Yeah those guys sure are obsessed with themselves. If you asked me who I was generally the context would indicate which kind of response would be appropriate and sufficient, like my name, occupation or what have you. Usually when none of that applies and they mean some special creamy you center in some indexical correspondence or immaterial spiritual animating force, then whatever else that follows isn't going to be interesting.

Good presentation. 'Anatta' is one of the 'three marks' of all existing phenomena, the other two being 'anicca' (impermanent) and 'dukkha' (unsatisfying, although a hard word to translate).

In my view, there's a lot of misunderstanding of the meaning of non-self; it is always used as an adjective, a description - that everything is anatta. When the Buddha was asked if there is a self or not, he didn't answer (1). But that doesn't stop a lot of people saying 'Buddhism teaches there is no self'. There are endless debates about it on Buddhist forums (well, endless up until being locked, usually).

Compassion is one of the 'four immeasurables' or 'sublime abidings', the others being loving-kindness, empathetic joy and equanimity.

(Buddhists love lists.)

You have quite nicely presented a pretty standard picture of Buddhist metaphysics darthbarracuda and I am left wondering if this raises any particular questions for you ?

"But who, Venerable One, is it that feels?"
"This question is not proper," said the Exalted One.
I do not teach that there is one who feels.
If, however, the question is put thus:
'Conditioned through what does feeling arise?' then the answer will be 'Through sense impressions as a condition feeling [arises]; with feeling as a condition, craving [arises]."
--SN II 13

It is a series of different loci of experience, always gaining and losing components. — darthbarracuda

Here you have nailed it. In Western culture, you find many, many pseudo Buddhists, who follow worldly Dhammas like assiduously seeking gain, failing to realize that gain is impermanent. Fame is impermanent. Honor is impermanent. Reputation is impermanent. Loss is ineluctable, shamelessness is one of the core teachings of Cynicism (very much like Buddhism), which claims we shouldn't recognize any shame and to reject reputation. The point being you find people who think they understand change, yet participate in a culture which enshrines certain unchanging values. It would seem then, knowing culture is a source of delusion is one of the first things understand. Blind faith in the conditioned responses and stereotypes of interiorized social norms are a major impediment to the Buddhist path.

Also, meditation is vegetation. Western culture is one of myrmidons. Being able to stop and establish quietude, stillness, and silence is seen as laziness. Yet it is precisely inaction which is necessary to watch the moving parts of the self and spy the inward defilement insinuated in us by the rat race or hedonic treadmill we were raised in, and conditioned by. It isn't possible to get out of the box by novelty seeking, novelty seeking becomes a repetitive, conditioned response like any other one. Only sitting still and vegetating allows us to see what never stops moving, and lucidly untie our Gordian knots; one of the main skills meditation conveys is how to live in a state of mind similar to the onset of sleep, not unlike hypnagogia(pompia), which is a state where subconscious syndromes more readily sally up for observation... making strenuous effort to get on top - and ambitiously pursuing rewards and goals, sticks and carrots - in an economic fundamentalist system totally negates this essential quality.

Thus I've come to realize practicing Buddhism in western culture is almost too difficult. Our culture is anti Buddhist in every conceivable way. It may be possible to apply bits and pieces of it in the morning and before bed; when the willy-nilly commercialized life takes over at work and in relationship, Buddhism isn't there..the worldly dhammas take control (learned classical conditioning).

Briefly, the eight worldly conditions which repeat through socially conditioned response (which few can undo): gain and loss, honor and dishonor, happiness and misery, praise and blame. If we see that everything changes...we should also see that these conditions change as well and set them down like a red hot ball of iron.

Generally, we are taught to increase our self as much as possible everyday. The wisdom of Taoism and Buddhism teach the opposite. Everyday we should peel back and drop another layer of the onion of the delusions of our self-concept, the box we're in made up of conditioned responses. It would be interesting to compare Western psychology's idea of self-concept to anatta; then it could be lucidly understood how different are Western egocentric sickness vis a vis Buddhism's no self. And how nearly impossible it is to apply anicca, dukkha, anatta to our lives. The skhandas are not really what we have to overcome having been steeped in Western conceptions of self, it is self concept, like self-image, self-esteem, ideal- self, future selves...and other defilements that have been bred into our schemas. The skhandas, I'm afraid will remain with us till the end in shallow celebrity culture. To overcome these, you'd have to move to a monastic setting. Then we should focus on what can be overcome, or be shed, such as self-concept.

There is something that doesn't change, it's what is used in meditation. Budhho, the one who knows. If you think about it, it would be impossible to see or track the intimations of our kaleidoscopic, conditioned responses if there were nothing in us different than they are (and not another changing element). It would be a phantasmagoria impossible to exit. Luckily, meditation gets us in contact with Buddho, the one who knows everything about us and is our aid in self-examination; without it we could probably never prune away delusion, anger, greed. That one of the skhandas is consciousness itself was always a tough one for me. Buddho would seem to be pure consciousness and the tool we use to take the discontinuous, quantum leap into via negativa and unity...apparently it is a tool to be jettisoned in the end, while the organism still lives of course (since consciousness, Buddho, is a skhanda). Those who enter nirvana have been absorbed. Western culture would call them lazy or autistic..and nobody wants to be a special needs person, at the very least we have been insinuated with the idea laziness is a virulent pestilence (but what if it was that we desired very little, ascetically? apparently we are still WASPs, and fear eternal damnation without working around the clock). See the problem. We had better settle for boddhisattvahood and retain Buddho to help others get out of this violent, Western apoplexy. Then we can communicate what we know about deconditioning. Then once we are all boddhisattvas, we can wink out of existence at once together.

It's as though we come to believe something like 'knowledge is power' or 'learning is power' when learning, experience, and memory are actually a record of endless rounds of becoming, births. When it's understood any possible aspect of self-concept is made of this record of learning, experience, and memory, that the bricks of self are made of these conditioned responses, it's patent the difficulty of exiting samsara. Unlearning, unexperiencing, and forgetting are essential to deconditioning. Escaping the box can't be done by visiting another culture while bringing your own background...or even by learning another culture if you didn't have an identity... Part of us is out of existence along with the part that is in it...we aren't fully in or out of existence...we can learn to decondition by following the part that's vanishing from existence. Trusting the noetic quality in ourselves is a requisite to this, and understanding that outside of egocentrism, we still have a knowing faculty to guide us. While this sounds mystical, intelligence itself is a kind of knowing independent from what is known (knowledge and experience, etc.)...it operates far too subtly to attribute to knowledge, reason, memory or any faculty that can be collocated beside karma, or personal history.

The body is composed of elements that are always in flux: we eat stuff, stuff becomes us, we defecate stuff. We do not call body the specific composition at any given time: we call body the system that smartly sustains itself in a changing environment. Look at the body of an old man: possibly none of its flesh is made of the same stuff as when he was a baby, and yet it is the same body.

The self is composed of memories that are always in flux: we learn, we change our beliefs, we forget. We do not call the self a specific substrate upon which memories exist: we call self the learning entity.

Yes our selves are fragmented daily by sleep, and occasionally by drugs and other intense psychological phenomena; but past the novelty of the fragmentation, we resume our cognitive train of thought unchanged.

Therefore, there is a psychological identity which is carried forward from birth to death, and we call it the self.

I've often thought that the Buddhist doctrine of no-self is in conflict with the doctrine of reincarnation. What reincarnates? The answer usually given is the skandhas. I don't find this answer to satisfactorily defend the coexistence of these two doctrines. Do you? If there is no me, no I, that is attached to the skandhas, why should I worry about what happens to them? In other words, is that package of skandhas me? If there is no true self that will find itself being that package and moving into another body, instead of meditating for years to gain liberation, why not just kill myself now?

Consider the skandhas belonging to two people, one me(or you in your case) and one Joe Blow. This (my?) body dies and the Joe body dies. What, if anything, makes the karma or skandhas belonging to this identity of more concern to me (who?) than that of Joe? After all, there is no persisting self that spans or owns both my childhood and my adulthood any more than there is a self spanning between Joe and me, right?

When I achieve liberation from my false self concept, who or what finds freedom? The Buddha has attained enlightenment, right? But I haven't? What's going on here? Why does the bodhisattva reincarnate (indeed how?) if there are no discrete selves to liberate? If there are no selves, there is no problem. Nobody is deceived.

Maybe someone can sort all this out for me.

And how can a nonexistent self be deluded that it exists?

Perhaps the identity, the body, the karma, and all that, are like a jacket and the self is like a person wearing it. But enlightenment is like realizing that the jacket has no occupant. So who finds out they are not identical with the jacket? The jacket? Who is the bodhisattva trying to liberate? A bunch of jackets? Or a bunch of noexisting jacket-wearers who think they are jackets? It seems to me that the jackets disperse all by themselves. No need to worry. They are just objects anyway, right?

The problem of the relation between the self and the body that dies is not solved by positing a package of skandhas that reincarnates, is it? Why isn't my relation to that skandha package just like my relation to the temporary composite that is my body? Neither are me, right? Who is it that really isn't these things? Nobody? Then where is the problem?

I suspect that the skandhas represent something like a body on another level, another sheath. This idea just defers the problem. Instead of asking what happens to me when my body dies, why can't I ask what happens to me when my skandhas disperse or whatever?

How is this all not an incoherent mishmash of incompatible ideas, some of which were retained because of cultural inertia or some such?

Thus I've come to realize practicing Buddhism in western culture is almost too difficult. Our culture is anti Buddhist in every conceivable way — Anthony

Yes, but your interpretation of Buddhism is eminently Western . It has to be. We think from and after our own cultural history, which includes all the sedimented ideas of Western Greek-Judaeo-Christian metaphysics that form the background of our inquiries. Western Buddhism is not an ignoring or turning back from Western philosophy but a carrying forward of it. We can see examples of this in Buddhist-like thinking of the self of Heidegger, Nietzsche, and Merleau-Ponty, and in amalgams of east and west in the writings of phenomenologically trained philosophers like Evan Thompson, Carl Rogers and Francisco Varela.
But not only is Western philosophy now able to thinking in Buddhist-like ways,from its own history, it has exceeded some of those teachings. For instance, your formulation of social relations in terms of rote conditioning has already been jettisoned by some Western philosophers.

Thus I've come to realize practicing Buddhism in western culture is almost too difficult. — Anthony

I see your point. (And a very well-written and insightful post.) As an anglo drawn to Buddhism, I too have found there are aspects of it that are, shall we say, culturally remote in many ways. But there are, as Buddhists teach, 84,000 dharma doors - a figurative expression for the ability to approach it from a variety of perspectives.

There is also the approach of 'engaged Buddhism', popularised by Thich Nhat Hanh. It builds on the mahayana philosophy of the ' non-duality of samsara and nirvana' - that samsara is itself nirvana, if understood right (and arriving at this understanding is itself the purpose and also the method). Maybe this is analogous to the Christian understanding of deity as both immanent and transcendent - in the world while also beyond it.

I've often thought that the Buddhist doctrine of no-self is in conflict with the doctrine of reincarnation. — petrichor

Actually, Buddhists don't teach reincarnation, as such, but rebirth, which is subtly different. And there is not a great deal of detailed discussion of re-birth in the Pali Buddhist texts. (This came much later, in the scholastic tradition.) But the Buddha is simply said to be able to see 'where beings are destined' in the future life, according to their karma (traditionally, one of the 'six realms' of human, animal, hungry ghost, hell, titan, or heaven.)

I think the basic principle is, however, that if there is no continuity beyond physical death, then the principle of karma really doesn't have any foundation; at death. it makes no real difference how you lived your life. From there it's a very short step to nihilism or everyday materialism. Buddhism is a soteriological tradition - meaning, it is concerned with rising above or escaping from the endless round of birth and death.

In any case, I find the notion of previous lives intuitively appealing, as it seems to me that persons are born with attributes, talents, dispositions and characteristics which are very hard to account for in purely physicalist terms, and that in some sense they do seem to embody the memories of previous lives. The idea of an individual life being a part of a much larger sequence doesn't strike me as outlandish, although I am mindful that reincarnation is generally taboo in Western culture.

Actually, Buddhists don't teach reincarnation, as such, but rebirth, which is subtly different

Is there really so much difference? Basically, the idea is the same. If you are good, you go better places after death. If you are bad, you go bad places.

I think the basic principle is, however, that if there is no continuity beyond physical death, then the principle of karma really doesn't have any foundation; at death. it makes no real difference how you lived your life. From there it's a very short step to nihilism or everyday materialism.

Is this a good reason to reject the possibility that there is no continuity beyond physical death? Because it leads to the loss of other ideas we'd like to keep? What about trying to determine what is actually true rather than believing in ideas because we prefer their consequences? Perhaps the truth is palatable. Perhaps it isn't. Personally, I want to conform my view of the world as much as possible to what is actually true about it.

As a young person, I read the Bhagavad Gita as if it was scripture and saw its ideas in a certain light. Two decades later, I read it again. I saw it in a completely different light. I had no special reverence for it. This allowed me to ask certain questions.

Suppose group A has some power over group B. Group A is teaching an idea or value to group B. If we can see clearly that group A stands to gain somehow from group B believing what it is being taught by group A, does this give us reason to be suspicious of the ideas being taught?

If a slave owner teaches his slaves that maximally pleasing their owner will lead them to paradise after they die, this looks suspicious, doesn't it?

Consider the idea of Hell. Clearly, this idea was spread by religious authorities that were attached to political power. If you are a king running a country and you don't have much in the way of surveilance technologies, if you want to keep an eye on people and keep them in line, it takes a lot of police to do that. But if you can get them to believe that the laws you want them to follow are not just the arbitrary laws of the land, but rather the laws of God and that God is omniscient and watches not just their actions, but also their thoughts and will reward them greatly for doing and thinking what basically pleases the king or punish them with eternal fire for doing what causes the king problems, what costs him money, this all reduces the cost of rule greatly, no? If people really believe this, they'll self-police their very thoughts! How convenient for kings! And maybe this is good for society. But that doesn't make it true!

Consider the doctrines of karma and reincarnation in India. Notice that you have a situation where there is great disparity of wealth and power and the powerful classes are exploiting the less powerful. Suppose the exploited classes ask why they have such a shitty lot and the priestly and warrior castes have such a nice one. Maybe the lower and more populous classes express outrage at the unfairness and threaten power with rebellion. Well, the priests answer, you actually deserve your shitty lot. You did bad things in past lives. You are now working out that karma. We wealthy ones, on the other hand, earned our positions! We were virtuous! We deserve to be here. And if you do your caste duty (be a good slave) diligently throughout your life with no demand for reward, you too might find yourself on top, eating the good food, being carried on golden platforms by slaves! You might even become a god! Isn't this basically what the Bhagavad Gita teaches?

Clearly, the doctrines of reincarnation and karma served the powers that taught them. There are many other excellent reasons to reject these ideas, but their usefulness to political power is a good reason to be suspicious. It isn't so different from telling children that Santa will give them good presents if they behave and that the monster in the closet will get them if they are bad.

Many religious ideas exist primarily because they have been excellent tools of governance.

Buddhism inherited a lot of baggage from Hinduism. It is conceivable that reincarnation and karma were retained simply because of cultural inertia. Or perhaps they still served power. Maybe no-self itself is an idea that serves power or the larger community. One of the great power tensions in society after all is that between the individual and the collective. But maybe the idea of the persisting soul too is a tool of power!

Always keep in mind that those who have historically held power had an interest in what we believed to be true and what we believed people ought to do with their lives and what we valued.

Many religious ideas exist primarily because they have been excellent tools of governance. — petrichor

Many, or all? Do you think there is any reality in religious or spiritual traditions, or they are simply power-relationships and methods of domination?

I can see how they can be turned to that end. And furthermore that there is no single thing that corresponds with 'religion' - the concept itself has many layers of meaning and connotation.

And yet, for all that, I still find something in it which cannot be described in any other terms.

I don't think religion and religious ideas are fully explained by power interest. Religion is complex. But power interest, in my view, is one of the most important things to keep in view when trying to understand why these ideas and practices exist.

There are good things in religion. I have an ambivalent relationship to it all. I even nearly became a monk as a younger man. I later grew rather disillusioned though.

Fair enough. Me also - I mean, not nearly becoming a monk, but the ambivalent relationship. And I do agree that the power relationships that seem to inevitably thrive in religions are a fundamental aspect.

But, back to the theme - the basic philosophical point about the Buddhist view is that there is nothing which doesn’t change. This applies equally to the concept of self, to atoms, and to Gods, insofar as they are posited as comprising some unchanging essence. That is why Buddhism is often compared to what is now called process philosophy. So it’s a heresy in Buddhism to say there is an unchanging core or essence which migrates from life to life. The expression that was adopted in later Buddhism was ‘citta santana’ which is generally translated as ‘mind-stream’.

it seems to me that persons are born with attributes, talents, dispositions and characteristics which are very hard to account for in purely physicalist terms, and that in some sense they do seem to embody the memories of previous lives. The idea of an individual life being a part of a much larger sequence doesn't strike me as outlandish — Wayfarer

Would this be true also of animals? Do you also have trouble with the use of physicalism to explain psychological phenomena like consciousness?

But, back to the theme - the basic philosophical point about the Buddhist view is that there is nothing which doesn’t change. This applies equally to the concept of self, to atoms, and to Gods, insofar as they are posited as comprising some unchanging essence. — Wayfarer

That is a very neat cut into what matters; thank you.

We can define as unchanging anything we want. It is just a language/imagination task. And to posit as unchanging some thing might be just what we need to advance our knowledge. So to deny that stuff can be unchanging - specially we ourselves, when we see so many people stuck in a dream or another - is to blind oneself of a very useful concept.

There is also the approach of 'engaged Buddhism', popularised by Thich Nhat Hanh. It builds on the mahayana philosophy of the ' non-duality of samsara and nirvana' - that samsara is itself nirvana, if understood right (and arriving at this understanding is itself the purpose and also the method). Maybe this is analogous to the Christian understanding of deity as both immanent and transcendent - in the world while also beyond it. — Wayfarer

I know of Thich Nhat Hanh, and have listened to a few of his audio books. As an individualist, who feels only individuals, one by one, can self-regulate and handle their inward defilements, the Lesser Boat, Hinayana, has a little more appeal to me; Mahayana accommodates the social element and the place of bodhisattvas in helping, perhaps, mitigate suffering of others; withal, though, you can lead a horse to water and he may die of thirst.

There seems to be a conflict between individual virtue, Te, and group norms, however. If one places sociality at the center of being, then he also has to accept some of the obvious downward helices people around him are upholding, or even causing. TNH, as a Mahaynist is willing to endorse social norms as indomitable and to be accepted as part of the odyssey, no matter how wrongheaded they are.

The preceptor I've found most helpful is the Cambodian, Ajahn Chah, his teachings are more in line with my own fairly stubborn introversion. He will even recommend not thinking of others in order not to compare yourself to them. This chimes with one of the main issues, from my perspective, which is destroying relationships and generating noxious culture. The internet and social media, e.g., are tearing apart people's self-regulation, while extrinsic valorization and external locus of control vex to a large extent, anything remotely resembling equanimity, temperance, and quiescence necessary for a bhikku to enter the stream toward nirvana. One could ask whether it's even possible to enter the stream in modernity with driving algorithms rather stealing away self-regulation. I'd have to check where a bodhisattva falls on the spectrum of enlightenment...from stream entrant to once returner, and so on. Actually, he couldn't be a once returner, as he will have to return until everyone is wrangled into the stream. At any rate, I would think entering the stream requires internal orientation to an ever increasing extent as it parallels the delusion, anger, and greed prevalent in society.

As indicated in the post above, Christians (who have anything resembling a philosophical/theological backing...who aren't nominal, in other words, and their religion isn't only a feeling of operant obligation to them in averting hell's maw, but a primal interest) who are thinkers, can talk about cosmology, teleology, and eschatology; one of the images they share with eastern tenets, like anatta, is via negativa. Apophatic theology elucidates a lot for me, or perhaps I should say it darkens a lot for me (since neti neti =not this not that), inasmuch as darkness is a more apt image of non-existence than light (you can argue a blinding light covers all same as darkness...though it is hard to imagine such light compassing an object without some kind of limitation or source, which would give rise to opposition) . Perfect darkness is far more mysterious, the source of mystery perhaps, because it doesn't appear to have a source, it is the absence of a source, not really a contravention of anything imaginable. Darkness is a very refreshing "object" of mediation for me. Nothing can be crystallized or conditioned by it (nothing is its only condition), the way light freezes everything and subjects it to becoming (stale/old, conditioned responses).

I do see what you imply by a nonduality of samsara and nirvana, though nonduality itself is a concept and, ergo, a skhanda. Nonduality, e.g., is the antipode of duality. Immanence and transcendence, also, are in a fight with each other. Somehow, the gist of eastern though has its terminus in revealing a way out of all possible dichotomous elements at war with each other. Reconciliation of opposites. Of course, this is the Middle Way Buddha spoke of. A good metaphor from Ajahn Chah: we are floating down a river with serpents of defilement/vice on either side toward the ocean and we want to get to the ocean without ever being bit. Perhaps the banks are lighted with things we are afraid of or tempted by, appearing in the light, and as Buddhists, we try to stay in the darkness and to transcend the dichotomy of anything that has a source. Lasting peace has to find a way out of the battle.

we are floating down a river with serpents of defilement/vice on either side toward the ocean and we want to get to the ocean without ever being bit. Perhaps the banks are lighted with things we are afraid of or tempted by — Anthony

You buddhists should make more movies!

there is nothing which doesn't change

What is the implicit argument here?

P1: There is nothing which does not change

P2: The self is something which doesn't change

C: Therefore, there is no self

We could question both premises.

Let me say something before I dig into it a little. One thing that troubles me about discussions of Buddhist thought and doctrine is that there is a tendency that I've noticed elsewhere to give the Buddha some kind of unquestionable authority. Why? Because he was enlightened! And that's supposed to intimidate any would-be questioners. But that's all a matter of faith. For many, it seems not to be a question about whether what the Buddha or another enlightened being said is true, but rather whether they said it, the presumption being that whatever an enlightened one said must be true. This is a little like saying someone was a prophet who had special access to God and therefore must be believed.

I, personally, am skeptical of claims of enlightenment and prophecy. I am also very skeptical of stories and claims about the Buddha. Any kind of ascription of special authority to Buddhist doctrine is to me just as problematic as saying that the Bible says X, therefore it is true, because God gave us the Bible. How do we know? Because the Bible says so. Not that you or anyone else here would do any of this! I just want to make clear that I won't accept faith-based claims as such. The claims need to be tested on their own merits.

To return to the issue at hand, I can think of some examples of things that don't change. First of all, in the West, whatever its merits, we have Plato's philosophy, which offers a contrary set of claims. Some things don't change. The ratio of a circle's diameter to its circumference is one example. In modern physics, many quantities are invariant. There are many conservation laws. The total amount of energy in a system doesn't change. It is like having a ball of clay that changes form. While the form changes, the basic substance doesn't. There is something which passes through the changes and which is conserved. But the thing about conserved quantities and fundamental substances is that you cannot get at them directly. Suppose absolutely everything we know is a form of some basic substance. It is worse than the problem of a fish knowing water. Arguably, it would be impossible to detect the substance. All we can detect are differences. What is constant is, by virtue of its constancy, undetectable.

When it comes to a self, this problem is deepened. It could be like an unchanging substance. Perhaps it is our very consciousness. It is the ocean in which every fish that we perceive swims. Everything we experience is a modification of it or something arising within it. It itself cannot become an object of perception. It is the very condition for the possibility of perception.

I am not surprised that deep meditators come up empty-handed when they try to see the self. This is like trying to bite one's own teeth! Obviously, the only things that you can be aware of are things that change. That isn't remotely proof that there is nothing which does not change.

It might be argued that we know about some things which don't change through reason, not through perception. To sit in meditation and watch for these things to test their reality might be the wrong approach, especially if we stop thinking. Thinking might be the only way to know of them!

Kant's arguments about the transcendental unity of apperception and whatnot might be relevant here.

And what of Descartes? If there is one thing I know for sure, it is that I exist. A nonexistent entity cannot be fooled into thinking it exists. Whatever the deceptive nature of the arisings in the mind, that in which they arise cannot be doubted.

To be clear though, I don't believe in an individual self as a final substance. But I am convinced of something that might be thought of as a universal self. It is omnipresent, everywhere present to itself. But it cannot be known directly, positively. But it is that which is experiencing being everything. The personal, individual self is thus, in my view, false self. And if we examine it, it falls apart. I believe Buddhists are in fact penetrating to some depth when they see it as a fiction. But to stop there, I think, is a mistake.

As for reincarnation, in my view, the universal self is omnicarnate. It is everyone and all things at all times. But I deny that there is any discrete and separate self, soul, bundle of skandhas, or any such thing belonging to a specific person that dips in and out of the world like a sewing machine, occupying one identity after another in serial fashion. Such an idea is fraught with problems.

Thus I've come to realize practicing Buddhism in western culture is almost too difficult. Our culture is anti Buddhist in every conceivable way. It may be possible to apply bits and pieces of it in the morning and before bed; when the willy-nilly commercialized life takes over at work and in relationship, Buddhism isn't there..the worldly dhammas take control (learned classical conditioning). — Anthony

Eastern culture is believed to not value individualism as much as Westerners, but it’s not like that doesn’t have a downside as well. You sound guilty of the common mistake of over-romanticizing the East.

Yeah, maybe. But the practice of meditation is as individual as it gets. Nobody can know the truth for you, or the configuration of your own mind; this is the foremost responsibility then I'd think, not materialism or behaviorism, or of any kind of code you haven't submitted to vetting yourself. So romantic or no, is of no moment to me. Orienting and devoting to Eastern practices is of great benefit for mental health, if it isn't entertaining, then it can help a Westerner grow up beyond his need for things and hopefully help replace outer screens with the inner one. Knowing how to be alone with yourself (without internal conflict) and getting along with yourself is a prerequisite for getting along with others. This is more important than learning how to use the new operating system on your computer, to be sure. It just depends on what you value. Peace on Earth would be nice, worth being a dreamer for. Tibet was the most peaceful culture ever for a reason. Hardly a mistake or romantic. Some don't care for peace. Perhaps it isn't entertaining or inspiring to them. Most warriors are internally conflicted, violent, and in need of endless battles. The internal war in such people can be ignored as long as there's an outer war to "justify' the one they have within; unfortunately, commercial relationships basically mirror the competition and strife you see in war; and those who value money and profit motive should have been conscripted to be soldiers.

Buddhism helps separate suggestive influences and hypnotic induction from the what's really there within. In other words, it's beneficial to know my truth as it is separate from anyone else's. There's danger in representing anything or being a joiner of an organization; the danger is we start to mime what's in front of us or what we hear without fully examining the mental impression it makes in us. In this way, one may mistake the mind itself for mental impressions made in it. Being unable to make this distinction is something that should be feared.

Tibet was the most peaceful culture ever for a reason. — Anthony

Was it? If so, there could be many reasons for that.

I just looked up statistics for peaceful countries and Buddhism for 2018. They rank as follows:

Cambodia (97% Buddhist) is 96th most peaceful out of 163 countries.
Thailand (93%) 112th
Myanmar (88%) 122nd

The country with the most Buddhists, 244 million (including Tibetans), ranks 112th

Not impressive at all and many Western countries are more peaceful. Indeed the United States (1.2% Buddhist) ranks better than Myanmar, although just barely at 121st.

Of course I don't mean currently.

One thing that troubles me about discussions of Buddhist thought and doctrine is that there is a tendency that I've noticed elsewhere to give the Buddha some kind of unquestionable authority. Why? Because he was enlightened! And that's supposed to intimidate any would-be questioners. But that's all a matter of faith. — petrichor

The Buddha's authority is not unquestionable. Nobody has to accept the Buddha's teaching. In the tradition, a lay person had to approach a monk three times to seek instruction before being taught. But Buddhists are not generally going to try and save you in spite of yourself, like Christians do.

There is a oft-quoted passage in a sutta called 'the address to the Kalamas' which is cited in relation to the Buddhist view of religious authority:

Kalamas: 'Don't go by reports, by legends, by traditions, by scripture, by logical conjecture, by inference, by analogies, by agreement through pondering views, by probability, or by the thought, "This contemplative is our teacher." When you know for yourselves that, "These qualities are unskillful; these qualities are blameworthy; these qualities are criticized by the wise; these qualities, when adopted & carried out, lead to harm & to suffering" — then you should abandon them.' Thus was it said. And in reference to this was it said.

"Now, Kalamas, don't go by reports, by legends, by traditions, by scripture, by logical conjecture, by inference, by analogies, by agreement through pondering views, by probability, or by the thought, 'This contemplative is our teacher.' When you know for yourselves that, 'These qualities are skillful; these qualities are blameless; these qualities are praised by the wise; these qualities, when adopted & carried out, lead to welfare & to happiness' — then you should enter & remain in them.

Clearly in Buddhism, the Buddha has authority, but the attitude is still vastly different to dogmatic religions. On the one hand, there is the explicit statement that 'the dharma that I [the Buddha] perceive is deep, difficult to fathom, beyond mere logic, perceivable only by the wise'. But on the other hand, the 'noble disciples' (aryas) and Bodhisattvas are indeed able to discover or realise these dharmas, through disciplined introspection and the other elements of the eightfold path - in other words, to become Buddhas themselves.

And finally, the Buddha compares his teaching to a raft, brought together from gathering up 'branches and twigs', which are used to transport the aspirant 'across the river' of suffering - whereupon the raft is left behind, not carried around or idolised.

In both these respects (among many others), Buddhism is quite different to dogmatic religion.

I don't believe in an individual self as a final substance. But I am convinced of something that might be thought of as a universal self. It is omnipresent, everywhere present to itself. But it cannot be known directly, positively. — petrichor

Then why believe it? It is the epitome of unsupported speculation. At best it's a feeling. This is precisely where the Buddha diverged from Hinduism, as he showed their doctrine of 'universal self' is incoherent.

That said, there is a deep principle which you articulate well here:

Everything we experience is a modification of it [consciousness] or something arising within it. It itself cannot become an object of perception. It is the very condition for the possibility of perception. — petrichor

I actually do think that is true, and that it is a principle recognised by both Hindu and Buddhist philosophy (not so much Western). I think where the Buddha's approach is superior, is that he recognises that you can't 'objectify' this 'unknown knower', for the very reason that you point out: the eye can't see itself, the hand can't grasp itself. This is something the Upaniṣads themselves say. But the Buddhist criticizes its proponents for trying to articulate this as a knowable. (But it's a very abstruse point and that is my interpretation, although I might add I wrote an MA thesis on it.)

First of all, in the West, whatever its merits, we have Plato's philosophy, which offers a contrary set of claims. Some things don't change. The ratio of a circle's diameter to its circumference is one example. In modern physics, many quantities are invariant. — petrichor

Very much agree with you. In relation to the Western tradition, I'm definitely an advocate for Platonism. I discussed this on a thread on DharmaWheel forum (where I happen to be a mod. My conclusion about the matter can be read here).

Do you also have trouble with the use of physicalism to explain psychological phenomena like consciousness? — Joshs

Darwinian theory is a biological theory which is first and foremost a theory of the origin of species. As an account of the origin of species, it assumes an attitude of methodological naturalism, which is fine as far as it goes. But in my view, once h. sapiens evolved to the point of language and culture, then we transcend the biological. We are able to conceive of purposes above and beyond those encompassed by biological theory.

It might be interesting to note that Alfred Russel Wallace, who is credited as the co-discoverer of the principle of natural selection, took a very similar view, and never accepted that Darwin's theories could account for every characteristic of humankind:

[Mr Darwin's] whole argument tends to the conclusion that man's entire nature and all his faculties, whether moral, intellectual, or spiritual, have been derived from their rudiments in the lower animals, in the same manner and by the action of the same general laws as his physical structure has been derived. As this conclusion appears to me not to be supported by adequate evidence, and to be directly opposed to many well-ascertained facts, I propose to devote a brief space to its discussion. — Alfred Russel Wallace

You can find the rest of the discussion here.

thank you Anthony, many fine points there, I can see you are very insightful.

Some things don't change. The ratio of a circle's diameter to its circumference is one example. — petrichor

The decimal representation of Pi never ends and never settles into a permanently repeating pattern.

In any case, change is itself a mental perception. If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? However we might answer that question one thing is sure, if we did hear it something changed.

Of course I don't mean currently. — Anthony

Looking forward to your evidence showing that "Tibet was the most peaceful culture ever," because of Buddhism.

In the meantime, what, Buddhism doesn't age well?

I'll try to substantiate that claim. Not a master of history, so will have to go see where I read that. If I'm wrong, I'll admit it. Which culture do you think is/was most peaceful?

Iceland, in 2018 anyway. Icelandic culture must be pretty chill. :razz:

And the males in Iceland actually outlive females on average...strange.