Rakshi
The big info dump chapter, in which two characters combine their complementary partial understandings to make some sense of the story so far.
Buddhism for Vampires
Vajrayana meets preternatural romance
Latest posts
A delegation from Nalanda University
The Interim Acting Chancellor of Nalanda University comes to visit, with his attendant.
Roaring Silence
My vampire novel was inspired by a scene in a meditation book.
The dead don’t think
Our hero finally recognizes the full horror of his situation, and learns to meditate.
No sex or funny stuff
An engineer attempts to write a sex scene. Hilarity ensues.
Sleeping with Sukhi
A tantric vampire romance novel can’t do without a love scene.
Meeting Naropa’s dakini
In which I meet a terrifying goddess at Starbucks.
Drinking the sun
Integrating monstrous aspects of experience, that you have rejected, frees energy for creativity and play—and is the path to nobility.
Absorb your shadow
Absorbing your shadow means embracing your monstrous power while cultivating your human nobility.
Hunting the shadow
To discover your shadow qualities you have hidden from yourself, you must go hunting on the path of attention.
Romancing the shadow
Jung's “shadow,” and Robert Bly’s monstrous interpretation of it, resonate with Buddhist Tantra; but Romanticism obstructs a translation.
Death threats from offended Buddhists
Buddhists who issue death threats, when they feel that their religion is insulted, don't seem very Buddhist. Imitating Islamic fundamentalists?
Lovecraft, Speculative Realism, and silly nihilism
Understanding why nihilism became silly may improve your attitude to life considerably.
Dark culture: black magic as art and play
Dark culture demonstrates that beauty, love, and freedom can be found in the midst of the nightmare.
Black magic and meaningness
Dark culture and black magic are ways of working through the emotional implications of nihilism—the discovery that the universe is monstrous.
Black magic, transformation, and power
“Black magic” can be liberating in the real (non-magical) world, if you have been brought up in an excessively narrow moral code.
What makes magic “black”?
Defining black magic; dispelling confusions. Black magic is whatever social consensus, or authority, considers taboo.
Dark culture and tantric transformation
Black magic as liberating transformation and as art.
Can we hunt p-zombies with fMRI?
An experiment that might explain metaphysical disagreement, zombies, consciousness, and Daniel Dennett.
A philosophical zombie
Zombies play important roles in both Western and Buddhist philosophy of mind.