It would be great to start a post like this with a epistemic status note, that specifies your relationship to Buddhism.
I read your post as operating on the assumption that the historic path of the Buddha is about teaching farmers to meditate.
To the extend I understand the history of Buddhism that isn’t what Buddhism was about for thousands of years.
In religions there’s always a desire to argue that what’s taught today is taught because it’s ancient knowledge but I see no reason to have that kind of discourse on LessWrong.
If you want to argue that you have something useful to say about meditation, there’s no necessity to argue that what you are saying is a translation of the Buddha. I don’t think that it leads to good epistemic hygiene.
People like to have a claim on “what the Buddha really taught”, e.g. in this post “Though the Buddha taught one specific concentration technique...”
But we don’t really know what the Buddha taught. We have scriptures from an oral tradition, compiled by many people centuries after the death of this figure, a figure for which we have very little historical evidence for, that probably did exist, but we don’t really know when. He is a ghost.
Therefore, it seems a safer option not to state what “The Buddha” taught or what “Buddhism” (singular) is really about at its core.
In the parable of the raft, the Buddha describes “a man in the course of a journey” who arrives at a body of water that he has to cross. Since there are no boats or bridges available, his only option is to assemble a raft out of the “grass, twigs, branches, leaves” and whatever other materials are to hand. Having bound them together, and “making an effort with his hands and feet” he manages to get across to the opposite shore. Despite its evident usefulness, he realises that there is no point in carrying the raft any further once it has accomplished its purpose. So he leaves it by the shore and continues on his way. Likewise, the Buddha concludes, “I have shown you how the dharma is similar to a raft, being for the purpose of crossing over, not for the purpose of grasping” [M. 22]. This story shows how the dharma is an expedient, a means to achieve an urgent task at hand, not an end in itself that is to be preserved at all cost. It emphasises how one needs to draw upon whatever resources are available at a given time in order to accomplish what you have to do. It does not matter whether these resources are “what the Buddha truly taught” or not. The only thing that matters is whether such a configuration of disparate elements is of any help in getting you across the river. [...] In the light of this parable, it makes little sense to ask: “Is this really Buddhism?” The only relevant question is: “Does it float?”
There are a lot of different ways to build a raft that floats. If you want to study rafts it’s useful to be able to speak about how different rafts are constructed and how the differ from each other.
The article speaks about providing a “praxis-based, post-metaphysical vision of the dharma”. That points in the direction of what the OP called mindlessness teacher.
Trying to be post-metaphysical is often about not thinking much about metaphysis and thus in this case staying with the metaphysics of concentration, equanimity, tranquility, mindfulness and suffering without thinking about whether those are the best concepts to use.
Trying to be post-metaphysical is often about not thinking much about metaphysis and thus in this case staying with the metaphysics of concentration, equanimity, tranquility, mindfulness and suffering without thinking about whether those are the best concepts to use.
Huh? The article’s very much saying that we should think about whether the traditional concepts are useful, and then it has an extended case study where it dismantles and reconstructs the four noble truths into a form that’s rather different from the common one but which it argues to support practice better. Whether its proposed new version is actually better is a question I don’t have a strong opinion on, but it’s certainly at least trying; the “mindlessness trainer” criticism seems off.
there’s no necessity to argue that what you are saying is a translation of the Buddha
I agree that it isn’t necessary to make that argument in order to say something useful about meditation. But in the name of epistemic hygiene I do think it is necessary to reveal your true motivations/concerns, which seems to be the case here.
I don’t think that I know the true concerns after reading the post. It’s for example unspecified whether romeostevensit has read any of the texts he wants to “translate” in their original language and what his relationships to those texts happens to be.
The post is predicated on reading 4 different translations of Pali Canon discourse, checked against my own experience, discussion with teachers, and works of historical Buddhist scholarship charting the development of differing interpretations.
edit: I also agree with ashen above, the frame of ‘what the buddha taught’ is a simplified one that dissolves under close examination (the historical record on how the discourses got compiled is if anything even more sketchy than the one we have for the bible)
This reply easks for a epistemic status note. I started noticing something to a similar name on lesswrong posts. I was quite a bit confused on what they were supposed to accomplish. This particular suggestion leaves it quite murky for what kinds of considrations those notes would be used for.
In general I didn’t know whether those epistemic status notes were a community thing, how recent a development they were and where to look up the relevant info. Also for some strange reason it felt weird to ask directly only about them on a random post (and I did not ask).
It would be great to start a post like this with a epistemic status note, that specifies your relationship to Buddhism.
I read your post as operating on the assumption that the historic path of the Buddha is about teaching farmers to meditate.
To the extend I understand the history of Buddhism that isn’t what Buddhism was about for thousands of years.
In religions there’s always a desire to argue that what’s taught today is taught because it’s ancient knowledge but I see no reason to have that kind of discourse on LessWrong.
If you want to argue that you have something useful to say about meditation, there’s no necessity to argue that what you are saying is a translation of the Buddha. I don’t think that it leads to good epistemic hygiene.
People like to have a claim on “what the Buddha really taught”, e.g. in this post “Though the Buddha taught one specific concentration technique...”
But we don’t really know what the Buddha taught. We have scriptures from an oral tradition, compiled by many people centuries after the death of this figure, a figure for which we have very little historical evidence for, that probably did exist, but we don’t really know when. He is a ghost.
Therefore, it seems a safer option not to state what “The Buddha” taught or what “Buddhism” (singular) is really about at its core.
I like the way that Stephen Batchelor put it:
And yet, Batchelor has written several books on “what the Buddha really taught” and the true meaning of Buddhism.
Your link has since rotted. But I found this other article which also paraphrases Batchelor’s paraphrase of the parable: https://thebuddhistcentre.com/westernbuddhistreview/does-it-float-stephen-batchelors-secular-buddhism
It references Batchelor’s book Secular Buddhism.
Fantastic piece! Thanks for the link.
There are a lot of different ways to build a raft that floats. If you want to study rafts it’s useful to be able to speak about how different rafts are constructed and how the differ from each other.
The article speaks about providing a “praxis-based, post-metaphysical vision of the dharma”. That points in the direction of what the OP called mindlessness teacher.
Trying to be post-metaphysical is often about not thinking much about metaphysis and thus in this case staying with the metaphysics of concentration, equanimity, tranquility, mindfulness and suffering without thinking about whether those are the best concepts to use.
Huh? The article’s very much saying that we should think about whether the traditional concepts are useful, and then it has an extended case study where it dismantles and reconstructs the four noble truths into a form that’s rather different from the common one but which it argues to support practice better. Whether its proposed new version is actually better is a question I don’t have a strong opinion on, but it’s certainly at least trying; the “mindlessness trainer” criticism seems off.
I read the first few pages, if he gets more into actual concept development later on my charge might be too strong.
I agree that it isn’t necessary to make that argument in order to say something useful about meditation. But in the name of epistemic hygiene I do think it is necessary to reveal your true motivations/concerns, which seems to be the case here.
I don’t think that I know the true concerns after reading the post. It’s for example unspecified whether romeostevensit has read any of the texts he wants to “translate” in their original language and what his relationships to those texts happens to be.
The post is predicated on reading 4 different translations of Pali Canon discourse, checked against my own experience, discussion with teachers, and works of historical Buddhist scholarship charting the development of differing interpretations.
edit: I also agree with ashen above, the frame of ‘what the buddha taught’ is a simplified one that dissolves under close examination (the historical record on how the discourses got compiled is if anything even more sketchy than the one we have for the bible)
This reply easks for a epistemic status note. I started noticing something to a similar name on lesswrong posts. I was quite a bit confused on what they were supposed to accomplish. This particular suggestion leaves it quite murky for what kinds of considrations those notes would be used for.
In general I didn’t know whether those epistemic status notes were a community thing, how recent a development they were and where to look up the relevant info. Also for some strange reason it felt weird to ask directly only about them on a random post (and I did not ask).
See this post (including the comments) for info about “epistemic status”.