A group blog of scholars exploring Indian philosophy
The world picture of the Buddhist Pali Canon is a mythical world picture. The world is made up of 31 planes of existence, divided into a formless realm, a fine material realm and a sensory realm. In the formless realm Continue reading Bultmann for Buddhists
I don’t believe in God. But if I did, that God might need to be Krishna. I have come to believe that the problem of suffering is effectively insurmountable. That is, the vast suffering in the world clearly implies that Continue reading A god for the real world
Evan Thompson’s critique of my eudaimonistic and probabilistic approach to karma has two prongs: that it is not really karma, and that it doesn’t work on its own terms. I addressed the first criticism last time. Now I’d like to Continue reading Is the eudaimonist proposition true?
I have spent a good deal of time criticizing the idea of a “perennial philosophy”, the idea (expressed by Ken Wilber and others before him) that the great sages of the world have always basically agreed on the really important Continue reading Perennial nondualism
I’d like to now envision the book I am working on. This post is something like a proposal for the book, both to clarify my thoughts on it and (more importantly) to hear yours. As I write it I keep Continue reading A book on how virtue helps us flourish
(In the last months, the IPhblog has hosted a long discussion on Evan Thompson’s last book, Why I am not a Buddhist. We are grateful to the participants, namely Amod Lele and Evan Thompson himself for their patience and accuracy Continue reading Losing the Thread: A Response to Lele (Guest Post by Evan Thompson)
For some time now I have realized: it is time for me to write a book. It’s time to take ideas that I have circulated in blog-post form and develop them into a more systematic, coherent constructive argument. It has Continue reading Resolving cliffhangers in a book
I will close out this latest round of replies to Evan Thompson with a recap: It is simply not the case that karma “is fundamentally about” why bad things happen to good people (or vice versa). To try to portray Continue reading Theodicy is not the core of karma
Last time I explained why I think a constructive modern Buddhist philosophy should indeed focus on Buddhist philosophical texts as its sources for karma, and I stand by that. Yet ironically, even if we were to turn away from philosophy Continue reading Karma in society
In my previous post I discussed how Evan Thompson and I may agree in principle that not all innovations to a tradition are legitimate. The real question, then, is how applicable the accusation of cherry-picking (or shopping cart) is in Continue reading Karma: eschatology, theodicy, or eudaimonism?