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April 21 - May 9, 2022
but if it is that of a practitioner engaged in an existential dialogue with Gotama, then one will seek a reading that helps one flourish as a person.
“In proportion as God becomes more ideally human, the greater becomes the apparent difference between God and man. To enrich God, man must become poor; that God may be all, man must become nothing.”
Gotama’s ironic atheism and emphasis on self-reliance have given way to the kind of devotion and dependency that Feuerbach regards as the essence of religious behavior.
Those with a vested interest in preserving the correct interpretation of texts cannot tolerate the idea that “ordinary” people might enter into a living dialogue with the authors of those texts.
Europeans were still fundamentally preoccupied with the question of God, the very idea of a “moral but Godless universe”83 being utterly alieṇ Yet behind the belief in God lies the even more deeply entrenched sense that the universe has a meaning or purpose.
Enlightenment is not a transcendent mystical rapture but an ethical experience that reveals the nature of the existential dilemma and the way to its resolutioṇ
to dispense with such key doctrines as rebirth, the law of karma, and liberation from the cycle of birth and death would surely undermine the entire edifice of Buddhism itself. Yet for those who have grown up outside of Indian culture, who feel at home in a modernity informed by the natural sciences, to then be told that one cannot “really” practice the dharma unless one adheres to the tenets of ancient Indian soteriology makes little sense.
The history of Buddhism is the history of its own ongoing interpretation and representation of itself. Each Buddhist tradition maintains that it alone possesses the “true” interpretation of the dharma, whereas all the other schools either fall short of this truth or have succumbed to “wrong views.”
In terms of my own theory of Buddhism 2.0, I need to be alert to the tendency of falling into the very trap that I am critiquing. The more I am seduced by the force of my own arguments, the more I am tempted to imagine that my secular version of Buddhism is what the Buddha originally taught, which the traditional schools have either lost sight of or distorted. This would be a mistake, for it is impossible to read the historical Buddha’s mind in order to know what he “really” meant or intended. At the same time, each generation has the right and duty to reinterpret the teachings that it has
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Instead of getting bogged down in these arguments, he insisted on revealing a therapeutic and pragmatic path that addressed the core issue of human suffering. He recognized that one could endlessly debate the truth or falsity of metaphysical propositions without ever reaching a final conclusion and, meanwhile, fail to come to terms with the far more pressing matter of one’s own and others’ birth and death.
This establishes the kind of separation that can lead to cultish solidarity as well as hatred for others who fail to share one’s views. “When the word ‘truth’ is uttered,” remarked the Italian philosopher Gianni Vattimo, “a shadow of violence is cast as well.”4
Because the opposite of Truth is untruth, delusion, or lie.
We have to train ourselves to the point where on hearing or reading a text from the canon our initial response is no longer “Is that true?” but “Does this work?”
Awakening is not a singular insight into the absolute, comparable to the transcendent experiences reported by mystics of theistic traditions, but a complex sequence of interrelated achievements gained through reconfiguring one’s core relationship with dukkha, arising, ceasing, and the path.
The Four are presented in that order because that is the order in which they occur as tasks to be performed: fully knowing suffering leads to the letting go of craving, which leads to experiencing its cessation, which leads to the cultivation of the path.
“Ceasing” is no longer seen as the goal of the path but as those moments when reactivity stops (or is suspended) in order that the possibility of a path can reveal itself and be “brought into being.”
To spell this out: fully knowing dukkha leads to the letting go of what arises, which leads to moments in which what arises ceases, which opens up a “complete view,” the first step of the eightfold path. Such a view then informs how we think and make choices (step 2), which lead to how we speak (step 3), act (step 4), and work (step 5), which provide an ethical framework for applying oneself (step 6) to cultivate mindfulness (step 7) and concentration (step 8). But what is one mindful of? What does one concentrate on? One is mindful of and concentrates on life as it presents itself in each
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To fully embrace suffering does not increase suffering but paradoxically enhances your sense of astonishment at being alive. By saying “yes” to birth, sickness, aging, and death, you open your heart and mind to the sheer mystery of being here at all: that in this moment you breathe, you hear the wind rustling the leaves in the trees, you look up at the night sky and are lost in wonder.
So it is with Buddhism 2.0. In the light of this parable, it makes little sense to ask “Is this really Buddhism?” The only relevant question is “Does it float?”
In his Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life, the eighth-century Mādhyamika poet Śāntideva pushes the idea even further: It is a misconception to think That I shall experience (suffering in a future life), For it is another who will die And another who will be borṇ8
The ethics of karma are thus turned on their head: the only meaningful motive for action can be compassion for others.
Yet death, as the disintegration of the senses and the brain we now possess, surely must open up the possibility of a potentially infinite variety of forms of existence
Any examined human life involves the realization that we have been thrown into this world, without any choice,
This implies a pre-existing entity with the ability to make choices, separate from the world and forced into it, rather than an entity that emerges and develops from within the world. There was no You to be given or denied a choice.
A truly agnostic position is not an excuse for indecisioṇ
I agree with this statement generally, but this whole paragraph is loaded with aggressive and judgemental language. Looking at rebirth as a metaphor isn't cowardly or an excuse if it satisfies a spiritual need. Just because it doesn't satify HIS philosophical or theological curiosity doesn't mean it's a prevarication.
In accordance with the central Buddhist doctrine of “conditionality,” the concept of sangha and the role of the monastic in Buddhist societies were both conditioned by the socioeconomic conditions of their times. And in accordance with the equally central notion of “impermanence,” they too are subject to change. There is, nonetheless, a trend to overlook the implications of these doctrines on Buddhism itself and its institutions.
If Buddhism is to survive, it needs to find a firm communal footing within the framework of secular culture.
It means, on one hand, taking one’s reason as far as it will go and, on the other, not accepting anything as true unless it is somehow demonstrable.
All schools of Buddhism agree that one should not believe something simply for the sake of believing it but only if it can somehow be demonstrated as true, if it can be realized in some practical way.
Buddhism is often misrepresented as something nihilistic or life-denying.
It simply exposes the fallacy of the deeply felt, almost instinctive assumption that our self, the mind, or anything else must be secured on a permanent, transcendental basis. Yet the uniqueness of a person’s mind or identity, the uniqueness of a flower that’s growing in the garden, does not require any kind of transcendent basis that’s peculiar to that thing. Emptiness indicates how everything that comes about does so through an unrepeatable matrix of contingencies, conditions, and causes as well as through conceptual, linguistic, and cultural frameworks.
For example, we may have a great deal of scientific understanding about oak trees, but that knowledge in itself, and our access to that information, is not going to speed up the growth of oak trees. Historically, we can see that Buddhism has never managed to root itself in any culture until several generations have passed.
The emptiness of self, for instance, is not the denial of individual uniqueness but the denial of any permanent, partless, and transcendent basis for individuality.
By paying mindful attention to the sensory immediacy of experience, we realize how we are created, molded, formed by a bewildering matrix of contingencies that continually arise and vanish. On reflection, we see how we are formed from the patterning of the DNA derived from our parents, the firing of a hundred billion neurons in our brains, the cultural and historical conditioning of our times, the education and upbringing given us, all the experiences we have ever had and choices we have ever made. These processes conspire to configure the unrepeatable trajectory that culminates in this
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Heartfelt appreciation of our own contingency enables us to recognize our interrelatedness with other equally contingent forms of life. We find that we are not isolated units but participants in the creation of an ongoing, shared reality.
Having let go of the notion of a transcendental self, we realize we are nothing but the stories we keep telling ourselves in our own minds and relating to others.
If the Dalai Lama’s injunction is valid now, then presumably it would have been valid in the past too—
Why? Things change. It doesn't sound like he was stating dogma, just making a recommendation.
Buddhism may also be enabled to recover its own critical and pragmatic perspective, which, historically, has often been overshadowed by its having assumed the identity of a religious creed.
The moment you declare that you believe in God or the law of karma, you are acknowledging that you do not know whether they exist or not.
This is an empty semantic argument. Most people who says they believe mean that they know. They make claims like "God exists because ______" or "That is how i know God loves me/hates_____." However misguided, belief is synonymous with "know in your heart."
All that will survive from my brief spell here as a rational animal will be the traces I leave behind in this world and the impact I have through my words and deeds on the lives of others.
One can be as inflexibly dogmatic about a scientific worldview as a religious one.
Meditation on impermanence, suffering, and no-self, for example, did not—as the Buddha insisted it would—lead me to disenchantment, dispassion, and a resolve not to be born again but to an ever-deepening awareness of life’s infinitely poignant beauty.
Rather than attaining nirvana, I see the aim of Buddhist practice to be the moment-to-moment flourishing of human life within the ethical framework of the eightfold path here on earth.
one could also argue that the discovery of the effectiveness of mindfulness in reducing suffering allows Buddhism to recover its secular soul that has long been obscured by the encrustation of religious beliefs.
They understand how both their personal actions and the deeds of a society or state that they endorse will have consequences long after their own death.
That's what i would call karma
The self is itself a cloud of minute events and as such is part of the world.
I now feel that we need a religious version of the scientific method. I’ll put it this way: the only religious convictions that are of any value to you are ones you have formulated yourself and worked out and tested in your own life and in debate with other people.
To learn how to think clearly, to express oneself articulately: these are practices of the dharma in themselves.
Clear is kind. Unclear is unkind.
Nonetheless, I think it is important for any serious practitioner to memorize the key Buddhist lists, such as the four truths, the eightfold path, the five aggregates, the twelve links of dependent origination, the four foundations of mindfulness, and so oṇ
I doubt Buddhism will get very far in the modern world if one insists that to really understand and practice it you have first to embrace the cosmology of ancient India.
We get sidetracked, much as the Buddha said in the parable of the arrow, where the person just endlessly discusses what kind of arrow it was, what kind of bow it was, what kind of person shot it.
We’ve opened up a kind of clearing, a space within, in which we’re no longer determined or conditioned by reactivity. That is nirvana.
