Identity, Consciousness, Buddhism | Mistaking Ourselves Blog

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Feb 23
6 min

Emptiness

Reducing the extent to which we suffer depends upon lessening feelings of anguish and unfulfilled desire. These are feelings which arise...

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Jan 20
6 min

Doing and Non-doing

As is well known, Buddhism arrived in China, probably in the first century CE, and evolved gradually into the tradition that now we term...

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Dec 21, 2020
5 min

Sleeping, Dreaming, Waking and Awakening

When we are in a state of deep sleep we are not aware of anything. For most, if not all, of us we are only aware that we have ‘slept...

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Nov 25, 2020
6 min

You and Me

Let’s try a thought experiment. I am here and you are there. As it happens, I am in the UK and you, perhaps, are in the USA or in India,...

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Nov 8, 2020
5 min

Anxiety and Covid-19

At the present moment in late 2020 the presence of Covid is making us anxious about our futures, fearful for the lives of those we love...

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Oct 27, 2020
7 min

Beyond Belief

A question often asked is whether Buddhism is a religion or whether one can practice its methods in the absence of any belief in...

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Oct 6, 2020
7 min

Total Attention

I want to pursue further the distinction between thought and our wider intelligence by looking at what Jiddhu Krishnamurti (K) called...

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Sep 28, 2020
8 min

What Lies Beyond Thought?

‘But before you think about something which you do not know, you must find out what thinking is, must you not?’ -Jiddhu Krishnamurti We...

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Sep 15, 2020
5 min

Thinking

In the previous post we looked at how primitive experience, and in particular sensation and perception, arose during the course of our...

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Aug 31, 2020
6 min

Sensation, Perception and Selfhood

We looked in the previous post at how the Buddhist analysis describes the arising of ignorance, the way that we mistake ourselves for a...

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Aug 24, 2020
4 min

Ignorance

Buddhism emphasises how everything and every experience is dependent on other things and on other experiences. This is the idea of...

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Jul 27, 2020
7 min

Child and Adult Selves

We have argued previously that from the Buddhist perspective the self-view is pervasive but ultimately illusory. Meditation helps us to...

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Jul 18, 2020
7 min

Universal Constructors

The apparent link between biological and cultural evolution, as set out in the previous post, was identified by the philosopher Karl...

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Jul 13, 2020
7 min

Solving Problems: Identity and Intelligence

I believe that determining our collective identity can assist us to find solutions to our most pressing problems- environmental, social,...

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Jul 5, 2020
6 min

The Transparent View

We saw in a previous post how the view that we have of the world and of our self, the outer and the inner view, is transparent. We...

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Jun 27, 2020
7 min

Three Worlds

The debate about whether consciousness is reflexive, as discussed in last week’s post, is related to the fact that we experience an inner...

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Jun 19, 2020
8 min

Self, Self-Consciousness and Presence

The Buddhist contribution to the role of selfhood in our lives appears originally to have been a purely pragmatic one. The historical...

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Jun 12, 2020
6 min

Many Voices: No Selves

Identity is an absorbing human problem, one that seems to fascinate us now more than ever. In the 1950s, thirty-seven English language...

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Jun 7, 2020
7 min

Why Buddhism is True

I want to demonstrate how ideas based on a Buddhist approach to contentment and fulfilment are already a powerful force in contemporary...

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Jun 1, 2020
7 min

No Self, No Subject, No Suffering?

In previous posts we began with the notion of identity and how what appears to be most intimate is our self. It is difficult to evade or...

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