«…many modern writers following Kant and earlier usage introduced by Berkeley and muddied (though in constructive ways) by Hume — urge that a central task of philosophy is to "answer the skeptic": to show, presumably, that what the skeptic denies to be possible is in fact not only possible, but actual. To adopt a later medical metaphor, this endeavor strikes me as a form of philosophical resistance in the psychoanalytic sense, a consequence of the very disease of which the skeptic intends to cure philosophers. It is more appropriate, I will argue, not to resist skeptical arguments, but to attend carefully to them. In particular, I will argue that resistance to skepticism rests on a confusion of skepticism with one of its extreme targets — typically what I follow the Buddhist skeptics in calling "nihilism." Such a confusion mistakes the point of skeptical arguments, the conclusions of the critical portions of the skeptical enterprise, and, most importantly, the skeptical solutions[…]»

— Jay L. Garfield. Epoche and Śūnyatā: Skepticism East and West

«So if we look at the "big picture" and attempt to create an overarching goal for psychoanalysis, what would that be? My answer to this question is born out of my own personal analysis, and the most successful cases I have treated. Patients ask me how analysis will change them, if all goes well. Will they be released from the depression that has haunted them their whole lives? Can they rid themselves of self-doubt, negative thinking, or wanting approval? I always say no. I tell them that their basic personality will not change. I tell them that no matter how much better they get, under duress, the old fears, bad habits, and negative attitudes will return.

But I also explain the value of self-awareness, insight and integration. I tell them they can be much better off than they are now through a series of small, yet extremely meaningful, modifications. I tell them it is all a matter of degree, and that the difference between being suicidal and not being suicidal, between having some idea of why you are experiencing a particular emotion versus being completely in the dark, between being able to resolve conflicts with co-workers versus getting fired repeatedly—that these cumulative changes can make for an entirely different life without having to create an entirely different person.

Most of all, I tell my patients that the goal of analysis is for them to know themselves and trust their own intuition and experience. I find that most pathology ends up being expressed through denying one's own perceptions, needs, and feelings. Getting better, regardless of diagnosis, centers on helping patients to listen to their gut reactions and learn to follow them in a constructive way.

[…]

Any notion of trusting one's intuition and feelings must rest on this balance between internal and external reality. I can honestly say that I have never treated anyone who did not know the "truth" about themselves and the people closest to them, no matter what mental gymnastics they might go through to deny or split off that truth.»

— Karen Maroda. Seduction, Surrender & Transformation: Emotional Engagement in the Analytic Process

«In Heidegger also there is no subject, but there is Dasein, the “being-there,” or “being-here,” according to the translation of the German term regularly employed by Heidegger—since his early masterpiece Being and Time (1927)—in place of the traditional term for “subject.” Dasein, however, as Heidegger clarifies, is always and immediately In-der-Welt-Sein: “being- in-the-world.” For Heidegger “always” or “immediately” do not mean “at a second moment in time,” as when subject encounters the world or something in the world is perceived by a subject. On the contrary, what he means is that our being-in-the world is still the world: it is a “fold” of the world and not something different from it. In other words, the being-in-the world is the world folding on itself and revealing itself as other than itself and, at the same time, as nothing other than itself.

[…]

The profound meaning of Heidegger’s view is that experience is not an arrow going from the subject to the object or from the object to the subject, but is rather like an open space stretching between subject and object, a third space of which the subject and the object are the effects, or, worse, the abstractions. There is a world, and there is a being-in-the-world, precisely because there is a dense network of practices, occupations, gestures, and affections in which we are always immersed unknowingly and unintentionally, or at least independently of a previous awareness or decision.»

— Federico Leoni. Time
(in G. Stanghellini et al. (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Phenomenological Psychopathology)

«Buddha’s first attempt to teach was a complete failure. On his way to Gaya, he passed an acquaintance, Upaka, a Jain, who immediately noticed a change in his friend. “How peaceful you look! How alert!” he exclaimed. “You are so serene! Your complexion is clear, your eyes are bright! Who is your Teacher? and whose dhamma are you following these days?” It was a perfect opening. The Buddha explained that he had no teacher and belonged to no sangha. As yet, there was nobody like him in the world, because he had become an Arahant, an “accomplished one” who had won through to the supreme enlightenment. “What!” Upaka cried incredulously. “Surely you are not saying that you are a Buddha, a Jina, a Spiritual Victor, the Holy One for whom we are all waiting?” Yes, the Buddha replied. He had conquered all craving and could indeed be called a Jina. Upaka looked at him skeptically and shook his head: “Dream on, friend,” he said. “I’m going this way.” Abruptly, he turned off the main road into a side track, refusing the direct route to Nibbana.»

— Karen Armstrong. Buddha

«A young mother, distraught with grief, brought her dead infant to the Buddha. Knowing of his great powers, she begged him to bring her child back to life. He promised to do so, saying that he only required a single mustard seed from a household that had known no suffering. The woman set out from door to door, asking for a mustard seed and hearing from each fam­ily a different tale of sorrow. She slowly understood the universality of suffering, laid her child to rest, and became a nun, eventually achieving nirvāṇa.»

— Donald S. Lopez Jr. The Story of Buddhism

Никакие поверхностные обыденные дела, связанные с практическими надобностями, ценностно не сравнятся с вещами бесполезными и потому по-настоящему важными: декламацией стихов, аскезой и диониссийством, хождением по лесу, чтением трактатов и экзистенциальным исследованием ландшафтов.

Только вот любые сакральные практики, паломничества, интеллектуальные экзерсисы и посещения болот тоже оборачиваются пустыми формами, как только начинаешь думать, что в них и есть смысл. Потребление впечатлений и переживаний, духовных опытов и состояний сознания оказывается на одной доске с потреблением услуг и вещей. Катарсис души — «безвредная радость» по Аристотелю — сводится к аффективной разрядке в эстетическом.

Смысл, в конечном счете, брезжит в слепом пятне, в пронизывающем ощущении «не то!», в ускользающем ужасе, в том мгновении, когда, засыпая, вздрагиваешь и падаешь в собственной постели, и екает сердце, перехватывает дыхание, как от удара. И вот уже ты проснулся, восстановил равновесие, избыл и объяснил пережитое, и все в порядке. Но нет.

«This is your periodic reminder that “organisms enjoy using their faculties well” explains more about motivation than “brains are cued to release dopamine”.

“Dopamine hit” stands in for a Hume + neurobabble model of pleasure and happiness. On this model you think about these things mechanically and hydrolically, in terms of hormetically optimal dosage, in a reductionistic and atomized way.

“Using faculties well” stands in for an Aristotelian model of happiness and pleasure. On this model you think about positive affect as interwoven with activity, the exercise of one’s powers, which brings in the complexity of human thought, action, and life in a more holistic way.

On the dopamine model, you wonder about your affect level like it’s a progress bar and think about things you can do to increase it in a quasi-pharmaceutical way. You optimize for good feelings and low stress, and worry about addiction.

On the faculty model, you think about your activities and how they add up and work together. You optimize for well-being and happiness, and worry about your narrative arc.

About 90% of the time people refer to a dopamine hit or their dopamine levels, jokingly or otherwise, I think they would be better served thinking about the relevant activities in a semantically thicker way.

The human condition not the mammalian brain, layers of meaning not levels of neurotransmitter, unresolved tension and insecurities not imbalance in cortisol or your limbic system, joy in good work not dopamine hits, sacred ecstasy not oxytocin and endorphins, fun not chemicals.

Of course the brain is real and there’s a yes-and integrative story to be told about these things but that is not how they are deployed most of the time. They serve as reductionistic blockers of meaning, of conceptual understanding of some affectively salient slice of your life.»

— Matt Bateman

«Certainly the most extreme form of devotion to the Lotus [Sūtra] derived from the twenty-third chapter in which a bodhisattva named Bhaiṣajyarāja ("Medicine King") in a previous life decided to express his dedication to a buddha by transforming himself into a flame. In order to do this, he ingested all manner of oils and fra­grances for twelve hundred years. He then coated his body with oil, donned a jeweled cloak soaked in oil, and set himself ablaze, creat­ing a light that illumined the universe for twelve hundred years. Reborn in the presence of the buddha he had so honored, he was entrusted with the task of cremating the buddha upon his death, collecting his relics, and erecting stūpas. Having completed this task, he immolated his forearm in offering. His deed was praised by the Buddha, who remarked that burning even a finger or a toe as an offering to a stūpa accrues greater merit than offering all that is pre­cious in the universe.

Although there is little evidence to suggest that such a practice was emulated in India, it was in China, where cases of self-immolation have been documented into the twentieth cen­tury. Stories are told of monks and nuns who wrap themselves in waxed cloth and then set themselves alight, chanting the twenty­ third chapter of the Lotus Sūtra until their voices fall silent. A less extreme and far more common practice was the burning of fingers or the joints of fingers. The finger (or joint) would be anaesthetized by tying a string very tightly below the portion to be burned, in order to cut off the circulation. The finger would next be wrapped in pine resin and sandalwood and then set ablaze, as the monk (and those who attended him) chanted. Here, the Lotus Sūtra, which elsewhere explains that the Buddha does not always mean what he says, seems to have been taken quite literally.»

— Donald S. Lopez Jr. The Story of Buddhism.

«The status of monkhood was considered sufficiently auspicious for there to develop in Japan a tradition of posthumous ordination. As in the standard ordination ceremony, each precept was recited and the person was asked three times whether he or she intended to keep it. The fact that the deceased remained silent was interpreted in the Zen sect (which administered most funerals) as a sign of Zen insight. After the precepts had been administered, the deceased was presented with the possessions of a Buddhist monk or nun: a robe and a bowl. In addition, a kechimyaku (lineage certifi­cate) was prepared, listing the deceased at the end of a long line of disciples, traced back over the generations to the Buddha himself. The name of the deceased, however, was a new Buddhist name. The degree of esteem of the monastic name so bestowed-an esteem measured by the number of characters and the number of strokes required to write each character-was (and continues to be) often related to the amount of money offered by the family. In modern funerals, more than half of the funeral fee paid to the temple can be for the Buddhist name. With the deceased now a monk or nun, a monastic funeral would be performed, with the deceased dressed in robes with head shaved. The kechimyaku would be placed inside the coffin with the body.»

— Donald S. Lopez Jr. The Story of Buddhism.

«The rule forbidding sexual intercourse was established not after a monk surrendered to lust but when a monk who had left his parents and his wife to join the sangha honored his mother's request to produce an heir to inherit the family's wealth. The monk's brief but suc­cessful return to the ways of a householder was condemned by the Buddha, who told him it would have been better for him to have inserted his penis into the mouth of a poisonous snake than to have placed it in the vagina of a woman.

[…]

For monks, the penetration of any orifice — of a male, female, ani­mal, or spirit — with the penis even to the depth of a mustard seed, whether one is the active or passive party, entails expulsion from the order. A monk may also not penetrate any of his own orifices. This rule was made to discourage two remarkable monks, one of whom was capable of auto-fellatio and another who performed auto­ sodomy.»

— Donald S. Lopez Jr. The Story of Buddhism.