i recently learned about the buddhist concent of dependent origination, which states that all phenomena arise in dependence with other phenomena. this was surprisingly similar to my idea of dialectical materialism, and it got me thinking about how buddhism could be reconciled/combined with a marxist world view. has anybody here read books or articles on this topic?
obviously not everything buddhists believe (reincarnation is an obvious example) is going to jive with marxism but that doesn’t mean it’s worthless to try to analyze one in terms of the other
Death to America
This is not an useless response, the more reason you should really, really read that book.
I have read that book and thought a great deal about this. Assuming there to be an objective material world is very useful in practice. Still there is something even Lenin admits about experience. We can only ever have a subjective view of reality. We know that various chemicals and socially informed perceptions and so on are highly determinative in how we perceive reality. The way machians tried to categorize the world and describe some perfect system is absurd, but they are not completely wrong. I have tried hard to find the right conceptualization for experience and it is ultimately futile. Meditative practices are very helpful in clearing up perceptions to see things closer to objectively.
I highly recommend reading ‘The Ego Tunnel’ and ‘The Mind Illuminated’ for a scientific perspective on Buddhist insights rather than going “philosophy that’s not mine is bad, religion is bad, look away.”