If I consider you as inside my tribe, I am naturally “good” to you. I will take care of you; I may even risk my life to save you or that which you love.
If I consider you outside my tribe, look out.
Tag: Learning in Public
What I see as the fundamental problem, and what I am most interested in working on, is that we humans do not understand the kind of beings we are.
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Avijjā as Mis-understanding
Greetings, Friendlies. :) For your consideration: what about translating Avijjā as “Mis-understanding”? “Ignorance” seems a little pejorative, “confusion” a little apathetic. Mis-understanding may sound odd at first, but in dhamma circles we do something similar when we speak of dis-ease. We are not speaking of illness, we are speaking of _not being at ease_. In […]
Previously we proposed that chemotaxis may be a precursor of vedanā and that holding this view (lightly) may contribute to a more embedded/interconnected understanding of human-beingness in the spectrum of life. This time I’d like to play with the idea that infusing an understanding of vedanā with a sense of taxis/movement can more coherently embed […]
Perhaps. Some dharma teachers claim there is no English equivalent for the Pāli “vedanā” . Although I do not know a word in common usage, there has been a word used in psychology since the 1930s, “valence”, that I think will do the job very well. [1] In (the HIGHLY recommended) How Emotions Are Made, […]
“if we want to focus our minds on serious and difficult things, we may at points have to take some radical steps – and to do things that will strike some people as odd and or even unwarranted.” ~Alain de Botton, How to Think More Effectively A few years ago I wrote about Gregg McKeowen’s […]
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Thoughts on Determinism / Free Will
Chatting with a friend about Existentialism, Buddhist Ethics, Determinism, Free Will (because that’s the kind of nerds we are). Today’s position on determinism / free will: I come from a strongly evolutionary perspective, and a strongly materialist perspective. Should be logically hemmed into determinism. I also study ethics and attempt to cultivate (aka, re-wire my […]
Perhaps. Regarding Viññāṇa, I first heard the phrasing “Consciousness Of” from John Peacock’s “Buddhism Before the Theravada” series (Part 5, 53:45): “…consciousness is always a consciousness of…” something. That is, Gotama spoke of consciousness always having an object. (MN 38) “Consciousness is reckoned according to the very same condition dependent upon which it arises. Consciousness that […]
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Playful Dhamma
Dear Friendlies, Greetings! Writing in a rush, my fingers tangling in the keyboard. Please excuse if incoherent; excited. I think I’ve understood something (again), and wondering if any of you have advice in this direction. An aspect of my life that is lacking in cultivation is the eleventh parami. Humor. Levity. Actually I think the best […]
Transcript for Episode 9 of Dharma PhD (the podcast); we talk about bringing a dhammic lens to the zombie apocalypse (ie, HBO’s TV Series, _The Last of Us_).
Perspective, Acceptance, Forgiveness, Gratitude. Thanks, science.
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MN 139, Part 5: Subhūti
Maybe it’s not really about Subhūti?
Continuing to unpack MN 139, On Avoiding Conflict (Parts 1, 2, 3)… recently Ajahn Nisabho gave a bonzer talk, Culture War Pacifism: The Dhamma of Dolly Parton. He spoke about engaging skillfully in political discourse, about not being caught up in the collective papañca of the culture wars. Might this bit in MN 139, about […]
MN 139, on avoiding conflict, could be divided into three themes: cultivating oneself, communicating with others, and seeking out good influences in one’s life. I didn’t catch this at first, but now I see in this second theme, Communicating With Others, Gotama encouraging us to speak in such a way that we allow our interlocutors […]
Greeting, Friendlies! Part of the tangle of ideas I spoke about in Part 1 comes from reading or hearing teachers or practitioners* use words in contexts such that I think they are referring to a territory near(ish) to Awakening. In this post I’d like to acknowledge these words and ask the hivemind what others might […]
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MN 139, Part 2: Synopsis
Cultivating oneself, communicating with others, and seeking out good influences. All this in the service of avoiding conflict. Sounds reasonable.
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MN 139, Part 1: How to Not-Conflict
Playing around with different translations for the sutta title. Parsing Pāli for fun and profit…
I’ve been thinking a lot about Awakening. What is it? How does one get there? What does one “get” from it? Why do I want whatever it is? Are these even the right kinds of questions to be asking?
There is nothing here that has not been explained beforeAnd I have no skill in the art of rhetoric;Therefore, lacking any intention to benefit others,I write this in order to acquaint it to my mind. ~Shantideva, A Guide to the Boddhisatva’s Way of Life, Translated by Stephen Batchelor
Sometimes ideas get all wrapped up and around and through each other and a clever theory, when gently prodded, reveals itself a writhing, gnarly mess. Maybe this doesn’t happen to you? It totally happens to me. I think I understand a thing, I get all excited about it, I try explaining it to someone, or […]
Edit: If you want to start with Part 1, that’s here. The meditation teacher Leigh Brasington wrote a book on Dependent Origination which he self published and made available for Dāna on his website. He kindly (and enthusiastically!) read my previous post on DO and Conditionality. With his permission, here’s an image we cobbled together: A few […]
After I left military service in 2014, I moved to Paris and studied Philosophy for two years. The most important course I took during that time was “Modern Critical Theory” where a long-limbed, curly-cue of a Frenchman introduced me to Postmodernism and Critical Theory. In that course I read Western thinkers touching into the same concepts […]
In Part 1 we talked about motivation for starting an Independent PhD. But why an Independent PhD rather than a classic, Institutional PhD? I describe my Independent PhD as “Four-ish years of study, practice, and discourse that culminates in a book no-one will read.” But the beauty of an Independent PhD is that it doesn’t have to be four […]
Part 1 – Are there two Nibbānas?
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On Anurodha, “Liking”
In your day-to-day, off-the-cushion experience, what part of the 12-link Dependent Origination cycle (12-nidanas) do you notice most readily? I ask because I think it may be the case that many of us spend our days “liking” stuff or “disliking” stuff. But liking/disliking is not in the 12-nidanas. When I first began learning about Dependent Origination I was surprised to […]
Greetings, Friendlies! The writing challenge continues; taking a quick zoom out and spending a few sessions writing about the Independent PhD as the container for this Dharma PhD gig. I don’t know if y’all are interested in this material; maybe anything that is not a sutta spreadsheet is anathema? Let me know if that’s the […]
(TL;DR: No. Pain is not Vedanā.)
When I first began studying Dependent Origination, it was not clear to me where DO (paṭiccasamuppāda) ended and Conditionality (idappaccayatā) began. Today it’s a little more clear; here’s what I think, and why I think it matters: Conditionality (idappaccayatā) is the way the world is. All phenomena are dependent on (conditioned by) other phenomena. The […]
I’ve recently learned of the writing workshop Ship 30 for 30. The structure is writing <250 word "Atomic Essays" every day for 30 days.
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¿Is Vedanā Interoception?
Is vedanā interoception? Or is interoception vedanā? In a 2018 talk on Vedanā (link) @MartineBatchelor referred to @LisaFeldmanBarrett’s book, How Emotions Are Made. She described interoception and asked, “…the question is, is she talking about the same thing [as] me?” [4:29] Here’s my take: In HEAM, Barrett says: “Simple pleasant and unpleasant feelings come from […]
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