Archive for June 2012
A Secular Understanding of Dependent Arising: Table of Contents
Americans seem to use “dependent origination” as the most common translation of paticca samuppada, but I don’t think we’re talking about “origination” so much as about what is arising, so I prefer “dependent arising”. (For the sake of search engines, I used “dependent origination” in the title of each blogpost, but a rose by any…
Read MoreA Secular Understanding of Dependent Origination: #7 Feeling
There are these six classes of feeling: feeling born of eye-contact, feeling born of ear-contact, feeling born of nose-contact, feeling born of tongue-contact, feeling born of body-contact, feeling born of mind-contact. — MN 9 translated by Bhikkhus Nanamoli and Bodhi Still in the field of sense information, here we are being asked to look at what…
Read MoreBuddhism Vs. Neuroscience
Long before my interest in Buddhism, I was fascinated by how our brains work, how thoughts arise, how consciousness works, and where this feeling of self comes from. In my opinion, going back to childhood, I’ve never seen the brain and body as separate, but instead two integrated systems. My interest in neuroscience was partly…
Read MoreA Secular Understanding of Dependent Origination: #6 Contact
Up to this point what has been covered in the first five steps is an overview of the problematic situation as it’s given to us.The model for what’s going on in these first five steps is a well-known origin myth that gets referred to in various different places in the suttas: the story of the…
Read MoreA Secular Understanding of Dependent Origination: #5 Use of the Six Senses
When Sariputta describes step #5 (from MN 9, as translated by Bhikkhus Nanamoli and Bodhi), we are clearly in the field: There are these six bases: the eye-base, the ear-base, the nose-base, the tongue-base, the body-base, the mind-base…. This tells us nothing about how it relates to the process of dependent origination, it only tells…
Read MoreEpisode 120 :: Lenorë Lambert :: Secular Buddhism Australia
Lenorë Lambert Lenorë Lambert joins us to speak about the new Secular Buddhism Australia website. There’s a great deal of discussion online lately about what secular Buddhism is, and what are the views of people who designate as secular Buddhists. Of course there is no one and only secular Buddhism, and there is a great…
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