Reducing the extent to which we suffer depends upon lessening feelings of anguish and unfulfilled desire. These are feelings which arise from the psychological state of incompleteness, of feeling oneself to be lacking something or lacking in something. For something to be felt to be lacking one must feel that there is a needer and a thing needed, that is for the needer and needed to be concrete entities possessing (respectively) the need and capacity to be satisfied and for there to be a thing chosen that will confer such satisfaction. This double psychological assumption (of course, in origi ..read more

As is well known, Buddhism arrived in China, probably in the first century CE, and evolved gradually into the tradition that now we term ‘Zen’. Two key exponents in this lengthy process of development were Bodhidharma (5th century CE) and the sixth patriarch (that is, the individual Hui-neng (638-713 CE) who is generally recognised as the founder of the fully-formed Zen tradition. Hui-neng is regarded as the sixth in the lineage of the Zen patriarchs in China that originated with Bodhidharma, roughly two centuries previously. Already long established in China were two further traditions- Conf ..read more

When we are in a state of deep sleep we are not aware of anything. For most, if not all, of us we are only aware that we have ‘slept deeply’ (or well) when we awake and find ourselves refreshed by our sleep. But in dreaming and in waking we are conscious, albeit that the worlds that we inhabit in those two states can be vastly different. Thus, momentary consciousness (or successive states of consciousness) characterises both waking and dreaming, even if we cannot always recall what it is that we have been conscious of. These are the familiar three states of consciousness. But in ancient India ..read more

Let’s try a thought experiment. I am here and you are there. As it happens, I am in the UK and you, perhaps, are in the USA or in India, or anywhere else in the world (but probably not in outer space). I am separate to you, and you are separate from me, although we are linked in some way when we communicate. Except we, sophisticated inhabitants of the twenty-first century, know that this is not really the case. For one thing we are both composed of physical materials that are remarkably similar, carbon and water for the most part. For another, we are both dependent for our continuing existenc ..read more

At the present moment in late 2020 the presence of Covid is making us anxious about our futures, fearful for the lives of those we love and worried about the consequences for our economy and society. Being anxious, of course, has a purpose; it encourages us to take precautions against being infected, and also makes us wary of increasing the chances that we infect others. There is no single method to achieve this, but it is eminently rational for each sovereign state to require its citizens to adopt measures and practices that are thought likely to reduce its spread, and for us, its citizens ..read more

A question often asked is whether Buddhism is a religion or whether one can practice its methods in the absence of any belief in doctrine. Stephen Batchelor addressed this question in his book Buddhism Without Beliefs (1997). He has an interesting take on belief, and what it means not to believe. The latter is typically described as agnosticism, usually thought of as ‘not knowing’. Yet Batchelor defines agnosticism not as ‘not knowing’ but as ‘not wanting to know’, and the difference between the two approaches he says can be crucial to one’s practice. He points out that agnosticism has a long ..read more

I want to pursue further the distinction between thought and our wider intelligence by looking at what Jiddhu Krishnamurti (K) called ‘total attention’. K believed that our fascination with thinking was closely connected with the human preference (no doubt conferred by natural selection) to have an ‘occupied’ mind, a mind which, at least in the waking state, is animated by thought. In his view such permanent occupation was neither necessary nor desirable. Of course, he acknowledged that thought is required to pursue a practical goal or address a technical matter. But outside these narrow and ..read more

‘But before you think about something which you do not know, you must find out what thinking is, must you not?’ -Jiddhu Krishnamurti We looked last time at the limits of thought and at the distinction between thought and intelligence. Millions, or more probably billions, of thoughts and words have been devoted through the ages to what might be considered the meaning or purpose of our lives. But the outcome of all this enquiry is that there is no transcendental truth that can be expressed in language or which can be the subject of thought, at least not if that language or thought is to respect ..read more

In the previous post we looked at how primitive experience, and in particular sensation and perception, arose during the course of our evolutionary history. In turn, sensation and perception formed the basis for emotions and thoughts. This account reveals how sensation and perception- and by extension emotions and thinking- are not something that simply happen to us, but are experiences over which our bodies have a degree of influence. This influence is a critical feature of our innate nature. It means that we can at least to a degree shape how we perceive, feel and think. And in doing so we s ..read more

We looked in the previous post at how the Buddhist analysis describes the arising of ignorance, the way that we mistake ourselves for a self or subject that has experiences which belong to a ‘me’. In this post I want to go back to the earliest stages of our evolutionary development, namely the way in which our sense of being selves emerged from the role that sensation and perception played in the origin of our species. One of the key attributes of natural selection was to favour the development of sensitivity at the boundary of the primitive organism. Membranes became increasingly sensitive, b ..read more