In this episode, Sean MacCracken reflects on his experience at the American Academy of Religion, noticing a shift toward more participatory, contemplative, and integrative approaches in religious studies. He discusses his course, Kashmiri Shaivism: Supreme Non-Dualism, highlighting how meditation, contemplation, and embodied practices cultivate awareness, ethical self-reflection, and creative engagement with the world.

Sean also explores how his study of Indian philosophy and Tantric traditions opens broader, integral ways of knowing that move beyond reductionist frameworks. He discusses his article, “Regarding Humanism: Some Observations Concerning the Tibetan Buddhist and Transhumanist Dialogue,” showing how Buddhist and Tantric insights deepen our understanding of humanism, development, and collective ethical responsibility.

This episode offers listeners a glimpse into how contemplative and Integralist approaches can reshape learning, thinking, and living—showing philosophy as a path toward grounded, ethically engaged, and transformative ways of being in the world.

Sean K. MacCracken is adjunct faculty at California Institute of Integral Studies. He recieved a M.A. and Ph.D in Asian and Comparative Studies from CIIS, and a M.A. in Religious Studies from University of Virginia.

“Regarding Humanism: Some Observations Concerning the Tibetan Buddhist and Transhumanist Dialogue”

https://processcenturypress.com/unprecedented-evolution-continuities-and-discontinuities-between-human-and-animal-life-and-the-future-of-humanity/

The EWP Podcast credits

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Politics of Tranquility: The Material and Mundane Lives of Buddhist Nuns in Post-Mao Tibet (Cornell University Press, 2025) concerns the Tibetan Buddhist revival in China, illustrating the lives of Tibetan Buddhist nuns and exploring the political effects that arise from their nonpolitical daily engagements in the remote, mega-sized Tibetan Buddhist encampment of Yachen Gar.

Yasmin Cho's book challenges two assumptions about Tibetan Buddhist communities in China. First, against the assumption that a Buddhist monastic community is best understood in terms of its esoteric qualities, Cho focuses on the material and mundane daily practices that are indispensable to the existence and persistence of such a community and shows how deeply gendered these practices are.

Second, against the assumption that Tibetan politics toward the Chinese state is best understood as rebellious, incendiary, and centered upon Tibetan victimhood, the nuns demonstrate how it can be otherwise. Tibetan politics can be unassuming, calm, and self-contained and yet still have substantial political effects. As Politics of Tranquility shows, the nuns in Yachen Gar have called forth an alternative way of living and expressing themselves as Tibetans and as female monastics despite a repressive context.

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Jing Li teaches Chinese language, literature, and cinema. Her research focuses on rural China, independent filmmaking, and digital media cultures.

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Michael Uebel is a psychotherapist and researcher currently based in Austin, Texas. He is recognized as a pioneer in applying psychological insights to the historical intersections of social, personal, and imaginative phenomena. He is a Research Affiliate at the University of Texas at Austin and a psychotherapist in both the public sector and in private practice.

Uebel has taught literature and critical theory at several universities, including the University of Virginia, Georgetown University, and the University of Kentucky.

Seeds of Equanimity: Knowing and Being (Mimesis, 2025), is an innovative introduction to the philosophy and psychology of equanimity.

Uebel challenges the popular modern view often associated with certain mindfulness practices that equanimity is a state of impartial quiescence, solidity, or inner stillness, achieved through emotional regulation.

His book reanimates the concept of equanimity by drawing on its philosophical and psychological genealogy by tracing its origins and development, framing it as a dynamic, active, and flexible existential condition.

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Dr Pierce Salguero sits down with Nick Canby, visiting assistant professor at Brown University and a clinical psychologist specializing in meditation and psychedelics. Together, we dive into Nick’s research on the self — what is it and what it’s like to lose it. Along the way, we mention some of the downsides of experiencing oneness and the complications of defining a mental health disorder.

If you want to hear scholars and practitioners engaging in deep conversations about the dark side of Asian religions and medicines, then subscribe to Black Beryl wherever you get your podcasts. Also check out our members-only benefits on Substack.com to see what our guests have shared with you. Enjoy the show!

Resources mentioned in this episode:

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Pierce Salguero is a transdisciplinary scholar of health humanities who is fascinated by historical and contemporary intersections between Buddhism, medicine, and crosscultural exchange. He has a Ph.D. in History of Medicine from the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine (2010), and teaches Asian history, medicine, and religion at Penn State University’s Abington College, located near Philadelphia. website

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This important new work, Buddhist Landscapes: Art and Archaeology of the Khorat Plateau, 7th to 11th Centuries (NUS Press, 2023) by Stephen Murphy, build on extensive fieldwork and archaeological surveys to reveal the Khorat Plateau as having a distinctive Buddhist culture, including new forms of art and architecture, and a characteristic aesthetic. By combining archaeological and art historical analysis with an historical ecology approach, Murphy traces the outlines of Buddhism’s spread into the region, along its major river systems. In this episode, hosted by Natali Pearson, Murphy shows how he has read this history into and against the Khorat landscape, attending to the emergence of monumental architecture such as stūpa, and Buddha images carved into the rockfaces of hills and mountainsides, and the importance on the Khorat Plateau of the use of boundary markers, or sīmā.

This book provides a new picture of the region in the first and early second millennia, adding to our understanding of the development of Buddhism in Southeast Asia, and offering a new basis for other regionally-focused scholarship to thrive —from textual Buddhology to history to anthropology. As Murphy explains, this opens up new possibilities for understanding the early spread of Buddhism within different landscapes across Asia.

Dr Stephen A. Murphy specialises in the art and archaeology of early Buddhism and Hinduism in Thailand, Laos, Myanmar, Cambodia and Malaysia. He is the Pratapaditya Pal Senior Lecturer in Curating and Museology of Asian Art, and Chair of the Centre of South East Asian Studies, at SOAS University of London.

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Since the early days of Buddhism in China, monastics and laity alike have expressed a profound concern with the past. In voluminous historical works, they attempted to determine as precisely as possible the dates of events in the Buddha's life, seeking to iron out discrepancies in varying accounts and pinpoint when he delivered which sermons. Buddhist writers chronicled the history of the Dharma in China as well, compiling biographies of eminent monks and nuns and detailing the rise and decline in the religion's fortunes under various rulers. They searched for evidence of karma in the historical record and drew on prophecy to explain the past. John Kieschnick provides an innovative, expansive account of how Chinese Buddhists have sought to understand their history through a Buddhist lens. Exploring a series of themes in mainstream Buddhist historiographical works from the fifth to the twentieth century, he looks not so much for what they reveal about the people and events they describe as for what they tell us about their compilers' understanding of history. Kieschnick examines how Buddhist doctrines influenced the search for the underlying principles driving history, the significance of genealogy in Buddhist writing, and the transformation of Buddhist historiography in the twentieth century. This book casts new light on the intellectual history of Chinese Buddhism and on Buddhists' understanding of the past.

As I say in the interview, Buddhist Historiography in China (Columbia University Press, 2022) is one of those that you hope exists out there somewhere, and are delighted when you find out it does! This book is highly recommended not only for those with a keen interest in Buddhism and Chinese history, but also those fascinated by questions of historiography and temporarily more broadly. 

Lance Pursey is a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Aberdeen where they work on the history and archaeology of the Liao dynasty. They are interested in questions of identity, and the complexities of working with different kinds of sources textually and materially.

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Blending travelogue, history, and archaeology, Searching for Ashoka: Questing for a Buddhist King from India to Thailand (SUNY Press, 2023) unravels the various avatars of India's most famous emperor, revealing how he came to be remembered—and forgotten—in distinctive ways at particular points in time and in specific locations. Through personal journeys that take her across India and to various sites and cities in Sri Lanka, Myanmar, and Thailand, archaeologist Nayanjot Lahiri explores how Ashoka's visibility from antiquity to the modern era has been accompanied by a reinvention of his persona. Although the historical Ashoka spoke expansively of his ideas of governance and a new kind of morality, his afterlife is a jumble of stories and representations within various Buddhist imaginings. By remembering Ashoka selectively, Lahiri argues, ancient kings and chroniclers created an artifice, constantly appropriating and then remolding history to suit their own social visions, political agendas, and moral purposes.

Nayanjot Lahiri is Professor of History at Ashoka University. Her previous books include Finding Forgotten Cities: How the Indus Civilization was Discovered; Marshalling the Past: Ancient India and Its Modern Histories; and Ashoka in Ancient India, which was awarded the John F. Richards Prize in South Asian History in 2016.

Raj Balkaran is a scholar of Sanskrit narrative texts. He teaches at the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies and at his own virtual School of Indian Wisdom. For information see rajbalkaran.com.

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This textbook offers a fresh approach to learning Sanskrit, the ancient language at the heart of South Asia’s vast religious, philosophical, and literary heritage. Designed for independent learners and classrooms alike, it provides a uniquely in-depth and immersive introduction to the language, exploring a rich selection of Sanskrit texts from the Buddhist tradition.

Reading Sanskrit: A Complete Step-By-Step Introduction with Texts from the Buddhist Tradition (Columbia UP, 2025)draws from the Buddhist tradition’s vast Sanskrit corpus to present a thematically coherent collection of texts covering a wide range of literary genres, including narrative, philosophical, and poetic writings. This unique choice of source material provides an engaging approach to language learning, immersing the student in one of the major strands of South Asian spirituality and culture while highlighting Buddhism’s connection to other religious and literary traditions.

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When the robe becomes a weapon, who can stop the violence?

We think of Buddhism as a faith of peace—rooted in compassion, patience, and nonviolence. But across South and Southeast Asia today, the robe is being turned into a weapon, as radical monks and nationalist movements unleash hatred and war.

In The Robe and the Sword: How Buddhist Extremism is Shaping Modern Asia (Columbia Global Reports, 2025), acclaimed journalist Sonia Faleiro travels from Sri Lanka’s riot-scarred towns to the homes of refugees along the Myanmar border to Thailand’s fortified temples, uncovering how militant monks have transformed a tradition of nonviolence into a tool of terror. She reveals how Sri Lanka’s Galagoda Aththe Gnanasara incited mobs against Muslims, how Myanmar’s Ashin Wirathu helped ignite a genocide, and how elements of Thailand’s clergy have entrenched military rule.

Through vivid portraits of zealots, survivors, and dissident monks fighting to reclaim their faith, Faleiro delivers an unflinching investigation into the colonial trauma, economic grievances, and political forces fueling a dangerous new extremism. The Robe and the Sword is a searing and indispensable work of narrative nonfiction, urgently needed to understand how sacred traditions are being weaponized—and what is at stake for the future of our interconnected world.

This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts.

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In her new book, Caring for Glaciers: Land, Animals, and Humanity in the Himalayas (University of Washington Press, 2019), Karine Gagné explores how relations of reciprocity between land, humans, animals, and glaciers foster an ethics of care in the Himalayan communities of Ladakh. She explores the way these relations are changing due to climate change, the growth of the wage economy at the expense of traditional agricultural and pastoral lifestyles, and increased military presence resulting from Ladakh's status as a border area. This book will be of interest to those who are interested in the anthropology of ethics, ethics in Buddhist communities, and the anthropology of climate change.

Kate Hartmann is a PhD candidate in Buddhist Studies at Harvard University. Her work explores issues of perception and materiality in Tibetan pilgrimage literature, and she can be reached at [email protected].

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