This second book in the 'Middle Way Philosophy' series develops five general principles that are distinctive to the universal Middle Way as a practical response to absolutization.
This second book in the 'Middle Way Philosophy' series develops five general principles that are distinctive to the universal Middle Way as a practical response to absolutization.
What do dogma, repression, and conflict have in common? They all result from human judgement blocked from wider understanding by a false assumption of completeness. This book puts forward a theory of absolutization, bringing together a multidisciplinary understanding of this central flaw in human judgement, and what we can do about it. This approach, drawing on Buddhist thought and practice, philosophy, psychology, neuroscience, embodied meani...
What do dogma, repression, and conflict have in common? They all result from human judgement blocked from wider understanding by a false assumption of completeness. This book puts forward a theory of absolutization, bringing together a multidisciplinary understanding of this central flaw in human judgement, and what we can do about it. This approach, drawing on Buddhist thought and practice, philosophy, psychology, neuroscience, embodied meani...
The Jungian concept of archetypes is of immense value for critically distinguishing what is potentially of universal practical value in religious and other cultural traditions, and separating this from the dogmatic elements. However, Jung encumbered the concept of archetypes with debatable constructions like the 'collective unconscious' that are unnecessary for understanding their practical function. Archetypes in Religion and Beyond puts forw...
The Jungian concept of archetypes is of immense value for critically distinguishing what is potentially of universal practical value in religious and other cultural traditions, and separating this from the dogmatic elements. However, Jung encumbered the concept of archetypes with debatable constructions like the 'collective unconscious' that are unnecessary for understanding their practical function. Archetypes in Religion and Beyond puts forw...
Red Book, Middle Way offers a new interpretation of Jung's Red Book, in terms of the Middle Way, as a universal principle and embodied ethic, paralleled both in the Buddha's teachings and elsewhere.
Red Book, Middle Way offers a new interpretation of Jung's Red Book, in terms of the Middle Way, as a universal principle and embodied ethic, paralleled both in the Buddha's teachings and elsewhere.
Sangharakshita (1925-2018) was a Buddhist writer and teacher, founder of the Triratna Buddhist Order and Community (previously FWBO). Apart from his practical achievements, Sangharakshita was an original thinker on the adaptation of Buddhism to modern conditions, an autodidact whose intellectual creativity was stimulated by both cross-cultural experience and practical contingency. His thinking is little known or appreciated outside the movemen...
Sangharakshita (1925-2018) was a Buddhist writer and teacher, founder of the Triratna Buddhist Order and Community (previously FWBO). Apart from his practical achievements, Sangharakshita was an original thinker on the adaptation of Buddhism to modern conditions, an autodidact whose intellectual creativity was stimulated by both cross-cultural experience and practical contingency. His thinking is little known or appreciated outside the movemen...
The Middle Way is the first teaching offered by the Buddha in his first address, and the basis of his practical method in meditation, ethics, and wisdom. It is often mentioned in connection with Buddhist teachings, yet the full case for its importance has not yet been made. This book aims to make that case.
The Middle Way is the first teaching offered by the Buddha in his first address, and the basis of his practical method in meditation, ethics, and wisdom. It is often mentioned in connection with Buddhist teachings, yet the full case for its importance has not yet been made. This book aims to make that case.
This third volume of the Middle Way Philosophy series applies the revolutionary view, taken from cognitive science, that meaning is found in our bodies rather than in a relationship between language and reality. The cognitive meaning found in dictionaries and the emotive 'meaning of life' cannot be separated. This approach reveals the basic error of the metaphysical views that depend on absolute cognitive meaning. It also provides the basis fo...
This fourth volume of the Middle Way Philosophy series uses cognitive psychology and balanced sceptical philosophy to explain both how we get stuck in dogmas, and how provisionality is possible. It is argued that we can make progress both in avoiding delusions and developing wisdom not by finding 'truth' or employing 'rationality', but rather through awareness of our assumptions. We need not ultimately true beliefs (as is often assumed), but j...
Initially inspired by the Buddha's Middle Way, but working in Western Philosophy and related disciplines, Robert M. Ellis first developed Middle Way Philosophy in a Ph.D. thesis in 2001. This new detailed account is the product of a further ten years of refinement of his approach, and concentrates on the philosophical core. It is followed by three further volumes focusing more on the psychological and practical implications of the philosophy. ...
Truth on the Edge is an introduction to a new philosophy of objectivity, inspired by the Buddha's Middle Way but worked out in entirely Western terms. Robert M. Ellis's philosophy of the Middle Way was originally developed as a Ph.D. thesis, A Theory of Moral Objectivity, but this book is intended as a more accessible introduction to this philosophy. The key theme is the idea that we are not justified in making any claims about truth, whether ...
North Cape is the relic of a gradual change in one man's life, over a period of more than twenty years, from aspiring poet to philosopher. Robert M. Ellis is more intent today on developing a philosophy of the Middle Way, but the roots of this philosophical drive are found in earlier creative work, much of it written as a Cambridge student or when on Buddhist retreats. The poems in this collection record varying experiences of travel, observat...
A New Buddhist Ethics' offers a different approach to tackling moral issues, using the Middle Way originally inspired by the Buddha. It aims to free Buddhist ethcs from karma, rebirth, and the revelations of the enlightened. Robert M. Ellis has been developing a universal philosophy of the Middle Way. Here he applies this approach to issues of practical ethics. The Middle Way is a practical approach to ethics which avoids the delusions of eith...
This book is a critique of Buddhism by a philosopher with about 20 years' experience of practising Buddhism. It attempts to judge Buddhism by the standards of its own key insight of the Middle Way. This book argues that Buddhism has often abandoned the Middle Way and allowed dogmatic metaphysical assumptions to take its place. The Buddha criticised appeals to metaphysics, yet many of the trappings of traditional Buddhism are built on it - whet...
This book was originally written as an accredited Ph.D. thesis - but one that broke all the usual rules. Rather than focusing on a small area like most theses, this is a inter-disciplinary philosophical treatise that attempts to establish a new approach to the whole question of objectivity, especially in ethics. Inspired by the Buddhist Middle Way, but argued in Western terms from first premises, this book challenges widespread assumptions fou...
