Gratitude, Nerves, and Academic Adventures

Big sigh as I just completed my online CV for the American Academy of Religion annual conference and job center. I passed by an former colleague (we were grad students together in philosophy at UM) today and informed him of this and he said, “wow… that’s so… grown up!” He, on the other hand is in his second or third year applying to PhD programs. He’s right though, it is pretty grown up. And, by golly, I do feel a bit nervous.

But then… I have taught university courses with glowing reviews, while studying full time, and holding another part time job (and the teaching was easily the most rewarding and fun of these three activities). I’ve done plenty of administrative work. I understand the politics. Becoming a professor will be daunting, but mostly due to self-imposed pressure toward perfection, to know the material from every possible angle. So I have full confidence in my ability to step into the role of professor.

In terms of gratitude, I realize how fortunate I’ve been to work with the great scholars I’ve known along the way: Alan Sponberg, who sat down with me and friends for a chat and impromptu Pali lesson just last week, Rupert Gethin and Paul Williams, two very different but wonderfully generous scholars at Bristol, Paul Dietrich who kindly oversaw my attempt to fill Dr. Sponberg’s shoes at UM for a year, and Damien Keown, Buddhist Ethicist extraordinaire, gently prodding me along in the great sea of doctoral student-hood. Not to mention Albert Borgmann, David Webster, Amod Lele, Rev. Danny Fisher and (really countless many) more wonderful scholars and people who have come into my life as a result of my stubborn studies. It is a wonder, a wonderful wonderful wonder.

And current academic adventures?

The big one is finishing my doctorate, writing about something like this:

The language of a path (Pāli: magga) is explicit in early Buddhism. The Buddha’s teachings constitute a path leading from the experience of suffering to awakening. The notion of a path is similar in the ethics of Immanuel Kant, one leading from heteronomy to autonomy. In this work I show the centrality of the path motif within Buddhist soteriology, cosmology, and ontology. I then evaluate Kantian ethics, moving his notions of path to the center, relying on neo-Kantian ethicists Allen W. Wood and Onora O’Neill. Finally I bring these two into comparative and critical dialogue to expose weaknesses and develop strengths of each. The work in both cases is one of constructive, holistic, and textual ethics aiming to bring deeper understanding to the nature of these ethical systems.

And the only slightly smaller adventure – a presentation at the annual AAR conference in just over 3 weeks on this:

This presentation undertakes to compare the ethics of the “Spiritual Exercises” (1540) of St. Ignacius de Loyola and the meditations of early Buddhism, namely that of the mettā-bhāvanā, or “Cultivation of Loving-Kindness.” Both of these employ emotionally evocative language to serve their soteriological purposes. This evocative language is often lost in our discussions both of the Jesuits as the “philosophers of Catholicism” and Buddhism as an eminently “rational religion.” Yet both provide a contemplative-ethical foundation for the undertaking and understanding of their emotional practices. This is the daily examen in the Jesuit “Spiritual Exercises” and the practice of sila in early Buddhism. In this presentation I will discuss the importance of these practices and the dialectical role they play in the meditative lives of practitioners in these traditions.