How Nonsectarian is ‘Nonsectarian’?: Jorge Ferrer's Pluralist Alternative to Tibetan Buddhist Inclusivism

This paper queries the logic of the structure of hierarchical philosophical systems. Following the Indian tradition of siddhānta, Tibetan Buddhist traditions articulate a hierarchy of philosophical views. The ‘Middle Way’ philosophy or Madhyamaka—the view that holds that the ultimate truth is emptiness—is, in general, held to be the highest view in the systematic depictions of philosophies in Tibet, and is contrasted with realist schools of thought, Buddhist and non-Buddhist. But why should an antirealist or nominalist position be said to be ‘better’ than a realist position? What is the criterion for this claim and is it, or can it, be more than a criterion that is tradition-specific for only Tibetan Buddhists? In this paper, I will look at the criteria to evaluate Buddhist philosophical traditions, particularly as articulated in what came to be referred as the ‘nonsectarian’ (ris med) tradition. I draw from the recent work of Jorge Ferrer to query the assumptions of the hierarchical structures of ‘nonsectarian’ traditions and attempt to articulate an evaluative criteria for a nonsectarian stance that are not based solely on metaphysical or tradition-specific claims.     

ONLINE BUDDHIST AND CHRISTIAN RESPONSES TO ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

I report the findings of a comparative analysis of online Christian and Buddhist responses to artificial intelligence. I review the Buddhist response and compare it with the Christian response outlined in an earlier essay (Tamatea 2008). The discussion seeks to answer two questions: Which approach to imago Dei informs the online Buddhist response to artificial intelligence? And to what extent does the preference for a particular approach emerge from a desire to construct the Self? The conclusion is that, like the Christian response, the Buddhist response is grounded not so much in the reality of AI as it is in the discursive constructions of AI made available through Buddhist cosmology, which (paradoxically), like the Christian response, are deployed in defense of the Self, despite claimed adherence to the notion of anatta, or non‐Self.     

Slavoj žižek's critique of western buddhism

Slavoj ?i?ek's incisive critique of western Buddhism raises the following questions: Is western Buddhism the paradigmatic ideology of late capitalism? Is Buddhism nihilistic absorption in nothingness? Does Buddhism negate the Real together with the imaginary? Is Buddhist metaphysics violent? The essay considers these questions and asks if western Buddhism, contrary to what ?i?ek argues, may become an antidote to the nihilism that pervades late capitalist societies.     

Buddhist Conceptual Rhyming and T.S.Eliot's Crisis of Connection in TheWaste Land and ‘Burnt Norton’

In this essay, I elaborate a reading of the Buddhist allusions throughout T.S. Eliot's poetry as being not confessions of Buddhist faith or merely syncretic experiments, but rather ‘conceptual rhymes’ with the crisis of personal connection that preoccupies Eliot across multiple texts. In the Buddhist concepts of pratītya-samutpāda, ?ūnyatā, sa?sāra, and the pretas, Eliot finds thematic resonances with his own emotional and psychological concerns and so alludes to these concepts in ‘The Fire Sermon’ section of The Waste Land and ‘Burnt Norton’ of Four Quartets as part of his characteristic poetic collage. By examining the connection between Eliot's personal poetic practice and the cross-cultural traditions upon which he drew, my argument intervenes in a long-standing debate regarding the meaning of Asian religio-philosophical influences in the poet's key texts. Moreover, by close reading the third movement of ‘Burnt Norton’ for Buddhist allusions, I attempt to refocus scrutiny of Buddhism in Eliot from the oft-discussed ‘Fire Sermon’ section of The Waste Land to Eliot's later Four Quartets, which remains under-examined for its Buddhist influences by scholars who instead attend to the latter text's more pronounced Vedic references.     

Sedation and care at the end of life

This special issue of Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics takes up the question of palliative sedation as a source of potential concern or controversy among Christian clinicians and thinkers. Christianity affirms a duty to relieve unnecessary suffering yet also proscribes euthanasia. Accordingly, the question arises as to whether it is ever morally permissible to render dying patients unconscious in order to relieve their suffering. If so, under what conditions? Is this practice genuinely morally distinguishable from euthanasia? Can one ever aim directly at making a dying person unconscious, or is it only permissible to tolerate unconsciousness as an unintended side effect of treating specific symptoms? What role does the rule of double effect play in making such decisions? Does spiritual or psychological suffering ever justify sedation to unconsciousness? What are the theological and spiritual aspects of such care? This introduction describes how the authors in this special issue wrestle with such questions and shows how each essay relates to the author’s individual position on palliative sedation, as developed in greater detail within his contribution.     

Suffering and the Shape of Well-Being in Buddhist Ethics

This article explores the defense Indian Buddhist texts make in support of their conceptions of lives that are good for an individual. This defense occurs, largely, through their analysis of ordinary experience as being saturated by subtle forms of suffering (du?kha). I begin by explicating the most influential of the Buddhist taxonomies of suffering: the threefold division into explicit suffering (du?kha-du?khatā), the suffering of change (vipari?āma-du?khatā), and conditioned suffering (sa?skāra-du?khatā). Next, I sketch the three theories of welfare that have been most influential in contemporary ethical theory. I then argue that Buddhist texts underdetermine which of these theories would have been accepted by ancient Indian Buddhists. Nevertheless, Buddhist ideas about suffering narrow the shape any acceptable theory of welfare may take. In my conclusion, I argue that this narrowing process itself is enough to reconstruct a philosophical defense of the forms of life endorsed in Buddhist texts.     

Speech after Rape: Towards a Theological Poetics of Identity and Loss after Philomela's ‘Voice of the Shuttle’

Abstract

This article seeks to reconsider the tale of Philomela's ‘Voice of the Shuttle’ and recent criticism of the work from Patricia Klindienst and Geoffrey Hartman to exemplify the concerns in figuring a poetics that seeks to disclose and describe that which is essentially the unspeakable, namely rape. Central to this discussion are the following two concerns: First, what is the declaration of principle within a given work that attempts to speak of violence such as rape? Is it to speak the act anew as testimony? Is it to artificially suture the wounds that cannot be sutured? Second, how can art function as an incarnation of this coming together of form, content and import around the unspeakable such as rape, and what should this embodiment within literary space ultimately concern? It is the aim of this article to illustrate the way that speech after rape and violence moves into a refining of the category of what is considered speech, thereby calling for a poetics of communitas which does not merge identities to suture wounds of the unspeakable, rather liberates voices of both loss and hope.     

To be or not to be: Buddhist selves in Toronto

Buddhist identity: a Buddhist by any other name?When we talk about a ‘Buddhist’ or ‘Buddhists’ in Canada and the United States, what exactly is our referent—a label or category, an identity, or perhaps something more? Is the term ‘Buddhist’ signifying a reified object (or subject?), one that subsumes all sorts of practices, beliefs, philosophies, and preconceptions under its umbrella? Or can the term be used to signify choice, personal commitment, motivation, partiality, and perhaps even struggle? We have a great many labels and categorizations of the differences among and between Buddhists, but can we really assume that the term ‘Buddhist’ itself is unproblematic? Calling someone a Buddhist in the West, or ‘naming’ them as such, appears initially and on the surface a fairly straightforward undertaking. And yet, the very act of naming itself is a composite of assumptions and expectations. In much of the anthropological literature on initiation rituals, the act of naming has been construed as more-or-less a societal quest for order and control of the individual. Naming marks who is ‘in’ and who is ‘out’. Being named is an important marker of social identity, socialness, and social belonging (inter alia, Jell-Bahlsen 1989; Jacquemet 1992; Cohen 1994).     

Buddhist Fictionalism

Questions regarding what exists are central to various forms of Buddhist philosophy, as they are to many traditions of philosophy. Interestingly, there is perhaps a clearer consensus in Buddhist thought regarding what does not exist than there may be regarding precisely what does exist, at least insofar as the doctrine of anātman (no self, absence of self) is taken to be a fundamental Buddhist doctrine. It may be noted that many forms of Mahāyāna Buddhist philosophy in particular are considered to offer a quite austere ontology—a rather ‘empty’ account of what exists. Continuing in this vein of ontological austerity, here I will attempt to lay out a relatively novel approach to Buddhist ontology, viz. Buddhist fictionalism.     

Is There a Korean Contribution to U.S. Pastoral Theology?

South Korea is a unique convergence of eastern and western religious traditions: 30% of South Koreans call themselves Christian, 30% Buddhist, and everyone is strongly influenced by the active traditions of Confucianism and Shamanism. Based on 8 months of research in South Korea, this paper explores three perspectives on the relationship of Christianity to traditional Asian religions: 1) Is Christianity saving Korean spirituality from the failures of Confucianism, Buddhism and Shamanism? 2) Is Christianity destroying Korean spirituality because of its connections with modernism and its rejection of historic Korean religions? 3) Is a deeper Korean spirituality transforming both Christianity and Asian religions into something that will help the world heal from the contradictions of modernism?     

Astonishment: A study of an ethically valorised emotion in Buddhist narrative literature

This essay explores the role that Buddhist narrative literature plays in fostering the cultivation of ethically valorised emotions. The essay focuses on astonishment, as it figures in ārya ?ūra's Jātakamālā, a collection of Sanskrit narratives. The essay examines how and why ārya ?ūra valorises astonishment and what this valorisation reveals about the significance of emotions in Buddhist ethical life. The key distinction implicit in ārya ?ūra's work between natural and cultivated emotions is worked out.     

The Buddhist Roots of Watsuji Tetsurô's Ethics of Emptiness

Watsuji Tetsurô (1889–1960) is famous for having constructed a systematic socio‐political ethics on the basis of the idea of emptiness. This essay examines his 1938 essay “The Concept of ‘Dharma’ and the Dialectics of Emptiness in Buddhist Philosophy” and the posthumously published The History of Buddhist Ethical Thought (based on lectures given in the 1920s), in order to clarify the Buddhist roots of his ethics. It aims to answer two main questions which are fundamentally linked: “Which way does Watsuji's legacy turn: toward totalitarianism or toward a balanced theory of selflessness?” and “Is Watsuji's systematic ethics Buddhist?” In order to answer these questions, this essay discusses Watsuji's view of dharma, dependent arising, and morality in Hīnayāna Buddhism. It then proceeds to Watsuji's fine‐tuning of the concept of emptiness in Mādhyamika and Yogācāra Buddhism. Finally, this essay shows how Watsuji's modernist Buddhist theory connects to his own systematic ethical theory. These two theories share a focus on non‐duality, negation, and emptiness. But they differ in their accounts of the relations between the individual and the community, between the “is” and the “ought,” and between hermeneutics and transcendence. These findings give us hints as to Watsuji's origins, pitfalls, and possibilities.     

Two cheers for Tanhā

The central character in Sartre's 1938 novel La Nausée, Antoine Roquentin, has lost his sense of things, and now the world appears to him as utterly unstable. Roquentin suffers from what he calls ‘nausea,’ a condition caused by an ontological intuition that the self, as well as the world through which that ‘self’ moves, lacks a substantial nature. The novel portrays Sartre's own philosophical account of the self in La transcendence de l'égo. Here Sartre argues that Husserl's account of consciousness is not radical enough; the ‘I’ or ego is a pseudo-source of activity (and Sartre thus draws very close to a particularly Buddhist account of personal identity). My essay questions Roquentin's response to his ontological insight: why is this the occasion for ‘nausea’? Why doesn't Roquentin (as King Milinda famously does) celebrate and embrace his ‘non-self’? I argue that Sartre's depiction of Roquentin's ailment, and the unsatisfactory solution he provides, misunderstands both the aggregate nature of things as well as authentically rendered consciousness-only (vijñaptimātra).     

Compassion as a matter of fact: The argument from no‐self to selflessness in Sāntideva's Siksāsamuccaya

Due to the extended time frame over which they occur, human-induced environmental changes are out of sync with human lives lived in an age characterized by nano-second attention spans. As a result, the violence exacted by such changes poses representational and motivational challenges to human abilities to address them. I tackle the question, as a scholar from outside the discipline of religious studies, how might Buddhist thought provide valuable tools for people interested in working progressively at the intersection of violence and human-induced environmental degradation? Like other non-specialist Westerners, I have cobbled together an eclectic Buddhist perspective. I aim to explore affinities between certain Buddhist themes and my own professional orientation and expertise in earth science. To that end, I describe concepts of time derived from geological science and Asian mythical traditions; probe ideas about violence in relation to global environmental degradation; and, consider implications of the Noble Eightfold Path, the way to deliverance from suffering taught by the Buddha, for adjusting systemically to environmental change over time. By expanding, scientifically and spiritually, what the present moment can be, an instant of infinite duration, I hope to connect my journey towards taking a long view of a moment with the long view of change that human beings require to awaken to violence that is at once potentially catastrophic and so slow, that it's difficult to discern and therefore counter.     

Buddhist Non-Cognitivism

The purpose of this essay is twofold. First, I plan to argue that in light of Buddhist epistemology and metaphysics, it would be an inherent contradiction to the Buddhist tradition as whole to defend the cognitivist view that moral knowledge is possible. Quite the contrary, this essay will demonstrate that, in light of Buddhist theories of knowledge and metaphysical philosophies of no-self and emptiness, Buddhist ethics only makes coherent sense from a standpoint of non-cognitivism. Second, from the arguments that support a non-cognitivist reading of Buddhist ethics, I plan to show that such a standpoint does not entail moral nihilism. Rather, what we find in Buddhism is a middle-way ethic of pluralism. Herein I shall argue that the moral life of Buddhism non-cognitively arises within skandha of feelings, yet is conditioned by the cognitive nature of Buddhist wisdom.     

BUDDHISM,FREE WILL,AND PUNISHMENT: TAKING BUDDHIST ETHICS SERIOUSLY

In recent decades, there has been growing interest among philosophers in what the various Buddhist traditions have said, can say, and should say, in response to the traditional problem of free will. This article investigates the relationship between Buddhist philosophy and the historical problem of free will. It begins by critically examining Rick Repetti's Buddhism, Meditation, and Free Will (2019), in which he argues for a conception of “agentless agency” and defends a view he calls “Buddhist soft compatibilism.” It then turns to a more wide-ranging discussion of Buddhism and free will—one that foregrounds Buddhist ethics and takes seriously what the various Buddhist traditions have said about desert, punishment, and the reactive attitudes of resentment, indignation, and moral anger. The article aims to show that, not only is Buddhism best conceived as endorsing a kind of free will skepticism, Buddhist ethics can provide a helpful guide to living without basic desert moral responsibility and free will.     

Learning About Teaching from the Traditions We Teach: Reflections on an Undergraduate Buddhism Course

Abstract. Can one engage in pedagogical reflection from within the worldviews and practices of the religious traditions that one teaches? This essay explores the possibility of generating comparative models for teaching and learning via the Buddhist concepts of no‐self (anātman), skilful means (upāya‐kau?alya), and awakening (bodhi).     

Violence and Selfhood

Is violence senseless or is it at the origin of sense? Does its destruction of meaning disclose ourselves as the origin of meaning? Or is it the case that it leaves in its wake only a barren field? Does it result in renewal or only in a sense of dead loss? To answer these questions, I shall look at James Dodd’s, Hegel’s, and Carl Schmitt’s accounts of the creative power of violence—particularly with regard to its ability to give individuals and groups their sense of self-identity. I shall also follow up on Peg Birmingham’s suggestion that Socrates’ defense at his trial points to an alternate source of our self-identity—one that is ultimately less barren.     

Wading Through the Quagmire of Religious History

How should we teach religious history? What is the impact of our methodology on what, and on how, our students learn? Is there a methodology that cultivates an awareness of the multiculturalism and the need for deeper social interaction that characterizes many of our classrooms? This essay proposes and briefly explores the potential value of empathetic engagement as a pedagogical tool in response to these concerns. A specific application of empathetic engagement is made to teaching and learning about the history of American Catholicism.