Buddha-Sasana

Discovering Buddhism

I begin to tell my own “way seeking mind” story of how I first came to Buddhist practice. (Through the Looking Glass 1, 1/27/2023)

Final notes

We review Buddhism’s unique roles in the symbolic/transcendent world. (Buddhism as Self-Help 18, 1/20/2023)

The transcendent dimension

We look at how Buddhism fits into the symbolic structures of social cognition: the sacred, myth, ritual and community, and how meaning, motivation and supramundane experience are rooted there. (Buddhism as Self-Help 17, 1/13/2023)

Ordering the world symbolically

Social cognition works symbolically. We continue our understanding of the constructed symbolic world in terms of myth and the sacred and their influence on human behavior. (Buddhism as Self-Help 16, 1/6/2023)

The serious life

Symbolism provides the workings of social, cooperative life. We discuss the ubiquity and importance of ritual and then the ethic of living by vow, with examples from the Zen tradition. (Buddhism as Self-Help 15, 12/30/2022)

Supramundane experience

Lasting well-being is possible within the selfless, pro-social, cooperative world. We discuss moral communities, when they go wrong and the Buddhist resources that make them work. (Buddhism as Self-Help 14, 12/23/2022)

Mundane feelings

The Buddha divides thoughts into wholesome and unwholesome. The mundane unwholesome search for hedonic pleasure necessarily fails to produce lasting well-being for modern psychological and evolutionary reasons. (Buddhism as Self-Help 13, 12/16/2022)

The Sangha of non-selves

The monastic Sangha provides a context in which social conditions that presuppose a self are excluded. (Buddhism as Self-Help 12, 12/9/2022)

The sociocultural non-self

A quick tour of various societal structures gives us an idea of where a non-self might be able to live and thrive. (Buddhism as Self-Help 12, 12/2/2022)

The Dharma strikes back

Contrary to being the ideology of global capitalism, Buddhism is only marginally about self-help under adverse social conditions, but intrinsically concerned with improving social conditions. (Buddhism as Self-Help 10, 11/25/2022)