Selected Writings

1993-2003

Introduction

 

Selected Writings offers a representative sample of my written work from 1993 to 2003, the period during which I wrote The Awakening of the West, Buddhism without Beliefs and Verses from the Center (see books) .  The content ranges from journalism to philosophical essays, from translations to interviews. The Freedom to be No One;The Director's Cut; Two Letters by Antonin Artaud; Giraffe; Tibet, Tibet; Lhasa and the Soul of Tibet; How to Stop; and Red have not been published before.  The other pieces have all appeared in journals or anthologies (publishing details are included at the end of each). 

There are four parts, grouped according to subject matter: 

• The Agnostic Buddhist

• Buddhism and the West

• The Dalai Lama and Tibet

• Here and Now

Part One:  The Agnostic Buddhist

The thread that binds these five pieces together is my concern to articulate a view of Buddhism that honours the Asian traditions while interpreting their insights in the light of secular modernity. The Agnostic Buddhist is the edited transcript of a talk I gave at Rochester Zen Center, New York, in 1996.  It serves as a personal introduction to my agnostic approach to Buddhist thought and practice presented in Buddhism Without Beliefs.  Six years later James Shaheen, editor of Tricycle, explored with me a number of the questions raised by that book. At the Crossroads is the edited transcript of that interview, published in the magazine in 2002. The Freedom to be No One was a paper given at a conference in Los Angeles in 1998 to a group of psychologists and psychotherapists.  It explores the nature of human experience as understood from the perspective of Nagarjuna's philosophy of emptiness and attempts to define the meaning and purpose of a personal Buddhist practice.  The Director's Cut interweaves an interpretation of the Buddhist doctrine of the twelve links of dependent origination with a sequence of tableaux from a filmset in 1930's America. It was an early, abandoned draft of the chapter "Becoming" in Buddhism without Beliefs.  Creating Sangha was published in Tricycle in 1995.  It is a reflection on the meaning and importance of community in a contemporary, non-monastic and largely non-Buddhist environment. 

 

Part Two:  Buddhism and the West

The pieces in this section are more historical than personal in emphasis.  They reflect my on-going interest in trying to understand what is taking place in the encounter between Buddhist traditions of Asia and the modern world, which I explored in my book The Awakening of the West.  Towards a Culture of Awakening is the transcript of an interview by Wes Nisker for the journal Inquiring Mind in 1995.  It explores some of the issues raised by Buddhism's historically proven ability to transmit its teachings and values across cultures, and what implications this might have for the present time.  The Lessons of History continues this inquiry and looks at the impact of historical consciousness itself on the way in which we perceive Buddhism and its teachings.  It was published in Tricycle in 2000.  In a similar vein, Buddhism and Postmodernity considers this encounter in the terms of its relation to the idea of postmodernity.  It was first delivered as part of a lecture at Bristol University in 1998.  Translating Nagarjuna explores the difficulties of turning a classical Buddhist text (in this case Nagarjuna's Mulamadhyamikakarika) into modern English so that it can be made accessible to a contemporary audience.  It is the transcript of an interview in 2000 by Dharmachari Vishvapani for Dharma Life magazine.  As an example of a Romantic and eccentric response to Buddhism earlier in the twentieth century, Two Letters of Antonin Artaud is my translation of two letters the French playwright addressed to the Dalai Lama and The Schools of Buddha in 1925.  The next two pieces look at the impact of Buddhism on two very different Englishmen. Existence, Enlightenment and Suicide is a study of the life and work of Harold Musson (Nanavira Thera), who ordained as a Theravada monk in Sri Lanka in 1948.  It was originally conceived as a chapter in The Awakening of the West, then developed into a paper delivered at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London in 1996.  The Eclectic Cleric is the transcript of an interview I made in Cambridge in 2003 with the radical Christian theologian Don Cupitt, whose writings have drawn on Buddhist ideas and been a source of inspiration in my own work.  It was published in Tricycle in the same year.

 

Part Three:  The Dalai Lama and Tibet

Much of my formative training in Buddhism was with Tibetan lamas in Tibetan.  I have also visited and travelled widely in Central Tibet in the course of work on The Tibet Guide.  While no longer a Tibetan Buddhist, my interest and fascination with Tibet has continued to produce a number of essays on Tibetan issues past and present.  Giraffe is an unconventional biographical sketch of the Tibetan lama Tsongkhapa (1357-1410), founder of the Geluk school of Tibetan Buddhism.  It focuses on the Chinese political background to the life of this remarkable monk-scholar.  Tibet, Tibet is the text of a paper I delivered at a symposium at the University of Colorado in 2000.  It offers an interpretation of the famous prediction "When the Iron Bird Flies, the Dharma will come to the land of the Red Man", followed by a reflection on how Tibet is in danger of turning into a kind of theme park.  Lhasa and the Soul of Tibet examines the structure and symbolism of the city of Lhasa from the perspective of James Hillman's post-Jungian Archetypal Psychology.  It was originally a paper, accompanied by slides, delivered at a conference at Dartington Hall, England in 1996. Letting Daylight into Magic analyses the recent controversy among Tibetan Buddhists over the tantric protector deity Dorje Shugden, triggered by the Dalai Lama's ban on the practice in the mid 1990's.  The Future is in Our Hands is a memoir of a meeting I attended in 1993 in Dharamsala with the Dalai Lama and other Western Buddhist teachers to discuss the ethics of the teacher-student relationship and other topics relevant to the transmission of Buddhism to the West. The Dalai Lama also features in What's Wrong with Conversion, Your Holiness? a short piece I wrote for the Faith and Reason column of the London Independent in 1999, following a visit of His Holiness to Britain in which he was widely quoted as encouraging people to look more deeply into their own religious traditions rather than embrace Buddhism.

 

Part Four:  Here and Now

This section is a mixed bag of pieces, loosely united by their being responses to current affairs and cultural practices. A Convenient Fiction is a memoir of my meeting with the German political activists Petra Kelly and Gert Bastian in 1992 in Berlin, shortly before their violent deaths. It was published in Resurgence in 1993.  Spaces in the Sky offers a personal reflection on the events of September 11, 2001. It was published in Tricycle in the winter issue of that year.  Photography and Meditation considers the parallels and differences between the taking of photographs and the meditative practice of mindful awareness.  It is a longer version of my endnote to Martine Batchelor's Meditation for Life, for which I provided the photos.  Is Cannabis Good for the Soul? considers the influence of psychotropic drugs on those of my generation who were drawn to Eastern thought and practice.  It formed part of my foreword to Allan Hunt-Badiner and Alex Grey's Zig Zag Zen (2002).  It was published in the Faith and Reason column of the London Independent in 2000.  How to Stop is a translation of a short dzogchen text by the nineteenth century Tibetan lama Shabkar.  Red is the result of an exercise done during a creative writing workshop at Sharpham College in 1996