Western Buddhism and the New Age
Western Buddhism has been heavily influenced by the New Age movement. In online forums it is common to encounter nominal Buddhists proclaiming New Age beliefs that are alien or even antithetical to Buddhism. Adherents of such ideas rarely seem to be aware of those ideas’ origins, however; nor of their problematic nature from a Buddhist point of view. And even less rarely will they self-identify as followers of the New Age. The latter is typical, however. As Margrethe Løøv remarks in a recent book about the New Age movement, “very few people actually denote themselves New Age — the preferred...
What is Real? (New Paper)
Published yesterday in Organon F: International Journal of Analytic Philosophy (30.2: 182−220). abstract: Two of the most fundamental distinctions in metaphysics are (1) that between reality (or things in themselves) and appearances, the R/A distinction, and (2) that between entities that are fundamental (or real, etcetera) and entities that are ontologically or existentially dependent, the F/D distinction. While these appear to be two very different distinctions, in Buddhist metaphysics they are combined, raising questions about how they are related. In this paper I argue that plausible versions of the R/A distinction are essentially a special kind of F/D distinction, and...
Is Secular Buddhism Possible?
The question whether secular Buddhism is possible might seem absurd at first. Varieties of what has been, or could be called “secular Buddhism” have been around for well over a century, and there is a sizable group of people who consider themselves “secular Buddhists”. So, of course, “secular Buddhism” is possible. So, let’s be a bit more precise. My question is not really whether there are “things” (in a rather broad sense of “thing”) that could be or have been called “secular Buddhism”, but whether there could be something that is genuinely secular and simultaneously genuinely (a variety of) Buddhism....