My feelings about Buddhism are linked to my feelings about [ psychedelic ]s and the mind more generally. I am pretty ignorant on all of…
The Buddha really liked lists. For example: the three refuges (the buddha, the dharma, and the sangha) the [ three characteristics ] the…
Here's a perspective I like on spiritual awakening, elaborating on a metaphor used by NameRedacted. Suppose you awaken from a dream: a…
see: https://www.abolitionist.com/ https://qualiacomputing.com/2018/11/07/anti-tolerance-drugs/ [ suffering ] may seem inevitable. [ karma…
In Pāli, dukkha refers to the unsatisfactory parts of existence. Literally it refers to a wheel in which the axel hole is not centered…
Academic components: Right view (right understanding): seeing reality as it really is and understanding the [ four noble truths ]. This…
Notes on Abram Demski and Scott Garrabrant's sequence on Embedded Agency Embedded Agents : Classic models of rational [ agency ], such as…
I think [ Dan Brown ] said somewhere that a good synonym for 'empty' in meditative contexts is 'mere construction'. For example, practicing…
See [ emptiness ].
Very smart people tend to disbelieve in [ enlightenment ] because they hold up unrealistic notions of what it is or what it entails. There…
David Chapman suggests that enlightenment in Buddhism is not a single defined thing, 'the word is hopelessly confused': https://vividness…
In [ Dan Brown ]'s telling, these are: mindfulness ( sati ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mindfulness (Buddhism))_): paying attention to the…
I grew up in the 2000s reading the New Atheists, where 'faith' was considered a dirty word. Faith was the opposite of reason; it meant…
Buddists identify five factors as obstacles to [ concentration ] in [ meditation ]: Sensory desire ( kāmacchanda ) Aversion or ill will (…
Interesting and seemingly very powerful perspective on the [ cessation of suffering ]. Most refs on this page are from this twitter thread…
Aka the four 'divine abodes' or Brahma-viharas: [ loving-kindness ] (metta): active good will towards others compassion: empathizing with…
These are the first teaching of the Buddha, after he achieved [ enlightenment ] while [ meditation|meditating ] under a tree. The truths are…
a Buddhist point. I was trying to fast last night and kept being tempted to relax it slightly . "It won't hurt anything if I just have one…
I don't know if this makes sense, but one intuition I have for karma comes from the observation that the weights of a least-squares linear…
From @visakanv on Twitter: (relevant to [ nothing matters ])
No-self is one of the [ three characteristics ] that traditional Buddhism holds are present in all phenomena. In later Buddhism, the…
There's a spiritual idea, in Buddhism and elsewhere, that there is "nothing to do": everything is already suffused with "primordial…
Ken McLeod claims that 'emotional reactivity' is the origin of suffering. Pain consists both in what happens and in our reaction to it. But…
A set of methods for maintaining an " attitude of spacious passion ". The particular methods are contingent; if you could maintain the…
Buddhist (Pali) term referring to craving, longing, desire for the world to be other than as it is. This includes craving good things and…
A point made by NameRedacted in various talks, e.g. The World is Inside You (also the '[ emptiness ] of perception' described by [ Dan…
It exists, but is [ empty ], insubstantial, a [ fabrication ]. Foregrounding this view is an important part of [ awakening ] or…
[ impermanence ] [ dukkha ] (unsatisfactoriness) [ no-self|annita ] (no-self) Daniel Ingram's summary: things "come and go, don't satisfy…
A story from [ Dan Brown ]: A group of psychologists came to interview the Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of Tibet. One of the Americans…
This may be a central point of confusion: how do we define AI systems that have preferences about the real world , so that their goals and…