Article 0
I'm writing up notes on the skandhas, which is a difficult task. I wrote four long essays on skandhas, comparing the two accounts found in Sue Hamilton's book and another from the same year by Tilmann...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Notes on Nonduality
Today I'm typing up notes on duality and nonduality.In Buddhist circles we tend to talk a lot about mind/body dualism. But this is a fairly new subject, introduced by Descartes. I think in the ancient...
View Article"Authenticity" is Not a Useful Criterion
One of the complaints that we most often see in response to the Chinese origins thesis is that it sounds implausible, or as one senior Japanese academic recently said, it sounds "unnatural". Underlying...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Water Nation and the Fire Nation
I have been listening to the audiobook version of the new history, The Dawn of Everything, by David Graeber and David Wengrow. This is the most important non-fiction book I have ever read. I urge...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Buddhist Meditation and Sensory Deprivation
Buddhist meditation techniques are coming under increasing scientific scrutiny as researchers realise that the altered states engendered by meditation may provide clues to how the brain creates the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Buddhist "Ethics" and Sensory Deprivation
In my previous essay, I argued for a link between meditation and sensory deprivation: more specifically that meditation, viewed as withdrawal of attention from the sensorium, causes (non-pathological)...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Prajñā And Sensory Deprivation
In the two preceding essays, I have explored the role that sensory deprivation (or monotony) might play in Buddhist practice, especially in relation to the threefold path: śīla, samādhi, and prajñā....
View ArticleSome Notes on Cessation and Prajñāpāramitā.
My thirteenth article on the Heart Sutra has been published. (2022) "The Cessation of Sensory Experience and Prajñāpāramitā Philosophy"International Journal of Buddhist Thought and Culture...
View ArticleClik here to view.
On the Historicity of the Buddha in the Absence of Historical Evidence
I recently posted an appreciation of David Drewes' recent IABS conference presentation on the historicity of the Buddha to a Triratna Buddhist Order forum and got bushwhacked by a couple of...
View ArticleNotes on Translating the Skandhas
I dislike it when translators adopt idiosyncratic translations, since they tend to dislocate us from the source text and the general body of translations. That said, I find some standard translations...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Just How "Crazy" is the Heart Sutra?
I recently read Karl Brunnhölzl’s absurdist article “The Heart Sutra Will Change You Forever” in the Buddhist magazine Lion’s Roar (September 29, 2017). I composed this response and sent it off to the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Some Issues of Pāli Chronology.
The matter of which parts of the Pāli sutta-piṭaka are older is one that has a tragic past. The first scholar to look systematically at the issue was Caroline Augusta Foley Rhys Davids. As a student,...
View ArticleOn the Indo-Tibetan Commentaries and Methods in Buddhist Studies
I have almost no interest in popular translations, or commentaries, since these all repeat the same mistakes and result in cliches that I know to be untrue. I do try to be completist when it comes to...
View ArticleClik here to view.
On the Cognitive Linguistics of Emptiness.
This essay applies an analytical method developed by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, especially as it occurs in the book Metaphors We Live By originally published in 1981, with a revised edition 2003....
View ArticleDoes Buddhism Provide Good Explanations?
What is an explanation? And more to the point, what is a good explanation? To answer these questions we have to formulate a "good" explanation of "explanation" along with an explanation of what...
View ArticleClik here to view.
That Chariot
The simile of the chariot is a well-known Buddhist explanation. In ancient India, explanations often take the form of analogies and, in this case, the analogy makes use of a simile: X is explained by...
View ArticleAn Open Letter to Buddhist Studies Academics
I'm not an academic. I don't have the training, temperament, or the inclination. If I had been an academic I would have chosen chemistry (my undergraduate major) as my field, not Buddhist Studies....
View ArticleClik here to view.
Reading rūpa (phenomeno)logically
Because I read everything that academics publish on the Heart Sutra, I see a lot of translations of the Sanskrit word rūpa (Chinese: sè色). The most common translation of the word is "form" but, one...
View ArticleDoes Buddhism Provide Good Explanations?
This is my 600th essay on this blog. Thanks to all my readers over the last 17 years. Although I've slowed down in order to focus on publishing in academic journals, I still enjoy writing these less...
View ArticleClik here to view.
What's the Difference Between a Meditator and Corpse?
At first glance, my title this week might seem like an odd question or the opening to a joke. In fact, the question is asked and answered in the Pāḷi Mahāvedalla Sutta (MN 43). This is one of those...
View Article