Sensei Alex Kakuyo is a former Marine, author, and Buddhist teacher in the Bright Dawn Center of Oneness Buddhism. He teaches a nonsectarian approach to the Dharma, which encourages students to seek enlightenment in everyday life.
You can follow him by visiting his blog, The Same Old Zen and on Twitter: @sameoldzen.
Regular People Doing Regular Things is What Saves the World
By Sensei Alex Kakuyo I live in an apartment complex where everyone shares a trash chute. Several times a week I take my garbage down the hall to the trash room, put it into a hole in the wall, and watch it disappear forever. The hole...
read more
Self Worth is Not About Your Income or Job Title
By Sensei Alex Kakuyo I was perusing Facebook the other day when I came upon the following question, "How do you maintain a sense of intrinsic self-worth within capitalism? This is a deep question, and it's an important one for our time,...
read more
The Amazon Rainforest is Burning
By Sensei Alex Kakuyo The Amazon Rainforest is burning. To be fair, it's been burning in one form or another for a long time. Subsistence farmers in South America have used slash and burn farming practices for centuries, which involve...
read more
How the US Women’s Soccer Team Can Teach Us about Sympathetic Joy
By Sensei Alex Kakuyo I was never very good at soccer. A lack of foot/ eye coordination mixed with my ability to sprint like an asthmatic turtle caused me to hang up my cleats at the ripe old age of 10. However, I never lost my love for...
read more
The Lesson in The Game of Thrones Finale (and Why we Hate it)
By Sensei Alex Kakyuo WARNING! Game of Thrones Spoilers ahead! If you haven't seen the final season yet, you may want to close out this article now. ...
read more
Buddha as a Blues Brother
By Sensei Alex Kakuyo I discovered Blues music when I was 10 years old. I was at my maternal grandmother’s house, watching TV when a movie called the Blues Brothers came on the screen. The premise of the movie is fairly simple---two...
read more
A Buddhist’s View on Love, Romance & Compassion
By Sensei Alex Kakuyo Valentine's Day was last week, and people celebrated in a variety of ways. In fact, Kanye filled his living room with roses and hired Kenny G to serenade his wife, Kim Kardashian-West. Others celebrated in more...
read more
Do Buddhists Have a Role in Politics?
By Sensei Alex Kakuyo A while back I read a book called, The Ape in the Corner Office by Richard Conniff. In the book, Conniff uses examples from the animal kingdom (everything from fish to primates) to explain why people do the strange...
read more
Resolutions: Accepting All of the Crooked Parts
By Sensei Alex Kakuyo There was an old Buddhist priest who ran a small temple at the top of a hillside. He'd spent several decades chanting, praying, and providing spiritual support to his community, but the time had come for him to...
read more
You’ve Always Had the Power to Return Home
By Sensei Alex Kakuyo When we examine the human body, the default setting is one of good health; that is to say, we assume that people are supposed to be healthy, and then we go from there. We wake each morning with the expectation that we'll be...
read more
I’ll Take Reality Over Psychedelic Buddhism Any Day
By Sensei Alex Kakuyo You meet all kinds of people on the road. Some of them are clearly running from something; a past trauma or an action they regret. Others are clearly looking for something; a tribe of like-minded people or a safe place to call...
read more
Killing the Buddha: The Cycle of Samsara
By Sensei Alex Kakuyo I witnessed a murder last night. It happened in my kitchen while I was making tea. I had just finished boiling water and I was perusing my collection of tea bags. As I leaned over the counter, trying to...
read more
Being a Light in a Society of Anger
By Sensei Alex Kakyuo In Buddhism, a Bodhisattva is a being who has vowed to realize enlightenment in order to save all sentient beings from suffering. Teachers will often tell stories of Bodhisattvas and their great feats/vows of...
read more
The Zen of Being Mentally Strong
By Sensei Alex Kakuyo Recently, I read a book by professor Nassim Taleb called, Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder. In the book, Taleb argues that there are three types of systems in the world. There are fragile systems that break under...
read more
What Makes a Buddhist’s Robes Sacred, and a Bathrobe Mundane?
By Alex Chong Do Thompson In less than a month, I'll be inducted as a Lay Minister in the Bright Dawn Center of Oneness Buddhism. After the ceremony, I'll have a new Dharma name, and be authorized to use the title Sensei. I'll give...
read more