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David Robert Loy (born 1947) is an American scholar and author, and teacher in the Sanbo Zen lineage of Japanese Zen Buddhism. [1] [2]
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David Robert Loy (born 1947) is an American scholar and author, and teacher in the Sanbo Zen lineage of Japanese Zen Buddhism. [1] [2]
Loy was born in the Panama Canal Zone. His father was in the U.S. Navy so the family traveled a great deal. He attended Carleton College in Minnesota, and spent his junior year abroad studying philosophy at King's College London. After graduation in 1969 he moved to San Francisco and then to Hawaii where he began to practice Zen Buddhism. [1]
In 1971, he began practicing Zen with Yamada Koun Roshi and Robert Aitken in Hawaii.
In 1984 Loy moved to Kamakura, Japan to continue Zen practice with Yamada Koun Roshi, director of the Sanbo Kyodan.
He completed formal koan study in 1988 with Yamada Koun and received the dharma name Tetsu-un, "Wisdom Cloud". [3]
Loy's main research interest is the dialogue between Buddhism and modernity, especially the social implications of Buddhist teachings. In addition to academic lectures, he offers workshops and leads meditation retreats in the U.S. and internationally.
Loy received an M.A. in Asian philosophy from the University of Hawaii in 1975, and his Ph.D. in philosophy in 1984 from the National University of Singapore. [4]
He was a senior tutor in the Department of Philosophy at the National University of Singapore from 1978 to 1984. [5]
In 1990 [5] Loy was appointed professor of philosophy and religion at Bunkyo University in Chigasaki, Japan until January 2006, when he accepted the Besl Family Chair of Ethics/Religion & Society, a visiting appointment with Xavier University in Cincinnati, Ohio that ended in September 2010. [4]
In June 2014 Loy received an honorary doctorate degree from Carleton College, his alma mater, for his contributions to Buddhism in the West. In April 2016 Loy returned his honorary degree to Carleton College to protest the institution's investment in fossil fuel-producing organizations. [6]
Loy offers lectures, workshops, and retreats on various topics, focusing primarily on the encounter between Buddhism and modernity: what each can learn from the other. He is especially concerned about social and ecological issues.
In addition to many scholarly papers and popular articles, Loy is the author of several books on comparative philosophy and social ethics, including:
Nonduality focuses on the nonduality of subject and object in Buddhism, Vedanta, and Taoism, with reference to several Western thinkers including Wittgenstein and Heidegger. The main argument is that these three Asian systems may be different attempts to describe the same (or very similar) experience. The categories of Buddhism (no self, impermanence, causality, eightfold path) and Advaita Vedanta (all-Self, time and causality as maya, no path) are "mirror images" of each other. Ultimately it becomes difficult to distinguish a formless Being (Brahman) from a formless nonbeing (shunyata). Buddhism can be understood as a more phenomenological description of nonduality, while Vedanta is a more metaphysical account.
Lack and Transcendence: The Problem of Death and Life in Psychotherapy, Existentialism, and Buddhism brings the three traditions together in a synthesis receptive to the insights of each regarding the fundamental issues of life and death and death-in-life. The Buddhist denial of a substantial self implies that our basic problem is not fear of death but fear that we don't really exist. In response, we become obsessed with "reality projects" (compare Becker's "immortality projects") that often make things worse. Later chapters explore the philosophical and psychological implications.
A Buddhist History of the West is not a history of Buddhism in the West but a Buddhist perspective on the development of Western civilization. The Buddhist claim that the (sense of) self is haunted by a (sense of) lack has important historical implications, affecting the ways that (for example) freedom, progress, science, economic and political development have been understood and pursued.
The Great Awakening: A Buddhist Social Theory develops the social implications of Buddhist teachings for our understanding (and response to) collective forms of dukkha (suffering). Today the "three poisons" – greed, ill will, and delusion – have been institutionalized. There are discussions of poverty, economic development, and corporate capitalism; Buddhist perspectives on the war on terror, our criminal justice system, and the connection between Zen and war; and essays addressing technology, deep ecology, and our relationship with the biosphere.
The Dharma of Dragons and Daemons: Buddhist Themes in Modern Fantasy examines the ways that spiritual themes (for example, good and evil, sin and redemption, friendship, time, war and violence, creativity, the meaning of life, the meaning of death) are treated in some of the classics of contemporary fantasy: The Lord of the Rings, Ende's Momo, the anime of Hayao Miyazaki, Pullman's His Dark Materials, and Le Guin's Earthsea.
Money, Sex, War, Karma: Notes for a Buddhist Revolution is a series of short essays that begins with the essential teaching of the Buddha: the connection between suffering and the delusive (sense of) self, usually experienced as a sense of lack. Subsequent essays discuss the implications for the ways we understand money, fame, karma, food, sexuality and romantic love, consumerism, ecology, war, and social engagement.
Awareness Bound and Unbound: Buddhist Essays is a collection of related essays on Buddhist and comparative issues, including language, truth and deconstruction; Taoism, Christianity (Swedenborg, The Cloud of Unknowing), and postmodernism; the karma of women; violence, the clash of civilizations, and the war on terror.
The World Is Made of Stories is a sequence of "micro-essays" and quotations that offer a new way of understanding Buddhism and a new Buddhist understanding of the Way, consistent with what Buddhism says about the human predicament and how it can be resolved. If the self is composed of the stories one identifies with and attempts to live, karma is not what the self has but what the sense of self becomes, as we play habitual roles within stories perceived as objectively real.
A New Buddhist Path is in three parts, which address the meaning of enlightenment, the nature of evolution, and the nonduality of individual and social transformation.
Ecodharma: Buddhist Teachings for the Ecological Crisis addresses the ecological implications of Buddhist teachings for our present situation. German and Spanish translations are forthcoming.
Loy is also the editor of Healing Deconstruction: Postmodern Thought in Buddhism and Christianity (Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1996), with essays by Roger Corless, Philippa Berry, Morny Joy, Robert Magliola, and David Loy; and the co-editor (with John Stanley and Gyurme Dorje) of A Buddhist Response to the Climate Emergency (Wisdom Publications, 2009), which includes contributions by the 14th Dalai Lama, Thich Nhat Hanh, the 17th Karmapa, Robert Aitken, Joanna Macy, Bhikkhu Bodhi, Joseph Goldstein, Matthieu Ricard, Lin Jensen, and many others.
Loy appears in the 2003 documentary Flight From Death, a film that investigates the relationship of human violence to fear of death, as related to subconscious influences. He also appears in two documentary films by the Planetary Collective: Overview and Planetary.
He is married to Linda Goodhew, formerly an associate professor of English literature at Gakushuin University in Tokyo, Japan, and co-author of The Dharma of Dragons and Daemons. They live near Boulder, Colorado, and have one son, Mark Loy Goodhew.
Buddhist philosophy is the ancient Indian philosophical system that developed within the religio-philosophical tradition of Buddhism. It comprises all the philosophical investigations and systems of rational inquiry that developed among various schools of Buddhism in ancient India following the parinirvāṇa of Gautama Buddha, as well as the further developments which followed the spread of Buddhism throughout Asia.
Saṃsāra is a Sanskrit word that means "wandering" as well as "world," wherein the term connotes "cyclic change" or, less formally, "running around in circles." Saṃsāra is referred to with terms or phrases such as transmigration/reincarnation, karmic cycle, or Punarjanman, and "cycle of aimless drifting, wandering or mundane existence". When related to the theory of karma it is the cycle of death and rebirth.
Moksha, also called vimoksha, vimukti, and mukti, is a term in Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism for various forms of emancipation, liberation, nirvana, or release. In its soteriological and eschatological senses, it refers to freedom from saṃsāra, the cycle of death and rebirth. In its epistemological and psychological senses, moksha is freedom from ignorance: self-realization, self-actualization and self-knowledge.
In Buddhism, the term anattā or anātman is the doctrine of "no-self" – that no unchanging, permanent self or essence can be found in any phenomenon. While often interpreted as a doctrine denying the existence of a self, anatman is more accurately described as a strategy to attain non-attachment by recognizing everything as impermanent, while staying silent on the ultimate existence of an unchanging essence. In contrast, dominant schools of Hinduism assert the existence of Ātman as pure awareness or witness-consciousness, "reify[ing] consciousness as an eternal self."
Kenshō is an East Asian Buddhist term from the Chan / Zen tradition which means "seeing" or "perceiving" "nature" or "essence", or 'true face'. It is usually translated as "seeing one's [true] nature," with "nature" referring to buddha-nature, ultimate reality, the Dharmadhatu. The term appears in one of the classic slogans which define Chan Buddhism: to see oneʼs own nature and accomplish Buddhahood (見性成佛).
The English term enlightenment is the Western translation of various Buddhist terms, most notably bodhi and vimutti. The abstract noun bodhi means the knowledge or wisdom, or awakened intellect, of a Buddha. The verbal root budh- means "to awaken", and its literal meaning is closer to awakening. Although the term buddhi is also used in other Indian philosophies and traditions, its most common usage is in the context of Buddhism. Vimutti is the freedom from or release of the fetters and hindrances.
Nondualism includes a number of philosophical and spiritual traditions that emphasize the absence of fundamental duality or separation in existence. This viewpoint questions the boundaries conventionally imposed between self and other, mind and body, observer and observed, and other dichotomies that shape our perception of reality. As a field of study, nondualism delves into the concept of nonduality and the state of nondual awareness, encompassing a diverse array of interpretations, not limited to a particular cultural or religious context; instead, nondualism emerges as a central teaching across various belief systems, inviting individuals to examine reality beyond the confines of dualistic thinking.
A lineage in Buddhism is a line of transmission of the Buddhist teaching that is "theoretically traced back to the Buddha himself." The acknowledgement of the transmission can be oral, or certified in documents. Several branches of Buddhism, including Chan and Tibetan Buddhism maintain records of their historical teachers. These records serve as a validation for the living exponents of the tradition.
Robert Baker Dairyu Chotan Aitken Rōshi was a Zen teacher in the Harada-Yasutani lineage. He co-founded the Honolulu Diamond Sangha in 1959 with his wife, Anne Hopkins Aitken. Aitken received Dharma transmission from Koun Yamada in 1985 but decided to live as a layperson. He was a socialist and anarchist who advocated for social justice for homosexuals, women and Native Hawaiians throughout his life, and was one of the original founders of the Buddhist Peace Fellowship.
Sanbo Kyodan is a lay Zen school derived from both the Soto (Caodong) and the Rinzai (Linji) traditions. It was renamed Sanbo-Zen International in 2014. The term Sanbo Kyodan has often been used to refer to the Harada-Yasutani zen lineage. However, a number of Yasutani's students have started their own teaching lines that are independent from Sanbo Kyodan. Strictly speaking, Sanbo Kyodan refers only to the organization that is now known as Sanbo-Zen International.
Karma is a Sanskrit term that literally means "action" or "doing". In the Buddhist tradition, karma refers to action driven by intention (cetanā) which leads to future consequences. Those intentions are considered to be the determining factor in the kind of rebirth in samsara, the cycle of rebirth.
Ego death is a "complete loss of subjective self-identity". The term is used in various intertwined contexts, with related meanings. The 19th-century philosopher and psychologist William James uses the synonymous term "self-surrender," and Jungian psychology uses the synonymous term psychic death, referring to a fundamental transformation of the psyche. In death and rebirth mythology, ego death is a phase of self-surrender and transition, as described later by Joseph Campbell in his research on the mythology of the Hero's Journey. It is a recurrent theme in world mythology and is also used as a metaphor in some strands of contemporary western thinking.
Buddhism and Hinduism have common origins in the culture of Ancient India. Buddhism arose in the Gangetic plains of Eastern India in the 5th century BCE during the Second Urbanisation. Hinduism developed as a fusion or synthesis of practices and ideas from the ancient Vedic religion and elements and deities from other local Indian traditions.
Yamada Koun Zenshin, or Koun Yamada, was a Japanese Buddhist who was the leader of the Sanbo Kyodan lineage of Zen Buddhism, the Dharma heir of his teacher Yasutani Haku'un Ryoko. Yamada was appointed the leader of the Sanbo Kyodan in 1967, 1970 or 1973 and continued to differentiate the lineage from other Japanese Zen traditions by deemphasizing the separation between laypeople and the ordained—just as his teacher Yasutani had done. Yamada was also instrumental in bringing Christians to the practice of Zen that “by the end of Yamada’s teaching career approximately one quarter of the participants at his sesshins were Christians”.
Sudden awakening or Sudden enlightenment, also known as subitism, is a Buddhist idea which holds that practitioners can achieve an instantaneous insight into ultimate reality. This awakening is described as being attained "suddenly," "in one glance," "uncovered all together," or "together, completely, simultaneously," in contrast to "successively or being uncovered one after the other." It may be posited as opposite to gradualism, an approach which says that insight can be achieved only through a long gradual step by step process.
Buddhist modernism are new movements based on modern era reinterpretations of Buddhism. David McMahan states that modernism in Buddhism is similar to those found in other religions. The sources of influences have variously been an engagement of Buddhist communities and teachers with the new cultures and methodologies such as "Western monotheism; rationalism and scientific naturalism; and Romantic expressivism". The influence of monotheism has been the internalization of Buddhist gods to make it acceptable in modern Western society, while scientific naturalism and romanticism has influenced the emphasis on current life, empirical defense, reason, psychological and health benefits.
Zen is a school of Mahayana Buddhism that originated in China during the Tang dynasty as the Chan School or the Buddha-mind school, and later developed into various sub-schools and branches. Zen was influenced by Taoism, especially Neo-Daoist thought, and developed as a distinguished school of Chinese Buddhism. From China, Chán spread south to Vietnam and became Vietnamese Thiền, northeast to Korea to become Seon Buddhism, and east to Japan, becoming Japanese Zen.
The Zen tradition is maintained and transferred by a high degree of institutionalisation, despite the emphasis on individual experience and the iconoclastic picture of Zen.
Modern scientific research on the history of Zen discerns three main narratives concerning Zen, its history and its teachings: Traditional Zen Narrative (TZN), Buddhist Modernism (BM), Historical and Cultural Criticism (HCC). An external narrative is Nondualism, which claims Zen to be a token of a universal nondualist essence of religions.
Advaita Vedanta and Mahayana Buddhism share significant similarities. Those similarities have attracted Indian and Western scholars attention, and have also been criticised by concurring schools. The similarities have been interpreted as Buddhist influences on Advaita Vedanta, though some deny such influences, or see them as expressions of the same eternal truth.
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