Philosophize This! is a philosophy podcast.
even though, Steven has slowed down the release of his podcasts, I strongly recommend that you listen to it chronologically, not only you go through the philosophy itself from the very beginning. But you can also listen to Steven develop his own podcast skills.
#9 The Buddha
- Life of Buddha
- How Buddha came to four noble truths
Four noble truths
1. The nature of suffering
- Suffering is universal
- Dissatisfaction is the default state of the human brain
- Satisfaction, or happiness, leaves as often as it comes
- No matter what: It eventually fades (eg buying your dream car)
- No matter how good something is, eventually it just becomes normal
- You no longer fully appreciate what you have
2. The cause of suffering
- Desire (created by mind in different ways)
- Attachment, aversion or ignorance
- Attachment
- See something they want, assume having that thing makes them happy
- Exalt the good properties, ignore bad things
- Aversion
- Magnifies problems into things bigger than they are
- Agonises over things they have no control over
- Cut in line example, some people fuming, anger to be expected, “if only I didn’t have to deal with…”
- Someone from a different set of experiences having same things happen to them may not feel slighted
- Expectations: Expected to be treated in a certain way. Why is not meeting those personal expectations bad.
- Ignorance
- From attachment and aversion – your individual happiness depends on and is controlled by the world around you
- “If only X hadn’t happened…”
- No good things or bad things, just things (examples of bad things leading to good things)
- Things, people, places, situations – none have inherent characteristics, we just think they do
- Ineffective ways of pursuing happiness, destined to fail
3. How suffering can be eliminated
- Suffering can be ended by eliminating desire
- Desire comes from selfishness
- Delusion that you exist separately from everyone else
- We are all part of a giant internal structure of existence that’s interconnected
- Ego
- Be mindful of what’s productive
4. The path to remove suffering altogether
- Get rid of your ego
- Roadmap to Nirvana - the 8-fold path, perfect it to achieve enlightenment
- Morality: Right speech, right action, right livelihood
- Meditation: Right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration
- Wisdom: Right understanding, right resolve
- Interpretations vary enormously
- Easier said than done
Buddhism
- Mental gymnastics
- No God beholden to
- Fate in own hands
- Buddha significance is example of reaching Nirvana, something to emulate
- Encouraged discourse and discussion
- Meditation and mindfulness
- Ego: A person always in your face, yammering on about “you!”, from birth to death, on and on – non-stop internal chatter.
- Try to think about one thing
- Surprising how easy to fail
- Mindfulness is about monitoring thoughts to determine if productive, eventually decrease bad
The bottom line is:
Whether you want to be stoic about life or something else. It is important to let go. And yes, there strife and suffering without a doubt. But the world never stops turning around itself. So just let go!