By Marilynne Robinson
During this formidable booklet, acclaimed author Marilynne Robinson applies her astute mind to a couple of the main vexing themes within the heritage of human thought—science, faith, and realization. Crafted with an identical care and perception as her award-winning novels, Absence of brain demanding situations postmodern atheists who campaign opposed to faith below the banner of technological know-how. In Robinson's view, clinical reasoning doesn't denote a feeling of logical infallibility, as thinkers like Richard Dawkins may perhaps recommend. as an alternative, in its purest shape, technological know-how represents a look for solutions. It engages the matter of information, a side of the secret of cognizance, instead of supplying an easy and ultimate version of reality.
By protecting the significance of person mirrored image, Robinson celebrates the facility and diversity of human attention within the culture of William James. She explores the character of subjectivity and considers the tradition during which Sigmund Freud was once located and its impact on his version of self and civilization. via willing interpretations of language, emotion, technology, and poetry, Absence of brain restores human realization to its valuable position within the religion-science debate.
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Additional resources for Absence of Mind: The Dispelling of Inwardness from the Modern Myth of the Self (The Terry Lectures Series)
Example text
THE BUDDHA'S TEACHING CAREER After his enlightenment, Shakyamuni debated with himself about whether or not to teach what he had learned. As blissful as his awaken ing had been, it was obviously something one had to do for oneself. The Great Awakening:The Buddha and His Legacy 17 Unfortunately the people he observed around him gave no indication in their behavior that they would listen to his message and take on that responsibility. They appeared to be too caught up in their personal identities, interests, and ambitions to believe that they were not, in fact, separate beings, or to aspire to a self-liberating form of awareness.
In its most orthodox usage—and in the Theravada tradition—it refers to someone seriously on his or her way to being awakened. Thus Shakyamuni Buddha, for example, could be labeled a bodhisattva up until his enlightenment, and so could all of the sentient beings he was in his previous lives—plant, animal, or human. In Mahayana Buddhism, which in its broadest definition incorpo rates the Tibetan or Vajrayana tradition as well as Pure Land, Zen, and other schools, bodhisattva can have the same meaning.
Gautama (Gotama). His family or last name. • Shakyamuni (Sakyamuni). Literally, "Sage of the Shakya Clan," a name given to him after his enlightenment, referring to the clan (and region) of his birth • Tathagata. Literally,"the thus-perfected one," a title given to him after his enlightenment. • Sugata. Literally, "the happy one," a title given to him after his enlightenment. THE BUDDHA'S TEACHING CAREER After his enlightenment, Shakyamuni debated with himself about whether or not to teach what he had learned.