In arriving at the heart of Buddhist philosophy, Nolan Pliny Jacobson attempts to eliminate some of the confusion in the West concerning the Buddhist view of what is concrete and ultimately real in the world. Jacobson presents Nāgārjuna, the Plato of the Buddhist tradition, as the major exemplar of the Buddhist expression of life. In his comparison of Buddhism and Western theology, Jacobson demonstrates that some efforts in Western religious thought approach the Buddhist empirical stance. _ _.

Prefatory Remarks to Charles Hartshorne's Essay The leading process philosopher of out time intimately divulges his own awakening to the fundamentals of ...

Charles_ _Hartshorne characterizes this book as “an eloquent and insightful presentation of the claims of Buddhism to the attention of thoughtful people in this country, espe­cially those aware of the widely influential process philosophy and process theology of Whitehead.” Stressing Buddhism as opposed to West­ern philosophy, Jacobson concentrates on the theme of the self-corrective nature of Buddhism, ending with a strong emphasis on “self-surpassing Oneness.” Introducing the reader to the major perspectives of Buddhist philosophy, he notes that “the more fully (...) awakened we become to the moments that are the real event, the more we will recog­nize how much we need each other to enrich these _nows, _and the less tempted we will be to serve that abstract and false self.” Because everything on earth is a part of everything else, an organic whole, even the most enlightened self-interest is irrational and destructive. The rational person seeks to “infuse the life we live with the novel qualities of each _now.” _The rational person further struggles to “free himself from the one-sided, self-justifying cultural cocoons that have dwarfed and warped his awareness and crippled cross-cultural communica­tions,” according to Jacobson. Buddhism of­fers the only alternative to the enervated economic, political, diplomatic, and military measures presently used to “cope with un­derlying disaster.”. (shrink)

Kenneth Inada calls this last book in Nolan Pliny Jacobson’s trilogy on Buddhist philosophy and process thought "not only timely, but urgent." "The message contained in the book," he notes, "should be released immediately." Seizo Ohe, Japan’s most distinguished philosopher of science, captures the essence of that message when he cites Jacobson’s understanding that Buddhism is "a new global cultural movement in which Japan and America are going to have a common world-historical mission—respectively as the eastern and western ends of (...) the eastern and western branches of human civilization." Jacobson convincingly demonstrates that Buddhism and the Western philosophies of Heraclitus and of modern thinkers such as Dewey, Whitehead, and Hartshorne have developed a reason truer to authentic experience than the reason so prevalent in traditionally dominant Western philosophy. (shrink)