Skeptical Buddhism
@skepticalbuddhism.bsky.social
asks how well we've understood what the Buddha taught, as we see him in our oldest versions of his talks. By going back to those ancient texts, and studying the culture of his time, can we get a more accurate sense of it? An iconoclastic Secular Buddhism.
40/ What does the middle, Rituals section say? … #SB40of10K
… We often hear that Craving and Clinging tell us not to get attached to material things, or to relationships, or fame, but the Buddha didn't stop there: he had much more to say.
… We often hear that Craving and Clinging tell us not to get attached to material things, or to relationships, or fame, but the Buddha didn't stop there: he had much more to say.
November 8, 2025 at 7:12 PM
40/ What does the middle, Rituals section say? … #SB40of10K
… We often hear that Craving and Clinging tell us not to get attached to material things, or to relationships, or fame, but the Buddha didn't stop there: he had much more to say.
… We often hear that Craving and Clinging tell us not to get attached to material things, or to relationships, or fame, but the Buddha didn't stop there: he had much more to say.
36/ Next post: bsky.app/profile/skep...
1/ The central section of Dependent Arising (DA), which we're calling "Rituals", using the Buddha's metaphorical word for our habits of thought, can be seen as the best-understood part of the lesson, since it deals with our experience of the here-and-now.
#SB40of10k
#SB40of10k
November 8, 2025 at 7:07 PM
36/ Next post: bsky.app/profile/skep...
29/ With the next post we'll begin to look at the final three links of the forward-moving process of DA's description of the arising of our sense of self in the world.
November 8, 2025 at 7:02 PM
29/ With the next post we'll begin to look at the final three links of the forward-moving process of DA's description of the arising of our sense of self in the world.
28/ What better way was there to try to get his brilliant new insights through to an audience for whom psychology would be such a strange and hard-to-see idea?
November 8, 2025 at 7:02 PM
28/ What better way was there to try to get his brilliant new insights through to an audience for whom psychology would be such a strange and hard-to-see idea?
27/ was speculative, they could conceivably begin to then see that most of their beliefs about the self were the same. That process happens now, when modern practitioners notice their own cultural conditioning, and the assumptions we make about others as well as our own selves, often unsupported.
November 8, 2025 at 7:02 PM
27/ was speculative, they could conceivably begin to then see that most of their beliefs about the self were the same. That process happens now, when modern practitioners notice their own cultural conditioning, and the assumptions we make about others as well as our own selves, often unsupported.
26/ It was a term that could be seen (with the insights that come from mindfulness) to cover rituals learned by cultural forces, teaching ideas about the creation of, and modification of the self. Once his listeners recognized that what their culture taught them through *saṅkhārā*'s rituals
November 8, 2025 at 7:02 PM
26/ It was a term that could be seen (with the insights that come from mindfulness) to cover rituals learned by cultural forces, teaching ideas about the creation of, and modification of the self. Once his listeners recognized that what their culture taught them through *saṅkhārā*'s rituals
25/ With no words for psychological processes in the language of his culture — heck, no cultural insight into such processes at all — using *saṅkhārā* was brilliant.
November 8, 2025 at 7:02 PM
25/ With no words for psychological processes in the language of his culture — heck, no cultural insight into such processes at all — using *saṅkhārā* was brilliant.
24/ I may be alone in finding it incredibly clever of him to have borrowed the term *saṅkhārā* — expressing both the craving for existence that was believed to have brought the *ātman* into existence and the rituals that modify it — to express "habits of thought" that create and shape the self.
November 8, 2025 at 7:02 PM
24/ I may be alone in finding it incredibly clever of him to have borrowed the term *saṅkhārā* — expressing both the craving for existence that was believed to have brought the *ātman* into existence and the rituals that modify it — to express "habits of thought" that create and shape the self.
23/ All kinds of views about the self that are built up out of speculation, rather than direct experiences, lead to trouble. That is the problem he was pointing out. And it's our unexamined habits of thought that he's suggesting we learn to pay attention to.
November 8, 2025 at 7:02 PM
23/ All kinds of views about the self that are built up out of speculation, rather than direct experiences, lead to trouble. That is the problem he was pointing out. And it's our unexamined habits of thought that he's suggesting we learn to pay attention to.
22/ But it's the Buddha doing his best, using his updated modification of the methods of Vedic teachers before him, to express new ideas with parallels to old, familiar concepts.
November 8, 2025 at 7:02 PM
22/ But it's the Buddha doing his best, using his updated modification of the methods of Vedic teachers before him, to express new ideas with parallels to old, familiar concepts.
21/ If they were definitions he'd be limiting his meaning to those views being problems, but as he tells his cousin and attendant Ananda in DN 15 (see my post #SB5of10K for details) he's using *pariyāya* -- figurative language -- which may sound to our ear as a literal definition.
November 8, 2025 at 7:02 PM
21/ If they were definitions he'd be limiting his meaning to those views being problems, but as he tells his cousin and attendant Ananda in DN 15 (see my post #SB5of10K for details) he's using *pariyāya* -- figurative language -- which may sound to our ear as a literal definition.
20/ He's referring to those "eternalist" views (karma, rituals, rebirth) and "annihilationist" views (knowledge of the eternal self, dissolving into union with Brahman after death) that he is saying lead to problems. Note that these are examples from his time, not actually definitions.
November 8, 2025 at 7:02 PM
20/ He's referring to those "eternalist" views (karma, rituals, rebirth) and "annihilationist" views (knowledge of the eternal self, dissolving into union with Brahman after death) that he is saying lead to problems. Note that these are examples from his time, not actually definitions.
19/ When the Buddha begins each of the three links in the chain — Craving, Clinging, and Becoming — with *kāma* but then goes on to provide more examples (all of those dealing with views about the self common in his time) he is making his most significant point.
November 8, 2025 at 7:02 PM
19/ When the Buddha begins each of the three links in the chain — Craving, Clinging, and Becoming — with *kāma* but then goes on to provide more examples (all of those dealing with views about the self common in his time) he is making his most significant point.
18/ Another purpose for including a *kāma* worldview, though, is that it's easy enough to see, and so as an introduction to how clinging and craving lead to trouble, it provides a pattern that hopefully can make the subtler description of issues with speculative views visible.
November 8, 2025 at 7:02 PM
18/ Another purpose for including a *kāma* worldview, though, is that it's easy enough to see, and so as an introduction to how clinging and craving lead to trouble, it provides a pattern that hopefully can make the subtler description of issues with speculative views visible.
17/ The inclusion of the *kāma*-level in DA serves two purposes. As mentioned in 14/ above, it does describe a worldview that leads to the arising of dukkha, harming oneself and others.
November 8, 2025 at 7:02 PM
17/ The inclusion of the *kāma*-level in DA serves two purposes. As mentioned in 14/ above, it does describe a worldview that leads to the arising of dukkha, harming oneself and others.
16/ …creates a false sense of a lasting, changeless, separate self that is justified in its use of argument and violence to protect and perpetuate itself and its opinions.
November 8, 2025 at 7:02 PM
16/ …creates a false sense of a lasting, changeless, separate self that is justified in its use of argument and violence to protect and perpetuate itself and its opinions.
15/ The most significant lesson contained in DA is its rendering of exactly how an ephemeral gathering of speculative opinions, ungrounded by direct experience…
November 8, 2025 at 7:02 PM
15/ The most significant lesson contained in DA is its rendering of exactly how an ephemeral gathering of speculative opinions, ungrounded by direct experience…
14/ As I see it, though the discussion of the *kāma*-level description of Clinging, Craving, and even Becoming makes a valid point about the ways a lifestyle full of concern for things outside us lead to trouble and strife, it's not the only point.
November 8, 2025 at 7:02 PM
14/ As I see it, though the discussion of the *kāma*-level description of Clinging, Craving, and even Becoming makes a valid point about the ways a lifestyle full of concern for things outside us lead to trouble and strife, it's not the only point.
13/ Note that this psychological explanation of DA is not a new way of looking at it that I came up with: it's been well-understood by many who are wiser than me for quite a long time. All I'm adding here is a clearer view of the tools he used to express his new insight.
November 8, 2025 at 7:02 PM
13/ Note that this psychological explanation of DA is not a new way of looking at it that I came up with: it's been well-understood by many who are wiser than me for quite a long time. All I'm adding here is a clearer view of the tools he used to express his new insight.
12/ Because it was a new idea, there was no language to express it, so he used a concept that was familiar — Vedic ideas about modifying the visible form of a permanent self (*ātman*) to better match its ideal — as a parallel to what he was trying to explain.
November 8, 2025 at 7:02 PM
12/ Because it was a new idea, there was no language to express it, so he used a concept that was familiar — Vedic ideas about modifying the visible form of a permanent self (*ātman*) to better match its ideal — as a parallel to what he was trying to explain.
11/ The Buddha was describing a completely new idea to the people of his time: the psychological phenomena of the way we create a sense that there is an already-existing, separate self within us, built out of social concepts about the self, and out of our experiences.
November 8, 2025 at 7:02 PM
11/ The Buddha was describing a completely new idea to the people of his time: the psychological phenomena of the way we create a sense that there is an already-existing, separate self within us, built out of social concepts about the self, and out of our experiences.
10/ My intention is not to single out one knowledgeable teacher. You'll find many who define DA's Craving as about externals and stop there. Which is a shame, since there are also many teachers and wise practitioners who have recognized that the Buddha was describing how we build the self.
November 8, 2025 at 7:02 PM
10/ My intention is not to single out one knowledgeable teacher. You'll find many who define DA's Craving as about externals and stop there. Which is a shame, since there are also many teachers and wise practitioners who have recognized that the Buddha was describing how we build the self.
9/ To be sure this was where Guntaratana stopped the lesson, I bought the book he'd excerpted the article from. In it, he did not mention this middle section's emphasis on views about the self.
November 8, 2025 at 7:02 PM
9/ To be sure this was where Guntaratana stopped the lesson, I bought the book he'd excerpted the article from. In it, he did not mention this middle section's emphasis on views about the self.
8/ The article has no discussion of what the Buddha was, with his parallel to the Vedic mythos around the creation of the *ātman*, trying to explain: how we build what we think of as a lasting self, and how our staunch defense of that self and the ideologies it is made of, lead to trouble.
November 8, 2025 at 7:02 PM
8/ The article has no discussion of what the Buddha was, with his parallel to the Vedic mythos around the creation of the *ātman*, trying to explain: how we build what we think of as a lasting self, and how our staunch defense of that self and the ideologies it is made of, lead to trouble.
7/ He also quite correctly describes the problem as our tendency to want the things we crave and cling to them, wishing them to last. Though Bhante Guntaratana doesn't mention it, that's only half of what the Buddha was telling us with DA. The easy-to-see half. The smaller consequences half.
November 8, 2025 at 7:02 PM
7/ He also quite correctly describes the problem as our tendency to want the things we crave and cling to them, wishing them to last. Though Bhante Guntaratana doesn't mention it, that's only half of what the Buddha was telling us with DA. The easy-to-see half. The smaller consequences half.