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I like very much James' "conditional" as a description of the world .... and perhaps of our particular small enterprise as well: do we trust ourselves and trust each other enough to take the risk?  I'm in.  See Evolving systems: having gotten started. 

As for James' "The hindoo and the buddhist", perhaps we could chalk it up to an unusual provinciality of thought in a man who by and large does much better than that?  Christians are, I think, at least as prone to being "afraid of more experience, afraid of life" as are Hindus and Buddhists.  And much of meditative practice is actually aimed precisely at appreciating "finite experience" rather than avoiding it.  That James used a misguided contrast to help clarify "pragmatism" doesn't itself make a strong case that there is any necessary conflict between pragmatism and either Hinduism and Buddhism or meditative disciplines in general.  In fact, Ben and I have been working on a paper arguing that there is an interesting overlap between pragmatism and, among other things, some eastern traditions.  Looking forward to talking more about that at some point.