As an American convert to Orthodoxy from Evangelicalism… sorry? At the very least, to defend my good name, we’re not all like that (though it is a depressingly common trend).
I’m with the tenth century Christians, inasmuch as I can skip over to much Buddhist literature (especially the Dhammapada) without skipping a beat; it’s always been a very natural transition for me. From what I’ve heard, the feeling is apparently mutual, at least when it comes to the Sermon on the Mount.
Do you have any resources discussing the accidental canonization of Pope Marcellinus? That’s hilarious (though, if you will, his accidental canonization could be seen as a providential exposé of the inevitability of universal salvation).
I certainly don’t mean to gate-keep. But the fact that you’re a convert and a reasonable fellow means you’re an increasingly rare breed, statistically.
A version of of Barlaam's tales appears in the casket choice decreed by Pportia's father in "The Merchant of Venice". To my mind, it is an illustration of the powers of stories to cross boundaries of culture, faith, and age via the unconscious (often much wiser and more open than the stratifying conscious mind and presumably the reason Jesus taught with parables).
The dissonance between the historical consciousness of, like, the average Greek parishioner and of an American evangelical convert to Orthodoxy is depressing if one thinks about it too long. I keep waiting for the punchline on the phenomenon of mass Protestant conversion to Orthodoxy and Catholicism to happen so the trend can stop dominating the scene, but alas.
I keep hearing it blamed on American evangelicals, but that seems to be only the case in the US. I've never been to a church outside of the US, but I've seen similar disturbing behavior from Orthodox who weren't previously evangelicals. I'm thinking of some of the Mt. Athos monks who held to ridiculous conspiracy theories during the pandemic. Our priest actually had a whole sermon on how and why we should ignore them. There's also a lot of the hatred for Catholics and other non Orthodox seemingly worldwide in Orthodoxy. All the calendar silliness. Then there's the infamous Patriarch Kirill of the KGB. Rocor are hardline traditionalists and a lot of them are convert parishes but the one nearest me isn't. When I converted I heard lots of horror stories from people talking about how we had it easy. Back in the 80s when many converted most perishes were full on immersed in ethnophyletism and people were treated extremely poorly because they weren't of the nationality of the church they were joining. Even when I converted in 2016, I was asked why I would do such a thing because Italians are Catholics, Greeks/Russians,etc. are Orthodox, Germans are Lutherans, and English are Anglicans. Ethnophyletism seems to still be going strong. I've got no love for the evangelical exodus to more ancient churches but I think we've had our own problems too.
Oh, no one would deny that Orthodoxy is a mess globally. The American situation is special but not any more egregiously depressing than many other problems.
This is a fair rejoinder. While it’s absolutely true that Orthodoxy can have a historic bigotry for non-Orthodox Christians and non-Christians, and anti-intellectual fideism can be found everywhere and anywhere, I do think there’s a distinctive flavor of it that’s a clear Protestant infusion into the Orthosphere. And that would be fine, I guess, except that when I stopped being a regular some years back, it was already beginning to be the case that one couldn’t experience real parish life without that largely ethereal spirit worming its way into the actual, concrete community. I can only imagine what the last few years have done for that.
I hear you there. I guess that's why I largely skip coffee hour. I basically just come to worship and then leave. Although I just recently left one parish for another and it seems to be better. We have a young priest who gives 10 minute sermons that I actually like all focusing on how to concretely love others we meet in everyday life and not boring historical excurseses or political culture war diatribes. So I'm still new but hopeful. But you're right it has been very demoralizing realizing one has much less in common with your community than you thought. By the by, has your experience markedly improved since you went back to the Episcopal Church? I hope so and God bless!
Meditating on the writings of Maximus on the gnomic will have impressed on me not only their inevitable internal logic concerning salvation, but also the necessity of compassion, both for myself and others. At least, it made it easier to live with myself and love the people around me, even when I didn't like either very much at the moment. That's not a critique by the way, more of a keep your chin up.
Thank you for this reminder. I will try to actively think of this to connect more with my community. It is very true but something I forget often. The theology shouldn't be an abstract intellectual exercise, but it's use is in how it instills compassion in you. Thank you.
I, too, an a convert from the Fundamentalist wing of Evangelicalism. I was fortunate in that I first converted to Lutheranism, then to Orthodoxy. I've been wrong so many times. Thus, I have been disabused of any notion of theological certitude. This, unfortunately, is not the case with any converts who are proud of their ability to discern the truth. They still measure truth against themselves; they are their own plumb bob. I've also noticed a disturbing trend among immigrants from the old country who are very often politically conservative and drag that into the church. We have a Yaya in our church who refused to wear a mask or get the vaccine, and was convinced the bishop was part of a conspiracy to poison his flock.
I must admit, however, that this is the first time I've read about Barlaam and Josaphat. For some reason I had them confused with Barsanuphius and John.
The combination of recent conservative trends and social media has been like a neutron bomb going off in many brains. It leaves the physical structures intact while scouring the mind of its rationality. I lost a dear friend to a horrid stew of conspiracy theories that left him completely gutted. It was shocking and sad.
I began life as a Unitarian-Universalist, so this sort of commonalty seems to be baked into my consciousness (though I decided I was an atheist at age 7 with an argument strikingly similar to that of Russell's "Why I am not a Christian" - "converting' when at age 15, a Jewish friend said to me, "you know Don, not everyone thinks God's an old guy in the sky with a beard." - a few years later, by Grace granted a recognition of That/He/She/whatever pronoun "in whom we live and move and have our being" delivered me, as Plotinus put it, "from thought to vision."
I don't know if it's something most scholars would accept, but writing around the time of World War 1., in his commentary on the Bhagavad Gita, Sri Aurobindo noted having recognized sutras from the Gita lifted "bodily" into various Buddhist texts from around the first to second centuries BC. Sri Aurobindo saw this as largely responsible for transforming a relatively small, rather ascetic teaching into the world religion of compassion and love so exemplified in the Metta Suttra and later in Shantideva.
Whatever myths (errors?) there are regarding Jesus' travels to India, it seems highly likely that Mahayana Buddhist monks would have made their way to Egypt before his birth (the tales of King Milinda are referred to in 3rd century Greece). So whether it is factually true, I love the idea that Sri Krishna, by way the Gita and subsequent Mahayana Buddhists, had some "influence" on the teachings of that dark-skinned Palestinian socialist Jew who has had such a transformational effect on all of humanity.
***
I'm just assuming people here will know who Sri Aurobindo was, but in case not, a brief overview:
Sent at age 5 from India to England by his anglophone father, with strict instructions for him not to have ANY contact with anything India, Aravinda Ghose grew up a poet and writer, as a teenager teaching himself German to read Goethe in the original, and Italian to read Dante in the original.
It's my understanding that he received the highest marks in Greek and Latin ever recorded at Cambridge University. A member of the "Lotus and Dagger" society at the University, he returned to India in 1893 determined to fight for liberation, within 10 years, becoming the leader of the independence movement prior to Gandhi's arrival on the scene (he also was overwhelmed with a sense of an "all pervading Infinite Reality" upon setting foot on Indian soil in 1893, a sense that never left him)
In 1910 receiving an inner command to leave British India i(he had already been jailed in 1907 for suspicious of being a terrorist, and in 1910 was considered by many in the British government to be "the most dangerous man in India") he left for Pondicherry, in French-controlled South India, and lived there for the rest of his life.
His major works were written, 64 pages a month, between 1914 and 1921, and are considered by many to be among the greatest works in the history of Indian philosophy (note that he wrote his Gita, Upanishads, and Vedic commentaries, as well as his works on Yoga, socio-political issues, poetry and more, simultaneously during that 7 year period).
His collaborator, Mirra Alfassa (aka "The Mother") gave an impromptu commentary on the Dhammapada, and during her travels in Japan from 1914 to 1920 met several roshis who recognized her as a fully enlightened master.
Humorously enough, because of some stray negative comments regarding the extreme nihilists who have existed among the Buddhists, my integral yoga community (that is the community of disciples of the Mother and Sri Aurobindo) have an almost knee-jerk negative attitude toward Buddhism.
However, Robert Thurman (former chair of Tibetan Buddhist studies at Columbia U, and first of Americans to be ordained as a monk in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition) recognized much of Sri Aurobindo's philosophy to be remarkably congruent with Tibetan Buddhism. And to come full circle, in the mid 70s I was startled to see the extent of commonalties between the rituals of various sects - particularly the Nyingma) - of Tibetan Buddhism and medieval Catholicism (and even more so with many of the teachings and practices of contemplative prayer in the Orthodox tradition).
That Unitarian-Universalist influence was, I guess, much stronger than i realized, though I've hardly set foot in their church since 1963.
What a fascinating story of cultural osmosis! I love fantasy tales that find their way in the actual history or at least in the collective consciousness. For that reason I hope that one day you will write a similar article about Prester John. (I know that you have shortly narrated his legend in the Story of Christianity, but I am sure you can say much, much more about this topic.) Or, if we dare to dream big, perhaps one of your next novels will take place in the vast grey zone between reality and imagination in Medieval Europe and Asia (similar to Umberto Eco's Baudolino).
I hope I did not offend anyone by using the adjective "Nestorian." I had no such intent.
"God, ALL in all" seems to contradict any ad modum recipientis kind of ontology, if I may phrase it that way. The problem with Neoplatonic ontologies in general is that they were designed to account for the eternity of the world as it is. The victory over all Powers and Principalities in Jesus Christ risen from the dead and the abolition of this Age are not welcome here, not to mention the idea that risen Christ is the firstborn of all creation and the first man ever made in the image of the invisible God.
Thank you for clarifying your opinion about Nagarjuna.
"I confess, I should like to make quite a great a deal of it" : I am sure everybody here would love to read it.
Could you, please, be so kind as to explain to us how you can be an anima naturaliter buddhistica and a Neoplatonist? I will not ask you if a Buddhist anima is a real possibility. And I do not suggest that you would have to be both a Buddhist and a Neoplatonist at the same time. I am asking because, as time passes, I feel more and more a Buddhist Orthodox Christian and les and less a Neoplatonist (I also speak here as a historian of Greek-Arabic Neoplatonism or Neo-Aristotelianism). As I understand "the Way," whether Buddhist (Dzogchen in particular, bu Zen also) or Taoist, its main spiritual or contemplative tenet is, to put it briefly, non-intentionality. How does that fit in with the kind of Neoplatonism you advocate? Can there be any intentio in the absence of all substantial objects of reference? Can there be any meaningful intentio outside "a world of hypostases"?
Do you have an opinion about the extent to which the Nestorian writings found in Dunhuang were doctrinally influenced by Buddhism and/or Taoism?
The East Syrian Christian writings in Dunhuang, do you mean? I think they were influenced terminologically and perhaps, in a vaguer sense, philosophically. But I would have to study them at length to have anything to say about whether they were influenced doctrinally,.
By anima naturaliter buddhistica, I meant mostly a certain sensibility. I remain fairly Neoplatonic in my thinking. I would note that there are versions of Yogacara that can be read in a Neoplatonic way, if one is indifferent to the badly worked-out ontology that bedevils much of Buddhist metaphysics.
I’m not Dr. Hart by any means—but, as a note, SuttaCentral has free translations of most of the Pali canon (the canonical texts of the Therevada tradition), including the Dhammapada. I rather like Bhikkhu Sujato‘s translation, which may be downloaded in any number of formats here: https://suttacentral.net/edition/dhp/en/sujato
Unrelated: what are forms if we can’t say that every English noun corresponds to a deathless ideal in the mind of God? I’m troubled by thoughts of “the form of the eared seal” and “the form of the Taco Bell restaurant”.
That's why a careful distinction is usually maintained between form and material instantiations, and between essence and accidents. Usually anything obviously contingent on spatial and temporal conditions is regarded as accidental, whereas any abstract characterization capable of transfinite application is accorded the status of essence. But only the mind of God knows every distinction perfectly.
Since Platonism was brought up, Lloyd Gerson has just released a new book on Plato's moral realism. I was wondering if you intend to read it and possibly review it, or maybe even have a conversation with him about it?
Further question: how does platonism do the intellectual work accomplished by social constructivism? What I mean is this: say social constructivists believe that some reality X exists only or in part by the consent of communal, hermeneutical tradition. Might a platonist believe the same, and if not, how would a platonist accommodate the appearance of constructedness with a realist approach to universals?
I strongly suspect I am missing important information, so feel free to reframe the situation.
I’m not sure what prompts the question. Platonism is of course quite the opposite of any constructivism; why would it need to do the work of constructivism?
Hmm. By the confusing term “do the work”, I meant only that if an explanation of some data is to be superior to another, it must explain the same data in the process of explaining it better. Also, I meant that each approach to some phenomenon or other tends to have certain data that it specializes in accommodating. So I’m wondering how platonism explains the data that constructivists specialize in accommodating. Hence my reference to the appearance of constructedness. Come to think of it however, I’m not sufficiently familiar with constructivism to point to any particular data it “specializes in accommodating”, so perhaps my whole question needs rethinking.
Last attempt. How about a test case. How would a platonist explain the monetary value of gold? Is gold valuable because of some inherent property, or because we say it has value?
As an American convert to Orthodoxy from Evangelicalism… sorry? At the very least, to defend my good name, we’re not all like that (though it is a depressingly common trend).
I’m with the tenth century Christians, inasmuch as I can skip over to much Buddhist literature (especially the Dhammapada) without skipping a beat; it’s always been a very natural transition for me. From what I’ve heard, the feeling is apparently mutual, at least when it comes to the Sermon on the Mount.
Do you have any resources discussing the accidental canonization of Pope Marcellinus? That’s hilarious (though, if you will, his accidental canonization could be seen as a providential exposé of the inevitability of universal salvation).
I like your last observation especially.
I certainly don’t mean to gate-keep. But the fact that you’re a convert and a reasonable fellow means you’re an increasingly rare breed, statistically.
A version of of Barlaam's tales appears in the casket choice decreed by Pportia's father in "The Merchant of Venice". To my mind, it is an illustration of the powers of stories to cross boundaries of culture, faith, and age via the unconscious (often much wiser and more open than the stratifying conscious mind and presumably the reason Jesus taught with parables).
D'accord.
Classic piece. Sancte Gautama...
The dissonance between the historical consciousness of, like, the average Greek parishioner and of an American evangelical convert to Orthodoxy is depressing if one thinks about it too long. I keep waiting for the punchline on the phenomenon of mass Protestant conversion to Orthodoxy and Catholicism to happen so the trend can stop dominating the scene, but alas.
I keep hearing it blamed on American evangelicals, but that seems to be only the case in the US. I've never been to a church outside of the US, but I've seen similar disturbing behavior from Orthodox who weren't previously evangelicals. I'm thinking of some of the Mt. Athos monks who held to ridiculous conspiracy theories during the pandemic. Our priest actually had a whole sermon on how and why we should ignore them. There's also a lot of the hatred for Catholics and other non Orthodox seemingly worldwide in Orthodoxy. All the calendar silliness. Then there's the infamous Patriarch Kirill of the KGB. Rocor are hardline traditionalists and a lot of them are convert parishes but the one nearest me isn't. When I converted I heard lots of horror stories from people talking about how we had it easy. Back in the 80s when many converted most perishes were full on immersed in ethnophyletism and people were treated extremely poorly because they weren't of the nationality of the church they were joining. Even when I converted in 2016, I was asked why I would do such a thing because Italians are Catholics, Greeks/Russians,etc. are Orthodox, Germans are Lutherans, and English are Anglicans. Ethnophyletism seems to still be going strong. I've got no love for the evangelical exodus to more ancient churches but I think we've had our own problems too.
Oh, no one would deny that Orthodoxy is a mess globally. The American situation is special but not any more egregiously depressing than many other problems.
This is a fair rejoinder. While it’s absolutely true that Orthodoxy can have a historic bigotry for non-Orthodox Christians and non-Christians, and anti-intellectual fideism can be found everywhere and anywhere, I do think there’s a distinctive flavor of it that’s a clear Protestant infusion into the Orthosphere. And that would be fine, I guess, except that when I stopped being a regular some years back, it was already beginning to be the case that one couldn’t experience real parish life without that largely ethereal spirit worming its way into the actual, concrete community. I can only imagine what the last few years have done for that.
All churches are churches. All too human. Witness the shameful Moscow patriarchate.
Hear, hear.
I hear you there. I guess that's why I largely skip coffee hour. I basically just come to worship and then leave. Although I just recently left one parish for another and it seems to be better. We have a young priest who gives 10 minute sermons that I actually like all focusing on how to concretely love others we meet in everyday life and not boring historical excurseses or political culture war diatribes. So I'm still new but hopeful. But you're right it has been very demoralizing realizing one has much less in common with your community than you thought. By the by, has your experience markedly improved since you went back to the Episcopal Church? I hope so and God bless!
Meditating on the writings of Maximus on the gnomic will have impressed on me not only their inevitable internal logic concerning salvation, but also the necessity of compassion, both for myself and others. At least, it made it easier to live with myself and love the people around me, even when I didn't like either very much at the moment. That's not a critique by the way, more of a keep your chin up.
Thank you for this reminder. I will try to actively think of this to connect more with my community. It is very true but something I forget often. The theology shouldn't be an abstract intellectual exercise, but it's use is in how it instills compassion in you. Thank you.
I, too, an a convert from the Fundamentalist wing of Evangelicalism. I was fortunate in that I first converted to Lutheranism, then to Orthodoxy. I've been wrong so many times. Thus, I have been disabused of any notion of theological certitude. This, unfortunately, is not the case with any converts who are proud of their ability to discern the truth. They still measure truth against themselves; they are their own plumb bob. I've also noticed a disturbing trend among immigrants from the old country who are very often politically conservative and drag that into the church. We have a Yaya in our church who refused to wear a mask or get the vaccine, and was convinced the bishop was part of a conspiracy to poison his flock.
I must admit, however, that this is the first time I've read about Barlaam and Josaphat. For some reason I had them confused with Barsanuphius and John.
The combination of recent conservative trends and social media has been like a neutron bomb going off in many brains. It leaves the physical structures intact while scouring the mind of its rationality. I lost a dear friend to a horrid stew of conspiracy theories that left him completely gutted. It was shocking and sad.
"Irony of providence", awesome.
Ironic, as this piece and my subsequent reading of The Balavariani had a lot to do with my conversion to Orthodoxy.
Same. Life takes many courses.
Somewhat unrelated question: have you read any Henry Corbin yet?
Btw, I'm still waiting for you to write something about Sufism (or Islam in general).
It would be hard not to have read Henri Corbin. He's not exactly a new property. But I don't think I've ever written on Sufism.
Thank you for using "eponymous" correctly. The ignorance of rock critics ("The Clash's eponymous first album") has nearly skunked this term.
How tragic.
I began life as a Unitarian-Universalist, so this sort of commonalty seems to be baked into my consciousness (though I decided I was an atheist at age 7 with an argument strikingly similar to that of Russell's "Why I am not a Christian" - "converting' when at age 15, a Jewish friend said to me, "you know Don, not everyone thinks God's an old guy in the sky with a beard." - a few years later, by Grace granted a recognition of That/He/She/whatever pronoun "in whom we live and move and have our being" delivered me, as Plotinus put it, "from thought to vision."
I don't know if it's something most scholars would accept, but writing around the time of World War 1., in his commentary on the Bhagavad Gita, Sri Aurobindo noted having recognized sutras from the Gita lifted "bodily" into various Buddhist texts from around the first to second centuries BC. Sri Aurobindo saw this as largely responsible for transforming a relatively small, rather ascetic teaching into the world religion of compassion and love so exemplified in the Metta Suttra and later in Shantideva.
Whatever myths (errors?) there are regarding Jesus' travels to India, it seems highly likely that Mahayana Buddhist monks would have made their way to Egypt before his birth (the tales of King Milinda are referred to in 3rd century Greece). So whether it is factually true, I love the idea that Sri Krishna, by way the Gita and subsequent Mahayana Buddhists, had some "influence" on the teachings of that dark-skinned Palestinian socialist Jew who has had such a transformational effect on all of humanity.
***
I'm just assuming people here will know who Sri Aurobindo was, but in case not, a brief overview:
Sent at age 5 from India to England by his anglophone father, with strict instructions for him not to have ANY contact with anything India, Aravinda Ghose grew up a poet and writer, as a teenager teaching himself German to read Goethe in the original, and Italian to read Dante in the original.
It's my understanding that he received the highest marks in Greek and Latin ever recorded at Cambridge University. A member of the "Lotus and Dagger" society at the University, he returned to India in 1893 determined to fight for liberation, within 10 years, becoming the leader of the independence movement prior to Gandhi's arrival on the scene (he also was overwhelmed with a sense of an "all pervading Infinite Reality" upon setting foot on Indian soil in 1893, a sense that never left him)
In 1910 receiving an inner command to leave British India i(he had already been jailed in 1907 for suspicious of being a terrorist, and in 1910 was considered by many in the British government to be "the most dangerous man in India") he left for Pondicherry, in French-controlled South India, and lived there for the rest of his life.
His major works were written, 64 pages a month, between 1914 and 1921, and are considered by many to be among the greatest works in the history of Indian philosophy (note that he wrote his Gita, Upanishads, and Vedic commentaries, as well as his works on Yoga, socio-political issues, poetry and more, simultaneously during that 7 year period).
His collaborator, Mirra Alfassa (aka "The Mother") gave an impromptu commentary on the Dhammapada, and during her travels in Japan from 1914 to 1920 met several roshis who recognized her as a fully enlightened master.
Humorously enough, because of some stray negative comments regarding the extreme nihilists who have existed among the Buddhists, my integral yoga community (that is the community of disciples of the Mother and Sri Aurobindo) have an almost knee-jerk negative attitude toward Buddhism.
However, Robert Thurman (former chair of Tibetan Buddhist studies at Columbia U, and first of Americans to be ordained as a monk in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition) recognized much of Sri Aurobindo's philosophy to be remarkably congruent with Tibetan Buddhism. And to come full circle, in the mid 70s I was startled to see the extent of commonalties between the rituals of various sects - particularly the Nyingma) - of Tibetan Buddhism and medieval Catholicism (and even more so with many of the teachings and practices of contemplative prayer in the Orthodox tradition).
That Unitarian-Universalist influence was, I guess, much stronger than i realized, though I've hardly set foot in their church since 1963.
What a fascinating story of cultural osmosis! I love fantasy tales that find their way in the actual history or at least in the collective consciousness. For that reason I hope that one day you will write a similar article about Prester John. (I know that you have shortly narrated his legend in the Story of Christianity, but I am sure you can say much, much more about this topic.) Or, if we dare to dream big, perhaps one of your next novels will take place in the vast grey zone between reality and imagination in Medieval Europe and Asia (similar to Umberto Eco's Baudolino).
I second the motions.
Reminds me of Fr Bede Griffith: " Christianity and Buddhism are very similar, especially Buddhism".
Have you read Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny? Sci-fi that uses Hindu and Buddhist mythology as its framework.
I hope I did not offend anyone by using the adjective "Nestorian." I had no such intent.
"God, ALL in all" seems to contradict any ad modum recipientis kind of ontology, if I may phrase it that way. The problem with Neoplatonic ontologies in general is that they were designed to account for the eternity of the world as it is. The victory over all Powers and Principalities in Jesus Christ risen from the dead and the abolition of this Age are not welcome here, not to mention the idea that risen Christ is the firstborn of all creation and the first man ever made in the image of the invisible God.
Thank you for clarifying your opinion about Nagarjuna.
I said nothing about Nagarjuna. He was Madhyamaka, whereas I was thinking of Cittamatra.
Neoplatonic ontologies do not presume a constant state of affairs. They presume only a constant metaphysics of participation and emanation.
Oh, and I doubt anyone took offense at the word Nestorian, but it is a misleading term.
Thank you, David.
"I confess, I should like to make quite a great a deal of it" : I am sure everybody here would love to read it.
Could you, please, be so kind as to explain to us how you can be an anima naturaliter buddhistica and a Neoplatonist? I will not ask you if a Buddhist anima is a real possibility. And I do not suggest that you would have to be both a Buddhist and a Neoplatonist at the same time. I am asking because, as time passes, I feel more and more a Buddhist Orthodox Christian and les and less a Neoplatonist (I also speak here as a historian of Greek-Arabic Neoplatonism or Neo-Aristotelianism). As I understand "the Way," whether Buddhist (Dzogchen in particular, bu Zen also) or Taoist, its main spiritual or contemplative tenet is, to put it briefly, non-intentionality. How does that fit in with the kind of Neoplatonism you advocate? Can there be any intentio in the absence of all substantial objects of reference? Can there be any meaningful intentio outside "a world of hypostases"?
Do you have an opinion about the extent to which the Nestorian writings found in Dunhuang were doctrinally influenced by Buddhism and/or Taoism?
Thank you in advance.
The East Syrian Christian writings in Dunhuang, do you mean? I think they were influenced terminologically and perhaps, in a vaguer sense, philosophically. But I would have to study them at length to have anything to say about whether they were influenced doctrinally,.
By anima naturaliter buddhistica, I meant mostly a certain sensibility. I remain fairly Neoplatonic in my thinking. I would note that there are versions of Yogacara that can be read in a Neoplatonic way, if one is indifferent to the badly worked-out ontology that bedevils much of Buddhist metaphysics.
Any recommended translations of the Dhammapada and Bodhicaryāvatāra?
I’m not Dr. Hart by any means—but, as a note, SuttaCentral has free translations of most of the Pali canon (the canonical texts of the Therevada tradition), including the Dhammapada. I rather like Bhikkhu Sujato‘s translation, which may be downloaded in any number of formats here: https://suttacentral.net/edition/dhp/en/sujato
I have this & it is good: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-dhammapada-9780199555130?cc=us&lang=en&
The Oxford World Classics version of the Bodhicaryavatara is quite good too.
Unrelated: what are forms if we can’t say that every English noun corresponds to a deathless ideal in the mind of God? I’m troubled by thoughts of “the form of the eared seal” and “the form of the Taco Bell restaurant”.
That's why a careful distinction is usually maintained between form and material instantiations, and between essence and accidents. Usually anything obviously contingent on spatial and temporal conditions is regarded as accidental, whereas any abstract characterization capable of transfinite application is accorded the status of essence. But only the mind of God knows every distinction perfectly.
Since Platonism was brought up, Lloyd Gerson has just released a new book on Plato's moral realism. I was wondering if you intend to read it and possibly review it, or maybe even have a conversation with him about it?
Further question: how does platonism do the intellectual work accomplished by social constructivism? What I mean is this: say social constructivists believe that some reality X exists only or in part by the consent of communal, hermeneutical tradition. Might a platonist believe the same, and if not, how would a platonist accommodate the appearance of constructedness with a realist approach to universals?
I strongly suspect I am missing important information, so feel free to reframe the situation.
I’m not sure what prompts the question. Platonism is of course quite the opposite of any constructivism; why would it need to do the work of constructivism?
Hmm. By the confusing term “do the work”, I meant only that if an explanation of some data is to be superior to another, it must explain the same data in the process of explaining it better. Also, I meant that each approach to some phenomenon or other tends to have certain data that it specializes in accommodating. So I’m wondering how platonism explains the data that constructivists specialize in accommodating. Hence my reference to the appearance of constructedness. Come to think of it however, I’m not sufficiently familiar with constructivism to point to any particular data it “specializes in accommodating”, so perhaps my whole question needs rethinking.
I’m not aware of any such data.
Last attempt. How about a test case. How would a platonist explain the monetary value of gold? Is gold valuable because of some inherent property, or because we say it has value?