Would You Like a PhD With That?

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The reason for the change is I’m looking into doing a PhD in philosophy, so I want a method to separate reader communication and blog content. Until recently I had to post content on the website in order for people to know about an event or something similar. This new method will allow me to keep in contact with  readers and have the website content focused on philosophy, meditation, Buddhism and all that good stuff rather than my dribble about nothing…although some might say in my case these two and mutually inclusive.

My interest in research writing, or what I thought was philosophical style writing, started a while ago. I had become interested in understanding a little of western philosophy after reading an essay by Professor Jay Garfield and watching videos from a conference of Western and Buddhist philosophy scholars. Jay is the guy who translated Tsong Khapa’s Ocean of  Reasoning. His university webpage http://www.smith.edu/philosophy/jgarfield.html (turns out that most professors have them) and I read one of his essays from this page. This led to me to read more essay style papers by professional philosophers, and eventually this style of communication inspired the philosophy as practice post. Somehow I found http://www.h-net.org/~buddhism/ a list for Buddhist scholars and graduate students (you cant get on this list unless you are a professional academic or graduate student but you can read what they are saying). On this list someone asked about remote PhD programs, which led to someone else replying with a link to a page with a pdf file of PhD rules for Australian universities. I still don’t know why but, for some reason I read this document and to my surprise it was possible in some circumstances to gain entry into a PhD program without an undergraduate degree.

So I began to investigate all the how-to stuff, emailed a number of people asking what was probably some pretty naive questions, and in the end I found a list of Australian universities that seemed relevant and sent them all an introduction letter and research proposal.

Below is part of what I originally sent a couple of university here in Australia.

The research will investigate the soteriological efficacy of Tsong Khapa’s Madhyamaka dialectic: How does a non-affirming negation give rise to Buddhist salvation?

Given Tsong Khapa’s unique reading of Candrakiriti, Nagarjuna and the controversy surrounding his presentation of the Two Truths. There is still an unanswered question of whether the Gelugpa’s praxis does in fact lead a spiritual aspirant to Enlightenment.

Tsong Khapa’s followers believe that his dialectical approach gives us a constructive exegesis of Nagarjuna’s thought as set out in his seminal text, The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way (Mulamadhyamakakarika). Tsong Khapa strove to articulate the vision of emptiness and dependent arising as mutually dependant. This has led to Tsong Khapa’s presentation of the Two Truths, as understood by his opponents, to be thoroughly problematic. Some of his opponents believe that Tsong Khapa reifies conventional phenomena, while others believe his view of emptiness is nihilistic, and therefore his presentation falls out of scope of Nagarjuna’s “Middle Way”.

I believe that not only is Tsong Khapa’s hermeneutical strategy coherent, that his articulation of the Two Truths is soteriologically efficacious, i.e. it does indeed lead a spiritual aspirant to Buddhist salvation but, that his articulation of conventionalities, particularly his description of the self or person sheds light on the age old Buddhist question who is it that becomes enlightened, and also current issues in western philosophical thought on the nature of personal identity.

This was received well by most of the universities but, given I had no research academic background and no undergraduate degree of any kind (I first met Geshe Loden part way through an arts degree, then left to concentrate on dharma) I kept being told I “no” “sorry” etc etc. I didn’t believe them, much to the annoyance of a friend who would say…but he (this professor) has 25 years of experience, if he says you can’t get in, then you can’t get in! I don’t know why but, I didn’t believe them (although I can’t see if I will get in, I felt I should at least keep trying…that was the feeling I was getting).

So I tried a couple more different universities and I finally found one university that seemed interested to at least talk. Ok your getting somewhere I thought. After maybe a dozen, or perhaps more emails, this is where I stand…

I have been asked to write an honors degree thesis (16,000 words) within 4 to 8 weeks, I think that honors degree students get 10 months or so but perhaps this is not correct. The university will then evaluate the thesis and I may be offered a place (without a scholarship to start with. PhD study is not courseware so there are no fees…although it is full time work) depending on the quality of the paper.

I would like to document my journey from here to (hopefully) completion of a PhD, so if you are interested to hear (it might be very boring) the story you please sign up to the newsletter. Future blog posts and website content will mainly consist of longer articles and essays on Buddhist related topics.

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