A group blog of scholars exploring Indian philosophy
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
Pema Chödrön’s When Things Fall Apart is a beautiful and valuable work on dealing with difficult circumstances. What strikes me in it is how Chödrön – despite being a monk herself – takes a position so deeply at odds with Continue reading Improving on the Buddha
When I was in grad school, a big academic fashion was to heap scorn on the idea that mystical experience could be something cross-cultural: everything was reducible to social context, and the similarities of experience didn’t really matter, as I Continue reading Finding mysticism in unexpected places
Readers may be interested in a new article by Scott Stroud that traces the influence of American pragmatist John Dewey on his student, the modern caste reformer B.R. Ambedkar.
Céline Leboeuf just interviewed me about philosophy for her “Why Philosophy?” newsletter. I discuss the role that Buddhism and Śāntideva have played in my philosophical formation and conception of philosophy, so I thought the interview might be of interest to Continue reading “Why Philosophy?” interview
The United States has always been a relentlessly pragmatic place, which doesn’t leave it much room for philosophy. Watching three Republican presidential candidates all take pot-shots at philosophy on the same night was only the most vivid recent example. But Continue reading You don’t have to drop philosophy for activism