The suffering of a starvng child in Sommalia is not do due a lack of 'right thoughts' and not due disires he/she has control over. Buddhism and some versions of Stocism, etc. strike me as self-centeered. (even if they don't believe in 'self' in case of Buddhism).
I agree, though I think Buddhism suffers (ah!) from this more than Stoicism. Neither philosophy takes into consideration structural, as distinct from personal, reasons for human misery. That's why my next project will be on Cicero's Skepticism, which includes an explicitly political component.
I did take a class on Zen from a Master [a]. Zen suffers (ah) less from the metaphyical baggage, but still is very 'self' oriented for a religion/philosphy that denies self.
Xianty and Islam are both better on the issue of the poor though more in theory than practice.
[a] I did come up with an answer for 'one hand clapping' -- slap the master! I was not 'enlightened' enough to do it </;-_)=
In the training I received from the teachings of The Buddha (Thai Forest tradition of Ajahn Chah, Spirit Rock and San Francisco Zen Center) during the last 25 years the most important thing to “see” into was “impermanence”. Just a real “glimpse” into the impermanence of everything in our moment to moment lives and through the various stages of our development from toddler, to infant, to child, to adolescent, to adulthood and old age was enough to discern that everything is changing except that which knows our changing experience.
This “knowing” of experiences was to to be investigated and cognized. Everything else was to be let go off since clinging to it and it’s misperceptions was wrought with anxiety, worry, fantasies, hopes, memories these events are to be experienced and not to be dismissed. The Buddha specifically warned us about “self making” and it’s processing through “dependent origination”. Once we see for ourselves this thicket of views we have about just about everything in life and relax it’s hold on us is liberating.
The four noble truths are not statements of facts nor is it a “claim” about truth. It is similar to Marcus Aurelius’s understanding through taking a “view from above” as a “Spiritual Exercise” -- so the we see for ourselves that we are imprisoning ourselves by our own views. The point is not to come to some definitive proclamation about self or not self, nor about birth and rebirth, but it is inviting us to see clearly the we are more like verbs than we are nouns and we are parts of this ongoing process of change that began 13.8 billion years ago with a “Big Bang” …and it hasn’t stopped since that bang. Therefore, we can stop causing our own suffering through a lack of understanding of how things work when we take a view from above with the eye of wisdom.
Melville, well, yes and no. Setting aside that of course ancient Buddhists couldn't have known about the Big Bang, the Stoics agree on impermanence, but they still arrive a strong sense of self. Moreover, the Stoic self dies with use, the Buddhist one cannot, otherwise no reincarnation and no karma, and the doctrine of karma very much is a point of Buddhist philosophy.
Also, just linguistically, it's a bit funny to state four noble truths but then add that they are not really truths.
I do wonder how similar, or not, the SF Zen Center teachings are to other schools of thought within Buddhism. As you know, there are a lot!
Four Noble Truths are actually The Four Noble actions, to recognize suffering, to see it’s origination, to know it’s cessation, and the path that leads to it culmination.
Yes, it is a fascinating subject worthy of our investigation, we know about the “Big Bang” and it does correlate with dependent origination that depicts the causes and effects and it’s continuation of cause and effects all the way back to the “Big Bang”……these schools of philosophical thoughts and explorations are meant to free us from our thicket of views and to return us to our original nature i.e.; our immediate experience. They are not meant to be believed but to be explored. As far as we know we die every night and re-birthed in the morning and we experience a multitude of mind states that we identify with from happiness to sadness, to despair to glee...this constant changing of states are meant to be seen through as “not self”……and the awareness that knows this is where we take refuge -- as it happens-- not from memory. Stephen Batchelor includes in his expression of The Dharma a health curiosity of The Hellenic schools of philosophy as a path of inquiry and a rewarding experience resulting from reading Pierre Hadot’s “Philosophy as a Way of Life”…:he was the one who recommended to me to read Pierre Hadot and use his method to study Buddhism and other schools of thought.
There certainly are many similarities between Buddhism and the Hellenistic schools. That said, not sure what one might mean when saying that for all we know we die every time we go to sleep. No, we don't die. Unless you are using "die" in an entirely metaphorical sense.
What I mean by recognition is to “know” suffering while it is happening. That is when anxiety, worry, frustration, pain, difficulty, sadness, despair have arisen within us our first step is to recognize it, that recognition is an action, the next step is to be aware that you have recognized it (another conscious task…that happens very fast).
The whole process hinges upon us seeing that in our immediate experience we are liking and disliking which is a form of clinging or repelling what is happening in our experience and this is the “cause” of suffering (not desires -- the clinging to hold onto or reject what is in our immediate experience is the crux that creates the ball of chain to continue down towards more suffering.
Once we begin to see this process in action in ourselves we can loosen the grip or relax our reaction to get rid of it, this is ”cessation of suffering” and this is a noble action because it leads to freedom from anxiety, worry, sadness that are the consequences of our clinging to what we like or rejecting what we dislike. We don’t control our likes and dislikes they control us. My main point is that these noble tasks of recognizing, seeing, and understanding lead to our greater well being through our conscious actions of responding to our day to day moment to moment experience of life.
Let me play devil's advocate for a moment. Sure, if we manage to get rid of our desires, or clinging, then we also get rid of anxieties and fears. Would we also not get rid at the same time of what makes a human life interesting and worth living? Things like relationships, striving for justice, pursuing meaningful projects, and the like?
Stoicism suffers from a bit of the same problem, but at least it recognizes that so-called externals do have value, and it puts the highest value on virtue, which is a pro-social attitude.
It is foolish to try and “get rid” of our desires — that is not the aim of the practice and it is a misunderstanding. All of what life offers up to us is for us to experience fully without clinging or rejecting — but to simply experience it and enjoy these events as they happen and to notice their impermanence ….because everything comes and goes and we are in a constant process of becoming. This is my take on The Buddha’s teaching that has been gleaned from my experience with my teachers whom Stephen Batchelor is one of them and a major contributor to my learning……Just as Donald Robertson and Massimo Pigliucci (you) are my guides of Stoicism so to is Stephen Batchelor a great teacher of understanding what The Buddha was pointing to and not what the cultural conditioning of Buddhism that has been as taught as a belief system.
I went through a period where I studied Buddhism and Yoga. The main goal of each seemed to be to escape from the endless cycle of rebirth/reincarnation. With our modern understanding that we end at death, it seems mission accomplished, to be a bit glib. I think both have value to offer, and I still love a good yoga class, but not as philosophies of life in their orthodox forms.
I know some modern Buddhist are grappling with these issues too, and secular Buddhism is quite interesting. Stephen Batchelor's books Buddhism Without Beliefs and Alone With Others - An Existential Approach to Buddhism are worth reading if you are interested in how a modern practitioner grappled with these issues.
Andrew, thanks for the kind words! Yes, there are interesting approaches to secular Buddhism. I would add Bob Wright's Why Buddhism is True and Owen Flanagan's The Bodhisattva's Brain : Buddhism Naturalized.
I think I fall into the causal continuity camp. However, I don't believe that causal continuity somehow re-manifests as a new individual. Rather, the effects of our actions continue long after we are dead and gone. Assuming there's no permanent, separate self to begin with, only the universe manifesting and re-manifesting through cause and effect (and subsequently creating the illusions of permanent, separate selves for us conscious beings), the effects of what we do in this manifestation are what live on and are "reincarnated", so to speak.
And I suppose that view turns karma into a mere metaphor. And I'm fine with that, but I've been seeing a lot of posts in the Buddhist community lately about how if you don't believe these metaphysical things then your might as well give up on Buddhism altogether.
Nick, yes, religion is a bit of a drag. I'm good with the interpretation you suggest, but as you say, that essentially does away with the whole notion of reincarnation and karma in any strong sense of those terms.
One thing you don't mention is karma as a version of the justice that, say, Christianity seeks in an end time, judgement, reward and punishment. Suffering might be a condition of existence, but other people's actions affect the suffering (or bliss) of all. As with fear of death, solved by either chiliasm or the cycle of rebirths, the hunger that the good be rewarded and the bad punished (in contrast to the actual situation observed among humans) is handled by karma. And without a self that's consciously continued into subsequent lives, the concept of karma seems a bit disappointing. That sort of justice requires a subject to reap the rewards or suffer the punishment.
In the Christian tradition there's a deity dispensing justice. Buddhism tries to make justice self-operating, and indeed the 8-fold path describes some decent rules (grounded in human experience) that don't require divine sanction to be grounded. In that way, Buddhism is a large advance over the Christian view (rooted as it seems in a Father archetype).
What remains is to be explicit about the ground of ethics, that such (and there are other systems) as the eightfold path are rooted in human experience with no external Being or self-acting mechanism to right the lack of justice in human existence.
Yes, that's my understanding as well. I do think Buddhism is an advancement over Christianity, but the remaining metaphysical problems are enough for me not to embrace the philosophy. Mind you, pretty much every philosophy has metaphysical issues, including Stoicism. But some are more or less compatible with the modern scientific view than others.
As another who dabbled in Buddhism years ago, thank you for expressing very well my own unarticulated thoughts . Also thank you for your mention of Peter Adamson’s “A History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps”, which sounds like a good podcast for me to follow, and perhaps a good book series for me to read. In the eighties I read a couple of such histories- by Bertrand Russell and more expansively by Frederick Coplestone. I need a refresher on the topic!
How did you find the Coplestone series? I am looking for a something to fill in the gaps in my education, to give me a feel for the overall history of philosophy, as tool with which to assess which philosophers to read (and in what order) . . .
It’s been over thirty years since I read Coplestone. I’m an autodidact, and this was early in my self education, so I can’t compare it with other series. But I found it readable and engaging, or I would not have finished it. I’m now following the podcasts that Massimo mentioned, I listened to three episodes so far on Stoicism, and find it worthwhile
Indeed, he was quite opinionated, which at least made for an honest expression of his views. Another book that greatly influenced my thinking, but biased my opinion of certain philosophical traditions was Popper’s “The Open Society and its Enemies”. I read it because his political philosophy and mine seemed to overlap, but of course he had thought it out a lot more carefully and consistently than I had. Popper was also the first philosopher of science I read, with “Objective Knowledge”. I should reread him and Russell once I retire
The suffering of a starvng child in Sommalia is not do due a lack of 'right thoughts' and not due disires he/she has control over. Buddhism and some versions of Stocism, etc. strike me as self-centeered. (even if they don't believe in 'self' in case of Buddhism).
I agree, though I think Buddhism suffers (ah!) from this more than Stoicism. Neither philosophy takes into consideration structural, as distinct from personal, reasons for human misery. That's why my next project will be on Cicero's Skepticism, which includes an explicitly political component.
I did take a class on Zen from a Master [a]. Zen suffers (ah) less from the metaphyical baggage, but still is very 'self' oriented for a religion/philosphy that denies self.
Xianty and Islam are both better on the issue of the poor though more in theory than practice.
[a] I did come up with an answer for 'one hand clapping' -- slap the master! I was not 'enlightened' enough to do it </;-_)=
“ There is no mark of self,
And there is no mark of other,
There is no mark of a living being,
And there is no mark of a life span”
In the training I received from the teachings of The Buddha (Thai Forest tradition of Ajahn Chah, Spirit Rock and San Francisco Zen Center) during the last 25 years the most important thing to “see” into was “impermanence”. Just a real “glimpse” into the impermanence of everything in our moment to moment lives and through the various stages of our development from toddler, to infant, to child, to adolescent, to adulthood and old age was enough to discern that everything is changing except that which knows our changing experience.
This “knowing” of experiences was to to be investigated and cognized. Everything else was to be let go off since clinging to it and it’s misperceptions was wrought with anxiety, worry, fantasies, hopes, memories these events are to be experienced and not to be dismissed. The Buddha specifically warned us about “self making” and it’s processing through “dependent origination”. Once we see for ourselves this thicket of views we have about just about everything in life and relax it’s hold on us is liberating.
The four noble truths are not statements of facts nor is it a “claim” about truth. It is similar to Marcus Aurelius’s understanding through taking a “view from above” as a “Spiritual Exercise” -- so the we see for ourselves that we are imprisoning ourselves by our own views. The point is not to come to some definitive proclamation about self or not self, nor about birth and rebirth, but it is inviting us to see clearly the we are more like verbs than we are nouns and we are parts of this ongoing process of change that began 13.8 billion years ago with a “Big Bang” …and it hasn’t stopped since that bang. Therefore, we can stop causing our own suffering through a lack of understanding of how things work when we take a view from above with the eye of wisdom.
Melville, well, yes and no. Setting aside that of course ancient Buddhists couldn't have known about the Big Bang, the Stoics agree on impermanence, but they still arrive a strong sense of self. Moreover, the Stoic self dies with use, the Buddhist one cannot, otherwise no reincarnation and no karma, and the doctrine of karma very much is a point of Buddhist philosophy.
Also, just linguistically, it's a bit funny to state four noble truths but then add that they are not really truths.
I do wonder how similar, or not, the SF Zen Center teachings are to other schools of thought within Buddhism. As you know, there are a lot!
Four Noble Truths are actually The Four Noble actions, to recognize suffering, to see it’s origination, to know it’s cessation, and the path that leads to it culmination.
Thanks for the clarification, but doesn't "to recognize" imply that one is acknowledging a truth?
Yes, it is a fascinating subject worthy of our investigation, we know about the “Big Bang” and it does correlate with dependent origination that depicts the causes and effects and it’s continuation of cause and effects all the way back to the “Big Bang”……these schools of philosophical thoughts and explorations are meant to free us from our thicket of views and to return us to our original nature i.e.; our immediate experience. They are not meant to be believed but to be explored. As far as we know we die every night and re-birthed in the morning and we experience a multitude of mind states that we identify with from happiness to sadness, to despair to glee...this constant changing of states are meant to be seen through as “not self”……and the awareness that knows this is where we take refuge -- as it happens-- not from memory. Stephen Batchelor includes in his expression of The Dharma a health curiosity of The Hellenic schools of philosophy as a path of inquiry and a rewarding experience resulting from reading Pierre Hadot’s “Philosophy as a Way of Life”…:he was the one who recommended to me to read Pierre Hadot and use his method to study Buddhism and other schools of thought.
There certainly are many similarities between Buddhism and the Hellenistic schools. That said, not sure what one might mean when saying that for all we know we die every time we go to sleep. No, we don't die. Unless you are using "die" in an entirely metaphorical sense.
What I mean by recognition is to “know” suffering while it is happening. That is when anxiety, worry, frustration, pain, difficulty, sadness, despair have arisen within us our first step is to recognize it, that recognition is an action, the next step is to be aware that you have recognized it (another conscious task…that happens very fast).
The whole process hinges upon us seeing that in our immediate experience we are liking and disliking which is a form of clinging or repelling what is happening in our experience and this is the “cause” of suffering (not desires -- the clinging to hold onto or reject what is in our immediate experience is the crux that creates the ball of chain to continue down towards more suffering.
Once we begin to see this process in action in ourselves we can loosen the grip or relax our reaction to get rid of it, this is ”cessation of suffering” and this is a noble action because it leads to freedom from anxiety, worry, sadness that are the consequences of our clinging to what we like or rejecting what we dislike. We don’t control our likes and dislikes they control us. My main point is that these noble tasks of recognizing, seeing, and understanding lead to our greater well being through our conscious actions of responding to our day to day moment to moment experience of life.
Let me play devil's advocate for a moment. Sure, if we manage to get rid of our desires, or clinging, then we also get rid of anxieties and fears. Would we also not get rid at the same time of what makes a human life interesting and worth living? Things like relationships, striving for justice, pursuing meaningful projects, and the like?
Stoicism suffers from a bit of the same problem, but at least it recognizes that so-called externals do have value, and it puts the highest value on virtue, which is a pro-social attitude.
It is foolish to try and “get rid” of our desires — that is not the aim of the practice and it is a misunderstanding. All of what life offers up to us is for us to experience fully without clinging or rejecting — but to simply experience it and enjoy these events as they happen and to notice their impermanence ….because everything comes and goes and we are in a constant process of becoming. This is my take on The Buddha’s teaching that has been gleaned from my experience with my teachers whom Stephen Batchelor is one of them and a major contributor to my learning……Just as Donald Robertson and Massimo Pigliucci (you) are my guides of Stoicism so to is Stephen Batchelor a great teacher of understanding what The Buddha was pointing to and not what the cultural conditioning of Buddhism that has been as taught as a belief system.
Thank you again brightening my morning!
I went through a period where I studied Buddhism and Yoga. The main goal of each seemed to be to escape from the endless cycle of rebirth/reincarnation. With our modern understanding that we end at death, it seems mission accomplished, to be a bit glib. I think both have value to offer, and I still love a good yoga class, but not as philosophies of life in their orthodox forms.
I know some modern Buddhist are grappling with these issues too, and secular Buddhism is quite interesting. Stephen Batchelor's books Buddhism Without Beliefs and Alone With Others - An Existential Approach to Buddhism are worth reading if you are interested in how a modern practitioner grappled with these issues.
Andrew, thanks for the kind words! Yes, there are interesting approaches to secular Buddhism. I would add Bob Wright's Why Buddhism is True and Owen Flanagan's The Bodhisattva's Brain : Buddhism Naturalized.
I second Stephen Batchelor, especially Buddhism Without beliefs.
I think I fall into the causal continuity camp. However, I don't believe that causal continuity somehow re-manifests as a new individual. Rather, the effects of our actions continue long after we are dead and gone. Assuming there's no permanent, separate self to begin with, only the universe manifesting and re-manifesting through cause and effect (and subsequently creating the illusions of permanent, separate selves for us conscious beings), the effects of what we do in this manifestation are what live on and are "reincarnated", so to speak.
And I suppose that view turns karma into a mere metaphor. And I'm fine with that, but I've been seeing a lot of posts in the Buddhist community lately about how if you don't believe these metaphysical things then your might as well give up on Buddhism altogether.
Religion is a bit of a drag, eh?
Nick, yes, religion is a bit of a drag. I'm good with the interpretation you suggest, but as you say, that essentially does away with the whole notion of reincarnation and karma in any strong sense of those terms.
One thing you don't mention is karma as a version of the justice that, say, Christianity seeks in an end time, judgement, reward and punishment. Suffering might be a condition of existence, but other people's actions affect the suffering (or bliss) of all. As with fear of death, solved by either chiliasm or the cycle of rebirths, the hunger that the good be rewarded and the bad punished (in contrast to the actual situation observed among humans) is handled by karma. And without a self that's consciously continued into subsequent lives, the concept of karma seems a bit disappointing. That sort of justice requires a subject to reap the rewards or suffer the punishment.
In the Christian tradition there's a deity dispensing justice. Buddhism tries to make justice self-operating, and indeed the 8-fold path describes some decent rules (grounded in human experience) that don't require divine sanction to be grounded. In that way, Buddhism is a large advance over the Christian view (rooted as it seems in a Father archetype).
What remains is to be explicit about the ground of ethics, that such (and there are other systems) as the eightfold path are rooted in human experience with no external Being or self-acting mechanism to right the lack of justice in human existence.
Yes, that's my understanding as well. I do think Buddhism is an advancement over Christianity, but the remaining metaphysical problems are enough for me not to embrace the philosophy. Mind you, pretty much every philosophy has metaphysical issues, including Stoicism. But some are more or less compatible with the modern scientific view than others.
As another who dabbled in Buddhism years ago, thank you for expressing very well my own unarticulated thoughts . Also thank you for your mention of Peter Adamson’s “A History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps”, which sounds like a good podcast for me to follow, and perhaps a good book series for me to read. In the eighties I read a couple of such histories- by Bertrand Russell and more expansively by Frederick Coplestone. I need a refresher on the topic!
How did you find the Coplestone series? I am looking for a something to fill in the gaps in my education, to give me a feel for the overall history of philosophy, as tool with which to assess which philosophers to read (and in what order) . . .
It’s been over thirty years since I read Coplestone. I’m an autodidact, and this was early in my self education, so I can’t compare it with other series. But I found it readable and engaging, or I would not have finished it. I’m now following the podcasts that Massimo mentioned, I listened to three episodes so far on Stoicism, and find it worthwhile
Bob, Russell's History was certainly entertaining, but also biased. For instance, he definitely didn't like the Stoics! Peter's series is top notch.
Indeed, he was quite opinionated, which at least made for an honest expression of his views. Another book that greatly influenced my thinking, but biased my opinion of certain philosophical traditions was Popper’s “The Open Society and its Enemies”. I read it because his political philosophy and mine seemed to overlap, but of course he had thought it out a lot more carefully and consistently than I had. Popper was also the first philosopher of science I read, with “Objective Knowledge”. I should reread him and Russell once I retire
Yes, Popper too was opinionated but smart. That's what you want in a philosopher. We may disagree, but then I need to carefully think about why...