And this is contradicted by their doctrine that we create our lives fully and should take responsibility for our own births. — Gregory

Taking responsibility is not the business of the so called so-self. the logic goes more like this: If there is no self, then there is no one to take responsibility. The act of taking responsibility can be understood as the illusory self, which is a construct (a personality constituted by language and cultural institutions), which is a necessary condition for the self effacing finality of nirvana.

The basic message I believe is that you are simply not who you think you are. So is then anatman a tool in the sense that this will disentangle you from yourselves and your own grasp? — Gregory

The disentanglement is Of the empirical self. The no-self, as odd as this sounds, is never put in play, so to speak, for it is a kind of nothing, a nothing relative to our gaze. The Buddha nature is always there, pure and inviolable. How does it, then, come under the "spell" of delusory thinking? this is unanswerable, since to speak and answer would be a deployment of the delusional self. This is not unlike the Wittgensteinian objection that logic cannot be known, for this would require logic to make it so.
It is a metaphysical problem.

2) the world is illusion

This is contradicted by the idea that Nirvana is now, is here. To see the world without mental essences is a goal of meditation. The result is seeing the world for what it is. But what happens to maya? How can you treat the world functionally as real while doubting what it is? — Gregory

But this "seeing the world without mental essences" is just part of the illusion, this kind of thinking that divides and builds meanings out of "differences". Derrida is in the background on this issue. If there is anyone who makes this case, it is Derrida. See his Structures, Signs and Play (and certainly Not his "Difference" which will simply irritate. Think of illusion as, not simply words as tags on things; rather, it is experience, the past/present/future construction is the very foundation of the world. No wonder serious meditation is so hard to achieve. Daunting at best, for one is not just trying to calm the mind. One is quite literally attempting to erase/nullify/annihilate the world.

Daunting at best, for one is not just trying to calm the mind. One is quite literally attempting to erase/nullify/annihilate the world. — Constance

To annihilate the world in this sense would mean erasing our internal model of the world. Clearly, that's not the case and practice is more like temporarily bypassing particular neural networks, perhaps strengthening some and weakening others in a more permanent way.

I know middle class Westerners seem to fetishize Buddhism but is there any good reason we should care what it (in any of its fecund forms) says? Asking for a friend...

It's a religion like any other, and like other religions, I think it's built on some valuable insights. The concept and experience of 'emptiness', for instance, has value because it can lead to well-being (when not fetishized).

How can you treat the world functionally as real while doubting what it is? — Gregory

Supposedly by realizing the that world and everything above, below, and to each side of it is empty.

The concept and experience of 'emptiness', for instance, has value because it can lead to well-being (when not fetishized). — praxis

Do you think this can be demonstrated?

Absolutely, yes, although not in a way that is likely to be agreeable to a... fetishizer.

Various studies have been conducted on the suppression of the neural default mode network.

suppression of the neural default mode network. — praxis

OK. What on earth is that?

Absolutely, yes, although not in a way that is likely to be agreeable to a... fetishizer. — praxis

Isn't it the fetishizers who have a Jones for evidence based everything these days? I think it's the denigrators and vandals like me who doubt evidence. :razz:

What on earth is that? — Tom Storm

Good question. It's worth looking into, imo. :grin:

The world is a vast supermarket of ideas and lifestyle options. I need a good reason to pursue neuroscience which is not a subject of much interest to me. Seems it's like quantum mechanics for spawning a range of spurious notions amongst laity.

Jeeez, ya blokes from daunundda are lazy:

Meditation has been associated with relatively reduced activity in the default mode network, a brain network implicated in self-related thinking and mind wandering. However, previous imaging studies have typically compared meditation to rest despite other studies reporting differences in brain activation patterns between meditators and controls at rest. Moreover, rest is associated with a range of brain activation patterns across individuals that has only recently begun to be better characterized. Therefore, this study compared meditation to another active cognitive task, both to replicate findings that meditation is associated with relatively reduced default mode network activity, and to extend these findings by testing whether default mode activity was reduced during meditation beyond the typical reductions observed during effortful tasks. In addition, prior studies have used small groups, whereas the current study tested these hypotheses in a larger group. Results indicate that meditation is associated with reduced activations in the default mode network relative to an active task in meditators compared to controls. Regions of the default mode showing a group by task interaction include the posterior cingulate/precuneus and anterior cingulate cortex. These findings replicate and extend prior work indicating that suppression of default mode processing may represent a central neural process in long-term meditation, and suggest that meditation leads to relatively reduced default mode processing beyond that observed during another active cognitive task.

Full article: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4529365/

Jeeez, ya blokes from daunundda are lazy: — praxis

Yeah I am but I've seen this some of this stuff already. I was thinking more about Buddhism specifically. Mediation doesn't care if you are Sam Harris or the Dalai Lama.

Emptiness is the core of Buddhism.

Emptiness is the core of Buddhism. — praxis

And the core of nihilism. Or at least some expressions thereof.

You're claiming that the core of a religion is nihilistic in nature? :chin:

I know middle class Westerners seem to fetishize Buddhism but is there any good reason we should care what it (in any of its fecund forms) says? — Tom Storm

You are a self-described picker and chooser from the philosophy bin of life. I would think you've been exposed to eastern philosophy enough here on the forum and elsewhere to know whether or not you think it has anything to offer intellectually or spiritually. If it doesn't, toss it back in the bin. But if it does, you'd be foolish not to take it with you.

You're claiming that the core of a religion is nihilistic in nature? :chin: — praxis

You make that sounds like a bad thing. :wink:

But no, I was responding to what you said about emptiness - it was just a quip and isn't really germane to this thread.

If it doesn't, toss it back in the bin. But if it does, you'd be foolish not to take it with you. — T Clark

One man's trash is another man's treasure. Or so I am told.

Philosophy as dumpster diving. I can get behind that.

Philosophy as dumpster diving. I can get behind that. — Tom Storm

I didn't really like the whole "philosophy bin of life" metaphor. I tried to think of a better one, but couldn't find it. I like yours better.

I've always been partial to cherry-picking myself, metaphorically that is.

I have often pondered Buddhism and emptiness and how this sits with nihilism - perhaps passive nihilism. Nietzsche (admittedly with an inadequate understanding) thought Buddhism expressed nihility. But might there not a connection between Nietzsche's goal of self-overcoming and citta-bhavana the Buddhist concept of (mind-cultivation). In used to read Suzuki on Buddhism in the 1980's. This quote resonated and I have often adapted it (perhaps controversially) for some expressions of nihilism.

Emptiness which is conceptually liable to be mistaken for sheer nothingness is in fact the reservoir of infinite possibilities.
D.T. Suzuki

I like the Suzuki quote. Everything changes and therefore everything is empty. Without change nothing is possible.

I don't think that any religion is about self-overcoming. I recently read a quote in a book that went something like, "If you don't master yourself someone else will be your master." I think that's true, and that religion is all about someone else being your master.

I don't think that any religion is about self-overcoming — praxis

Interesting. I can't help feeling that religions, when practiced from a certain perspective - are often about overcoming or transcendence - perhaps as simple as overcoming your baser self or your more human urges, but right through to attaining enlightenment. Of course this all depends on how one constructs those ideas and no doubt there is a spectrum of possibilities.

Of course this all depends on how one constructs those ideas and no doubt there is a spectrum of possibilities. — Tom Storm

As far as I can tell, all religions each claim the correct constitution.

Ex mea sententia the madhyamaka (the middle way) is the crux, the heart and soul, of Buddhism and anything in/outside it that contradicts the madhyamaka doctrine is, hasta be, false.

:halo: :up:

:blush:

no self — Gregory

Aka anatta - something other than truth, oui mon ami?

To annihilate the world in this sense would mean erasing our internal model of the world. Clearly, that's not the case and practice is more like temporarily bypassing particular neural networks, perhaps strengthening some and weakening others in a more permanent way. — praxis

Meditation is not to be understood with talk about materialist reductions. The idea is absurd, for all things become the same thing. As if being in love or experiencing plague symptoms are analytically reducible to regionalized brain functions. No, the matter has to be approached phenomenologically. Buddha, the quintessential phenomenologist, it is said, and I believe this right, takes the world as it appears, and the annihilation of the world in the context of Buddhist thought sees the world as a construct that can be put down, ignored, and this is a affectively revelatory event of profound dimensions.

there is no understanding of Eastern thought apart from this essentially phenomenological description of the world.

1) there is no self — Gregory

What is meant by "self". As in, what are the limits of the self? Is it the physical body? Because if not, if the self is as fundamental as the energy and matter that makes up one's self as we exist in human form, then self extends to all matter and energy in the universe. In essence, in this case self is equivalent to the universe.

2) the world is illusion — Gregory

What is meant by the "world"? Is it everything exterior to the self (the physical body). Or is ones body included in and a subset of: the entire world/universe?

These two tenets are equivalent in that I have reduced them to the same question. What is world and what is self? And how do we distinguish the two relative to eachother?

For me there is no distinction other than what you choose to believe. You can choose to be all things (the entire universe) but then you must acknowledge all things as fundamentally the same thing.

Or the second option: you may put up partitions. You may delineate self from other - but then you must justify why other is different from you.

For me the sensible answer is both options simultaneously. It is obvious that you are part of a whole and constructed of the same "stuff", but also unique in that you are a human having experienced a specific time span and specific places.

Duality is prudent to see all aspects of the truth. The truth is not black or white. It is both, as well as the grey in-between. The "whole". Not the "cherry-picked".

No, the matter has to be approached phenomenologically. — Constance

The matter, like any matter, can be approached from various angles, including scientific or “materialist.”

Can you explain why you believe it has to be approached phenomenologcally?