Bret W. Davis, PhD is Professor and Higgins Chair in Philosophy at Loyola University Maryland, where he teaches courses in Asian, Western, and cross-cultural philosophy, and where he directs The Heart of Zen Meditation Group. In addition to attaining a PhD in philosophy at Vanderbilt University, he has studied and taught in Germany and Japan. While living in Japan for more than a dozen years, he studied Buddhist thought at Otani University and Japanese philosophy at Kyoto University while practicing Rinzai Zen at Shōkokuji monastery. He writes on Zen Buddhism, on the Kyoto School of modern Japanese philosophy, on Western philosophers such as Martin Heidegger, and on issues in cross-cultural philosophy and comparative philosophy of religion.