This paper addresses the ways that we can understand and transform our strong emotions and how this project contributes to moral and spiritual development. To this end, I choose to think with two Tibetan Buddhist thinkers, both of whom take up the question of how passionate emotions can fit into spiritual and moral life: the famous, playful yogin Shabkar Tsodruk Rangdrol (1781–1851) and the wandering, charismatic master Patrul Rinpoche (1808–1887). Shabkar's The Autobiography of Shabkar provides excellent examples of using one's (...) own passionate emotions to connect to others and gain insight into the world. Patrul Rinpoche's The Words of My Perfect Teacher (kun bzang bla ma'i zhal lung) focuses on passionate empathy with the emotions of others. Drawing on these texts, I present a (distinctly Buddhist) conception of a passionate life and argue that passionate emotional experience is a central part of moral and spiritual development more broadly construed. (shrink)

This paper addresses the primacy of reason over emotion in much of Western philosophy and education. It brings Theravadan Buddhist wisdom to bear upon Western philosophical and educational conceptions of emotion, empathy, and compassion. More specifically, it discusses the four Brahmavihāras, or Divine Abodes. These abodes are considered boundless states of heartmind awareness that dismantle the bifurcation of mind/emotion and embody ideals of social engagement and peace. If cultivated, or dwelled in, they can overturn negative and destructive impulses, freeing the (...) mind from greed, hatred, and delusion. They include Mettā, or loving-kindness, Karunā, or compassion, Muditā or sympathetic joy, and Uppekā or equanimity. In some respects, these abodes reflect aspects of contemporary Western understandings of empathy and compassion. However, they also elaborate upon and differ significantly from these understandings. North American learning outcomes, particularly in such areas as English language arts and peace education, seek to support the cultivation of emotional literacy in students with the hopes that such cultivation will initiate and enhance responsive and responsible relations with self, other, and environment. Insight into these abodes can consequently shed light on possibilities for deepening ethical, emotional, and educational engagement in North America. (shrink)

The thesis of this work is that in both modern Japanese philosophy and American pragmatism there has been a paradigm shift from a monological concept of self as an isolated "I" to a dialogical concept of the social self as an "I-Thou relation," including a communication model of self as individual-society interaction. It is also shown for both traditions all aesthetic, moral, and religious values are a function of the social self arising through communicative interaction between the individual and society. (...) However, at the same time this work critically examines major ideological conflicts arising between the social self theories of modern Japanese philosophy and American pragmatism with respect to such problems as individualism versus collectivism, freedom versus determinism, liberalism versus communitarianism, and relativism versus objectivism. (shrink)