The older the question, the older the answers.
You’ve called your philosophy Rational Buddhism. How does it differ from traditional Buddhism? What type of exploration did you go through?
The rational part means I have to reconcile with science and evolution. I have to reject all the pieces I can’t verify for myself. For example, is meditation good for you? Yes. Is clearing your mind a good thing? Yes. Is there a base layer of awareness below your monkey mind? Yes. All these things I’ve verified for myself.
Some beliefs from Buddhism I believe and follow because, again, I’ve verified or reasoned with thought experiments myself. What I will not accept is things like, “There’s a past life you’re paying off the karma for.” I haven’t seen it. I don’t remember any past lives. I don’t have any memory. I just have to not believe that.
When people say your third chakra is opening, etc.—I don’t know—that’s just fancy nomenclature. I have not been able to verify or confirm any of that on my own. If I can’t verify it on my own or if I cannot get there through science, then it may be true, it may be false, but it’s not falsifiable, so I cannot view it as a fundamental truth.
On the other side, I do know evolution is true. I do know we are evolved as survival and replication machines. I do know we have an ego, so we get up off the ground and worms don’t eat us and we actually take action. Rational Buddhism, to me, means understanding the internal work Buddhism espouses to make yourself happier, better off, more present and in control of your emotions—being a better human being.
I don’t subscribe to anything fanciful because it was written down in a book. I don’t think I can levitate. I don’t think meditation will give me superpowers and those kinds of things. Try everything, test it for yourself, be skeptical, keep what’s useful, and discard what’s not.
I would say my philosophy falls down to this—on one pole is evolution as a binding principle because it explains so much about humans, on the other is Buddhism, which is the oldest, most time-tested spiritual philosophy regarding the internal state of each of us.
I think those are absolutely reconcilable. I actually want to write a blog post at some point about how you can map the tenants of Buddhism, especially the non-fanciful ones, directly into a virtual reality simulation. [4]
Everyone starts out innocent. Everyone is corrupted. Wisdom is the discarding of vices and the return to virtue, by way of knowledge.
Understanding the long-term consequences of your actions. [11]
If wisdom could be imparted through words alone, we’d all be done here.