My studies of Buddhism have always been with a philosophical bent. My first academic conference paper was titled, “The Use and Abuse of Ontology in Buddhist Philosophy of Mind,” trying to trace the history of how Buddhists have understood the connection between mind and body, and how Westerners have labeled those understandings. I think I covered everything from the Pali texts to Merleau-Ponty and John Searle. It was a mess, but a fun one.
More recently I’ve looked at the categories Westerners have applied to Buddhism in the West (Three Buddhisms, Two Buddhisms, One Buddhism?) as well as the ways that we might come to better understand Buddhist ethics specifically. Categories, those created by Buddhists and by scholars, have always been on my mind.
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