On Desire
Wednesday April 16, 2008
I’ve just had a review of William B. Irvine’s book On Desire
As you will see from reading the review, I enjoyed Irvine’s book, although not without some reservations. In particular, what the book lacked for me was an assessment of the positive role of desire in human life.
There’s a popular understanding of Buddhism that it is a matter of extinguishing desire. I’m not sure that this is either possible or desirable (and, of course, it raises the famous “paradox of desire” in Buddhism, which is to say, the question of how one can desire to extinguish desire – see here and here). Anyway, the textual story on this is much more nuanced, and for those interested, it might be well worth reading David Webster’s
Meanwhile, have a look at the review on the Metapsychology website.
Image: Arturo Delfin
Have your say! [2]
Tune In!
Monday March 24, 2008
For a few days, I’ve been taking a bit of time off, seeing friends and reading books and doing anything other than sitting in front of a computer screen. But I thought I would log on to tell readers from the UK that this coming Wednesday, the 26th March, I’m reading my story, The Philosopher on BBC Radio4 at 3.30pm. (See the link here... By the way, whilst we’re at it, what’s with that “rather improbably” inserted by the BBC website editor? Cheeky…) The story was commissioned by the Walsall Black Readers’ Group, who proved stimulating commissioning editors.
So, if you happen to be around on Wednesday afternoon, tune in and have a listen. I think there’s also a “The Making Of…” documentary about the five stories that are being broadcast this week – the others are by Helen Cross, Mil Millington, Lindsey Davis and Nicola Monaghan, and all were commissioned by various readers’ groups – on the Thursday morning at 11.30.
Have your say! [1]
Site Update
Friday February 8, 2008
Whilst replying to Sam and Maria’s comments on my earlier posts, I realised that it was high time I sorted out the cramped comments box on this site. The old comments box only allowed about one sentence to be visible at any one time, which made trying to write in anything other than soundbites horrible. So I’ve made the comments box much larger and thereby, I hope, made it much more usable. So happy commenting, and enjoy all of that space!
A Secular Age - Reviewed
Monday January 21, 2008
It’s been a busy few weeks, and now I’m throwing myself back into teaching in earnest, as well as working on a proposal for a philosophy book; so I have not had a chance to write much here at thinkBuddha for a few days. But a few days ago, I was reassured by a quote that I stumbled upon from the physicist Wolfgang Pauli: “I do not mind if you think slowly, but I do object when you publish more quickly than you think.”
Anyway, one of the other things I’ve had on the go is that I’ve been working on a review of Charles Taylor’s book A Secular Age
Comments List Updated.
Friday November 23, 2007
Just another very brief post. I have just updated the recent comments system, and so once again recent comments are now displayed on the front page, in the sidebar. Currently the comments list needs a bit of restyling because they ain’t very pretty, so I’ll be sorting this out in the next couple of days; but it is good to have the comments list back, so that you can see what people are saying, and which topics are generating the most lively discussion.
Some Small Changes
Monday October 22, 2007
I’ve been making some small changes to thinkBuddha, so that the site looks a bit tidier. I’m currently tidying up the sidebar, and I have also upgraded some of the software behind the scenes so that the coding for the site now validates, once again. You may also notice that the images have shifted over to the right hand side of the articles, which makes the text flow a bit simpler and easier to read. There will be a few other changes here as well over the coming days: nothing major, just a bit of necessary – indeed, long overdue – spadework behind the scenes…
Cargo Fever Hits the States
Friday October 19, 2007
For all of you readers in the States, I thought that I should let you know that it is now possible to get hold of a copy of my novel Cargo Fever from Amazon.com.
Cargo Fever explores the Indonesian myths of the orang pendek – the so-called “Short Man”, said to live in the forests of Sumatra, and tackles important themes such as religion, the persistence of cultural memory, rationalism and yeti-smuggling, whilst exploring the twilight world of the boundaries between Homo sapiens, Gods, ancestors and animals. But rather than rattling on about it here, which would be unseemly, perhaps I should just give an extract from the book – an extract specially selected for visitors to thinkBuddha. The extract comes from chapter 13, when we meet Mr Liao, a Taiwanese fisherman who works for the Buddhist fishing company, Matsya Corporation, and who is negotiating a delicate contract with the local authorities on the island of Kenukecil.
An hour or so later, Mr Liao the Taiwanese fisherman appeared on the jetty at the back of the Lovely Vista Hotel. He performed a few stretches, facing into the sun, then sat down on a low stool and crossed his legs. He closed his eyes, feeling the cool breeze on his face. A fly buzzed past his ear. The lap of the waves against the jetty soothed his heart. Ah, he thought, the sufferings of cyclical existence! His head was thumping just a little and the pain in his side that he had first noticed a month or two ago had returned that morning. Mr Tan, his assistant, was dozing like an ox upstairs.
Fugitive images flitted across his mind: fragments of conversation, memories, hopes, desires. He made another subtle adjustment to his posture, trying to settle his body so that his mind might follow suit. It had been a long time since Mr Liao had experienced the delicious fruits of meditation. How hard it was, he thought, to be a man both of the world and also of the spiritual realm. He should have become a monk: it was the good fortune of monks that they lived off the fortunes of others and had no work of their own, other than that of treading the noble path with its eight incomparable limbs. Like an octopus, he thought. As a fisherman, the imagery came naturally to him and did not seem strange. Like an incomparable octopus.
Once, Mr Liao had seriously considered taking monastic vows, but the itching of the flesh had been too hard to resist. He had dreams, sometimes, of himself in saffron, in a cloud of incense, serene and untroubled. The most persistent of his dreams was this: he was dressed as a monk and walking in quiet meditation when he was set upon by women, who cavorted around him naked. In this dream, Mr Liao walked through their midst like a bull elephant in the Himalayan forest walking through a herd of elephant cows, for these mere women were incapable of disturbing the meditative equipoise of his mind. The dream ended with him sitting before a shrine and the women abruptly disappearing, leaving him alone with a ribbon of incense smoke snaking up to the ceiling.
Outside his dreams, however, the fleshly itching was too strong and Mr Liao had taken a wife, having read in a primer on religion that the life of a virtuous householder was better than that of a bad monk. Not long after his marriage, he realized that even this life was beyond his moral grasp. Although it pained him to confess it, he had often partaken of the pleasures offered by Mr Gu’s establishment in Kenukecil. Thus, Mr Liao was a man of contradictions: capable of subjugating the itching of his flesh in his dreams, but not in his waking hours; a model husband and a perfect father to his son while at home in Taipei, who drank deep of the pleasures of the whorehouse when he was away…
If you want to read more, then you can Buy a Copy from Amazon.com (it will take a few weeks to arrive, but worth the wait: you’re not likely to read a better book about yeti-smuggling all year). UK visitors can buy a copy here
