Dr Dhivan Jones

Visiting Research Fellow

School of Humanities and Social Sciences
dhivan.jones@chester.ac.uk
Dr Dhivan Jones

My research is in early Buddhist philosophy, and on the reception of ideas from Buddhist philosophy into western Buddhism. My book This Being, That Becomes: The Buddha’s Teaching on Conditionality was published by Windhorse in 2011. I work with texts in source languages, such as Pāli and Sanskrit, using comparative philological methods, and I draw on the history of western philosophy to find ways to interpret Buddhist philosophical concepts in a modern western context.

I joined the department in February 2019, having taught for the Open University, and in the Universities of Lancaster, Leeds and Bristol. My first degree was in Religious Studies at Lancaster University, studying a lot of Asian religious philosophy. For my MA, I studied modern European philosophy, then completed a PhD thesis entitled ‘The Phenomenology of Love’ at Lancaster University in 1995.

I lived and worked with Buddhists for some years, and was ordained into the Triratna Buddhist Order in 2004, when I was given the name Dhivan. I continue to teach Buddhism and lead retreats in the context of the Triratna Buddhist community. I returned to academic life by studying for an MPhil in Sanskrit and South Asian Studies at Cambridge University. I taught philosophy and religious studies for the Open University for ten years, also teaching Buddhism at the University of Leeds and Indian Religions at the University of Bristol.

Undergraduate modules

  • TH4063 Reading Religions: Texts, Traditions and Teachings
  • TH4064 Philosophy, Religion and the Good Life
  • TH4065 Food, Sex and War: An Introduction to Ethics and Religion
  • TH5055 Asian Philosophies: Knowledge, Liberation and the Self
  • TH6051 Violence and Nationalism: Religious and Philosophical Perspectives

Postgraduate modules

  • TH7046 Buddhist Concepts of Awakening

My research interests include

  • Pāli language and texts
  • early Buddhist philosophical thought
  • Indian Buddhist philosophy
  • Buddhism and environmentalism

PhD (and DProf) supervision

I am happy to supervise work in the following areas:

  • Early Buddhist doctrine and history
  • Buddhist texts in Pāli and Sanskrit
  • Buddhist philosophy
  • Buddhism and environmentalism

Research Students

Jack Graham (PhD student, 50% with Wendy Dossett), Theory of religion

Elsewhere on the web

Dhivan's website 

Authored Book

Dhivan Thomas Jones. This Being, That Becomes: the Buddha’s teaching of conditionality. Cambridge: Windhorse, 2011.

Articles in Academic Journals and Books

Dhivan Thomas Jones (2021). ‘Translating paṭicca-samuppāda in Early Buddhism’, in Translating Buddhism: Historical and Contextual Perspectives, ed. Alice Collett. Albany: State University of New York Press (pp.227–58).

Dhivan Thomas Jones (2020). ‘Upaniṣadic Echoes in the Alagaddūpama Sutta’, Journal of the Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies 19, pp.79–102.

Dhivan Thomas Jones (2020). ‘Three Ways of Denying the Self’, Western Buddhist Review 7 pp.19–43.

Dhivan Thomas Jones (2019). ‘Going Off the Map: Transcendental Dependent Arising in the Nettippakaraṇa’, Buddhist Studies Review 36:2 pp.167–90.

Dhivan Thomas Jones (2019). ‘A Teleological Mode of Conditionality in Early Buddhism’. International Journal of Buddhist Thought and Culture 29:2, pp.119–49.

Dhivan Thomas Jones (2019). ‘‘Preconditions’: The Upanisā Sutta in Context’. Journal of the Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies 17, pp.30–62.

Dhivan Thomas Jones (2017). ‘Illness, Care and Cure in the Pali Canon’, in C.P. Salguero, ed. Buddhism and Medicine: an anthology of premodern sources, Columbia University Press, pp.3–11.

Dhivan Thomas Jones (2016). ‘That bhikkhu lets go both the near and far shores’: meaning and metaphor in the refrain from the uraga verses’. Journal of the Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies 11, pp.71–107.

Dhivan Thomas Jones (2014). ‘Like the Rhinoceros, or Like Its Horn? The Problem of khaggavisāṇa Revisited’. Buddhist Studies Review 31:2.

Dhivan Thomas Jones (2013). ‘Through a Blue Chasm: Coleridge, Wordsworth and the Buddha on Imagination’. Western Buddhist Review 6, pp.35–57.

Dhivan Thomas Jones (2012). ‘The Five Niyāmas as Laws of Nature: an Assessment of Modern Western Interpretations of Theravāda Buddhist Doctrine’. Journal of Buddhist Ethics 19, pp.545–82.

Dhivan Thomas Jones (2009). ‘Why Did Brahmā Ask the Buddha to Teach?’. Buddhist Studies Review 26:1, pp. 85–102.

Dhivan Thomas Jones (2009). ‘New Light on the Twelve Nidānas’. Contemporary Buddhism 10:2, pp. 241–59.

Thomas Jones (1999). ‘Useless Passions? Sartre on love’. In French Existentialism: consciousness, ethics and relations with others, ed. James Giles. Rodopi: Amsterdam.

Reviews

Dhivan Thomas Jones (2015). ‘The Forerunner of All Things: Buddhaghosa on Mind, Intention and Agency, by Maria Heim’. In Journal of Buddhist Ethics, 22, pp.365–70.

Dhivan Thomas Jones (2009). ‘Essential Dharma: three new selections from the Pali canon compared’. In Western Buddhist Review, 5.

Dhivan Thomas Jones (2009). ‘Review: What the Buddha Thought, by Richard Gombrich’, London: Equinoxe, 2009. In Western Buddhist Review, 5.

Thomas Jones (1994). ‘Review: Personal Love by Mark Fisher’, London: Duckworth, 1990. In Journal of Applied Philosophy 11:1.

  • BA
  • MA
  • PhD (Lancaster)
  • MPhil (Cambridge)
  • FHEA