29 Sunday Oct 2017
Posted in Anger, Early and Theravāda, Gentleness, Mahāyāna, Politics, Tranquility
Tags
Aśvaghoṣa, conferences, Dalai Lama XIV, Engaged Buddhism, Frédéric Richard, IABS, Stephen Jenkins, Tibet, Tibetan Youth Congress
I presented about Disengaged Buddhism at the International Association of Buddhist Studies conference in August. My talk was paired with a presentation by Frédéric Richard on a topic that did not initially appear to be related: the Tibetan government in exile. As it turned out, the papers proved fascinating mirror images of each other. Continue reading
14 Sunday May 2017
Posted in Early and Theravāda, Foundations of Ethics, God, Islam, Mahāyāna, Metaphysics, Sāṃkhya-Yoga, Self
Cross-posted at the Indian Philosophy Blog.
I’ve been thinking lately about MacIntyre’s explanation of the Muslim philosopher ibn Sīnā and the ways in which ibn Sīnā’s concept of God requires us to rethink the entire world around us if we accept it:
From [atheists’] standpoint a theist is someone who believes in just one more being than they do and who therefore has the responsibility for justifying her or his belief in this extra entity. But from the standpoint of the theist this is already to have misconceived both God and theistic belief in God. To believe in God is not to believe that in addition to nature, about which atheists and theists can agree, there is something else, about which they disagree. It is rather that theists and atheists disagree about nature as well as about God. For theists believe that nature presents itself as radically incomplete, as requiring a ground beyond itself, if it is to be intelligible, and so their disagreement with atheists involves everything. (God, Philosophy, Universities p. 47)
What’s drawing my attention is that you could write a very similar passage to characterize Buddhism. Continue reading