It should explain which assumptions build up our default understanding of reality, how those assumptions are wrong, and point out aspects from our experience whose repeated observation will update those assumptions, explaining how this causes psychological change in meditator.
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Also explain how impermanence, no-self and unsatisfactoriness are all interrelated and connected with each other in a way that your average Western science-minded, allergic-to-mysticism reader can understand. Ideally dependent origination too.
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I'm writing something, but feel like I'm mostly building it from scratch. Surely there must be existing attempts to do this, by people further along the path of insight than I am? Pointers welcome.
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Replying to @xuenay
I think this is a highly worthwhile project. However… I think that if you take the framework seriously enough to think it through carefully enough to explain it accurately, you will discover that it is wrong. That is probably why there is no good explanation available!
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Replying to @Meaningness
Interesting. Want to say more on that, or would it take a book? :-)
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Replying to @xuenay
The framework is called Abhidharma. Studying Abhidharma was the main activity of elite Theravadin monks before they reinvented meditation. Their theories of meditation came out of trying to make that framework functional instead of dogmatic. 1/
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Replying to @Meaningness @xuenay
Abhidharma is concerned with foundational philosophical questions of metaphysics, cosmology, ethics, and psychology. It is not *the* Buddhist theory of those things. It is *a* Buddhist theory. It comes from, roughly speaking, the second major period of scriptural innovation. 2/
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Replying to @Meaningness @xuenay
The first period generated the Hinayana sutras; Abhidharma was second; Mahayana was third; Tantra fourth. (Simplifying history a bit.) Each of these had quite different, sharply contradicting accounts of mind, enlightenment, metaphysics, etc. 3/
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Replying to @Meaningness @xuenay
Mahayana and especially Tantra rejected the Abhidharma theories, for good reasons. They don’t work. They have irresolvable internal contradictions, as well as contradicting evidence and experience. 4/
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Replying to @Meaningness @xuenay
The kings of Sri Lanka—which was the only Theravdin country until a few centuries ago—banned Mahayana and especially Tantra because they tended to make subjects resist royal rule. 5/
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Meditation was also politically inconvenient, and monastic Buddhism was mostly reduced to memorizing the Abhidharma texts. When Theravadins tried to figure out how to meditate again, around 1900, Abhidharma was their only politically-acceptable source. 6/
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Replying to @Meaningness @xuenay
The currently-most-popular meditation theories in the West derive mainly from Mahasi Sayadaw’s ideas, which explicitly synthesized Abhidharma with modern (=Western) psychology & philosophy. 7/https://vividness.live/2011/07/07/theravada-reinvents-meditation/ …
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Replying to @Meaningness @xuenay
This half-baked mash-up is given as Transcendent Eternal Truth That Must Not Be Questioned by most Western Buddhist teachers. I think it’s pervasively mistaken and often harmful. 8/
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