With some questions we just can’t help our- selves. Buddhists answer one way. Hindus answer another. Both say we’ve got the wrong idea of what the self is or isn’t. I’m not sure what to think…except… that they, that we, are likely all a bit off in our estimation. Is it a bit like when in the Boy Scouts, on a camping trip, the older scouts would make the younger scouts excited about snipe hunting? And so off we’d go…
In an attempt to get clearer, and less hyperbolic, about the value of suffering, I earlier suggested the idea of a suffering threshold, which is the “point” at which suffering loses its (positive) value and warrants easing. The idea of easing suffering leads directly to compassion/pity and this passage from section 338 of Nietzsche’s the Gay Science: The whole economy of my soul and the balance effected by “distress,” the way new springs and needs break open, the way in…
In the well-known parable of the arrow, the Buddha responds negatively to the usefulness of answering certain metaphysical questions. The point that he makes is that they are not important for furthering the goal of alleviating dukkha (suffering/existential dissatisfaction): Whether the view is held that the world is eternal or not, Malunkyaputta, there is still birth, old age, death, grief, suffering, sorrow and despair – and these can be destroyed in this life! I have not explained these other things…
After teaching about Buddhism this past week and Nietzsche’s ideas on creativity and greatness, and after watching Limitless last night, the following thoughts came to me. In the Will to Power, Nietzsche writes: How does one become stronger?— By coming to decisions slowly; and by clinging tenaciously to what one has decided. Everything else follows. The sudden and the changeable: the two species of weakness. (Section 918) In Limitless, a creatively blocked writer takes a drug that allows him to utilize…
I have long been drawn to Buddhism and to Nietzsche’s ideas. After much thought, I propose a reconciliation; I propose the creation of a Nietzschean Buddhism. How could this be a possibility? After all, the third noble truth of Buddhism is that there is a way out of suffering, and the fourth noble truth gives us the way out. Suffering is optional, as is staying in samsara, the eternal recurrence of rebirth and a life of suffering. How is that…
In an earlier essay I raised some questions about the value of suffering, especially the default assumption that suffering is to be avoided and brought to a quick end when it does occur. In Nietzsche’s writing we find claims that suffering has instrumental value and intrinsic value, or at least it will to the higher types of human beings who have the appropriate will. Here I want to consider the claim that suffering has instrumental value and what that means…
The cessation of suffering is Buddhism’s end goal. The Buddha has discovered how to do it, according to Buddhism and Buddhists who have achieved the goal. A supposedly central requirement for achieving the goal is to realize the truth of no-self: there is no substantial self that endures over time. Leaving aside what exactly this means, an important question regards why one should accept the doctrine of no-self. The Buddha gave arguments for the view and later Buddhists gave still…
Pleasure and pain are as intriguing as they are dangerous. They are with us from the beginning and experienced daily, yet I don’t think many of us understand them very well. Most basically they are tools, very primitive ones. If you feel pain, then that is often a good sign that you should try to stop what you’re doing. We can’t necessarily say the same thing reversed about pleasure. Pleasure is a less discriminating tool than pain. And that is…
In reading Siderits’s excellent Buddhism as Philosophy I have come to realize the following problem. If a religion has its base in philosophy, if its central tenets are supposed to follow from the use of reason and argument, then none of its conclusions can ever be firm enough to ground religious practice. There will always be difficult objections and questions that cannot be answered in a way sufficient to allow one to say, “I know this is true and I…
In the original essay on the relational nature of personal identity, from October 10th, 2010, I wrote the following: What are some of the typical components of personal identity? 1) Body 2) Consciousness associate with/centered in one body (including will and self-consciousness). 3) Memories of consciousness (as the direct causal product of 2) But it seems to me that we should also include things such as: 4) Sets of beliefs 5) Attitudes/dispositions 6) Emotional make up 7) Ways of thinking…