Tag Archives: Four Noble Truths

In praise of the present moment

19 Sunday Nov 2023

Posted by in Anger, East Asia, Flourishing, Mahāyāna, Meditation, Mindfulness, Modernized Buddhism, Serenity

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One of the things that helped me realize the need for self-improvement by not-self-improvement was regular practice with the excellent Headspace meditation app, created by a former Tibetan monk named Andy Puddicombe. Headspace is at the epicenter of “McMindfulness”: the app normally charges for access but I get it for free as a work wellness benefit, and this arrangement has made Puddicombe millions of dollars. In turn, the app is a big reason I defend McMindfulness – especially through John Dunne’s hugely helpful distinction between “classical” and “nondual” mindfulness.

That is to say: the core practice in Headspace is noticing your emotions, positive and negative, as they arise, and reacting to them with nonjudgemental acceptance. And you do so, yes, in the present moment. Critics like Ron Purser correctly note that that present-moment focus is not found in classical Indian texts like the Pali suttas or Śāntideva – but Dunne notes that it is found in other premodern Buddhist traditions, like the Tibetan writings of Wangchuk Dorje. And I dare say that that present-moment technique is an improvement: one that does a better job than the classical tradition’s techniques at their shared goal of reducing our suffering.

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Of mental health and medical models

24 Sunday Apr 2022

Posted by in Early and Theravāda, Epicureanism, Flourishing, Health, Human Nature, Psychology, Skepticism, Stoicism, Therapy

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The concept of mental health – and even more so its converse of mental illness – has become ubiquitous in the modern West, and it deserves serious examination by philosophers. Many, probably most, cultures would not recognize the claim that a mind that sees demons or refuses to speak or commits suicide is in a condition analogous to a body with a fever or a broken limb.

The idea of mental health and illness is the central idea in the psychological approach that we typically refer to as the medical model. The term “medical model”, in its most basic sense, means that one approaches a given field of human endeavour in the manner associated with medicine: that field may then be considered a part of medicine, or simply analogous to it. I believe the term was coined by R.D. Laing, the prominent critic of psychiatry, and so it often takes on a negative cast, for the application of specific aspects of modern medicine in areas where it is inappropriate to do so.

It does not have to, though. Unless we reject modern medicine in its entirety (which would be a stupid idea), we are going to accept some aspects of the medical model for at least the practice of medicine itself. Modern medicine has accomplished a great deal, even in its application to phenomena of the mind: antipsychotics and antidepressants are not cure-alls by any means, but for a great many people, their mental lives are much improved as a result of these medicines.

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Suffering’s mental causes are not merely conventional

16 Sunday May 2021

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

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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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Emotions are not primarily judgements

07 Sunday Mar 2021

Posted by in Anger, Biology, Early and Theravāda, Emotion, Fear, Human Nature, Meditation, Mindfulness, Practice, Psychology, Serenity

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I was struck by two things when I read Martha Nussbaum’s Anger and Forgiveness. On one hand, as I noted previously, I’m excited by Nussbaum’s new, and more Śāntidevan, normative approach to anger; it seems like she and I have moved toward the same position there. On the other, though, I realized that I have moved away from Nussbaum’s general descriptive theory of emotion. Nussbaum articulates this theory at length in Upheavals of Thought, and I don’t think her theory has changed much by the time we get to Anger (she offers a summary of it in the appendix). What has changed, in the roughly fifteen years since I read Upheavals cover to cover, is that I agreed with her theory then, and I no longer do – and reading the short summaries of the position in Anger helped me realize that.

Nussbaum’s theory (derived primarily from the Stoic thinker Chrysippus) is that emotions are fundamentally cognitive judgements of value, with a content directed at an object believed to affect our well-being. So fear, for example, is primarily a judgement that something could be harmful to us in the future; grief is primarily a judgement that something of value has been lost to us. I found this account plausible when I first encountered it. I no longer do.

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Defending the removal of suffering

31 Sunday Jan 2021

Posted by in Attachment and Craving, Early and Theravāda, Epicureanism, Flourishing, Foundations of Ethics, Happiness, Mahāyāna, Patient Endurance, Serenity, Stoicism

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It is typically the case that more can be said in disagreement than agreement. In the case of Martin Hägglund’s This Life, I think paying attention to those realms of disagreement is particularly helpful, because our deepest disagreements highlight the ways in which I am a Buddhist and he is not, even though there are core elements to his critique of Buddhism that I absolutely share.

As is the case in many extended disagreements, it can be helpful to start with a disagreement over terminology in order to make sure that what follows is clear. In Hägglund’s case, he frames his argument as one for a “secular” view over a “religious” one. I have said a great deal over the years about why I think the concept of “religion” generally obscures more than it clarifies, and there’s no need to repeat those general points here; in the present context, the important thing is that Hägglund falls victim to the same problems others do. In Hägglund’s telling, Martha Nussbaum can count as entirely “secular” despite her self-identification as Jewish, while Spinoza, the Stoics and the Epicureans all count as “religious” – even though many Epicureans explicitly rejected the gods. Such a framing, it seems to me, can only end up as the vast majority of other attempts to demarcate the “religious” from the “non-religious” do: in confusion.

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In defence of McMindfulness

08 Sunday Dec 2019

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

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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 →

Whose religion? Which science?

24 Sunday Dec 2017

Posted by in Aesthetics, Attachment and Craving, Biology, Buddhism, Christianity, Karma, M.T.S.R., Meditation, Metaphysics, Natural Science, Self, Supernatural

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A little while ago I had the pleasure of giving a guest lecture on Buddhism to David Decosimo‘s class at the Boston University School of Theology. The students were a delight to teach – smart, actively engaged, asking many questions. One student’s question in particular stuck with me after the session. She had started to ask a long set of multiple questions, and then distilled it down to what she referred to as a simple question: “How would you describe the relation between Buddhism and science?”

My first response was: “That is not a simple question!” There is so much to say about it that there are now books written not merely on the actual relationship between Buddhism and science, but on the very idea of a relationship between Buddhism and science. I gave a relatively rambling answer. But after leaving the classroom it occurred to me that there was a relatively simple answer that I could have given – one that would have put a large part of the question’s complexity aside, but focused on something of particular relevance to students of Christian theology. Continue reading →

Beyond the removal of suffering

01 Sunday Oct 2017

Posted by in Death, Early and Theravāda, Flourishing, Happiness, Karma, Modernized Buddhism, Monasticism, Natural Science, Supernatural

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Last time I discussed Jan Westerhoff’s potent objection to naturalized Buddhism: if there is no rebirth then we can end our suffering simply by committing suicide. Westerhoff takes this objection as a reason to accept rebirth. I do not. Rather, I take it as pointing to a deeper problem with some core Buddhist teachings as they are usually understood. Continue reading →

Disengaged Buddhism in the era of Trump

16 Sunday Apr 2017

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

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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 →

The power of a beautiful temple

19 Sunday Mar 2017

Posted by in Aesthetics, Early and Theravāda, Place, Rites, Serenity, Supernatural

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We think these days a lot about Buddhist ethics, which often involves some thought about Buddhist politics. We tend to think a lot less about Buddhist aesthetics.

Now there’s an obvious explanation that could be given for this: the Buddhist dhamma teaches that worldly pleasures mire us in suffering. So aesthetics, insofar as it deals with pleasurable phenomena like art, is something Buddhists should avoid. In response I give you this:

Temple of the Emerald Buddha, Bangkok

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