Hiram Crespo's Blog - Posts Tagged "contemplation"
"Tend Your Garden" review at SBA
Rick Heller, of the Secular Buddhist Association, has written a book review of Tending the Epicurean Garden from a contemporary Buddhist perspective. I'm very happy that the obvious parallels between Zen Buddhism and Epicureanism are being appreciated. I recently gave an interview to the Conscious Resistance and was also asked about the parallels between Buddhism and Epicureanism by Derrick Broze, who mixes elements of Zen and shamanics (another subject that I will likely address in the future).
Both wisdom traditions contain a science of happiness that points the finger at desires as the first place where we need to engage in philosophical hygiene. However, whereas to Buddha all desires are dissatisfaction, to Epicurus there are natural and necessary desires that we MUST attend to in order to live and be healthy: nature does not give us a choice.
The timing is perfect because it comes on the heels of a blog I wrote recently titled Enargeia and the monkey mind, where I discuss the ineffable insights one gets during contemplative practice and how these insights cannot be put into words, how there is a need for a Zen-like mode of face-to-face transmission, and I generally explore the issues around transmission of Epicureanism in view of the non-rational nature of katastemic pleasure, which is the height of hedonic wellbeing in our tradition.
My editor wanted me to stick to verbiage that seemed familiar and to keep away from terms like "katastemic", which I then translated as abiding pleasure. The chapter on the science of contemplation draws mainly from the Zen Buddhist tradition, as it's the tradition of meditation that has the most science behind it and is the most relevant to our epistemology. Inevitably again, the choice of abiding pleasure as the translation for katastemika hedone creates further parallels with Buddhism, as they speak of abiding peace, or peaceful abiding in their practice. As these traditions evolve into an English-language science-infused American context, their similarities become increasingly evident.
Drawing from Buddhism makes sense because of the uninterrupted lineage of wisdom keepers who have consistently bettered and developed their insights and practices for 2,500 years. Why reinvent the dharma wheel?
However, in the modern era and as science vindicates insights given to us by ancient sages, I must echo neuroscientist Sam Harris in his piece Killing the Buddha. While arguing that we no longer speak of Islamic alchemy or Christian physics but of sciences of chemistry and physics, he argues in favor of a science of contemplation:
I agree with Rick Heller: labels are not nearly as crucial as the wordless insights and the sense of wellbeing derived from consistent practice.
Both wisdom traditions contain a science of happiness that points the finger at desires as the first place where we need to engage in philosophical hygiene. However, whereas to Buddha all desires are dissatisfaction, to Epicurus there are natural and necessary desires that we MUST attend to in order to live and be healthy: nature does not give us a choice.
The timing is perfect because it comes on the heels of a blog I wrote recently titled Enargeia and the monkey mind, where I discuss the ineffable insights one gets during contemplative practice and how these insights cannot be put into words, how there is a need for a Zen-like mode of face-to-face transmission, and I generally explore the issues around transmission of Epicureanism in view of the non-rational nature of katastemic pleasure, which is the height of hedonic wellbeing in our tradition.
My editor wanted me to stick to verbiage that seemed familiar and to keep away from terms like "katastemic", which I then translated as abiding pleasure. The chapter on the science of contemplation draws mainly from the Zen Buddhist tradition, as it's the tradition of meditation that has the most science behind it and is the most relevant to our epistemology. Inevitably again, the choice of abiding pleasure as the translation for katastemika hedone creates further parallels with Buddhism, as they speak of abiding peace, or peaceful abiding in their practice. As these traditions evolve into an English-language science-infused American context, their similarities become increasingly evident.
Drawing from Buddhism makes sense because of the uninterrupted lineage of wisdom keepers who have consistently bettered and developed their insights and practices for 2,500 years. Why reinvent the dharma wheel?
However, in the modern era and as science vindicates insights given to us by ancient sages, I must echo neuroscientist Sam Harris in his piece Killing the Buddha. While arguing that we no longer speak of Islamic alchemy or Christian physics but of sciences of chemistry and physics, he argues in favor of a science of contemplation:
What the world most needs at this moment is a means of convincing human beings to embrace the whole of the species as their moral community. For this we need to develop an utterly nonsectarian way of talking about the full spectrum of human experience and human aspiration. We need a discourse on ethics and spirituality that is every bit as unconstrained by dogma and cultural prejudice as the discourse of science is. What we need, in fact, is a contemplative science, a modern approach to exploring the furthest reaches of psychological well-being.
I agree with Rick Heller: labels are not nearly as crucial as the wordless insights and the sense of wellbeing derived from consistent practice.
