I agree that there are techniques that have bad effects if used in the wrong or careless ways, as well as schools/teachers who might even endorse some of those wrong ways.
My experience, and the experience of various people I know who’ve done similar practices, is that the kinds of things that get destroyed are mostly just ones that are messing up the mind. And that many of the practices are essentially about enhancing the information that’s going into the brain’s existing processes for learning and reorganizing itself from feedback signals, so that it can better refactor and optimize its own activity.
This can certainly lead to some desires or values being changed or reprioritized. But the way I view it is that it’s less about deep values changing, and more about improved information processing changing things that were actually suboptimal or needlessly greedy strategies for trying to fulfill the deep values.
A shallow example would be the experience of many advanced meditators who end up drinking less alcohol as the experience of it becomes less pleasant. A practice like body scanning might train the brain to better process sensory information from different parts of the body, so that the negative effects of alcohol on the body are felt more strongly, so the brain starts downweighting the desire to drink in response to those feedback signals.
I think there are certainly some schools within Buddhism that fit the sutric description, but Chapman’s description of schools of Buddhism outside his own tends to feel a little strawmannish and tribalish to me.
I do agree that some, perhaps very significant, degree of renunciation is involved in advanced practice, but at least none of the teachers I follow have a “you should renounce the world because the world is bad and sensual pleasures are horrible” undertone to it. (For what it’s worth, Claude also flags those bits of Chapman’s “sutra vs. tantra” comparison table as ideologically motivated.)
My own interpretation is that many things are worth renouncing simply because they do not actually make you better off in the long term, and because there are states of mind that you can try to cultivate that feel better both for you and others. E.g. being filled with an experience of love toward all existence and that feeling drawing you to help others out of a genuine delight for their well-being feels ultimately more satisfying than spending the evening browsing Facebook.
Yeah, I wouldn’t expect his position to be popular, because he’s basically saying that in order to improve its marketability western Buddhism has discarded the “vibe” of total renunciation, while essentially maintaining the system of practices that had been developed with renunciative ends in mind. I don’t suppose that there’s an objective way to resolve this until substantial studies of the effects of these practices are conducted.
I agree that there are techniques that have bad effects if used in the wrong or careless ways, as well as schools/teachers who might even endorse some of those wrong ways.
My experience, and the experience of various people I know who’ve done similar practices, is that the kinds of things that get destroyed are mostly just ones that are messing up the mind. And that many of the practices are essentially about enhancing the information that’s going into the brain’s existing processes for learning and reorganizing itself from feedback signals, so that it can better refactor and optimize its own activity.
This can certainly lead to some desires or values being changed or reprioritized. But the way I view it is that it’s less about deep values changing, and more about improved information processing changing things that were actually suboptimal or needlessly greedy strategies for trying to fulfill the deep values.
A shallow example would be the experience of many advanced meditators who end up drinking less alcohol as the experience of it becomes less pleasant. A practice like body scanning might train the brain to better process sensory information from different parts of the body, so that the negative effects of alcohol on the body are felt more strongly, so the brain starts downweighting the desire to drink in response to those feedback signals.
Hmm. Do you disagree with Chapman that western Buddhism is largely Sutra-derived, and the ultimate goal of Sutra is renunciation of worldly concerns (the stuff that’s considered indispensable in the west)?
I think there are certainly some schools within Buddhism that fit the sutric description, but Chapman’s description of schools of Buddhism outside his own tends to feel a little strawmannish and tribalish to me.
I do agree that some, perhaps very significant, degree of renunciation is involved in advanced practice, but at least none of the teachers I follow have a “you should renounce the world because the world is bad and sensual pleasures are horrible” undertone to it. (For what it’s worth, Claude also flags those bits of Chapman’s “sutra vs. tantra” comparison table as ideologically motivated.)
My own interpretation is that many things are worth renouncing simply because they do not actually make you better off in the long term, and because there are states of mind that you can try to cultivate that feel better both for you and others. E.g. being filled with an experience of love toward all existence and that feeling drawing you to help others out of a genuine delight for their well-being feels ultimately more satisfying than spending the evening browsing Facebook.
Yeah, I wouldn’t expect his position to be popular, because he’s basically saying that in order to improve its marketability western Buddhism has discarded the “vibe” of total renunciation, while essentially maintaining the system of practices that had been developed with renunciative ends in mind. I don’t suppose that there’s an objective way to resolve this until substantial studies of the effects of these practices are conducted.