The doctrine of karma, as elaborated in the Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain religious traditions, offers a powerful explanatory account of the human predicament, and in particular of seemingly undeserved human suffering. Whitley R. P. Kaufman is right to point out that on some points, such as the suffering of children, the occurrence of natural disasters, and the possibility of universal salvation, the karma theory appears, initially at least, much more satisfactory than the attempts made to solve the perennial problem of (...) evil by writers working within the mainstream theistic traditions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam .1 Kaufman, we think, is also correct to highlight the lack of critical analysis given by contemporary philosophers of religion to the theory of karma, at least in comparison with the voluminous body of work produced in recent years on the theistic problem of evil . Kaufman?s recent article in this journal, therefore, is to be welcomed as a step toward redressing this imbalance in the literature, and in the process helping to remove the Western theistic bias of much contemporary philosophy of religion. On the other hand, we think that Kaufman has unfortunately done little to further the general understanding of the doctrine of karma. (shrink)

Guided by key insights of the four great philosophers mentioned in the title, here, in review of and expanding on our earlier work (Burchard, 2005, 2011), we present an exposition of the role played by language, & in the broader sense, λογοζ, the Logos, in how the CNS, the brain, is running the human being. Evolution by neural Darwinism has been forcing the linguistic nature of mind, enabling it to overcome & exploit the cognitive gap between an animal and its (...) world by recognizing environmental structures. Our work was greatly influenced by Heidegger’s lecture notes on metaphysics (Heidegger, 1935). We found agreement with recent progress in neuroscience, but also mathematical foundations of language theory, equating Logos with the mathematical concept of structure. The mystery of perception across the gap is analyzed as radiation and molecules impinging on sensory neurons that carry linguistic information about gross environmental structures, and only remotely about the physical reality of elementary particles. The most important logical brain function is Ego or Self, guiding the workings of the brain as a logos machine. Ego or Self operates from neurons in frontopolar cortex with global receptive fields. The logos machine can function only by availing itself of global context, its internally stored noumenal cosmos NK, and the categorical-conceptual apparatus CCA, updated continually through the neural default mode network (Raichle, 2005). In the Transcendental Deduction, Immanuel Kant discovered that Ego or Self is responsible for conscious control in perception relying on concepts & categories for a fitting percept to be incorporated intoNK. The entire CNS runs as a “movie-in-the-brain” (Parvizi & Damasio, 2001), at peak speed processing simultaneously in a series of cortical centers a stack of up to twelve frames in gamma rhythm of 25 ms intervals. We equate global context, or NK, with our human world, Heidegger’s Dasein being-in-the-world, and are able to demonstrate that the great philosopher in EM parallels neuro-science concerning the human mind. (shrink)

I will here apply the classical Indian model of the dramatic actor as a methodology for interpreting the soteriological psychology of the Bhagavad Gītā, paying special attention to the usefulness of this approach for clarifying Kṛṣṇa's rationale in showing his divine form in Chapter 11. I argue that the Gītā advocates creative role-play as both the means and the end of liberation. Further, while Kṛṣṇa's teachings can be understood in terms of orthodox Hindu soteriologies that have in view an overcoming (...) of the emotions, I argue that Kṛṣṇa looks to transform Arjuna into an ‘athlete of emotion’, much like traditional Indian-based training methods do for theatrical actors. (shrink)

This paper challenges the view that justice leads to or generates peace. Islamic, Hindu, Buddhist, Confucian, Daoist and Chinese military philosophical perspectives on violence and peace are reviewed. Based on insights derived from these Asian traditions concerning the relationship between violence and peace, the author argues that the quest for world peace is not attainable. The author proposes that people need to direct their attention, energy and action to support personal and community peace, and to support justice, which entails legitimate (...) and sanctioned acts of violence, and just war. (shrink)