The Art of Letting Go - The Philosophy of the Buddha

this video is sponsored by the book summary service blinkist the first 100 people to use the link in the description will receive one week of free unlimited access plus 25 off a full membership what does it mean to live well and be virtuous in a world of suffering chaos and deterioration what does it mean to go on living in a consciousness that is inevitably bound to the struggle of it only becoming more confused and tormented as it becomes more capable and aware generally speaking most religious and philosophical concepts are spurred out of these sorts of challenges and questions they represent humanity's attempt to overcome or deal with the deficiencies and difficulties bestowed into each pair of unrequested human hands one perhaps especially unique example of such an attempt is the philosophy and religion of buddhism [Music] somewhere between 6th and 4th century bc in what is now southern nepal a boy named siddhartha gautama was born he was born to an aristocratic family his father shorodhana being the king of a growing state in the indian subcontinent when siddhartha was born a holy messenger prophesied that he would become one of two things either a great king or a great religious leader when receiving this prophecy being the conservative king that his father was he determined that he would ensure that siddhartha would become the former he would ensure this by completely sheltering siddhartha confining him within a massive palace he had configured away and walled off from the rest of the world rigidly filtering what was allowed in by a standard of perfect health beauty and luxury constantly cleansing the palace of any signs of imperfection discomfort misery ugliness illness and death preventing siddhartha from ever knowing they existed all of this in shortadana's mind was to create a world that would be easy for siddhartha to fall in love with and desire kingship of removing any need to consider question or become interested in religious and spiritual domains throughout his childhood and into early adulthood however siddhartha would for this very reason become increasingly curious and begin probing into life at 29 years old his existential curiosity finally boiled over the walls of the palace and into the unknown and prohibited kingdom of beyond at this point siddhartha would make the decision to take his first journey out of the palace and into the world in anticipation of this in an effort to maintain the masquerade of a perfect redeemable world his father ordered the streets to be removed of all signs of pain suffering sickness old age and death despite this however while on his journey siddhartha would still happen by an extremely sick man his body obviously blemished and written on by the conditions of his ailment when siddhartha saw this he asked the chariot driver whom he was being escorted by what was wrong with the man the chariot driver informed siddhartha that the man was sick and explained to him what this meant after returning to the palace for a little while on a second journey out at some point siddhartha would next be exposed to an elderly man who looked extremely feeble frail and wrinkled again when he saw this having never seen an elderly person of such age he asked the driver what was wrong the driver informed him of the phenomenon of aging and how like that man all human bodies grow old with time decaying growing unattractive and becoming weak again after returning to the palace for a little while on a third journey out this time siddhartha would encounter a funeral procession occurring through the streets exposing him to for the first time a dead body again siddhartha asked what was wrong and was informed by the driver about death and the impending finite limit of all living things now completely and utterly devastated by his collection of newfound insights into the fragility of the physical body the temporal horizon of age and the finite terminating nature of existence of which all living things including himself would inevitably face he felt the final straw break destroying his comfortable sheltered youthful image of the world and replacing it with its true horrifying one realizing this truth of the world now siddhartha could no longer return and stay in the palace rather he found himself compelled by a new quest to overcome and deal with this image of life on a fourth journey siddhartha now seeking answers noticed a meditating holy man in the city who seemed to be at complete peace amidst the horrors that surrounded him curious about the man's apparent ability to attain such a state after inquiring into him siddhartha would become inspired and spend the following many months on a sort of spiritual quest seeking holy practices ideas and answers however being a very pragmatic and inquisitive man by this point refusing to mindlessly agree with the conventions orthodoxies and blind faiths required for many of the religious ideas and practices of the time siddhartha found himself at the very brink of available ideologies and methods still completely unsatisfied at some point along with a group of several other men siddhartha would engage in the extreme radical spiritual practice known as asceticism which involves a complete renunciation of earthly indulgences and pleasures in an attempt to deprive the body and free the self after many months of starving himself into an unrecognizably weak malnourished skin draped collection of bones siddhartha still had found nothing in the form of answers or resolutions to life he could not think straight and the extreme physical deprivation only created more futile suffering and so he began to eat food again returning back somewhere into the middle of the two extremes now ostracized by the ascetic men for what they felt was giving up siddhartha would continue on his own meditating alone in the forest away from the rest of the entire world he would continue to both eat and meditate not depriving his body nor pursuing much beyond what his body needed for basic comfort throughout this period siddhartha would experience a collection of introspective realizations and it was here that siddhartha would begin to formulate his fundamental philosophical tenets and it was here that sadartha's story would become the story of the buddha or the enlightened one in this moment buddhism would begin its journey in human history challenging and changing the course of religious social and philosophical orthodoxy forever in truth it isn't clear how much of the buddha's story is real or fable if not entirely fable most of what is known about the buddha and his teachings are based on oral accounts that were written down centuries after his death leaving plenty of room for various interpretations and supplementary details to be added and twisted furthermore there are numerous versions of a story that are accepted as accurate each with at least slightly different details tones spiritual references and overarching implications however regardless of literal accuracy and variation the general story of the buddha arguably always remains the same at its core it is a story of us all the story of growing up becoming curious and tempted seeking to move out and beyond the borders of the sheltered reality maintained by our parents society and our underdeveloped psyche beginning to discover life's contaminated horrors for the first time and the extreme lengths we often go to in order to try to understand overcome and escape them in terms of buddha's specific philosophical ideas his core principles are contained in what he termed the four noble truths the first noble truth being that life is fundamentally suffering no matter who or what all living things are bound and connected by this intrinsic existential quality of suffering in its broadest sense the second noble truth proposes that this suffering is a consequence of our desires and attachments the third truth in a revolutionary way of thinking for its time goes on to argue that since suffering is a product of attachment and desire one can personally overcome and end suffering by eliminating or recalibrating their desires and attachments the fourth and final noble truth contains the steps buddha believed were necessary to do so this collection of steps would be named the noble eightfold path also often referred to as the middle way these eight steps include right view right intention right speech right action right livelihood right effort right mindfulness and right concentration these concepts are not so much steps to be achieved or discovered in a linear order but rather a wheel of actively circulating behaviors and wisdoms that one must constantly be turning in broad summary it essentially calls for the practice of wisdom humanistic morality through universal compassion moderation self-knowledge and reaching enlightenment or nirvana through non-attachment and the elimination of desire essential to the success of buddhist teachings is this final idea of non-attachment and no desire admittedly this concept can sound rather convoluted or at the very least counter-intuitive at first but it starts by recognizing the true nature of the self which is in at least one interpretation of the buddhist teachings non-self or emptiness buddha argued that fundamentally our external world is in perpetual unattainable flux and consequently so too are we we are but collections of constantly changing qualitative interactions between the world and our thoughts and thus the idea of a fixed independent identifiable self is a delusion this is essential to understand because it suggests that the self that we are trying to satisfy escape or eternalize never even really exists in the first place rather the capital i that we describe is merely a state of emptiness constantly being filled and emptied by the succession of each moment this concept can perhaps be experienced distinctly when one considers how there is no real central point of sensation and experience when one experiences something like smell mental vision taste memory or emotion of course they can be pointed to the mind but where in the mind after the nose who or what is smelling or let's say if you imagined a purple cat right now and visualized it in your head where is the purple cat how is the purple cat where are you seeing it from there is just a blank emptiness filled up by the interacting thoughts and sensations of the moment all becoming one constantly changing hybrid of self and material world buddha's teachings are about reorienting our view of ourself so that we see this that there is none so we can then reorient our view of the world according to the buddha we suffer not as a result of not having enough things like money status success or ideal external circumstances but because the desire for such things is attached to the impossible delusion of a permanent self capable of being satisfied by desire and the only way out of this is ending or at least attempting to reduce one's dependence on such desires and attachments living with some form of restrained moderation and conquering the prodding delusion of self though one may conquer a thousand times a thousand men in battle yet he indeed is the noblest victor who conquers himself self-conquest is far better than the conquest of others not even a god an angel mara or brahma can turn into defeat the victory of a person who is self-subdued and ever restrained in conduct said the buddha of course buddhism is not without its shortcomings and outdated artifacts for secular types its religious association can likely pose its fair share of problems and outside of this just in terms of its general core principle can one truly desire no desire does this work as a final desire ceasing the very thing required to enact it or does it create a mirage effect that holds us in further submission to it moreover to what extent do we really have any control over our desires the information we encounter and how it all works together to affect us and as the world and humanity continues to develop further and further and temptations and indulgences and distractions seep into every corner of modern societal life we are likely left with at the very least an extremely difficult uphill climb into even the secular form of his teachings however regardless of this and any other difficulties or pitfalls buddhism still remains a highly unique and compelling system of thinking over millennia it has seen many different iterations interpretations updates and effects not only in the east but also in the west even influencing many significant western philosophers by the likes of arthur schopenhauer friedrich nietzsche ralph waldo emerson emil charon alan watts likely david hume and many others currently it is the world's fourth largest religion with over half a billion followers worldwide primarily divided into two main overarching categories theravada and mahayana at its core buddhism still remains one of the most unique and dynamic schools of religious thought grounding its ideas in empirical experience and practical methodologies making its wisdom accessible without necessarily depending on any gods or faith in the unknowable and untouchable bringing the spiritual down into the hands of the pragmatic everyday person and perhaps most significantly it confronts the suffering and darkness of life directly and does not keep us in the palace of ignorance it does not try to lie to us it does not shelter or cuddle it makes its best efforts to find the minimums and maximums of life and lead us down a path towards some semblance of hope and living well in spite of what's really out there this video was sponsored by blinkist with the new year beginning that additional motivation to start or improve habits is possibly doing its little annual dance in the back of your head of course the new year is really no more than just one day turning into another with a different arbitrary number 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Channel: Pursuit of Wonder

Views: 813,652

Rating: 4.9536872 out of 5

Keywords: what is buddhism, buddha, who is buddha, who was the buddha, what do buddhists, what do buddhists believe, the philosophy of buddhism, philosophy, eastern philosophy, school of life, pursuit of wonder, consciousness, zen, alan watts, taoism, einzelgänger, the art of letting go, the art of not caring, stoicism, daily stoic

Id: 0VyyWklwpBE

Length: 16min 29sec (989 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 13 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/Gowor]

Can you add a short summary of how the video relates to Stoicism? From a quick glance it's about Buddhism.

[u/Objective_Pass_5530]

I was looking for a video like this, thank you!

[u/[deleted]]

What are some strategies to let go? I think about how insignificant our lives are compared to the city/state/country/continent/world/universe