I've written over 450 essays for this website. My writing has appeared in the Journal of Buddhist Ethics, the Journal of the Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies, and the Western Buddhist Review. I've written books on the Kālāma Sutta, mantra calligraphy, and Sanskrit names. I'm currently working on a book about Karma and Rebirth and planning another on the Heart Sutra.
If you want to contact me comment on the blog or email [my name] @gmail.com. I can also be found on the internet.
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Academia.edu | ORCID | ResearchGate
"If you don't like these ideas, I have others."
Marshall McLuhan
This blog started life as a series of long emails to my friend Pema in Cleveland, Ohio. She was a new Buddhist and I was explaining my thoughts on some Buddhist themes. Having got started, I realised that I had a lot of things to say and enjoyed saying them.
The emphasis of the blog changes depending on my interests at the time. The main themes are etymology and the history of language; textual interpretation and criticism, especially the Pāli suttas; the history of ancient India, and particularly the history of ideas with respect to Buddhism; and the integration of Buddhism with contemporary Western Culture, with an emphasis on science.
The first posts were casual, off the cuff comments, limited to 1000 words, but as time has gone on I have aimed for more rigour, dropped the word limit and introduced the use of footnotes and references.
I occasionally get my writing published. Click on the "Publications" tab above. See also my Academia.edu page.
Interviews
2012: Interview with Ted Meissner of The Secular Buddhist. We talked about lots of stuff but especially karma, rebirth, and my brand of pragmatic Buddhism.
Nov 2015: Interview with Matthew O'Connell of Imperfect Buddha Podcast, again talking about karma and rebirth, my work on these subjects has moved on considerably in the last two years as work on my book progresses. I wrote a companion essay for this interview: In Conversation about Karma and Rebirth.
Triratna Buddhist Order
I've written some essays to help clarify my understanding of the Order. These are my personal views:
Triratna Buddhist Order 15 January 2010. A note on the name change.
Triratna Buddhist Order & Community. 02 July 2010. Structure and function of the movement.
Ordination : a contested term. 18 September 2009. Some thoughts on the meaning of the word and how it is used. A critique of Buddhist use and the establishment it is generally associated with.
Why I am (Still) A Buddhist. 06 July 2012
Nāmapada: a guide to names in the Triratna Buddhist Order. 07 January 2011. Blurb for my book on Order names.
QUOTES
“Memories beautify life, but only forgetting makes it bearable.”
Honoré de Balzac
“We know that people can maintain an unshakable faith in any proposition, however absurd, when they are sustained by a community of like-minded believers.”
Daniel Kahneman
"The ontological subjectivity of the domain [of consciousness] does not prevent us from having an epistemically objective science of that domain."
John Searle.
"Meaning is use."
Wittgenstein. Philosophical Investigations.
"Nullius in verba - Accept nothing on authority".
"Philology is the art of reading slowly"
Roman Jakobson
"Scholarship is an ongoing dialectical process."
Michael Witzel
"Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts."
Richard Feynman. "What is Science?"
The Physics Teacher. Vol. 7, issue 6 (1969)
Sapere aude! – Dare to know!
(motto for the Enlightenment)
Immanuel Kant."Beantwortung der Frage: Was ist Aufklärung?" (Answering the Question: What Is Enlightenment?) 1784.
"Science—knowledge—only adds to the excitement, the mystery, and the awe of a flower. It only adds. I don't understand how it subtracts."
Richard Feynman, The Pleasure of Finding Things Out.
"If happiness consisted in the pleasures of the body, we should call oxen happy whenever they come across bitter vetch to eat."
Heraclitus. Fragment.
"The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose."
Merchant of Venice. Act 1, Scene 3
"There is now no safer occupation than talking bad science to philosophers, except talking bad philosophy to scientists."
Midgley, Mary. 1979. 'Gene-juggling'. Philosophy. 54(210): 439-458.
“The system protects itself with indignation against a challenge to deceit in the service of power, and the very idea of subjecting the ideological system to rational inquiry elicits incomprehension or outrage, though it is often masked in other terms.”
Noam Chomsky
“Memories beautify life, but only forgetting makes it bearable.”
Honoré de Balzac
“We know that people can maintain an unshakable faith in any proposition, however absurd, when they are sustained by a community of like-minded believers.”
Daniel Kahneman
"The ontological subjectivity of the domain [of consciousness] does not prevent us from having an epistemically objective science of that domain."
John Searle.
"Meaning is use."
Wittgenstein. Philosophical Investigations.
"Nullius in verba - Accept nothing on authority".
The Royal Society Motto
"Philology is the art of reading slowly"
Roman Jakobson
"Scholarship is an ongoing dialectical process."
Michael Witzel
"Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts."
Richard Feynman. "What is Science?"
The Physics Teacher. Vol. 7, issue 6 (1969)
Sapere aude! – Dare to know!
(motto for the Enlightenment)
Immanuel Kant."Beantwortung der Frage: Was ist Aufklärung?" (Answering the Question: What Is Enlightenment?) 1784.
"Science—knowledge—only adds to the excitement, the mystery, and the awe of a flower. It only adds. I don't understand how it subtracts."
Richard Feynman, The Pleasure of Finding Things Out.
"If happiness consisted in the pleasures of the body, we should call oxen happy whenever they come across bitter vetch to eat."
Heraclitus. Fragment.
"The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose."
Merchant of Venice. Act 1, Scene 3
"There is now no safer occupation than talking bad science to philosophers, except talking bad philosophy to scientists."
Midgley, Mary. 1979. 'Gene-juggling'. Philosophy. 54(210): 439-458.
“The system protects itself with indignation against a challenge to deceit in the service of power, and the very idea of subjecting the ideological system to rational inquiry elicits incomprehension or outrage, though it is often masked in other terms.”
Noam Chomsky
“We know that people can maintain an unshakable faith in any proposition, however absurd, when they are sustained by a community of like-minded believers.”
Daniel Kahneman
"I'd rather have questions that cannot be answered, than answers that cannot be questioned."
Richard Feynman.
