Practice Library

The Inner Causes of Distress and Well-being: Insights from Buddhist Psychology

D1S4 - Materialism as a Learned Delusion, and Innate Self-Grasping

Lama Alan · 59 minutes · recorded January 1, 2019

Ignorance and delusion as the taproot from which the other afflictions grow. Lama Alan separates delusions we acquire from our surroundings from those we are born with, and argues that materialism, the view that a person is nothing but a brain, is an acquired one, quoting Huxley in 1869 and Donald Hoffman on how little has changed since. The innate one is grasping at a separate, autonomous self. We narrow attention to the breath at the nostrils, with counting to ten offered as trainer wheels.

Attachment and craving Buddhist psychology

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