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Love of All Wisdom

~ Philosophy through multiple traditions

Love of All Wisdom

Tag Archives: Robert Sharf

A way forward for Wilber?

28 Sunday Oct 2012

Posted by Amod Lele in Foundations of Ethics, M.T.S.R., Metaphilosophy

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Alasdair MacIntyre, Dustin DiPerna, Ken Wilber, Mark Schmanko, modernism, modernity, mystical experience, Robert Sharf, Romanticism, Wilhelm Halbfass

I have not yet had a chance to hear a response from Dustin DiPerna on my post replying to his. However, his friend Mark Schmanko emailed me a response which I found utterly fascinating – one which takes up the arguments of my article as well. (I am posting these remarks with Mark’s permission.)

I had argued, following current work in religious studies like that of Robert Sharf and Wilhelm Halbfass, that replicable mystical experience is more of a modern construction than we make it out to be, certainly not something at the core of premodern traditions. The conclusion in my article argued that, if my claims were true, a Wilberian could take two legitimate options: either rethink Wilber’s model heavily so as to incorporate the non-mystical elements of traditions, or “bite the bullet” and admit that it is accepting only the mystical elements and not other elements that would be closer to the tradition’s cores. Continue reading →

Précis of “Beyond enacted experiences”

30 Sunday Sep 2012

Posted by Amod Lele in Buddhism, Christianity, Consciousness, Dialectic, Judaism, M.T.S.R., Meditation, Metaphilosophy, Natural Science, Vedānta

≈ 15 Comments

Tags

Candrakīrti, Jesus, Ken Wilber, mystical experience, New Testament, perennialism, religion, Robert Sharf, Wilhelm Halbfass

I’ve been wanting to refer on the blog to the article I recently wrote for the Journal of Integral Theory and Practice. Out of respect for the journal’s hardworking editors (and the law!), I will not post the article or its text on the site. But I’d like to give a summary of what I said there, so that blog readers without access to JITP will know what I’m talking about. The argument here is not as precise or careful as that in the article, and readers will need to find a copy of JITP 7(2) to get those details.

The article is above all a critique of Ken Wilber’s method in cross-cultural philosophy, a method that Wilber himself describes as a form of empiricism. Continue reading →

The trouble with phenomenological similarities

23 Sunday Sep 2012

Posted by Amod Lele in Early and Theravāda, M.T.S.R., Meditation, Philosophy of Language, Roman Catholicism

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

Buddhaghosa, Cloud of Unknowing, early writings, mystical experience, Ninian Smart, perennialism, phenomenology, Robert M. Gimello, Robert Sharf

This week’s post is a slightly abridged version of a paper I wrote eleven years ago for Robert Gimello’s class on Buddhist meditation traditions. I’m posting it now for a couple of reasons: because I still enjoy its punchy rhetoric, because it’s a useful corrective to Wilberian and similar perspectives that assume “religion” is fundamentally about mystical experience, and because I think it’s likely to be relevant to posts I want to make in the months ahead. I also still agree with it to at least some extent, but I am not entirely sure what that extent is, and that is something I hope to be sorting through.


In his chapter “What would Buddhaghosa have made of the Cloud of Unknowing?”1, Ninian Smart argues that “there are phenomenological similarities between the differing practices despite the contrast in language and style between Buddhaghosa and the author of the anonymous 14th-century Christian text The Cloud of Unknowing.” Although Smart never defines “phenomenological”, I believe from the context of the article that he uses the term to refer to similarities of experience, and specifically mystical experience.

To what extent does Smart’s chapter succeed in its project? Continue reading →

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