I remember an answer which when quite young I was prompted to make to a valued adviser, who was wont to importune me with the dear old doctrines of the church. On my saying, What have I to do with the sacredness of traditions, if I live wholly from within? my friend suggested, — “But these impulses may be from below, not from above.” I replied, “They do not seem to me to be such; but if I am the Devil’s child, I will live then from the Devil.” No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature. — T Clark

Goodness. A profound idea.

I've been reading Whitman's Leaves of Grass and it is quite extraordinary.

Dear Harold Bloom said of Emerson: "Emerson is the mind of our climate; he is the principal source of the American difference in poetry and criticism and in pragmatic postphilosophy." Do you think this holds?

We have no choice , because whether we like it or not, whatever valuative framework we choose will eventually collapse and be transformed from within its own resources( the best becomes the worst, good becomes evil) . — Joshs

Perhaps I don't fully understand. I have certainly never had this experience but I do accept that beliefs and thought systems are not immutable.

The main problem seems to be that people want to be enlightened without being enlightened. In other words, they want to be at once what they are now and enlightened. — Apollodorus

This point really resonates. Thank you for a very considered response.

I read Nietzsche’s self-overcoming ( will to power) as being different than you were before, not better in the sense of some kind of cumulative progress or organic growth. — Joshs

That's intriguing, Joshs - I know my thinking is conventional but I wonder why be different if it isn't in some greater sense, better? What is the impetus for transformation - is it being who you really are, which may not be an improvement?

One civilisation's winter is another's summer. — Banno

Sounds like a metaphorical description of the state of Western democracy...

I am looking for people who are specifically feeling the need for “end-time philosophies” - schools of thought that you feel are especially valuable when external meaning-making and systems, and their many discoveries, fail. — Joshua Jones

I can't tell from the tone of your post whether you actually believe in end times or you are just hustling for an aesthetic experience.

Bodhisattva means 'a buddha-to-be', ie. a person on the path to buddhahood, but not yet a buddha. — baker

Could be. The way it was taught to me was that a Bodhisattva postpones entering Nirvana in order to teach humanity. For what it is worth, I noticed that the Dalai Lama has said that Jesus may have been a Bodhisattva.

Now I am talking about a mythic traditions and they don't always compare neatly. In my worldview Jesus never existed as described in the fan fiction (the gospels). These are myths, perhaps based on original stories of an itinerant preacher.

Are just examples of human nature inherit subconscious fears and discriminatory tendencies. That would have arose regardless of the existence of religion or not. — TheQuestion

That's missing my actual point. :smile: It doesn't matter how many different ways prejudice might arise. My point is that faith is often used as a justification for prejudice. Hence the question: what can't be justified by an appeal to faith? Answer: nothing. In other words, faith is a terrible pathway to truth.

But if the person is corrupt and not align with God's grace you can manipulate a congratulation to think badly.

But if you are well versed in the scripture and knowledgeable of the word, you can identify these vipers like a sore thumb. — TheQuestion

One man's viper is another's pious believer. That's the whole problem.

I take the view that is highly likely that a sincere Christian could also be a racist, homophobic, judgemental person. After all, it's only a believer's subjective personal opinion about what constitutes the correct interpretation of Scripture. That's all any religion ever has - subjective interpretation. Well, that and the faith that their interpretation is correct even if it supports a hatred of gay people, women or Islamic folk.

This is from "Princess Bride," right? — T Clark

No, that's from the director's cut of "Blade Runner".

Thanks. Do you associate enlightenment with the acquisition of virtue (sorry about that phrase) or is virtue an entirely separate domain?

Another significant source was the ideas of the 'New England Transcendentalists', best known of whom were Emerson and Thoreau, and through whom the Indian conception of enlightenment also percolated. These had considerable influence on successors such as Pierce, James, Royce, and others, down to Abraham Maslow and other transpersonal psychologists. — Wayfarer

Of course, I totally forgot about them. I keep starting Walden and not finishing it. I've always responded to the notion of society as having a depleting effect on individuals. For me self knowledge requires significant alone time. That would be my path rather than deliberate meditation.

All that said, I think there's an inherent tension between the European and Indian ideals of enlightenment. The former is an essentially individualist, pragmatic and scientific whilst the latter is based on a radically different, non-individualist conception of the nature of the self and the meaning of existence. However, culture being what it is, these two somewhat conflicting attitudes are now meeting and combining in a dialectic to produce an entirely new synthesis, encompassing many disciplines including phenomenology, biosemiotics, systems theory and the 'new physics' — Wayfarer

You've packed a lot to think about in that paragraph. There are contemplative traditions within Christianity (generally via monastic pathways) which would be free of the scientific and individualistic focus. Additionally, I guess Gnosis is one such tradition. And today, Father Richard Rohr (from the Franciscan tradition) is a teacher in a contemplative, enlightenment tradition it seems to me. He's pretty scathing about the materialistic spirituality of mainstream Christians.

"Truly enlightened people see oneness because they look out from oneness, instead of labeling everything as superior and inferior, in or out. If you think you are privately “saved” or enlightened, then you are neither saved nor enlightened."

Do as I say not as I do...

Tom Storm I think Jung is a great guide to understanding the possibilities of the human psyche. His term of 'Individuation' has something in common with 'enlightenment'. Individuation is about assimilating unconscious content with the ego to form the Self. — I like sushi

Yes, I am somewhat familiar with Jung and studied him in college. One of my parent's close friends was involved with the Gnostic Gospel find in Nag Hammadi and a close confidant of Jung's from the 1940's. I can see CJ's process of individuation as leading there - if one every becomes fully individuated.

None of these things are easy to understand or practice. But it doesn't mean they're unreal. — Wayfarer

Understand. But perhaps they are ideas I can't use or have no use for. That renders them almost unreal.

I think the idea is that it should be a living non-attachment. — Janus

Yes, but why waste time on eating and breathing... I'm only half joking BTW.

I'm interested in what might be a Western equivalent of enlightenment - outside from Jung's somewhat syncretistic ideas.

Does anyone have comments on Nietzsche's ideas of self-overcoming? The will to power implies significant attachment however, but perhaps I am wrong.

The secular version of enlightenment seems to be a kind of emotional and aspirational minimalism.

I hear you. I'd be interested in what Wayfarer says to that. In my worldview I can also achieve a state of non-attachment by shooting myself.

Not sure I will ever fully understand Parmenides or Plotinus or comprehend idealism, but I take it from all this that an empiricist will never find the soteriological release of nirvana.

:up:

My very first lecture in philosophy was about the distinction between empiricism and rationalism. Took me a long while to grasp that distinction, and I'm still working on it. — Wayfarer

That is a noteworthy distinction and I think I understood this early on - at least in principle.

For me, enlightenment, in the way we are discussing it, is self-awareness. I know that I have become more and more self-aware as I've gotten older. Somewhere along the line, that became my path. To become as self-aware as I can in as many ways as I can. — T Clark

I think I've always thought of it along similar lines. But additionally there's a flavor of being initiated into cosmic secrets. In my own life I feel that self-awareness has increased whilst other things (skills and attributes mainly) have declined. The net value of my incremental self-realization is questionable.

Is Nietzsche's self-overcoming a form of the enlightenment narrative?

Enlightenment in the Buddist sense simply means the realization of what they call emptiness, and it has little if anything to do with the development of virtue. — praxis

Empty of virtue too it seems. :razz:

Sam Harris does talk about enlightenment from several perspectives.

This quote from his Waking Up website struck me as apropos:

"What is enlightenment, which is so often said to be the ultimate goal of meditation? There are many esoteric details that we can safely ignore—disagreements among contemplative traditions about what, exactly, is gained or lost at the end of the spiritual path. Many of these claims are preposterous. Within most schools of Buddhism, for instance, a buddha—whether the historical Buddha, Siddhartha Gautama, or any other person who attains the state of “full enlightenment”—is generally described as “omniscient.” Just what this means is open to a fair bit of caviling. But however narrowly defined, the claim is absurd. If the historical Buddha were “omniscient,” he would have been, at minimum, a better mathematician, physicist, biologist, and Jeopardy contestant than any person who has ever lived. Is it reasonable to expect that an ascetic in the fifth century BC, by virtue of his meditative insights, spontaneously became an unprecedented genius in every field of human inquiry, including those that did not exist at the time in which he lived? Would Siddhartha Gautama have awed Kurt Gödel, Alan Turing, John von Neumann, and Claude Shannon with his command of mathematical logic and information theory? Of course not. To think otherwise is pure, religious piety."

The provenance of the term is that it was used by Thomas Rhys-Davids, founder of the Pali Text Society, which translated the Pali Buddhist texts into English, as the translation for 'bodhi'. Bodhi is one of those many Buddhist terms for which there is no real English equivalent, but it's often also translated as 'wisdom'. — Wayfarer

Hence Jesus as being described by some as a bodhisattva.

Should the term enlightenment be reserved solely for use by spiritual traditions? It seems so connected to particular expressions of metaphysics.

It reminds me of the discussion I had with @Janus earlier about who can be called a Christian. Can someone who believes that Jesus is a myth and thinks all stories of miracles and the New Testament stories are nonsense, be called a Christian? I am inclined to say no but Janus and perhaps others disagree.

When Harris uses the term enlightenment is he talking about the same thing as a more traditional Buddhist?

Are we heading back to the themes in Evan Thompson's book, Why I am Not Buddhist?

Thanks, I have. Some of Harris' stuff prompted me to ask the question.

Cosmic Consciousness by Richard Maurice Bucke. — Wayfarer

Good call - my mum had this book and used to gently lecture me about it. I forgot all about it. As it happens Spinoza was her favorite thinker.

it is possessed by a very few individuals, and it provides a radically transformative understanding of the nature of existence. — Wayfarer

That's interesting. I wonder too how this transformative understanding might impact upon the behavior of such a person. Are they more likely to be in harmony with others, eschew violence, have affairs? In other words and an enlightened one, do you get a humanity bypass? If not it just sounds like a case of immense wisdom in some areas and drastic failings in others.

much of this material is categorised, or should I say stereoptyped, as religious dogma, therefore superstitious, anti-rational and unscientific — Wayfarer

As you've noted, that's mainstream life in post Enlightenment age...

This may throw a question mark on any who claim to have experienced 'enlightenment.' I am partly thinking of Krishnamurti, who was believed to be a future spiritual leader, and he had to step back from this and look at the nature of such a quest, rather than being drawn into the inflated ego consciousness of spirituality. — Jack Cummins

Thanks Jack. Yes, Krishnamurti has come up a few times. I find what he says very interesting and always have. But his personal life seems to have been somewhat tawdry. It this is enlightenment then it seems to have a limited purview.

But many people just don't do those practices, don't develop those virtues — baker

Yes, I think this is worth developing further.

"Faith in humanity" is what makes the difference beteen being "normal" and being "antisocial". — baker

Wow - I never had you as a feel good New Age thinker, B. :razz:

When it eventually comes out that such and such comedian is depressed, or committed suicide, somehow, it's not a surprise. — baker

The trope of the sad clown is one of those unfortunate truths about humor. I tend to see the funny side of real things rather than contrived things. I can't do comedy movies or any kind of sitcom either. I find Nietzsche amusing in places ("In heaven all the interesting people are missing.") and he may well have been a riot in person. But I am not a deep reader of his oeuvre and I can't help feeling that if he had just been more successful with women he might have been a very different style of writer.

Just as true, or more so, of philosophers and wannabe philosophers. — T Clark

And don't even talk to me about actors....

If 'stand-up' calls to mind some guy wittering on about his flatmate's bathroom habits then I agree, but there's more to it than that, I promise. — Cuthbert

It's not just the material, it's the form. And I have no sense of humour. I find comedians generally too needy for love or hectoring bores.

He is. Good example.

Ok, I think I get it. I shouldn't be looking for philosophers doing stand-up. I should be looking for stand-ups doing philosophy. That's a great idea! — Cuthbert

Maybe. I personally dislike most stand up comedy, so I'm out. :groan:

Perceiving the flower incorrectly is still about the flower.

Realism does not claim that our perceptions are always correct.

It just rejects the weirdness of "the thing itself" as opposed to "the thing".

SO for example we know about colourblindness, we know that some folk see the flower's colour differently. We understand that this is not a fact about the flower. But most pertinently, we know that there is a flower for all this to be true of. We do not make the invalid inference that all there is, is perceptions-of-flowers, nor make the equally absurd presumption that there is a flower-in-itself that we can never know. Both these views are philosophical junk. — Banno

Nicely put and helpful.

Review

https://secularbuddhistnetwork.org/a-review-of-evan-thompsons-why-i-am-not-a-buddhist/

I've read some of his writing and I have seen Thomson lecturing on YouTube. He has a nice manner. The quote about Buddhist modernism is a killer. I feel like I could say a similar thing about myself and Christianity.

Thanks.

No worries - these are all good questions. And yes, I have used this very argument about art (I think we both did on here somewhere...)

If they think philosophically I would say they are philosophers. — Janus

A big if. Janus we just disagree on this. No point in going on. Take care.

But don't you think people are free to define themselves in ways differently than you would? — Janus

It's not about me or you Janus I would have thought. People are free to call themselves philosophers without ever having read or undertaken any actual philosophy. I have no problem with that, but are they philosophers?

So, what beliefs exactly do you think are indispensable for one to hold in order to qualify as a Christian? — Janus

Who knows? But it's more than just an ethical system. I follow almost all Christian moral values - but I do not consider myself Christian - perhaps culturally Christian... If you leave out the supernatural component and the numinous, it could be said you leave out the raison d'être.

If the guy you spoke about follows the moral principles as given in the sermon on the mount, then he is a Christian in my book. — Janus

I can't get there.

It's not simply an "obsession with purity", but a matter of efficacy. Can the newer developments that are occuring under the banner of Buddhism deliver, or at least promise what the older one(s) did? — baker

I think that's right too. What do you think of contemporary Wester secular Buddhism in its various expressions?

What drives me is the question whether the Buddha of the Pali Canon as I know him was in fact not trying hard enough to find satisfaction in "life as it is usually lived" (and that such satisfaction can indeed be found, by everyone) and that his teaching on dependent co-arising is wrong. — baker

This is more or less the question that preoccupied me 30 years ago. I personally have never felt dissatisfied by life, even though it has often been difficult, so the question lost urgency. A different question if you live in more dire or horrific conditions, no doubt.

Interesting, thanks. So often people are fixated by identifying a practice in its purity or as originally intended. Hence pietist movements like Hasidism or Islamic State (not that the two are comparable).

Buddhism has a way of dealing with that in terms of calling them the 'second' and 'third' turnings of the wheel of dharma. It managed to retain the core principles through otherwise massive changes. — Wayfarer

Would you contend that Buddhism has incorporated this ongoing dialectic or evolution in its approach? Do you have a view about phenomenology and how it might resonate with Buddhism?

As David Loy, another Buddhist writer, says, 'The main problem with our usual understanding of secularity is that it is taken-for-granted, so we are not aware that it is a worldview. It is an ideology that pretends to be the everyday world we live in. Most of us assume that it is simply the way the world really is, once superstitious beliefs about it have been removed.' And among those 'superstitious beliefs' are the fundamental principles of Buddhism. — Wayfarer

Yes, I've been struck by this aspect of modern secular Buddhism too. Do you consider what Wright et al practice to be Buddhism or is it simply secularism inspired by some Buddhist principles?

I met an earnest Liberal Catholic some years ago who insisted that he was a practicing Christian. Except he thought Jesus did no miracles, died on the cross, was not resurrected and that much of the New Testament was 'an insult to the intelligence'. (shades of the Jefferson Bible) I told him that I considered him to be a secularist with some handpicked Christian cultural values, but not a Christian. This irritated him greatly.

When do calculated changes and omissions made to a belief system transform that system into something else?