Linda Blanchard

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An end to suffering? Surely it's optimistic.

The Buddha Comments on Politics - Secular Buddhist Network Linda Blanchard argues that the Buddha's key concept of dependent arising reveals how our tendency toward self-making is impacted by socially constructed beliefs which underpin political views.

Over on the Secular Buddhist Network website:

3/ Anyone know who is doing the work of keeping up the Secular Buddhist Network site?

2/ In its heyday it had a lively forum, Ted Meissner's deep interviews with secular types and even non-secular bright thinkers, and many articles, including mine (now disappeared into the ether). I'm grateful they saved one of my posts on Dependent Arising though, and list my book as worth reading.

1/ I'm sad to have discovered the Secular Buddhism (dot org) website has disappeared into the Secular Buddhist Network (dot org). Nothing against the SBN. I literally know nothing about them since there's no information on the website as to who they are, and I've read very little on the site.

16/ I hope you'll stick with me, even though sometimes it takes me a while. I end up working to get about the next three or four interconnected threads finished before posting the first in a set.

15/ Overall, what I'm saying the Buddha taught is not all that different from what the teachers we have, and those in the past whose work we still have access to, have said. Though there is some, enough to make me a bit of a heretic. Another small paradigm shift, to a more secular understanding.

14/ Anyway, I will keep on because seeing what the Buddha put into the structure he built, the care, the amount of thought, a life-long effort that is so impressive, I feel responsible to him to see if anyone else can see it if I take the time to, first, show the evidence, then finally, the scope.

13/ I don't know you folks. Bluesky seems a cold and sterile place to me because there is so little interaction. It's not that I need praise or ego-boosting, not at all, but it's difficult to tell even something as simple as whether I should hustle to get a post out every few days, or take my time.

12/ I'm not confident my readers will stick with me through delays, and my slow accumulation of details and connections. I'm not sure I'm going to be able to make the richness of the structure the Buddha put together clear enough for those who follow the teachings to be as impressed as I am.

11/ Over on the Skeptical Buddhism account, at the moment I'm just trying to get enough background in place to explain why "contact" is a key point in the chain, and I keep finding more and more needs to be said first.

10/ All of this by way of making yet another apology for the long pause between the last post on dependent arising and the next.

9/ Especially for my style of writing, which tends to be conversational, not academic; at length, not in brief; taking the time to try to explain the way this bit supports and illuminates that bit.

8/ As is writing about all this in a way that is, ideally, accessible to the beginner, as well as useful to someone further along in their practice. It's challenging, especially for a writer of my bent, who feels the interconnecting of the pieces is part of the beauty of the Buddha's dharma.

7/ But it's worth the effort.

6/ But as one on the path, it can be rough going at first. Initial reactions to concepts like "There is no self" are often rejected as not fitting our current understanding of the world. A paradigm shift is required, and it's usually not a comfortable one.

5/ This interdependence of each piece is part of the reason the dharma is good for the beginner, and the advanced, and the fully awakened practitioner. Each piece when barely understood is helpful, but as we connect them up, what we now see becomes clearer, and more helpful.

4/ But perhaps the most incredible and, unfortunately, challenging aspect of his teachings is the way just about all the pieces are interconnected, and not just casually, but intimately, fundamentally. This is not news; it's been recognized for a long time.

3/ One thing I've discovered, since taking a context-driven approach to understanding his teaching methods is the way that layering of meaning allowed him to live the dharma he expressed. I'm working on laying a foundation that will, I hope, allow me to show that.

2/ Another is his personal style of teaching: the way it evolved over time; the way he built it to have layers of meaning making it useful for newcomers just beginning to understand it, more useful with each deeper level of insight.

1/ There are many things that amaze me about the Buddha's teachings. Among them, his discovery of what is essentially one fundamental issue in human nature that we just naturally fail to see, that leads to all kinds of trouble. And I do mean all kinds. Small, middling, big, and huge.

8/ “The Realized One does not declare such things for the sake of deceiving people or flattering them, nor for the benefit of possessions... Rather... When they hear that, they apply their minds to that end. That is for their lasting welfare and happiness."

7/ (From Sujato's translation) "What do you think, Anuruddha and friends? What advantage does the Realized One see in declaring the rebirth of his disciples who have passed away: ‘This one is reborn here, while that one is reborn there’?”

6/ He is very consistently answering questions as if he believes in, experienced, knows rebirth intimately, but every answer is perfectly aligned to 12-link DA as a metaphor of rebirth that points to something else entirely.

5/ ...he does not say it's because it's true and helpful. He does say it's not to deceive and it's helpful. To me that points to it being deceptive, but not done for the purpose of all that deceit normally brings, but to be helpful, though just a little deceitful.

SuttaCentral Early Buddhist texts from the Tipitaka (Tripitaka). Suttas (sutras) with the Buddha's teachings on mindfulness, insight, wisdom, and meditation.

4/ By the time we hit late, he is fully willing to sound as though he knows everything, yet he often talks about that knowing using language that can be read two ways. For example in MN 68 his first answer to his own question of why he states where his disciples go after death...

3/ He is also beginning to get playful with language, and build his own mythology. I see him doing this, rewriting his early encounters with the Kassapa brothers (see my version of the story in half of Learn Comedy From The Buddha).

secularbuddhism.org/learn-comedy...

2/The names for all the links being suggestive of cycles of rebirth (yet DA is never presented as a complete, repeating circle) he uses that metaphor to enable him to not argue, to be able to speak to believers in rebirth in ways helpful to them but consistent with the meaning of DA.

1/ Whereas I believe what's happened in that changing thread of themes in the suttas is that the Buddha slowly shifted his style of teaching. Possibly about the time he added avijja and sankhara to DA, he shifted over to your Middle theme. He's decided to use the metaphor of rebirth constructively.