Tag: buddhism

Buddhism and the human chain

The philosopher of Buddhism, Jay Garfield, gave a great interview to The New York Times’ philosophy blog, The Stone.

“Treat the past reflectively and with gratitude and responsibility, and with an awareness that much of our present life is conditioned by our collective past; take the future seriously as something we have the responsibility to construct, just as much as if we would be there personally.”

The quote above is given as one way a Buddhist who does not literally believe in rebirth might interpret it as a metaphor. This could be especially appropriate depending on how you understand the notion of no-self. If we were better able to transcend our egocentric viewpoints, we’d spend more time considering our legacy to future generations.… Continue reading...

Is there a self?

I’ve been following Robert Wright’s MOOC on Buddhism and Modern Psychology. One of the most interesting ideas at the heart of this course frames Buddhism as a rebellion against natural selection. Wright investigates whether by helping us to see the world more clearly, Buddhism, and particularly meditation, irons out some of the perceptual and affective distortions caused in us by the selection process, and so alleviates suffering.

Wright asks us to imagine that we are walking a trail where a hiker was recently bitten by a snake. If out of the corner of an eye we see a coiled up rope on the edge of the trail, we’d probably jump out of ‘striking distance’ of the rope. Despite colouring our perception of the world, the low-level fear that caused us to see a snake in a rope is adaptive.… Continue reading...

Things as they are

Last night I read a fascinating essay in the LA Review of Books on Donald Richie, an expatriate writer in Japan. I was struck in particular by this quote from Richie’s The Inland Sea:

“The innocent does not look for reasons behind reasons. He, secure in the animal nature that all of us have and only half of us admit, is able to see that all reality is what the West finds merely ostensible reality. Reality is skin deep because there is only skin. The ostensible is the truth.”

Whether he’s right or not, that’s a profound thought in our age of explanations. It reminded me of the scene in Zen in the Art of Archery where another expatriate, Eugen Herrigel is struggling to allow his bow to ‘shoot itself’.… Continue reading...

Philosophising The Stanley Parable

stanley parable 1

I spent all of last night exploring The Stanley Parable. If you haven’t played it, I’d recommend doing so before reading on.

The Stanley Parable is a computer game that does something no other artistic medium could do so well. Early in the game, you are presented with two identical doorways. Before you can decide whether to choose the door on the left or the door on the right, the narrator tells you (in the past tense) that Stanley walked through the door on the left. Wary of authority, I took the door on the right and the narrator began hours of cajoling and threatening as he tried to persuade me to follow the game’s storyline as he envisaged it. Of course, you soon realise that defying the narrator is the narrative of the game.… Continue reading...