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Love of All Wisdom

~ Philosophy through multiple traditions

Love of All Wisdom

Tag Archives: architecture

Our need for other people

19 Sunday Apr 2020

Posted by Amod Lele in Buddhism, Flourishing, Friends, Jainism, Monasticism, Pleasure

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Alasdair MacIntyre, architecture, ascent/descent, Ayn Rand, COVID-19, intimacy/integrity, qualitative individualism, Tattvārtha Sūtra, vinaya, Yoga Sūtras

As I write this post, I, probably along with most of my readers, face severe restrictions on normal human social activity, in order to limit the rapid spread of the COVID-19 virus. Electronic communications have made it possible to continue a social life despite these restrictions – but much of this conversation tends to focus on the virus and the limitations of life under it. I find myself yearning for more conversations about other things, and you may be as well. I also do not think I have anything particularly profound to say about the virus so far. For these reasons, I am not going to write here about the virus, at least for now. Instead, for the next little while I’m going to write about other topics that I’d been planning to write about anyway, but on an increased frequency to suit my and others’ changed schedules: every Sunday rather than every alternate Sunday. This is the first such post. I was not thinking about the virus when I originally wrote it, but perhaps it takes on a different resonance now.

A good human life, in general, requires living with other human beings. Some would take this claim as a truism, but I think it’s important to establish it. The ideal of the autonomous, independent individual is not merely a modern Western conceit, as is usually thought; this ideal is held up as a high ideal by monastic traditions in ancient India, perhaps most prominently in the Yoga Sūtras and Jain Tattvārtha Sūtra which describe their highest ideal as kaivalya, aloneness.

Continue reading →

Ten years of Love of All Wisdom

01 Saturday Jun 2019

Posted by Amod Lele in Buddhism, God, Human Nature, M.T.S.R., Meditation, Metaphilosophy, Practice, Prayer, Reading and Recitation, Rites, Unconscious Mind

≈ 14 Comments

Tags

Aaron Stalnaker, Alasdair MacIntyre, architecture, Aristotle, ascent/descent, autobiography, chastened intellectualism, H.P. Lovecraft, identity, Ken Wilber, Mañjuśrī, Plato, Vasudha Narayanan

I opened Love of All Wisdom to the public, with three first posts, on 1 June 2009. That was ten years ago today.

In the span of the history of philosophy, ten years is the blink of an eye. In the span of the blogosphere, however, ten years is an eternity. A lot happens in that time. Ten years ago, Instagram, Snapchat and Lyft did not exist; Uber, Airbnb, the Chrome browser and the Android operating system were less than a year old. Continue reading →

Whose religion? Which science?

24 Sunday Dec 2017

Posted by Amod Lele in Aesthetics, Attachment and Craving, Biology, Buddhism, Christianity, Karma, M.T.S.R., Meditation, Metaphysics, Natural Science, Self, Supernatural

≈ Comments Off on Whose religion? Which science?

Tags

Abhidhamma, architecture, Boston University, Four Noble Truths, Nick (Nattavudh) Powdthavee, Pali suttas, pedagogy, rebirth, religion, Siddhattha Gotama (Buddha)

A little while ago I had the pleasure of giving a guest lecture on Buddhism to David Decosimo‘s class at the Boston University School of Theology. The students were a delight to teach – smart, actively engaged, asking many questions. One student’s question in particular stuck with me after the session. She had started to ask a long set of multiple questions, and then distilled it down to what she referred to as a simple question: “How would you describe the relation between Buddhism and science?”

My first response was: “That is not a simple question!” There is so much to say about it that there are now books written not merely on the actual relationship between Buddhism and science, but on the very idea of a relationship between Buddhism and science. I gave a relatively rambling answer. But after leaving the classroom it occurred to me that there was a relatively simple answer that I could have given – one that would have put a large part of the question’s complexity aside, but focused on something of particular relevance to students of Christian theology. Continue reading →

The saksit of Notre-Dame

03 Sunday Sep 2017

Posted by Amod Lele in Aesthetics, Early and Theravāda, Emotion, Natural Science, Place, Psychology, Roman Catholicism, Supernatural

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

Abhidhamma, architecture, autobiography, Canada, Hebrew Bible, music, Pali suttas, rasa, religion, saksit, Thailand, Thomas Aquinas, Vannapa Pimviriyakul

Basilique Notre-Dame. Photo by David Iliff. Licence: [CC-BY-SA 3.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en)

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 →

The power of a beautiful temple

19 Sunday Mar 2017

Posted by Amod Lele in Aesthetics, Early and Theravāda, Place, Rites, Serenity, Supernatural

≈ 4 Comments

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:

Temple of the Emerald Buddha, Bangkok

Continue reading →

Of superstition and aesthetics

05 Sunday Mar 2017

Posted by Amod Lele in Aesthetics, Early and Theravāda, Modern Hinduism, Modernized Buddhism, Supernatural

≈ 6 Comments

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 →

Coming to like modern India

03 Sunday Feb 2013

Posted by Amod Lele in Aesthetics, Family, Food, Modern Hinduism, Place, Pleasure, Rites

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

architecture, autobiography, Pune, Thailand

This post will be a little less philosophical, strictly speaking at least, than is usual here. Readers have found my autobiographical explorations interesting in the past, and I hope this will be similarly so.

I recently returned from India, to have a traditional Indian wedding ceremony. (I’ve been married for two and a half years, but my Indian friends and relatives could not attend that ceremony, nor did it have Indian gods presiding over it.) It’s an unfortunate irony that I have been able to get to India much less frequently ever since I started studying it. My previous trip was at the beginning of 2005; it had been eight years between that trip and the one I just returned from, whereas in my childhood the years between trips were no more than three. And I’m very glad to have had this trip, for it made quite a different impression on me from the previous ones. Continue reading →

On hating the real world

03 Sunday Jun 2012

Posted by Amod Lele in Christianity, Confucianism, Early Factions, Place, Politics, Supernatural

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

architecture, Communism, conservatism, Eric Voegelin, Frank Gehry, Front Porch Republic, Gnosticism, modernism, modernity, natural environment, Romanticism, Simone Weil, Wendell Berry

A few months ago I was having a conversation with a friend of mine who is particularly given to pithy epigrams. We were discussing the Stata Center: a brightly colourful building on the MIT campus, designed by architect Frank Gehry, which is designed deliberately to look chaotic, unfinished, random. It’s not a building that leaves many people feeling neutral. My friend disliked its artifice, disjoint from the things around it. I said I thought it would be terribly inappropriate in the middle of a historic neighbourhood, but that it’s just right for a school like MIT, so focused on progress and the future. She didn’t think it was appropriate anywhere, and added: “Frank Gehry hates the real world.”

I’ve been thinking about that quote while reading articles by Patrick Deneen and others at Front Porch Republic, who would probably agree with my friend about Gehry’s architecture (though not about much else). Continue reading →

Philosophical single-mindedness (1)

20 Sunday Nov 2011

Posted by Amod Lele in Aesthetics, Modernized Buddhism, Place, Prayer, Protestantism, Rites, Roman Catholicism, Salafi

≈ 15 Comments

Tags

architecture, Augustine, autobiography, Jesus, Martin Luther, modernism, music, Stonehill College

One of the most common slams made against modernist (Yavanayāna) Buddhism is that it is “Protestant.” I’ve previously written about how there’s more to Buddhist modernism than this, and about the curious quasi-theological assumption that having Protestant influence is seen as a bad thing. At the same time, I’ve been realizing that there are close links between Protestantism and modernism. Not too surprising, perhaps, since the two emerge out of the same historical context, the Europe of the past 500 years – but I think their similarities may go deeper than that. Continue reading →

Aesthetics and ethics in Zanzibar Town

13 Sunday Mar 2011

Posted by Amod Lele in Aesthetics, African Thought, Food, Place, Politics

≈ 10 Comments

Tags

Alain Finkielkraut, architecture, authenticity, David Harvey, Karl Marx, modernism, modernity, skholiast (blogger), Søren Kierkegaard, utilitarianism, Zanzibar

Skholiast has an interesting riff on my recent post about happiness, and I’d like to riff right back. Skholiast quotes from Alain Finkielkraut‘s La défaite de la pensée – a book I read long ago while backpacking through France, in the hope of beefing up my philosophical French. And Skholiast’s quote from Finkielkraut got me thinking of a much more recent trip, my honeymoon in Zanzibar two months ago.

As well as spectacular beaches, Zanzibar has a tremendously atmospheric old Stone Town, and crumbling palaces built in the nineteenth century by Sultan Said. On a tour of these palace ruins, our guide spoke mournfully about how the government had destroyed and misused these palaces after independence and revolution in 1964. It is surely worth mourning when a beautiful object from the past is lost forever. In addition to this destruction, the revolutionary government built most of Ng’ambo, the “other side” of Zanzibar town – the part that is completely non-atmospheric, full of concrete blocks designed by East German engineers. It is in Ng’ambo that the majority of urban Zanzibaris live. The tourist guidebooks tend to scoff at Ng’ambo if they mention it at all, which they rarely do – and no surprise, since it is utterly charmless to look at, a generic site that could be anywhere.

And yet driving through Ng’ambo, I could also see what motivated the revolutionary government to build it that way; more than that, I was quite pleased to see it. Continue reading →

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