While science has done much to improve the human estate, scientific rationality—at least as it is understood and practiced today—is not in itself an able vehicle of human wisdom.

Contemporary science has allied itself with the perennial, and scientifically discredited, dogma of materialism, which in our time functions every bit as much a suppressive official church as the dominant ecclesiastical institutions did before science eclipsed their imperial authority. And while most of the dominant religions today have made their grudging rapprochement with the scientific and political authorities, their own fundamentalisms are always threatening to escape the containment vessel forged by the liberal European consensus of the past three centuries. Consequently, humankind today is hemmed in on all sides by the two warring (but strangely similar) ideologies of scientific materialism and conventional or fundamentalist religions. This is why there is such a profound “wisdom gap” in contemporary world culture.

DharmaCafé begins from two very simple premises: That there actually is a numinous, luminous, spiritual, transcendent, and irreducibly conscious Reality (what we shall here call “the sacred”) and that our own participation in this Reality is the most vital, passionate, interesting, and important aspect of our individual and collective lives. Instead of expending most of its energies “getting to church”—that is, attempting to prove that the sacred really exists—DharmaCafé will start out “in church“ and go on to bring energy, clarity, depth of feeling, critical insight, and even great good humor to its most compelling and potent manifestations. It is committed to freely exploring and vividly reporting on the total specrum of humanity’s sacred endeavors to the millions upon millions of literate, intelligent human beings who are interested in hearing about them.

DharmaCafé is here to give living proof that there is a way out of the nightmare of present history. DharmaCafé is here to fulfill the profound need of an intelligent and rapidly growing audience for an independent, authoritative, and reliable guide to the sacred as it manifests itself in all dimensions of life, past and present. DharmaCafé is here to gather and empower the “cultural creatives” who are reaching beyond their inherited ethnic, religious, political, and cultural loyalties toward a means of understanding and engaging all of life in the light of spiritual truth. DharmaCafé is here to satisfy our thirst for the profundity of actual spiritual practice and the depths of lived experience rather than the surfaces of doctrines and the superficiality of egocentric personalities. DharmaCafé is here to chronicle humanity’s efforts to embark upon the next stage of its cultural and spiritual evolution. DharmaCafé is here to reveal Dharma, the way in which the sacred is lived in all of life and culture.

Our purpose is to bring together a community of open-hearted, open-minded, and truly serious students, scholars, and practitioners interested and active in every kind of sacred endeavor. We intend to offer critical essays, articles, and reviews that inform, uplift, and, yes, Enlighten us all. . . So, welcome again to DharmaCafé!  -William Stranger
http://dharmacafe.com
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