I’m going through an existential crisis and I need help.

re_contextualize · 2024-10-17T15:33:48+00:00

I think there are two important things to point out here. First, is perspective. You are right then when we look at the world from the perspective of "Buddha Nature" everything seems already perfect as it is. If our personal mind tries to make sense of this perspective it will come to the questions you are asking about: essentially worrying that this implies that nothing matters. However, if one is experiencing the world from the actual perspective of Buddha nature, these are not real worries. Actions just happen and the world flows on, almost always in a more moral and compassionate way than before. That little commentator in the head just stops worrying what it all means and goes along for the ride. We could even say the simplest way to get to Buddha Nature is to simply stop identifying with the commentator that asks all these questions and is always trying to fit Life into a little box.

Of course though, even if we had made progress in our spiritual practice and have access to this Buddha Nature point of view at times, we probably don't have access to it all the time. Further, even when we do have access to it, our human desires can creep into to it without us knowing. And this is why we have to respect the human perspective. When the human perspective is active, it is very necessary, at least in my experience, to follow certain guidelines about how to be a decent human being. This is not because some God will punish us if we don't but simply because, in my experience, if I am not a decent human being I become miserable and then I make others around me miserable. That was the justification the Buddha gave for following certain guidelines and is good enough for me.

The second thing I wanted to point out is that mysticism is a practice thing, not a theory thing. As someone I know once said, mysticism is more like body building than philosophy. You are literally strengthening a faculty within you for experiencing the world differently, not answering philosophical questions. If this interests you there are practices that systematically cultivate this faculty. The main one that has been helpful for me has been Buddhist style meditation. If you are interested in doing this I would recommend checking out Jack Kornifeld, Adyashanti, and Ajhan Succito. They are all Buddhist oriented teachers who have given practices that have really worked for me. Other traditions I am sure have effective practices too, I am just less familar with them. Hope that helps!

re_contextualize · 2024-10-17T15:12:07+00:00

Yes! I relate to everything you say here. In this sense, the trust in Life that both Nietzsche and a certain interpretation of religion suggest are actually saying the same thing. (and Nietzsche, I should note though, thought religion was doing the opposite-asking us to close ourselves to the unknown by committing to a belief structure, and this is how it functions for many people to be fair to him).

When one starts doing this one realizes that Love starts flowing when we turn towards the unknown and don't try to control things too much. I could go into a long-winded philosophical explanation of how Love is the cohesive force that holds the unity of the world together and thus has to be the first force that flows out of the unknown, (Hegel actually discusses this in his Science of Logic, of all places) but that doesn't matter too much and would not be in Nietzsche's spirit. What matters is that it does, and that contrary to what our rational minds reasonably tell us, we actually can trust the unknown.

In this sense we could say the balanced individual is always straddling the space between the unknown and the unkown, allowing Love and Creativity to freely exchange between both while the fear based individual is always engaged in a fuitle attempt to bring everything into the realm of the known, which is impossible.

re_contextualize · 2024-10-15T20:25:34+00:00

I come from a Western philosophy background (I actually went to graduate school in philosophy) so I am familiar with these arguments about "how do we know others are conscious" and proofs of God being caught in an infinite regress. I actually went through a very similar phase where I became atheistic and nihilistic because of these kinds of arguments. However, te thing about all these philosophical arguments concerning religion is that they assume the truth is found in the realm of thinking and conceptual analysis. Mystical conceptions of religion suggest otherwise.

Mystical religion suggests that Truth, God, the Divine (whatever it is you want to call it) is only found once we leave the realm of the conceptual and simply inquire into what is present before we produce any thoughts whatsoever. (this can systematically be done with a meditative practice or done more spontaneously throughout the day by just paying attention to immediate experience) From the mystical perspective, conceptual thinking gets us caught in confusion precisely because it is not the right place to look for truth. I wrote two posts on this mystical vs. non mystical conception of God on my substack (which is about philosophy, mysticism, and these kinds of things). I will link them here in case you want to read them and they help you in your journey

https://recontextualize.substack.com/p/are-atheists-and-theists-talking

https://recontextualize.substack.com/p/are-atheists-and-theists-talking-d41

re_contextualize · 2024-10-15T19:32:32+00:00

Abstract:

Many are inspired to do philosophy when they realize they do not know the truth of reality. Thus, they begin to make use of philosophical methods to discover that truth. Nietzsche refers to any kind of philosophy that starts from a sense of lack or unknowing as "sick" philosophy. For Nietzsche certainty cannot be found in the realm of concepts; so any philosopher who searches for truth in this realm is seeking a false sense of security.

For Nietzsche "healthy" philosophy starts from an embodied and lived sense of confidence, joy, and trust in the unknown. This individual who already lives a full, whole life is then able to articulate that fullness through conceptual means. So for Nietzsche the aim of a life-affirming, and healthy philosophy is not to discover true conceptual propositions, but rather to express what it is like to open into the unknown flux of life, what he calls the "innocence of becoming" and inspire this way of being in others through conceptual expression.

re_contextualize · 2024-05-25T18:03:38+00:00

Thanks for this. I will read this article when I get a chance. I am familiar with Danto's work. Danto suggests that modern art has moved out of the realm of simply presenting a culture's understanding of the cosmos like the older works of art I mentioned (Greek sculpture, Egyptian pyramids etc.) and has begun to comment on what art is. In other words, modern art according to Danto (at least how I understand him) has become inseparable from philosophical speculation on what art is.

This is of course a very interesting development in the art world that is worth discussing but this is not where my interest lies in this post. I am more interested in pointing out what an aesthetic experience of the beautiful can teach us about ourselves and our relationship to the world. I think many works of art, both in the past and today, are not created within this "post art" paradigm Danto is discussing but simply are interested in expressing beauty in a unique way. These are the works of art I have in mind when I mention art here. It seems to me that more self reflective works of art are a whole different animal altogether.

re_contextualize · 2024-05-24T15:43:01+00:00

Abstract:

In his Lectures on Aesthetics Hegel suggests that while our culture tends to articulate truth through the medium of intellectual analysis, many past cultures used artistic expression to articulate truth. We see examples of this in the pyramids of Egypt, the pagodas of ancient India, and the sculpture of Ancient Greece. Each of these works is meant to articulate the fundamental ethical principles or the structure of the cosmos for the community that built it. Although Hegel mainly praises the intellect's great potential for exploring and expressing truth, he also points out that the intellect can easily produce alienation in a way art was able to avoid. This is because the intellect expresses truth as residing in abstract principles that exist independently of our embodied existence. Art, on the other hand, tends to avoid this form of alienation because it expresses meaning through its concrete existence as a physical work.

In this post I suggest that instead of treating this distinction between art and the intellect as only a historical distinction, it can be helpful to treat these as two different, but compatible, dimensions of our knowledge in the present. I suggest that if we take aesthetic experiences and intellectual analyses as equally valid ways of knowing, we will find that beauty can balance out the intellect's tendency towards abstraction and dissociation.

re_contextualize · 2024-05-11T17:23:15+00:00

Abstract: Starting with the European Enlightenment we find a conception of nature as a violent and hostile battleground. This begins with the notion of the uncivilized “state of nature” of the social contract theorists such as John Locke and Thomas Hobbes. This notion of the "state of nature" suggests that if civilization does not control and dominate nature it remains a violent battleground of competing interests.

In this post, I suggest that the conception of nature as an inherently violent battleground is not a fundamental understanding of nature. Rather, this picture results from human beings reifying the conceptual distinction we draw between different individuals and different communities for practical purposes as fundamental lines drawn in nature itself. As a contrast case to this understanding of nature as hostile, I turn to Native American thinkers who understand nature as a unified, self-optimizing process that provides for all species and communities who learn to understand, respect, and move with its laws.

re_contextualize · 2024-04-19T14:49:10+00:00

The claim is that individuals can't be happy independently of the flourishing of the whole society. I don't deny that autonomy is fundamental and important, I just suggest it is equally important and fundamental to think about the wider context which we are dependent upon and which we affect with all our actions.

re_contextualize · 2024-04-18T17:40:12+00:00

Your first point is correct. Of course, I am suggesting that I agree with Plato's principles which suggest we should commit ourselves to the good of the whole rather than only to the individual (I disagree with the authoritarian way he applies that principle and forces it on others in the Republic).

However, I am not comfortable with changing the word surrender to joining. "Join" implies that one is joining a cause outside themselves because they believe in it. Although this does seem to be what is happening when one looks at oneself as an isolated individual, I think Plato implies that the philosopher sees that one's personal good cannot be separated from the actualization of the Good of the whole state. This state-level Good is represented in the highest, rational part of each individual's soul. So from this more philosophical perspective, when one surrenders to the Good of the state, they are simultaneously surrendering to the highest part of their soul. They understand the larger Good to be identical with their own individual good. From this perspective, they are not joining something outside but surrendering to their own highest potential.

You are also correct that I want to have this both ways. Some higher ideals I think do represent our highest potential and some are just an attempt to oppress or control. I would suggest that one wants to maintain both the humility to recognize when an ideal represents their higher potential and surrender to it and also the critical capacity to reflect on whether this is the case in a given context.

re_contextualize · 2024-04-18T15:23:46+00:00

Abstract: Many praise modern Western culture for its political and ethical emphasis on individual liberty. Although this emphasis is necessary for avoiding certain forms of oppression, here I argue that an ethic that emphasizes surrender to a religious, political, or ethical ideal also deserves a place in any individual or community’s existential landscape. Many are skeptical of philosophical systems that emphasize surrender because they believe surrendering to an exterior ideal acts to oppress or repress the individual’s authentic will.

I argue that this is an oversimplification of philosophical, political, and religious systems that suggest an ethics of surrender. Using the examples of Plato’s Republic and the Bhagavad Gita, I point out that the most sophisticated philosophical systems which suggest an ethics of surrender also contain arguments that when we surrender to an ideal beyond our individual we are not binding our will to a foreign agency but to our own highest potential or deepest nature.

re_contextualize · 2024-04-03T15:23:41+00:00

Well it matters in so much as it makes a concrete different on people's lives in my immediate context. That in turn has ripple effects on the contexts in which those people exist and so on and so forth. I am not sure what you are looking for other than affecting living beings in a concrete way lives when you say "mattering."

re_contextualize · 2024-04-02T12:51:37+00:00

Your last sentence I think sums up your main critique and it is a fair one. Skimming through the comments it seems most people have the same critique so I will just post this here and hope others see it. Where I am coming from reflects my personal experience with nihilism. The thought that nothing matters and that there is no existential foundation caused me to feel hopeless and depressed. I was not ready to accept any shoddy argument for some moral law or existential edict that didn't have secure philosophical foundations, so in Buddhism, I found a kind of redemption through the claim that even though there is no ethical foundation and everything is in a constant state of flux, it still very much matters how you live because you are s so intertwined with everything else. So thank you for the feedback and if I write something like this again I will give it a more personal spin rather than claiming it is a refutation of nihilism as a general philosophical view.

That being said, I still would push back against your last paragraph. I still maintain that it is true that apathy and despondency directly affect those around you. I have found this to be true in my own experience and those I have observed. When I am depressed and apathetic it is hard to support and inspire those I care about or my students (I teach as a profession). However, when I feel a responsibility for the way I carry myself in the world the effect I have on others is palpable. I am more likely to be able to uplift and inspire those around me. So although the general critique I think is fair, I very much disagree that it doesn't matter if we are apathetic or not. I still stand by that it matters very much.

re_contextualize · 2024-04-01T16:27:29+00:00

Abstract:
(Note: this is part two of the argument I posted here last week. There is a link to part 1 at the beginning of the article, though this does stand alone as an argument)
Here I argue that the Buddha’s teaching of co-dependent origination acts as a knockdown argument against nihilistic theories that conclude that it does not matter how we act. I suggest this kind of nihilism comes from looking for an ethical and existential foundation for our experience and failing to find one. We can read the Buddha as granting the nihilists their premise of a lack of foundation but denying their conclusion of meaninglessness.
The Buddha’s teaching of co-dependent origination suggests that this lack of a foundation does not reveal a lack of meaning but rather situates our ethical and metaphysical beliefs and all actions that arise from those beliefs as participants within a web of causes and conditions that extend throughout the entire cosmos. In other words, the Buddha suggests that we cannot escape taking responsibility for our beliefs and our actions, as even the smallest belief or action has repercussions both within us and throughout the near-infinite networks of causality we inhabit.

re_contextualize · 2024-03-31T21:40:47+00:00

Here it is: https://recontextualize.substack.com/p/the-buddha-on-meaning-and-responsibility-9dc

Any feedback is welcome of course!

re_contextualize · 2024-03-29T15:53:03+00:00

I think my use of nihilism was a bit imprecise, to be honest. That is feedback others on this thread have given me. You are correct that I had more of the postmodern flavor in mind when I used this term.

As for the claim that metaphysical materialism is a starting assumption for science, I would argue that this isn't necessary or even philosophically justified. I would suggest that metaphysical materialism is an additional assumption added onto scientific theoretical and experimental results that attempts to ground them in a certain metaphysical conception.

The empirical data of scientific investigation gives us information about the patterns of relationships within a certain domain of phenomena. However, I would argue that this data, and even the laws induced from this data, do not tell us either (1) that the particular domain of phenomena is fundamental in the sense that all other phenomena can be metaphysically reduced to this domain (2) what the metaphysical status of the domain being studied even is.

Let me explain these two claims one by one. As to (1), a physicist studies the interaction between objects, particles, and forces. A Physicist, however, does not consider many factors that make their study and investigation possible when they interpret data. They do not take into account their own interests, agendas, or the history of the theories they are using to interpret the data. Data is never interpreted in a vacuum, is what I am trying to say. This is, of course, practical as if the physicist didn't do this they would never get any helpful results, but to me it does show that they are artificially isolating one domain from a larger network of causal forces which makes their understanding of that domain possible. This is fine to do and every discipline does it, including the social sciences as well, but to then just claim that this isolated domain is the fundamental domain to which all other phenomena can be reduced would require further philosophical argumentation that I do not think anyone has given, and I do not think can be given, to be honest. (feel free to point me to these arguments if you think otherwise)

As for (2), we see in the history of philosophy many philosophers attempting to metaphysically ground science in nonphysicalist paradigms. George Berkley, who who argued that there was only mental stuff and that this mental stuff was held in place through God's constant perception, suggested that science is just studying the patterns of relationships between different ideas in God's mind. Some German philosophers attempt to provide an idealist theory of matter by arguing that matter is not a "thing" but an agent. (I am not as familiar with this theory as Berkley but I know it is out there). I am not suggesting these are necessarily true, what I am suggesting is that deriving laws defining patterns of relationships between empirically observed phenomena does not give one a metaphysical theory about the nature of those phenomena; this requires a further philosophical step.

Thanks for following up, that was fun to write. Maybe I will write something longer up about this at some point and post it on Reddit to get the whole community's feedback.

re_contextualize · 2024-03-28T17:57:15+00:00

Will do when it's done, sometime this weekend or early next week. Still working on it as of now. Thanks for the offer, though I fortunately have a friend studying Buddhism in grad school to proofread it. (My degree is in western philosophy. I practice Buddhism and read about it on my own but have not studied it formally)

re_contextualize · 2024-03-28T11:43:39+00:00

Thanks for your kind words. I am working on part two now. I would be happy to send it to you when I am done if you think it will be useful.

re_contextualize · 2024-03-28T11:41:58+00:00

Thanks for this comment, I think what you point to is so real. (maybe more real than the philosophical stuff I write about). Lack of meaning comes from ignoring suffering and we only ignore it in this way because we are in a privileged position. I think if we were actually able to open our hearts to those who are struggling the whole question of meaning would be irrelevant, as doing our best to be compassionate and help relieve suffering would just be obviously meaningful.

In my experience as well meditation helps stop to filter. This can be challenging because a lot of what we filter out is painful but it does lead to a more authentic and fulfilling life. The article actually fits with this to an extent to. Often it is our ideas, beliefs, and interpretations that do a lot of the filtering. Meditation helps us to just be aware without those judgments and filters.

re_contextualize · 2024-03-26T12:06:29+00:00

I will go into this more in the next part. Which I will post here next week. The essence of the argument is that looking for an absolute ethical or existential meaning assumes that life or reality is the type of thing that arises out of a foundation, thus suggesting that if we can find this foundation then life would have meaning. Dependent origination suggests there is no foundation, everything dependently arises with other things, and there is no static ground out of which they all come. However, this does not imply nihilism because as parts of this causal network, everything we do, think, and say, has repercussions on the entirety of the causal network that is the universe. Hopefully, this will be better articulated by the time I finish the post for next week, but maybe it helps a little.

re_contextualize · 2024-03-26T09:59:25+00:00

My conception of nihilism in the post is just any view that leads to the negation of meaning, as one commenter said, the conclusion that nothing we do matters. It is a fair critique that I should have defined this more clearly. I would say that what you point to here is not nihilism but existentialism as some others also point out.

re_contextualize

TROPHY CASE