Show that original Buddhism involved methodological unknowables, antinomies in the style of Kant, and that the karma and rebirth mythology - in its current form at least - is a spurious later addition which is not only philosophically inconsistent (violating the recorded silence of the Buddha on these matters and his practical approach to spiritual development) but obviously intertwined with harmful and erroneous values and ideology of caste and wealth (itself unambiguously condemned in other parts of the Pali Nikayas). Argue for a fundamental inconsistency in the Pali canon. There is a conflict between the original philosophical-ethical system of mental introspection and cultivation and later corruptions and interpolations involving an elaborate and fantastical mythology of karma and rebirth. There is an approach which interprets these interpolations as a matter of "conventional truth" designed to inculcate the consequences of moral action and to prepare disciples to receive the genuine philosophical teachings. We can think of the ordinary self as a character in a multiplayer video game with which one strongly identifies with. The player character can be a cause of genuine suffering to the mind identified with it as well as to other character-identified minds (internet gaming addiction can be a significant cause for suicide). Thus this identity is "real" and only ceases to be real once dis-identification is achieved. And the identification experienced by non-rational animals which cannot dis-identify in their present state renders their experience robustly real. We can also think of living beings as sources of psychic-spiritual energies which can influence both themselves and the world in a plurality of not yet understood ways depending on their moral character and the habits and spiritual state of the mind. With the dissolution of the body such energies (as integrating all the experience of a given life) are released in a powerful way into the world. Thus in its higher sense the doctrine of karma is coherent with the metaphysical agnosticism of original Buddhism.
In the light of the above the connection and convergence between Stoicism and original Buddhism is of great interest. Stoicism was at heart a phenomenology (based the distinction between the impression itself and our attitude, acceptance, relationship, towards the impression, between phantasia and synkatathesis - and the practice of epokhê found admirably illustrated in Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus - and the lekton as the intentional object distinct from the thought-act as well as the theory of self-perception in perception found in Hierocles), a scientific psychology (prosokhê is satipatthâna) and physics (i.e. the illusory self is a part of an unlimited consciousness) and a remarkable ethical system (in which virtue is its own reward, vice its own punishment) compatible with agnosticism with regards to the after-life - thus according completely with our reconstruction of original Buddhism. And very importantly: intelligence and morality (i.e. wisdom and virtue) are one, all virtues are inseparable and equal to wisdom.
In humans, rational animals, reason is involved in every mental event; this is explained in the case of perception by saying that our appearances, the way things strike us perceptually, are actually thoughts. Perceiving is thinking, not the reception of raw data. Perceiving and thinking are not separate faculties; for humans there is no way of taking in information about the world that does not involve thinking. (Julia Annas, Hellenistic Philosophy of Mind, p.75)This article by Jon Brooks, thought interesting, is very much mistaken because it relies on the typical modern theravada or western physicalist interpretation of original Buddhism. Brooks does not seem to have read MN20 and other similar suttas.
This is our account of the enlightened, seeing mind. The unconscious mind(1) uses a flux of primordially given material to construct an individual self or personality(2) and its correlative world(3) in which the individual self can also be conceived as existing in. The world and the individual self exist only for a conscious observing mind(4) which is at the same time identified with the individual self(3) and completely lost to and living in its correlative world(3). Enlightenment consists in the observing mind(4) dis-identifying from the individual self(2) and seeing directly this self(2) and the world(3) as nothing but process and construction of the unconscious mind(1) based on the flux of primordially given material. Its first task is to see the flux of the primordially given material not as it is part of the self-construction and world-construction and identifying living-in-the-world, but as pure immanent flux as such transparently revealing itself as actively operated on and used by the unconscious mind(1). Instead of seeing the puppet as a living being it sees the puppet as an inert object whose every movement and aspect are totally dynamically and continuous determined by the dance of the strings and movements of the puppet-master. The enlightened mind illumines and unmasks the unconscious mind with its energies and constitutive processes (a major factor being the meditation on the universal a priori condition of temporality, temporal intentionality such as memory and anticipation and the characteristic of transience and compositeness) and also has a higher intuitive form of self-awareness or self-consciousness which is free and unbounded and independent and not like selfhood or world-hood.
But we should ask first: what is thought? How does thought relate to consciousness, to the individual self and to the world? Ordinary consciousness experience involves a stream of thoughts but we are in general not directly aware of our thoughts as thoughts or even of the thinking of thoughts as thinking (prosokhê). Nor is thinking a completely conscious voluntary activity. Thought is in intimate inseparable connection to the individual self and the world. The enlightened mind illuminating the unconscious mind strives to see not only the sensible flux as sensible flux but the thought flux as just thought flux, in other words, to become neutrally (detachedly) aware of the process of thought as purely a process of thought (inner discourse, inner verbal discourse) and to obtain complete power and control over such a process. The sensible flux in reality exists only within the flux of thought and its direction or intention. The awakening consciousness must illumine all thought and the impressions and sensations involved with thought and the whole process by which sensations (and feelings) and thoughts are intertwined and the sense of self and the world comes to be.
But there is another approach (found for instance in the Upanishads). To view the mind as an organism which in its ordinary state has powers pointing outwards, entangled and identified in different directions. These powers need to be inverted, recoiled and all fundamental forces reversed and turned inward. This is the theory of the "divine virtues" and the hidden meaning of faith and humility. The above two approaches are insufficient because they are turned outwards and represent the ego, the will and exteriority trying to overcome and rise above itself. It suggests that what we call thought has many levels and that the above "thought" is only the most exterior production of thought which cannot master itself or illumine or transcend itself (i.e. achieve super-individual states of being and consciousness). Rather one needs to get to the root of all thought, to the ur-thoughts, to spiritual intuition and communion which represents the undefiled native stage of thought. The secret is to abandon, leave and transcend something without being caught and fixated on what you are transcending. Only to pay attention as long is strictly necessary and to what is strictly necessary for being free of such objects and the inclination towards such objects. We must investigate with significance of the philosophy of Schopenhauer regarding this. It is not by studying the shadows and being fixated on them (even when conceived merely as shadows) that one exists the cave.
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