10 excerpts, 31:33 total duration
“You mentioned [existentialism/eternalism] and nihilism as familiar Western philosophical ideas. I understand that Buddhism’s approach is not one or the other. How do other Western philosophical ideas like solipsism or materialism sit?” Answered by Ajahn Amaro and Ajahn Pasanno. [Philosophy ] [Middle Path] // [God] [Humor] [Views] [Suffering] [Cessation of Suffering] [Teaching Dhamma]
Sutta: SN 22.86: “I teach suffering and the end of suffering.”
Comment: Philosophy usually tries to create a philosophy from which you pull down how to live your life, but the Buddha is the other way around. [Philosophy ]
Sutta: DN 1: Sixty-two wrong views.
14. Comment: Some Buddhists get upset when they hear someone say that Buddhism is a philosophy. [Philosophy] [Aversion] [Buddhist identity]
Response by Ajahn Pasanno: “It’s a lot more than that.”
6. The Buddha taught not-self by ecouraging his disciples to ask these questions. [Teaching Dhamma] [Not-self] [Questions] [Philosophy]
Sutta: SN 22.59 Anattalakkhaṇa Sutta questionaire (Chanting Book translation).
Response by Ajahn Pasanno. [Skillful qualities] [Ajahn Chah]
1. Comment: I was thinking about our obsession to create things. We create our world out of the things that we create. So Nibbāna being no thing-ness seems just right. [Proliferation] [Nibbāna] [Non-identification]
Response by Ajahn Amaro. [Volitional formations] [Conventions] [Impermanence] [Philosophy] [Aggregates] [Insight meditation] [Suffering]
Quote: “The things of this world are merely conventions of our own making....” — Ajahn Chah in Convention and Liberation. [Ajahn Chah]
3. “When kamma meets this present moment way of handling experience, this synchronic approach, is there some sort of free will there?” Answered by Ajahn Amaro. [Kamma] [Conditionality] [Philosophy]
Reference: The Wings to Awakening by Ajahn Ṭhānissaro, pp. 35-37.
Quote: “The concept of free will is quite European.” [Philosophy] [Culture/West]
Reference: “Is God a Taoist?”, Raymond M. Smullyan in The Mind’s ‘I’, edited by Douglas R. Hofstadter and Daniel C. Dennett.
3. Comment: The Scottish philosopher David Hume expressed his understanding of the nature of self similar to a Buddhist understanding. [Philosophy] [Not-self] // [Sense bases] [Perception]
Reference: David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature.
5. Discussion about possible connections between Western philosophy and Buddhism. [Philosophy] [History] [Spiritual traditions]
1. Comment: When you were reading from the passage from Ācariya Nāgārguna’s Mūlamadhyamaka-kārikā (quoted in The Island by Ajahn Pasanno and Ajahn Amaro, p. 109), it struck me that the use of the word essence is equivalent to the way the Buddha uses the word self. [Acariya Nāgārguna] [Language] [Self-identity view] // [Mahāyāna] [Philosophy]
Sutta: SN 5.10: The Bhikkhunī Vajirā.
4. “Is [SN 12.15] specifically what the middle way refers to?” Answered by Ajahn Amaro. [Middle Path] // [Dependent origination] [Eightfold Path] [Sense bases] [Philosophy]
Sutta: SN 56.11: Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta (Chanting book translation).
Reference: Concept and Reality by Bhikkhu Ñāṇananda p. 63, quoted in The Island by Ajahn Pasanno and Ajahn Amaro, p. 140.
Sutta: SN 2.26: Rohitassa.
Sutta: DN 11.85: Where earth, water, fire, and air no footing find...
6. “You mentioned [existentialism/eternalism] and nihilism as familiar Western philosophical ideas. I understand that Buddhism’s approach is not one or the other. How do other Western philosophical ideas like solipsism or materialism sit?” Answered by Ajahn Amaro and Ajahn Pasanno. [Philosophy ] [Middle Path] // [God] [Humor] [Views] [Suffering] [Cessation of Suffering] [Teaching Dhamma]
Sutta: SN 22.86: “I teach suffering and the end of suffering.”
Comment: Philosophy usually tries to create a philosophy from which you pull down how to live your life, but the Buddha is the other way around. [Philosophy ]
Sutta: DN 1: Sixty-two wrong views.
7. “It is, friend, in just this fathom-high carcass endowed with perception and mind that I make known the world, the origin of the world, the cessation of the world, and the way leading to the cessation of the world.” — SN 2.26.5 [Bhikkhu Bodhi translation]. [Nature of the cosmos] [Four Noble Truths]
Quote: “This pithy utterance of the Buddha may well be the most profound proposition in the history of human thought...” — Bhikkhu Bodhi’s footnote to the above passage. [Bhikkhu Bodhi] [Philosophy]
Sutta: SN 35.116: The world in the Noble One’s discipline.