23 Sunday Nov 2025
Posted in Emotion, Mahāyāna, Meditation, Mindfulness, Modernized Buddhism, Psychology
Modern mindfulness tends to urge us to stay in the present moment, learn to avoid getting distracted by wandering thoughts. A friend recently raised a thoughtful critique of this approach: aren’t there times when we want, even need, our thoughts to wander?
Continue reading16 Sunday Nov 2025
Posted in Consciousness, Deity, Mahāyāna, Meditation, Mindfulness, Prayer, Psychology, Roman Catholicism
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Andy Puddicombe, Brook Ziporyn, Headspace, John Dunne, mystical experience, nondualism, phenomenology, Śāntideva, Satan, Spain, Teresa of Ávila, Tiantai 天台, Zhiyi
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 the Christian martyrs so much that in childhood they “agreed to go off to the land of the Moors and beg them, out of love of God, to cut off our heads there”, and felt very disappointed that they could not find a way to do this. (Section 1.4, page 3 of the Kavanaugh-Rodriguez translation) The later sections are the more famous ones, depicting Teresa’s vivid visions of angels.
In the middle, though, the book takes an unexpected detour – nearly a hundred pages – providing instructions for prayer. I don’t believe in Teresa’s God, let alone pray to him, which made it very tempting to skip these chapters. I’m very glad I didn’t, though, because I found important things in them that I recognized as a Buddhist.
Continue reading12 Wednesday Nov 2025
Posted in Anger, Attachment and Craving, Confucianism, Early and Theravāda, Emotion, External Goods, Flourishing, Foundations of Ethics, Human Nature, Mahāyāna, Meditation, Metaphysics, Mindfulness, Morality, Natural Science, Pleasure, Politics, Psychology, Self
≈ Comments Off on Mindform Podcast interview
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Alex O'Connor, Aristotle, authenticity, autobiography, Charles Goodman, conventional/ultimate, expressive individualism, Frank Lawton, Friedrich Nietzsche, interview, Jeremy Bentham, Kāma Sūtra, Madhyamaka, phenomenology, Śāntideva, Thailand, utilitarianism, virtue ethics
I was interviewed by Frank Lawton on a recent episode of the Mindform Podcast on self-development and wisdom, associated with Ryan A. Bush’s Designing the Mind. We begin with my formative story in Thailand and the anti-politics associated with it, proceeding to a critique of utilitarianism, a discussion of my gradual movement from Theravāda to Mahāyāna Buddhism, and finally to an exploration of expressive individualism. All told, I think it’s a very nicely rounded introduction to my philosophical thinking – even if my growing hair is in its awkward phase and I stammer a little too much!
22 Monday Sep 2025
Posted in Consciousness, Daoism, Deity, Early and Theravāda, Indigenous American Thought, Mahāyāna, Meditation, Metaphysics, Method and Theory in the Study of Religion, Psychology, Roman Catholicism, Self, Supernatural, Vedānta
≈ Comments Off on Canadian psychedelic podcast interview
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autobiography, Buddhaghosa, Canada, drugs, Elon Musk, interview, John Hick, MAPS, Meister Eckhart, mystical experience, nondualism, Osheen Dayal, phenomenology, religion, Roland Griffiths, Śāntideva, Teresa of Ávila, Thailand, Upaniṣads, Zhuangzi
Following up my talk on psychedelics and mysticism, Osheen Dayal of the Canadian branch of MAPS just interviewed me on the same subject for their video podcast. In the interview we talk about a wide range of subjects from my personal Buddhist story through St. Teresa’s angel to Elon Musk. Have a look!
15 Sunday Jun 2025
Posted in Certainty and Doubt, Epistemology, French Tradition, Mahāyāna, Meditation, Metaphilosophy, Metaphysics, Practice, Self, Serenity
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Chan/Zen 禪, David J. Blacker, drugs, Madhyamaka, mystical experience, Oxherding Pictures, Pierre Hadot, René Descartes, Śāntideva
David J. Blacker’s recent Deeper Learning with Psychedelics is a valuable attempt to think through the implications of psychedelics for philosophy and education. One passage in particular caught my imagination: Blacker points out the similarities between a psychedelic experience and René Descartes’s passage of radical doubt.
Continue reading01 Sunday Jun 2025
Posted in Confucianism, Daoism, East Asia, Greek and Roman Tradition, Mahāyāna, Meditation, Metaphilosophy, South Asia, Vedānta
≈ Comments Off on Is Asian philosophy footnotes to the Buddha?
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Alfred North Whitehead, Confucius, Livia Kohn, Plato, Śaṅkara, Siddhattha Gotama (Buddha), Upaniṣads, Zhu Xi, Zhuangzi
Recently I wanted to explore a fascinating passage of the Daoist founder Zhuangzi, where the text recommends “sitting in oblivion” or “sitting and forgetting” (zuòwàng 坐忘). That passage bears striking similarities to mystical practices and experiences from around the globe.
To help figure it out, I turned to Sitting in Oblivion by the Daoism scholar Livia Kohn, which shows how “sitting and forgetting” was developed as a practice and taken up at great length by later Daoist thinkers. One passage of Kohn’s particularly struck me:
The most important aspects of the rather extensive Buddhist imports into Daoism for sitting in oblivion include the organizational setting of meditation practice in monastic institutions, the formalized ethical requirement in the taking of precepts and refuge in the Three Treasures, the doctrines of karma and retribution, the five paths of rebirth, and the various layers of hell, as well as the vision of the body-mind in terms of multiple aspects, defilements, hindrances, and purification. (107)
“Rather extensive” indeed! I knew that East Asian Buddhists had drawn a great deal from Daoism – I have sometimes uncharitably described Chan/Zen as “Daoists cosplaying as Buddhists” – but I hadn’t realized how much the influence went in the other direction. Karma, rebirth, meditation, monastic institutions, taking precepts, taking refuge? At that point you sure sound a lot like Buddhists without the name!
Continue reading09 Sunday Mar 2025
Posted in Emotion, Meditation, Mindfulness, Modernized Buddhism, Psychology
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 a “secret” in the sense of being concealed away somewhere, just that beginners are rarely told how important it is; I more or less had to figure it out for myself. This holds true for the practices I’m most familiar with – Headspace, Robert Sokolove’s medical mindfulness recording, Goenka vipassanā – but also seems to hold for other forms of modern mindfulness that I’ve listened to recordings of. Because of this, I think it’s easy for a beginner to misinterpret what mindfulness meditation is about.
Headspace’s meditation instructions usually involve focusing your attention on your breath – its inward and outward movement, the way your chest and stomach rise and fall with the breath. (Sokolove’s likewise.) Goenka vipassanā puts more emphasis on repeatedly scanning your attention up and down through your body. But it’s become clear to me that that focus, on the breath or the bodily sensations, is not the point of any of these exercises.
Continue reading02 Sunday Mar 2025
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B.K.S. Iyengar, Elizabeth De Michelis, Mark Singleton, Swami Vivekānanda, Vācaspati Miśra, Yoga Bhāṣya, Yoga Sūtras
Even more ubiquitous in the West than mindfulness meditation, and for a longer period of time, is yoga: specifically meaning the practice of postural stretching exercises, with names like “sun salutation” and “downward dog”. They can be supplemented by breathing exercises and perhaps occasionally meditation, and there is often some element of Sanskrit or philosophy involved, but to a normal English-speaking layperson, the core of what yoga means is the postures. This is the sort of yoga that is sometimes even a competitive sport. Its health benefits are rarely contested; as my own aging body gets less naturally flexible, it’s probably only a matter of time before I sign up with a local yoga studio myself.
Meanwhile, in the classical Sanskrit from which the term is derived, yoga refers to a variety of spiritual practices in which postures play a minor role, if any. Śāntideva uses the term “yogin” to describe people with a greater understanding of reality, with postures never being mentioned in the text. The most famous and influential yoga text, the Yoga Sūtras of Patañjali, says that posture (āsana) is one – just one – of the eight limbs of yoga, and the only thing it specifies about posture is that posture should be “firm and pleasant” (sthirasukham) (YS II.46). There’s no stretching involved here; indeed the text suggests the opposite, that one should be comfortable, likely for meditation. The Yoga Bhāṣya commentary – traditionally included with the original – names several kinds of posture without explaining them; when Vācaspati Miśra’s subcommentary does come to explain them, it shows that they are postures for meditation, ways of placing your feet while you sit. Meditation, in general, plays the largest role in this classical yoga; stretching plays none.
So it’s natural to ask: how exactly did we get from one to the other, from a meditative classical yoga in which stretching plays no role, to a modern yoga in which it plays the primary role? I’ve seen this question asked in surprisingly few places. I wanted to get a deeper understanding of that question, so I thought it would be worth reading Elizabeth De Michelis’s 2005 work with the very promising title A History of Modern Yoga.
Continue reading23 Sunday Feb 2025
Posted in Biology, Emotion, Mahāyāna, Meditation, Philosophy of Science, Supernatural
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 of circular centres (cakras in standard Sanskrit transliteration, chakras in modern English spelling). This account of the “subtle body” (sūkṣma śarīra) has become popular in modern yoga and other forms of alternative medicine or spirituality.
I don’t believe this account of the subtle body – but not primarily for the obvious reason.
Continue reading16 Sunday Feb 2025
Posted in Anger, Compassion, Emotion, External Goods, Fear, Health, Meditation, Mindfulness, Modernized Buddhism, Practice, Psychology, Stoicism, Unconscious Mind
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 a surer path to happiness and reducing suffering.
But the question that has played an ever-increasing role in the three ensuing decades has been: okay, but how? It is one thing to recognize that your craving and anger – or fear or self-pity or shame or other negative emotions – are the main thing keeping you down. It is quite another to do something about them. Our animal natures make those states quite recalcitrant.
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