Buddhism as religion, philosophy, psychology, or other

The question of what no-self means goes straight to the issue of the context in which Buddhism is being interpreted, which I’ve only said a little about before.  Two friends have made comments that demonstrate this issue:


1.  related to common sense a self must exist in some form, because the continuity of who we are essentially defines one real person as existing, both as a physical and a mental entity, as a relatively continous perspective, history, collection of attitudes and preferences, relationships, etc.  Of course if self is only interpreted as a collection of elements that all change over time that's still sort of the point.  What "real" in "real person" means is the question.

2.  related to other Indian philosophy Buddhism is a rejection of the philosophical position declaring atman is real (or instead asserting "anatman," or that there is no permanent, enduring self).  It's not really different than the first point except that in one case there is a real self observed because of common sense and everyday experience and the other relates to different old forms of Indian philosophy.  Philosophy and common sense don't necessarily need to overlap a lot, though.


Atman is essentially “self,” but maybe that’s not so simple.  The concept of soul could relate here, and exactly what is meant would almost surely shift depending on the way other philosophical concepts are arranged (assuming it's taken to be philosophy).  All of this is complicated from being a debate conducted 2500-2600 years ago, so the modern form is almost certainly not exactly the same.  Western philosophy is something else entirely, itself occurring in different forms, and Western religion something else again.  The short version is that at least in part the Buddha was probably rejecting schools of thought that said self (atman) is real, although in other core teachings he wouldn’t accept either “self” or “no-self” as a good answer.


So before I say more about self and no-self related to these two points, in the next blog entry, I’ll back up and fill out these contexts a little as a necessary background for different answers.

Main branches of Buddhism

It would be easy to overgeneralize Buddhism even taken in different senses since there are several different main branches of Buddhism (three are usually described, but even that may be too simple), and different schools or specific traditions within those.  These would refer back to different core teachings, and mix with cultural aspects and beliefs, and the conclusions or specific teaching points and related practices would therefor vary.


I’m not really the best person to fill in this section since I’m not a historian of Buddhism (I’ll get to the contexts that I have related to) but here is a sketch to show what I meant.  If someone is interested the main Wikipedia article is a decent starting point, with lots to read beyond that.

credit Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhism

1.  Theravada:  the oldest or original main branch, the division that Thai Buddhism is a part of, along with closely related regional traditions in Laos, Cambodia, and Myanmar.  Sri Lanka is the other notable location for this tradition (but again, what do I know).  One interesting aspect of this tradition is there is a Buddhist cannon, in the main form in Pali language, of received teachings and texts including essentially all we have of direct teachings from the Buddha himself (aside from possible later discoveries, which I really won’t get into).

The tradition was oral for centuries so it seems possible these teachings shifted a bit, but the story is they didn’t, that chanting really is effective word for word preservation.  It’s my impression (based on studying Christianity as religion in school) that those New Testament texts and content changed a lot over the first half a century, based in written works, but it’s hard to say how that informs a likelihood of these early Buddhist teachings as shifting.  An official selected cannon also is likely to have sifted and rejected some content, a process more familiar from Christianity, and it’s very difficult to say what ideas or content was circulating then that didn’t make the cut.



2.  Mahayana:  a later tradition or wave of Buddhism.  Why waves, or branches, why the discontinuity?  That’s yet another good question I won’t really answer.  But we see how modern Christianity has shifted over the last half a century and extrapolating that it’s easier to imagine that a tradition could change, or split, or even go relatively dormant and then start again in a different form.  Chinese Buddhism (Chan) and Zen, the closely related Japanese branch, are the forms we’re most familiar with, but then these relate to ideas mixed with other traditions, especially Taoism (which is nice).  My understanding is that this branch originated within India, as the first branch did, and there are lots of great stories about what different emperors or individuals did related to the developments.

A religious historian could say a lot more.  It seems as well to at least mention Bhodidharma, for being such an influential, interesting and semi-mythical character, who deserves further reading in Wikipedia type sources or any number of other places Google turns up.

http://faculty.luther.edu/~kopfg/referenc/buddhist.html

One might naturally wonder how the two branches relate, and how the new context could tie back to anything but the same original teachings.  My impression (versus an informed understanding) is that there was a substantial break related to new teachings re-surfacing, but don't take my word for it, read up a bit.

Also one needs to bear in mind that the way Buddhism is structured any one enlightened teacher is a completely valid reference source, so if someone made claims from that stated context to re-interpret Buddhism in a modern form (now one that’s something on the order of 800 years old, but modern awhile ago) then that still does work.  More on all this in a later section on Buddhism as religion versus other interpretations.


3.  Vajrayana:  More of the same from Mahayana; new texts can be found or drafted, with new Masters, new interpretation, and spread to new places.  Under this branch we get a very interesting tradition in Tibet, with lots of different mystical connections (like Tantra—a few nice twists there) and a return to an academic philosophical tradition in addition to a monastic based religion.


4.  Other:  really seems there should be some way to capture how the last few centuries have progressed, doesn’t it?  In a way the whole point of those branches seemed to be the emergence of major traditions though, and what’s going on with New Age in America or elsewhere really isn’t that (no offense intended).  All the same I’m sure there are interesting other groupings or interpretations out there, or else I wouldn’t have just written a “4,” even if I’ve got nothing substantial to say here.

Buddhism as religion, philosophy, psychology, other

This is really my main point for this post, so I'll try to get on with it.

Buddhism as religion

That’s what those branches essentially were, broad groups of religious traditions.  But different people were interpreting Buddhism as other things at the same time, even related to those traditions and some of the same content.  “Popular Buddhism” must surely be a new thing related to how we are taking it, ideas that mix in, but surely not new related to someone going in that direction.  It’s hard to say what the Buddha intended because he seemed to be presenting ideas in different contexts, which would be quite appropriate since surely there wasn’t just one main context to work within at his time either.

Wat Pho, where I ordained!  (credit www.bangkok.com)

In my own experience, relating only to the Thai tradition, and not intended as a summary of that tradition, a lot of the focus within a religious context is on the rituals, moral codes, meditative components, and other practices that are derived from the teachings.

In case you weren't believing that last claim...

A monastic tradition is the main sub-set of that here (in Thailand), but of course it all relates back to everyone else that is Buddhist as well, or most people here.  It might sound like I’m saying philosophy or everyday interpretation drops out, and of course I’m not; that’s part of it.  But to the average person those are secondary to the acts of going to the temple for ceremonies or advice and how everyday observances relate, for example the degree to which they follow the five precepts (main restrictions, for example not to kill).


The philosophy does tend to get minimized for the average person that accepts Buddhism as their own religion (per my experience).  They don’t struggle to learn the background of early Indian philosophy, competing schools, and all the core concepts (Pali terms that come up, like atman or vasana), although the general background does come up.  Christian awareness of the New Testament and how it relates to the older teachings is a good parallel; who really studies all that.  Some do, and it informs more of the perspective of priests and ministers and such, but what the average person works with is a bit general.  That's not such a bad thing, until they seem to have lost track of even that.

Buddhism as philosophy

I should start by saying I had some bad experiences with modern analytic philosophy education (philosophy as logic puzzles or arguments that don’t relate to ordinary experience at all) so I could be a bit biased against this general direction.  It wasn’t just a bad class either, or several, but I’ll leave that personal history aside for now.

Philosophy is an interesting subject.  For us in the West it started with the Greeks asking questions about the meaning of life and more specific questions about the nature of reality and self.  Plato telling us his take on Socrates' teachings (who didn’t write them down) is the main starting point, but that was based on a number of Pre-Socratic sources and schools of thought, which we have only fragments of now (like“you can’t step in the same river twice,” by Heraclitus), but there must have been a lot more development we’ve just lost track of given the dating (roughly the time of the Buddha, or way back).

Indian philosophy is a different thing.  The emphasis on different historical schools of thought is different, and their use of formal logic was a bit developed compared to Western ideas, which did get around to that more later.

This is where I might say a number of random sampled ideas from different positions except the last class I took on Indian philosophy and last books I read were a long time ago.  Suffice it to say they argued about things like if the self is real or not real.  What they meant by self would have depended on lots of other context, the way they arranged lots of other ideas.  It wasn’t exactly religion, and not exactly meant for guidance of an ordinary person making ordinary life decisions either; it was abstract—philosophy.  One might argue that assumptions of this sort underpin everyday worldview (a philosopher might), or a different philosopher might be fine with completely separating the two.

I have no idea how integrated the two different scopes were 2500 years ago in India, or how religious beliefs and contemplative traditions (meditation) interrelated.  It’s really not that interesting to me either; that reconstruction project would seem unlikely to ever circle back to my own everyday experience.

The modern Western division is more about two different main schools setting up different approaches and frameworks for ideas (Analytic versus Continental; but why read up on that, watch it explained on YouTube).  To some extent there is a parallel debate on particular points about Realism versus Nominalism, or how “real” some abstract ideas of entities really are.  What is meant by “real” is quite diverse and complicated, even mind-numbing, so I’ll leave it at that (no link; knock yourself out on Google-searched articles if you like).

Related to Buddhism and Indian philosophy, as these relate to Western philosophy, and referencing back to the earlier chart of main branches, only some parts of these are seen as having philosophical components that relate to modern philosophy.  Strange, right?  It means most aren't formulated in terms of logic and arguments.  The main one usually referenced is the work of Nagarjuna in the Madhyamika school of Mahayana (really interesting stuff, if a bit abstract and technical).  Yogacara is likely to also have components that are framed in terms Western philosophy could appreciate and work with but might have just not been as fashionable in relation to people taking these up, or it could be something about what they actually said.

Tibetan Buddhism is another interesting exception here.  In that chart it's listed as "Tantric," which invokes images of Hollywood stars participating in exotic sex practices, and that must be part of it.  There is also very technical, logical, and developed Tibetan Buddhist philosophy, nothing about seemingly sordid mystical practices, and of course the Dalai Lama ends up writing popular books that aren't really examples of either.

Buddhism as psychology

To me this is where it gets interesting.  Buddhism can also be interpreted as a description of how reality works, not really in the sense of a set of abstract ideas being interpreted against other dominant sets of abstract ideas, but in terms of experienced reality.  This gets closer to modern psychology, how we see the ego versus id or superego, and on from there and to later forms and models.

One interesting difference is that the Buddha—in some teachings—was quite clear about limiting his teaching to what was useful, and leaving aside parts of theories and explanations that wouldn’t really apply in practice, so he didn’t seem to be sketching out any sort of model of reality, be it philosophical or psychological.  He also said a broad range of different things, so everyone can make of Buddhism what they like and find some early teaching justification for that.  Since a lot of the vast Pali cannon isn’t translated into teachings that can be accessed in English, or other modern languages, that process will just keep unfolding over time.

Just starting with the idea of no-self, only a little, not in detail yet, we see how a positive model, a description of what is, might not be part of the approach at all, at least related to that one concept.  One more nice blog link gets back to that subject, no-self,, but I'll return to it again myself later.  There are other parts of other teachings that do go more in that direction, describing reality a little, but to me it’s also possible to drift towards a general interpretative stance that accepts the teachings are to be practical guidance, not a model, an idea that is very plainly stated in some early references.  This leads to a final category of what Buddhism can be taken as, although there could as easily be others.

Buddhism as self-help

www.fakebuddhaquotes.com/the-thought-manifests-as-the-word/

I’ve intentionally embraced a context description here that reaches towards a lot of diverse ideas in modern times, some of which are a bit fuzzy or even of dubious purpose.  Buddhism wasn't exactly ancient self-help, of course.  Which to reference as an example of the modern adjusted forms: cults, accepted popular authors, or something like Scientology?  For each tree is known by its own fruit, as they say (Luke 6:44),  so unless people are committing suicide or attacking other unrelated independent thinking it seems best to just let them be, but also as well to be careful about the sources, what comes from what.



The idea of real versus non-genuine Buddhism is a different thing than someone offering their own thoughts on interpretation of general concepts, of course.  In the fake quote cited in the previous picture, the sentiment is fine but it just wasn't a teaching of the Buddha.  Per that author, Bodhipaksa:  We can be fairly sure the Buddha never said this, although we can be equally sure that he said things like this.  The actual passage is so nice that although it's not a real quote of the Buddha, and doesn't have a lot to do with this blog content, I'll repeat it here anyway:

The thought manifests as the word;
The word manifests as the deed;
The deed develops into habit;
And habit hardens into character.
So watch the thought and its ways with care,
And let it spring from love
Born out of concern for all beings.


I'm definitely not trying to put words into the Buddha's mouth in this blog, or create definitive interpretations.  I'm just talking around some ideas, my own limited understanding.  It doesn't hurt to compare Buddhism to self-help, there's just limitations in context analogy in doing so.


The next related question might be about the form of what the Buddha intended; was this a set of teachings for the masses, or only for monks and other contemplatives?  Or both?  Did it need to be tied to a complex description of reality to function (a metaphysics), or did it not?  To what extent to the branches of the eightfold path represent parts of the same journey one person would need to take to find the value, or to what extent could someone “walk” one branch and not the others?  To that last question it seems like some degree of mixing must be required; how know what the practical aspects mean without some theory, or how to lead a life of appropriate practice without embracing some element of the moral code, and so on.

I’ll cut this short but clarify this is generally how I’m trying to interpret Buddhism; as practical guidance that applies to everyday life and can help modify an ordinary worldview.  It’s about introspection, and changing perspective, or at least that seems clear enough to me.  That’s not really the most common take on Buddhism, and for many it’s more or less completely invalid, or else at least missing a lot of the point.  So be it; maybe I’m dead wrong.  Per my wife that would be consistent with my approach to a lot of other everyday subjects, and my conclusions.

My wife is Thai, and Buddhist, by the way, but has nothing at all to say about core teachings.  She learned all that in a class in grade school but it’s essentially gone now.  Buddhism here ties to religious rituals, and the daily life practices should relate to the lay-person precepts (funny how that works out), and they do see the contemplative aspects as relevant to both monks and lay-people to some extent, so the theory creeps back in there a little.  Monks are sometimes very familiar with core teachings and the Buddhist cannon, or some others not so much.

"Smorgasbord" faith (not a description that's derogatory to everyone):  how to pick which parts to embrace

Just by reading fuzzy and personal interpretation themed blogs like this one one could hardly pull together what aspects should be relevant or not, never mind what was original.  Personal preference also doesn’t seem like a great guide, since past bias towards some context may turn out to be a start mostly in the wrong direction.

An example might help here:  Christianity is often interpreted so that faith is one main aspect, or even the main aspect.  Taken one way, what you do can be seen as secondary to what you believe, because God or Jesus can forgive any lapses in actions but not a limited faith (acceptance of certain ideas).  Of course all this could be seen as a bit less relevant since I'm claiming Buddhism could possibly be valid as religion, or as a few other things instead.

Of course this analogy with Christianity is open to debate, and Christians definitely wouldn’t generally see it that way, that actions are relatively irrelevant (or most probably wouldn't).  All the same if this type of context or approach is translated to Buddhism the limited scope of applicability seems to not hold at all, for any of the different contexts I’ve described.  Buddhism as religion would be more likely to accept that effective rituals are more important, along with a sum of actions, so that merit and karma relate to what you do, not what you think.  Philosophy is obviously about what you think, and to some extent psychology, while the “self-help” context sort of depends on how one is taking it.  Regardless of emphasis all wouldn't seem to claim one is "doing Buddhism" without more than one part involved, part of the original message.

Seems like I may have dropped out even a glance at what “New Age” contexts are about but I suppose it’s not my place to say.  As I take it those really do generally share my own take on trying to make Buddhism apply to everyday life so I’m sympathetic, even if I have to be skeptical of the effectiveness of crystals or wary of angels creeping back into the set of ideas, or even worse, aliens.  But I’ve been to Sedona a few times so I can meet people in the middle a little with all that, I’m just equally agnostic about a lot of ideas, reincarnation / rebirth and others that are less mainstream.

In the next entry I’ll get back to how I see no-self as being a different issue in these different contexts.

No-self in Buddhism by way of concept of vasana

The Buddhist rejection of the concept of a real, independent self would normally be considered one of the main core concepts in Buddhism.  But what could it mean?  Of course to some extent I really do exist as a consistent being; I'm here today, as yesterday, tied to a physical body that changes make-up some (entirely over time), but it all is somewhat consistent.  This entry will be my own take on what it means, simplified.


That said no harm in citing some core concepts, not from memory but instead as cited from a modern source and further described in Wikipedia, the source of all mostly correct knowledge:


Taken together with the perceptions of anicca (impermanence) and dukkha (imperfection), anatta (not self) perception is the last of the three marks of existence, which when grasped strategically, leads to dispassion (nibbida). Dispassion then causes the mind to naturally tend to the deathless, and this is called release (vimutti).^[2]

"Selves & Not-self: The Buddhist Teaching on Anatta", by Thanissaro Bhikkhu. Access to Insight (Legacy Edition), 30 November 2013,

Self as soul

Self might somehow relate to the concept of a soul, in which case the teaching is rejecting that, or maybe it's not that simple.  Of course it's not nearly the same concept in Buddhism as Christianity since your soul doesn't go to heaven or hell when you die.  Or does it?  It's a long side-path but some Buddhists really do believe that, even though everyone knows the core teaching is about reincarnation or rebirth, that people come back as someone else.

Although there's lots to say I'll just leave the next life out of this, as if the discussion doesn't need to go there.  The Buddha surely was saying there is no self, that was clear, but he also rejected speculations about next lives.  At least in some teachings where he didn't mention next lives instead he said that; it's all not so consistent.  That was probably for different reasons, but for now we can say because he taught different things to different people in relation to what was most useful to them.

Self as assumed continuous being, the "real me"

I think this gets closer to the point.  We each have a persona, a set of ideas and assumptions about who we are, related to preferences, ways we respond to things, tied to our worldview and history, etc.  For me I'm male, an American, an expat, I've got a profession that defines me, and habits, I'm a parent, I have likes and dislikes, and so on.  All of that is "who" I am.  Or is it?  What if all of that is just habit, a tendency to repeat what I've done, at least what seemed to work out, with a good bit of randomness thrown in from what's happened to me.  In a psychological model maybe that would be an ego, or maybe that's more just self-image, but then that model brings along with it other different divisions of self that might just complicate any useful comparison.

In general I'm going to steer this blog well away from foreign concepts and Buddhist theory because it's supposed to be about my own understanding, but I'll break form related to that for an aside, with a definition from Wikipedia and a citation there from a modern Tibetan Buddhist source about the concept:


Vāsanā (Sanskrit; Devanagari: वासना) is a behavioural tendency or karmic imprint which influences the present behaviour of a person  [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/vasana]

Sandvik (2007: unpaginated) states that:

... bag chags, in Sanskrit vāsanā. This word is used a lot in presentations about karma. It means habitual tendencies, subtle inclinations that are imprinted in the mind, like a stain. For example, if someone smokes, there will be a habitual tendency for an urge to smoke every day, usually around the same time. There are bigger picture bag chags, such as why some people are kind by nature, and others are cruel; it's the tendency to behave in a certain way that will trigger similar actions in future, reinforcing the bag chags.

Sandvik, K. (June 7, 2007). 'bag chags'. Jigtenmig - Classical Tibetan Language Blog. Source: [2] (Accessed: Sunday November 1, 2009)


Lots to work with there, right.  Although there's no way I could delve into both that one concept and the range of background ideas that make sense of it, a range of different Buddhism interpretations contexts, I'll treat that cited content as relatively self-explanatory, even if it's sort of not. 

The next step seems clear enough; there is no real self tied to these types of habits.  Whether there is or not seems a bit pointless at first, right, like the kind of thing only philosophers would argue about, something meaningless.  The "self" is such habits, in one sense, and clearly they do exist.  But we suppose it's something more, that those are aspects of a real me.  That could derive from a belief in a soul but really it doesn't need to; it's just common sense.  I do exist as a body, for sure, so why isn't there a real me, an inner self, as well.  Maybe better to jump next to one possible answer, a reason why not.

What if no-self?

What if we turn it around and assume there is no self, what happens?  We've got a strange idea in our mind, one that is inconsistent with the rest of our worldview, but I mean what else.  Surely that wouldn't mean that we drop every single habit or preference, that I stop coming to work, forget about my kids, stop preferring cereal in the morning, or whatever else.  The idea could be a tool for examining what these preferences, habits, and self-definitions really are.  It's likely we wouldn't get to any new assumptions quickly, or that we could somehow become a lot more flexible about such things.  It's hard to imagine it would help someone quit smoking.

Maybe that's not such a bad example.  I smoked for some time, and had trouble quitting.  It wasn't that it was tied to a definition of self, but it did relate to a physical, chemical addiction, and also to habits.  I associated smoking with a lot of things; eating, waking up, relieving different kinds of stress.  It was a bit ironic that it relieved stress from not smoking for whatever periods of time, from the effects of the addiction itself, so to that extent it was both the cause and the cure.  My grandfather, being a good stubborn German (mostly), told a nice short story about him quitting.  He just got tired of it and said that was it; he would never smoke again, and he never did.  I love that kind of resolve, and the simplicity.  To some extent I was really physically addicted; to another extent it was all habit, just in my head.  Both ties gave me some trouble but I quit soon after that, and haven't smoked any cigarettes since, many years later.

www.fakebuddhaquotes.com

As I take it Buddhism isn't about quitting smoking but to some degree the example can inform about views of self that aren't useful.  I take the Buddha as saying that a relatively radical and serious consideration that everything is impermanent and no real self exists can be practical and informative.  But how do we do it?  More theory definitely helps, but it's also easy to get lost in the ideas so that it never leads back to the place it should apply, everyday perspective.  To me it really should tie to simple introspection, perhaps along with some other strange practices and mystical theories, if one goes in for such things.

To tie it back to the last entry on suffering, this is one place to bridge the different concepts together.  It doesn't take a lot of meditative insight to realize which factors cause someone the most unhappiness.  To just pick a couple, maybe it's stress at work, too much politics, or to another a lack of a family, not finding that right person as a spouse and having kids.  The second is all something that doesn't already exist, right, a perceived lack.  It might be an important goal for someone but it really is possible taking that goal the wrong way could lead away from that outcome instead of towards it.  It's been my experience that someone is best able to be part of a stable relationship once they are able to be independent rather than co-dependent, so that they can join the other as a whole person and not a set of unfulfilled demands.  But then I'm no relationship guru, and that's leading away from the point. 

What about stress at work?  I'd be lying if I said I can cure that with a few abstract ideas applied correctly, for myself of someone else.  But here expectations definitely come into play, and adjusting them instead of changing the external conditions (other people) surely is one possible strategy.  One easy mistake to make is to get hung up on how things "should be," to not focus on things as they are.  Maybe in a service company someone feels the customer and services should be the main priority, and somehow financial goals and company image are much higher priorities (just hypothetical).  A proper perspective would be able to balance all these as separate and relevant factors, and whatever else comes up as well.  It wouldn't be a constant source of stress that ideas contradict, since contradiction is already a basic part of human and corporate nature anyway.  Conflicting demands are another thing, but when the conflict is clear the next step is also clearer.  To some degree choices must be made without a knowledge of outcomes but with the right perspective, and enough information, a person can take the "best guess" and next step without sweating inconsistencies.  

Maybe this is why people with absolutely no moral compass seem to be the most comfortable among us, to some extent, because there isn't this sort of contradiction.  They do what they want; easy.  That's also definitely not in keeping with the Buddha's message, though.  He is recommending someone move past these types of issues in a different way, to see the big picture and self more clearly, free of not seeing personal factors as an input, but not necessarily by dropping them.

But wait, that is it, isn't it, dropping self?  Maybe in Zen meditation it is, but to me not exactly so in Buddhism.  I need to keep most of the same goals and inputs I have right now, regardless of how aware of them I am or how grounded in a real permanent self I see them.  I could take them more lightly, and benefit from examining them, or even dropping some, but in the end I'd have to act in many of the same ways as if there was a real, permanent self.  Except I'd really not need to get depressed if I wasn't married with a child; why would that help, when taking steps to resolve it would do more than depression or anxiety.  And I could make some peace with chaos and conflict at work, even unreasonable demands, contradictions, and bad outcomes, and so on.  I wouldn't need to become the soulless guy that follows no principles but self-interest to do that, but some assumptions should shift a bit.

How does it work, no self, how do you do it?

Map of interrelated Buddhst concepts, credit existentialbuddhist.com

I've just said a little about how I interpret what it is but not how.  Of course I'm no authority to put in any final word so this blog is just what I think, a few ideas on that.

So far I've mentioned it could relate to quitting smoking (definition of self as a smoker), stress at work (definition of expectations related to external consistency), and dissatisfaction related to not having a family, a spouse and children (expectation of having those things at a certain time, or even in general).  Based on these diverse examples what I mean seems to not be so clear or unified.  Even if someone could work past that it's not at all clear how changing expectations really relates to there being a self or not; it's just about expectations, interpretation of how things go, even just about response to them.  There's not clearly a "no-self" here.

This is where it gets tricky.  Assumptions about self are really tied to a very general and broad set of ideas, not really something someone is usually completely clear on.  One might be proud of a job or status in a hobby, so I could be proud to be a parent, or an IT professional (or not; maybe I'd see that as neutral, or could be something to move away from), and could have been proud to be a snowboarder (before, when I did that).  In those cases--the affirmative version--I might openly accept those things as good examples of what define "me."  A lot of other things would be much more vague, just kind of there in the background.  A car commercial might imply a person really defines themselves by what car they own but maybe a lot of people don't.  It's funny how using an IPhone, Android based phone, or feature phone is so often accepted as self-defining now, but I'm drifting a little here.

To get back to the "how," how would you use this to adjust definition to feel happier (less suffering, more appropriate worldview, etc.).  For me it's tricky but not that difficult.  You use some form of introspection, studying yourself, to see which of these triggers is giving you a problem.  The phone issue probably isn't, but then you never know.  Some people might be spending an hour a day fretting over their next phone purchase, reading up or whatever, with that concern running in the background the other 23 hours.  Work stress is probably on the list for almost everyone.  Seeing how it works is a big part of the resolution process.  Meditation might actually help at this step but I'm not seeing how a deep trance-like state is critical here.  Just chilling out about the phone might be enough, but it might take a more rational acceptance of the issue to really be at peace with it.

For me this is possibly why the Buddha put it in such an unconventional format; because you really need to start from the ground up to get to a clear picture of all of it.  If you can really grapple with and accept that "self" is only a collection of habits and preferences, along with a history that caused them, and expectations that fold in, then you can really unpack all that.  If not then you're stuck at trying to relax, and you'd likely not get past people saying happy truisms, like something about accepting the things you can't change.  That won't help.  If there are dozens of separate things stressing you out on a daily basis, lots of crazy assumptions, desires, regrets, and expectations, then just relaxing isn't even close to the solution.

One might ask, did this work for me.  For me, sort of.  Except I'm not enlightened or elevated above the normal human condition; nothing like that.  I did drop the smoking thing, but not really through the Buddha's insightful advice.  I try to look at the big picture, to not sweat details.  I really did cut ties with needing to own a lot of things; I just don't care about that.  I've got a phone (Samsung Note, quite mid-range) but as far as all the rest I just don't need it.  Of course it helps being an American related to looking shabby.

What about life as a monk, no self there?

Might as well mention this since I've done a little with that.  In order to keep this short I'll stop short of any general statements here about monks and schools and the rest; more in another post, here just about my own experience as relating to no-self.

In a way it's easier for a monk because the role is defined by lots of rules, wearing those particular clothes, fulfilling a well-defined role in terms of actions and manner, and not being tied to many types of conventional definitions.  Money essentially drops out but that part still gets to be a long story.  Next one might say "wait a tick; those are still definitions of a self, just a different sort."  I suppose so.  It might counter that a little that it's clearly not supposed to act as a "self-image," but maybe not much.  Monks still have titles and such, job roles, so some of those things transfer over.

I was only a monk for two months so my experience was all about adapting, not living within the role.  For me the radical change of context also shifted my concerns, so there wasn't much going on related to what I owned or any other personal preferences.  Complete abstinence is part of the deal but really nothing I could say about that would be informative; different people would likely relate to breaking that habit differently, or the longer term.  Short term monks generally weren't so concerned about the deeper goals or even meditative practices, in my own experience, and I suppose long term monks less than you might think.  So of course it broke all the normal cycle of expectations and self-definition by radically changing circumstances, but something a lot more mundane might do much of the same, like joining the military.

I'll close this before it's a book and rejoin it later under the next Buddhist concept that occurs to me.  I'll close by citing one of countless references that go further into doctrine and more standard explanation, but googling "Buddhism no self" turns up scores more:

http://www.existentialbuddhist.com/2010/09/self-and-not-self/

The meaning of suffering in Buddhism

The four noble truths are seen as the main teaching of the Buddha, the core ideas that all other ideas relate back to, just presented in different ways.

Those truths are (roughly):

1.  that suffering or some type of dissatisfaction is an aspect of normal life (dukkha in Pali, but I won't refer to "original" concepts here throughout this),

2.  that there is a cause for it (attachment),

3.  and a resolution for it (enlightenment, although the teachings get odd on this point),

4.  and that there is a way to reach that (the 8-fold path).

image credit:  ieet.org

Lots of online references or even Wikipedia would fill in more details about all that, with the rest here just about my take on what is meant by suffering.

The concept wasn't clearly originally meant as suffering, or at least not in the same group of senses the English language expression is used.  We wouldn't really know what the original meaning is for sure for a few reasons.

Why the original meaning of "suffering" is not available:

-most notably, because use of language changed over time.

We get the most direct source references in Pali, transferred from an earlier chanted tradition, probably translated before that from a local dialect language (but again, do lots of research to get the full story of speculation about the Buddha's native language if you like).  English expressions and concepts change a lot over the course of a century, and language in general is like that, so even the Pali step alone isn't necessarily consistent, and "suffering" always was just a ballpark guess at a summary.

-context change:  specific ideas are presented within the framework of a culture-based perspective, so if a modern American says something and a modern Thai person says a nearly identical thing the different contexts still can shift the meaning a bit.  Since the Buddha was talking about ideas that may or may not have been from a mainstream religious, psychological, or "philosophical" perspective (and what philosophy means is really inconsistent over much shorter time frames) we can't have any idea about that context, or how it changed.  What we call Hinduism today, earlier versions of a diverse set of ideas, were part of that, but even today it would be hard to summarize, and completely impossible to trace back to one time and place 2500 years ago.

-interpretation change:  Buddhism interpreted today, and 50 years ago, and 100 years ago are all relatively different things, and you couldn't simplify it down to one interpretation per a time anyway.  It would be interpreted as religion by one, psychology by another, as differing forms of philosophy by others, mixed with other ideas, rituals, practices, or cultural aspects by some, and so on.


All that said what follows will be my take, not any other objective reconstruction.  I won't bother to defend it against other main interpretations to save time and avoid endless regression of possible ideas.  To me it's as well not to pin this down to one specific concept because to me part of Buddhism is figuring out what the concepts and guidance and review process means related to your own life and perspective (worldview), but all the same for the sake of discussion I will.

My take on "suffering":

I think this really works best as a family of concepts, to be sorted out by the individual related to their own experience.  To keep it unified and general "dissatisfaction" might work but as I see it for different people lots of different specifics might apply:  stress, unfulfilled desire, unhappiness, even shades of other less general and specific emotions and statuses like anger, hatred, jealousy, etc.  To some extent these could be broken down as the causes of some feeling of discontent (the way the concept is framed in that original structure) and then the way it is exhibited in a particular circumstance (those emotions or perspectives).

image credit www.perasonaltao.com

In some interpretations people have tried to turn it around and see how a goal of happiness works instead.  That's backwards from the original structure, right, but it still might work, or at least could be informative.  All the same in this particular teaching the Buddha was saying you can remove a perspective element that causes unhappiness (or whatever interpretation), and what you are left with is happiness.  But why put it that way, backwards?

One reason proposed by some is that the structure is set to match what a doctor does with an illness or disease:  identify the condition, identify the cause, propose a cure, then implement it.  Also it may be informative to turn around the pursuit of happiness in the first place, since in a way it's obvious that seeking it directly couldn't work.  It's more typical for us in modern times and Western culture to associate states, activities, and ownership with happiness so we might seek out all sorts of conditions related to being happy:  to eat good food, to own something, to have a good career, or financial stability, to do any activity one likes, or be in a certain relationship, and so on.  Or maybe to seek out a balance of just some of those.  In rare cases we would turn it around and look for removing obstructions (illness, job dissatisfaction, using different self-help approaches, etc.), but usually  it's the other way around.

How is the Buddha's message different than a conventional approach

So the general direction is different, not looking for happiness and related conditions, but what else is different about all this?  Actually it seems closest to either psychology or self-help, when looked at from this perspective.  In those endeavors one is looking for either a cure or at least a different approach.  Usually in other cases it's not like that; the current worldview, perspective, desires, etc. are all accepted as the starting point, essentially implicitly but there all the same.

Also the Buddha is saying this can be conducted by an individual, to some extent, leaving aside the need for external guidance, additional explanations of teachings, meditative practice guidance, etc.  It starts from ordinary perspective.  Unhappiness, or something like it, is a condition the individual is causing through their own assumptions, related to specific desires and specific views of self (which starts into other teachings a bit).

Immediately I'm reminded of posts you see on the internet that seem to echo this, but in a sense which are such different and light versions they somehow seem completely different.  People find lots of ways to say that they can be happy if they can just find contentment within themselves, and not worry about what other people say, or not embrace fear, and can control their own expectations, and so on.  So what is different here?  These teachings seem a bit more specific:  the concepts aren't completely simple and clear to us, but it doesn't seem to boil down to a half-dozen such feel-good slogans.  Also the eightfold path goes on to suggest a lot of hard work, not just a simple perspective shift, lightening up.

As my grandmother used to say, other people's complaints or problems are like water off a duck's back to her, it doesn't matter.  But that seems to only capture some of what's going on here.  The Buddha goes on to suggest re-evaluating an implicit concept of self, a personal code of morality, to take up meditative practice, and to read further in other teachings.  That's not just lightening up.

Enlightenment:  really?

picture credit:  www.highexistence.com

What about this difference; a completely different end point than a person that is just relaxed and not self-absorbed, or doesn't desire a lot of things they probably won't have, like owning a lot of things, or supermodels.  It's as hard as any other step in Buddhism to say what Enlightenment means, although of course a lot of different people drawing on a lot of teachings will do just that.  

For many it's something that will happen in a much later life, only after many lives as a monk or something such.  A little seems to get lost here because the goal sort of drops out, and the general direction with it.  Others find elements more grounded in this one life experience, but some of these in stages that relate to meditative attainment, levels of Zen meditation training and such.  If that's the actual right answer--and there may not really be one--then it only applies to people into such things.  An interesting take in Thai culture is that it is a distant goal (not in this life) but accumulating religious merit is a factor, so the religious ceremonies and good deeds and in particular alms given to monks are all practical contributions, steps towards it.

What about a more practical interpretation, what if we try to bring it back to a simple, everyday concept?  That may be out of place, arguably.  But if we try to do that it could simplify to the degree to which we can eliminate certain types of unhappiness, based on certain types of perspective problems.  In particular it might relate to desires, expectations, views of self, and relation to time, to confining experience more to immediate awareness and not getting caught in stress related to the past and present (again all dipping into other teachings).  Someone wouldn't need to be completely enlightened for that kind of interpretation to work, not a "Master" you do an apprenticeship under, not really even the Buddha.  You wouldn't really need milestones for this to work either, not to be half-enlightened, or at certain other types of markers.

Real self-awareness would relate to each person having some idea of the extent to which it was working, if not a clear understanding of further steps and specific goals.  There probably wouldn't really be a stopping point, although one might expect a leveling off of the work on such a thing, and the gains.  It would seem likely it would be ongoing, forever, a work in progress, sort of how life itself works.

Steps to Buddhist practice

This I really can't answer, of course.  There was the eightfold path, in the teaching version (summary image earlier in this entry).  It wasn't so clear someone could do all of that, although it seems to some degree following up on all parts would be required, and to some degree an individual practice may well emphasize just one part.  Without some additional reading up and information it's hard to imagine the other parts would work (for example, "practicing" only through moral practice or meditation without knowing any more background, the wisdom step).  Those are three of the eight parts of the path, by the way, so it's nothing too exotic.  I should probably drop this for now and rejoin it for more on other practices and approaches.

Do you need to learn Buddhism from a Master?

An online friend and I just discussed an interesting point in Buddhism, do you need to learn it from a Master, or are much more limited forms of exposure also valid?

I would expect even from my initial post my perspective would be clear, or maybe it wouldn't be.  To me Buddhism starts from the teachings of the Buddha in any form; reading the versions of his own words as passed down, from personal guidance from a meditation master, from reading a popular book on the subject, or from exposure to a blog or online discussion.

Of course there are qualifications about that; some forms of Buddhism seem more valid and useful than others, and some seem essentially wrong to me.  Lighter expressions of "go with the flow" do communicate some of the essence of Buddhism but generally don't get to what I see as the original ideas and practice.  For me different versions are potentially more applicable for different people, so for some a lot of reading of theory may be a great place to start, and for others meditation practices, or others yet highly interpreted versions of core teachings translated to a modern context and practices.  This idea of many paths to a similar goal is not limited to Buddhism; it's part of the earlier diverse Indian tradition we refer to as Hinduism, which includes pantheism, mythology, references to social role practices, and lots of other ideas.

As I see it the degree to which these ideas or practices improve ordinary every-day, momentary experience, simplify it and remove problems a person conventionally causes through errors in perspective, to that extent it is matching the original aims of Buddhism.

So what about enlightenment, the final goal to be clear of all "attachments" and improper views of self?  There must be something to that, but I don't see it as a practical goal, or seeking out an enlightened Master as a practical or necessary starting point.  We still have versions of the Buddha's own words available, likely modified over time, and to me we can benefit from others' interpretations regardless of whether they have attained states of consciousness we couldn't possibly relate to or not.

Learning Buddhism from a novice?

But the discussion I mentioned itself is also informative, from that friend, so I'll cite it here, in it's entirety to preserve not just the individual points but the whole context.

In response to an initial discussion of Buddhist theory she wrote:

This is really funny.

Let me ask you something. Can you become a really good chef by studying food science?

Your approach to Buddhism is the same as tea!

You can't become a carpenter by analyzing the book of carpentry, you can't understand tea by reading about what others have said alone.

If you stick to standing outside, you will never get the feel of what's inside.

It's like someone had gone rock climbing and analysed the route for you. And by listening you think you understood the very route, but another climber tells you another route, and you thought..wait, I thought at the rock you had to use your grip instead of stretching your leg far to reach the next holding!?

It's like a carpenter practicing all his life to get his skills just right and wrote a book about it, and although after you read it you understand exactly what tools to use for which type of wood, you understood every single word in this book, but you are still not a carpenter.

There are 20 something different words for "snow or ice" for the Eskimos, but without going to the north pole you wouldn't be able to recognize the meaning of such words.

Don't you get it? If your feelings and sensations doesn't match, you'll never believe or truly understand what people are trying to say.

Experience is different to knowledge, and language can not explain experience or skill.

The limitation of language is this, for something abstract or experiencial, it can not be exact. For e.g, in meditation there are many different states,

In the beginning if I say you'd experience numbness, or pain, do you think these two words means exactly the same physical sensation to different people?

And if I had experienced this does it mean everyone else would experience the same sensation? No!

So how can you talk about Buddhism when a lot of his teaching was for really high level yogi who could do a lot of things such as controlling their breath till the extend they don't need to breath much at all!??????????? So let's see you read a text and become a yoga practitioner?

One can't even understand the terminologies of yoga unless one tries to practice it!!!!

If you've never had an ice-cream, and I try to describe it to you, do you think you'll know exactly how it taste like?

I mean well but this is already stretching what I can do with language. To be honest I am giving up.

To which I responded:

You assume I'm not a high level yogi. Do you know that? I've practiced a good bit of meditation, some guided by monks that have practiced all their lives. I've practiced some yoga, and have been an ordained monk. I have experienced some unusual effects of unusual meditative states.

But I'm not an advanced yogi, and we see the teachings and scope of Buddhism differently. The Buddha taught different paths are valid, and therefore taught in different ways, ideas that could sound contradictory or could relate to different valid approaches. All would need to tie back to personal experience, to essentially be about that, but different focus on meditation would be a part of it.

I've also drank a good bit of tea, and taught myself to cook, and done a lot of rock climbing, and built a house once. For all these things one benefits from experienced assistance but you don't need to learn from a master chef and so on. It could speed up the process and help you get further but for each if you declined to start until you had the ideal support you'd never get past frying an egg, or being able to only scramble on rocks instead of climbing 5.8 and then 5.9, and so on.

We do disagree on how valid Buddhism is for people that aren't essentially enlightened. Do you think the dalai lama is enlightened, or Thich Naht Hanh, or was Buddhadasa Bhikku? If not is what they say still valid and useful? I've attended a number of talks by senior monks here and they imply the opposite, that beginning and intermediate practice is really as much the point, and that they are speaking as fellow practitioners, not Buddhas.

Maybe your approach to tea is the same; you would only value hearing from a Master, and devalue your own experience of drinking a cup of tea, and not care to hear from others that haven't served half a lifetime as an apprentice. I suppose there could be something to that, but to me it ignores the fundamental experience, drinking tea, to focus on a higher goal, transcendent knowledge and practice of tea.

To talk more about Buddhism we would both have to assume there is some value and validity in talking about Buddhism. So even though life experience and practice is the final goal there really is no point in discussing approach, the path. It ends up quite like that for most people, for different reasons, more often due to a lack of interest.
In reading back through what you wrote I missed one interesting analogy, about Eskimos and ice.  You said I'd need to go to the North Pole to experience this ice, right?  But Eskimos don't live there; further South instead.  The error is telling; I could go to Alaska and learn the same thing, but if I thought I needed to go to the North Pole I'd never make it.

Perhaps I never mentioned I was a snowboarder and mountaineer as well.  I'm intimately familiar with different kinds of snow conditions, just in a different context.  I know how they feel to snowboard or ski on, and to snowshoe through.  I know how to dig an avalanche pit (a way to assess snow conditions), and although I'm not trained enough to really assess the findings, and shouldn't be in high risk areas to begin with, I know enough to identify what those areas are, and the layers of different type of snow mean something to me.

To me so it is with Buddhism.  You learn by starting to learn, from whatever sources you have.  Just as you'd never become an avalanche expert without expert training you'd never get to certain types of understanding, practice, and experience without guidance from the right teachers of Buddhsim, but one should be careful about how they take that limitation.  Understanding of snow begins with a walk in the snow; you can start in on Buddhism by reading a book, or from a book or discussion in an online group, even when the sources are relatively uninformed.

But we have the words of the Buddha as well, right, if likely altered quite a bit by centuries of change and language transfer.  Why wouldn't someone read that?  It's not possible to read a good translation of the entire Buddhist cannon, and that only represents one school of thought in Buddhism anyway, but why not read what there is of it translated and widely available.  Basic concepts like "self" and "suffering" will surely not match the original form but the books are there in a local library, so there is no need to go to a remote temple or mountain cave to find a yogi to begin.


There are talks by monks and open meditation centers here so there are easy intermediate sources, but as I see it one should be open to learning from different people that aren't those experts, practicioners, references, and so on.  Of course Buddhism is only about immediate life experience, ordinary perception, so at some point that is the main reference point, not exotic interpretations or visions in a trance like state.

Conclusion

Hard to say to what extent either of us are really right.  There is something to what she is saying; you learn certain things from experts, and to some extent the advanced teachings of the Buddha are an example of that.  But she is also rejecting any value in learning from anyone but an expert, or the validity of something like reading a popular book on Buddhism, or even the words of the Buddha (to the extent we have access to them).  

If someone completely agrees with her they never should have read past the first entry of this blog, or maybe even read that, so in a sense I need not be concerned about such an audience.  The limitations she describes are a separate issue.  It wouldn't be possible for me to assess the degree to which I've been exposed to and practiced "real Buddhism."



Based on what she is saying only certification by a Buddhist Master would determine that, and again there is probably something to that.  Based only on my own experience as a monk the irony here is that very few monks would have any indication of their own status of attainment, based on this qualification.  Of course such a process is referenced in certain traditions and teaching structures, and seemingly she would accept that and only that as valid.  Next we should discuss her own exposure, right, to see what such a process is like.  I've known people that have been through some of that but based on the forms I've experienced it myself I couldn't really judge.

What is Buddhism

This blog is about Buddhism.  The monkeys are my kids, so dedicated to them, what I'd want them to know.

What is Buddhism (to me)

To me Buddhism is a system of guided introspection, closest to either psychology or self-help, but of course different people take it different ways.

The consensus here in Thailand is that it's a formal religion, so all about rituals.  For New Agers it's mystical explanation of metaphysics, how external reality is.  In philosophy classes they bend and stretch it to get logic and arguments and their own metaphysics out of it (realism versus idealism or nominalism, for example), but they have to start with some limited forms of Buddhism to get there.  Only late forms mixed with other sets of ideas comes close enough, like Tibetan Buddhism (12th century and on), or maybe later Indian thinking.  I've nothing against New Age mindsets, and I sort of do related to analytic philosophy, but to each their own.

The Buddha's messages can't really be summarized because he said lots of different things for lots of different audiences, even aside from later ideas almost certainly mixing in.  The tradition was oral for hundreds of years, based on chants of teachings.  They say that preserved the original versions as well as writing but of course you can't know.  Even writing doesn't work as well as one might think; the New Testatment (Bible) changed a lot in just 70 years or so.

One core teaching is that there is no real and permanent self, likely pointed at old versions of philosophy, but also a practical teaching.  To me it's not a description of reality but a tool to examine what self really is, supported by other related things he said and other introspection practices (meditation, etc.).  I think the moral teachings were also not designed as rules but instead meant as a practical guide for how to relate to others, going along with the other teachings.  In some reported content the Buddha rejected a lot of philosophical / metaphysical / religious speculation as irrelevant, to me clearly identifying his teachings as practical in nature, and personal, related to individual experience only, not abstract theory.

Of course the Buddha was also responding to the ideas of his time, which we've sort of lost track of since 2500 years ago is a long time.  Hinduism is still around but it's hard to say how the forms or conventional acceptance is different, and it's not really a narrow set of ideas today.  A lot of what he said makes sense in relation to the class-restriction ideas of his day, and a lot of the monk's rules are about that.  It's hard to separate those two sets of ideas; what he taught for people in general, and what he said for monks to do, or even if there was a significant difference.  His teachings come to us filtered through the old monastic tradition, just as the early Catholic church essentially filtered and warped what Jesus taught (my take at least, but then I did study Christianity and Islam as well, so a bit informed).

Next one might ask what the Buddha said one should do to "discover self," (not the best way to put that) or what rules to follow.  that really takes some looking into.  I'll say  more about all that but it gets to be a long story.

My path in Buddhism (they love the word path)

To go back to context, I got interested in philosophy and religion and a few other subjects when my first career in engineering ended due to changes in the defense industry (where I'd been working; where the demand for industrial engineers was then).

I studied on my own for about 10 years and eventually went back to school, getting a bachelors and masters in philosophy, with a focus on Buddhism.  The first degree also covered religion but the second was straight analytical philosophy, which is quite awful.  To them personal experience had nothing to do with philosophy, and if you were working with that then you were really discussing "wisdom," and not philosophy.  So by definition it was pointless, just about logic puzzles and formal arguments.

I was also a monk for a short time here, two months, but that seems best as another story.




As I meant to say in that first summary to me Buddhism is really a methodology, a way to help someone review their own experience, so if you learn about it without doing it then it's also nothing.  In the end you really can define or describe what the perspective change itself actually is because it's just a perspective change.  It works better to do so in negative terms, like saying you would attach less to preconceptions like self image, but that's still not saying what it positively is.

In the end the result is what's left when you take away those forms of error; more pure and direct experience.  It's nothing to talk about, just something to do.  Rejecting self sounds a lot more negative than it actually is because that's taking a method to be a description, which it isn't.  To say there is no permanent enduring self you've not really said anything.  It's not a rejection of a soul; that's something else entirely.  It's about how someone would model their reality, or even more specific how they would examine the current assumptions that amount to a model.

For most this must ring a bell.  The question must be if it adds anything, or is just repetition, or if it seems off a bit.   The Japanese tea ceremony is supposed to be about this, sort of, but as I've been exposed to that it's quite different.  Emptying self to perform an activity can be informative and instructive but as I see it not so useful on it's own.  Taken with other ideas, maybe.  But then again as I mentioned to another friend not so long ago immediate experience does tend to regularly get overlooked, so maybe something so basic could really be helpful.  Buddhism teaches there is nothing for us but immediate experience and the rest is as much illusion and abstract ideas as anything, even if quite useful when applied properly.