• About me
  • About this blog
  • Comment rules
  • Other writings

Love of All Wisdom

~ Philosophy through multiple traditions

Love of All Wisdom

Tag Archives: Disengaged Buddhism

Freedom and the good life

24 Sunday Jan 2021

Posted by Amod Lele in External Goods, Flourishing, Human Nature, Self, Self-Discipline

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Alasdair MacIntyre, Alessandro Ferrara, Aristotle, Ashleigh Brilliant, Ashley MacIsaac, authenticity, Disengaged Buddhism, Immanuel Kant, Martin Hägglund, qualitative individualism

Following from his distinction between freedom and necessity, Martin Hägglund tells us that “The rational aim, then, is to reduce the realm of necessity and increase the realm of freedom.” (223) The rational aim of politics, perhaps. But the Disengaged Buddhists remind us how many of life’s problems politics cannot solve. And these problems go right to Hägglund’s own core concepts of freedom and necessity.

Hägglund misses the point expressed in Ashleigh Brilliant’s wonderful epigram: freedom is not the goal, but you need freedom before you can decide what the goal is. Freedom itself, as the simple ability to do what one finds fulfilling, is empty of content. The most important thing is not merely to have room to pursue our ends, but to actually pursue them, which requires we think about which ends are really ours, which are really worth pursuing – and then actually do so. Free time is not the end, it is a means to the end. Alessandro Ferrara puts the point well in his Reflective Authenticity. Ferrara articulates the distinction that I have referred to as quantitative versus qualitative individualism, referring to each as autonomy and authenticity respectively – and he makes the key point that “authenticity presupposes autonomy.” (6, emphasis his) Without the ability to self-determine, a Hägglundian freedom, we cannot be our true selves. But that freedom is only a necessary condition for true self-expression, not a sufficient one!

Continue reading →

McMindfulness and Engaged Buddhism: the twin innovations

22 Sunday Dec 2019

Posted by Amod Lele in Foundations of Ethics, M.T.S.R., Metaphilosophy, Mindfulness, Modernized Buddhism, Politics

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

Amanda Ream, authenticity, Buddhist Peace Fellowship, Disengaged Buddhism, Engaged Buddhism, Ron Purser, William Edelglass

Ron Purser’s critique of McMindfulness is in line with William Edelglass’s critique of the “happiness turn” in Western Buddhism. Purser and Edelglass are both right to note that something new, less traditional, is going on in modern mindfulness. For there are parts of Buddhism that secular mindfulness leaves out, intentionally. Purser is right about that: right mindfulness (sammāsati) is only one part of the traditional Noble Eightfold Path, and mindfulness practices often leave out the rest. And so he is also right to ask the question:

what is mindfulness for? Is it merely to attain better health, higher exam scores, focused concentration at work, or “self-compassion?” Is it a medical form of self-improvement? In a way, posing the question is tantamount to asking what constitutes “the good life,” the traditional basis of philosophy. (79)

Indeed it is. And that is of course a difficult question. But it is important that the traditional Buddhist answers to that question are no closer to Purser’s anti-capitalist activism (or to Edelglass’s concern to alleviate “deprivation, violence, illness, racism, and environmental degradation”) than they are to secular mindfulness. I suspect they are further away from it. Continue reading →

In defence of McMindfulness

08 Sunday Dec 2019

Posted by Amod Lele in Anger, Attachment and Craving, Early and Theravāda, Economics, External Goods, Mahāyāna, Meditation, Mindfulness, Modernized Buddhism, Politics

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

Disengaged Buddhism, Four Noble Truths, Jon Kabat-Zinn, Pali suttas, Ron Purser, Śāntideva

The mainstreaming of mindfulness meditation continues at a rapid clip. According to the Center for Disease Control, in the years 2012 to 2017 the percentage of adults meditating in the United States more than tripled, to 17%. The American market for provision of meditation-related services is now worth $1 billion and growing.

With any phenomenon this mainstream, one expects a backlash. Sure enough, there have been a number of pieces appearing recently that chastise programs like BU’s under the name “corporate mindfulness”, or more pithily, “McMindfulness”. Continue reading →

Disengaged Buddhism article is published

18 Monday Nov 2019

Posted by Amod Lele in Early and Theravāda, M.T.S.R., Mahāyāna, Modernized Buddhism, Politics

≈ Comments Off on Disengaged Buddhism article is published

Tags

Aśvaghoṣa, Candrakīrti, Disengaged Buddhism, Engaged Buddhism, Jātakas, Pali suttas, Śāntideva

It’s been a long time in the making, but my article on disengaged Buddhism is finally published. It’s at the free online Journal of Buddhist Ethics, so you can go read it for yourself.

I’ll say a bit here about what you can expect to find. Some of the article goes over territory I’ve already covered on Love of All Wisdom and the IPB: I discuss Aśvaghoṣa’s worries about severity, Śāntideva’s rejection of external goods, the Cakkavatti Sīhanāda Sutta’s detached attitude to time. The article does this in more detail than the blogs have, and I also show similar ideas in other suttas and jātakas and from Candrakīrti.

The article also responds more directly to existing engaged Buddhist scholarship. Engaged Buddhist scholars have, so far, been the people actually doing constructive Buddhist ethics. They are not merely describing what Buddhists happen to believe but prescribing a Buddhist way of life, and that much is something I think we need more of. What I don’t think they do nearly enough is think about or respond to the points made by the likes of Śāntideva and Aśvaghoṣa. The article explains why they should.

So the article isn’t itself a work of constructive Buddhist ethics; I’m not taking a position on engagement or disengagement there. What I am doing is reminding other people doing constructive Buddhist ethics about a large body of ideas that they ignore or silence, and urging them to take those ideas more seriously. My own constructive position on these questions is complicated. I’ve started to take some of it up on the blog – for example, I think there is some empirical confirmation for the Disengaged Buddhists’ psychological claims. That isn’t the whole story, though, and you can expect to hear more about my constructive views in the years to come. I am proud of the article as a starting point.

Cross-posted at the Indian Philosophy Blog.

Does Śāntideva think bodhisattvas are happy?

24 Sunday Feb 2019

Posted by Amod Lele in Compassion, External Goods, Flourishing, Foundations of Ethics, Happiness, Hermeneutics, Mahāyāna, Patient Endurance

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

AAR, Candrakīrti, conferences, Disengaged Buddhism, Madhyamaka, Matthieu Ricard, Śāntideva, Stephen Harris, Thomas Kuhn, William Edelglass

A while ago William Edelglass put up a paper for discussion on academia.edu about Śāntideva and happiness. I made some suggestions for changes in a way that turned out to be unhelpful, since William informed me that the paper was already on its way to publication and he had only put it up by accident! Now, though, the paper has been published, as a chapter in David McMahan and Erik Braun’s valuable and readable volume on meditation, Buddhism and science. So perhaps now is the time to take my old suggestions and reframe them here as part of an ongoing public discussion.

William’s purpose in the chapter is to critique what he calls the “happiness turn” in Western Buddhism, in which Buddhist advocates cite Buddhism’s ability to make its practitioners happy. The most prominent such case is Matthieu Ricard, the Tibetan monk whose fMRI scans showed record levels of activity in the parts of the brain associated with happiness. William thinks this emphasis on happiness misrepresents significant elements of Buddhism, and cites Śāntideva at length to prove his case.

Overall, I do not find myself convinced. Continue reading →

The psychological case for disengaged Buddhism

05 Sunday Aug 2018

Posted by Amod Lele in Anger, Early and Theravāda, External Goods, Fear, Happiness, Health, Mahāyāna, Politics, Psychology

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

Aśvaghoṣa, Boston University, Candrakīrti, Disengaged Buddhism, Donald Trump, Nick (Nattavudh) Powdthavee, Pali suttas, Philip Brickman, Richard Easterlin, Śāntideva, Steven Collins

My project on disengaged Buddhism has now been submitted to a journal. It’s undergone several revisions by this point. One of the most important such revisions was suggested unanimously by BU’s magnificent CURA seminar. In an earlier draft I had attempted to emphasize the contemporary constructive significance of disengaged Buddhism by noting how its ideas were corroborated by some contemporary psychological research. The seminar participants thought that discussion of psychology did not strengthen the paper because I didn’t have the space to defend them fully; the paper would stand best discussing disengaged Buddhists’ claims in their historical context and letting those claims stand on their own.

I think they were right, and I removed the psychology discussion from the paper – a little sadly, as I thought the psychological case for disengaged Buddhism was worth making. Fortunately, I have another place to make it: here. Continue reading →

Listening to contemporary disengaged voices

22 Sunday Jul 2018

Posted by Amod Lele in Early and Theravāda, M.T.S.R., Modernized Buddhism, Politics

≈ 9 Comments

Tags

Aśvaghoṣa, Buddhist Peace Fellowship, Burma/Myanmar, Disengaged Buddhism, Engaged Buddhism, George Bond, Joseph Cheah, Judith Simmer-Brown, race, Thomas Tweed, United States

My upcoming paper on disengaged Buddhism focuses on classical Indian texts that engaged Buddhist scholarship has generally silenced. As I read more, though, I come to see that contemporary Asian and Asian-American Buddhists also have politically disengaged tendencies, which modern politically active scholarship – not only Buddhist – also tends to silence.

I first noted this tendency of silencing in Judith Simmer-Brown’s introduction to the Buddhist Peace Fellowship, the leading engaged Buddhist organization she helped found. The group, she says, “was concerned that Buddhist practice centers and groups had become entirely removed from the social and political issues of the day: some teachers and organizations were even actively discouraging political involvement.” (69) And that’s it for those “teachers and organizations”. Why were they discouraging political involvement? What did they say? What were their names? No answers are forthcoming; they receive no voice. What we hear instead is the story of how Simmer-Brown and her American fellows put together a politically engaged group in defiance of their teachers.

The tendency plays out in a different way in Joseph Cheah‘s Race and Religion in American Buddhism. Continue reading →

The political path vs. the Buddhist path

29 Sunday Oct 2017

Posted by Amod Lele in Anger, Early and Theravāda, Gentleness, Mahāyāna, Politics, Serenity

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Aśvaghoṣa, conferences, Dalai Lama XIV, Disengaged Buddhism, Engaged Buddhism, Frédéric Richard, IABS, Stephen Jenkins, Tibet, Tibetan Youth Congress

I presented about Disengaged Buddhism at the International Association of Buddhist Studies conference in August. My talk was paired with a presentation by Frédéric Richard on a topic that did not initially appear to be related: the Tibetan government in exile. As it turned out, the papers proved fascinating mirror images of each other. Continue reading →

Karmic punishment is not a good thing

23 Sunday Jul 2017

Posted by Amod Lele in Early and Theravāda, Foundations of Ethics, Free Will, German Tradition, God, Karma, Mahāyāna, Metaphysics, Morality, Patient Endurance, Politics, Self

≈ 7 Comments

Tags

Abhidhamma, Buddhaghosa, Charles Goodman, Damien Keown, Disengaged Buddhism, Immanuel Kant, Jātakas, justice, Justin Whitaker, Pali suttas, Śāntideva, Sutta Nipāta

I’m continuing to examine Justin Whitaker‘s interpretation of Pali Buddhist ethics as Kantian moral law. I argued last time that the concept of dhamma does not serve in these texts as a universal, trans-human moral law. Here I want to take a similar look at the concept of kamma – better known in English as karma.

Justin claims that for Kant “the Moral Law is universal, concerned with all (rational) beings, and is holistic in its conception of morality as a guarantor to a just realm of ends (supported by the moral argument for belief in God).” (47) I think this interpretation of Kant is missing something in that Kant does not view the moral argument as demonstrating that there actually is a guarantee of cosmic justice, only that we must act as if there is (it is a regulative ideal). But I’ll leave that aside here because I want to focus on the comparison to Buddhism. Continue reading →

Disengaged Buddhism in the era of Trump

16 Sunday Apr 2017

Posted by Amod Lele in Anger, Early and Theravāda, External Goods, Mahāyāna, Modernized Buddhism, Politics, Psychology, Serenity

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

autobiography, conferences, Disengaged Buddhism, Donald Trump, Engaged Buddhism, Four Noble Truths, George W. Bush, IABS, Pali suttas, race, S.N. Goenka, Śāntideva, United States

Cross-posted at the Indian Philosophy Blog.

Śāntideva’s anti-political views are very commonly missed by Buddhist scholars today, especially constructive or theological ones, who are excited by the Engaged Buddhist embrace of political action. He is hardly alone among classical Indian Buddhists in expressing them. So last September I proposed a presentation to the International Association of Buddhist Studies (IABS), which I intended to turn into a paper, explaining the importance of these anti-political views and entitled “Disengaged Buddhism”.

I was expecting Hillary Clinton to win the American election. Continue reading →

← Older posts

Welcome to Love of All Wisdom.

I invite you to leave comments on my blog, even - or especially - if I have no idea who you are. Philosophy is a conversation, and I invite you to join it with me; I welcome all comers (provided they follow a few basic rules). I typically make a new post every other Sunday. If you'd like to be notified when a new post is posted, you can get email notifications whenever I add something new via the link further down in this sidebar. You can also follow this blog on Facebook or Twitter. Or if you use RSS, you can get updates through the RSS feed.

Recent Comments

  • Benjamin C. Kinney on Literature as representation and rasa
  • Nathan on The Mary Ellen Carter and the secret of happiness
  • loveofallwisdom on The Mary Ellen Carter and the secret of happiness
  • loveofallwisdom on The Mary Ellen Carter and the secret of happiness
  • JimWilton on The Mary Ellen Carter and the secret of happiness

Post Tags

20th century academia Alasdair MacIntyre Aristotle ascent/descent Augustine autobiography Buddhaghosa Canada conferences Confucius conservatism Disengaged Buddhism Engaged Buddhism Evan Thompson Four Noble Truths Friedrich Nietzsche G.W.F. Hegel gender identity Immanuel Kant intimacy/integrity justice Karl Marx Ken Wilber law Martha Nussbaum Mencius modernity Pali suttas pedagogy Plato rebirth religion Siddhattha Gotama (Buddha) T.R. (Thill) Raghunath technology theodicy Thomas Aquinas Thomas Kuhn Thomas P. Kasulis United States utilitarianism Śaṅkara Śāntideva

Categories

  • African Thought (11)
  • Applied Phil (236)
    • Death (36)
    • Family (34)
    • Food (17)
    • Friends (12)
    • Health (20)
    • Place (21)
    • Play (6)
    • Politics (132)
    • Sex (18)
    • Work (31)
  • Asian Thought (367)
    • Buddhism (265)
      • Early and Theravāda (103)
      • Mahāyāna (111)
      • Modernized Buddhism (78)
    • East Asia (80)
      • Confucianism (51)
      • Daoism (12)
      • Shinto (1)
    • South Asia (125)
      • Bhakti Poets (3)
      • Cārvāka-Lokāyata (5)
      • Epics (15)
      • Jainism (23)
      • Modern Hinduism (35)
      • Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika (6)
      • Sāṃkhya-Yoga (13)
      • Vedānta (33)
      • Vedas and Mīmāṃsā (7)
  • Blog Admin (24)
  • Method (221)
    • M.T.S.R. (128)
    • Metaphilosophy (147)
  • Practical Philosophy (320)
    • Action (10)
    • Aesthetics (37)
    • Emotion (135)
      • Anger (28)
      • Attachment and Craving (20)
      • Compassion (5)
      • Despair (3)
      • Disgust (3)
      • Faith (17)
      • Fear (5)
      • Grief (5)
      • Happiness (46)
      • Hope (14)
      • Pleasure (25)
      • Shame and Guilt (6)
    • External Goods (43)
    • Flourishing (75)
    • Foundations of Ethics (99)
    • Karma (42)
    • Morality (58)
    • Virtue (134)
      • Courage (2)
      • Generosity (10)
      • Gentleness (5)
      • Gratitude (10)
      • Honesty (13)
      • Humility (22)
      • Leadership (4)
      • Mindfulness (12)
      • Patient Endurance (26)
      • Self-Discipline (6)
      • Serenity (24)
      • Zest (4)
  • Practice (101)
    • Karmic Redirection (5)
    • Meditation (28)
    • Monasticism (36)
    • Physical Exercise (2)
    • Prayer (13)
    • Reading and Recitation (10)
    • Rites (19)
    • Therapy (9)
  • Theoretical Philosophy (309)
    • Consciousness (14)
    • Epistemology (102)
      • Certainty and Doubt (14)
      • Prejudices and "Intuitions" (25)
    • Free Will (17)
    • God (61)
    • Hermeneutics (47)
    • Human Nature (25)
    • Logic (27)
      • Dialectic (15)
    • Metaphysics (84)
    • Philosophy of Language (17)
    • Self (60)
    • Supernatural (48)
    • Truth (57)
    • Unconscious Mind (13)
  • Uncategorized (1)
  • Western Thought (388)
    • Analytic Tradition (87)
    • Christianity (134)
      • Early Factions (8)
      • Protestantism (20)
      • Roman Catholicism (45)
    • French Tradition (46)
    • German Tradition (81)
    • Greek and Roman Tradition (103)
      • Epicureanism (23)
      • Neoplatonism (2)
      • Pre-Socratics (5)
      • Skepticism (1)
      • Sophists (6)
      • Stoicism (17)
    • Islam (34)
      • Mu'tazila (2)
      • Salafi (3)
      • Sufism (8)
    • Judaism (33)
    • Natural Science (81)
      • Biology (18)
      • Philosophy of Science (46)
    • Social Science (130)
      • Economics (23)
      • Psychology (51)

Recent Posts

  • Literature as representation and rasa
  • The Mary Ellen Carter and the secret of happiness
  • Would eternal life be meaningless?
  • Defending the removal of suffering
  • Freedom and the good life

Popular posts

  • One and a half noble truths?
  • Wishing George W. Bush well
  • Do Speculative Realists want us to be Chinese?
  • Why I am not a right-winger
  • On faith in tooth relics

Basic concepts

  • Ascent and Descent
  • Intimacy and integrity
  • Ascent-descent and intimacy-integrity together
  • Perennial questions?
  • Virtuous and vicious means
  • Dialectical and demonstrative argument
  • Chastened intellectualism and practice
  • Yavanayāna Buddhism: what it is
  • Why worry about contradictions?
  • The first philosophy blogger

Personal favourites

  • Can philosophy be a way of life? Pierre Hadot (1922-2010)
  • James Doull and the history of ethical motivation
  • Praying to something you don't believe in
  • What does postmodernism perform?
  • Why I'm getting married

Archives

Search this site

All posts, pages and metadata copyright 2020 Amod Lele. Comments copyright 2020 their comment authors. Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike (BY-NC-SA) licence.

Proudly powered by WordPress Theme: Chateau by Ignacio Ricci.