Firstly,

The title of the blog, "Everything is ablaze!", is a quotation from the Buddha's Fire Sermon, one of the most resonant religious texts I've ever encountered. I think it's so important to me because the Buddha realized that there is an underlying Truth to our life experience that transcends silly intellectual narratives. He gave this sermon to a bunch of fire-worshipping ascetics, people who clearly, on paper, did not feel the way the Buddha did about the world, but he explained his teachings with language that penetrated to the heart of his audience, using the fire that these people worshipped to illustrate his view of the world as united, alive, and interdependent.

Not only do I find the Buddha's metaphor totally compelling, I think his understanding that everybody is taking the exact same world and interpreting it differently remains one of the most timely lessons we can learn today. The filthy, greedy nihilists that run the U.S. government and the faith-blind fundamentalists they've co-opted and I, the upper-middle class, privileged, uncertain teenage know-it-all are all taking the same data and putting our own words to them until we really convince ourselves we are looking at different worlds.

We're not. Same world, different person.

That is what this blog will be about: drafting the collective Fire Sermon of the 21st century so that we can all learn that ancient and forgotten lesson of the Buddha's, that everything is ablaze.