Posts Tagged ‘stoicism’
Buddhist & Stoic Wisdom for a Skeptical Age
Today we will look at Antonia Macaro’s great new book “More Than Happiness: Buddhist and Stoic Wisdom for a Sceptical Age”. We’ll consider what it says about the projects early Buddhism and Stoicism have in common, as well as mention some interesting questions she raises. Check out my Patreon page!
Read MoreBuddhism and Stoicism 2: Five Differences
Buddhism and Stoicism are in many ways allied philosophies. However in this video we will look at five ways that they differ. We will be looking in specific at early Buddhism and Stoicism as reflected in its Classical Greek and Roman texts, and as explained in Massimo Pigliucci’s recent book “How to Be a Stoic”.…
Read MoreBuddhism and Stoicism 1: Five Similarities
Buddhism and Stoicism are in many ways allied philosophies. In this video we will look at five ways that they overlap. We will be looking in specific at early Buddhism and Stoicism as reflected in its Classical Greek and Roman texts, and as explained in Massimo Pigliucci’s recent book “How to Be a Stoic”. While…
Read MoreWhat is Secular Buddhism?
This is a short experiment, a video I’ve cobbled together and put up on YouTube on the question “What is secular Buddhism?” where I try to explain both what it is, and how it has come about historically. It’s quite short, seven and a half minutes long, so I don’t go into a whole lot…
Read More"Buddha vs. Faust": Responding to Ronald Lindsay
Ron Lindsay’s recent blog post “On the Pursuit of Meditation: Buddha vs. Faust” begins as a mild critique of Sam Harris’s recent book Waking Up, and then segues into a skeptical review of meditation. Lindsay is President of the secularist/skeptic Center for Inquiry.* Although I dealt with many relevant topics at some length in my review of…
Read MoreOn the Skillfulness of Refined Taste
On the first day of a course in wine appreciation I was presented with two samples and asked to describe their aromas. They both smelled like wine. There was nothing else I could say about them. I remember thinking that that would change, and that by the end of the course I would be able to…
Read MoreCultivating Wisdom in an Era of Technological Change
My grandmother grew up in the era of the horse and buggy, but lived to see a man set foot on the Moon. When I was a kid growing up in New York we had rotary dial telephones. Personal computers were just being introduced, with green phosphorescent screens and weird command-line interfaces. The first office Xerox…
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