The Long Hard Road to Nowhere

[minorannoyance]

I wrote this paper for a religion class called Modern Problems of Belief, and thought it might be a useful topic for discussion. The book, by Pema Chödrön, comes from a primarily Buddhist perspective, but I feel with a bit of effort, anyone can use the lessons in the search for knowledge.

Comments

[planetkimi]

Your essay is very timely for me - thank you for sharing.
I am suddenly very motivated to find my copy of the Wisdom of No Escape and reread it. :)

[_lyra_b]

I appreciate the way you summarized some rather complicated philosphical ideas and put them into very understandable terms. I particularly like the lyric you chose, as it certainly defines the essence of the book's main theme, not to mention it being one of my favorite songs.

As I was reading this over yesterday and thinking about Eastern philosophy, one thing struck me: "You can choose to believe anything you like, but don’t let it define your world for you." This is one of the concepts I have difficulty with, having orginally come from a Western religious background. My question for you is, if it can be answered in terms of your reading I guess, if one doesn't define one's world by one's beliefs, how can one have convictions? The contradictory nature and nebulousness of Buddhism is something I both embrace and get upset by (there's a Zen moment for you).

Aside from that, this was a fine essay and if anything it inspired me to work on my meditation and my breathing again.

[pluribus_adelos]

the unknown is frightening

Yes, because we have a tendency to assume the unknown is bad. I think this has its basis in at least two concepts: first, it is an inherent evolutionary protection/survival mechanism, and as such is built into the very core of our way of thinking, and second, that each of us has had a distinct, unique, and hence unequal set of experiences that may (or may not) reinforce our instinct and belief that more often than not the unknown is bad rather than good.

However, where my thoughts are really headed is that I don't buy into the implication that known things are less frightening. Knowing that a critical part WILL fail and cause my flight to crash does not make it less frightening than simply suspecting a failure. Of course, knowing NOTHING critical will fail brings reassurance. But the assurance is in the knowledge that nothing bad will happen, not simply the knowledge of what will happen. Yet perhaps the timing of such knowledge would matter in a positive way, particularly if the knowledge is far far in

[pluribus_adelos]

Seems I remember reading in the news recently about research into human intuition, or "hunches". If I recall, the results were that our intuition about bad things happening has a positive correlation (good for survival) whereas our intuition about good things happening is essentially random (bad for poker, stock markets, and other forms of gambling).