Why is it so difficult to stop thinking?

[JimC]

Because "thinking" for hominids in the past was a requirement to survive in a dangerous world. An off switch would not be selected for...

[rasetsu]

While I can see reason behind learning the mental skill that meditation teaches you, I think there is something profoundly important about the fact that we return to not having this skill in the absence of practice. And I don't think it's just atrophy of skill, like my not being able to speak French anymore — there is a pull in us to get back from that place to where non-meditators live. So while the skill may have some utility in general, it would seem that whatever is being modulated is pushing it into a range which evolutionary processes have decided are not in the interest of our genes and our species. Part of that may be being a Westerner, and thus the habit is more unnatural for me. (And being a thinker, I find it distinctly uncomfortable and frustrating.) I'm tempted to fall back on the slogan that evolution is smarter than you, but it's clear that evolution is only interested in your genes, not you as a person and animal. But still, I think that "resistance" should be telling us something, I'm just not sure what it is.

The more I explore Buddhism, the more I see it as the product of a man with great psychological insight. He was a great observer and could follow a lead like the best of us. However lacking our current understanding of brains, evolution, psychology and so forth, he was massively handicapped in his search for a model which explained and accounted for his psychological observations and understandings. It's at that point, trying to develop hypotheses and models to explain these mental and material phenomenon, that it takes a massive left turn, filling in gaps of mystery with spackle composed of fanciful metaphysics and ontological ideas, ending up with an edifice that is a monstrous chimera, composed of parts that are right and in the right place, parts that are right, but on the wrong animal, and parts that don't belong on any animal whatsover. Buddhism is one part keen psychological insight, and four parts institutionalized Makyo.

[FBM]

"institutionalized Makyo." I like that phrase. It hits the nail right on the head.

[Jason]

So.. why not be a cafeteria Buddhist? Take the worthwhile insight, and bin the rest. If you find it worthwhile that is.

[FBM]

So.. why not be a cafeteria Buddhist? Take the worthwhile insight, and bin the rest. If you find it worthwhile that is.

That's what I do. People cry "cherry-picking!" as if it were a foul to take the good parts from a system and ignore the detrius, like institutionalized woo, tradition, hero-worship, etc. To me, it's just common sense. Nothing wrong with the eclectic approach, imo.

[rasetsu]

I don't, primarily because, a) I have my own models, which are incompatible and inconsistent with Buddhist models, b) I don't see the Buddhist practice as addressing needs in a productive healthy way, in part motivated by corrupt metaphysics and doctrines, and part by the mismatch between the assumptions of the practice and my own conclusions about what those assumptions should be, c) part is that woo, in whatever form, usually, and in this case does, end up being merely a tool for hurting and exploiting people, d) the excesses and dangers of institutionalized anything are rife in Buddhism as without enough truth to anchor it, it floats free of any helpful or productive anchoring point, d) it and the Buddha have become objects of worship and veneration, e) the evils perpetrated in this world by Buddhism and Buddhist, regardless of its scale relative to say Christianity, is still real and substantial, and should be deprived of its foundation. (The romanticization of Tibet and life under the Lamas being a case in point in which a real horror is covered over with a glaze of denialism, revisionist history and ignorant but well meaning apologists who, what, hanker for returning giggle fucker to his throne so he can go back to walking on the backs of peasants? And if not him, the next guy, or the next. Tyrants in the service of truth is one thing; Buddhism is a tyrant in service only to itself, and I don't think it's true.)

[Jason]

I don't know about the truth of your objections, but what I meant was to take the worthwhile insights from Buddhism (I think you said there were some) and not actually practice Buddhism. I suppose I was being to oblique and tangential with the 'cafeteria' idiom.

[rasetsu]

I don't know about the truth of your objections, but what I meant was to take the worthwhile insights from Buddhism (I think you said there were some) and not actually practice Buddhism. I suppose I was being to oblique and tangential with the 'cafeteria' idiom.

Naw, I was doing my Zilla impersonation, raging all over Tokyo and forgetting the point of the original question.


Basically my first three objections cover it, I just don't think there's any baby left after we've thrown out the bath water.

As a profoundly materialist, science based Taoist and Hindu who sucks at meditation, I just don't find enough of it sufficiently useful to pay the price necessary to get it.

I have done little meditation, but do not doubt I would find myself with a talent; I'm just not sure what it would be a talent for, and what use the result would be.

My Taoism, cogSci, abstruse philosophy and so on already have the map more than amply covered.

Let me reverse the question: What specific insights or practices of Buddhism might be useful for one to adopt independent of the institution or a practice, and why?

[Jason]

Interesting question, but I only ever practised meditation and only studied Buddhism independently and not very much in depth. What meditation did for me was to ease my anxiety and PTSD symptoms (as well as undirected anger) a great deal as well as improve my mental focus. I would suspect improved mental focus was a side-effect of practising mental discipline to the point where you can 'still' your mind - which as you already said isn't really the cessation of thinking.

FBM would have a wealth of insight I'm sure.

[FBM]

Interesting question, but I only ever practised meditation and only studied Buddhism independently and not very much in depth. What meditation did for me was to ease my anxiety and PTSD symptoms (as well as undirected anger) a great deal as well as improve my mental focus. I would suspect improved mental focus was a side-effect of practising mental discipline to the point where you can 'still' your mind - which as you already said isn't really the cessation of thinking.

FBM would have a wealth of insight I'm sure.

I'll regurgitate something, if you like, but I'm not really interested in debating the merits/demerits of Buddhism as an institution or anything else, really. People should practice what they think is best, not what someone else thinks is best.

Anyway, my source material is all Pali Canon. I don't bother with anything Mahayana, including Tibetan stuff. When Buddhism went into China, the Chinese immediately started tacking Chinese woo onto it, and it's been accumulating ever since.

In the Pali suttas, there are quite a few stories in which people would ask the Buddha questions on metaphysical things such as life after death, whether or not the universe was infinite, etc. He refused to answer them and insisted that he only taught about dukkha (incorrectly translated as 'suffering' and more accurately, but awkwardly, 'the unsatisfying-ness of experience'), its cause and its cessation. He always redirected the questioner back to the Four Noble Truths.

Thus, the woo and metaphysical stuff that people attribute to Buddhism is mostly Mahayana's later additions, and not found in the Pali suttas.

Anyway, his stated purpose was to show people how to resolve their own experience of being uneasy, dissatisfied, etc, with life and the knowledge that you're going to die. No reliance on gods and no afterlife (in the conventional sense).

Meditation is a part of the Buddha's recommendations, but you have to know that conversations about the topic and just ordinary deep thinking about it were listed among the forms of Buddhist meditation. You can do it while walking or doing mundane tasks, ie, practicing mindfulness. The extreme emphasis on the 'zazen' posture that people generally associate with Buddhist meditation is also a later Mahayana (Chan/Zen) encrustation.

The Buddha was emphatic that nobody can do this for you. In the Pali formula, first someone would hear of the teachings, then investigate them by questioning an adept, evaluate whether or not they were likely to work for them, and then, if the answer was 'yes' (which didn't always happen), they would resolve to start putting it into practice as either a layperson or monk/nun.

You probably already know the basics, at least, of the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path. It's not terribly different from Cognitive Behavior Therapy. All of the other stuff that has crusted up around the 4NT is worthless, imo, and I ignore it. Stuff like hero-worship of the Buddha or this or that "master," traditions and beliefs about spirits, chanting, reincarnation, cosmology and metaphysics, anything unrelated to the practice of the 4NT. I've no time for that crap. Death is creeping up on me.

[JacksSmirkingRevenge]

"Sometimes I like to sit and think...and sometimes I just like to sit."

[rasetsu]

For what it's worth, the 4NT, the eightfold path, proof is in the pudding, the Buddha's agnosticism regarding metaphysics and so forth can all be drilled down into and equally criticized, but through different avenues.

If there's anything left of the Buddha worth salvaging, it is the eightfold path. But note, much like Christianity's attempt to own moral philosophy, much of that isn't original to him, and much was inherited lock stock and barrel from Hindu traditions, likely influenced by Jainism, and simply one of a range of heterodox traditions offering good things. If you stress the Buddha but ignore Lokayata, or the logics of the Vedas, the reason isn't found in the substance of the eightfold path, anymore than the focus on the ten commandments or Jesus explains the preference for that instead of the Eloquent Peasant or the Code of Ur Nammu, the 316 laws versus the code of Hammurabi.


On a personal note, as a Taoist, I am most heavily influenced by Nagarjuna and the Madhyamaka, so be careful where you be pointing that thing, s'il vous plait.

[rasetsu]

"Sometimes I like to sit and think...and sometimes I just like to sit."

"Right sitting is right practice."
— Shunryu Suzuki


"You cannot attain it by thinking. You cannot grasp it by not-thinking."
— Alan Watts

[FBM]

Not sure. From atman to anatta. You can't be Hindu if you deny atman and Brahma. The Buddha redefined kamma, too. For the brahmins, it was salvation through ritual. The Buddha redefined it as 'intention/volition,' which depended on the individual's virtue, not caste or diligence in performing the rituals. Hindus do like to claim Buddhism as heterodox, but they tend to gloss over the fundamental ways that the Buddha gutted their philosophy.

[SteveB]

Heavy enough sedation will pull it off.