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Philosophy as/and/or Religion

Philosophy as/and/or Religion

1. In laying out the idea that there may be some value in thinking of philosophy as good for nothing, I drew comparisons between a certain way of conceiving of philosophy and what I take to be the best way to conceptualize Dōgen’s understanding of the practice of seated meditation or zazen. For Dōgen, you sit just to sit, not for some other end (wink wink). If we take seriously Socrates’ claim in the Apology that practicing philosophy is the…

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If We See Things Clearly, Do We See That Suffering is Neither Good Nor Bad?—Exploring Issues with Zen and the Fact/Value Dichotomy

If We See Things Clearly, Do We See That Suffering is Neither Good Nor Bad?—Exploring Issues with Zen and the Fact/Value Dichotomy

Quite representatively of popular Zen writings and teachings, Sobun Katherine Thanas is recorded, in her The Truth of This Life: Zen Teaching on Loving the World as It Is, as saying: I’ve been thinking with renewed interest how difficult it is to see or hear clearly. Settling the mind allows us to see things as they really are, relatively free of emotional or intellectual biases. Clear seeing may not happen the first time we sit, but maybe it will. Our…

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Thoughts on Time, Grief, and the Self

Thoughts on Time, Grief, and the Self

I would like to begin by considering two radically different pictures. First, consider the original notion of an atom: a kind of indestructible, unchanging, simple. That is, because it had no smaller parts, i.e., it was simple, and it was further then taken to be indestructible and unchangeable, since to be destroyed or changed, it would require smaller parts that could be taken away or replaced. Now imagine such an atom moving through the world, interacting with various things, but…

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Cutting Through Bullshit—The (Possible) Advantages of Chronic Illness and Disability

Cutting Through Bullshit—The (Possible) Advantages of Chronic Illness and Disability

Some years ago, I was reading Nietzsche and it occurred to me to make a note in my journal. Something along the lines of needing to regularly come back to Nietzsche, as he provides a wonderful sort of intellectual conscience. Is this a surprising thing to think about Nietzsche? What I have in mind are such passages as, “[Philosophers] all pose as if they had discovered and reached their real opinions through the self-development of a cold, pure, divinely unconcerned…

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Goethe and Ryōkan as Exemplars of How to Live

Goethe and Ryōkan as Exemplars of How to Live

Writing on compassion in early Buddhism, Anālayo notes that the primary form of compassion was teaching the Dharma, i.e., the Buddhist teachings on the cessation of suffering. But as Anālayo also notes, verbal instruction is not the only way to teach: teaching, “…can also take place through teaching by example” (Compassion and Emptiness in Early Buddhist Meditation, 16). Indeed, teaching and learning by example are extremely important, and often unconscious. We don’t always realize that others, especially children, learn by…

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Suffering and Platonic Lives, Platonic Selves

Suffering and Platonic Lives, Platonic Selves

How would you feel if you were never to read another book in your life? What about if you were never to ski, or if not skiing, then some other sport? How would you feel if you could not live in the city? What about the country? What about the suburbs? These are only a few questions that pertain to the kinds of lives we might live. Some of us would be unmoved by life without books and others could…

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The Nietzschean Bodhisattva: Part I

The Nietzschean Bodhisattva: Part I

One of the tasks that Joan Stambaugh pursues in her chapter on “Creativity and Decadence,” is to explain what it means to say that “Nietzsche sees art as fundamental to life, as the ‘truly metaphysical activity of man’” (The Other Nietzsche, 21). Nietzsche, Stambaugh says, sees art as not, “a sphere of culture, not as a highly specialized, privileged area for the few, but as that activity of man that is most crucial to his life” (ibid.). Stambaugh finds such…

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The Fruitfulness of Using Aristotle to Understand Buddhism

The Fruitfulness of Using Aristotle to Understand Buddhism

One of the classes I teach is Ethics from a Global Perspective. I usually begin the course with selections from Aristotle‘s Nicomachean Ethics. As I tell my students, I think there is much that Aristotle gets wrong, particularly his views on women, but his overall ethical framework, and the concepts and distinctions he employs, are extremely useful. While Kant is an obvious exception, Aristotle’s teleological approach can easily be mapped on to the other views we consider such as Hinduism…

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Dōgen on Hearing Things As They Are…a Response to Okumura Roshi

Dōgen on Hearing Things As They Are…a Response to Okumura Roshi

One of my most beloved contemporary Zen practitioners and scholars is Shōhaku Okumura Roshi. One reason is simply the fact that he is in the lineage of Zen that I attempt to practice, namely Dōgen’s. But I also find his approach very human; that is, his approach to Zen is a Zen that a human could practice. This is not always the case, it seems to me, with other Zen practitioners and commentators. But this, of course, does not mean I…

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Controlling for Joy

Controlling for Joy

I often have the feeling that my Buddhist practice is in turmoil. Its high and low tides in response to my sorrow’s moon. Sometimes that moon is full, others new, but most often all manner of shapes in-between. This would likely bother me more if I had not read CS Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters when I was first working through my existential crisis of religion in my early 20s. This short book is a fascinating read, as Lewis relates an…

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