29 Sunday Oct 2017
Posted in Anger, Early and Theravāda, Gentleness, Mahāyāna, Politics, Serenity
Tags
Aśvaghoṣa, Dalai Lama XIV, Disengaged Buddhism, 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
01 Sunday Oct 2017
Tags
Alasdair MacIntyre, Four Noble Truths, Friedrich Nietzsche, Jan Westerhoff, John Stuart Mill, Pali suttas, Rāmāyana, rebirth, Śāntideva, suicide, Thailand
Last time I discussed Jan Westerhoff’s potent objection to naturalized Buddhism: if there is no rebirth then we can end our suffering simply by committing suicide. Westerhoff takes this objection as a reason to accept rebirth. I do not. Rather, I take it as pointing to a deeper problem with some core Buddhist teachings as they are usually understood. Continue reading
03 Sunday Sep 2017
Tags
Abhidhamma, architecture, autobiography, Canada, Hebrew Bible, music, Pali suttas, rasa, religion, saksit, Thailand, Thomas Aquinas, Vannapa Pimviriyakul
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Basilique Notre-Dame. Photo by David Iliff. Licence: CC-BY-SA 3.0
Basilique Notre-Dame – one of the most magnificent cathedrals in North America – was the first work of architecture to leave a real impact on me, as an undergraduate in Montréal. I visited it again recently for the first time in a long time, and this time it made me think: saksit. Continue reading
23 Sunday Jul 2017
Tags
Abhidhamma, Buddhaghosa, Charles Goodman, Damien Keown, Disengaged Buddhism, Immanuel Kant, Jātakas, justice, Justin Whitaker, Pali suttas, Śāntideva, Sutta Nipāta
I’m continuing to examine Justin Whitaker‘s interpretation of Pali Buddhist ethics as Kantian moral law. I argued last time that the concept of dhamma does not serve in these texts as a universal, trans-human moral law. Here I want to take a similar look at the concept of kamma – better known in English as karma.
Justin claims that for Kant “the Moral Law is universal, concerned with all (rational) beings, and is holistic in its conception of morality as a guarantor to a just realm of ends (supported by the moral argument for belief in God).” (47) I think this interpretation of Kant is missing something in that Kant does not view the moral argument as demonstrating that there actually is a guarantee of cosmic justice, only that we must act as if there is (it is a regulative ideal). But I’ll leave that aside here because I want to focus on the comparison to Buddhism. Continue reading
09 Sunday Jul 2017
Posted in Early and Theravāda, Foundations of Ethics, Mahāyāna, Metaphysics, Morality
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Abraham Vélez de Céa, Buddhaghosa, Immanuel Kant, Jayarava Attwood, Justin Whitaker, Matthew Moore, Pali suttas, Śāntideva, Siddhattha Gotama (Buddha), Yogācāra
In his interesting recent Buddhism and Political Theory, Matthew Moore sums up current scholarly work on Buddhist ethics noting “There are several major debates ongoing in the field, particularly whether early Buddhist ethics are better understood as consequentialist or a version of virtue ethics (almost no one argues for deontology)…” (113)
My friend and fellow blogger Justin Whitaker is a major part of the “almost”. I once described him as a “voice in the wilderness” for interpreting Buddhist ethics in terms of Kantian deontology. But I was delighted to hear that he has recently completed his dissertation, in a way that should make that voice a little louder. And I was happy to have a chance to read it.
To say that I am delighted that the work exists is not, of course, to say that I agree with it. Continue reading
28 Sunday May 2017
Posted in Deity, Early and Theravāda, Islam, Mahāyāna, Metaphysics, Self
Cross-posted at the Indian Philosophy Blog.
A friend read the previous post on ibn Sīnā and Śāntideva and asked (on Google+) what exactly I meant by “incompleteness”. It was a great question and made me realize there was a bit of confusion in my own thinking.
The point of connection I saw between the two different thinkers was above all at the level of understanding the world. Continue reading
14 Sunday May 2017
Posted in Deity, Early and Theravāda, Foundations of Ethics, 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
16 Sunday Apr 2017
Posted in Anger, Early and Theravāda, External Goods, Mahāyāna, Modernized Buddhism, Politics, Psychology, Serenity
Tags
21st century, autobiography, Disengaged Buddhism, Donald Trump, Engaged Buddhism, Four Noble Truths, George W. Bush, IABS, Pali suttas, race, S.N. Goenka, Śāntideva, United States
Cross-posted at the Indian Philosophy Blog.
Śāntideva’s anti-political views are very commonly missed by Buddhist scholars today, especially constructive or theological ones, who are excited by the Engaged Buddhist embrace of political action. He is hardly alone among classical Indian Buddhists in expressing them. So last September I proposed a presentation to the International Association of Buddhist Studies (IABS), which I intended to turn into a paper, explaining the importance of these anti-political views and entitled “Disengaged Buddhism”.
I was expecting Hillary Clinton to win the American election. Continue reading
19 Sunday Mar 2017
Posted in Aesthetics, Early and Theravāda, Place, Rites, Serenity, Supernatural
Tags
architecture, Augustine, autobiography, Four Noble Truths, Japan, music, Robert Wilson, saksit, Siddhattha Gotama (Buddha), Thailand, upāyakauśalya, Vannapa Pimviriyakul
We think these days a lot about Buddhist ethics, which often involves some thought about Buddhist politics. We tend to think a lot less about Buddhist aesthetics.
Now there’s an obvious explanation that could be given for this: the Buddhist dhamma teaches that worldly pleasures mire us in suffering. So aesthetics, insofar as it deals with pleasurable phenomena like art, is something Buddhists should avoid. In response I give you this:
05 Sunday Mar 2017
Tags
architecture, autobiography, Jinapañjara Gathā, Justin McDaniel, Pali suttas, religion, Thailand, Vasudha Narayanan
While I was working in Thailand as a young man, my closest friend there was a pious Christian who had recently converted, as an undergraduate. He took a short vacation in Malaysia and came back deeply admiring the (Muslim) Malay people he met, saying: “They’re so religious!”
I noted, “The Thais are very religious too.” He exclaimed – “But that’s just – superstition!”
I was nonplussed by that reaction and didn’t answer it, because it left my secular self a bit confused: I hadn’t really thought there was a difference between religion and superstition. That seemed a potentially inflammatory point to make, so I left it silent. But I certainly didn’t agree with him. I was already admiring the Thai Buddhists I met, and would soon come to learn my most important life lesson from the Buddhism I found in Thailand. I would never want to dismiss it as mere superstition.
Until, perhaps, I recently started reading the works of Justin McDaniel. Continue reading