Glenn Wallis

Glenn Wallis & John Kendall Hawkins An Interview with Glenn Wallis Glenn Wallis is an independent scholar and founder of Incite Seminars in Philadelphia. He has taught at several universities, including Brown University and the University of Georgia. His most recent books include A Critique of Western Buddhism and How to Fix Education. Wallis blogs at Speculative Non-Buddhism. He holds a Ph.D. in Buddhist studies from Harvard University. He has also recently published An Anarchist’s Manifesto (Warbler, 2021). He is an expert in Emma Goldman’s practical philosophy of anarchy. Here in this interview, he goes into detail about what Goldman espoused and her legacy, while also contrasting her thoughts on anarchy with his own. He addresses how notions of anarchy have changed over time and what its value is today. John Kendall Hawkins is an American ex-pat freelancer based in Australia. He is a former reporter for The New Bedford Standard-Times.

Buddhist practitioner contained in the collection of works by Advayavajra (ca. 1007–10851) known as the Advayavajrasaçgraha. The prescriptions for this training, called the ådikarma (literally: preliminary practice), is contained in the first text of the collection, the Kud®≈† inirghåtana2 (The Refutation of False Views). The article is divided into two parts. The first provides some context for the ritual prescriptions, the translation of which constitutes the second part. My contention is that Advayavajra, in prescribing the ådikarma in the rhetorical manner that he does, is aiming to accomplish several aims. These can be grouped under two broad concerns. The first is institutional in nature, the second, ritual. First, Advayavajra seems to be creating a bridge between the antinomian, extra-monastic forms of Buddhist practice that were gaining influence in his day, and the established institutional structures that had, for centuries already, represented the norm for Buddhist learning and practice. This reconciliatory project required him to argue for the legitimization of certain ritual and doctrinal innovations that were, in fact, divergent from established practices and views. Second, in his prescriptions for the ådikarma itself, Advayavajra aims to establish a clear relationship between preliminary training and expert accomplishment. He connects this concern with the first by founding unconventional expertise on conventional training. The strategy employed by Advayavajra in this regard is to prescribe the ådikarma not merely as “preliminary,” as is generally the case, but as “primary,” in the sense of a continuously constituted foundation.

Anarchism names a quite specific species of social violence. This species, however, is radically distinct from the variety assumed by liberals and conservatives alike. In the literal sense of the term, it is more accurate to designate this species as “counterviolence,” or even, as Natasha Lennard puts it,“impossible nonviolence.” 1 In the figurative sense that I mainly intend, the “violence” perpetuated by anarchism involves an adamant refusal to acquiesce to an unjust status quo, and a corresponding vehement insistence of constructing just ways of organizing social life. Anarchist violence is thus more an issue of violation (of what it views as untenable norms, etc.) than it is of death and destruction. Given how large violence looms in discussions of anarchism,

Rick Repetti has written a lengthy, somewhat sprawling, rebuttal to four criticisms leveled against contemporary “mindfulness.” I offer here my reaction to his text in the form of reader response criticism. I’m not using “reader response” in its technical sense. I just mean to convey that I will not be commenting on each of his complicated meanderings or analyzing his copious analogies or dissecting his various examples. That would be too much. I will instead read through his text, pause at those points that strike me as salient, and then offer my more or less spontaneous response to them.

What concrete actions might a change-minded teacher take? This is the question driving How to Fix Education. An uncanny anticipation fills the halls of American higher education today. It is the sense that a reckoning is coming. Whether it is the case that higher education is in the teeth of a catastrophic crisis or only headed in that direction, many college professors, administrators, and students can no longer stave off their suspicion that something is seriously amiss. In How to Fix Education, Glenn Wallis argues that consequential action can be taken immediately in the classroom to put the humanity back in “the humanities.” In this succinct handbook he provides the logic and layout of an approach for instructors who want to enact larger-scale social changes with or without institutional change at the macro level.

An abiding concern of Mahāyāna Buddhists has been the accessibility of a buddha’s power in the world.1 Some Buddhists, notably philosophers and their commentators, have grappled with the very coherence of such a possibility. Viewing the question from a logical perspective, it has been necessary for such systematic thinkers to reconcile the apparent inconsistency ensuing from the two essential qualities deemed definitive of a buddha. A buddha is one who, by virtue of his awareness of the nature of reality, is completely liberated from the life-impelling force of mental defilements, and is thus beyond the scope of our world; and he is one who, by virtue of his profound compassion, is naturally compelled to continue engagement with beings still delusively ensnared in the world. Logically, these two qualities are at odds. Not all Buddhists, however, have sought a solution to the dilemma of accessing a buddha’s power on the basis of logical or epistemological theory. Some Buddhists have, rather, sought an imaginative-cultic solution. Relics, statues, paintings, architectural monuments, books, remembrance, meditation, guru veneration, and visualization have, at various times and in various places, been held to be the most effective means of rendering present the otherwise inaccessible or obscured power that accompanies a buddha. In this article, I trace the idea of the mantra as a vehicle of enlightened presence as it was presented to Indian Mahāyāna Buddhists in the medieval period.

Cruel Theory | Sublime Practice consists of three parts. Each part addresses both theoretical and practical dimensions of Buddhism. Topics include the formation of an autonomous subject in the face of Buddhism’s concealment of its ideological force; the possibility of a practice that thus serves as a theory or science of ideology; the reconstitution of practice as an organon of authoritative structures, including controlling social-conceptual representations; and the perception of Buddhism as the subject of a historical process.

A new translation and compilation, with a guide to reading the texts. In Basic Teachings of the Buddha, Glenn Wallis selects sixteen essential dialogues drawn from more than five thousand Pali-dialect suttas of the Buddhist canon. The result is a vibrant introductory guide to studying Buddhist thought, applying its principles to everyday life, and gaining a deeper understanding of Buddhist themes in modern literature. Focusing on the most crucial topics for today’s readers, Wallis presents writings that address modern psychological, religious, ethical, and philosophical concerns. This practical, inspiring, and engaging volume provides an overview of the history of Buddhism and an illuminating analysis of the core writings that personalizes the suttas for each reader. “Glenn Wallis brings wisdom and compassion to this work of scholarship. Everyone should read this book.” –Christopher Queen, Harvard University “A valuable sourcebook with a good selection of the fundamental suttas enhanced by an eloquent introduction and comprehensive notes–altogether a very useful text.” –Peter Matthiessen (Roshi), author of The Snow Leopard and Nine-Headed Dragon River “Glenn Wallis’s new and accessible translations of some of the Buddha’s lectures to his original students, along with Wallis’s elegant guide to the texts, gives twenty-first-century readers in the modern West a fresh chance to learn from this teacher.” –Charles Hallisey, Harvard University

Mediating the Power of Buddhas offers a fascinating analysis of the seventh-century ritual manual, the Mañjusrimulakalpa. This medieval text is intended to reveal the path into a ritual universe where the power of a buddha abides. Author Glenn Wallis traces the strategies of the Mañjusrimulakalpa to enable its committed reader to perfect the promised ritual, uncovering what conditions must be met for ritual practice to succeed and what personal characteristics practitioners must possess in order to realize the ritual intentions of the Buddhist community. The manual itself was written at a key point in Buddhist history, one when Hindu forms of practice were still imitated and on the cusp of the shift from Mahāyāna to Vajrayāna (or Tantric) Buddhism. In addition, the Mañjusrimulakalpa presents a rich compendium of Buddhist life in an earlier era, containing information on a variety of its readers' concerns: astrology, astronomy, medicine and healing, ritual practice, iconography, devotion, and meditation.

The dominant culture in India in the Buddha’s day, Brahmanical culture, took as axiomatic the existence of a supernatural creator deity. This deity, termed ‘Brahma’, was conceived as being ‘the all-seeing, the all-powerful, the Lord, the maker and creator, ruler, appointer and orderer, father of all that have been and will be’. Although the Buddha completely rejected such apparent metaphysical speculation as a ‘thicket of views’, he nowhere formulated a systematic repudiation of theism. In one canonical text, however, the Buddha, encountering a young Brahmin espousing theistic beliefs, gives a series of analogies and similes that help to illuminate his views on the matter. In short, the Buddha saw such a belief as being dangerously re- flexive, and hence as a symptom of a debilitating conceptual and affective disorder. Thus, in the dialogue, the Buddha aims to ease this ailment of his interlocutor through a threefold strategy: (1) displaying the language usage that under girds the problem; (2) reorienting the interlocutor towards the primacy of his conceptual apparatus as the proper locus of concern; and (3) providing a practice through which the interlocutor may develop the skills necessary for conceptual and affective health. The parameters of the discussion in this sutta are wide enough to render it of relevance to contemporary debates on theism. That is, the issue at stake in the sutta may be read as being not only about a restricted local notion of deity, but about God, broadly conceived. The article contains fresh translations from the text under consideration, the Tevijjasutta of the Dıghanikaya-(13).

Anarchism is commonly viewed as an outdated and wholly impractical idea. Worse, it has an accursed reputation for advocating chaos, violence, and destruction. The aim of An Anarchist’s Manifesto is to convince readers of the exact opposite: that anarchism is the most adaptive, humane, intelligent, singly inclusive proposal that we, as social animals, have ever envisioned. In the bracing tradition of the manifesto, Glenn Wallis “makes public” the values informing the anarchist way of life—order, equality, mutual support, and a vitalizing rejection of authoritarianism, oppression, and exploitation. Offering examples of anarchism in action that are sure to surprise, this startling book inspires even the most skeptical readers to experiment with these values in practical ways. Along the way, it offers a succinct account of anarchism’s historical blights of violence and quixotic utopianism. An Anarchist’s Manifesto cogently promotes and presents a transformative approach to living in harmony with others. Glenn Wallis is an independent scholar and founder of Incite Seminars in Philadelphia. He has taught at several universities, including Brown University and the University of Georgia. His most recent books include A Critique of Western Buddhism and How to Fix Education. Wallis blogs at Speculative Non-Buddhism. He holds a Ph.D. in Buddhist studies from Harvard University.

For readers both acquainted with and new to the writings of Friedrich Nietzsche, Nietzsche NOW! frames and explains Nietzsche’s thinking on topics of immediate contemporary concern and relevance. Wallis unpacks Nietzsche’s complex philosophy with a deft, empathetic, and brilliantly subtle analysis of the views of the Great Immoralist on democracy, identity, civilization, consciousness, religion, and other momentous topics. Throughout, Wallis includes ample extracts from Nietzsche himself. In Nietzsche NOW! Wallis takes readers on a sometimes counterintuitive, always revelatory journey to grasp the relevance of Nietzsche for our contentious times. Nietzsche NOW! contains Wallis’s original German translations of Nietzsche’s writings from the critical edition along with insights drawn from a decades-long close study of Nietzsche’s works and their academic reception. Glenn Wallis is the editor and translator of The Dhammapada and Basic Teachings of the Buddha (Random House), and the author of A Critique of Western Buddhism (Bloomsbury), An Anarchist’s Manifesto, and How to Fix Education (Warbler Press). He holds a Ph.D. from Harvard University and has taught at several universities, including Brown University, and at the University of Georgia as a tenured professor. He is the founder and director of Incite Seminars in Philadelphia.

The present article is a contribution to a particularly urgent issue that is unfolding in Buddhist circles in North America andEurope. Although this issue is framed in various ways, it revolves around a single question; namely, what form will contemporary reconfigurations of Buddhism take in the twenty-first century West? The most influential groups in this discussion to date are those that style themselves secular-, progressive-, atheist-, agnostic-, liberal-, and post-traditional Buddhist. As these groups gain adherents in the West, traditional organizations, such as the various Zens, Tibetans, Vipassanas, etc., are stating their claim to “Buddhism” with increasingly vehement proprietorship. The present article, however, is not yet another attempt to reformulate or reform (in any sense of the term) “Buddhism.” Neither is it concerned with ameliorating traditional Buddhism's relationship with contemporary western secular values. In performing its first task, however, my emerging theory, called “speculative non-buddhism,” can contribute to the current debate in a decisive way by showing that all forms of Buddhism are identical. What makes them so is that they are all governed by what I call “buddhistic decision:” the syntactical structure that constitutes all things, discourse, and people, “Buddhist.” Decision thus constitutes both the ideological nature, and the ideological constant, of “Buddhism.”

What are we to make of Western Buddhism? Glenn Wallis argues that in aligning their tradition with the contemporary self-help industry, Western Buddhists evade the consequences of Buddhist thought. This book shows that with concepts such as vanishing, nihility, extinction, contingency, and no-self, Buddhism, like all potent systems of thought, articulates a notion of the "real." Raw, unflinching acceptance of this real is held by Buddhism to be at the very core of human "awakening." Yet these preeminent human truths are universally shored up against in contemporary Buddhist practice, which contradicts the very heart of Buddhism. The author's critique of Western Buddhism is threefold. It is immanent, in emerging out of Buddhist thought but taking it beyond what it itself publicly concedes; negative, in employing the "democratizing" deconstructive methods of François Laruelle's non-philosophy; and re-descriptive, in applying Laruelle's concept of philofiction. Through applying resources of Continental philosophy to Western Buddhism, A Critique of Western Buddhism suggests a possible practice for our time, an "anthropotechnic", or religion transposed from its seductive, but misguiding, idealist haven.