Batchelor's "After Buddhism": A Review

With After Buddhism, Stephen Batchelor continues his project of cultivating a secular dhamma. Batchelor’s book is structured as an exegesis of the Pāli Canon, focusing almost exclusively on this early material to reconstruct what might be termed a secular Buddha. This is a Buddha who followed a kind of Pyrrhonian skepticism about truth, who declined…

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An Anecdote of Mettā and Pain

I’ve been doing mettā (lovingkindness) practice this last month. Day to day it involves spending meditation periods slowly repeating well-meaning hopes and wishes towards myself and others. It started off interesting, since I had to come up with some new formulae for my wishes, but it quickly became rote, much akin to breathing or repeating…

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Superstition

From the QualiaSoup series of videos, this is a terrific examination of the concept of Superstition.

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