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Articles 1 - 10 of 10
Full-Text Articles in Buddhist Studies
Buddhist Thoughts On The Battle For God: Is Fundamentalism A Good Reason To Ditch Religion?, Philip Novak
Buddhist Thoughts On The Battle For God: Is Fundamentalism A Good Reason To Ditch Religion?, Philip Novak
Collected Faculty and Staff Scholarship
"Not long ago I taught a seminar on science and religion that required three fo the most widely read gospels of the so-called new atheism: Richard Dawkin's The God Delusion, Daniel Dennett's Breaking the Spell, and Sam Harris's The End of Faith. As I read along, I found the Buddhist in myself in large agreement. after all, Gotama himself had been highly skeptical of the God-idea, involving as it often did an onmipotence he could not square with either the world's suffering or his belief in human freedom." ~ from the article
Buddhist Meditation And The Consciousness Of Time, Philip Novak
Buddhist Meditation And The Consciousness Of Time, Philip Novak
Collected Faculty and Staff Scholarship
This paper first reviews key Buddhist concepts of time -- anicca (impermanence), khanavada (instantaneous being) and uji (being-time) -- and then describes the way in which a particular form of Bhuddist [sic] meditation , vipassana, may be thought to actualize them in human experience. The chief aim of the paper is to present a heuristic model of how vipassana meditation, by eroding dispositional tendencies rooted in the body-unconscious alters psychological time, transforming our felt-experience of time from a bind to a liberating force.
The Practice Of Attention, Philip Novak
The Practice Of Attention, Philip Novak
Collected Faculty and Staff Scholarship
"Practices that strengthen the capacity for concentration or attention play a role in most great religious traditions. The importance of developing attention is most readily seen in the great traditions that arose in India, namely Hinduism and Buddhism." ~ from the article
Mystical Experiences And The Search For Human Spiritual Connection, Philip Novak
Mystical Experiences And The Search For Human Spiritual Connection, Philip Novak
Collected Faculty and Staff Scholarship
"...Mystical experiences can come and go, it seems, without altering the fundamental habit patterns and tendencies that vector our behavior. It is precisely this that separates mystical experience from the wider, deeper process of enlightenment. Enlightenment necessarily involves a lasting transformation of character (character is my shorthand for deep structural determinants of consciousness), while mystical experience does not. Enlightenment is an irreducibly moral notion and is, existentially speaking, inversely proportional to stinkerism. At least this is so for Buddhism, the tradition to which we owe, more than to any other, the very notion of enlightenment, and the tradition on …
Mysticism, Enlightenment, And Morality, Philip Novak
Mysticism, Enlightenment, And Morality, Philip Novak
Collected Faculty and Staff Scholarship
"Our outspoken anthropologist friend, Dr. A. Bharati, once remarked that if someone is a stinker before a mystical experience, he'll be a stinker afterwards .1 The swami's observation stemmed from years spent among the holy men of India and , no doubt, from considerable personal experience. It is an exaggeration , of course, but we cannot dismiss his crucial point: it is quite possible to be a mystic and a stinker. If we refuse to take Bharati's word for it, we need only to examine the numerous recent accounts of the oafish behavior displayed by acclaimed mystic-teachers. Or we …
Buddhist Meditation And The Great Chain Of Being: Some Misgivings, Philip Novak
Buddhist Meditation And The Great Chain Of Being: Some Misgivings, Philip Novak
Collected Faculty and Staff Scholarship
"In his Buddhist Meditation, Edward Conze puts it plainly: 'Meditational practices constitute the very core of the Buddhist approach to life.'1 To presume that the wisdom gained from mental culture is equally available to intellectual analysis, even of the highly refined and subtle, sort, is to presume that a job requiring a laser can be done equally will with a blowtorch. The Buddha's deepest insights are available to the intellect, and powerfully so, but it is only when those insights are discovered and absorbed, by a psyche made especially keen and receptive by long coursing in meditative …
On The Virtue Of Not Knowing Who You Are, Philip Novak
On The Virtue Of Not Knowing Who You Are, Philip Novak
Collected Faculty and Staff Scholarship
"...The problem of identity is an inescapable part of being born human and it is perhaps no an overstatement to say that the quality of our lives depends to a large extent on how we deal with it. In the following pages I will attempt two things: 1) to sketch the problem of identity in its universal characteristics and 2) to discuss the Buddhist approach to that problem." ~ from the article
The Dynamics Of The Will In Buddhist And Christian Practice, Philip Novak
The Dynamics Of The Will In Buddhist And Christian Practice, Philip Novak
Collected Faculty and Staff Scholarship
"The task of this paper is to suggest that the will-dynamics educed by Buddhist and Christian contemplative paths share fundamental structural similarities, a hypothesis which, if true, lends support to the notion of a psychologia perennis. The contemplative dimensions of Buddhism and Christianity, we will suggest, possess formally similar strategies for the attunement of the human will to its source in the Real, and attunement and dynamic balance in which both Buddhist and Christian contemplatives discover the salvation they seek." ~ from the article
Buddhism And Christianity By George Siegmund, Philip Novak
Buddhism And Christianity By George Siegmund, Philip Novak
Collected Faculty and Staff Scholarship
"Influenced by the sympathetic explorations of Thomas Merton, William Johnston and Hugo Enomiya-LaSalle (to name but a few) Christians have over the last decade or so shown an increasing willingness to learn from the Buddhist tradition. An environment in which interest is accompanied by a deep bow of respect is precious and worthy of preservation, and it is for this reason that Buddhism and Christianity deserves attention. It threatens that environment." ~from the review
Empty Willing: Contemplative Being-In-The-World In St. John Of The Cross And Dogen, Philip Novak
Empty Willing: Contemplative Being-In-The-World In St. John Of The Cross And Dogen, Philip Novak
Collected Faculty and Staff Scholarship
"If persons on different sides of the glove were independently to discover that bodies fall at the rate of sixteen feet per second squared, this would be taken as evidence that they had learned something about nature -- about the world and how it works. We see something like this at work in the sadhanas (spiritual paths) of St. John and Dogen. Though the Christian saint and the Zen master are leaves on quite different trees, similarities between then [sic], qua contemplatives, exist at a level profound enough to encourage the exploration of common ground. Ultimately this common ground invites …