I’m curious. Do you see Buddhism as a value system, a world model, a beneficial practice (ex. meditating), a community, a Schelling Point, a strategy (ex. a beneficial superorganism), or a combination of those or something else?
It’s a lot of things. I’d say that at its heart it’s a way of life, or a way to live life. That way manifests itself in many ways such that we can talk about common Buddhist values, world models, practices, community forms, etc. but all of those are implementation details of how you bring about something deeper, more subtle, and more fundamental than any of them. It’s a little hard to point at what that way is, though, so that I can say some words about it, because whatever words I say it will not be the thing itself, like the way a finger pointing at the moon is not itself the moon. If I had to pick some very few words to capture the essential nature of the Buddha way, I would say that it asks us to be here, now, in our totality, fully engaged in the act of living as compassionate agents embedded in the world.
I’m curious. Do you see Buddhism as a value system, a world model, a beneficial practice (ex. meditating), a community, a Schelling Point, a strategy (ex. a beneficial superorganism), or a combination of those or something else?
It’s a lot of things. I’d say that at its heart it’s a way of life, or a way to live life. That way manifests itself in many ways such that we can talk about common Buddhist values, world models, practices, community forms, etc. but all of those are implementation details of how you bring about something deeper, more subtle, and more fundamental than any of them. It’s a little hard to point at what that way is, though, so that I can say some words about it, because whatever words I say it will not be the thing itself, like the way a finger pointing at the moon is not itself the moon. If I had to pick some very few words to capture the essential nature of the Buddha way, I would say that it asks us to be here, now, in our totality, fully engaged in the act of living as compassionate agents embedded in the world.
thanks for your answer