Common or Garden Dharma. Essays on Contemporary Buddhism, Volume 2

Volume I in this series ended up more unified than I had planned. There are a few shorter pieces in it that are apropos of nothing at all, but for most of it, now that I read it again, I see how it reflects my own astonishment at finding myself teaching Buddhism in a faculty of Christian theology, at a university in an overwhelmingly Christian country. My efforts to see how Buddhism reacts to history, other religions, mythical patterns and society at large was also an effort to make sense of my own situation. I ended up getting caught in my own little Grand Narrative.
No such deficiency will be found in this volume. This, I promise, is a truly random, chaotic, farraginous gallimaufry of pieces that bear no relationship to one another whatsoever. I am really scraping the bottom of the barrel here. If you are a graduate student far in the future thinking of writing a dissertation on "A Unifying Theme in Volume 2 of Clasquin-Johnson's Common or Garden Dharma", I have one question for you. Do you believe in ghosts?
I also promise never, ever to use the words "farraginous" and "gallimaufry" again. Mind you, they are real words.
As before, some are academic pieces rewritten for as non-academic audience. Others were always meant for a wider audience, but did not always reach them.

Michel Clasquin-Johnson is an Associate Professor of Religious Studies at the University of South Africa. He lives in Pretoria, South Africa with his wife, son and two motorcycles.
In his spare time, he writes what can loosely be called science fiction. Not a lot of science involved, and a fine disregard for the rules of fiction.