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Love of All Wisdom

~ Philosophy through multiple traditions

Love of All Wisdom

Category Archives: Attachment and Craving

Happiness from politics, or, mourning in America (again)

10 Sunday Nov 2024

Posted by Amod Lele in Anger, Attachment and Craving, Compassion, Despair, Gratitude, Grief, Happiness, Mahāyāna, Patient Endurance, Politics, Serenity

≈ 3 Comments

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21st century, Donald Trump, early writings, George W. Bush, Martha Nussbaum, Prabhupada, Śāntideva, Treya Killam Wilber, United States

This is the first time I’ve ever reposted an old Love of All Wisdom post, because, despite its being nearly twenty years old now, I think it’s timelier than ever.

I first posted the following piece in 2016 when Trump won the first time – but I wrote it in 2005, after George W. Bush won the second time. I had been furious at Bush’s endorsement of torture and devastation of the climate throughout his first term I had been able to comfort myself with the thought that he didn’t really win: after all, even leaving aside all the voting irregularities, his opponent had also got more votes than he did. But in 2004 no such comfort was available to me; that disaster of a president had won a decisive victory including even the popular vote, and I had to find some way of coming to terms with the awful world he was going to keep building. I wrote this piece in my personal journal, for myself, and I have kept its original stream-of-consciousness style, reflecting my raw thought process as I processed.

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Improving on the Buddha

03 Sunday Nov 2024

Posted by Amod Lele in Attachment and Craving, Death, Disgust, Early and Theravāda, Faith, Foundations of Ethics, Hermeneutics, M.T.S.R., Mahāyāna, Metaphysics, Modernized Buddhism

≈ 11 Comments

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Abhidhamma, Aśvaghoṣa, John Dunne, Pema Chödrön, Śāntideva, Siddhattha Gotama (Buddha), Theragāthā, Tibet, Wangchuk Dorje

Pema Chödrön’s When Things Fall Apart is a beautiful and valuable work on dealing with difficult circumstances. What strikes me in it is how Chödrön – despite being a monk herself – takes a position so deeply at odds with traditional Indian Buddhism.

Chödrön refers to the traditional Buddhist “three marks” (tilakkhaṇa or trilakṣaṇa) of existence: everything is impermanent, suffering, and non-self. This idea goes back to very early texts. But Chödrön does with it is something quite different from the earlier idea:

Even though they accurately describe the rock-bottom qualities of our existence, these words sound threatening. It’s easy to get the idea that there is something wrong with impermanence, suffering, and egolessness, which is like thinking that there is something wrong with our fundamental situation. But there’s nothing wrong with impermanence, suffering, and egolessness; they can be celebrated. Our fundamental situation is joyful. (59)

Here’s the problem with this passage: the classical Indian Buddhist texts are quite clear that in fact there is something wrong with our fundamental situation. She is disagreeing with them, whether or not she acknowledges it.

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Being Ezili Freda

01 Sunday Sep 2024

Posted by Sandhya Lele in Aesthetics, Attachment and Craving, Deity, Economics, M.T.S.R., Rites, Roman Catholicism, Supernatural

≈ 6 Comments

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autobiography, Dykedon, Ezili Freda, gender, Haiti, Karen McCarthy Brown, Mama Lola, race, slavery, Vodou

On a trip last year to New Orleans, I wanted to learn more about a tradition with deep roots there: the one whose West African root is called Vodún, became Vodou in Haiti, and in New Orleans is always known as voodoo. The book I read is Karen McCarthy Brown’s Mama Lola, which focuses on the Haitian version, so I’ll use the “Vodou” spelling. Any introductory discussion of this tradition always begins with an obligatory disclaimer about Hollywood stereotypes: very little of it is about zombies, and even less is about sticking pins in dolls. But the real tradition is fascinating in its own ways.

As a philosopher, I’m nearly always most intrigued by cultural traditions in their philosophical or theological aspect: what sorts of thinking and reflection they have about the universe and how to live in it. But that’s not all such traditions have to offer, and if I confined all my interest to the philosophy, I would have to have found Vodou a disappointment. Mama Lola, the Vodou priestess Brown learned from, would regularly tell her “Karen, you think too much!” or “You ask too many questions!” Brown gets excited when a discussion between Mama Lola and another Vodou expert starts to turn to the theological, but they quickly drop the subject and never return. The tradition is all about interactions with the loa or lwa, supernatural beings with the ability to possess people in ritual trances. But neither in Mama Lola nor in anything else I’ve read or heard on the tradition, do I see Vodou practitioners think much about what exactly those beings are – even though there’s a lot to wonder about, since most Vodou practitioners consider themselves Catholics, and the relationship of the loa to the saints and angels they’re identified with, let alone to any singular God (bondye), is hazy at best.

But in spite of all that, there is one element of the tradition that absolutely fascinates me and calls to me. And her name is Ezili Freda.

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Self-improvement by not-self-improvement

05 Sunday Nov 2023

Posted by Amod Lele in Attachment and Craving, Christianity, Daoism, Deity, Flourishing, Humility, Mahāyāna, Meditation, Mindfulness, Self-Discipline, Serenity, Virtue

≈ 12 Comments

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Augustine, autobiography, Chan/Zen 禪, Disengaged Buddhism, John Dunne, Nancy Houfek, Pali suttas, Śāntideva, skholiast (blogger), Wangchuk Dorje

Years ago, in a difficult period of my life, I had looked for philosophical help and explicitly found it in Buddhism and not Daoism, rejecting Daoism and its sudden-liberation views in about the strongest possible terms. But that wasn’t the whole story.

I had already been trying to apply the four-stage model of skill development, taught to me by Nancy Houfek, in which one progresses from unconscious incompetence to conscious incompetence to conscious competence to unconscious competence. Trying to find a peaceful mind in those difficult days, I was all too conscious of my own incompetence, and Daoism provided no guidance that I could discern on how one could make the all-important step to conscious competence. But it is eight years later now, eight years I have spent working on my mindfulness through a nightly prayer ritual and, increasingly, meditation. I’ve gotten better at stopping my harmful thoughts when I put my mind to it; I think I’ve acquired a certain degree of conscious competence. The next step seems to be making it a habit, making it unconscious competence. And when it comes to that, the Daoists might have a point.

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The goods of lay life

13 Sunday Feb 2022

Posted by Amod Lele in Attachment and Craving, Early and Theravāda, External Goods, Family, Flourishing, Foundations of Ethics, Modernized Buddhism, Monasticism, Pleasure

≈ 14 Comments

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Justin Whitaker, Pali suttas, puruṣārthas, Siddhattha Gotama (Buddha)

I return today to my correspondence with Justin Whitaker on the Sigālovāda Sutta, taking off from his response to my previous post. The question at issue between us, I think, is what constitutes a good Buddhist life for a layperson or householder, a non-monk. We can get more specific by asking: should the layperson’s life be one that aspires to emulate the monk’s? I don’t think that it should, and I continue to suspect that Justin doesn’t either.

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The Sigālovāda’s vicious mean

01 Sunday Aug 2021

Posted by Amod Lele in Attachment and Craving, Early and Theravāda, Faith, Flourishing, Foundations of Ethics, Hermeneutics, Monasticism, Play, Pleasure, Self-Discipline, Work, Zest

≈ 15 Comments

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fundamentalism, H.L. Seneviratne, Martin Hägglund, music, Pali suttas, Sri Lanka

The Sigālovāda Sutta might be my least favourite sutta in the Pali Canon.

There is relatively little that the Pali texts say on “ethics” in a modern Western sense of interpersonal action-guiding; much of the specific instructions on action are found in vinaya, legal texts for the conduct of monks. The Sigālovāda is relatively unusual in providing guidance for action to lay householders. For that reason, a number of secondary writers on Buddhist ethics regard it as as a valuable guide for Buddhist ethical conduct.

I do not.

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Frustration where mind meets world

20 Sunday Jun 2021

Posted by Amod Lele in Attachment and Craving, Early and Theravāda, External Goods, Mahāyāna, Patient Endurance, Politics

≈ 3 Comments

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Aśvaghoṣa, Disengaged Buddhism, Patrick O'Donnell, Sallie King, Śāntideva

I find myself repeatedly returning to the question I asked earlier this year: “Is the problem in our heads?” That is: for Buddhists, especially classical ones, is the fundamental human problem located in our minds, or in the world? I have found that my thinking on this question has already changed even just since my posts on the topic last month.

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Suffering’s mental causes are not merely conventional

16 Sunday May 2021

Posted by Amod Lele in Attachment and Craving, Early and Theravāda, Metaphysics, Psychology

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

conventional/ultimate, Dhammapāda, Disengaged Buddhism, Four Noble Truths, Nāgārjuna, Pali suttas, Patrick O'Donnell

Patrick O’Donnell makes several interesting comments disputing my claim that for most classical Indian Buddhists “the causes of suffering are primarily mental.” I think they’re worth responding to at length, so I’ll take two posts to do so: this week on the theoretical (metaphysical and psychological) claims about the causation of suffering, next week on their practical implications.

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Is the problem in our heads?

18 Sunday Apr 2021

Posted by Amod Lele in Anger, Attachment and Craving, Modernized Buddhism, Politics, Psychology

≈ 7 Comments

Tags

Disengaged Buddhism, Engaged Buddhism, Pali suttas, Ron Purser, Sallie King

A key idea that I’ve stressed from the Disengaged Buddhists is that the causes of suffering are primarily mental – especially the “three poisons” or “unwholesome roots” of craving (rāga), aversion or hostility (dveṣa/dosa) and delusion (moha) – and that therefore changes in material conditions of life will do relatively little to solve them. Engaged Buddhists reject this latter idea, since they take changing the material conditions as essential. What has struck me recently, though, is that they reject the idea in ways that are different, and sometimes even opposite – each of which still, surprisingly to me in some ways, seems to accept that rāga, dveṣa and moha are indeed where the key problems of human existence lie. I see this point especially in comparing the different views expressed by Ron Purser and Sallie King. Continue reading →

Rejecting Śāntideva’s ethical revaluation

11 Sunday Apr 2021

Posted by Amod Lele in Attachment and Craving, External Goods, Family, Flourishing, Mahāyāna, Patient Endurance, Politics, Serenity

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Aśvaghoṣa, Disengaged Buddhism, Engaged Buddhism, Hsiao-Lan Hu, Mahāvaṃsa, puruṣārthas, Sallie King, Śāntideva

The key goal of my dissertation was to understand Śāntideva’s thought as it was and how it could be applied in a contemporary context. Now, for my book, I want to actually apply Śāntideva’s thought, which requires asking where he is right and where he is wrong. And that, it turns out, changes my understanding of some of the dissertation’s key concepts – especially the one in its title.

The dissertation is entitled “Ethical revaluation in the thought of Śāntideva”. In its third chapter, I describe “ethical revaluation” as a consequence of Śāntideva’s ideals of nonattachment (aparigraha) and patient endurance (kṣānti). I explain the idea of ethical revaluation as follows:

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