A group blog of scholars exploring Indian philosophy
The autobiography of (Saint) Teresa of Ávila is a most remarkable book. Its beginning sections on Teresa’s early life feel at once relatable (she recalls her youthful interest in making herself pretty) and utterly alien: she and her brother admired Continue reading Nondual mindfulness in Teresa of Ávila
It’s hard for me to view B.R. Ambedkar as a real Buddhist, when he threw out the Four Noble Truths after getting to Buddhism by a mere process of elimination. But then, to a real Buddhist, it shouldn’t matter – Continue reading Ambedkar and the Nation of Islam as skillful means
Susanta Bhattacharya, a doctoral candidate in Indian philosophy in Kraków, Poland, published in Journal of Indian Philosophy earlier this year and asked us to share a summary. The full title of the piece is “Does Liberation Entail Disembodiment? Re-examining the Continue reading Does liberation entail disembodiment? A guest post by Susanta Bhattacharya
Dr. Ambedkar, the 20th-century leader of the lowest (“Dalit”, formerly “untouchable”) Indian caste groups, might be having a moment. In my Indian philosophy class in 2019, I wanted to have a segment on modern Indian philosophy, so I introduced the Continue reading My complicated relationship with B.R. Ambedkar
One of the first things you’d learn in any Intro to Buddhism course is that most Buddhists alive today are part of the Mahāyāna tradition, in which one aspires to be a bodhisattva (and eventually become a buddha). Mahāyāna is Continue reading The lost Buddhisms
If Nāgārjuna, the great Madhyamaka Buddhist philosopher, is known for anything, it’s his doctrine of the emptiness (śūnyatā) of all things. But in his most famous work, Nāgārjuna warns his audience about emptiness: “Misperceived emptiness ruins a person of dull Continue reading Snakes wrongly grasped: on the psychedelic experiences of Musk and Manson
Daniel Pallies, a philosophy postdoc at Lingnan University in Hong Kong, recently wrote a blog post entitled “The inexplicable appeal of spicy food”. Pallies, from his bio, indicates that one of his key interests is the question: “What makes a Continue reading If only Bentham had read the Kāma Sūtra
Buddhists have never agreed on an overall metaphysics. They have long agreed that prajñā – accurately seeing things according to the ultimate truth – is hugely important, but they differ greatly on what that ultimate truth is. The Theravāda Abhidhamma Continue reading Where Buddhists agree on metaphysics
While Buddhist schools have many different takes on metaphysics – on what the world really is – they all acknowledge a distinction between two truths, or two levels of reality. That is: there is a conventional truth, the one familiar Continue reading Seeing through conventional reality
I’m delighted to be giving a talk at Psychedelic Science 2025, the annual conference of the Multidisciplinary Association of Psychedelic Studies. The conference (June 17-20 in Denver) promises to be really fun and stimulating. If you can make it, I’d Continue reading After mystical experiences