Podcasts about pyrrho

Pyrrho of Elis (c. 360–270 BCE) was an ancient Greek philosopher and founder of Pyrrhonism, a school of philosophical skepticism. He advocated for epoché (suspension of judgment) as a path to ataraxia (peace of mind). Influenced by his travels to India with Alexander the Great, Pyrrho believed that nothing could be definitively known and that by refraining from beliefs, one could achieve tranquility. His teachings laid the foundation for later skeptical thought in philosophy and medicine.

Welcome to Episode 204 of Lucretius Today. This is a podcast dedicated to the poet Lucretius, who wrote "On The Nature of Things," the only complete presentation of Epicurean philosophy left to us from the ancient world. Each week we walk you through the Epicurean texts, and we discuss how Epicurean philosophy can apply to you today. If you find the Epicurean worldview attractive, we invite you to join us in the study of Epicurus at EpicureanFriends.com, where you will find a discussion thread for each of our podcast episodes and many other topics.This week we continue our discussion of Book Two of Cicero's On Ends, which is largely devoted Cicero's attack on Epicurean Philosophy. This week we move on through Section XIII, starting roughly here:... Well, this is directed against Aristippus, who accounts that pleasure which all of us alone call pleasure, to be not only the highest but the only form of pleasure; while your school holds different doctrine. But he, as I have said, is in fault; since neither the shape of the human body nor reason, preeminent among man's mental endowments, gives any indication that man came into existence for the sole purpose of enjoying pleasures. Nor indeed must we listen to Hieronymus, whose supreme good is the same as that on which your school sometimes or rather very often insists, absence of pain. For if pain is an evil it does not follow that to be free from that evil suffices to produce the life of happiness. Let Ennius rather speak thus: he has a vast amount of good who has no ill; let us estimate happiness not by the banishment of evil, but by the acquisition of good, and let us not seek this in inactivity, whether of a joyous kind, like that of Aristippus, or marked by absence of pain, like that of our philosopher, but in action of some sort and reflection. Now these arguments may be advanced in the same form against the Carneadean view of the supreme good, though he proposed it not so much with the purpose of securing approval as with the intention of combating the Stoics, against whom he waged war; his supreme good is however of such a nature that when joined to virtue it seems likely to exert influence and to furnish forth abundantly the life of happiness, with which subject our whole inquiry is concerned. Those indeed who join to virtue either pleasure, the thing of all others which virtue holds in least esteem, or the absence of pain, which though it is unassociated with evil, still is not the supreme good, make an addition which is not very plausible, yet I do not understand why they should carry out the idea in such a niggardly and narrow manner. For, as though they had to pay for anything which they join with virtue, they in the first place unite with her the cheapest articles, next they would rather add things singly than combine with morality all those objects to which nature had primarily given her sanction. And because these objects were held worthless by Pyrrho and Aristo, so that they said there was absolutely no distinction of value between the best possible health and the most serious illness, people have quite rightly ceased long ago to argue against these philosophers. For by determining that on virtue alone everything so entirely depends, that they robbed her of free selection from among these objects, and allowed her neither starting point nor foothold, they abolished that very virtue of which they were enamoured. Erillus again by assigning all importance to know- ledge, kept in view a single kind of good, but not the best kind nor one by whose aid life can possibly be steered. So he too was long ago cast into oblivion, for since the time of Chrysippus there have certainly been no discussions about him.

Parmi les différents corvidés, il en existe deux qui sont moins bien connus, parce que vivant en altitude. Il s'agit du Chocard à bec jaune et du Crave à bec rouge, les deux seules espèces du genre Pyrrhocorrax.  “Pyrrho“ venant du grec “purrhos“, qui veut dire “couleur de la flamme“ et “korax“, “corbeau“, cela fait d'eux les Corbeaux aux couleurs de flammes, en référence à la couleur rouge de leurs pattes. Il faut ajouter à cela la couleur du bec, jaune chez le Chocard et rouge chez le Crave, mais vous l'aviez surement deviné. Des 2, le Chocard est le véritable montagnard, il vit et niche à plus haute altitude alors que le Crave est aussi présent sur les côtes rocheuses de l'océan Atlantique. Grégaires et sociables, ils sont tous les deux fidèles en amour, au partenaire comme au lieu de construction du nid. Celui-ci est construit dans les anfractuosités de la roche.  Omnivores et opportunistes, ils descendent dans les vallées pendant l'hiver, n'hésitant pas à se rapprocher des habitations pour se servir dans les restes et les déchets. Comme beaucoup d'autres corvidés, le Crave a parfois mauvaise réputation, il était autrefois accusé de pyromanie. D'un autre côté, la légende arthurienne raconte que l'âme d'Arthur aurait pris l'apparence du Crave, dont la couleur rouge des pattes et du bec représenterait le sang versé. Tuer un Crave porterait donc malheur… mais il est aujourd'hui présent sur des blasons locaux anglais. Aujourd'hui, Crave et Chocard sont classés en Europe dans les espèces vulnérables.  Sur le site de BSG, retrouvez les articles de Marie-Laure Fauquet sur le Chocard et la Crave _______ Découvrir tout l'univers Baleine sous Gravillon, et Mécaniques du Vivant sur France Culture : https://baleinesousgravillon.com/liens-2 Soutenir notre travail, bénévole et sans pub : https://bit.ly/helloasso_donsUR_BSG Nous contacter : contact@baleinesousgravillon.com _______ Montage / programmation : Zeynab Tamoukh et Albane Couterot

“It is not events that disturb us, but what we believe about them.” Is this true? Well, apparently Pyrrho, a rather obscure Greek philosopher claimed it to be the case and he may have been influenced by Buddhism in his creation of what today is called “Pyrrhonism”. Pyrrho agreed with the Buddha that delusion was the cause of suffering, but instead of using meditation to end delusion, Pyrrho applied Greek philosophical rationalism. Pyrrho's Way: The Ancient Greek Version of Buddhism (Sumeru Press, 2020) lays out the Pyrrhonist path for modern readers on how to apply Pyrrhonist practice to everyday life. Its author is Douglas C. Bates, founder of the Modern Pyrrhonism Movement. He has been a Zen practitioner for over 25 years, was a founding member of Boundless Way Zen, and is a student of Zeno Myoun, Roshi. “…succeeds in making a difficult and obscure philosophy not only intelligible but, more to the point, something to be practiced in a way that can make a difference to your life here and now.” — STEPHEN BATCHELOR, author of The Art of Solitude “…an intelligent, readable book that succeeds in its goal of introducing Pyrrhonism as practice.” — CHRISTOPHER BECKWITH, author of Greek Buddha: Pyrrho's Encounter with Early Buddhism in Central Asia Matthew O'Connell is a life coach and the host of the The Imperfect Buddha podcast. You can find The Imperfect Buddha on Facebook and Twitter (@imperfectbuddha). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

“It is not events that disturb us, but what we believe about them.” Is this true? Well, apparently Pyrrho, a rather obscure Greek philosopher claimed it to be the case and he may have been influenced by Buddhism in his creation of what today is called “Pyrrhonism”. Pyrrho agreed with the Buddha that delusion was the cause of suffering, but instead of using meditation to end delusion, Pyrrho applied Greek philosophical rationalism. Pyrrho's Way: The Ancient Greek Version of Buddhism (Sumeru Press, 2020) lays out the Pyrrhonist path for modern readers on how to apply Pyrrhonist practice to everyday life. Its author is Douglas C. Bates, founder of the Modern Pyrrhonism Movement. He has been a Zen practitioner for over 25 years, was a founding member of Boundless Way Zen, and is a student of Zeno Myoun, Roshi. “…succeeds in making a difficult and obscure philosophy not only intelligible but, more to the point, something to be practiced in a way that can make a difference to your life here and now.” — STEPHEN BATCHELOR, author of The Art of Solitude “…an intelligent, readable book that succeeds in its goal of introducing Pyrrhonism as practice.” — CHRISTOPHER BECKWITH, author of Greek Buddha: Pyrrho's Encounter with Early Buddhism in Central Asia Matthew O'Connell is a life coach and the host of the The Imperfect Buddha podcast. You can find The Imperfect Buddha on Facebook and Twitter (@imperfectbuddha). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history

“It is not events that disturb us, but what we believe about them.” Is this true? Well, apparently Pyrrho, a rather obscure Greek philosopher claimed it to be the case and he may have been influenced by Buddhism in his creation of what today is called “Pyrrhonism”. Pyrrho agreed with the Buddha that delusion was the cause of suffering, but instead of using meditation to end delusion, Pyrrho applied Greek philosophical rationalism. Pyrrho's Way: The Ancient Greek Version of Buddhism (Sumeru Press, 2020) lays out the Pyrrhonist path for modern readers on how to apply Pyrrhonist practice to everyday life. Its author is Douglas C. Bates, founder of the Modern Pyrrhonism Movement. He has been a Zen practitioner for over 25 years, was a founding member of Boundless Way Zen, and is a student of Zeno Myoun, Roshi. “…succeeds in making a difficult and obscure philosophy not only intelligible but, more to the point, something to be practiced in a way that can make a difference to your life here and now.” — STEPHEN BATCHELOR, author of The Art of Solitude “…an intelligent, readable book that succeeds in its goal of introducing Pyrrhonism as practice.” — CHRISTOPHER BECKWITH, author of Greek Buddha: Pyrrho's Encounter with Early Buddhism in Central Asia Matthew O'Connell is a life coach and the host of the The Imperfect Buddha podcast. You can find The Imperfect Buddha on Facebook and Twitter (@imperfectbuddha). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

“It is not events that disturb us, but what we believe about them.” Is this true? Well, apparently Pyrrho, a rather obscure Greek philosopher claimed it to be the case and he may have been influenced by Buddhism in his creation of what today is called “Pyrrhonism”. Pyrrho agreed with the Buddha that delusion was the cause of suffering, but instead of using meditation to end delusion, Pyrrho applied Greek philosophical rationalism. Pyrrho's Way: The Ancient Greek Version of Buddhism (Sumeru Press, 2020) lays out the Pyrrhonist path for modern readers on how to apply Pyrrhonist practice to everyday life. Its author is Douglas C. Bates, founder of the Modern Pyrrhonism Movement. He has been a Zen practitioner for over 25 years, was a founding member of Boundless Way Zen, and is a student of Zeno Myoun, Roshi. “…succeeds in making a difficult and obscure philosophy not only intelligible but, more to the point, something to be practiced in a way that can make a difference to your life here and now.” — STEPHEN BATCHELOR, author of The Art of Solitude “…an intelligent, readable book that succeeds in its goal of introducing Pyrrhonism as practice.” — CHRISTOPHER BECKWITH, author of Greek Buddha: Pyrrho's Encounter with Early Buddhism in Central Asia Matthew O'Connell is a life coach and the host of the The Imperfect Buddha podcast. You can find The Imperfect Buddha on Facebook and Twitter (@imperfectbuddha). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/buddhist-studies

“It is not events that disturb us, but what we believe about them.” Is this true? Well, apparently Pyrrho, a rather obscure Greek philosopher claimed it to be the case and he may have been influenced by Buddhism in his creation of what today is called “Pyrrhonism”. Pyrrho agreed with the Buddha that delusion was the cause of suffering, but instead of using meditation to end delusion, Pyrrho applied Greek philosophical rationalism. Pyrrho's Way: The Ancient Greek Version of Buddhism (Sumeru Press, 2020) lays out the Pyrrhonist path for modern readers on how to apply Pyrrhonist practice to everyday life. Its author is Douglas C. Bates, founder of the Modern Pyrrhonism Movement. He has been a Zen practitioner for over 25 years, was a founding member of Boundless Way Zen, and is a student of Zeno Myoun, Roshi. “…succeeds in making a difficult and obscure philosophy not only intelligible but, more to the point, something to be practiced in a way that can make a difference to your life here and now.” — STEPHEN BATCHELOR, author of The Art of Solitude “…an intelligent, readable book that succeeds in its goal of introducing Pyrrhonism as practice.” — CHRISTOPHER BECKWITH, author of Greek Buddha: Pyrrho's Encounter with Early Buddhism in Central Asia Matthew O'Connell is a life coach and the host of the The Imperfect Buddha podcast. You can find The Imperfect Buddha on Facebook and Twitter (@imperfectbuddha). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

“It is not events that disturb us, but what we believe about them.” Is this true? Well, apparently Pyrrho, a rather obscure Greek philosopher claimed it to be the case and he may have been influenced by Buddhism in his creation of what today is called “Pyrrhonism”. Pyrrho agreed with the Buddha that delusion was the cause of suffering, but instead of using meditation to end delusion, Pyrrho applied Greek philosophical rationalism. Pyrrho's Way: The Ancient Greek Version of Buddhism (Sumeru Press, 2020) lays out the Pyrrhonist path for modern readers on how to apply Pyrrhonist practice to everyday life. Its author is Douglas C. Bates, founder of the Modern Pyrrhonism Movement. He has been a Zen practitioner for over 25 years, was a founding member of Boundless Way Zen, and is a student of Zeno Myoun, Roshi. “…succeeds in making a difficult and obscure philosophy not only intelligible but, more to the point, something to be practiced in a way that can make a difference to your life here and now.” — STEPHEN BATCHELOR, author of The Art of Solitude “…an intelligent, readable book that succeeds in its goal of introducing Pyrrhonism as practice.” — CHRISTOPHER BECKWITH, author of Greek Buddha: Pyrrho's Encounter with Early Buddhism in Central Asia Matthew O'Connell is a life coach and the host of the The Imperfect Buddha podcast. You can find The Imperfect Buddha on Facebook and Twitter (@imperfectbuddha). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Part 3 in a series of interviews on the book I'm working on, Neither/Nor. In this episode, Isabela Granic and I discuss how AI technologies like ChatGPT relate to living textual traditions. We then move into Socrates vs Zhuangzi, and the Pyrrhonist "middle way" between dogmatism and nihilism. Topics discussed: Previous podcast episode: The AI and Dark Forest, with Maggie Appleton The relationship of textual traditions to their oral traditions and central texts The Socratic method versus Zhuangzi's "illumination" Pyrrho of Elis and Sextus Empiricus Part 2 of this series: A Philosophical Journey, with Isabela Granic Clerestory by Bryan Kam • Infrequent updates at Substack • All my work plus exclusive content at Patreon Show notes https://bit.ly/3J50vEG --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/bkam/message

⛓ Episode 55 ⛓ Join Leia as she sits down with Sir Pyrrho Leone to explore the strange new worlds of STAR TREK! You read that right! We boldly go where no man has gone before to discuss how Gene Rodenberry's super nova brand has introduced and continued to normalize the LGBTQIA+ community and how far it's come in newer series on streaming platforms. Nerd out with us! Resistance is Futile!

One key characteristic of an independent mind is not in what it thinks, but in how it thinks.” This podcast discusses skepticism and the practical application of this ancient philosophy in our modern lives to make us better thinkers. We go all the way back to Pyrrho, Sextus Empiricus, and other ancient Greek philosophers to look at the emergence of skepticism from around 360 BCE to the 3rd century CE. Skepticism often gets a bad rap. It is much more than some cooky denying anything, and everything exists. There is so much more to analyze. Albert Einstein hit the nail on the head when he said, “blind belief in authority is the enemy of truth.” When properly applied in our daily lives, skepticism helps us to question and doubt superficial or ideological dogma. Also, practicing skepticism fosters humility, which seems in short supply across modern culture. In our discussion today, we dive deep into the pros, cons, and, more importantly, how you, in your life, can use skepticism to think more clearly and effectively to make better decisions in life!Beyond this podcast, join me free to take your understanding of this topic to an entirely different level and become a subscriber to the Intellectual Freedom Podcast on Substack.  It is FREE! https://intellectualfreedom.substack.com/. Follow Dr. Hopkins on Twitter: https://twitter.com/DavidDHopkins

A Way To India For Pyrrho by Adam Wadley

Welcome to Episode One Hundred Forty-Seven of Lucretius Today. This is a podcast dedicated to the poet Lucretius, who wrote "On The Nature of Things," the only complete presentation of Epicurean philosophy left to us from the ancient world. Each week we'll walk you through the ancient Epicurean texts, and we'll discuss how Epicurean philosophy can apply to you today. If you find the Epicurean worldview attractive, we invite you to join us in the study of Epicurus at EpicureanFriends.com, where you will find a discussion thread for each of our podcast episodes and many other topics. We're now in the process of a series of podcasts intended to provide a general overview of Epicurean philosophy based on the organizational structure employed by Norman DeWitt in his book "Epicurus and His Philosophy."This week we discuss a series of Points and Counterpoints which Norman DeWitt describes as "True Opinions / False Opinions" about Epicurus:True Opinions - False OpinionsEpicurus' Place In Greek Philosophy:True: Epicurus came immediately after Plato (idealism; absolutism) and Pyrrho (the skeptic). Platonism and Skepticism were among Epicurus' chief abominations.False: Epicurus taught in response to Stoicism. (False because Epicurean philosophy was fully developed before Zeno began teaching Stoicism.)Epicurus' Attitude Toward Learning:True: Epicurus was well educated and a trained thinker.False: Epicurus was an ignoramus and an enemy of all culture.Epicurus' Goal For Himself And His Work:True: Epicurus was not only a philosopher but a moral reformer rebelling against his teachers.False: Epicurus was nothing more than a copycat who was ungrateful to his teachers.Epicurus' Place in Greek Scientific Thought:True: Epicurus was returning to the Ionian tradition of thought which had been interrupted by Socrates and Plato. Epicurus was an Anti-Platonist and a penetrating critic of Platonism.False: Epicurean scientific thought simply copied Democritus.Epicurus' Role As a Systematizer:True: As with Herbert Spencer or Auguste Comte, Epicurus was attempting a synthesis and critique of all prior philosophical thought.False: Epicurus was a sloppy and unorganized thinker whose system-building is not worth attention.Epicurus' Dogmatism:True: Epicurus' strength was that he promulgated a dogmatic philosophy, actuated by a passion for inquiry to find certainty, and a detestation of skepticism, which he imputed even to Plato.False: Epicurus' demerit was that he promulgated a dogmatic philosophy, because he renounced inquiry.Epicurus' View of Truth:True: Epicurus exalted Nature as the norm of truth, revolting against Plato, who had preached “reason” as the norm and considered “Reason” to have a divine existence of its own. Epicurus studied and taught the nature and use of sensations, and the role in determining that which we consider to be true.False: Epicurus was an empiricist in the modern sense, declaring sensation to be the only source of knowledge and all sensations to be “true.”Epicurus' Method For Determining Truth:True: Epicurus taught reasoning chiefly by deduction. For example, atoms cannot be observed directly; their existence and properties must be determined by deduction, and the principles thereby deduced serve as standards for assessing truth. In this Epicurus was adopting the procedures of Euclid and partying company with both Plato and the Ionian scientists.False: Epicurus was a strict empiricist and taught reasoning mainly by induction.Epicurus' As A Man of ActionTrue: Epicurus was the first missionary philosophy. Epicurus was by disposition combative and he was by natural gifts a leader, organizer, and campaigner.False: Epicurus was effeminate and a moral invalid; a passivist who taught retirement from and non-engagement with the world.Epicurus' View of Self-InterestTrue: Epicureanism was the first world philosophy, acceptable to both Greek and barbarian. Epicurus taught that we should make friends wherever possible.False: Epicurus was a totally egoistic hedonist ruled solely by a narrow view of his own self-interest.Epicurus Is Of Little Relevance to the Development of ChristianityTrue: Epicurus reoriented emphasis from political virtues to social virtues, and developed a wider viewpoint applicable to all humanity.False: Epicurus was an enemy of all religion and there is no trace of his influence in the “New Testament.”

Alex and Benjamin discuss Pyrrho and the Pyrrhonists, the conflict between the skeptics and the stoics, and the influence of ancient skepticism on modern empiricists, positivists, and pragmatists, particularly David Hume.

This week join Mike and Danny as they settle into cafe society and sip red wine on the banks of the Seine. Yes in France they philosophise on main street, he said ruefully. So, adjust your berets, order some moules-frite and get le garcon de cafe to leave the bottle as we introduce Michel Eyquem de Montaigne - essayist, sceptic, anecdotalist and all round renaissance thinker - but don't call him a philosopher for gods sake, he won't like it. Montaigne, the man who summed up philosophy in four words, "what do I know?". The man who advocated front room and back room thinking, the man who invented the essay and earned the enmity of all students for evermore. All this and a quick time hop back to Greece to meet with Pyrrho and his boys. Oh yes, and Danny is still trapped in the toilet, it's all very embarrassing really.

The most difficult case to bring to trial is a no-body homicide, which is why it so rarely happens. We dive deep into the history of such cases and the very nature of doubt.Covered topics: Alissa Turney, Michael Turney, Sarah Turney, Archibald Fisher, No-Body Homicide, Pyrrho, PyrrhonismaIW5G9PJEoqOzi7U49K8Further Reading:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epistemologyhttps://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3917&context=flrhttps://leb.fbi.gov/articles/featured-articles/no-body-homicide-cases-a-practical-approachhttps://www.nobodycases.com/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_murder_convictions_without_a_body#United_Stateshttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_Y3utIeTPghttps://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/arts/alissa-turney-sarah-turney-voices-for-justice-podcast-phoenix-paradise-valley-tik-tok-11482721https://thehueandcry.com/alissa-turneyhttps://www.nbcnews.com/dateline/sister-alissa-turney-who-disappeared-last-day-school-phoenix-arizona-n1231014https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/567418/time-abraham-lincoln-stopped-murder-trial-its-trackshttps://plato.stanford.edu/entries/skepticism/#PyrrSkephttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DsTWlKgXniwhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_SAocFtliohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denialismhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrrhohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrrhonism Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.

Episode Notes Dr. Christopher Beckwith Joins us to discuss his book “Greek Buddha: Pyrrho's Encounter with Early Buddhism” which examines links between very early Buddhism and the philosophy of Pyrrho, an ancient Greek philosopher who accompanied Alexander the Great on his Indian campaign. We also discuss the role of Scythians and Prince Gautama's lineage, Zoroastrianism and it's involvement in a rethink of the Buddha's rebellion against Brahmanism - and much much more that will leave you questioning everything you thought about this time period, and Buddhism itself as a philosophical movement. Book Links (Authors Page): https://www.amazon.com.au/Christopher-I-Beckwith/e/B001HPSGMG/ref=dp_byline_cont_pop_book_1 Christopher I. Beckwith is an American philologist and distinguished professor in the Department of Central Eurasian Studies at Indiana University Dr. Beckwith has taught at IU for 45 years, in which time he has developed 48 distinct courses. He is one of the most prolific and versatile researchers in the field of Central Eurasian studies. Beckwith is renowned for revolutionary scholarship that reshapes understanding of how, why and when the Central Eurasian steppe peoples from Eastern Europe to East Asia influenced the development of knowledge, religious beliefs and societies, not only within their homeland but in the neighboring peripheral cultures of Europe, the Middle East, South Asia, and East Asia as well. His research focuses on the history of ancient and medieval Central Eurasia and the cultures of the peripheral peoples, as well as the linguistics of Aramaic, Chinese, Japanese, Koguryo, Old Tibetan, Scythian, Turkic, and other languages. He has been named a MacArthur Fellow, a Guggenheim Fellow, a Fulbright-Hays Fellow, and a Japan Foundation fellow and has had numerous visiting appointments around the United States and the world. He has authored 12 books and over 60 articles. Time Stamps: 00:01 SOFCast introduction  02:35 Start of podcast 03:48 Chris Talks about how he came to study Central Asia in General 12:00 What inspired Chris to write Greek Buddha  14:00 Sextus Empiricus and Classical Skepticism - the Pyrrhonic connection  15:15 New Book “Scythian Empire” 21:00 Who was Pyrrho of Elis? 22:18 Was it only early Buddhism Pyrrho interacted with? 24:35 Similarities between Skepticism and Pyrrhonism? 30:45 Pragmata 31:55 Impermanence  42:50 The Significance of the Buddha - Pyrrho - Sextus Empiricus connection & problem of Criterion 48:50 A French connection? 54:00 Types of downstream Western Thought? 57:00 Which was first? Brahmanism before Buddhism ? Zoroastrianism before buddhism? 01:07:10 The Rig Veda was NOT Brahmanism 01:12:00 Flipping the Traditional Narrative 01:16:00 Talk about Chronology of the Buddhist Texts  01:20:00 Did Scythians have a class structure? 01:24:00 Persians and Scythians as Zoroastrian 01:32:00 Q&A Section: What are some of the still extant influences of Indo-Greek Buddhism on Buddhism Today? 01:43:00 Similarities between Daoism and Buddhism? Was Lao Tzu actually the Historical Buddha? 01:48:00 Book Coming Up: “The Scythian Empire” Book Links (Authors Page): https://www.amazon.com.au/Christopher-I-Beckwith/e/B001HPSGMG/ref=dp_byline_cont_pop_book_1 Support SOF Cast by contributing to their Tip Jar: https://tips.pinecast.com/jar/ship-of-fools-podcast Find out more at https://ship-of-fools-podcast.pinecast.co This podcast is powered by Pinecast.

Ep #662

You can support this podcast and enjoy bonus content and access to the Kind Mind studio and virtual meetings by becoming a patron at https://www.patreon.com/kindmind Are people more skeptical than ever? Or are certain groups more skeptical than others when it comes to science, religion or certain knowledge? When is it good and when is not good to be skeptical?The word "skeptic" has origins in ancient Greece and the philosophy of Pyrrho. It is derived from the root sound "spek" which meant to look but more specifically to inquire and reflect.Skepticism has evolved to simply mean doubt, which has its benefits and costs. Trust and doubt is regulated by the ventromedial prefrontal cortex in the brain, which tends to decline beyond 60 years of age.This is consistent with reports from the National Institute of Justice estimating that 12% of adults over 60 are exploited in financial crimes each year. It also explains why highly intelligent patients with injury to this brain region are more likely to fall victim to seemingly obvious online scams.But when it comes to skepticism in the broader sense, perhaps we could upgrade our lenses. Generally speaking, we tend to be skeptical of anything that falls outside our worldview and overly welcoming towards that which resides within it.With subtle meliorating, we can exchange some of our near-sightedness for far-sightedness when it comes to our outlook on life and the nature of things in order to strike a healthier balance that is cautiously optimistic, happily dissatisfied and taking our own thoughts with a grain of salt.Music “Sunset Serenade” by Ethereal Ephemera and episode artwork on website by Emily Dawn.https://www.michaeltoddfink.com

Glenn introduces concepts from medieval epistemology (i.e. the branch of philosophy dealing with knowledge and truth) and how these got challenged in the sixteenth and seventeenth century, particularly through the recovery of the ideas of the ancient Greek skeptic Pyrrho. After a foray into Descartes, who tried to answer Pyrrho, we look at Blaise Pascal, […]

Glenn introduces concepts from medieval epistemology (i.e. the branch of philosophy dealing with knowledge and truth) and how these got challenged in the sixteenth and seventeenth century, particularly through the recovery of the ideas of the ancient Greek skeptic Pyrrho. After a foray into Descartes, who tried to answer Pyrrho, we look at Blaise Pascal, […]

Glenn introduces concepts from medieval epistemology (i.e. the branch of philosophy dealing with knowledge and truth) and how these got challenged in the sixteenth and seventeenth century, particularly through the recovery of the ideas of the ancient Greek skeptic Pyrrho. After a foray into Descartes, who tried to answer Pyrrho, we look at Blaise Pascal, the father of probability theory. Pascal used a barometer to short-circuit Pyrrho’s approach and in the process laid the foundation for a new approach to knowledge based on probability. This new epistemology has shaped thinking in the West ever since and largely created the modern world. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/the-theology-pugcast/support

What Happens when East meets West? Exploring the History of Cultural and Philosophical Exchange between Ancient Greece and Ancient India. In last part of the series we discussed Indian and Greek Pantheism. This week we take a look at some points of historical and conceptual contact between these two great civilizations. Key words: Buddhist influences on Pyrrhonism, Greek influence on Indian thought. Three Marks of Existence, Deconstructing Personhood, Epoché, Ataraxia and Nirvana, Undifferentiated Nature, Two Truths Doctrine, Dependent Origination, Tetralemma and Catuṣkoṭi Logic. Scepticism, Pyrrho, Pyrrhonism and Nāgārjuna, Madhyamaka, Mahayana, Buddhism. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

An exploration of the art of philosophy, starring Plato, Simone de Beauvoir, Zhuang Zhou, Soren Kierkegaard, Diogenes of Sinope, Audre Lorde, and more! This is the third in a four-part series inspired by Plato's Allegory of the Cave. Scroll through the past episodes to find the first two parts, "Raising the Curtain, Lifting the Veil" and "Madmen." 

Stres je famózní nástroj. V moderním světě nám neustále slouží tak, že nás ráno probudí ze spánku, aktivuje mozek pro učení a zažene nás do bezpečí, kdykoliv je potřeba. Je navrhnut precizně, aby působil efektivně, rychle přišel a rychle odešel. Jenže život ve zrychlené době pohání kolečka stresu naplno, a to působí celou řadu poruch, úzkostí a ovlivňuje to všechny aspekty života. Kdy stres slouží tam, kde je potřeba a kdy je ho přespříliš? Dnes vám odvyprávíme příběh stresu ze všech stran. Co je to neuvědomovaný stres? Jak vypadá v mozku? Proč chronický stres v těle vypadá jako protrhnutá přehrada bez kontroly? Jaký vliv má stres v dětství na paměť a inteligenci během života? Pochopení stresu může pomoci s ním začít lépe pracovat a dělat to zároveň efektivně. V druhé části se tak věnujeme i metodám a principům, jak si vystavět bariéry proti stresu. Jak trénovat mozek? Jak praktikovat pozitivní stres pro dlouhodobé zdraví? Jak svůj stres měřit a odhalit spouštěče? To vše se dozvíte ve dnešním podcastu. Přejeme příjemný poslech. Sledujte Brain We Are na sociálních sítích: Instagram nebo Facebook Podpořte nás jednorázově nebo na startovači Zadej kód "BWA" pro 10% na náš biohackingový online kurz Zadej kód "BWA" pro 10% slevu na UpLife.cz "Tento podcast slouží pouze pro vzdělávací účely. Neberte informace v něm zmíněné jako lékařskou radu" Minutáž: 01:50 - Pyrrho, Řecký filosof 02:20 - Neuvědomovaný stres 08:50 - Trénink mozku a supernástroj meditace 18:50 - Co je to stres a jak se chová v těle? 20:30 - Stres v MOZKU a protrhlá přehrada, co nejde zastavit! 23:30 - Přecitlivělost ke stresu a zánět 28:30 - Kortizol (stresová molekula) a jeho vliv na paměť 32:30 - Hlad v mozku a jak ho ovlivňuje stres? PRAXE PRO SNÍŽENÍ STRESU: 36:30 - Sauna, proteiny tepelného šoku a oprava DNA 39:50 - Může být stres i pozitivní pro tělo? Aneb účinky hormetického stresu 47:20 - Odpočinek jako extrémní situace dnešní společnosti 48:30 - Meditace a vliv na stres 50:50 - Vliv myšlenek a prostředí na epigenetiku 53:00 - Dětství, stres a život 59:30 - Deprese, úzkosti a spouštěče 01:01:30 - Bariéra proti stresu 01:04:30 - Učení a zdravá míra stresu 01:06:00 - Sebe-měření stresu 01:08:30 - Dech pro uklidnění a HRV pás 01:11:00 - Měření stresu pomocí LUMEN Zdroje: Meditační aplikace Sama Harrise: https://www.wakingup.com/ Protrhnutá přehrada: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2682920/#:~:text=The%20paraventricular%20nucleus%20of%20the%20hypothalamus%20(PVN)%20has%20emerged%20as,autonomic%20functions%20(gastrointestinal%2C%20renal%20and Stres a epigenetika: https://www.nature.com/articles/nn.3594 Stres v dětství: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3753223/

Questions on the existence of true knowledge had plagued many Greek philosophers, but it was during the Hellenistic period when Skepticism, divided between two competing branches, emerged to openly cast doubt on the possibility of knowing anything at all. The disciples of Pyrrho of Elis, a contemporary of Alexander the Great, sought to achieve inner tranquility through indifference and lack of opinion, while the Academic Skeptics modeled themselves after Socrates, looking to engage in a perpetual state of inquiry as a way to better reach the truth. Title Theme: Seikilos Epitapth with the Lyre of Apollo, played by Lina Palera (https://soundcloud.com/user-994392473) Show Links Website/Episode Notes: (https://hellenisticagepodcast.wordpress.com/2020/06/29/046-hellenistic-philosophy-pyrrhonian-academic-skepticism/) IterArtis: YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzo) Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/iterartis/) Show Merchandise: Etsy (https://www.etsy.com/shop/HellenisticAgePod) Donations: Ko-Fi (https://ko-fi.com/hellenisticagepodcast) Amazon Book Wish List (https://tinyurl.com/vfw6ask)

Rob and Chris learn about Pyrrho and the Sceptics, but mostly just tell stories. TLDR: Terrible Podcast Makes Terrible Move.

من حلقة التجارب الدينية و المعجزات EP45: Religious Experiences and Miracles الحُجة من التجربة الدينية، هى حجة الانتقال من تجربة الاحساس بوجود الله لأثبات وجود الله، فى اقوى صورها. وبتستند على فكرة انه من الممكن فقط الاحساس بشئ ما من خلال اى تجربة فقط ان كان الشئ له وجود، وبالتالى ظاهرة التجربة الدينية دليل على وجود الله! البشر بتمر بتجارب دينية وروحية بتشعر فيها بوجود الله، اذن الله له وجود. لكن فى اضعف صورها الحجة بتجادل ان التجربة الدينية بتقدم ادلة فقط على وجود الله لكنها لاتثبت وجودة، الصورة دى من الحجة صاغها الفيلسوف الانجليزى ريتشارد سوينبيرن من خلال مبدأ العقلانية. لكن كلا الصورتين من الحجة بيفترضوا ان التجربة الدينية تجربة ادراكية فى الاساس بمعنى انها تجربة فيها الفرد بيدرك وجود شئ ما خارجى! لكن البعض جادل ان التجربة الدينية قد تحتوى على خيال المدرك وليس بالضرورة ادراكة. بمعنى ان الشئ او الكائن محل التجربة ليس له وجود مجرد فى الواقع او الطبيعة لكنه موجود بشكل نسبى فى عقل المدرك او الفرد المار بالتجربة. الاشكالية الاخرى اللى بتقابل التجارب الدينية، انها بتتناقض مع بعضها البعض، تقريبا كل الاديان فيها افرد ادعوا بالمرور بتجربة دينية ما بتأكد على الطائفة الدينية اللى بيتبعوها، لو كانت التجارب الدينية دى كلها صحيحية يبدو ان هتسبب اشكالية منطقية، لان كثيرمن التجارب الدينية دى بتأكد على مبادئ دينية مختلفة وفى كثير من الاحيان متناقضة مع بعضها! واخير اشكالية نسبية التجربة بتكون عقبة حقيقية امام مبدأ التجارب الدينية بشكل عام. ده بالاضافة لان فى تيار قوى المدرسة الشكوكية الفلسفية بيجادل ان ادراكنا للكائنات والاشياء المحيطة بينا فى الواقع بشكل يومي غير كافى لتبرير الاعتقاد فى وجود تلك الاشياء! جدلية ديكارت Descartes من الاحلام اقوى صور الحجة دى، لكن جذورها بترجع من قبلة فى الفلسفة الاسلامية عند ابن سيناء وفى الفلسفة اليونانية عند بيرو Pyrrho. الاشكالية ان كل التجارب نسبية شخصية وغير موضوعية subjective، واى تجربة نسبية بالضرورة حسب تعريفها متسقة مع عدد لانهائى من الحالات الموضوعية Objective States. او بصورة ابسط بغض النظر عن كيف ارى العالم، فى عدد لانهائى من الصور اللى من الممكن يكون عليها العالم الحقيقى! انا ممكن اكون بحلم، بهلوس، بتخيل، ببالغ، الخ ... لو تجاربنا المألوفة للعالم الخارجى غير كافية لتبرير الاعتقاد فى وجودة، اذن ما مدى الشك فى التجارب الدينية اللى من الصعب التحقق منها ودرجة حجتها على وجود الله؟! نص الحلقة ====== https://kalamfalsfa.wordpress.com/2018/08/16/ep45-religious-experiences-and-miracles/ https://youtu.be/gxiu8IjHSfg الملفات الصوتية ========= https://archive.org/details/KalamFalsfa_EP45 https://archive.org/download/KalamFalsfa_EP45/EP45_2018_08_16.mp3 https://archive.org/download/KalamFalsfa_EP45/EP45_ECN_2018_08_16.mp3 https://archive.org/download/KalamFalsfa_EP45/EP45_NoMusic_2018_08_16.mp3 Music Credit =========== Naseer Shamma – Happened at All: Amiriyaa https://goo.gl/r0ijGP Silence https://goo.gl/rf6HdQ Remember https://goo.gl/G7Yi6f Aaron Zigman: THE SHACK https://goo.gl/h3EUfc Brandon Fiechter - High Elves of Waterfall Sanctuary https://goo.gl/vRdQww Brandon Fiechter - Tree Dwellers https://goo.gl/HBsiOT Derek & Brandon Fiechter - Mystery Music https://goo.gl/hta7gF Medieval Music – Bridgewell https://goo.gl/xqu1JW Dinosaur Music and Prehistoric Music https://goo.gl/wazxKi Kevin MacLeod – Pooka https://goo.gl/lslojY للتواصل ومتابعة باقى الحلقات تابعونا على: https://www.facebook.com/KalamFalsfa https://kalamfalsfa.wordpress.com https://plus.google.com/u/0/+KalamFalsfa https://twitter.com/kalamfalsfa https://archive.org/details/@kalamfalsfa Continue reading →

Success is at hand for Andre's character Pyrrho. But it is a Pyrrhic victory, for after that we recount the history of the backward slide of science from the Roman conquest into the Middle Ages, until its final rebirth in the Renaissance and Enlightenment. Be sure to support the show at www.patreon.com/deadideaspod to get your portrait drawn! Custom map of Rome by Adam McKithern. Music by Rachel Westhoff. Maps, pics, references and more at www.deadideas.net.

Arriving at the Great Library of Alexandria, Andre's character Pyrrho of Pergamum searches for the secret plans for the floating statue. But in order to get his hands on them, he must first solve several science and engineering challenges. Along the way, we learn a great deal about the Library of Alexandria and its marvelous discoveries. Be sure to support the show at www.patreon.com/deadideaspod to get your portrait drawn! Custom map of Rome by Adam McKithern. Music by Rachel Westhoff. Maps, pics, references and more at www.deadideas.net.

Last time the Dawdlers had an original idea it was pretty goofy. This time it is less goofy. So “less goofy” in fact, anyone who listens might get downright pissed off. How dare us! For shaaaame… Anyhoo, this topic is a take on skepticism. Some may say it's radical. Harland would probably be fine with that. But in any case, it is—we think—important. Trying to change the world here folks…One. Chimp. At a time. Cheers, The Dawdlers

When chaos breaks into Pyrrho's ship

Pliny the Elder and Pyrrho of Elis lead us on a wild goose chase to track down just exactly why dogs were invented by man (and woman) 4,500 years ago.

I once participated in a twenty-three-day wilderness program in the mountains of Colorado. If the purpose of this course was to expose students to dangerous lightning and half the world’s mosquitoes, it was fulfilled on the first day. What was in essence a forced march through hundreds of miles of backcountry culminated in a ritual known as “the solo,” where we were finally permitted to rest—alone, on the outskirts of a gorgeous alpine lake—for three days of fasting and contemplation. I had just turned sixteen, and this was my first taste of true solitude since exiting my mother’s womb. It proved a sufficient provocation. After a long nap and a glance at the icy waters of the lake, the promising young man I imagined myself to be was quickly cut down by loneliness and boredom. I filled the pages of my journal not with the insights of a budding naturalist, philosopher, or mystic but with a list of the foods on which I intended to gorge myself the instant I returned to civilization. Judging from the state of my consciousness at the time, millions of years of hominid evolution had produced nothing more transcendent than a craving for a cheeseburger and a chocolate milkshake. I found the experience of sitting undisturbed for three days amid pristine breezes and starlight, with nothing to do but contemplate the mystery of my existence, to be a source of perfect misery—for which I could see not so much as a glimmer of my own contribution. My letters home, in their plaintiveness and self-pity, rivaled any written at Shiloh or Gallipoli. So I was more than a little surprised when several members of our party, most of whom were a decade older than I, described their days and nights of solitude in positive, even transformational terms. I simply didn’t know what to make of their claims to happiness. How could someone’s happiness increase when all the material sources of pleasure and distraction had been removed? At that age, the nature of my own mind did not interest me—only my life did. And I was utterly oblivious to how different life would be if the quality of my mind were to change. Our minds are all we have. They are all we have ever had. And they are all we can offer others. This might not be obvious, especially when there are aspects of your life that seem in need of improvement—when your goals are unrealized, or you are struggling to find a career, or you have relationships that need repairing. But it’s the truth. Every experience you have ever had has been shaped by your mind. Every relationship is as good or as bad as it is because of the minds involved. If you are perpetually angry, depressed, confused, and unloving, or your attention is elsewhere, it won’t matter how successful you become or who is in your life—you won’t enjoy any of it. Most of us could easily compile a list of goals we want to achieve or personal problems that need to be solved. But what is the real significance of every item on such a list? Everything we want to accomplish—to paint the house, learn a new language, find a better job—is something that promises that, if done, it would allow us to finally relax and enjoy our lives in the present. Generally speaking, this is a false hope. I’m not denying the importance of achieving one’s goals, maintaining one’s health, or keeping one’s children clothed and fed—but most of us spend our time seeking happiness and security without acknowledging the underlying purpose of our search. Each of us is looking for a path back to the present: We are trying to find good enough reasons to be satisfied now. Acknowledging that this is the structure of the game we are playing allows us to play it differently. How we pay attention to the present moment largely determines the character of our experience and, therefore, the quality of our lives. Mystics and contemplatives have made this claim for ages—but a growing body of scientific research now bears it out. A few years after my first painful encounter with solitude, in the winter of 1987, I took the drug 3,4-methylenedioxy-N-methylamphetamine (MDMA), commonly known as Ecstasy, and my sense of the human mind’s potential shifted profoundly. Although MDMA would become ubiquitous at dance clubs and “raves” in the 1990s, at that time I didn’t know anyone of my generation who had tried it. One evening, a few months before my twentieth birthday, a close friend and I decided to take the drug. The setting of our experiment bore little resemblance to the conditions of Dionysian abandon under which MDMA is now often consumed. We were alone in a house, seated across from each other on opposite ends of a couch, and engaged in quiet conversation as the chemical worked its way into our heads. Unlike other drugs with which we were by then familiar (marijuana and alcohol), MDMA produced no feeling of distortion in our senses. Our minds seemed completely clear. In the midst of this ordinariness, however, I was suddenly struck by the knowledge that I loved my friend. This shouldn’t have surprised me—he was, after all, one of my best friends. However, at that age I was not in the habit of dwelling on how much I loved the men in my life. Now I could feel that I loved him, and this feeling had ethical implications that suddenly seemed as profound as they now sound pedestrian on the page: I wanted him to be happy. That conviction came crashing down with such force that something seemed to give way inside me. In fact, the insight appeared to restructure my mind. My capacity for envy, for instance—the sense of being diminished by the happiness or success of another person—seemed like a symptom of mental illness that had vanished without a trace. I could no more have felt envy at that moment than I could have wanted to poke out my own eyes. What did I care if my friend was better looking or a better athlete than I was? If I could have bestowed those gifts on him, I would have. Truly wanting him to be happy made his happiness my own. A certain euphoria was creeping into these reflections, perhaps, but the general feeling remained one of absolute sobriety—and of moral and emotional clarity unlike any I had ever known. It would not be too strong to say that I felt sane for the first time in my life. And yet the change in my consciousness seemed entirely straightforward. I was simply talking to my friend—about what, I don’t recall—and realized that I had ceased to be concerned about myself. I was no longer anxious, self-critical, guarded by irony, in competition, avoiding embarrassment, ruminating about the past and future, or making any other gesture of thought or attention that separated me from him. I was no longer watching myself through another person’s eyes. And then came the insight that irrevocably transformed my sense of how good human life could be. I was feeling boundless love for one of my best friends, and I suddenly realized that if a stranger had walked through the door at that moment, he or she would have been fully included in this love. Love was at bottom impersonal—and deeper than any personal history could justify. Indeed, a transactional form of love—I love you because…—now made no sense at all. The interesting thing about this final shift in perspective was that it was not driven by any change in the way I felt. I was not overwhelmed by a new feeling of love. The insight had more the character of a geometric proof: It was as if, having glimpsed the properties of one set of parallel lines, I suddenly understood what must be common to them all. The moment I could find a voice with which to speak, I discovered that this epiphany about the universality of love could be readily communicated. My friend got the point at once: All I had to do was ask him how he would feel in the presence of a total stranger at that moment, and the same door opened in his mind. It was simply obvious that love, compassion, and joy in the joy of others extended without limit. The experience was not of love growing but of its being no longer obscured. Love was—as advertised by mystics and crackpots through the ages—a state of being. How had we not seen this before? And how could we overlook it ever again? It would take me many years to put this experience into context. Until that moment, I had viewed organized religion as merely a monument to the ignorance and superstition of our ancestors. But I now knew that Jesus, the Buddha, Lao Tzu, and the other saints and sages of history had not all been epileptics, schizophrenics, or frauds. I still considered the world’s religions to be mere intellectual ruins, maintained at enormous economic and social cost, but I now understood that important psychological truths could be found in the rubble. Twenty percent of Americans describe themselves as “spiritual but not religious.” Although the claim seems to annoy believers and atheists equally, separating spirituality from religion is a perfectly reasonable thing to do. It is to assert two important truths simultaneously: Our world is dangerously riven by religious doctrines that all educated people should condemn, and yet there is more to understanding the human condition than science and secular culture generally admit. One purpose of this book is to give both these convictions intellectual and empirical support. Before going any further, I should address the animosity that many readers feel toward the term spiritual. Whenever I use the word, as in referring to meditation as a “spiritual practice,” I hear from fellow skeptics and atheists who think that I have committed a grievous error.The word spirit comes from the Latin spiritus, which is a translation of the Greek pneuma, meaning “breath.” Around the thirteenth century, the term became entangled with beliefs about immaterial souls, supernatural beings, ghosts, and so forth. It acquired other meanings as well: We speak of the spirit of a thing as its most essential principle or of certain volatile substances and liquors as spirits. Nevertheless, many nonbelievers now consider all things “spiritual” to be contaminated by medieval superstition. I do not share their semantic concerns.[1] Yes, to walk the aisles of any “spiritual” bookstore is to confront the yearning and credulity of our species by the yard, but there is no other term—apart from the even more problematic mystical or the more restrictive contemplative—with which to discuss the efforts people make, through meditation, psychedelics, or other means, to fully bring their minds into the present or to induce nonordinary states of consciousness. And no other word links this spectrum of experience to our ethical lives. Throughout this book, I discuss certain classically spiritual phenomena, concepts, and practices in the context of our modern understanding of the human mind—and I cannot do this while restricting myself to the terminology of ordinary experience. So I will use spiritual, mystical, contemplative, and transcendent without further apology. However, I will be precise in describing the experiences and methods that merit these terms. For many years, I have been a vocal critic of religion, and I won’t ride the same hobbyhorse here. I hope that I have been sufficiently energetic on this front that even my most skeptical readers will trust that my bullshit detector remains well calibrated as we advance over this new terrain. Perhaps the following assurance can suffice for the moment: Nothing in this book needs to be accepted on faith. Although my focus is on human subjectivity—I am, after all, talking about the nature of experience itself—all my assertions can be tested in the laboratory of your own life. In fact, my goal is to encourage you to do just that. Authors who attempt to build a bridge between science and spirituality tend to make one of two mistakes: Scientists generally start with an impoverished view of spiritual experience, assuming that it must be a grandiose way of describing ordinary states of mind—parental love, artistic inspiration, awe at the beauty of the night sky. In this vein, one finds Einstein’s amazement at the intelligibility of Nature’s laws described as though it were a kind of mystical insight. New Age thinkers usually enter the ditch on the other side of the road: They idealize altered states of consciousness and draw specious connections between subjective experience and the spookier theories at the frontiers of physics. Here we are told that the Buddha and other contemplatives anticipated modern cosmology or quantum mechanics and that by transcending the sense of self, a person can realize his identity with the One Mind that gave birth to the cosmos. In the end, we are left to choose between pseudo-spirituality and pseudo-science. Few scientists and philosophers have developed strong skills of introspection—in fact, most doubt that such abilities even exist. Conversely, many of the greatest contemplatives know nothing about science. But there is a connection between scientific fact and spiritual wisdom, and it is more direct than most people suppose. Although the insights we can have in meditation tell us nothing about the origins of the universe, they do confirm some well-established truths about the human mind: Our conventional sense of self is an illusion; positive emotions, such as compassion and patience, are teachable skills; and the way we think directly influences our experience of the world. There is now a large literature on the psychological benefits of meditation. Different techniques produce long-lasting changes in attention, emotion, cognition, and pain perception, and these correlate with both structural and functional changes in the brain. This field of research is quickly growing, as is our understanding of self-awareness and related mental phenomena. Given recent advances in neuroimaging technology, we no longer face a practical impediment to investigating spiritual insights in the context of science. Spirituality must be distinguished from religion—because people of every faith, and of none, have had the same sorts of spiritual experiences. While these states of mind are usually interpreted through the lens of one or another religious doctrine, we know that this is a mistake. Nothing that a Christian, a Muslim, and a Hindu can experience—self-transcending love, ecstasy, bliss, inner light—constitutes evidence in support of their traditional beliefs, because their beliefs are logically incompatible with one another. A deeper principle must be at work. That principle is the subject of this book: The feeling that we call “I” is an illusion. There is no discrete self or ego living like a Minotaur in the labyrinth of the brain. And the feeling that there is—the sense of being perched somewhere behind your eyes, looking out at a world that is separate from yourself—can be altered or entirely extinguished. Although such experiences of “self-transcendence” are generally thought about in religious terms, there is nothing, in principle, irrational about them. From both a scientific and a philosophical point of view, they represent a clearer understanding of the way things are. Deepening that understanding, and repeatedly cutting through the illusion of the self, is what is meant by “spirituality” in the context of this book. Confusion and suffering may be our birthright, but wisdom and happiness are available. The landscape of human experience includes deeply transformative insights about the nature of one’s own consciousness, and yet it is obvious that these psychological states must be understood in the context of neuroscience, psychology, and related fields. I am often asked what will replace organized religion. The answer, I believe, is nothing and everything. Nothing need replace its ludicrous and divisive doctrines—such as the idea that Jesus will return to earth and hurl unbelievers into a lake of fire, or that death in defense of Islam is the highest good. These are terrifying and debasing fictions. But what about love, compassion, moral goodness, and self-transcendence? Many people still imagine that religion is the true repository of these virtues. To change this, we must talk about the full range of human experience in a way that is as free of dogma as the best science already is. This book is by turns a seeker’s memoir, an introduction to the brain, a manual of contemplative instruction, and a philosophical unraveling of what most people consider to be the center of their inner lives: the feeling of self we call “I.” I have not set out to describe all the traditional approaches to spirituality and to weigh their strengths and weaknesses. Rather, my goal is to pluck the diamond from the dunghill of esoteric religion. There is a diamond there, and I have devoted a fair amount of my life to contemplating it, but getting it in hand requires that we remain true to the deepest principles of scientific skepticism and make no obeisance to tradition. Where I do discuss specific teachings, such as those of Buddhism or Advaita Vedanta, it isn’t my purpose to provide anything like a comprehensive account. Readers who are loyal to any one spiritual tradition or who specialize in the academic study of religion, may view my approach as the quintessence of arrogance. I consider it, rather, a symptom of impatience. There is barely time enough in a book—or in a life—to get to the point. Just as a modern treatise on weaponry would omit the casting of spells and would very likely ignore the slingshot and the boomerang, I will focus on what I consider the most promising lines of spiritual inquiry. My hope is that my personal experience will help readers to see the nature of their own minds in a new light. A rational approach to spirituality seems to be what is missing from secularism and from the lives of most of the people I meet. The purpose of this book is to offer readers a clear view of the problem, along with some tools to help them solve it for themselves. THE SEARCH FOR HAPPINESS One day, you will find yourself outside this world which is like a mother’s womb. You will leave this earth to enter, while you are yet in the body, a vast expanse, and know that the words, “God’s earth is vast,” name this region from which the saints have come. Jalal-ud-Din Rumi I share the concern, expressed by many atheists, that the terms spiritual and mystical are often used to make claims not merely about the quality of certain experiences but about reality at large. Far too often, these words are invoked in support of religious beliefs that are morally and intellectually grotesque. Consequently, many of my fellow atheists consider all talk of spirituality to be a sign of mental illness, conscious imposture, or self-deception. This is a problem, because millions of people have had experiences for which spiritual and mystical seem the only terms available. Many of the beliefs people form on the basis of these experiences are false. But the fact that most atheists will view a statement like Rumi’s above as a symptom of the man’s derangement grants a kernel of truth to the rantings of even our least rational opponents. The human mind does, in fact, contain vast expanses that few of us ever discover. And there is something degraded and degrading about many of our habits of attention as we shop, gossip, argue, and ruminate our way to the grave. Perhaps I should speak only for myself here: It seems to me that I spend much of my waking life in a neurotic trance. My experiences in meditation suggest, however, that an alternative exists. It is possible to stand free of the juggernaut of self, if only for moments at a time. Most cultures have produced men and women who have found that certain deliberate uses of attention—meditation, yoga, prayer—can transform their perception of the world. Their efforts generally begin with the realization that even in the best of circumstances, happiness is elusive. We seek pleasant sights, sounds, tastes, sensations, and moods. We satisfy our intellectual curiosity. We surround ourselves with friends and loved ones. We become connoisseurs of art, music, or food. But our pleasures are, by their very nature, fleeting. If we enjoy some great professional success, our feelings of accomplishment remain vivid and intoxicating for an hour, or perhaps a day, but then they subside. And the search goes on. The effort required to keep boredom and other unpleasantness at bay must continue, moment to moment. Ceaseless change is an unreliable basis for lasting fulfillment. Realizing this, many people begin to wonder whether a deeper source of well-being exists. Is there a form of happiness beyond the mere repetition of pleasure and avoidance of pain? Is there a happiness that does not depend upon having one’s favorite foods available, or friends and loved ones within arm’s reach, or good books to read, or something to look forward to on the weekend? Is it possible to be happy before anything happens, before one’s desires are gratified, in spite of life’s difficulties, in the very midst of physical pain, old age, disease, and death? We are all, in some sense, living our answer to this question—and most of us are living as though the answer were “no.” No, nothing is more profound than repeating one’s pleasures and avoiding one’s pains; nothing is more profound than seeking satisfaction—sensory, emotional, and intellectual—moment after moment. Just keep your foot on the gas until you run out of road. Certain people, however, come to suspect that human existence might encompass more than this. Many of them are led to suspect this by religion—by the claims of the Buddha or Jesus or some other celebrated figure. And such people often begin to practice various disciplines of attention as a means of examining their experience closely enough to see whether a deeper source of well-being exists. They may even sequester themselves in caves or monasteries for months or years at a time to facilitate this process. Why would a person do this? No doubt there are many motives for retreating from the world, and some of them are psychologically unhealthy. In its wisest form, however, the exercise amounts to a very simple experiment. Here is its logic: If there exists a source of psychological well-being that does not depend upon merely gratifying one’s desires, then it should be present even when all the usual sources of pleasure have been removed. Such happiness should be available to a person who has declined to marry her high school sweetheart, renounced her career and material possessions, and gone off to a cave or some other spot that is inhospitable to ordinary aspirations. One clue to how daunting most people would find such a project is the fact that solitary confinement—which is essentially what we are talking about—is considered a punishment inside a maximum-security prison. Even when forced to live among murderers and rapists, most people still prefer the company of others to spending any significant amount of time alone in a room. And yet contemplatives in many traditions claim to experience extraordinary depths of psychological well-being while living in isolation for vast stretches of time. How should we interpret this? Either the contemplative literature is a catalogue of religious delusion, psychopathology, and deliberate fraud, or people have been having liberating insights under the name of “spirituality” and “mysticism” for millennia. Unlike many atheists, I have spent much of my life seeking experiences of the kind that gave rise to the world’s religions. Despite the painful results of my first few days alone in the mountains of Colorado, I later studied with a wide range of monks, lamas, yogis, and other contemplatives, some of whom had lived for decades in seclusion doing nothing but meditating. In the process, I spent two years on silent retreat myself (in increments of one week to three months), practicing various techniques of meditation for twelve to eighteen hours a day. I can attest that when one goes into silence and meditates for weeks or months at a time, doing nothing else—not speaking, reading, or writing, just making a moment-to-moment effort to observe the contents of consciousness—one has experiences that are generally unavailable to people who have not undertaken a similar practice. I believe that such states of mind have a lot to say about the nature of consciousness and the possibilities of human well-being. Leaving aside the metaphysics, mythology, and sectarian dogma, what contemplatives throughout history have discovered is that there is an alternative to being continuously spellbound by the conversation we are having with ourselves; there is an alternative to simply identifying with the next thought that pops into consciousness. And glimpsing this alternative dispels the conventional illusion of the self. Most traditions of spirituality also suggest a connection between self-transcendence and living ethically. Not all good feelings have an ethical valence, and pathological forms of ecstasy surely exist. I have no doubt, for instance, that many suicide bombers feel extraordinarily good just before they detonate themselves in a crowd. But there are also forms of mental pleasure that are intrinsically ethical. As I indicated earlier, for some states of consciousness, a phrase like “boundless love” does not seem overblown. It is decidedly inconvenient for the forces of reason and secularism that if someone wakes up tomorrow feeling boundless love for all sentient beings, the only people likely to acknowledge the legitimacy of his experience will be representatives of one or another Iron Age religion or New Age cult. Most of us are far wiser than we may appear to be. We know how to keep our relationships in order, to use our time well, to improve our health, to lose weight, to learn valuable skills, and to solve many other riddles of existence. But following even the straight and open path to happiness is hard. If your best friend were to ask how she could live a better life, you would probably find many useful things to say, and yet you might not live that way yourself. On one level, wisdom is nothing more profound than an ability to follow one’s own advice. However, there are deeper insights to be had about the nature of our minds. Unfortunately, they have been discussed entirely in the context of religion and, therefore, have been shrouded in fallacy and superstition for all of human history. The problem of finding happiness in this world arrives with our first breath—and our needs and desires seem to multiply by the hour. To spend any time in the presence of a young child is to witness a mind ceaselessly buffeted by joy and sorrow. As we grow older, our laughter and tears become less gratuitous, perhaps, but the same process of change continues: One roiling complex of thought and emotion is followed by the next, like waves in the ocean. Seeking, finding, maintaining, and safeguarding our well-being is the great project to which we all are devoted, whether or not we choose to think in these terms. This is not to say that we want mere pleasure or the easiest possible life. Many things require extraordinary effort to accomplish, and some of us learn to enjoy the struggle. Any athlete knows that certain kinds of pain can be exquisitely pleasurable. The burn of lifting weights, for instance, would be excruciating if it were a symptom of terminal illness. But because it is associated with health and fitness, most people find it enjoyable. Here we see that cognition and emotion are not separate. The way we think about experience can completely determine how we feel about it. And we always face tensions and trade-offs. In some moments we crave excitement and in others rest. We might love the taste of wine and chocolate, but rarely for breakfast. Whatever the context, our minds are perpetually moving—generally toward pleasure (or its imagined source) and away from pain. I am not the first person to have noticed this. Our struggle to navigate the space of possible pains and pleasures produces most of human culture. Medical science attempts to prolong our health and to reduce the suffering associated with illness, aging, and death. All forms of media cater to our thirst for information and entertainment. Political and economic institutions seek to ensure our peaceful collaboration with one another—and the police or the military is summoned when they fail. Beyond ensuring our survival, civilization is a vast machine invented by the human mind to regulate its states. We are ever in the process of creating and repairing a world that our minds want to be in. And wherever we look, we see the evidence of our successes and our failures. Unfortunately, failure enjoys a natural advantage. Wrong answers to any problem outnumber right ones by a wide margin, and it seems that it will always be easier to break things than to fix them. Despite the beauty of our world and the scope of human accomplishment, it is hard not to worry that the forces of chaos will triumph—not merely in the end but in every moment. Our pleasures, however refined or easily acquired, are by their very nature fleeting. They begin to subside the instant they arise, only to be replaced by fresh desires or feelings of discomfort. You can’t get enough of your favorite meal until, in the next moment, you find you are so stuffed as to nearly require the attention of a surgeon—and yet, by some quirk of physics, you still have room for dessert. The pleasure of dessert lasts a few seconds, and then the lingering taste in your mouth must be banished by a drink of water. The warmth of the sun feels wonderful on your skin, but soon it becomes too much of a good thing. A move to the shade brings immediate relief, but after a minute or two, the breeze is just a little too cold. Do you have a sweater in the car? Let’s take a look. Yes, there it is. You’re warm now, but you notice that your sweater has seen better days. Does it make you look carefree or disheveled? Perhaps it is time to go shopping for something new. And so it goes. We seem to do little more than lurch between wanting and not wanting. Thus, the question naturally arises: Is there more to life than this? Might it be possible to feel much better (in every sense of better) than one tends to feel? Is it possible to find lasting fulfillment despite the inevitability of change? Spiritual life begins with a suspicion that the answer to such questions could well be “yes.” And a true spiritual practitioner is someone who has discovered that it is possible to be at ease in the world for no reason, if only for a few moments at a time, and that such ease is synonymous with transcending the apparent boundaries of the self. Those who have never tasted such peace of mind might view these assertions as highly suspect. Nevertheless, it is a fact that a condition of selfless well-being is there to be glimpsed in each moment. Of course, I’m not claiming to have experienced all such states, but I meet many people who appear to have experienced none of them—and these people often profess to have no interest in spiritual life. This is not surprising. The phenomenon of self-transcendence is generally sought and interpreted in a religious context, and it is precisely the sort of experience that tends to increase a person’s faith. How many Christians, having once felt their hearts grow as wide as the world, will decide to ditch Christianity and proclaim their atheism? Not many, I suspect. How many people who have never felt anything of the kind become atheists? I don’t know, but there is little doubt that these mental states act as a kind of filter: The faithful count them in support of ancient dogma, and their absence gives nonbelievers further reason to reject religion. This is a difficult problem for me to address in the context of a book, because many readers will have no idea what I’m talking about when I describe certain spiritual experiences and might assume that the assertions I’m making must be accepted on faith. Religious readers present a different challenge: They may think they know exactly what I’m describing, but only insofar as it aligns with one or another religious doctrine. It seems to me that both these attitudes present impressive obstacles to understanding spirituality in the way that I intend. I can only hope that, whatever your background, you will approach the exercises presented in this book with an open mind. RELIGION, EAST AND WEST We are often encouraged to believe that all religions are the same: All teach the same ethical principles; all urge their followers to contemplate the same divine reality; all are equally wise, compassionate, and true within their sphere—or equally divisive and false, depending on one’s view. No serious adherents of any faith can believe these things, because most religions make claims about reality that are mutually incompatible. Exceptions to this rule exist, but they provide little relief from what is essentially a zero-sum contest of all against all. The polytheism of Hinduism allows it to digest parts of many other faiths: If Christians insist that Jesus Christ is the son of God, for instance, Hindus can make him yet another avatar of Vishnu without losing any sleep. But this spirit of inclusiveness points in one direction only, and even it has its limits. Hindus are committed to specific metaphysical ideas—the law of karma and rebirth, a multiplicity of gods—that almost every other major religion decries. It is impossible for any faith, no matter how elastic, to fully honor the truth claims of another. Devout Jews, Christians, and Muslims believe that theirs is the one true and complete revelation—because that is what their holy books say of themselves. Only secularists and New Age dabblers can mistake the modern tactic of “interfaith dialogue” for an underlying unity of all religions. I have long argued that confusion about the unity of religions is an artifact of language. Religion is a term like sports: Some sports are peaceful but spectacularly dangerous (“free solo” rock climbing); some are safer but synonymous with violence (mixed martial arts); and some entail little more risk of injury than standing in the shower (bowling). To speak of sports as a generic activity makes it impossible to discuss what athletes actually do or the physical attributes required to do it. What do all sports have in common apart from breathing? Not much. The term religion is hardly more useful. The same could be said of spirituality. The esoteric doctrines found within every religious tradition are not all derived from the same insights. Nor are they equally empirical, logical, parsimonious, or wise. They don’t always point to the same underlying reality—and when they do, they don’t do it equally well. Nor are all these teachings equally suited for export beyond the cultures that first conceived them. Making distinctions of this kind, however, is deeply unfashionable in intellectual circles. In my experience, people do not want to hear that Islam supports violence in a way that Jainism doesn’t, or that Buddhism offers a truly sophisticated, empirical approach to understanding the human mind, whereas Christianity presents an almost perfect impediment to such understanding. In many circles, to make invidious comparisons of this kind is to stand convicted of bigotry. In one sense, all religions and spiritual practices must address the same reality—because people of all faiths have glimpsed many of the same truths. Any view of consciousness and the cosmos that is available to the human mind can, in principle, be appreciated by anyone. It is not surprising, therefore, that individual Jews, Christians, Muslims, and Buddhists have given voice to some of the same insights and intuitions. This merely indicates that human cognition and emotion run deeper than religion. (But we knew that, didn’t we?) It does not suggest that all religions understand our spiritual possibilities equally well. One way of missing this point is to declare that all spiritual teachings are inflections of the same “Perennial Philosophy.” The writer Aldous Huxley brought this idea into prominence by publishing an anthology by that title. Here is how he justified the idea: Philosophia perennis—the phrase was coined by Leibniz; but the thing—the metaphysic that recognizes a divine Reality substantial to the world of things and lives and minds; the psychology that finds in the soul something similar to, or even identical with, divine Reality; the ethic that places man’s final end in the knowledge of the immanent and transcendent Ground of all being—the thing is immemorial and universal. Rudiments of the Perennial Philosophy may be found among the traditionary lore of primitive peoples in every region of the world, and in its fully developed forms it has a place in every one of the higher religions. A version of this Highest Common Factor in all preceding and subsequent theologies was first committed to writing more than twenty-five centuries ago, and since that time the inexhaustible theme has been treated again and again, from the standpoint of every religious tradition and in all the principal languages of Asia and Europe.[2] Although Huxley was being reasonably cautious in his wording, this notion of a “highest common factor” uniting all religions begins to break apart the moment one presses for details. For instance, the Abrahamic religions are incorrigibly dualistic and faith-based: In Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, the human soul is conceived as genuinely separate from the divine reality of God. The appropriate attitude for a creature that finds itself in this circumstance is some combination of terror, shame, and awe. In the best case, notions of God’s love and grace provide some relief—but the central message of these faiths is that each of us is separate from, and in relationship to, a divine authority who will punish anyone who harbors the slightest doubt about His supremacy. The Eastern tradition presents a very different picture of reality. And its highest teachings—found within the various schools of Buddhism and the nominally Hindu tradition of Advaita Vedanta—explicitly transcend dualism. By their lights, consciousness itself is identical to the very reality that one might otherwise mistake for God. While these teachings make metaphysical claims that any serious student of science should find incredible, they center on a range of experiences that the doctrines of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam rule out-of-bounds. Of course, it is true that specific Jewish, Christian, and Muslim mystics have had experiences similar to those that motivate Buddhism and Advaita, but these contemplative insights are not exemplary of their faith. Rather, they are anomalies that Western mystics have always struggled to understand and to honor, often at considerable personal risk. Given their proper weight, these experiences produce heterodoxies for which Jews, Christians, and Muslims have been regularly exiled or killed. Like Huxley, anyone determined to find a happy synthesis among spiritual traditions will notice that the Christian mystic Meister Eckhart (ca. 1260–ca. 1327) often sounded very much like a Buddhist: “The knower and the known are one. Simple people imagine that they should see God, as if He stood there and they here. This is not so. God and I, we are one in knowledge.” But he also sounded like a man bound to be excommunicated by his church—as he was. Had Eckhart lived a little longer, it seems certain that he would have been dragged into the street and burned alive for these expansive ideas. That is a telling difference between Christianity and Buddhism. In the same vein, it is misleading to hold up the Sufi mystic Al-Hallaj (858–922) as a representative of Islam. He was a Muslim, yes, but he suffered the most grisly death imaginable at the hands of his coreligionists for presuming to be one with God. Both Eckhart and Al-Hallaj gave voice to an experience of self-transcendence that any human being can, in principle, enjoy. However, their views were not consistent with the central teachings of their faiths. The Indian tradition is comparatively free of problems of this kind. Although the teachings of Buddhism and Advaita are embedded in more or less conventional religions, they contain empirical insights about the nature of consciousness that do not depend upon faith. One can practice most techniques of Buddhist meditation or the method of self-inquiry of Advaita and experience the advertised changes in one’s consciousness without ever believing in the law of karma or in the miracles attributed to Indian mystics. To get started as a Christian, however, one must first accept a dozen implausible things about the life of Jesus and the origins of the Bible—and the same can be said, minus a few unimportant details, about Judaism and Islam. If one should happen to discover that the sense of being an individual soul is an illusion, one will be guilty of blasphemy everywhere west of the Indus. There is no question that many religious disciplines can produce interesting experiences in suitable minds. It should be clear, however, that engaging a faith-based (and probably delusional) practice, whatever its effects, isn’t the same as investigating the nature of one’s mind absent any doctrinal assumptions. Statements of this kind may seem starkly antagonistic toward Abrahamic religions, but they are nonetheless true: One can speak about Buddhism shorn of its miracles and irrational assumptions. The same cannot be said of Christianity or Islam.[3] Western engagement with Eastern spirituality dates back at least as far as Alexander’s campaign in India, where the young conqueror and his pet philosophers encountered naked ascetics whom they called “gymnosophists.” It is often said that the thinking of these yogis greatly influenced the philosopher Pyrrho, the father of Greek skepticism. This seems a credible claim, because Pyrrho’s teachings had much in common with Buddhism. But his contemplative insights and methods never became part of any system of thought in the West. Serious study of Eastern thought by outsiders did not begin until the late eighteenth century. The first translation of a Sanskrit text into a Western language appears to have been Sir Charles Wilkins’s rendering of the Bhagavad Gita, a cornerstone text of Hinduism, in 1785. The Buddhist canon would not attract the attention of Western scholars for another hundred years.[4] The conversation between East and West started in earnest, albeit inauspiciously, with the birth of the Theosophical Society, that golem of spiritual hunger and self-deception brought into this world almost single-handedly by the incomparable Madame Helena Petrovna Blavatsky in 1875. Everything about Blavatsky seemed to defy earthly logic: She was an enormously fat woman who was said to have wandered alone and undetected for seven years in the mountains of Tibet. She was also thought to have survived shipwrecks, gunshot wounds, and sword fights. Even less persuasively, she claimed to be in psychic contact with members of the “Great White Brotherhood” of ascended masters—a collection of immortals responsible for the evolution and maintenance of the entire cosmos. Their leader hailed from the planet Venus but lived in the mythical kingdom of Shambhala, which Blavatsky placed somewhere in the vicinity of the Gobi Desert. With the suspiciously bureaucratic name “the Lord of the World,” he supervised the work of other adepts, including the Buddha, Maitreya, Maha Chohan, and one Koot Hoomi, who appears to have had nothing better to do on behalf of the cosmos than to impart its secrets to Blavatsky. [5] It is always surprising when a person attracts legions of followers and builds a large organization on their largesse while peddling penny-arcade mythology of this kind. But perhaps this was less remarkable in a time when even the best-educated people were still struggling to come to terms with electricity, evolution, and the existence of other planets. We can easily forget how suddenly the world had shrunk and the cosmos expanded as the nineteenth century came to a close. The geographical barriers between distant cultures had been stripped away by trade and conquest (one could now order a gin and tonic almost everywhere on earth), and yet the reality of unseen forces and alien worlds was a daily focus of the most careful scientific research. Inevitably, cross-cultural and scientific discoveries were mingled in the popular imagination with religious dogma and traditional occultism. In fact, this had been happening at the highest level of human thought for more than a century: It is always instructive to recall that the father of modern physics, Isaac Newton, squandered a considerable portion of his genius on the study of theology, biblical prophecy, and alchemy. The inability to distinguish the strange but true from the merely strange was common enough in Blavatsky’s time—as it is in our own. Blavatsky’s contemporary Joseph Smith, a libidinous con man and crackpot, was able to found a new religion on the claim that he had unearthed the final revelations of God in the hallowed precincts of Manchester, New York, written in “reformed Egyptian” on golden plates. He decoded this text with the aid of magical “seer stones,” which, whether by magic or not, allowed Smith to produce an English version of God’s Word that was an embarrassing pastiche of plagiarisms from the Bible and silly lies about Jesus’s life in America. And yet the resulting edifice of nonsense and taboo survives to this day. A more modern cult, Scientology, leverages human credulity to an even greater degree: Adherents believe that human beings are possessed by the souls of extraterrestrials who were condemned to planet Earth 75 million years ago by the galactic overlord Xenu. How was their exile accomplished? The old-fashioned way: These aliens were shuttled by the billions to our humble planet aboard a spacecraft that resembled a DC-8. They were then imprisoned in a volcano and blasted to bits with hydrogen bombs. Their souls survived, however, and disentangling them from our own can be the work of a lifetime. It is also expensive.[6] Despite the imponderables in her philosophy, Blavatsky was among the first people to announce in Western circles that there was such a thing as the “wisdom of the East.” This wisdom began to trickle westward once Swami Vivekananda introduced the teachings of Vedanta at the World Parliament of Religions in Chicago in 1893. Again, Buddhism lagged behind: A few Western monks living on the island of Sri Lanka were beginning to translate the Pali Canon, which remains the most authoritative record of the teachings of the historical Buddha, Siddhartha Gautama. However, the practice of Buddhist meditation wouldn’t actually be taught in the West for another half century. It is easy enough to find fault with romantic ideas about Eastern wisdom, and a tradition of such criticism sprang up almost the instant the first Western seeker sat cross-legged and attempted to meditate. In the late 1950s, the author and journalist Arthur Koestler traveled to India and Japan in search of wisdom and summarized his pilgrimage thus: “I started my journey in sackcloth and ashes, and came back rather proud of being a European.”[7] In The Lotus and the Robot, Koestler gives some of his reasons for being less than awed by his journey to the East. Consider, for example, the ancient discipline of hatha yoga. While now generally viewed as a system of physical exercises designed to increase a person’s strength and flexibility, in its traditional context hatha yoga is part of a larger effort to manipulate “subtle” features of the body unknown to anatomists. No doubt much of this subtlety corresponds to experiences that yogis actually have—but many of the beliefs formed on the basis of these experiences are patently absurd, and certain of the associated practices are both silly and injurious. Koestler reports that the aspiring yogi is traditionally encouraged to lengthen his tongue—even going so far as to cut the frenulum (the membrane that anchors the tongue to the floor of the mouth) and stretch the soft palate. What is the purpose of these modifications? They enable our hero to insert his tongue into his nasopharynx, thereby blocking the flow of air through the nostrils. His anatomy thus improved, a yogi can then imbibe subtle liquors believed to emanate directly from his brain. These substances—imagined, by recourse to further subtleties, to be connected to the retention of semen—are said to confer not only spiritual wisdom but immortality. This technique of drinking mucus is known as khechari mudra, and it is thought to be one of the crowning achievements of yoga. I’m more than happy to score a point for Koestler here. Needless to say, no defense of such practices will be found in this book. Criticism of Eastern wisdom can seem especially pertinent when coming from Easterners themselves. There is indeed something preposterous about well-educated Westerners racing East in search of spiritual enlightenment while Easterners make the opposite pilgrimage seeking education and economic opportunities. I have a friend whose own adventures may have marked a high point in this global comedy. He made his first trip to India immediately after graduating from college, having already acquired several yogic affectations: He had the requisite beads and long hair, but he was also in the habit of writing the name of the Hindu god Ram in Devanagari script over and over in a journal. On the flight to the motherland, he had the good fortune to be seated next to an Indian businessman. This weary traveler thought he had witnessed every species of human folly—until he caught sight of my friend’s scribbling. The spectacle of a Western-born Stanford graduate, of working age, holding degrees in both economics and history, devoting himself to the graphomaniacal worship of an imaginary deity in a language he could neither read nor understand was more than this man could abide in a confined space at 30,000 feet. After a testy exchange, the two travelers could only stare at each other in mutual incomprehension and pity—and they had ten hours yet to fly. There really are two sides to such a conversation, but I concede that only one of them can be made to look ridiculous. We can also grant that Eastern wisdom has not produced societies or political institutions that are any better than their Western counterparts; in fact, one could argue that India has survived as the world’s largest democracy only because of institutions that were built under British rule. Nor has the East led the world in scientific discovery. Nevertheless, there is something to the notion of uniquely Eastern wisdom, and most of it has been concentrated in or derived from the tradition of Buddhism. Buddhism has been of special interest to Western scientists for reasons already hinted at. It isn’t primarily a faith-based religion, and its central teachings are entirely empirical. Despite the superstitions that many Buddhists cherish, the doctrine has a practical and logical core that does not require any unwarranted assumptions. Many Westerners have recognized this and have been relieved to find a spiritual alternative to faith-based worship. It is no accident that most of the scientific research now done on meditation focuses primarily on Buddhist techniques. Another reason for Buddhism’s prominence among scientists has been the intellectual engagement of one of its most visible representatives: Tenzin Gyatso, the fourteenth Dalai Lama. Of course, the Dalai Lama is not without his critics. My late friend Christopher Hitchens meted out justice to “his holiness” on several occasions. He also castigated Western students of Buddhism for the “widely and lazily held belief that ‘Oriental’ religion is different from other faiths: less dogmatic, more contemplative, more . . . Transcendental,” and for the “blissful, thoughtless exceptionalism” with which Buddhism is regarded by many.[8] Hitch did have a point. In his capacity as the head of one of the four branches of Tibetan Buddhism and as the former leader of the Tibetan government in exile, the Dalai Lama has made some questionable claims and formed some embarrassing alliances. Although his engagement with science is far-reaching and surely sincere, the man is not above consulting an astrologer or “oracle” when making important decisions. I will have something to say in this book about many of the things that might have justified Hitch’s opprobrium, but the general thrust of his commentary here was all wrong. Several Eastern traditions are exceptionally empirical and exceptionally wise, and therefore merit the exceptionalism claimed by their adherents. Buddhism in particular possesses a literature on the nature of the mind that has no peer in Western religion or Western science. Some of these teachings are cluttered with metaphysical assumptions that should provoke our doubts, but many aren’t. And when engaged as a set of hypotheses by which to investigate the mind and deepen one’s ethical life, Buddhism can be an entirely rational enterprise. Unlike the doctrines of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, the teachings of Buddhism are not considered by their adherents to be the product of infallible revelation. They are, rather, empirical instructions: If you do X, you will experience Y. Although many Buddhists have a superstitious and cultic attachment to the historical Buddha, the teachings of Buddhism present him as an ordinary human being who succeeded in understanding the nature of his own mind. Buddha means “awakened one”—and Siddhartha Gautama was merely a man who woke up from the dream of being a separate self. Compare this with the Christian view of Jesus, who is imagined to be the son of the creator of the universe. This is a very different proposition, and it renders Christianity, no matter how fully divested of metaphysical baggage, all but irrelevant to a scientific discussion about the human condition. The teachings of Buddhism, and of Eastern spirituality generally, focus on the primacy of the mind. There are dangers in this way of viewing the world, to be sure. Focusing on training the mind to the exclusion of all else can lead to political quietism and hive-like conformity. The fact that your mind is all you have and that it is possible to be at peace even in difficult circumstances can become an argument for ignoring obvious societal problems. But it is not a compelling one. The world is in desperate need of improvement—in global terms, freedom and prosperity remain the exception—and yet this doesn’t mean we need to be miserable while we work for the common good. In fact, the teachings of Buddhism emphasize a connection between ethical and spiritual life. Making progress in one domain lays a foundation for progress in the other. One can, for instance, spend long periods of time in contemplative solitude for the purpose of becoming a better person in the world—having better relationships, being more honest and compassionate and, therefore, more helpful to one’s fellow human beings. Being wisely selfish and being selfless can amount to very much the same thing. There are centuries of anecdotal testimony on this point—and, as we will see, the scientific study of the mind has begun to bear it out. There is now little question that how one uses one’s attention, moment to moment, largely determines what kind of person one becomes. Our minds—and lives—are largely shaped by how we use them. Although the experience of self-transcendence is, in principle, available to everyone, this possibility is only weakly attested to in the religious and philosophical literature of the West. Only Buddhists and students of Advaita Vedanta (which appears to have been heavily influenced by Buddhism) have been absolutely clear in asserting that spiritual life consists in overcoming the illusion of the self by paying close attention to our experience in the present moment.[9] As I wrote in my first book, The End of Faith, the disparity between Eastern and Western spirituality resembles that found between Eastern and Western medicine—with the arrow of embarrassment pointing in the opposite direction. Humanity did not understand the biology of cancer, develop antibiotics and vaccines, or sequence the human genome under an Eastern sun. Consequently, real medicine is almost entirely a product of Western science. Insofar as specific techniques of Eastern medicine actually work, they must conform, whether by design or by happenstance, to the principles of biology as we have come to know them in the West. This is not to say that Western medicine is complete. In a few decades, many of our current practices will seem barbaric. One need only ponder the list of side effects that accompany most medications to appreciate that these are terribly blunt instruments. Nevertheless, most of our knowledge about the human body—and about the physical universe generally—emerged in the West. The rest is instinct, folklore, bewilderment, and untimely death. An honest comparison of spiritual traditions, Eastern and Western, proves equally invidious. As manuals for contemplative understanding, the Bible and the Koran are worse than useless. Whatever wisdom can be found in their pages is never best found there, and it is subverted, time and again, by ancient savagery and superstition. Again, one must deploy the necessary caveats: I am not saying that most Buddhists or Hindus have been sophisticated contemplatives. Their traditions have spawned many of the same pathologies we see elsewhere among the faithful: dogmatism, anti-intellectualism, tribalism, otherworldliness. However, the empirical difference between the central teachings of Buddhism and Advaita and those of Western monotheism is difficult to overstate. One can traverse the Eastern paths simply by becoming interested in the nature of one’s own mind—especially in the immediate causes of psychological suffering—and by paying closer attention to one’s experience in every present moment. There is, in truth, nothing one need believe. The teachings of Buddhism and Advaita are best viewed as lab manuals and explorers’ logs detailing the results of empirical research on the nature of human consciousness. Nearly every geographical or linguistic barrier to the free exchange of ideas has now fallen away. It seems to me, therefore, that educated people no longer have a right to any form of spiritual provincialism. The truths of Eastern spirituality are now no more Eastern than the truths of Western science are Western. We are merely talking about human consciousness and its possible states. My purpose in writing this book is to encourage you to investigate certain contemplative insights for yourself, without accepting the metaphysical ideas that they inspired in ignorant and isolated peoples of the past. A final word of caution: Nothing I say here is intended as a denial of the fact that psychological well-being requires a healthy “sense of self”—with all the capacities that this vague phrase implies. Children need to become autonomous, confident, and self-aware in order to form healthy relationships. And they must acquire a host of other cognitive, emotional, and interpersonal skills in the process of becoming sane and productive adults. Which is to say that there is a time and a place for everything—unless, of course, there isn’t. No doubt there are psychological conditions, such as schizophrenia, for which practices of the sort I recommend in this book might be inappropriate. Some people find the experience of an extended, silent retreat psychologically destabilizing.[10] Again, an analogy to physical training seems apropos: Not everyone is suited to running a six-minute mile or bench-pressing his own body weight. But many quite ordinary people are capable of these feats, and there are better and worse ways to accomplish them. What is more, the same principles of fitness generally apply even to people whose abilities are limited by illness or injury. So I want to make it clear that the instructions in this book are intended for readers who are adults (more or less) and free from any psychological or medical conditions that could be exacerbated by meditation or other techniques of sustained introspection. If paying attention to your breath, to bodily sensations, to the flow of thoughts, or to the nature of consciousness itself seems likely to cause you clinically significant anguish, please check with a psychologist or a psychiatrist before engaging in the practices I describe. MINDFULNESS It is always now. This might sound trite, but it is the truth. It’s not quite true as a matter of neurology, because our minds are built upon layers of inputs whose timing we know must be different. [11] But it is true as a matter of conscious experience. The reality of your life is always now. And to realize this, we will see, is liberating. In fact, I think there is nothing more important to understand if you want to be happy in this world. But we spend most of our lives forgetting this truth—overlooking it, fleeing it, repudiating it. And the horror is that we succeed. We manage to avoid being happy while struggling to become happy, fulfilling one desire after the next, banishing our fears, grasping at pleasure, recoiling from pain—and thinking, interminably, about how best to keep the whole works up and running. As a consequence, we spend our lives being far less content than we might otherwise be. We often fail to appreciate what we have until we have lost it. We crave experiences, objects, relationships, only to grow bored with them. And yet the craving persists. I speak from experience, of course. As a remedy for this predicament, many spiritual teachings ask us to entertain unfounded ideas about the nature of reality—or at the very least to develop a fondness for the iconography and rituals of one or another religion. But not all paths traverse the same rough ground. There are methods of meditation that do not require any artifice or unwarranted assumptions at all. For beginners, I usually recommend a technique called vipassana (Pali for “insight”), which comes from the oldest tradition of Buddhism, the Theravada. One of the advantages of vipassana is that it can be taught in an entirely secular way. Experts in this practice generally acquire their training in a Buddhist context, and most retreat centers in the United States and Europe teach its associated Buddhist philosophy. Nevertheless, this method of introspection can be brought into any secular or scientific context without embarrassment. (The same cannot be said for the practice of chanting to Lord Krishna while banging a drum.) That is why vipassana is now being widely studied and adopted by psychologists and neuroscientists. The quality of mind cultivated in vipassana is almost always referred to as “mindfulness,” and the literature on its psychological benefits is now substantial. There is nothing spooky about mindfulness. It is simply a state of clear, nonjudgmental, and undistracted attention to the contents of consciousness, whether pleasant or unpleasant. Cultivating this quality of mind has been shown to reduce pain, anxiety, and depression; improve cognitive function; and even produce changes in gray matter density in regions of the brain related to learning and memory, emotional regulation, and self-awareness.[12] We will look more closely at the neurophysiology of mindfulness in a later chapter. Mindfulness is a translation of the Pali word sati. The term has several meanings in the Buddhist literature, but for our purposes the most important is “clear awareness.”

On this episode of the podcast, we continue our study of the Hellenistic Age, this time focusing on Skepticism. We find out how Pyrrho used Skepticism to endure surgery without anesthesia, and learn why you can never really know if a pomegranate is a pomegranate. We also discover how winning the lottery could be the worst thing that ever happens to you, and compare Skepticism's key philosophers to their Smurf counterparts. Support the show on Patreon! www.philosophizethis.org for additional content. Thank you for wanting to know more today than you did yesterday. :)

Peter begins to examine ancient Skepticism, beginning with Pyrrho's life and doctrines, or lack thereof