🧠 Spirituality for Rationalists, Nihilists, Materialists, Skeptics, and Scientists
We'll analyze the merits of a spiritual orientation by examining core concepts of spirituality through non spiritual lenses. If you've been curious, skeptical or anything in the middle this is for you.
Rough Layout...
Week 1 – Meaning & Truth
We'll try to do absolute justice to the best of existentialism, modern epistemics, and philosophy to see what we can say about what the nature of meaning and truth. (Eg. Is there absolute truth? Can we prove it? What is the nature and origin of meaning? What is a meaningful life?). We will try to tie our conclusions to similarities and differences to Buddhist conceptions of truth & meaning. We will try to build an isomorphism, or at least some kind of equivalence between western epistemology/existentialism and Buddhist conceptions of meaning & truth, to build credence to Buddhist epistemology.
Resources meaningness.com
Week 2 – Metaphysics & The World
We'll try to dissect what physics, computational theory, and biology have to say about the nature of the world on a somewhat metaphysical level and determine its similarities or differences to the Buddhist conception of the world. We will try to build an isomorphism, or at least some kind of equivalence between the two, to further build credence to Buddhist metaphysics/psychology
Resources: Wolfram Physics Project, Heidegger, Latour
Week 3 – The Self
We'll try to dissect the latest scientific (neuroscientific, biological, etc) conceptions of the self, combine it with a fully materialist conception of the self and determine its similarities or differences to the Buddhist conception of self. We will try to build an isomorphism, or at least some kind of equivalence between the two, to further build credence to Buddhist metaphysics/psychology
Resources: TBD
Week 4 – Presenting Buddhism
Up until now, we will bring Buddhism or other spiritual traditions into the picture only when necessary. This week, we'll try to put it all together into a cohesive worldview & present suggestions for going forward
Audience & Purpose
I imagine that I now present as "spiritual" and therefore odd/woo woo/etc to certain audiences. These certain audiences used to be me and I believe that even if you don't have a full fledged spiritual practice, internalizing spiritual frameworks can be extremely liberating.
As such this is primarily meant for people with only cursory familiarity with spirituality, largely find themselves averse to spiritual discourse, but are maybe somewhat intrigued by what the hype is. Consider this as an opportunity to bring all your conceptions of Buddhism, religion, spirituality, meditation into a safe discussion group and have a way to actually spend time weighing these things against your current mental frameworks (materialism, rationality, science, etc.)