I may actually have a working idea for a thesis topic; it wouldn't be the first, or even fifteenth, but it seems the most promising so far. As I have yet to formulate a satisfactory version of the question on its own, the historical genesis of the question may prove more useful (to anyone who hasn't been scared away already). Different traditions refer to a transcendent, ineffable something (or lack of something, or both something and lack of something, or neither something nor lack of something; maybe even all of the above). However, these ineffable transcendents don't seem to be the same (pace Hick); Pseudo-Dionysius, for example, is talking about God while Nagarjuna is talking about the Buddhist doctrine of emptiness. Even though surface language appears the same, what allows for this differentiation? Are these thinkers inconsistent, or is there some way to allow for different ineffable transcendents?
To take this a step further, I am looking at Kierkegaard and the Japanese Buddhist Shinran. Both have some degree of apophaticism in their thoughts, and as a consequence stress the inner life of the believer and the way life is lived instead of trying to understand the non-understandable. So the thesis would be looking at a comparative study of these two thinkers, analyzing their solution to the problem of interacting with a transcendent reality, and asking the question of what makes for a Christian life as opposed to a Buddhist life in such frameworks (if there really could be any differentiation; it could turn out to be a reductio for existentialism).
Other than that, I guess there is my life outside of schoolwork too. Joy and I have been taking fencing classes; it's been lots of fun, but it ended last Tuesday :-(. So now we're going to have to look into an intermediate class and/or the fencing club in our area so that we can poke more people with swords.
