Introduction

Hello,

My name is Jonathan Warren, and this is my personal/philosophy/poetry blog. For my main website, please go to warren.info.

My philosophical background is most focused on early Indian and Sino-Tibetan Buddhist philosophy and history, which I studied at Reed College (Portland, Oregon, USA). I have been a practicing Buddhist of different types since the mid-1990s. I am currently most affiliated with Sri Lankan Theravada Buddhism, via Bhante Gunaratana's Bhavana Society near Washington, DC. In addition to dense philosophical texts and Sri Lankan Theravada, I have also had personal experiences with the following types of Buddhism, from most-to-least: Thai Theravada (mostly the Dhammayuttika Nikaya), the Vipassana meditation movement in the U.S. (the topic of my undergraduate thesis), the Gelug (i.e., Dalai Lama's) sect of Tibetan Buddhism, Chögyam Trungpa's Shambhala Buddhism, Korean Chogye Son (via Seung Sahn's school), and Japanese Soto Zen. I'm also moderately knowledgeable about many other religions and schools of Asian and Near-Eastern philosophy.

Though I generally know more about Eastern philosophy than Western, my Western philosophical views tend towards existential and hermeneutic phenomenology (e.g., Heidegger, Husserl, Ricoeur, etc.), philosophical pluralism, quantum physics, and enactive cognitive science (e.g., Varela, Rosch, Lakoff & Johnson, etc.). In graduate school, I also studied quite a bit about semiotics, hermeneutical archaeology, and social structure, such as: post-processualism, pragmaticism, and structuration. I also dig Heracleitus.

This weblog is a personal exercise in developing Right View, Right Speech, and Noble Friendships. Though I will try to reference good academic explanations of concepts that may be foreign to the reader, and may occasionally provide brief summaries of such concepts, this blog is not intended to be academic -- just my personal reflections.

Most any kind of sincere and courteous discussion is welcome on this blog. However, I reserve the right to delete harsh, malicious, proselytizing, spamming, etc. comments. I will never insist that you think in the same way that I do, but I insist that you afford me the same courtesy.

Also, nothing I say here necessarily represents the official views of my employer.

I hope you find this weblog spiritually beneficial.

With metta (unconditional loving-kindness),
Jonathan