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A non-theistic contribution to the dialogue between religion and secular humanism through the medium of Buddhist spiritual practice.
List of contents
Acknowledgements; A Shakespearean Prologue: The Voice of Cordelian Ethics; 1. Introduction; 2. 'A Spiritually Enlightened Individual; 3. The Resources of a Much Earlier Phase of the Tradition'; 4. The Distractions of Baruch Spinoza; 5. Immanuel Kant: 'To Regard as Petty what we are Otherwise Anxious About'; 6. Wittgenstein's Cool Temple; 7. Rilke, Shakespeare... and a Little Freud; 8. Concealment and Revelation; 9. Mindfulness and the Form of a Philosophical Life; 10. Epictetus: 'The Beginning of Philosophy' ...; 11. Ted Hughes: Evaporation, Translation, Translocation; 12. Philosophy as an Inventive Convergence of Methods; 13. Richard Norman: 'The Truths it Contains are Human Truths'; 14. Perspectives: Marmalade Stains on the Breakfast Table; 15. David Hume: Wanting the Natural Sentiments of Humanity; 16. 'What is the Difference between Love and God's Love?'; 17. 'Peace, Wild Wooddove, Shy Wings Shut'; 18. 'Only a Little Snivelling Half-Wit Can Maintain That'; 19. 'The World is Too Much With Us'; 20. Of Self and Self, of Atman and Anatman; 21. 'I am Myself Alone'; 22. The Five Heaps or Skandhas; 23.'We Claim that There is a Person, but we do not say that he is an Entity'; 24. Birds, Frogs and Tintern Abbey; 25. Human Resources and Hubris; References; Index.
About the author
Michael McGhee is Honorary Senior Fellow in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Liverpool. A British philosopher who was educated at a Roman Catholic seminary, he later became a practising Buddhist. He is the author of Transformations of Mind: Philosophy as Spiritual Practice (Cambridge University Press, 2000), editor and co-editor of various collections on philosophy and spirituality, and a founding editor of Contemporary Buddhism.
Summary
Many people claim they are secular rather than religious, but usually qualify this by claiming an interest in spirituality. But what kind of spirituality is possible in the absence of religion? This book offers a discussion of the idea of a dialogue between religion and atheism in terms of Buddhist practice.
