C. Pierce Salguero

Disclaimer: I don't do reviews, I do commentary. I can't tell you about literary quality or whether it was objectively "good", and I don't really think anyone else can either. What I can tell you is what I think of a book or what it makes me think of or feel.

Subtitle: A Guide to the 20 Most Important Buddhist Ideas for the Curious and Skeptical


2023-04-02: The introduction made me think I wouldn't like it but it turned out I got some good stuff out of it. I made a number of notes so maybe they'll make their way here. I guess I mostly learned that I'm right when I think that most Buddhists wouldn't consider me a Buddhist and I don't consider them a Buddhist either. 😉 In the end I think that the label doesn't matter, it's your actions that make you a Buddhist or not. There are apparently whole nations of fake buddhists in the world just like America has a shit-ton of fake christians. If you don't act in accordance with what Christ taught then you're not a Christian and if you don't act in accordance with what Buddha taught then you're not a Buddhist.

2023-12-24: Continuing the above thought, there are countless real Christians and Buddhists who don't know that they are.


2023-12-24:
Here are the bits I highlighted and the notes I attached to the highlights. I often don't highlight enough to provide context here so if my comments don't give enough context then you'll have to read the book. DN: Comments look like this


- Chapter 2: Suffering
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Duhkha can describe the physical pains that one experiences in old age, illness, and death, but the same word may instead refer to emotions like sadness, depression, or mental anguish. It also may refer to a general feeling of dissatisfaction, a sense that things aren’t quite right or that our purpose in life is something more than what we’re currently doing. Duhkha also can refer to the feeling of regret when we are prevented from experiencing pleasure, or the sense of loss when events that we are enjoying come to an end. This one word thus refers to the entire range of negative and dissatisfactory human experiences, the whole spectrum of emotional and physical experiences that we all wish to avoid.

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Buddhism’s basic position on duhkha, which is made clear in countless Buddhist texts from different traditions, is that these kinds of negative states are an inescapable part of life for all human beings. Buddhist doctrine asks us to accept the fact that life has a propensity to go awry. No matter what we do, we are subject to unfortunate events beyond our control.


- Chapter 3: Path

According to the Analysis of the Path (Maggavibhanga Sutta), a very influential text that introduces the model, the eight aspects of the Path are as follows:

1. Right view: We begin by accepting the postulates laid out in the Four Noble Truths, in order to gain proper understanding of the mission before us.
2. Right intention: We then strongly commit ourselves to Awakening. Usually, this aspect also involves a commitment to avoid dwelling in anger or committing acts of violence.
3. Right speech: We vow to avoid telling lies, using divisive or abusive speech, and engaging in “idle chatter.”
4. Right action: We vow to avoid killing, stealing, and sexual misconduct. (The latter is defined differently whether you’re a celibate monk or a married householder and is frequently updated to reflect local cultural norms.)
5. Right livelihood: We resolve to make a living in an ethically sound way that is free from dishonesty.
6. Right effort: We make efforts to maintain the “skillful” qualities we have already and to cultivate new ones. We also try to overcome the “unskillful” qualities we have already and to avoid taking on new ones. Skillful and unskillful qualities refer to states of mind and behavioral patterns that either help or hinder one’s progress on the Path.
7. Right mindfulness: We reflect on the body and its sensations and the mind and its qualities. This practice is usually described in English as “meditation” and is a topic I’ll have a lot more to say about in future chapters.
8. Right concentration: Through deeper practice of focused meditation, we learn to produce certain states of intense concentration, which facilitate our realization of Awakening.

DN: Best break down I've read. These actually make sense as opposed to most renderings of The Eightfold Way.

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What makes Buddhism different from the science of the brain or the psychology of adult development is that it promises not to merely improve your life but to lead you to the very pinnacle of human achievement.

DN: I disagree strongly with "pinnacle of human achievement", but then I have a very down-to-earth view of awakening.
---
I don't think Buddhism promises that, it promises relief from suffering. If you think that's the "pinnacle of human achievement" then you have a low bar for human achievement. Hmmm, it's a low bar, but also a hard one to achieve.


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Instead, we can start thinking of it as a vast collection of ideas and tools for human development that are useful to examine and consider one by one. We can then use our own discrimination to decide what, if anything, in this toolbox might work for us.

DN: There you go! It's a really excellent set of tools gifted us by an an ancient dead guy!


- Chapter 5: Renunciation
RENUNCIATION

DN: Explore this...
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I hightlighted the chapter head, not sure why. Maybe I'll have to read the chapter again to find out.


- Chapter 6: Non-Self

see “reality as it is”

DN: I think that seeing "reality as it is" means, without stories. Just see the actual circumstances of the situation and don't add anything extra. Don't guess why the other person did something, or what this means or any other made up bullshit. Don't think "this is the worst thing ever" or "they're a horrible person" or "they're an amazing and wonderful saint". Just see things as they are and don't fill in the blanks with bullshit. If you want to know why someone did something then ask them. But be aware that they might not actually know because most people don't know why they do most of what they do. See later comments about monkey training.

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We find ourselves wrapped up in it all: striving after certain things we want, wishing certain things were different, being dissatisfied with our current situation, or telling ourselves stories and then reacting to them as if they were true.

DN: Highlisted for the last bit. Making up stories and then believing them is a human specialty and probably our most common mistake.

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Someone whose karma (i.e., their previous actions, intentions, and experiences) has predisposed them in one particular direction

DN: I wish the kobo had a better keyboard so it was possible to make real notes. Again, I don't know why I highlighted this.

Maybe for the definition of karma as just your general disposition as influenced by prior action.

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Buddhism says that if you get better and better at concentrating on your constantly changing mental experience, you’ll find at the bottom of it all not a permanent self, but only a constant stream of impermanent, ever-changing phenomena.

DN: I'm not sure about "concentrating". I think you just need to get better and better at being aware of your mental experience. Most of our problem is that we go through life as sleep walkers. We're doing things and telling stories about why we're doing things but we're not really present for any of it.

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Arriving at this realization, we are liberated from identifying with the chaotic, raging flow of mental and physical phenomena. We see the dissatisfaction and suffering we have been producing by taking all of these impermanent heaps so personally. We can be truly at peace with the constant fluctuations of events, thoughts, and emotions, not attached to trying to control or identify with them. We have finally vanquished all suffering

DN: No, we have not "vanquished all suffering". That might be the fairy tale version of awakening but Buddhism is always and constantly about things being impermanent. So why is awakening the exception?

I don't think it is. I think you have a flash of insight and you wake up. Then the next day you're a sleep walker again, but you're a sleep walker who was awake for awhile, and knows they can be again.

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Can you sense this freedom from my description above? Maybe give it a try next time you get cut off in traffic or in some other situation in which you feel intensely negative. Don’t try to control your reactions; just observe what’s happening “as it is.” Do the negative feelings flow through more easily? Do you feel lighter than you normally would? Don’t take my word for it, but notice for yourself. Only you can say whether or not this perspective helps you.

DN: This is a thing I appreciate about Buddhism, this attitude of "try it and see". You don't have to accept anything on anyones say-so.


- Chapter 7: Buddha
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We know that Awakening is equivalent to attaining human perfection, and that it comes at the end of a long path of practice and many lifetimes of good karma. We also know that the core characteristic of Awakening is the liberation from suffering that comes from giving up all identification with the self.

DN: From Kobo: No... Well... Maybe, if you set the bar really low.

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Awakening is not human perfection. That's setting the bar way too high. That's the fairy tale version that a religion sells, not the realistic version that people can actually use to make their life better. Awakening is when you're not asleep. If you're paying attention to this moment as it happens then you're awake, you're awakened. If you're not then you're a sleep walker and your monkey brain is driving while you go along for the ride and pretend you're in control. (Robin Hanson's Elephant and Rider)



- Chapter 8: Mindfulness
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When Buddhists talk about mindfulness, they are normally referring to the practice of focusing your attention on a particular object and trying to remember to pay attention to it. In fact, the word “mindfulness” is a translation of the Buddhist term sati or smriti, which literally means “to remember,” “to recollect,” or “to bear something in mind.” While the object of your mindfulness can be one of a number of different things, the most common Buddhist meditation of all is mindfulness of the breath. Always present, available, and free, the breath is in many ways an ideal meditation object. You breathe tens of thousands of time per day, and although you almost never pay any attention to it, you can learn to.

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This is the meaning of mindfulness—of sati: remembering or recalling. It’s the act of again and again remembering to bring your attention back to the breath after it wandered away.

DN: THIS! Remembering that you are here and it is now!

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over time and with regular practice, I did notice positive changes. No overnight miracles, mind you, but slow and steady improvements.

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But why, you ask, would anyone want to get good at mindfulness? Tennis is one thing, but of all the skills to learn, why put any time and effort into this one? Well, in my experience, if you consistently practice mindfulness, you will not only get better at paying attention, but you will also gain valuable knowledge about how your mind works. If you’re like me, when you first start trying to be mindful of your breath or any other object, you’ll see for yourself that your mind is full of mental chatter that is out of control. You’ll find that no matter how hard you try to concentrate, you keep getting swept away by the current of mental phenomena. You may also start to see clearly how so much of what’s running through your mind is sheer nonsense. You may start to recognize unhelpful or unhealthy patterns of thought.

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You may start to understand how you are identifying with your mental phenomena, taking it all personally and even basing your identity on it. You may start to gain some perspective on certain things you thought were so serious or so hard to deal with. In the Buddhist lingo, you may start to train your “monkey mind” instead of letting it rule you.

DN: I'm digging that metaphor, a trainer for the monkey mind. The Monkey is elephant sized and you'll never be the one in control, but you can train the monkey.

The monkey has been there since you born and it started with some built in predispositions, some instincts, and then it was trained by your parents and siblings and your friends and neighbors and by your society and by your culture, the books you read and the movies and TV you watched and by the games you played. The monkey started with some general desires that 50,000 years ago and then it got trained by everything that it encountered during it's life, but it wasn't trained by you because you didn't know it was there.

You thought the monkey was you, so you were confused about why you couldn't get rid of a bad habit or pick up a good one. Mistaking the monkey for yourself you thought that you were bad or dumb or whatever when it was really the monkey making decisions and you making excuses. Now that you know, you can't really blame it for doing things that monkey's do. It's not a good or bad, it's a monkey. And you can't blame you for getting dragged around by by a huge monkey that you didn't know was there. But now that you know, you can start to train the monkey.

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Buddhist trainings that emphasize concentration often focus on generating what in the Pali language is called jhana, advanced states of absorption in which you become so concentrated on the object of meditation that the rest of the world melts away. When everything else disappears, you’re left with states of deep bliss, rapture, or stillness. Trainings emphasizing insight, on the other hand, focus on perceiving your chosen object of meditation as a manifestation of suffering, impermanence, and non-self—which in Buddhism are called the “three marks of all existence.” This kind of work is more deconstructive, breaking down your mental and physical experience into increasingly finer phenomena. Many training systems call for you to practice both concentration and insight sequentially or simultaneously. Normally, the goal of all of these kinds of advanced practice is to experience “cessations,” moments during which the whole self and the world drop away. In other words, Nirvana.

DN: I suck at concentration but I've always been suspicious of the idea that you become so focused on one thing that everything else disappears.

Why is this desirable? Pleasant, maybe, but why is it good for you? That seems like you're cutting yourself off from the world which seem like the opposite of what we're trying to achieve.

----
The three marks as found in a graphic novel about history (and so much more):

Everything changes, people are never satisfied, all identities are fictional.


- Chapter 10: The Middle Way
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Two contradictory things are true simultaneously.

DN: Non-duality. Not this OR that but this AND that and also not-this AND not-that.

Stop thinking in binary, we live in an analog world.

───
DN: The following are multiple highlights glommed together for brevity.

So let’s examine how the middle way would apply to race, shall we?
...
If we strictly apply the ideas we’ve been discussing, we have no choice but to concede that “race” is as empty as all of the other concepts rattling about in our minds.
...
At the same time, though, let’s be honest: race is obviously very real

DN: No, race is not real just because people believe in it. But the impact of their false beliefs have real effects on peoples lives.

This might seem like splitting hairs but it an important distinction. Race, along with most other humans concepts, is essentially bullshit, but because people believe the bullshit they act in certain ways and it's the actions that are the problem.

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To avoid falling into the trap of an emptiness-only viewpoint, Mahayana calls for a middle way. We need to strike a balance by acknowledging that from the Awakened perspective, all forms are ultimately empty, while also appreciating that from the human perspective, the world of forms is simultaneously very real and has tangible consequences.

DN: Interesting. If this is where Middle Way comes from then... yes.... but how is that useful. They (according to how I read this discussion) then turn around look at things entirely from the world of forms.

My assumption on reading the phrase "middle way" (not here, but lots of places before this one) was that it was analogous to my pre-existing views on moderation and avoidance of extremes.

I'm interested to learn whether this is what Buddhists mean by middle way, but I'm still going to keep mine because it matches theirs and is more broadly useful.

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“Inferior Vehicle”

DN: judging
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That was the Kobo comment. I was highlighting because if they say "inferior" then they're judging and it's likely attached to a story and therefore unskillful. I think a big part of Buddhism is learning to set aside our judgements (our stories) and just see things the way they are. I see this as tied strongly to acceptance.

Note that as in so many other cases language lets us down here. Judging can be skillful judging or unskillful (or both and neither, non-dualism).


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From this viewpoint, creating welcoming spaces for groups that are often marginalized is a compassionate way of behaving and an obvious necessity for a meditation center in contemporary America.

DN: But you're spaces should be welcoming for everyone. It's fine if you go out of your way to make sure that certain groups know that they're welcome, but don't make others feel unwelcome in the course of your effort.

As an extreme example, if you don't create a safe space for the Nazi's then you are behaving unskillfully and you will never be able to reach the Nazi's and teach them a better way. You are writing them off as "bad" when acutally it's just their misguided beliefs that are the problem and in so doing you are acting unskillfully.

That said, there's a practical aspect to it as well. When you invite the Nazi's over you should probably have a good (but non-provacative) security detail on standby and maybe put the breakables away.


- Chapter 13: Compassion
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Collectively known as the “immeasurable states of mind” (si wuliang xin) in Chinese or the “heavenly dwellings” (brahma vihara) in Pali, they are as follows:

■ Loving kindness (metta in Pali): a feeling of universal friendliness, goodwill, and love toward all beings.
■ Empathetic compassion (karuna): a feeling of wanting to remove the suffering experienced by other beings.
■ Altruistic joy (mudita): a feeling of joy at the happiness and success of other beings, untinged by jealousy or pride.
■ Equanimity (upekkha): a feeling of tolerance, peace, and tranquility in the face of annoyances, including those caused by other beings.These four immeasurables were understood to go together as a set in Indian culture long before the Buddha’s time, and they appear in other Indian religious traditions as well. However, they were absorbed into Buddhism and came to be among its central ideas. The main idea behind the Buddhist discourses on this subject is that we can and should cultivate these positive states of mind. As is true with mindfulness or concentration, the brain can be trained in the immeasurables.


- Chapter 17: Buddhist
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Orientalism, which refers to non-Asians projecting positive stereotypes onto Asian people or things.

DN: I'm a little baffled that there's a term for this. Isn't this the same thing as the "noble savage" and the "magical negro"? Is there a general term for those tropes?

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The swastika is a symbol that was used all over ancient Eurasia as a sign of good luck and auspiciousness (the word means “conducive to well-being” in Sanskrit). It continues to be a prevalent symbol in Buddhism, and you can see swastikas adorning temples, decorating sacred objects, and even emblazoned on the chest of Buddhist statues all over Asia. Even after Hitler used the symbol in his Nazi emblem, it was never associated with Nazism or Aryan ideology in Buddhist cultures. As a result, it never lost its positive connotations.

DN: This is something that humans get wrong, especially the political left.

Never, ever, let evil have a symbol.

If assholes start using Pepe the Frog or the OK sign as a symbol then everyone else should start using in friendly and encouraging and compassionate ways. Bury their signal for hatred in the noise of love.

🙄 😉


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Buddhists committed those violent crimes against humanity?

DN: No, people who call themselves "buddhists" did those things. Just like people who call themselves "christians" do all kinds of things that Jesus would find horrifying?

Buddhism or Christianity is just a suit that some assholes wear to justify whatever they want to do. Oh yes, they _believe_ that they're Buddhists and they have some of the trappings and lingo and even a lengthy heritage, but it's your actions that make you a Buddhist or a Christian, not your words or your beliefs or your clothes or your ancestors.

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I believe that if someone finds claiming a Buddhist identity to be helpful in becoming a better person, then that’s great. If not, then that’s perfectly fine too. The most important thing to me is that we are cultivating wisdom and compassion, not what we call ourselves while we’re doing it!

DN: I'm with you there!


- Chapter 19: Interconnectedness
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craving and aversion

DN: I can't remember the terms I usually see around this, I think Joseph Goldstein usually says pleasant and unpleasant but I like craving and aversion and don't remember hearing them before.

They give a sense of leaning toward or away from something and Steve Hagen has me thinking about leaning a lot. If you're leaning you're unbalanced.

And maybe when you're not taking the middle way you're unbalanced?
… (mehr)