This was a very short summary, but I think both things it brings up are key:
1. Things like Buddhism were not ‘belief systems’ (which Vervaeke calls a ‘post-Christian’ way of looking at it) and instead were practices. Like, you could imagine people of the future trying to understand football propositionally, and they sort of could, but it’s mostly not about the propositions, for the athletes or the spectators. It’s about enacting the football game. They were transformative practices—you should be able to see the difference between someone before Buddhism and after it (at least if they did it right).
2. The in-depth look at a problem that Buddhism was trying to be a solution to (parasitic processing).
Plato tells us a story about anagoge; Buddhism tells a story about its opposite, and how to avoid that.
This was a very short summary, but I think both things it brings up are key:
1. Things like Buddhism were not ‘belief systems’ (which Vervaeke calls a ‘post-Christian’ way of looking at it) and instead were practices. Like, you could imagine people of the future trying to understand football propositionally, and they sort of could, but it’s mostly not about the propositions, for the athletes or the spectators. It’s about enacting the football game. They were transformative practices—you should be able to see the difference between someone before Buddhism and after it (at least if they did it right).
2. The in-depth look at a problem that Buddhism was trying to be a solution to (parasitic processing).
Plato tells us a story about anagoge; Buddhism tells a story about its opposite, and how to avoid that.