Last week I had to share my understanding of Book of Serenity Case 39 and defend it in dharma combat as part of a shuso hossen ceremony.  I am particularly fond of Case 39, and thought I would share some thoughts about it here: Case: A monk asked Zhaozhou, “I have just entered the monastery: please give me some guidance.”  Zhaozhou said, “Have you had breakfast yet?”  The monk said, “Yes, I’ve eaten.”  Zhaozhou said, “Then go wash your bowl.” Zhaozhou Congshen— who was born in the 8th century and lived through most of the 9th— is one of the most beloved figures in Chinese ..read more

    I usually only write on Buddhist topics for this blog, trying my best to avoid political statements of one kind or another.  But I’ve been thinking about the Israel-Hamas war for seven months now and watching the campus protests that have sprung up in its wake.  I’ve struggled back and forth between sharing my thoughts and keeping this blog a conflict-free zone. Part of my reticence is due to knowing how many of my Buddhist colleagues disagree strongly with my opinions — and I don’t  want to alienate friends unnecessarily. But I just finished filming a course life ..read more

We want our Buddhist practice to be “authentic” in two different senses of the word: First, we want it to be authentically Buddhist­—a genuine part of the current of thought originating with the life and teachings of the historical Buddha and remaining, in important senses, faithful to it. Second, we want our practice to be authentic in the sense that we can practice it wholeheartedly without inner division, false consciousness, or pretense. We want it to be consonant both with our present understanding of ourselves and the world, and with our aspirations to transcend our present capabilities ..read more

  Winton Higgins is a prominent Australian secular Buddhist, and Revamp: Writings on Secular Buddhism (Tuwhiri, 2021) has been hailed by Stephen Batchelor, as “the most comprehensive account of secular Buddhism currently available.” Since Stephen Batchelor’s name is, in some ways, almost synonymous with secular Buddhism, this is high praise indeed. Higgins has been influenced by many of the same authors who have been important to my own development—Stephen Batchelor, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, David McMahon, Alasdair McIntyre, Martha Nussbaum, and Richard Rorty—just to name a few. We have sim ..read more

Linda Modaro and Nelly Kaufer’s Reflective Meditation: Cultivating Kindness and Curiosity in the Buddha’s Company (2023, Precocity Press) is a lively written conversation between the authors on their understanding of meditation and the meditative path. Linda Modaro is the founder and lead teacher at Sati Sangha, a Southern California based online meditation community, and Nelly Kaufer is the founder and lead teacher at Pine Street Sangha in Portland, Oregon. The book was edited by prominent Australian secular Buddhist Winton Higgins and originally published in New Zealand under the Tuwhiri im ..read more

It is hard to know how to even begin to review of a book of the beauty, depth, nuance, and complexity of David McMahan’s excellent Rethinking Meditation: Buddhist Meditative Practices in Ancient and Modern Worlds (Oxford, 2023). David’s previous book—his seminal The Making of Buddhist Modernism (Oxford, 2009)—is undeniably the most important book about Buddhist modernism written in this century, and Rethinking Meditation is destined to take its place alongside it as an indispensable classic. Rethinking Meditation is really two books in one. The first half of the book dismantles the myth that ..read more

  Two years ago a representative from the Monkfish Book Publishing Company based in Rhinebeck, New York asked if I would review The Garden of Weeds and Flowers: A New Translation and Commentary on The Blue Cliff Record (2021) written by Korean Jogye Order Zen teacher Matthew Juksan Sullivan. I let the publisher know I probably wouldn’t get around to writing a review right away—I was pretty busy at the time—and they said that was all right.  Then, in all my busyness, I never got around to the review. Which is a genuine shame, because I have kept this book constantly by my side for th ..read more

I have a new book entitled The House we Live In: Virtue, Wisdom, and Pluralism that regular readers of The Existential Buddhist will be interested in. The book explores the multiple crises imperiling American democracy and argues that progress in solving them depends on our arriving at a new consensus on what it means to be a good person and lead a good life. The book uses the commonalities underlying the Aristotelian, Buddhist, and Confucian traditions to re-imagine an ethics suitable for our time. It re-considers virtue, wisdom, and flourishing from a pragmatic perspective and addresses the ..read more

Déshān Xuānjiàn I vaguely remember a story—I’m not sure if it’s true or a joke, or if I am even remembering it correctly—that someone once asked Sigmund Freud about a patient who successfully completed psychoanalysis but still behaved like a jerk. How did Freud account for this? Freud allegedly quipped the patient was a “well-analyzed jerk.” Freud’s quip points to the possibility of  complex relationship between psychological health and being a decent human being. The two, according to psychoanalysis, are not necessarily the same. But one can imagine other psychotherapeutic approache ..read more

  There are three problems with how Buddhist enlightenment is traditionally understood. The first is enlightenment’s non-naturalistic aspects, for example, the idea of enlightenment as an end to rebirth. The idea of rebirth is inconsistent with the way most modern Westerners understand how the world works. The second is Enlightenment’s absolutism: the idea that enlightenment is a complete and permanent end to greed, hatred, delusion, and attachment, beyond which there is nothing more to accomplish. I don’t think such a state is humanly possible and I’ve never met anyone—be they monk, lam ..read more