I am writing this after going through Books VI and VII of the Confessions of St. Augustine. I think various parts of the Confessions could be understood and connected in light of understanding what it means for a truth to be embodied or personified. The parts I have in mind include (a) several episodes where other people make an impression on Augustine and (b) Augustine’s appeal to Christ (toward the.. Read More
I have been lucky to have had many great teachers during my academic life and mentors who continue to enrich my intellectual pursuits. In this post, I want to write about only three of them. The first is Graham Fulton. When I first met him, he was a psychology professor at University College Sedaya International (UCSI), Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. I was a student there from January 2006 till July 2007,.. Read More
Reflecting on the title of the book, Psychology as the Science of Human Being: The Yokohama Manifesto, it occurred to me that we can read the title in two different ways. First, psychology can be, and should be, a science that is responsive to human beings, to the messiness and ambiguities of our reality. According to this first meaning, we should be mindful that the target of psychological science, and.. Read More
I was one of the participants at a 3+ hour workshop on Francois Laruelle held by Incite Seminars. The workshop was facilitated by Glenn Wallis who opened the session with a personal note about how he had first encountered Laruelle’s work and how that encounter has influenced his own projects, most notably (thus far) his book, The Critique of Western Buddhism. Glenn’s presentation and the general atmosphere of the workshop–co-created.. Read More
In a recent trip to the nearby bookstore, I bought two books. One of them is Terry Eagleton’s How to Read Literature and the other is Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life. I just decided to right-click and to add “Lamott” to my browser’s dictionary, not just because I was irritated to see it underlined as a possible typo, but also because of how much.. Read More