Author: DavidWebster

Meanwhile, at American Buddhist Perspective..

On By DavidWebsterIn BuddhismLeave a comment

More interesting stuff from Justin, on models of thought in Buddhism:

I am often asked “why ‘impose’ Western models of thought on Buddhism?” as if discussing the nature of Buddhist philosophy or ethics is some sort of new colonialist/imperialist activity. The fact is, the Buddha used countless models, analogies, and illustrative examples in his teachings. READ MORE

When I have more energy, I think there is much to be said on how Buddhism engages models of teaching… Till then, I’ll make do with a quote from the Mahaparinibbana Sutta;

I have set forth the Dhamma without making any distinction of esoteric and exoteric doctrine; there is nothing, Ananda, with regard to the teachings that the Tathagata holds to the last with the closed fist of a teacher who keeps some things back.

Rabbi Jason Rosenberg from Tampa reviews Dispirited..

On By DavidWebsterIn Book, GeneralLeave a comment

At http://cbatampa.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/but-not-religious.html, Rabbi Jason Rosenberg from Tampa reviews Dispirited.

Below is a flavour of the piece…

There’s always a lot of talk about the idea of being “spiritual but not religious.” It certainly is a fairly common refrain, and it’s no surprise that proponents (and leaders) of organized religion are often against it. I’ll admit to having pretty mixed feelings on the matter*. On the one hand, I’m really not all that eager to attack people who are, more or less, minding their own business. It’s one of the ways in which religious people like myself often allow themselves to engage in mean-spirited pettiness. Not very religious, or spiritual, frankly.

* If you read this blog at all regularly, this should come as no shock to you!

And, maybe more significantly, it’s often not fair. At the very least, it’s using the same broad brush that many of us religious types hate being used on us. I mean, when someone says, “religion is all superstitious nonsense,” I usually protest about the word “all.” It’s manifestly true that some religion is superstitious nonsense. Maybe much of it.  READ THE FULL REVIEW…

Another interesting review – it doesn’t wholly agree, but engages with what seem serious questions..

Mortality..

On By DavidWebsterIn Death2 Comments

[Apologies for slow blogging / response of late. Those who know me will be aware of the reasons behind this. It may continue for some time, I fear. I will probably continue to tweet due twitter’s brevity, but blog posts – and certainly responses – will be fewer/slower.]

Below is a quote from the Pabbatopama Sutta, found in the Samyutta Nikaya (of the Buddhist Pali Canon). I omit the second part- which offers post-death rewards to those who follow the Buddha, Dhamma & Sangha, not because it’s irrelevant, but because it is not my primary concern here.

All religions (and quite a few things that claim not to be) seem to offer some rescue from death. I am tempted to see it as one of those features that distinguish religious phenomena from religion-like socio-political phenomena. What I do like, below, however, is the sense of inevitability- that it rolls over us all. It reminds me of Matthew 5.45 (For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. ESV, 2001), and reminds us that irrespective of post-mortem claims, this world is indifferent to us.

While others may choose to focus on the consolations that faith offers post-death, I am much more interested in this indifference. It seems instructive. Post-death threats and promises have not promoted ethics, and many religious thinkers have also taken this view. I am sure that there are those who believe (and claim evidence, but this is another matter), to an extent, that death is survivable: but I am not interested in that. The evidence is sketchy (at very best), and this world is without us once we die. It is this world that interests me. A mortal being is what we are to this world. Even if we look beyond death, this world is a place where we are mortal. It is only effected by what we do before death. What happens beyond is irrelevant.

Like massive boulders

mountains pressing against the sky

moving in from all sides

crushing the four directions,

so aging and death

come rolling over living beings:

 

noble warriors, brahmans, merchants

workers, outcastes, & scavengers

They spare nothing

They trample everything.

 

Here elephant troops can hold no ground

nor can chariots or infantry

nor can a battle of wit

or wealth win out

http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/sn/sn03/sn03.025.than.html

SBNR….

On By DavidWebsterIn Book, New Age5 Comments

The objections there have been, in places I have seen and some others that I suspect exist, to Dispirited, seem to partly have coalesced around my concerns over the term Spiritual But Not Religious (SBNR).

Another is my seemingly conflation of SBNR and ‘new age’ practices/beliefs. This is simpler to address. There are parts of the new age movement that see themselves as part of religious traditions, and identify as religious. Those that don’t (and this is a non-trivial portion of the new-age) seem to, by default or explicitly, fall within the SBNR category: it is a form of spirituality that asserts a non-religious affiliation

Which brings me back to the original point. I suggest in Dispirited that being spiritual is a religious undertaking. It is part of what being religious actually means. Of course there are other aspects, such as the formal, social and institutional aspects of religion: but at the heart of what religion is, what makes it a religion, rather than a belief system of another type, is the belief in a world which lies beyond the apparent material. If you assert a belief in the spirits of the dead, or angels (or, yes, even unicorns as spirit beings), or heavenly realms: I would consider these as religious claims. Of course they may also be empirical claims, but religion has always made empirical, historical and other claims. To only consider as ‘religious’ the institutionalised aspects which you happen to dislike, or have concerns about, is to ignore the actual nature of religious traditions and their history…

Sartre, Human Nature and ‘kusala’…

On By DavidWebsterIn Atheism, Philosophy8 Comments

I was re-reading Jean-Paul Sartre’s 1946 piece Existentialism Is a Humanism recently, as I headed off to explore existentialism with some 6th Formers locally. It was an interesting session, and not too doom-laden – I hope…

What struck me though, on my -re-read, was the following passage:

What do we mean by saying that existence precedes essence? We mean that man first of all exists, encounters himself, surges up in the world – and defines himself afterwards. If man as the existentialist sees him is not definable, it is because to begin with he is nothing. He will not be anything until later, and then he will be what he makes of himself. Thus, there is no human nature, because there is no God to have a conception of it. Man simply is. Not that he is simply what he conceives himself to be, but he is what he wills, and as he conceives himself after already existing – as he wills to be after that leap towards existence. Man is nothing else but that which he makes of himself. That is the first principle of existentialism.

This seems to hit the nail on the head. It lays out clearly the consequence of atheism: that we are a starting point, as humans. Without a human nature, we lay aside ideas of having an immutable spirit, or soul – or prior, spiritual form, and look to see what we can do as finite, temporally limited beings.

Photo of Sartre

This account, that tells us we have no recourse to anything but ourselves, is the opening up of freedom. Of course, Sartre and other existentialists (including the religious ones) are very aware that such freedom is far from unproblematic. Freedom in the absence of authority is, in part, where we derive absurdity from. We must choose. But how? With no spirit guide, no Holy book, no metaphysics which can guide morals, we are bereft of guidance.

Yet we must still choose.

This bracing circumstance may seem like a burden, but I want – in future posts – to see if we can employ some Buddhist ideas to help see where it might lead. The primary one of these will be the idea of ‘good’ action as being kusala. In The Philosophy of Desire book I begin to address the meaning of this term – and am largely in favour of the translation as ‘skilful’. This leads me, in that book, to argue for the idea of a ‘well-crafted life’ in a Buddhist context.

What would a ‘well-crafted life’, in an atheistic, existentialist world that Sartre claims we inhabit, look like? That’s what I hope to move on to in future posts..

On By DavidWebsterIn General1 Comment

From Speculative Non-Buddhists..

Glenn Wallis's avatarNon-Buddhism

What concrete answers can you offer to the following question? It is a question that goes to the very heart of this blog:

“Can Buddhist practice be the one place where we are still allowed to open our eyes to the truths that shape our lives everyday? Can it teach us not to hide from the truth inside a cloud of incense, mindfully experiencing our bodily sensations?” (Tom Pepper, comment #28 on “Running from Zombie Buddhas“)

This blog is concerned with the human. Buddhism claims, too, to be concerned with the human. So, why does this blog not simply offer a straight-forward presentation of Buddhist thought and practice? The answer is: because of the human.

Non-buddhism is an exploration of the suspicion that, as it is, Buddhism ultimately fails the human. Many reasons for that failure have been offered here, and more are on the way. They…

View original post 324 more words

Meditation and ‘Spirit’?

On By DavidWebsterIn General, Meditation, Philosophy7 Comments

An issue that keeps coming up in talks about Dispirited is that of meditation. Mindfulness meditation seems, in some contemporary settings, thoroughly secularised.

Over at http://www.bemindfulonline.com/ the Mental Health Foundation offer an online course to support people dealing with stress. They have a FAQ page that contains this statement:

Is it Religious?

No, this course does not contain anything of a religious nature. You will not be asked to accept anything except what you experience for yourself.

The question that I have been asked – in the context of being someone who wishes to look at how we might live without Spirituality is ‘Is Meditation spiritual?’

This strikes me as a very good question. Mindfulness as we now seem to refer to it has explicitly religious roots. It is based on the Pali Buddhist term Sati and arises as an integral component of the early Buddhist traditions. Nonetheless, my answer has usually been that there is scope for a non-spiritual reading of mindfulness, and that we could even offer (though here is not the place to do this, perhaps) a non-spiritual reading of much of the Pali Canon.

But am I right? Does this make sense – or is the religious inscribed into mindfulness? There might a praxis based answer located in an anthropological study of the use of it within Buddhist communities. Another answer might be derived from the key Suttas in the Canon that seem to be the basis for this practice.

The Satipaṭṭhāna (Foundations of Sati – Mindfulness) Sutta in the Majjhima Nikāya may be a good place to start. [The Mahāsatipaṭṭhāna Sutta – The Greater Foundations of Mindfulness, in the Dīgha Nikāya, adds little in this context]

Digression…

The Sutta begins with a statement that surprises some, after the usual pleasantries, in that declares the way offered has as the ‘only way’ to fully overcome the problems that Buddhism identifies (sorrow, lamentation, the way to over come dukkha). Some who think of Buddhism as inclusivist and open may be somewhat taken aback by this – it bears further examination.

The translation at http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/soma/wayof.html#discourse calls is ‘The Only Way’. In the authoritative translation of the Majjhima Nikāya by Bhikkhu Ñānamoli and Bhikkhu Bodhi (The Middle Length Discourses of The Buddha, Wisdom Books), they opt for ‘this is the direct path’. The Pali reads ekāyano ayam bhikkhave maggo – the important terms here being that of ekāyano and magga. While magga is not troublesome – being way or path – what are we to make of ekāyano? It is a compound from eka and ayana, the latter being ‘going’. Ayana maggo would be a path going (in this case to the goal). But the presence of eka here makes a difference. It is the word for ‘one’, but is often used in an indefinite sense (as noted here). We might be tempted (as Ñānamoli & Bodhi note most translators are, n.135, p.1188, inclined to do) to just have this as ‘the one way’, the ‘only way’, etc. However they invoke examples from elsewhere in the Majjhma Nikāya, and the commentary, that make things less clear. The context in the other uses of ekāyana magga make it clear that it can indicate a one-way path, or a single path that needs to be walked alone. Taking all this into account they opt for “direct path”: noting that other practices can be sidetracked, whereas “Satipaṭṭhāna leads invariably to the final goal”.

So maybe the apparent exlcusivism here is not so harsh as all that – but the efficacy and directness of the method is being brought to the fore..

Back to meditation:

The rest of the Sutta is not without issues of translation, but these don’t really impact on our concerns here hugely. Other than in one way…

The term itself for mindfulness: Sati : while this is linked to the Sanskrit Smriti (“that which is remembered”, a term used to refer to {non Śruti [‘heard’ – directly received]’} Hindu scriptures) it seems to have a base meaning of memory – which develops in Pali Buddhist usages (see Ñānamoli & Bodhi, p.1188) as attention, or awareness directed at the current or present moment. This is what seems to be what we mean by ‘mindfulness’ – present awareness or attention.

I will return to the Sutta in future posts, but what are the foundations here of Sati? The paṭṭhāna – the foundations (that which sets up) of mindfulness are listed as four-fold:

 “What are the four?

“Here, bhikkhus, a bhikkhu lives contemplating the body in the body, ardent, clearly comprehending (it) and mindful (of it), having overcome, in this world, covetousness and grief; he lives contemplating the feelings in the feelings, ardent, clearly comprehending (them) and mindful (of them), having overcome, in this world, covetousness and grief; he lives contemplating consciousness in consciousness, ardent, clearly comprehending (it) and mindful (of it), having overcome in this world covetousness and grief; he lives contemplating mental objects in mental objects, ardent, clearly comprehending (them) and mindful (of them), having overcome, in this world, covetousness and grief.”

These – the body, feelings, mind/consciousness (depending on translation), mind-objects – all seem to be consistent with a world-view that doesn’t invoke any sense of ‘spirit’ at all. I’d like to return to the detail given to awareness of death in the Sutta (another time), but here we have an account of mindfulness that seems wholly non-spiritual.

The possible issue that might cloud this is of where this leads: for some might suggest that if this leads to Nirvana – then that is itself a spiritual construct. That is a thorny question I’d like to return to as well: but the fundamental account that this practice, of self-aware, concentrated attention on the present experience of mind-body, is a means to the reduction and overcoming of suffering and misery may be an indicator that a non-spiritual account of meditation is perfectly feasible.