In Pursuit of Mysteries

Class for Fall 2008 at IBS

I stopped by the Institute of Buddhist Studies during lunch today (it is only about a mile and a half from my house). I went in to register for another class. As people may recall, I took a graduate level class there on Esoteric Buddhism, focusing heavily on Japan, this last Spring. I am not currently enrolled in a degree program there but I am looking at being in one in a year so it is good to get some of the classes out of the way that I might otherwise take then (and I might even learn something!). It isn’t cheap though, that’s for sure. I definitely have to look on it as investing in my future as classes cost a lot.

For this Fall, I had been thinking of taking a reading class for Japanese but the rigors of doing this while working, especially since it is an in-person class twice a week, made this a difficult prospect. Add to this the fact that R and I are going to Egypt in October for a couple of weeks and it just didn’t seem like a good idea.

Instead, I signed up for another online course. The description from the catalog is:

Tibetan Understandings of Tantra
HRHS 3014
Course Level: Intermediate
Instructor: Harrington

Tibet received a wealth of tantric materials from India, and in turn Tibetan thinkers and practitioners further developed tantra as a religious system. This course will explore this systematization of Buddhist tantra in Tibet, through readings in English translation of key works by Tsongkhapa and Kongtrul. The readings will first be placed in context with an overview of the history of Tibetan Buddhism. As an online course, students will be expected to maintain a detailed reading log of their thoughts, reflections, and questions about each week’s readings, to be shared with other class members, and to participate in a discussion of these reflections. A summary reflection paper of approx. 20+ pp. will be required at the end of the semester.
Participation/Term paper.

This looks to be fairly interesting. I have a background in Tibetan Vajrayana over the last six years but, as with many things, randomly reading things and studying for practice purposes often leaves holes in knowledge. I haven’t read much Tsongkhapa since my practice was mostly Nyingma derived (and occasionally Kagyu) and he’s the father of the Gelugpa sect, which has very different interpretations of Tantra from the first two. Dr. Payne told me good things about Dr. Harrington so I am hoping that the class works out well.

My Thesis Finally Available on ProQuest

When I completed my Master’s thesis in the Fall of 2007, I paid extra fees to ProQuest (aka UMI) to make an electronic version of it available as a PDF file for free. I figured that with my values oriented towards openness and such, I did not want my thesis locked up in ProQuest’s gated community as so many others have been.

For those that aren’t aware of things academic, just about every Master’s thesis or Doctoral dissertation done in the United States for decades has been archived by University Microfilms (UMI) in order to provide a repository for academic work. People with University library access can often browse this archive of previous academic work, which is helpful if you are doing your own academic work. This is because most theses and dissertations, like mine, will never be published and, therefore, aren’t accessible for people doing academic work without the use of archives like that provided by UMI, which has since changed its name to “ProQuest” (along with changing owners). By their own account, they have more than 2.4 million theses and dissertations in their archives.

I found out recently from a friend of mine working with ProQuest that my thesis data was finally online. I figured it would take six months, which turns out to be about right. You can see the official page for my thesis, which provides a link to either download the entire thesis or preview 24 pages of it. The whole thesis is only 93 pages. For those unfamiliar with it, the abstract for it is:

The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn was a 19^th century English society engaged in the creation of a systematic form of western esotericism. Its founders created a synthesis of previous strands of esotericism and spiritual thought that had existed in Europe. One aspect of this synthesis was the creation of a new vision of the soul. This soul went beyond a simple mixing of elements from earlier traditions and provided an integral portion of the spiritual vision that gave an overall purpose to the spiritual practices of the Golden Dawn. A discussion of the nature and structure of this soul, its key influences, and unique aspects gives clarity to some of the spiritual goals and vision of the Golden Dawn as a system of spiritual practice. This demonstrates a system of thought unique to the end of the nineteenth century that places it with other spiritual traditions of the world.

As some may recall, I did make print copies of is available through Lulu this last year, which allowed my mother, grandmother, and at least one of the people writing an academic recommendation for me to read it. That page also has a slightly differently formatted PDF available for download for free.

For anyone interested in the official, filed, copy of my thesis, it is there for retrieval. This seemed noteworthy enough to mention in the midst of various other things. The contents are relatively esoteric (*cough*) and I’m quite glad that I have received my degree and moved on to other things. This was kind of my last hurrah for western esotericism unless I write a couple of the articles that I’ve thought about over the last year.

Dr. Billings someday?

No, I don’t have a doctorate (yet). I met with Dr. Payne for lunch again today. As I’ve mentioned before, he’s the dean at the Institute of Buddhist Studies (IBS) at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley. I took the class on esoteric Buddhism with him during this last Spring semester in an effort to both improve my knowledge of such things but also to get some exposure to him (to see what he was like and vice versa) as I have been considering working on a doctorate at GTU. As people may recall, I received my Master’s degree, focusing on Western Esotericism, this last December.

Dr. Payne is one of the few people in the United States who has been doing academic work on Japanese esoteric Buddhism. In his case, it has been Shingon, but my interests are in Tendai, which is similar in many ways and has had a lot of cross-pollination with Shingon over the last 1,000 years in Japan. He and I have met over lunch a few times in the last six months to talk about Buddhist academia, GTU, and the possibility of doing a doctorate. He’s been pretty supportive and friendly, I must say, and I’ve appreciated him taking the time to meet with me.

Today, I spoke to him about my plans to apply this Fall for the doctoral program at GTU, which would start in Fall, 2009 for me (the soonest I could get into it, actually). We discussed ideas around the work that I could do and I think I’ll be focusing on Tendai esoteric practices, taimitsu, if I get in. I asked him if he’d write a letter of recommendation for me, based on my work in his class and our chats, and he agreed after some brief discussion. This is a big deal since he is the dean of one of the member schools of GTU and, more importantly, he is the only one of the faculty there that could really supervise the doctoral work that I want to do. (Also, the fact is that I only have two potential letters of recommendation right now and I needed three to apply!) I don’t know how difficult it is to get into GTU, though I expect it isn’t as hard as some, like Stanford, but having the guy that you want to advise your doctoral work agree to write a letter of recommendation to the same program definitely improves my chances of getting in and I think supports the two of us working together. I genuinely like Dr. Payne as well. He’s got some character and at least one friend who knows both of us thinks that we’d work well together (though he might put me through the wringer academically in the process).

Dr. Payne suggested, in no uncertain terms, that I should spend the next year working on Japanese, specifically reading, for the work that we discussed. IBS has classes that focus on Japanese language through liturgy that would be the right sort of thing (since I really don’t need to know how to introduce myself verbally for a business meeting for my academic work). The main emphasis is that I need to be able to read specific kinds of Buddhist texts, especially ritual manuals. Fortunately, the classes were, the last time I looked, only a couple of days a week in the mornings so I should be able to work them into my work schedule.

All of this means that I will be applying to the doctoral program and, assuming I am accepted, going to GTU to begin work on my PhD in a bit over a year. I’ll probably be there at least five or six years (maybe longer) with the first two years being the intense coursework and the rest being much more focused on research for my dissertation.

At this point, unless I can figure out how to work part time on my work at Mozilla, I would probably have to quit working there while doing my PhD work. I’ve been advised that if there is any way I can keep my current job (regardless of what it is), that I would do well to do so because any aid I get for academic work will be tiny and any graduate student jobs pay very little in comparison to “real” jobs. We’ll see how that works out.