As mentioned in my last post, I’ll be on the road again for another couple weeks. This time in NYC, Pennsylvania, and Ithaca spending time with good friends, academics, and good academic friends.  Speaking of travels and good friends, my old friend and roommate from 2004-5 Bristol days, SJ, was here yesterday and we took to the country roads just outside of Bristol. It’s amazing – and all too easy to forget – how beautiful and peaceful the countryside is... Read more

Some must-know things going on in the Buddhist world now. First is a conference next week in NYC on Buddhist Ethics. It should be the largest ever conference on this topic and features a keynote by my very own supervisor, Damien Keown. It’s free and open to the public but they do ask that you register online. The sheer concentration of brilliant scholars talking about Buddhist ethics/Buddhist philosophy is pretty likely to blow your mind. The day before that kicks off:... Read more

Having grown up in Montana, I am so grateful for every moment I was lucky enough to spend in nature. Whether you’re getting an Indian summer now, or fall is beginning to settle in, take some time to step away from the constructions of life and enter into nature. Even if it is just in a city park, pay attention to natural sounds: birds, leaves and grass beneath your feet, wind brushing through the trees. If you’re really ambitious, try... Read more

“However, far from superseding Kant, it seems as if, after two revolutionary centuries, the ‘lesser evil’ of Kant’s accommodation with the ‘century of Frederick’ and the studied equivocations and sensitivity to aporia which characterize his philosophizing still offer a future to which it might be worth returning.”– Howard Caygill, A Kant Dictionary, p.29 This is the last sentence in his introduction and refers to the impatience and perhaps actively destructive effects of post-Kantian philosophers. Often, indeed to this day, philosophy is too busy... Read more

The logo on a hoodie made by students in the Theology and Religious Studies Department at the University of Bristol. Now to get one for myself… Read more

The short answer is Yes. After the execution of Troy Davis, the ‘let him die‘ question at a recent Republican debate, and a series of other shameful, high profile news events coming from the US, it’s easy to forget that the country is, like any other, filled with many incredibly wonderful people who are speaking truth and making the world a better place. (my thanks to James Ishmael Ford for posting this video on his blog) Here is Troy Davis’... Read more

I’ve been back at work on my phd thesis on Kant and Buddhist ethics and also having many wonderful conversations with fellow scholars and friends regarding a wide range of topics in academia, philosophy, and history. The mental stimulation has been most welcome, and I look forward to its continuing for many months to come. One of the topics of discussion has somewhat steered around the above topics of Modernism, Optimism, and Naivety. Let me explain, briefly, what I mean by... Read more

This is an excellent book for anyone “too busy to meditate,” which these days seems like just about everyone I know. It’s compact, light-weight (easy to carry on the bus-train-plane-etc), and divided into very quickly readable chapters covering the whole A-Z of mindfulness. After a brief introduction (What, Why, and How), Harp gives us a discussion of the all-important fight-or-flight response. As he rightly points out, this physiological response to our surroundings evolved with us to keep us alive, but... Read more

I had a good chunk of time to just think today. To some extent at least, as I was running along the course of the Bristol Half-Marathon. I thought about 9/11 of course, about the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and about countless other issues plaguing humanity today. I thought I should be running for a peace-based charity (If you would like to support one, try Bhikkhu Bodhi’s Global Buddhist Relief). But for the most part, I just thought about... Read more