The author argues for the following as constituents of the moral virtue of open-mindedness: a second-order awareness that is not reducible to first-order doubt; strong moral concern for members of the moral community; and some freedom from reactive habit patterns, particularly with regard to one's self-narratives, or equanimity. Drawing on Buddhist philosophical accounts of equanimity, the author focuses on the third constituent, equanimity, and argues that it is a central, but often ignored, component of the moral virtue of open-mindedness, and (...) its absence can explain many failures of open-mindedness. (shrink)

Offered here is an interpretation of the ancient Confucian philosopher Mengzi's (372–289 B.C.E.) method of cultivating moral feelings, which he calls "extension." It is argued that this method is both psychologically plausible and an important, but often overlooked, part of moral life. In this interpretation, extending our moral feelings is not a project in logical consistency, analogical reasoning, or emotional intuition. Rather, Mengzi's method of extension is a project in realigning the human heart that harnesses our rational, reflective, and emotional (...) capacities in order to extend the feelings we already have to the appropriate objects for these feelings. It is argued that there are three main features of Mengzi's account that make it an attractive explanation of the cultivation of moral feelings. The first is the way Mengzi sees reasoning and philosophical reflection as an aid to, rather than the foundation for, moral development. The second is Mengzi's precision regarding the relationship between the basic moral feelings we start with (the "sprouts") and their corresponding virtues. The method of extension acts as a well-designed bridge between feelings and virtues. Third, Mengzi's account, unlike that of the Mohist Yi Zhi, whom he criticizes, pays special attention to the complexities and limitations of human psychology. In conclusion it is shown how a Mengzian understanding of the relationship between feelings and morality can answer some traditional challenges, especially Kantian ones, regarding the proper role of emotion in moral life. (shrink)

In this article I criticize some traditional impartiality practices in Western philosophical ethics and argue in favor of Marilyn Friedman’s dialogical practice of eliminating bias. But, I argue, the dialogical approach depends on a more fundamental practice of equanimity. Drawing on the works of Tibetan Buddhist thinkers Patrul Rinpoche and Khenpo Ngawang Pelzang, I develop a Buddhist-feminist concept of equanimity and argue that, despite some differences with the Western impartiality practices, equanimity is an impartiality practice that is not only psychologically (...) feasible but also central to loving relationships. I conclude by suggesting ways that feminist dialogical practices for eliminating bias and meditative practices are mutually supportive. (shrink)

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)

In this unprecedented book, contributors use Buddhist philosophical and contemplative traditions, both ancient and modern, and deploy critical philosophy of race, and critical whiteness studies, to address the proverbial elephant in the room – whiteness.

In the Buddhist ethical traditions, equanimity along with love, compassion, and sympathetic joy form what are called the four boundless qualities, which are affective states one cultivates for moral and spiritual development. But there is a sense in which equanimity seems very unlike the three others: love, compassion, and sympathetic joy all imply an emotional investment in others, whereas equanimity seems to imply an absence of such investment. This observation has provoked debate as to how to properly understand the relationship (...) between equanimity and the other three qualities. In this paper, I propose that equanimity - like love, compassion, and sympathetic joy - is itself a virtue of good intimate relationships and not in conflict with such virtues. (shrink)

In The Case for Rage, Myisha Cherry makes the case for a specific kind of rage, a qualified anger at racial injustice that she calls Lordean rage. Drawing on Audre Lorde's classic essay ‘The Uses of Anger’, Cherry develops the concept of Lordean rage as a productive, liberatory anger and defends it from a variety of objections, ranging from neo-Stoic concerns about anger's capacity for destruction to contemporary worries about the misuse of anger by white allies. The brilliance of the (...) book, I think, lies in its capacity to integrate a wide range of philosophical perspectives and arguments, including those from feminist and critical race theory and analytic philosophy of emotion, and present them in a way that speaks directly to our political and historical moment. The audience for this book is broad: anyone who has ever felt anger at racial injustice will have a stake in this book.Cherry begins with some philosophical distinctions to help delineate the contours of this kind of anger. Lordean rage has a particular object—racial injustice—and a specific motivational stance: ‘It aims at nothing less than transforming our world’ (p. 40). (She leaves it as an open, and interesting, question whether a variation of Lordean rage occurs in other cases of oppression.) For these reasons, Lordean rage demands a non-trivial degree of optimism and hope. It also requires a basic respect for both the victim and the perpetrator of racial injustice (p. 37). This last criterion distinguishes it from other motivating kinds of rage, such as ‘wipe rage’, which seeks to eliminate the object of the rage and ‘narcissistic rage’, which is only concerned with injustices that immediately effect oneself. These distinctions, and other helpful ones, are the subject of Chapter 1, which argues against the tendency to understand anger as a homogeneous or uniform phenomenon. We can’t, Cherry argues, paint anger in such ‘broad strokes’ but need a more nuanced account of how different kinds of angers are operative in different kinds of contexts. (shrink)

In Buddhist contexts, avidyā refers not only to a lack of knowledge but also (and primarily) to an active misapprehension of reality, a warped projection onto reality that reinforces our own dysfunction and vice. Ignorance is rarely innocent; it is not an isolated phenomenon of just-not-happening-to-know-something. It is maintained and reinforced through personal and social habits, including practices of personal and collective false projection, strategic ignoring, and convenient “forgetting.” This view of avidyā has striking similarities to philosophical analyses of white (...) ignorance, such as Charles Mills’, which understand white ignorance not in terms of a passive lack of knowledge but as an active refusal by whites to confront basic facts about our social world (Mills 2007, 16). I argue that Buddhist analyses of avidyā may help us understand the mechanisms of white ignorance and the practices for deconstructing it. (shrink)

In Nancy Sherman's discussion of the history of empathy, she notes that it was the English translation of the German Einfühlung - originally a term in aesthetics - which translates literally as "feeling one's way into another." According to Sherman's analysis, the main idea in these early usages of empathy in Western psychological contexts "is that of resonating' with another, where this often involves role taking, inner imitation, and a projection of the self into the objects of perception" (Sherman 1998, (...) 83). There is a deep recognition in Indo-Tibetan ethics of the moral significance of one's ability to "resonate" or "feel one's way into another" and no shortage of ethical practices of role taking, "inner imitation," and projecting of the self into objects of perception. These practices transition from the egocentric to an orientation sensitive to the needs of others is a major part of the Mahayana Buddhist conception of moral development, as is apparent in the ideal of bodhicitta (see Section 3). (shrink)

Both Stoic and Buddhist ethics are deeply concerned with the ethical dangers of attachments. Three dangers stand out: (1) the destructive consequences of overwhelming emotionality, brought on by attachment, both for oneself and others, (2) the dangers to one's agency posed by strongly held, but ultimately unstable, attachments, and (3) the threat to virtuous emotional engagement with others caused by one's own attachment to them. The first two kinds of moral dangers have informed Stoic models of detachment (see Wong (2006). (...) In this paper I draw on Buddhist texts to present a model of detachment that responds primarily to the third moral danger of attachment, the danger of not loving well. (shrink)

In their excellent new volume, Asian and Feminist Philosophies in Dialogue: Liberating Traditions, editors Jennifer McWeeny and Ashby Butnor offer a vision for philosophy that begins with the insight that philosophy is an activity: it is something that we do rather than simply learn about. As an activity—or even, at times, a performance—philosophy both shapes and is shaped by the social world, a world of power hierarchies, economic realities, and political strategies. Conceiving of philosophy as a socially situated activity highlights (...) its liberatory potential. The activity of philosophy can liberate or constrain; it can empower a person or diminish her. This volume seizes on this insight by employing what Butnor... (shrink)

Buddhist philosophical traditions share the Hellenistic orientation toward therapy, particularly with regard to therapeutic interventions in our emotional life. As Pierre Hadot and Martha Nussbaum have ably argued, for the Hellenistic philosophers, philosophy itself is a therapy of the emotions. In this paper, I shift the focus of the contemporary philosophical literature on therapies of the emotions, which investigates almost exclusively the Hellenistic philosophers, and instead draw on the therapies developed by Tibetan Buddhist philosophers and yogis, in particular Gampopa (1079–1153), (...) Tsongkhapa (1357–1419), and Patrul Rinpoche (1808–87). The texts I use are in the genre of Tibetan literature called lo jong (blo sbyong), or mind (blo)- training (sbyong). I argue that the philosophical analysis of the Tibetan Buddhist therapies gives us a model of moral improve- ment that is both novel and promising. This model focuses on the morally improving agent’s capacity for self-awareness and relaxation, her playful approach to emotional-ethical obstacles, and the cultivation of sophisticated, context-sensitive and appropriately flexible judgments about her emotional-ethical life. I also offer a rough taxonomy of Tibetan therapies of the emotions, which will serve as a vehicle to understanding the view of moral improvement described above. (shrink)

The Essential Jewel of Holy Practice is a vibrant philosophical and ethical poem by one of Tibet’s great spiritual masters. Patrul Rinpoche presents a complete view of the path of liberation from the perspectives of the Madhyamaka understanding of emptiness and the Mahāyāna ideal of compassionate care refracted through the Dzogchen perspective on experience. This yields a sophisticated philosophical approach to practice focusing on the cultivation of clear, open, luminous, empty awareness and of liberation leading to the transformation of one’s (...) moral capacity and sensitivity. Patrul Rinpoche’s verses speak intimately and directly to the reader and inspire one to develop one’s mind for the sake of ethical perfection and liberation. -/- The translators’ introduction provides a foundation for reading the poem and their commentary to the verses assists the reader in understanding Patrul Rinpoche’s allusions and technical terms. (shrink)

In response to Amy Olberding's fascinating and thoughtful book—a book that I wholeheartedly recommend to anyone—I will explore a specific kind of problem regarding manners and morality. It is a question that arises at the intersection of good manners, moral self-cultivation, and oppressive social systems: how do we practice good manners in non-ideal, unjust contexts as members of socially disadvantaged groups? Before I begin to address this question, I want to note that I am convinced by Amy's arguments for the (...) significance of civility and mannerliness in moral and social life (her main argument being, roughly, that civility shows our commitment to the big values of shared life together, the regular expression of... (shrink)

In this chapter I analyse two Buddhist moral psychological categories: the brahmavihāras (the four Boundless Qualities), which are the main moral affective states in Buddhist ethics, and the kleśas, or the afflictive mental states. Based on this analysis, I argue for two general claims about moral psychology in Indo-Tibetan Buddhist ethics. First, I argue that Buddhist moral psychology is centrally interested in the psychology of moral improvement: how do I become the kind of person who can respond in the best (...) possible way to the moral needs of myself and others? Second, and related, Buddhist moral psychology focuses on the skills of moral perception and attention. Moral philosophical arguments, I argue, are generally offered in the context of self-cultivation exercises and not, as they often are in Western ethics, as models of moral deliberation. (shrink)