School
Abhidharma
-
If Buddhism says there is no self, what exactly gets reborn?
I drive a bus in Ankara and listen to philosophy lectures between stops. This week's lecture was on Buddhism, and the speaker said two things that seem to contradict each other: there is no permanent self, and there is rebirth. If there's…
Started by Serkan Aydoğdu4 replies204 views -
Does general anaesthesia remove experience, or only our memory of it?
I'm an internist, not an anaesthetist, but I've watched hundreds of patients go under and come back. Most say the same thing: one moment they were counting backwards, the next they were in recovery. No time passed. But there is a technique,…
Started by Omar Farouk5 replies226 views -
Hume’s bundle and the Buddha’s no-self sound identical to me. What is the real difference?
I'm a poet and a literature postgraduate in Kochi, new to formal philosophy. I've just read two things in the same week and they seemed to say the same thing. Hume, in the Treatise, looks inward for his self and reports that…
Started by Kavya Menon4 replies196 views -
Is Vasubandhu’s doctrine of momentariness the same as modern stage theory?
I guide trekkers in the Annapurna region and have read about Buddhist philosophy for years, mostly in tea houses. Recently a friend showed me a chart of Western theories of persistence and pointed to one called exdurantism or stage theory: nothing strictly…
Started by Nima Tsering Gurung4 replies179 views -
If there is no self, who has free will? Is there a Buddhist position at all?
I guide trekkers in the Annapurna region and read Madhyamaka in tea houses in the evenings. A Swiss client asked me last month what Buddhism says about free will. I said it depends what you mean, which was true but cowardly. Here…
Started by Nima Tsering Gurung6 replies220 views -
Does general anaesthesia switch experience off, or only the memory of it?
I'm an internist in Addis Ababa, and a patient asked me before surgery last month whether she would "be there" during the operation and simply forget it, or whether she would not be there at all. I gave the reassuring answer. Afterwards…
Started by Tsion Bekele6 replies282 views -
Can trained meditative introspection count as evidence? Abhidhamma and William James
I am a Theravada nun in Kandy. My study is the Abhidhamma, the systematic part of our canon that analyses experience into momentary mental events and their factors. In the classical Theravada scheme there are fifty-two mental factors (cetasika), seven of which…
Started by Ayya Kusalañāṇī4 replies182 views