Buddhism Changed My Life, and It Can Change Yours, Too

I became a Buddhist by accident. I’d long been a philosophy guy, and was deep into an ancient Greeks phase. As is far too often the case, though, “philosophy guy” meant I had a decent grasp of philosophy as it existed for the Greeks and the traditions that followed them in the West. But it also meant being entirely ignorant of how anyone outside of that narrow tradition approached philosophical questions.

What appealed to me about the Greeks was the idea that philosophy wasn’t simply an analytical method, but instead a way of life. The goal of philosophical inquiry was to tell us what it meant to live well, and then provide us with advice on how to achieve that. Contemporary philosophy has lost that perspective, concerning itself primarily with what we can know and how we can know it. Those are interesting questions, but this narrowing of scope, and abandoning of the good life, is unfortunate. It makes philosophy less valuable than it could be.

At some point, I realized how provincial my philosophical studies were. I cared about broad ethical questions, but only knew about how a very small subset of humanity went about answering them. And so I set aside the Greeks and decided to read in other traditions. I had a lot of options, and the only reason I started with Buddhism is because I enjoyed Plato’s dialogues, and I’d heard early Buddhist texts were written in a similar style.

That taste-driven impulse changed my entire intellectual perspective—and my life, as well. First, I was right about the style of those early texts. The “suttas,” as Buddhist dialogues are called, are rather delightful to read. Like Plato, they don’t feel ancient. They can be complex, of course, but they’re not impenetrable, and the issues they wrestle with remain fresh and relevant today. But beyond the lucid style, they were—as is spoken to by the fact that, years later, I’m writing this newsletter—revelatory. What began in intellectual curiosity about ideas outside of the tradition I was familiar with turned into a conviction that Siddhattha Gotama both correctly assessed the human condition, but also offered the correct way to live well, grounded in a realistic understanding of it.

Further, actually reading Buddhist texts made me realize how unfortunate it is that we lump it in with “religion” and think of it as a faith analogous to the Christianity, Judaism, and Islam better known in our culture. The definition of religion is slippery, but it’s safe to say that Buddhism, particularly as presented in its earliest texts, looks nothing like those big three faiths. As an atheist, I found this refreshing and intriguing. Buddhism does not ask us to believe in a creator deity, and its ethical guidelines have nothing to do with a god's commands. It is a deeply human philosophy and, while the texts include reference to supernatural beliefs of the Buddha’s culture that I don’t share, it is no more a religion, in the way most of us use that term, than the ancient Greek philosophies of living I’d found so appealing. (I say “particularly as presented in its earliest texts” because some later forms of Buddhism take on a more clearly religious vibe. But those aren’t the Buddhisms that appeal to me, and they won’t be the focus of discussions at No-Self Help.)

Last week I summarized the problem Buddhism sets out to solve and the answer it gives. And the mission of this newsletter is to explore both in more detail, and to show how it applies to the kinds of challenges we all deal with in our work and personal lives. In other words, I don’t want to try to convince you of all the details of Buddhism’s theories and their value here, and I hope you’ll stick around for the long haul of that project. 

For now, and given the above context, let me just say this: The huge value Buddhism has had for me is a combination of the power its philosophical ideas have, and the explanatory utility of the way it understands psychology. I’m convinced both are fundamentally correct, and have found that internalizing Buddhist arguments, and the concepts they give us for analyzing the world and human behavior, has proved clarifying to a degree well beyond other philosophies I’ve studied. Siddhattha succeeded, in other words.

But Buddhism’s appeal goes beyond that. Because it’s not just a set of arguments, it’s also a highly developed path of practice. Most moral philosophies offer explanations for what it means to do the right thing, but they don’t tell us how to become the kind of person who routinely does that. Buddhism provides not just the ideal to aim at, but a training regimen. Mediation is powerful, and mediation within a Buddhist perspective even more so. The Buddha recognized that simply knowing, at an intellectual level, what is harmful and what is harmless wasn’t enough. We are habitual creatures, and the force of habit is paired with an extraordinary ability to rationalize our behaviors. Living well depends upon changing the perspective we bring to the world and the habits we follow. That’s what Buddhist meditation does. It gives us practical tools for becoming more focused and aware, and kinder and less reactive. Buddhism recognizes that happiness isn’t something to be understood abstractly, but something we do. Life is a practice, and Buddhism tells us how to practice well.

Taking Buddhism seriously and practicing it has made me a better person. That’s its power and its appeal. And that’s why I’m so excited to share these ideas with you.