I've always liked David Chapman's way of describing dharma. Here's a recent example from an "AMA" session he recently held.



FYI -- David's practice is rooted solidly in the Vajrayana tradition. You can read more of his material and learn about his background here:  https://meaningness.com/about-my-sites

Like when you got confused between fatalism and determinism and banned everyone who pointed it out 

Those people were banned because they were here acting in bad faith. They were filling up someone else's log with philosophical discourse after they had been directly asked to start a new thread. It was very clear to many of us having read their posts that they were not here to participate in good faith. 

​​​​​​​It was also, the same person. 

​​​​​​​This is a small community with one very specific primary function thus it is not difficult to weed out bad actors.

With all due respect but...

While I agree that most thinking isn't very original and most people seem to be blissfully unware of that, the name of the game still seems to be creative per-mutation in The Great Samsara Show. 

I could argue that bascially everything in MCTB2 is derivative (as Daniel Ingram himself says whenever someone thanks him for the book, he learned most if it somewhere else). But is the world a better place with MCTB2 in it? I would argue that that is very much the case. Could anyone else here have come up with it? I HIGHLY doubt it. Is it a big step in clarity brought to the soup of dharma? I very much think it is. 

Remember that confidence over competence dude a few weeks ago, with his logical error riddled "No BS guide to awakening" (most of wich went completely unchallenged)? Confidence over competence often is a sign of dark personality traits. The cocksure prophet.

The fact that every thought is not self doesn't change the fact that, for example, MCTB2 is an original work in a class of its own. Not one bit. That it is a rehashing of Budda dharma doesn't change the quality of the rehashing one bit. 

All twelve note compositions are derivative. So what is Frank Zappa but a bad Beethoven. Who was completely out to lunch anyway. And did nothing but copy Bach. 
How can you not scream in pain at such self congratulatory and completely unskilled "reasoning"?

So confusing those planes, saying that every thought is a) rehashing and b) not worth it and perceived poorly because it's no self anway and c) hence, in conclusion, a bad thing from the get go... That is either some very deep teaching in the way of "I am gonna put this out and see whether those suckers pay attention" or an example of the VERY THING this man critiques. Or some big oopsy on my part in failing to see something that is beyond my meagre mental capacities. 

That on the absolute front everything is not self, etc. doesn't make the need for skillful speech obsolete. In the face of the stupidity of most dharma teachers outside their very limited areas of expertise (if that), I think there is need for skillful reasoning and philosophising as something to train in all your life - as part of the first and last training. And yes, that will all be no self and all be creative rehashing. As is any teaching, btw. So let's not teach (or do AMAs...). We run the risk of polluting the thought soup. But somehow, our good teacher deems himself above such wordly weaknesses?


Sure, don't read Bertrand Russell. Nothing new or sensible. Especially when he talks about philosophy:

"Dogmatism and skepticism are both, in a sense, absolute philosophies; one is certain of knowing, the other of not knowing.
What philosophy should dissipate is certainty, whether of knowledge or ignorance."



An AMA (of all things...) where a teacher is cocksure (of all things...) about philosophy being nothing but dead men that where WRONG ABOUT EVERTHING and completely out to lunch. The irony. 


There is a Robert Anton Wilson phrase I'm rather fond of: "Meaningless statements that look meaningful to the linguistically naive."



Again, the curious thing is that he prooves his own point despite of himself. It is super important to check whether you have anything worthwhile to say and work at that craft of trying to say something sensible (if you must say something) all your life. But it ultimately will be not self, not your thoughts, etc. Both true. But trying to beat one to death with the other is... a move indicative of a rather peculiar headpace, I feel. It very much pollutes the thought soup. 

The trick, I think, is to train for clarity of soup. And training tends to work on the relative plain, even if it's all empty on another. Wich is why that man is a teacher in the first place. Again, the irony. 

I could go on. And on. And on. Thoughts that don't make any sense. Yeah. I think I see what he means. 



"Judge not, lest ye bore the audience." - Orson Welles

Something I quote but don't take to heart, obviously. 

Thankfully "unskilful" speech and bodily action "bubble up" before their full expression and can be recognised and let go off (the speech and/or bodily) it and instead let it either pass away as an idea-body tension or even just let go as a puff of energy with a bitter-sweet aftertaste. 

Of course some reactive patters are stronger than others so not always does recognising and letting go happen "in time" and stuff "spills over" so to speak. 

Even here a conventional apology can remedy the damage caused (depending on the extent of the unskilful speech and/or bodily action). 

Ok I better stop now as I'm forgetting what this thread was about  

​​​​​​​Best wishes! 

There is this moment in Gil Fronsdal's anapansati talks that has really stayed with me ... as he explores the sensations of the body in different positions during breath mediation, he says something like this 'I like to think that as I experience this particular sensation, I am having exactly the same sensory experience the Buddha might have had'

Enjoy your soup - there's more in the kitchen! :-)

Or one can ask "what would Jesus do?" 

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I have to say first that I don't know this guy or his teachings. 

that said, the excerpt presented here is utterly 'BS', I am sorry to say. 
language and hence thought is combinatorial, meaning that even the village idiot is able to think thoughts nobody had had before him. Same for the village Sage.

The fact that there is no thinker doesn't make everyone repeat thoughts from previous generations. The "thought soup" in Socrates time is not made of the same ingredients today's thought soup is made of.

this thinking, like the thinking of many 'spiritual' teachers, denotes a total ignorance of "information theory" (not computer science).

Yes, this is obviously the case. It's so obvious, in fact, that it made me wonder just wtf Chapman is getting at since, on the surface, what that seems to be is so ridiculous as to be a waste of time. Maybe we need to look deeper into what David Chapman is writing about. I think it concerns how we discover the nature of being human and then use that discovery to manage our lives. I think he's pointing to the difference between using philosophy as one approach versus what we can discover using the dharma as another. 

Here's one place to start:  https://meaningness.substack.com/p/undoing-philosophy

I'm interested in this because it speaks to the difference between the way a conceptual focus on my experience and a more experiential focus based on a meditation practice differ, and how that difference has affected my life since adopting the latter. 

I love this! I had never heard of Chapman before but what he says in the part Chris quoted is very clearly true. He puts the case a little bluntly, but it's more fun that way. For me, it took years to see that I was not the author of my thoughts. I would see it again and again, but it wouldn't stick. Even after having major events where this was clearly seen and integrated, I would go on to see it anew yet again at a later date. There is a lot of firmware working against this way of seeing.

Thoughts are viruses that replicate in our minds. Yes, new thoughts do also originate in our minds, much as new strains of viruses originate in our bodies by mutation and recombination. But we do not author the new viruses that we breed and spread to those around us, and we likewise do not author our thoughts. As Chapman says, they happen.  

I am enjoying reading his stuff. It includes quite a bit that is basic and/or not very coherent but there are lots of good ideas (good repackaging of ideas).  What he says about the problems people have with purpose and contradictory stances is very nice. His idea of meaningness is quite similar to soulfulness Rob Burbea's Soulmaking Dharma, though I think Rob does more with it than David is trying to do. Some of David's suggestions seem to be no different from what my mother would call "muddling along." But that is not a bad thing. 

I will hold off until I have read more of this stuff before writing more. 

Hey Chris,

I am equally interested in this. Maybe from the other end of the stick so to speak.

First of all, I am very very skeptical about the people who state the obvious, then tell you it's more profound than it seems. Why on earth don't they just state the "profound" truths they are aiming at.

This is why I hate much of the sufis stuff. Although in their case I understand why they can't say what they mean directly (for fear of persecution).
But in a liberal society where no one risks persecution for his ideas, I think it's easier for everyone to say what they mean as clearly as possible.

Second, i just remain flabbergasted by how someone like you can oppose the dharma and philosophy. All the dharma IS philosophy. Even the more experiential side.

What is Zen if not the tradition that is the furthest away from intellectualism and philosophy?
Who better incarnates Zen than Dogen?
What is the system of Dogen if not pure philosophy?

I do agree with you that there is a huge part that is non-conceptual but & that is a very weighty but there has been in each and every tradition, in each and every age, a flow of words to point to that, to explain it, to teach how to understand it, etc. Etc...
I think a zen guy like Norman Fischer explains this much better than I.

As an aside, I am sure that you are aware of the "split" brain experiments by Gazzaniga and others that showed very convincingly that what one can call "non conceptual consciousness" is right brain property because that has no language centers.
He also showed that the left brain will confabulate a likely story after the fact as needed. Which is as good a warning as they come against trusting our thoughts.

Make sense?

ps. What Chapman is doing, and what you did in your post, is using thoughts (and philosophy) to denigrate thought (and philosophy).

ps2. What I was referring to in my previous post is the power of the combinatorial nature of "information". The creativity of any combinatorial system is just limitless. See how music is still producing unheard before melodies using just a few basic sounds.

Edit
I come from a culture that is very skeptical about philosophy & philosophers. Just see Al Ghazali's "tafafut al-falisfa" (The Incoherence of the Philosophers).
I don't think any other culture has produced a more well crafted "refutation" of philosophy.
Unfortunately for him, Ghazali was simply using the methods of philosophers to create a different "philosophy".

Edit  2
Al Ghazal, for those who don't know him, became a mystic after a long road full of tyrns and twists. A very fascinating person indeed. 

Edit 3:
i did skim through some of Chapman's stuff and found it exactly "philosophy" although he denies that many times. I remain totally unconvinced. Either he wants to appear "different" by claiming that his stuff is anti-philosophical or that he does philosophy without knowing it like Moliere's Mr Jourdain (qui faisait de la prose sans le savoir).

Todo --
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Yes!

As I see it, there aren't "sides" to experience. There's just experience, and that includes everything. From soup to nuts, from Western philosophy to Eastern philosophy, from the mind being a conglomeration of experiences and at the same time a conglomeration of concepts. It's all the same. This is "and", not "or." As we experience the world, we tend to reduce what's happening to concepts. But while that is always and forever part of how human minds work, we're also capable of deeply seeing that's actually what's happening - how things are put together. That deep realization is what Zen tends to focus on.  I posted that his practice has been rooted in Vajrayana - I suspect you've heard the expression "one taste?"



I think provocation can be effective at getting people to focus, read on, or investigate further.

Chris 
"I think provocation can be effective at getting people to focus, read on, or investigate further."

fair enough. 
However I am also usually wary of people who want something from me. Be it only to "read on".
My experience is that they have something to sell, and when someone has something to sell,  their incentives are no longer aligned with yours. We're talking "spirituality " here. In ordinary life everyone is selling something. 

This is why I like this place. I have nothing to sell to you and as far as I can see you have nothing to sell to me.

i am very very wary of any "soiritual" teacher who relies on selling his teachings for his living. Even if that is disguised as "dana". that also has drawn me to Daniel.
Just in this context many traditional Sufi teachers had ordinary professions and never "sold" their teachings. I very much like the exemple of "Al Attar" which means the "perfume seller".

What do you mean by "selling" in this context? I'm sure Chapman would like you to read his thought soup.

By "selling" I meant the obvious case of spiritual teachers who rely on students for their livelihood, either through paid content, courses, etc or through donations.

David Chapman doesn't seem to fail in this category although he advertises paid content in his newsletter and also is involved in Amazon affiliates program.
I couldn't square this with his claim that he sold a prosperous business as the earnings from his newsletter and affiliate program are probably just peanuts for someone who worked in AI and sold a prosperous company (possibly in the AI sector.

As for his (free) content, I see a lot of rambling that could be spewed by an AI agent.

This is a pity because I could really have appreciated him as he aligns with a lot of things I like:
He claims that his learning was mostly science and that his writing is STEM colored;
He claims using Buddhist concepts without all the folklore that usually come with that package;
He claims to be influenced by neuroscience and other brain/psy sciences.
I myself very much like all this stuff.

But I can't shake the feeling "skimming" through his material that there is more chaff than grain.

Despite all this I am intrigued enough to continue browsing.

Thank you, Chris, for bringing this to my/our attention. 

I doubt his works are the result of AI. But, on that note, Chapman wrote a book called "Better without AI" that might be worth looking into.