Although by profession I am an academic and a scholar, I think of myself as an artist. In the big picture, of course, such labels mean nothing. We are all much bigger than our job titles. Nevertheless, by calling myself an artist -- even an artist of ideas -- I give myself permission to play; to take pleasure in the processes of thinking, researching, and writing for the sake of pleasure; to make leaps that might soar or might thud, without a concern for whether my playful investigations are useful or meaningful or commercially viable, let alone true. So, although I earned a Ph.D. in Buddhist Studies from the University of Michigan in 1996, I have not made expertise in that body of knowledge the chief focus of my professional endeavors. It is important to understand what facts are, how they work, and how to manipulate them with grace and accuracy. But the academic work of creating or discovering knowledge does not hold much interest for me in itself. As an author and a teacher, rather, I am dedicated to exploring the intellectual imagination. How does one use knowledge in a disciplined and accurate manner as a means through which to imagine and pursue possible futures?
These explorations have found their formal expression in two academic monographs. The first, Beyond Enlightenment: Buddhism, Religion, Modernity (Routledge, 2006), focuses on Ajanta, an archaeological site in India famous for its Buddhist caves filled with sculptures and paintings. But rather than limiting itself to questions about Buddhism in its ancestral land, Beyond Enlightenment explores the politics of enlightenment. How do Buddhists and Christians, ancient Indians and modern Europeans, use the ideal of enlightenment to instantiate their own political desires; to make those desires seem natural and righteous, beneficial and valuable for all?
My second book, The Splendid Vision: Reading a Buddhist Sutra (Columbia University Press, 2012), features the first-ever English translation of the “Splendid Vision Sutra,” a sixth-century Indian Mahayana Buddhist scripture known for its rich ritual magic and worship of bodhisattva-goddesses. Intended for introductory courses in Buddhism and general readers, the book uses the Splendid Vision Sutra to open a window onto religious experience and practice in the contemporary world as well as that of the past.
Writing is a joy, but so is performing. Though every successful professor is skilled at stagecraft, I have brought my passion for intellectual play into the realm of circus. As a member of Technomania Circus, and later as a founder and performer with Zirk Ubu, I explored my passion for the transformative possibilities, and perils, of abstract ideals. In particular, I loved to create characters who luxuriate in their own fantasies; who hardly recognize, let alone conform to, social norms. My playful personae included the magic house in love with a chicken; Cliffie, the Disco Shaman; the execrably bad poet; and Peter Henderson, who along with his sister Muffy formed the world's only mixed-sex conjoined twin pair.
It is too soon to say whether my circus days are fully behind me. Presently my creative energies are directed in two other directions. As a long term project, I am writing a book entitled, This Side of Mystery. This book provides a point-by-point guide to intelligent unknowing, that is, to a conscious and creative engagement with one’s own ignorance. There are circumstances when not-knowing feels more true than knowing and when one’s answers do not feel adequate to one’s questions. This Side of Mystery explores such experiences of disjunction, treating them as legitimate and normal, rather than as pathologies of reason or religiosity.
My other, more immediate project is "At the Violet Hour, In the Goldhorn Shadow," a construction for the 2012 Burning Man festival. As a long time participant at Burning Man, I have always brought performance pieces, never a work of material construction. Destined for the lonely outer reaches of the event, my interactive sculpture is modeled on the structure of the Native American sweat lodge. It will create an interactive environment within which participants might purify themselves in a heated encounter with the words of Alan Ginsberg's Howl and T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land.