Category: Buddhism
-
Memo to Zennists
You can't get beyond the discursive intellect until you get to it.
-
It’s Later than You Think
Decay is inherent in all component things. Work out your salvation with diligence! This was the last word of the Tathagata. Mahāparinibbāna Sutta Substack latest.
-
Sorry, Buddhists
Ultimately, there is no spiritual 'self-help.' Proximately yes, ultimately, no. We need exogenic assistance in beating back the demons, and we need grace.
-
Sam Harris on Rational Mysticism . . .
. . . and whether the self is an illusion. Top o' the Stack.
-
The Christian ‘Anatta Doctrine’ of Lorenzo Scupoli
Buddhism and Christianity both enjoin what I will call moral self-denial. But Buddhism is more radical in that it connects moral self-denial with metaphysical self-denial. Thus Buddhism denies the very existence of the self, whereas Christianity in its orthodox versions presupposes the existence of the self: Christian self-purification falls short of eliminativism about the self.…
-
Idolatry, Desire, Buddha, Causation, and Malebranche
Substack latest. Does causation have a moral dimension? This upload was 'occasioned' (all puns intended) by my meeting with the amazing Steven Nemes yesterday at Joe's Real BBQ in charming old town Gilbert. Among the topics we discussed were idolatry, desire, and Buddhism. He strode up, gave me a hug, and handed me three books…
-
Thomas Merton on Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche
Substack latest. Excerpt: One of the worst features of some New Age types is their conceit that they are beyond duality when they are firmly enmired in it. Perhaps the truly enlightened are beyond moral dualism and can live free of moral injunctions and prohibitions. But what often happens in practice is that spiritual aspirants…
-
Buddhism, Suffering, and One Reason I am not a Buddhist
Substack latest. For Buddhism, all is dukkha, suffering. All is unsatisfactory. This, the First Noble Truth, runs contrary to ordinary modes of thinking: doesn't life routinely offer us, besides pain and misery and disappointment, intense pleasures and deep satisfactions? How then can it be true that all is unsatisfactory? For the Buddhist, however, what is ordinarily taken by the unenlightened worldling to be sukha (pleasure)…
-
Buber on Buddhism: Notes on a Trenchant Critique
Substack latest. Martin Buber's critique of Buddhism, and of mysticism generally, is formidable.
-
Against Spiritual Self-Help
Because we are spiritual beings, we pray. Because we cannot be lamps unto ourselves, we need to.
-
A Difference Between Jesus Christ and Buddha
"And Jesus wept." (John 11, 35)
-
Another Note on Buddhism and Christianity
We feel intensely and care deeply. We are immersed in life and its passions and projects, its loves and its hates. But wisdom counsels detachment and withdrawal, mentally if not physically: one does not have to haul off to a monastery to cultivate detachment. Retreat into the serene and ataraxic can however be protracted unto…
-
Buddhism, Suffering, and One Reason I am not a Buddhist
(This entry touches upon some themes discussed with greater rigor, thoroughness, and scholarliness in my "No Self? A Look at a Buddhist Argument," International Philosophical Quarterly, vol. 42, no. 4 (December 2002), pp. 453-466.) For Buddhism, all is dukkha, suffering. All is unsatisfactory. This, the First Noble Truth, runs contrary to ordinary modes of thinking: doesn't life routinely offer us, besides pain and…
-
Is Buddhism a Religion?
Julius Evola in The Doctrine of Awakening, pp. 9-10, states unequivocally, . . . Buddhism — referring always to original [Pali] Buddhism — is not a religion. This does not mean that it denies supernatural and metaphysical reality, but only that it has nothing to do with the way of regarding our relationship with this…
-
Postscript to Minimal Metaphysics for Meditation: Reply to Dr. Caiati
Vito Caiati writes, . . . while I see the wisdom in your assertion “no one is likely to take up, and stick with, serious meditation, meditation as part of a spiritual quest, unless he is the recipient of grace, a certain free granting ab extra,” I am troubled about the soteriological implications of such…