional agony, thinking, “I don’t matter.” I have Autism and a mood disorder, so depression and burnout always come for me eventually. Not even Buddhadharma really helps much in the depths. The teachings on...
Philosophy and Depression: The Need to Understand Keeps Me Going
By Johnathon Lee Depression isn’t something that you can just wish away with positive thinking. It’s a biological condition---a state of being that isn’t entirely compatible with industrial culture. The chronically depressed are a culture of their own. Depression is...
Perspective and Morality: Sometimes It’s all Relative
By J.L. Pendall Pat and Jan step into the freezing night. It's literally freezing, 32 degree Fahrenheit. "Wow, it's so cold, Pat exclaims. "Nah, it's not too bad," Jan replies. So, who's right? Is it cold or not cold? Cold is the easy answer, since it's...
Death of A Question Mark: Living Without Understanding
By J.L. Pendall I've always been assaulted by questions. The main one is, "Who the fuck am I?" closely followed by, "What the hell is going on here?" They usually culminate into a plead: "Please, make it stop! I don't want to hurt anymore!" I've tried...
Beauty in the Most Unlikely Places
By J.L. Pendall I am calm, and my heart and mind are at rest. These words disappear from me right after I write them. The sky is a bright blue, and the trees sway with their shadows. Birds sing and flap, "Food! Food! Fuck! Fuck!" The unseasonable heat is...
A Hard Lesson: The Best Times are the Worst Times
By John Lee Pendall I've tried really hard to have my cake and eat it too, but what I really need is an emotional and intellectual fast. As the Lexapro wards off my depression and anxiety, it becomes clearer and clearer that I'm higher on the Spectrum than I...
There is No Path
By J.L. Pendall I'm in ruins. The only thing I know how to do is breathe. It's dark out here, at the furthest edges of being human. Who I am, what I want, what I think, it all seems so small. Even love, the most beautiful and precious of things, is nothing from...
Life Hack: The Rational Secret to Living Forever!
By J.L. Pendall Do you want to live forever? No? Alright, well you still might get something out of this article anyway, ya poor bastard. When we get right down to it---to the Buddhas'n'Bits, if you will---immortality is our biological imperative. Whew, that's...
We are All Wounded and We Can All Rise Above It
By J.L. Pendall We're all wounded. We judge others based on if they soothe or aggravate these wounds, and we judge ourselves the same way. No one makes it to adulthood intact, and then our pain becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. We get pissed when someone...
To Dream is to Be Human
By J.L. Pendall We sat on the pier, floating atop the waves. The water was lapping playfully at the wood as barges tugged along the river. The sunlight was reflected in a thousand different ways as cotton clouds grazed here and there against the blue. We had...
Impermanence Sucks
By John Lee Pendall Impermanence sucks. Everything would be impossible without it, but it still sucks. Life depends on impermanence. If things didn't change, then not even the tiniest cell could've been puked out of the primordial soup; there wouldn't have been...
What Does It Mean To Be Human?
By John Lee Pendall My head is usually full of questions; questions and random facts about the Beatles. I've learned too much to completely trust anything that I know; nothing's beyond doubt. No matter how infatuated I get with some view, doubt always rushes in...
Beholdism: Profound Beauty & The Good Life
By John Lee Pendall We're going to go off into left field today and talk about how beholding beauty can lead to a good, full life. So, for shiggles, we can call the philosophy beholdism. I ask you, Dear Reader, please don't hold me to this philosophy. I'm a...
On Lying, Deception & the Difference Between
By John Lee Pendall I'm a great liar who rarely lies. It started with storytelling. I loved making up short stories when I was a kid, and I'd always share them with my mom. I wanted to be a writer and an actor---a performer. Probably for the attention. It's a...
The Dark Side of Craving {Trigger Warning}
{Trigger Warning} By John Lee Pendall I didn't know what an Incel was until I read reviews of the Joker movie. I'm frequently out of the loop when it comes to current events, and that's not an accident, I work really hard at having no idea what's going...