A group blog of scholars exploring Indian philosophy
Early in the first Trump administration, I preached the importance of disengaged Buddhists’ lessons: to refrain from anger, to remind ourselves that some things are more important than politics. I think that that was easier to do the first time Continue reading Disengaged Buddhism in the second era of Trump
One of the things that really surprises me about contemporary mindfulness meditation is how rarely – especially at the beginning – they highlight what, as far as I can tell, is the most beneficial aspect of the practice. It’s not Continue reading The secret of mindfulness meditation
Traditional Indian and Tibetan tantric anatomy tells us that in the middle of the human torso there are three channels (nādis or “streams”), one each on the left, middle, and right, and that these proceed vertically upward through a number Continue reading Empiricism of the subtle body
The most important lesson I ever learned was back in Thailand in 1997: that the biggest contributor to my unhappiness wasn’t external problems like being single or unemployed, but my own mental states like craving. Fixing those mental states was Continue reading We need to see emotions as bodily
Guest post submitted by Debajyoti Gangopadhyay Classical Indian Buddhism scholar Suniti Kumar Pathak passed away recently in his Santiniketan house, Bengal. For the whole Indian Buddhist fraternity as well as Indo-Tibetan academia this loss is irreparable. He was 101 years Continue reading Obituary of Suniti Kumar Pathak
If we take a modern Buddhist approach where the ultimate reality is emptiness, what then does that look like in practice? Especially as we think about the key question:how can you be yourself if there is no self? In thinking Continue reading Sketching an existentialist Buddhism
How can we reconcile Buddhism with expressive individualism (“be yourself”) and with natural science? When I had previously turned to Wilfrid Sellars for help on this question, I had compared Sellars’s view to two Buddhist metaphysical positions on ultimate truth, Continue reading The physics of emptiness
Any serious contemporary Buddhist intellectual needs to think through the connection between Buddhist ideas and the relevant claims of natural science. Many of us, too, are expressive individualists: we believe that there is something valuable in the project of discovering Continue reading The scientific self is not reductionist
Monism is the idea that everything is, or is ultimately reducible to, one. This is not quite the same as nondualism, a term increasingly common in mystical circles. Nondualism is the idea that everything is not two or more – Continue reading Nondualism without monism
It doesn’t sit very well with many modern readers, including myself, to put a high value on shame. We often find shame to be something that cripples us, makes us burn with embarrassment in a way that inhibits our doing Continue reading The Buddhist critique of shame