X-Message-Number: 22500
Date: Thu, 11 Sep 2003 14:12:07 -0700
Subject: Buddhism without all supernatural mumbo-jumbo
References:  <>
From:  (Tim Freeman)

Message #22488
From: David Stodolsky <>

>You can't set aside all the supernatural mumbo-jumbo [from Buddhism],
>because that is what ultimately gives the system meaning.

Let's specify what we're talking about here.  If you leave out the
supernatural stuff from Buddhism, here's what's left:

The Four Noble Truths: 

   1. Life (as typically lived) is suffering, 
   2. the cause of suffering is attachment, 
   3. there is a path by which one can become free from attachment and
      therefore free from suffering, and 
   4. the path is the Eightfold Path.

As far as I can tell, "attachment" is the same as what the rational
emotive behavioral therapists (REBT's) call a "should", that is, a
belief that something *must* be true.  In other words, The REBT's
agree with Noble Truth #2.

If the REBT's have customers, they must agree with Noble Truth #1.  If
they honestly believe that they can help people, they must agree with
Noble Truth #3.  Their path away from suffering is different from the
Buddhist's, though.  Not that they are wrong; the assertion that one
thing works doesn't contract the assertion that a different thing
works.

The Eightfold Path is:

   1. Right understanding
   2. Right thinking
   3. Right speech
   4. Right action
   5. Right livelihood
   6. Right effort
   7. Right mindfulness
   8. Right concentration

There's substantial but not absurdly much detail under each of these
points.

The empirical claim from the Buddhists is: if you do those eight
things, you'll suffer less.

I think you're saying this is meaningless, unless you were talking
about something else.  One might sensibly say this is useless or
wrong, but it's not meaningless.

>The Buddhist approach is to deny physical reality (treating it as an
>illusion), if we stick with its original form.

Whether physical reality is real or an illusion has the same feel as
the other questions dismissed by the Buddha in "Questions Which Tend
Not To Edification" at
http://www.sacred-texts.com/bud/bits/bits013.htm.  Whether or not he
dismissed this particular issue, his dismissal certainly seems
applicable to this issue.

This isn't strong evidence of anything.  All religions seem to have
huge piles of religious texts that contradict each other enough that
you can always find a text justifying whatever you want.  However, I
do think this guy had insight into suffering 2500 years ago, and I
don't think he had much insight into cosmology or virtual reality, so
I prefer to focus on what he said about attachment and suffering.

>Working together effectively requires shared meanings which value
>joint work.

Working together effectively requires other stuff too.  What I'm
seeing when I'm talking to people about Alcor's instability is that
the big missing thing is rational resolution of disagreements, and the
disagreements aren't resolvable because everyone's so attached to
whatever they're disagreeing about that they won't consider
alternatives or follow a reasonable process.  People who have actually
been present at these disputes are welcome to speak up about how
things fail when they fail; please try not to make it personal.

>The rejection of the group as a reality or its treatment as the
>'enemy' of the individual (by Libertarian philosophy) is a
>methodological error which must be overcome to achieve a stable social
>environment.

I think the real problems are less abstract than that.  Rational
dispute resolution is a simple process and it doesn't require taking a
stand on whether the group is a reality.  The reality of groups feels
like another Question Which Tends Not To Edification to me.

-- 
Tim Freeman                                                  
GPG public key fingerprint ECDF 46F8 3B80 BB9E 575D  7180 76DF FE00 34B1 5C78 

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