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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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).
“ 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.
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.
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?
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.
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!