A little taste of some of the ideas in my new book, Why I Am Not a Buddhist: Beyond Buddhist Exceptionalism http://blog.yalebooks.com/2020/01/10/beyond-buddhist-exceptionalism/ … via @Yale University Press Blog
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Replying to @evantthompson @Yale
I like this a lot but: "Since I’m a modern Westerner who does not wish to renounce the world and become a monastic religionist, there is no way I can be a Buddhist without being a Buddhist modernist" - suggests mandatory monastic life for Buddhists!
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Replying to @crabby_smales @Yale
I don't mean to suggest that at all. I mean that I see no way right now to be a modern non-monastic Buddhist w/out being a Buddhist modernist (some monastics are Buddhist modernists, too, of course)
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Replying to @evantthompson @Yale
Felt need to cope/end suffering and unsatisfaction is not a "religious force", but a common human instinct and some lay buddhists practice the eightfold path of the suttas without any of the other forces that you mention (most are actually hindrances for a buddhist meditator)
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Indeed, but the way it's understood and channeled by Buddhism is religious. The 8fold path is a path to nirvana (a religious concept). Whether the desire to experience deep absorption is a hindrance or an aid depends on who (which Buddhist) you ask.
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Replying to @evantthompson @Yale
Do I have to say instead follower of (an interpretation of the) buddhamma instead? There are interpretations based on Nikayas+Agamas in which nibbana is not religious, is the ending of the natural forces of greed, hatred and delusion, the reality of a non grasping mind.
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Well, I argue in the book that those concepts and interpretations are religious. That's not a criticism of them; it's a criticism of how people think they are beyond or outside of religion in using them.
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