Tag Archives: Pali suttas

Right view vs. true statements

13 Sunday Sep 2020

Posted by in Anger, Attachment and Craving, Early and Theravāda, Epistemology, Philosophy of Language, Truth

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Paul Fuller’s The Notion of Diṭṭhi in Theravāda Buddhism, as its title might suggest, is a dry, abstract, technical monograph. It may also be one of the more spiritually beneficial books I have ever read.

I suppose maybe both of these things are appropriate to the book’s subject matter, the Pali Canon. One of the Canon’s “three baskets”, the abhidhamma, is notorious for its level of technical abstraction – and yet Theravāda tradition has consistently held it to be of great spiritual benefit. Erik Braun has demonstrated how the modern Burmese traditions of vipassanā meditation, now enormously popular around the world, have their origins in study of the abhidhamma.

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Classical and nondual mindfulness

14 Sunday Jun 2020

Posted by in Early and Theravāda, Hermeneutics, Mahāyāna, Meditation, Mindfulness, Modernized Buddhism, Monasticism

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Ron Purser’s critique of modern mindfulness is thoroughgoing, and extends beyond chastising its skepticism of political engagement. Purser also criticizes modern mindfulness on other grounds, grounds that I think are considerably closer to the views of classical (early) Buddhist texts.

In particular, Purser’s article “The myth of the present moment” (from the journal Mindfulness 6:680–686) points to a central element of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) and other modern mindfulness practices which is not present in the classical texts. Namely: Jon Kabat-Zinn, the founder of MBSR and modern medical mindfulness generally, defines mindfulness as “awareness that arises through paying attention, on purpose, in the present moment, non-judgementally”. So a key goal of modern mindfulness practice is “reducing thoughts and ruminations of the past and future, which keeps us from being in the present moment.” (Purser 682) Purser notes that this focus on the present moment is exemplified in the common introductory practice (included in BU’s mindfulness workshop) of mindfully paying attention to the experience of slowly eating a raisin.

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Is karma about why bad things happen to good people?

24 Sunday May 2020

Posted by in Action, Death, Deity, Early and Theravāda, Jainism, Karma, Method and Theory in the Study of Religion, Modernized Buddhism, Supernatural

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Continuing my reply to Evan Thompson, I will focus next on karma, because the reinterpretation of karma is central to my own eudaimonist Buddhism, and therefore it forms a focal point in Thompson’s critique. Karma is Thompson’s example of how I and other Buddhist modernists “recast Buddhist concepts in a way that makes them incongruent with their traditional meanings and functions.” Why? Thompson asserts that eudaimonism is not the core idea of karma, “if ‘core’ means what lies at the heart of the concept’s formation. On the contrary, the core problem, which drove the formation of the concept, is to explain why bad things happen to good people.”

I disagree entirely with this assertion.

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Political philosophy beyond the state

26 Sunday Apr 2020

Posted by in Confucianism, Flourishing, Human Nature, Monasticism, Politics, Social Science

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Modern liberal political philosophy has tended to take among its central questions: what is the proper relationship between the individual and the state? What rights does the individual have against the state, how do we select which individuals make decisions for the state? These are the central questions explored by John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Likewise the famous frontispiece of Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan, produced by Abraham Bosse in collaboration with Hobbes, depicts a giant man (the monarch) who is made up of hundreds of smaller people – the state and the individuals.

These are, I submit, the wrong questions for political philosophy to ask. A key problem with the Hobbes-Locke-Rousseau approach is it doesn’t think enough about what individuals are and why they would need a state. “Protection from violence” is the usual answer to the latter question, and it’s a venerable one – the idea that a state is established to protect its people is found in the Aggañña Sutta, in a passage that modern treatises on Buddhism quote all over the place (though it’s a blink-and-you-miss-it passage in the original). But individuals need much more than protection from violence!

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Does the kammatic/nibbanic distinction fit the facts?

16 Sunday Feb 2020

Posted by in Early and Theravāda, Karma, Method and Theory in the Study of Religion, Monasticism, Self-Discipline

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How helpful is Melford Spiro’s kammatic/nibbanic distinction in describing Buddhism? It can be tempting to line it up too closely with other dichotomies – to say that kammatic Buddhism is practised by householders and nibbanic Buddhism by monks, for example. Damien Keown (Nature of Buddhist Ethics 86) notes that in Spiro’s own survey of Burmese villagers, many laypeople say that they would prefer nirvana for their next life and most monks do not describe striving for nirvana as one of their main functions; so such a mapping of kammatic/nibbanic onto householder/monk would be false.

But Keown takes this point about laypeople and monks much too far when he draws the conclusion that therefore Spiro’s kammatic/nibbanic “theory does not fit the facts”. Continue reading →

Aristotelian vs. Buddhist eudaimonia

05 Sunday Jan 2020

Posted by in Analytic Tradition, Early and Theravāda, Epicureanism, External Goods, Flourishing, Foundations of Ethics, Greek and Roman Tradition, Karma

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Damien Keown’s The Nature of Buddhist Ethics closes by arguing for parallels between Buddhist and Aristotelian ethics. He claims that “there are many formal parallels between the ideal of human perfection conceived by the Buddha and that envisaged by Aristotle” (193), such that “Aristotelianism provides a useful Western analogue which will be of use in elucidating the foundations and conceptual structure of Buddhist ethics.” (196)

Is Keown right? Is Buddhist ethics like Aristotle’s? Continue reading →

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 →

Disengaged Buddhism article is published

18 Monday Nov 2019

Posted by in Early and Theravāda, Mahāyāna, Method and Theory in the Study of Religion, Modernized Buddhism, Politics

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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.

On mindfulness

15 Sunday Sep 2019

Posted by in Early and Theravāda, Meditation, Mindfulness, Modernized Buddhism, Psychology, Work

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The term mindfulness is ubiquitous in English-language discussions of Buddhism – and beyond, in secular meditation techniques. When I first encountered Buddhism in Thailand, the English word “mindfulness” was central to my understanding of the tradition. My journals in 1997 described mindfulness as “the Buddhist virtue”, and identified it with “detachment from negative emotions, the ability to sit back and go ‘Y’know, there’s really no reason to be pissed off about this here.’” It was not a word I encountered anywhere outside my own study of the tradition.

Seventeen years later, I realized that “mindfulness” had become mainstream when my hospital had prescribed mindfulness meditation for my insomnia. It has already become considerably more mainstream in the few years since. A couple years ago I participated in a new and popular mindfulness program through my employer, Boston University. I should stress that this program had nothing to do with the religion or philosophy departments, the Center for the Study of Asia, the Buddhist students’ organization, or any other such Buddhism-related part of the university. No, it was offered through Information Services and Technology, as part of my day job assisting professors to teach with technology – whether they are professors of chemistry, public health, hospitality administration, or anything else. Continue reading →

A Buddhist argument against rebirth

04 Sunday Aug 2019

Posted by in Attachment and Craving, Biology, Death, Early and Theravāda, Epicureanism, Hope, Modernized Buddhism, Psychology, Self, Supernatural

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I am not entirely sure that I agree with the argument I am about to make. However, I do find it at least plausible and I have not seen it made before. I think this argument is worth somebody making, and I think it is worth doing here.

That is: I would like to make a Buddhist argument against rebirth. An argument against rebirth on Buddhist grounds. Continue reading →