Episode 171: Buddhism vs. Evolution with Guest Robert Wright (Part Two)

Comments

1. James Wilson says

   September 13, 2017 at 12:33 am

   I thoroughly enjoyed this episode. I think Buddhism has moved past the point of exoticism in the West and can be taken much more seriously, especially aspects of mindfulness that have been used by therapists for quite some time now.
   I thought that Mark and Dylan brought up interesting points about what qualifies for meditation? Does it have to be sitting with oneself in stillness? Can it be listening to music, painting, working on bicycle? I think contemplation needs to be part of the practice. There are plenty of activities where we can become unselfconscious, but we usually don’t learn anything from them, while contributing to the feeling of needing to escape from reality rather than embrace it.
   I think a middle ground between East and West practice could be still meditation with the addition of contemplative writing, especially when it comes to sussing out what our anxieties and troubles may be at the time. Typically if I spend some time trying to makes sense of something troubling me by writing it out on the page, and fleshing out the details; the act of writing helps me make sense of my situation, and those worries no longer seem to have power over me anymore. Which goes to show that much of what we can stew about is just happening in our own mind.
   I don’t practice mediation daily, nor do I write daily or even weekly, but when I do I feel I have a much better sense of my own subjective reality.
   Thanks again for the show, and I’m really glad that there are folks like Robert out there that are giving credence to ancient wisdom.
   -James

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2. Graham Jones says

   September 13, 2017 at 10:25 am

   for more information on the history of insight and mindfulness meditation, here’s an interview with a scholar who wrote a book on Ledi Sayadaw, the 19th/20th century burmese monk who developed and popularized the practice. http://newbooksnetwork.com/erik-braun-the-birth-of-insight-meditation-modern-buddhism-and-the-burmese-monk-ledi-sayadaw-university-of-chicago-press-2013/

   here’s also “a primer on buddhist meditation”. a very different analysis than the one offered by wright.
   http://bit.ly/2x1eR4Z

   lopez also has a number of lectures on this history of science + buddhism dialogue and it’s very confused arguments. it would be interesting to put this information in dialogue with wright’s analysis.
   https://youtu.be/FF6rzOSM0Iw
   https://youtu.be/dj88vK5RxsI

   if this podcast is to do another episode on buddhism, shantideva’s bodhicaryavatara would be a better choice as it’s both a historically important text from indian antiquity and it’s used by practitioners today. it’s short, accessible, and maintains an engaging style. the translator Kate Crosby would be a great guest.

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   • Alan Cook says

     September 14, 2017 at 12:08 pm

     Yes, the Bodhicaryavatara would make a good reading for a podcast. Even better would be to read in in conjunction with Paul Williams’s book Altruism and Reality, or perhaps just the final chapter thereof, which is entitled “How Santideva Destroyed the Bodhisattva Path.” That would combine an important text from the tradition with a high-level contemporary discussion thereof. Here’s an article that discusses and responds to Williams’s argument:

     https://folk.uio.no/jonw/Bodhipath2001a.pdf

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3. Carlos Garcia-Suarez says

   September 14, 2017 at 3:18 am

   This is my first post as a full PLE member. I am writing from Madrid (Spain). While I enjoyed Wright’s podcast a lot, and I like very much the work he does, I think he presents the non-self argument in a bit weak form. In fact, the traditional Buddhist argument looks weak also to me. They break a person into parts, or aggregates and the argument go saying that as no of the individual parts is the self (as intuitively understood) then the self-does not exist, it is an illusion. But, you can have things that take shape, precisely as a sum or addition of parts, and then exhibits behaviors that were not present in the individual components. I am talking of course about the idea of emergent properties, But I am trying to go a bit beyond. The self could be something that emerges as a result of the interaction of the parts and that it could be as real as the parts themselves.

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4. qapla says

   September 19, 2017 at 4:13 pm

   TMHS 240: Happiness Vs. Pleasure And The Hacking Of The American Mind – With Dr. Robert Lustig

   http://theshawnstevensonmodel.com/robert-lustig/

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5. qapla says

   September 24, 2017 at 11:20 am

   There is pleasure
   And there is bliss.
   Forgo the first to posses the second.

   Dhammapada The Sayings of the Buddha 21:1

   Reply