Alright, thank you.tiltbillings wrote:http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka ... .irel.htmlbinocular wrote:I am generally wary about the idea of "bare awareness" and the idea that mindfulness is somehow about "just watching, without judgment."
I have never seen any reference in the suttas for this.
For one, this seems like a standard enough teaching on not-self.
For two, it doesn't say that mindfulness is about "just watching, without judgment."
For three, the Buddha gave this instruction to someone who apparently already had great faith in him, not to someone who would have significant doubts about the Buddha, the Dhamma and the Sangha. Bahiya wasn't an ordinary run-of-the-mill person. Thus the instruction given to Bahiya cannot apply to just anyone, especially not to a skeptic.
Moreover, actual Buddhist teachings on not-self are contextualized by the conviction in karma and rebirth. While some of the bare-awareness folks and Western psychologists who have appropriated "mindfulness" and "bare awareness" maintain quite decisively that this one life is all there is for a person and that when the body dies, it's all over. It is my personal opinion that trying to practice "bare awareness" while believing that when this body dies, one ceases as a person, forever, amounts to practicing nihilism, and it's no wonder those people then think they must supplement Buddhist practice with Western psychology, given that they believe that Buddhism is insufficient.