# a compelling convergence of classical Western wisdom, Eastern contemplative traditions, and the insights of modern science There’s a remarkable amount of convergence on what you might call “the missing owner’s manual for the human mind” among these traditions that are rooted in a humble inquiry into how things actually are, rather than an assertion of certain theological beliefs. This overlap suggests that they’re all encountering real features of the world and the human brain, so this confluence itself is cause for greater confidence in the teachings and worldview that they present. That’s not to say that we should jump to thinking that the current articulations in these traditions are perfect and complete — after all, [[all models are wrong but some are useful]]. But it does suggest that they’re onto something … that they are at least partially correct insofar as they go. The dovetailing with scientific knowledge is particularly compelling, given the immense weight of evidence and the interwoven coherence of the mathematical theories undergirding it. Taken alone, the philosophical similarities between Buddhism and Stoicism might only suggest that they both fell victim to the same cognitive fallacies or biases. A convergence with our best scientific understanding of the human brain and the world it navigates suggests that those similarities reflect separate, somewhat successful attempts to describe the same reality. (Though not entirely separate, since [[there was probably some historical contact between the Hellenistic philosophers and Indian sages]].) This convergence deals with a few main areas of human wisdom. For one, they come to complementary views on [[the practical psychology of suffering and how to avoid (most of) it]]. They also emphasize [[the importance of presence of mind and awareness of attention]], either in the form of [[mindfulness in Buddhism]] or [[the Stoic awareness of self-talk and impressions (prosoche)]], which support each other reciprocally. They also recognize the [[nondual]] nature of existing as a conscious experience and as an aspect of the living surface of the planet, which is objectively beyond dispute and experientially a spiritually important thing to notice. Stoicism more than Buddhism takes some knowledge of the natural world — in our day, scientific knowledge — as foundational for having any kind of skillful life philosophy by which to navigate your experience. Finally, they have convergent ideas on [[what’s centrally important for living a well-lived human life]] ([[the central focus of this wisdom tradition is the pursuit of human flourishing]]). Also worth making clear that I’m not saying that these traditions, even taken together, are the final word on what a full wisdom tradition would include. There’s lots of critiquing, elaborating, and expanding that would advance the canon — bring it into closer alignment with the true nature of things. [[We need to move the ball forward]]. * unnecessary suffering and how to avoid it * seeking to embrace the world as it actually is — living in accordance with nature * realization that your conscious experience is an active “best guess” rendering of the world, not the world itself * recognition of nondual connectedness / un-separateness from the cosmic whole * virtue ethics / primacy of character and virtues What would an advanced practitioner of this tradition look like? ### Main points: * [[the convergence]] * just a starting point .. [[the underlying approach]] is the main thing * [[how to derive Stoicism]] In that sense it’s most like ancient Stoicism in that it was a continuous school and tradition that lasted 500 years and ancient degrees in Rome. While this kind of wisdom tradition doesn’t limited itself to any particular historical tradition, it can take stoicism and secular Buddhism as a good starting point.  both are non-dogmatic and fundamentally empirical, and both are focused on the psychology of suffering and well-being. They also both came to remarkably similar conclusions on many of these points. not “following” Stoicism, but engaging in the same kind of pursuit of wisdom that they were pursuing. Moving the ball forward. * strong convergence in areas of practical psychology, suffering, virtue, and cosmic connectedness * dovetailing between what modern science, psychology, cognitive science, neuroscience, taken in a holistic way, together with particle physics, a full picture of what is happening there. The dovetailing between that and the sort of first person descriptions from Buddhism and stoicism, the ways in which the clearly both attempt to describe the same organ from different sides * the fullness of that picture from both the third person and the first person sides is very compelling. It really starts to get to given that that then inherits the strength by with which we know all of science, you start to get more confident saying, this is basically how things are. There may be more to it, but there's not less. * that sort of bringing the scientific grounding in the ways in which that's very much in the continuation of stoicism, and that they based their philosophy at the time on their own natural sciences of the time, as one of the three legs of The three legged stool. * the contemplation of mortality. As another dovetailing between stoicism and Buddhism. And fits nicely with the scientific view of the world. It's all very accepting of the facts of our biology and our fragility as a as an organism [[the role of science]] ### Old essay: I see the elements of a compelling modern wisdom practice in a synthesis of three rich traditions: science, secular Buddhism, and ancient Stoic philosophy. Together, this synthesis provides a very sane, non-dogmatic, and robust alternative for people seeking the things that religions used to provide: an uplifting sense of connectedness with something greater; practical guidance on how to live well and avoid folly; a nurturing community of likeminded people committed to each other’s wellbeing. It offers another path for those who’ve left traditional religions behind, but given the choice between atheistic scientific nihilism on the one hand and the melange of New Age pseudo-spiritual nonsense on the other, have chosen neither. There’s a lot to say about this synthesis, but as a place to start, let’s look at what is contributed by each of the three parts — science, Buddhism, and Stoicism — and how they complement each other. The ancient Greek and Roman philosophy of Stoicism provides the main framework and backbone. If you’re not familiar with ancient Stoicism, the first thing to know is that the modern meaning of “being stoic” is giving you absolutely the wrong idea. The ancient philosophy was a remarkably practical, systematic guide on how to live intensely in the moment with brimming gratitude and fluid resilience, and an urgent call to civic action for the betterment of all humanity. To achieve this, it provides lucid psychological insights to recognize and avoid pointless suffering and distraction, along with a whole curriculum for learning to reason correctly and an admonishment to see and accept your place as part of the living cosmos. It was an astonishingly comprehensive manual for artful living. In fact, Stoicism inspired one of the most successful forms of modern, evidence-based psychotherapy, called Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. Rather than waiting until a person becomes so tangled up and confused that they need therapy, let’s provide this guidance to people preemptively.  So ancient Stoicism provides a great starting point for the synthesis, in two different ways. The first is the general framework and content mentioned above, often summarized as: * “logic” — learning to think well and reason correctly * “physics” — having knowledge of the physical world and understanding yourself to be a part of that whole * “ethics” — acting with virtue for the betterment of society Within this framework, it provides a toolset of psychological insights to avoid needless suffering, such as “it’s not things that upset us, but our opinions about things” — an admonishment to recognize and own our interpretations of outside events, the often-exaggerated or distorted narratives we tell ourselves that shape and feed our emotional reactions. Second, we can take inspiration from the way that the ancient schools of Stoicism in Greece and Rome were organized and run. To the people in those schools, Stoicism wasn’t a religion — it was a shared inquiry and practice for living well. The teachings were all subject to scrutiny and debate. People were encouraged to be skeptical, and to not accept any platitudes on anyone else’s word alone, but only by testing the logic and truthfulness of the ideas for themselves. The schools met in public spaces, originally in an open-air market in Athens (a “stoa”, hence the name), and were open to all. And the teachings themselves were expected to be refined and evolved over time, as the written record shows they were. That, in broad outlines at least, sounds like a great model for a “school of life” that I’d like to be a part of. And it’s well suited to modern sensibilities that prize skepticism and individual autonomy, and that distrust dogmatism. Stoicism prescribes a suite of daily practices and reflections as a way of developing the psychological skills and perspective needed to live wisely and gracefully. While some of these — such as the practice of taking the “view from above”, imagining observing yourself from 10,000 feet — are known to us, only a fragment of Stoic practices have survived in writings that we still have today. And this is where secular Buddhism comes in. I’m not the first person to note the striking common ground and compatibility between Buddhism and Stoicism. They both put a central emphasis on understanding the psychology of human suffering and how to alleviate it. And they both offer a suite of practices to achieve this. But while much of the specific details of Stoic practice have been lost to history, the Buddhist record is mostly intact. So we can use Buddhist meditations and other psychological insights to supplement and fill in the gaps where Stoic practices have been lost. Central among these is mindfulness meditation. Mindfulness has become popular lately — which I find very encouraging — and people who have heard of it probably have a wide range of notions about what it is. A good way to summarize it, though, is simply paying closer, undistracted attention to your direct experience, moment to moment. Part of this is learning to notice when you’ve become lost in thought, and gracefully letting the thoughts go so you can return to clearly witnessing your experience. This is an immensely useful tool for avoiding needless suffering in itself, but it’s also highly complementary to many Stoic practices. For example, it’s hard to notice how your opinions about things are upsetting you if you’re not really aware of that inner narrative to begin with, or if you can’t distance yourself from it. For many people, that might be as far as their mindfulness practice goes, and even this much would be a huge benefit. But for anyone so inclined, Buddhism offers a whole path of contemplative insight that’s available to pursue. Crucially, Buddhism shares with Stoicism an empirical, “don’t take my word for it” approach. In that spirit, we can leave behind the more “out there” metaphysical claims about reincarnation, other realms, and whatnot, since we have no clear way of knowing whether they’re true. A secular Buddhism stripped of such supernatural claims is closer to the original teachings of the Buddha anyway, since he purportedly had little interest in metaphysical questions; he focused squarely on identifying and alleviating the causes of human suffering. Had he been interested in metaphysics, dubious religious cosmologies were all that he could have turned to, since reliable knowledge of the cosmos simply wasn’t available in ancient times. Here’s where a modern wisdom tradition can move the ball forward. Unlike our predecessors, we now have access to staggeringly comprehensive knowledge of our bodies and how they emerged as part of the planet’s living surface, and how that planet emerged as part of the vast unfolding tapestry of energy that is the universe. We can take this as our “physics”. So this is the contribution science makes. When it comes to reliable knowledge of what we are, what life is, and what the larger world is in which we find ourselves, there’s really no other game in town. It’s a solid foundation on which to build. And happily, despite the bleak and nihilistic overtones it may have for some people, viewed with an open mind, the plain facts of our existence can be deeply inspiring and transformative.  You don’t need to be a scientist or know every gory detail of biochemistry to get the point here, but you do need to be savvy about scientific reasoning — which would naturally be a part of the “logic” branch of the practice. A grounding in how the skepticism and empiricism of science leads to reliable knowledge fits naturally with the general empirical approach of Stoicism and secular Buddhism. It also guards against the “sounds true, is true” credulousness that plagues New Age philosophies. Importantly, though, part of being savvy about science is understanding where the factual claims supported by evidence stop and where scientists’ more-philosophical claims begin. We don’t need to import everything commonly presented under the banner of “science” wholesale. We can and should take the knowledge produced by science as our best-available description of the natural world — after all, we don’t get to choose our own facts — but we also can and should form our own impressions of the world depicted by those facts, and not merely defer to scientists’ philosophical world views. Science can’t tell us what we should make of those facts, or how we should feel about the world it describes. Science also can’t guide us in how to incorporate that knowledge and perspective into a practical philosophy for artful living — and here Stoicism comes back in. The Stoics used a deep contemplation of “physics”, taken broadly, as a foundation for their wisdom practice. Like Tibetan Buddhists, they made a practice of internalizing their own mortality, and used that contemplation to kindle urgency of action, deep appreciation, and emotional resilience.  They also made a practice of reminding themselves of their interconnectedness with all of life and the world at large. They saw in the workings of the cosmos a sublime rational principle — which today we might call the laws of nature, but which they also took to be a kind of embedded, distributed divinity — and saw themselves as a manifestation of that cosmic order. Cultivating this “big picture” perspective helped them to reframe events in their lives more objectively and less hyperbolically, and to gracefully accept the unfolding of external events beyond their control. They saw in this perspective cause to “broaden their circles of concern” beyond identity with tribe or nation, and to see themselves as citizens of the world; cosmopolitanism was originally a Stoic concept.  Today we can go even further, since we now know the facts of our common ancestry and interconnectedness with all of life, and that we consist of indestructible energy unseparated from and as old as the universe itself. This can radically expand our sense of self and our “circles of concern.” Within that big picture, the Stoics noted human beings’ unique position as social animals capable of reason. From that, they drew a sense of what it means to live according to their own nature: that is, using reason to build a good society. Here again Stoicism contributes something beyond what the pure facts of science can provide: that we should value a *good* society, and not merely one that maximizes our own reproductive success. It also asserts that the best ethical framework to guide our behavior toward that end is one that places our character and virtue on a tier above all other worthwhile pursuits — that while it’s sensible to pursue wealth, health, love, and reputation and avoid their opposites, we must never trade our character or integrity for these things. Imagine if more people in the modern world lived by this maxim. Yet even this emphasis on virtue is not taken as some immutable, divine commandment. It’s presented as practical guidance that has stood the test of time — the “ancient road” — for how to navigate competing priorities to best fulfill a person’s innate potential to live beautifully and gracefully, in accordance with their nature. It’s a proposal for each person to try and test in their own life. But the possibility of discovering “another route that is more direct” always remains open. Again, there’s much more to say about all of this, but hopefully this gives at least a sketch of how science, secular Buddhism, and Stoic philosophy come together and complement each other to form a compelling basis for a modern wisdom tradition. #publish