In this holiday blur, let's take a look at Pyrrho of Elis, who thought that suspending judgment would make us calmer and happier. Plus, we can't really know anything for sure anyway...
Dec 30, 2023·edited Dec 30, 2023Liked by Meredith Alexander Kunz
Interesting article.
Pyrrho has been described as the "Greek Buddha". Buddhism talks about emptiness of things (eg. Heart Sutra), which is interpreted by Buddhist scholars like Chogyam Trungpa to mean things are as they are when they are "empty" of our preconceptions. It is our superfluous judgment which creates the distinctions of like-dislike, good-bad, attraction-aversion.
Perception without judgment is considered to be the purest form of perception in many Eastern traditions. When we don't judge, the world is exactly as it is. Personally, I find this very intriguing. Sometimes, when I get annoyed with what someone did, I see that it is just what someone did. The judgement that it is annoying is purely mine. My annoyance is a quality of my judgment, not a quality of what someone did.
I hear the echoes of Stoicism here. "What injures you is not people who are rude or aggressive but your judgement they are injuring you." (Epictetus, Encheiridion 20) Acts and things don't create distinctions. Our judgments do.
Dec 28, 2023·edited Dec 28, 2023Liked by Meredith Alexander Kunz
I loved this piece, and I am a fan of the practical application of Pyrrhonism like you demonstrated here. As a former Buddhist monk whose studied the Pali canon for thirty years, I do want to say I think the resonance between Pyrrho and the Buddha is overstated and I'm somewhat bewildered by this scholarly trend lately. Pyrrho seems to me much more like another Indian teacher, a contemporary of the Buddha, Sanjaya Belatthiputta, who the Buddha, or his disciples, were (probably somewhat unfairly) very critical of, and who was, indeed, a Skeptic. The Buddha, though he criticized attachment to views in and of themselves, thought that accurate knowledge was available through meditative training and strongly advocated for which views he thought lead to freedom and harshly criticized those he said don't, and some of these views of the Buddha would have been rejected by Pyrrho as dogmatic and non-empirical. See here on Sanjaya: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanjaya_Belatthiputta
Interesting article.
Pyrrho has been described as the "Greek Buddha". Buddhism talks about emptiness of things (eg. Heart Sutra), which is interpreted by Buddhist scholars like Chogyam Trungpa to mean things are as they are when they are "empty" of our preconceptions. It is our superfluous judgment which creates the distinctions of like-dislike, good-bad, attraction-aversion.
Perception without judgment is considered to be the purest form of perception in many Eastern traditions. When we don't judge, the world is exactly as it is. Personally, I find this very intriguing. Sometimes, when I get annoyed with what someone did, I see that it is just what someone did. The judgement that it is annoying is purely mine. My annoyance is a quality of my judgment, not a quality of what someone did.
I hear the echoes of Stoicism here. "What injures you is not people who are rude or aggressive but your judgement they are injuring you." (Epictetus, Encheiridion 20) Acts and things don't create distinctions. Our judgments do.
I loved this piece, and I am a fan of the practical application of Pyrrhonism like you demonstrated here. As a former Buddhist monk whose studied the Pali canon for thirty years, I do want to say I think the resonance between Pyrrho and the Buddha is overstated and I'm somewhat bewildered by this scholarly trend lately. Pyrrho seems to me much more like another Indian teacher, a contemporary of the Buddha, Sanjaya Belatthiputta, who the Buddha, or his disciples, were (probably somewhat unfairly) very critical of, and who was, indeed, a Skeptic. The Buddha, though he criticized attachment to views in and of themselves, thought that accurate knowledge was available through meditative training and strongly advocated for which views he thought lead to freedom and harshly criticized those he said don't, and some of these views of the Buddha would have been rejected by Pyrrho as dogmatic and non-empirical. See here on Sanjaya: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanjaya_Belatthiputta
Calm is as calm does… great message.