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From Access to Insight No-self or Not-self? by Thanissaro Bhikkhu One of the first stumbling blocks that Westerners often encounter when they learn about Buddhism is the teaching on anatta, often translated as no-self. This teaching is a stumbling block for two reasons. First, the idea of there being no self doesn’t fit well with […]
July 16, 2010
Reflecting on my reactions to eliron‘s post it got me thinking about how buddhism is misunderstood generally in popular culture. It always struck me how, if you go to so called ‘head shops’, or hippy shops, you will always find statues of the Buddha along with pipes to smoke weed, tie-dye, incense and other psychedelic […]
July 10, 2010
eliron, I fear I may have been too blunt and hard edged in my responses to your initial critical post. I’ll admit I threw myself in with gusto. Apologies if I was too harsh. I’m not a model Buddhist by any stretch. You left me an initial response to my lengthy counter-posts. I dealt with […]
July 4, 2010
Apologies to eliron but I ended up writing the following response to one part of his comment that he left me. I hope I’ve clarified some points in this but I apologise for jumping the gun on responding to him. Think of this as a supplemental post. Taken from eliron’s comment: In my post and […]
July 3, 2010
Continued from part 4 In conclusion: In one way there was no need to write these responses to eliron’s post, although I have enjoyed the challenge (and no, it hasn’t caused me any suffering). Based on his post and comments, eliron’s conception of Buddhism is based on things that the Buddha didn’t teach, so whatever […]
July 3, 2010
Continued from part 3 6. ‘There is no community in Buddhism, since people are nothing more than obstacles to extinguishing desire.’ In fact, ‘Buddha’s forming of a monastic community contradicts his own teachings.’ Again, I’m classing this one as a ‘misunderstanding to the point of absurdity.’ Still, I’m happy to repeat myself and as I […]
July 3, 2010
Continued from part 2 On to the next point: 3. ‘In Buddhism, there is no real compassion, as whatever you get is deserved because of karma and no-one should try to remedy it.’ I think karma often gets tangled up in many people’s minds with the concept of fate. The misunderstanding that karma is purely […]
July 3, 2010
Continued from part 1 So, into the flood, so to speak. On writing this I have left a comment on eliron’s post asking which sources he drew on for his knowledge of Buddhism. Having said that I will still proceed with this even though at this point I haven’t heard back from him. So, where […]
July 3, 2010
This blog entry by eliron caught my attention. I’ve reproduced it below and with a couple of the comments and eliron’s responses. I have then tried to draw out what appear to me to be the main themes of his argument. I’ve had to break up my response to eliron’s post into several sections as […]
Shut up and meditate 
July 26, 2010
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