Here are some of the things people have said about me.
You’re obviously a very sincere, devoted truth-lover. And you refuse to devote yourself to anything or anyone other than the ultimate truth. I respect that in you.
Rupert Spira
Spiritual Teacher
(Wikipedia page)
Thank God that you’re here, that you’re doing the work you do and that you keep going. You’ve shone a light on my life so many times.
I want to also say that your compassion is so deep and expansive. It’s like mycelium penetrating rocks, enriching the soil, and interconnecting whole forests. You help me to grow.
E.(L.S.)A.
David Leon is that rare thing: someone genuinely deeply interested in the classic heritage of philosophy, and ready to apply it to life itself.
Dr. Jessica Frazier
Lecturer in Theology and Religion at Trinity College, University of Oxford
Fellow of the Oxford Centre for Hindu studies
(Wikipedia page)
David Leon has an immense – perhaps unique – capacity to forgive. It is not a ‘matter of the heart’ or not some ‘natural gift’, to speak colloquially. To be able to forgive is the sheer materiality of his intellect. It is an effect of his location in the absolute limits of knowledge and experience – even into the crevasse beyond.
It flows from risk-ridden philosophical effort that establishes his subjectivity as consistently subjective with no soothing antidote of the objective. In a thoroughly antagonistic gesture to the current state of affairs, his capacity to forgive does not pertain to the logic of alterity, but to the logic of sameness. He is perhaps an entirely new form of the Communist-being – and thus, a humble model for the ‘new man’.
His path is impossible – may he follow this path.
Dr. Agnibho Gangopadhyay
DPhil in History, University of Oxford
David makes everything clearer and richer and calmer and delightful-er. I count myself extremely lucky to have ever found such a friend and I would expect some kind of cosmic event if everyone on earth were to have someone like him.
Isabelle Agerbak
David is one of the most sincere and devoted seekers after truth and beauty that I have met. His presence is a balm to the mind and I miss sharing a city with him. He is the kind of person who inspires one to aspire to betterness: not through imposition, but through his ability to hold back and make space for the world. Such spaciousness of heart is no mere accident of birth: David displays a self-discipline and resoluteness which is at once magnificent and terrifying. His depth and breadth of knowledge of global spiritual and philosophical traditions is rare and precious, especially when combined with such a sensitive aesthetic sensibility.
Henry Straughan
PhD Candidate in Philosophy, Yale University
David is a North Star to every soul who crosses his path. He is a breathing inspiration to us all that another kind of existence is possible: one that marries a deep understanding of the human condition in its countless spiritual, existential, and psychological torments with a boundless, unalloyed, and unshakeable love for all mankind. It is in this ink that David dips his pen before putting it to paper, and that is why I await his forthcoming literary work with tremendous excitement.
Saad Slaoui
PhD Candidate in Mathematics, UT Austin
I truly believe that everything David does is out of a sincere love for all people and a pure desire to apply his intellect to helping them. David has this exceptional ability to make you feel ‘seen’. He is both extraordinarily kind and a keen observer of human nature, and he helped me gain and develop insights about myself that I still use to inform how I interact with the world.
Danielle v.d.P.
By the way, thanks for getting me hooked on philosophy back in Berlin.
Denis PopovIn Vienna I met a girl who had majored in philosophy during her studies. So that’s one of the topics that got the ball rollling and now we’re married
When a surely kind feeling
Kulbir Hayer
walks to you on words
It fatedly comes dressed
in garments of grammar
cloths of conventions,
through old draperies
of even older dispositions.
Now, conceive a man
who were to strive
to understand Kindness Itself,
to perceive its true nature
beyond all appearances.
Would he not sift into his heart
all the Kind of this world
to forge of Kindness
an ineffable image?
Such a man would not only
discern its forms
but would live
and sleep with Kindness.
Now, let by Kindness be understood
That which is to be understood.
…then that man is David Leon.
David Leon has crossed to the other shore, attained nirvana, and yet chooses to remain among us out of compassion. He writes like he breathes. He knows everything and everyone — if he were to leave, the city of Oxford would fall apart.
Lena Zlock
DPhil Candidate, Department of Education, University of Oxford
Though you boast of the name David Lion,
Prof. Richard Gombrich
Which suggests you’re the man to rely on,
When Goliath appears
You cry, crippled by fears,
“Don’t be mad — it was only a try-on.”
Boden Professor of Sanskrit Emeritus at the University of Oxford
Founder-President of the Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies
President of the Pali Text Society (1994–2002)
General Editor Emeritus of the Clay Sanskrit Library
(Wikipedia page)
[Proof, if anyone should ever dream of contesting it,
of the extreme timidity and self-doubt of my youth.]
David Leon 