"The goal of the fourfold task, I would argue, is to lead an integrated life.

An integrated life is the outcome of having embraced the suffering world, let go of reactivity and beheld reactivity's ceasing. From this still and empty space one then responds with intuitions, thoughts, intentions, words and acts that are not determined by reactivity.

The moment in which reactivity ceases is also the moment that allows a "complete view" (the first branch of the path) to emerge." 

After Buddhism: Rethinking the Dharma for a secular age 

"Mara, the personification of reactivity, is conquered not by eliminating every last reaction from one's mind but by finding a way to become impervious to his attacks. We acquire freedom from reactivity yet without the reactivity ceasing to occur. If we observe these impulses and do not feed them, they will die down over time and diminish in frequency.

Gotama continued to be subject to Mara's attacks even after his awakening. As long as we are embodied in flesh, nerves and blood, reactivity will be part and parcel of what it entails to be human." 

After Buddhism: Rethinking the Dharma for a secular age 

"I see Gotama's vision to be primarily concerned with these fundamentals:

An understanding of conditionality as the context for
A fourfold task:

to comprehend suffering,
to let go of the arising of reactivity,
to behold the ceasing of reactivity, and
cultivate an eightfold path that is grounded in the perspective of

Mindful awareness and leads one to become
Self-reliant in the practice of the dharma." 

After Buddhism: Rethinking the Dharma for a secular age 

"A secular approach to Buddhism is thus concerned with how the dharma can enable humans and other living beings to flourish in this biosphere, not in a hypothetical afterlife. Rather than emphasizing personal enlightenment and liberation, it is grounded in a deeply felt concern and compassion for the suffering of all those with whom we share this earth.

The purpose of the Buddha's teaching is not to resolve doubts about the nature of reality by providing answers to such conundrums but to offer a practice that will remove the arrow of reactivity, thereby restoring practitioners' health and enabling them to flourish here on earth.

Such a practice is concerned with finding an authentic and autonomous response to the questions that life poses rather than confirming any doctrinal article of faith." 

After Buddhism: Rethinking the Dharma for a secular age 

"Emptiness is first and foremost a condition in which we dwell, abide and live.

Emptiness thus seems to be a perspective, a sensibility, a way of being in this poignant, contingent world.

Rather than being the negation of self, emptiness discloses the dignity of a person who has realized what it means to be fully human.

Such emptiness is far from being an ultimate truth that needs to be understood through logical inference and then directly realized in a state of nonconceptual meditation. It is a sensibility in which one dwells, not a privileged epistemological object that, through knowing, one gains a cognitive enlightenment.

To dwell in emptiness means to inhabit fully the embodied space of one's sensory experience, but in a way that is no longer determined by one's habitual reactivity. To dwell in such emptiness does not mean that one will no longer suffer. As long as one has a body and senses, one will be "prone to the anxiety" that comes with being a conscious, feeling creature made of flesh, bones and blood.

For Gotama, the point is not to understand emptiness but to dwell in it. To dwell in emptiness brings us firmly down to earth and back to our bodies. It is a way of enabling us to open our eyes and see ordinary things as though for the first time. As the Buddha instructed his student Bahiya, to live in such a way means that "in the seen, there will be only the seen; in the heard, only the heard; in the sensed only the sensed; in that of which I am conscious, only that of which I am conscious.

How, in the course of Buddhist history, did the concept of emptiness evolve from a way of dwelling on earth unconditioned by reactivity into an ultimate truth to be directly cognized in a nonconceptual state of meditation?" 

After Buddhism: Rethinking the Dharma for a secular age 

"We are creatures who react as we come into contact with the world through our senses.

Such reactions are entirely natural. They are neither good nor bad. Strictly speaking, they are not even "ours". They are simply what happens when an organism interacts with its environment. They are what arises.

The person who lets go of reactivity does not shun involvement with the world but moves nimbly and lightly through it.

Gotama recognized that human beings spend an inordinate amount of time absorbed in the amplifications and proliferations of reactivity.

Letting go of reactivity is a consequence of comprehending reactivity.

The practitioner sees the tricksterish wiles of reactivity for what they are: the seductive, infantile play of an organism that is primarily - and, for the most part, redundantly - preoccupied with its biological survival.

Nirvana [is] to be understood in one of two senses: either as the ceasing of reactivity or as freedom and independence from reactivity.

To behold and thus become aware of nirvana means consciously to affirm and valorize those moments when you see for yourself that you are free to think, speak and act in ways that are not determined by reactivity.

Nirvana is clearly visible the moment reactivity stops." 

After Buddhism: Rethinking the Dharma for a secular age

"Nonattachment is, of course, what we are practicing when we meditate.
Because the self is composed of mostly habitual ways of thinking, feeling, acting, reacting and so forth, it means that when I "let go" of them while meditating, I am deconstructing my sense of self - or, more precisely, the self is deconstructing, because it is not really something that "I" can do." 

A new buddhist path - p. 50

"To realize that I am nothing (or, better, no-thing) is to become free, because there is no longer an insecure self inside that can never feel secure enough. Realizing that I am everything gives rise to compassion for others who are not really separate from me." 

A new buddhist path - p. 53

"We come to meditation with the usual assumption that the thoughts and images and feelings that arise are something that I am doing, only to realize that the thoughts, etc. have a life of their own. It's more correct to say that the thoughts are "doing" me: that my sense of self is composed of mostly habitual ways of thinking, feeling, acting, reacting, remembering, planning, intending and so forth.

One's thinking, feeling, intending, etc. constantly relate back to the self-image of a "me", yet that image too is a conditioned construct.
Conditioned by what? By earlier experiences, both passive (what happened to me) and active (what I did in response).

According to Buddhism, the problem isn't that we have a self; on contrary, there's never been a real self, so there's nothing to discard. Nor do we need to get rid of the sense of self; that's necessary to function in daily life. The problem is a sense of self that feels and believes itself to be separate from the rest of the world.

Realizing that the sense of self is a construct gives us insight into why it is the source of our most problematic dukkha. A constructed self is not something that has any discrete reality of its own. It's a cluster of impermanent and interacting psycho-physical processes that are not grounded in anything more substantial.

The solution to our festering sense of lack is deconstructing and reconstructing the sense of self, so that it doesn't feel so separate." 

A new buddhist path - p. 43-47

"Sankhara, one's habitual tendencies, are what survive death and lead to the conception and development of a new psychophysical being, which is necessary for those tendencies to continue actualizing. The sense of self as we know it does not survive, which is why we don't remember our past lifetimes, yet mental tendencies continue to exist, and cause the formation of a new one." 

A new buddhist path - p. 138

Dependent origination and the five aggregates

Early Buddhist maps of the mind - Andrew Olendski

Early Buddhist maps of the mind - Andrew Olendski

The five aggregates

Early Buddhist maps of the mind - Andrew Olendski

"When desire is replaced by equanimity, and awareness of all phenomena thus unfolds without reference to self, we gain the freedom to move along with change rather than setting ourselves against it."

Self as a verb - Tricycle: The Buddhist Review - Summer 2005

"[...] grasping is not something done by the self, but rather self is something done by grasping. The self is constructed each moment for the simple purpose of providing the one who likes or doesn’t like, holds on to or pushes away, what is unfolding in experience. Just as there is a fundamental interdependence between consciousness and its object, so also is there an interdependence between desire and its subject. But there is no inherent bond between subject and object or between consciousness and desire."

Self as a verb - Tricycle: The Buddhist Review - Summer 2005

"Desire is a state of disequilibrium between what is arising and what one wants to be arising."

Self as a verb - Tricycle: The Buddhist Review - Summer 2005

"We do face the more challenging problem of how first to uncover the socially constructed prejudices we all harbor and then to transform them, not at this level of intellectual argument but at the deeper level of changing emotional and behavioral responses. It is not about changing views (the aggregate of perception), but of reconstructing patterns of habitual reaction (the aggregate of formations). Fortunately, the Buddha bequeathed to us a powerful tool for doing this: mindfulness.

Psychology has demonstrated clearly that some of what we do is conscious and some is unconscious. That is to say, we are consciously aware of a narrow band of our experience as it unfolds, but most of what happens is formulated out of view and emerges apparently on its own from the mysterious depths of the psyche to surge into behavior unhindered by awareness. Our views and reactions are formed as they appear, based on patterns laid down in the past, and consciousness is more a matter of observing what is already unfolding than of deciding what will take place.

Mindfulness practice involves training the ability to observe what is happening within us in the present moment with an attitude of patience, kindness, and equanimity. As different bodily sensations or feeling tones or thoughts arise into conscious awareness, we “watch along with” (anupassati) them, or “gaze evenly upon” (upekkhati) them, or are simply “aware of” (pajanati) and “fully experience” (patisamvedati) them. If we get angry at what we see, or if any sort of response rooted in attraction or aversion occurs, then we are thrust out of mindful awareness and get carried away ..."

Shining a light - Tricycle: The Buddhist Review - Fall 2015

"There is a simple way to become a buddha: When you refrain from unwholesome actions, are not attached to birth and death, and are compassionate toward all sentient beings, respectful to seniors and kind to juniors, not excluding or desiring anything, with no designing thoughts or worries, you will be called a buddha. Do not seek anything else."


Birth and death - Tricycle: The Buddhist Review - Fall 2000

"We cannot be the experience we perceive. This means we are not our thoughts, emotions, states of mind, physical sensations or sense data."

Awakening: a paradigm shift of the heart - p. 201

"As practice matures, we reach a stage of perfect equanimity, where all the factors of enlightenment ripen. At this time, there are no cravings or yearnings, even for the next breath or the next moment of experience. There is not the slightest impulse toward either becoming or not becoming. As the mind settles into this perfect balance of noncraving, the flow of consciousness conditioned by changing objects suddenly stops. The mind then opens to and alights upon nibbana, the unconditioned, the unborn."

The end of suffering - Tricycle: The Buddhist Review - Winter 2013