sam harris: a neo-buddhist after my own heart

Sam Harris is by far my favourite of the so-called 'New Atheists.' I especially like his approach to trying to bring things like science, spirituality and reason together, and I think he's more or less on the right track when it comes to these kinds of things, i.e., having no problem being a vocal atheist and critic of religion while at the same time being open to the fact that people have 'spiritual' experiences. As he wrote in "10 Myths - And 10 Truths - About Atheism":

There is nothing that prevents an atheist from experiencing love, ecstasy, rapture and awe; atheists can value these experiences and seek them regularly. What atheists don’t tend to do is make unjustified (and unjustifiable) claims about the nature of reality on the basis of such experiences. There is no question that some Christians have transformed their lives for the better by reading the Bible and praying to Jesus. What does this prove? It proves that certain disciplines of attention and codes of conduct can have a profound effect upon the human mind. Do the positive experiences of Christians suggest that Jesus is the sole savior of humanity? Not even remotely — because Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims and even atheists regularly have similar experiences.

Being a 'Buddhist' myself, I also like the fact that he's actually practiced meditation, and comes at things like vipasana meditation from the standpoint of neuroscience, de-emphasising their strictly religious roots in an attempt to move more towards developing "a scientific account of the contemplative path" (A Contemplative Science).

I think that if there were more people like Sam Harris who were interested in what Buddhism and other contemplative paths have to offer from a scientific standpoint, we could easily create a contemplative science of our own utilizing the latest in modern technology and knowledge of how the brain functions. For example, I think his latest blog post does a great job of pointing out the importance and usefulness of meditation and transcendent experiences:

My friend Jerry Coyne has posted a response to my recent video Q&A where he raises a few points in need of clarification about meditation, transcendence, spiritual experience, etc.:

This discussion continues at 21:25, when Sam criticizes atheists, scientists and secularists for failing to “connect to the character of those experiences” and for failing to “give some alternate explanation for them that is not entirely deflationary and demeaning and gives some warrant to the legitimacy of those experiences.” He implies that these experiences are somehow beyond the purview of science. I find that strange given Sam’s repeated emphasis on the value of science in studying mental states.

I’m not quite sure what he’s getting at here, and he doesn’t elaborate, but I don’t see why giving credence to these über-transcendent experiences as experiences says anything about a reality behind them. Yes, they might indeed change one’s personality and view of the world, but do any of us deny that?

I had similar experiences on various psychoactive substances when I was in college, and some of them were even transformative. The problem is not with us realizing that people can feel at one with the universe or, especially, at one with God; the problem comes with us taking this as evidence for some supernatural reality. What does it mean to say that an experience is legitimate? If someone thinks that he saw Jesus, I am prepared to believe that he thought that he saw Jesus, but I am not prepared to say that he really did see Jesus, nor that that constitutes any evidence for the existence of Jesus.

So my question for Sam would be this: “So if we accept that people do have these seriously transcendent experiences, what follows from that—beyond our simple desire to study the neurobiology behind them?”

These are all good points. I certainly didn’t mean to suggest that transcendent experiences are “beyond the purview of science.” On the contrary, I think they should be studied scientifically. And I don’t believe that these experiences tell us anything about the cosmos (I called Deepak Chopra a “charlatan” for making unfounded claims of this sort). Nor do they tell us anything about history, or about the veracity of scripture. However, these experiences do have a lot to say about the nature of the human mind—not about its neurobiology, per se, but about its qualitative character (both actual and potential).

So, to answer Jerry’s question: yes, many things follow from these transcendent experiences. Here’s a short list:

1. It is possible to feel much better (in every sense of “better”) than one tends to feel. It is, in fact, possible to be utterly at ease in the world—and such ease is synonymous with relaxing, or fully transcending, the apparent boundaries of the “self.” Those who have never experienced such peace of mind will view the preceding sentences as yet another eruption of “mumbo jumbo” on my part. And yet it is phenomenologically true to say that such states of well-being are there to be discovered. I am not claiming to have experienced all relevant states of this kind. But there are people who appear to have experienced none of them—and many of these people are atheists.

This is not surprising. After all, experiences of self-transcendence are generally only sought and interpreted in a religious or “spiritual” context—and these are precisely the phenomena that tend to increase a person’s faith. How many Christians who have felt self-transcending love for their neighbors in church, or body-dissolving bliss in prayer, decide to ditch Christianity? Not many, I would guess. How many people who never have experiences of this kind (no matter how hard they try) become atheists? I don’t know, but there is no question that these states of mind act as a kind of filter: they get counted in support of ancient dogma by the faithful; and their absence seems to give my fellow atheists yet another reason to doubt religion.

Reading the comments on Jerry’s blog exposes the problem in full. There are several people there who have absolutely no idea what I’m talking about—and they take this to mean that I am not making sense. Of course, religious people often present the opposite problem: they tend to think they know exactly what I’m talking about, in so far as it can seem to support one religious doctrine or another. Both these orientations present impressive obstacles to understanding.

2. There is a connection between feeling transcendently good and being good. Not all good feelings have an ethical valence, of course. And there are surely pathological forms of ecstasy. I have no doubt, for instance, that many suicide bombers feel extraordinarily good just before detonating themselves in a crowd. But there are forms of mental pleasure that seem intrinsically ethical. In fact, there are states of mind for which phrases like “boundless love and compassion” do not seem overblown. Of course, it is possible for a person not to know that this is a potential of the human mind, or to imagine that such experiences must be signs of psychopathology. Again, people who think this way seem to gravitate toward atheism. And it is decidedly inconvenient for the forces of Reason that if a person wakes up tomorrow feeling “boundless love and compassion” the only people likely to acknowledge the legitimacy of his experience will be representatives of one or another religion (or New Age cult).

3. Certain patterns of thought and attention prevent us from accessing deeper (and wiser) states of well-being. Transcendent experiences, in so far as they are usually temporary, are often surrounded by a penumbra of other states and insights. Just as one can glimpse deeper strata of well-being, and briefly see the world by their logic, one can notice the impediments to feeling this way in each subsequent moment. There is no question that all of these mental states have neurophysiological correlates—but the neurophysiology often has subjective correlates. Understanding the first-person side of the equation is essential for understanding the phenomenon. Everything worth knowing about the human mind, good and bad, is taking place inside the brain. But that doesn’t mean that there is nothing to know about the qualitative character of these events. Yes, qualitative character can be misleading, and certain ways of talking about it can manufacture fresh misunderstandings about the mind. But this doesn’t mean that we can stop talking about the nature of conscious experience. At one level, there is nothing else to talk about.

4. Certain “spiritual” experiences can help us understand science. There are insights that one can have through meditation (that is, very close observation of first-person data) that line up rather well with what we know must be true at the level of the brain. I’ll mention just two, which I have written about before and will return to in subsequent posts: (1) the ego/self is a construct and a cognitive illusion; (2) there is no such thing as free will. There is simply no question that these statements are well grounded scientifically (in fact, it is very difficult to even imagine a physical account of the human mind that would suggest their falsity at this point). So, here are two facts which science gives us good reason to believe, and which I believe we can know through introspection, but which seem quite paradoxical and troubling to most people.

As for the “various psychoactive substances” Jerry mentions, I’ll address the risks and rewards of these in my next post.

At this point, I should probably make it explicitly clear that my admiration for Sam Harris isn't due to his vocal support of atheism nor to his vocal criticism of religion; but because of his scientific approach to contemplative issues. I think he finds a good balance between his atheistic/materialistic worldview and the fact that people have and can benefit from these kinds of spiritual experiences, something that's definitely missing from other 'New Atheist' writers such as Richard Dawkins.

pali vs. sanskrit: what's the deal?

People new to Buddhism sometimes ask how it came to be that the teachings of Theravada were transmitted in Pali, but the teachings of Mahayana were primarily transmitted in Sanskrit. I'm certainly not an expert on the subject, so take whatever I say with a grain of salt; but from what I understand, it's mainly due to the combination of when and where each set of texts were initially composed, and when and where they were eventually transmitted.

Pali, an early form of Prakrit related to Hindi and Sanskrit, is thought to be a composite of several dialectal forms and expressions most likely based on the language the Buddha himself taught in, which is generally held to be a dialect of Magadhi Prakrit; although there's still a great deal of debate among scholars as to the exact dates and place of origin of Pali itself.

The commentarial tradition of Theravada holds that Pali is identical to Magadhi; but as the introduction to A New Course in Reading Pali: Entering the Word of the Buddha notes, it doesn't share many of the distinctive characteristics found in Magadhan inscriptions, primarily from the time of Asoka (approximately 300–232 BCE). Nevertheless, it's considered by many scholars, such as Wilhelm Geiger and Walpola Rahula, to at least be closely related to Magadhi, especially in the sense of being a type of popular speech.

Whatever the case, it's believe that at the time of the Buddha (approximately 400 BCE), many of the great wandering ascetics (samana) in the northern area of India known as Magadha, like the Buddha and his contemporary Mahavira (Nigantha Nataputta), taught in the popular vernacular of the people used for general communication and commerce, as opposed to Vedic Sanskrit, the sacred language of Vedas used by brahmins. This was not only done because they rejected the authority of the Vedas, but because they wanted to make their teachings more widely available. The use of Vedic Sanskrit also appears to be in decline by this time.

Not long afterwards, however, Sanskrit seems to have made a serious comeback as a literary and religious language thanks to the great Indian scholar and grammarian, Panini (scholarly dates vary from 500 to 300 BCE), and texts were starting to be written down as well as passed on orally. By the time the early Mahayana sutras were being composed, mostly in the south but also the north, Panini's Sanskrit had already become the standard, most likely starting in Gandhara, his home, and spreading south and east throughout the rest of India.

Early Buddhist texts underwent various degrees of Sanskritization, while newer texts were being composed in what's now termed Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit or even classical Sanskrit itself. Much of the former, making the scriptural basis of Theravada, were transmitted via Asoka to places like Sri Lanka, where they survived the decline of Buddhism in India and Central Asia, while much of the latter, making the scriptural basis of Mahayana, found a safe home in places like China.

some rambling thoughts on nietzsche's ego and will to power

A recent thread on newbuddhist.com reminded me of something I wrote a while back about what Nietzsche might have meant when he wrote:

Let’s position ourselves, by contrast, at the end of this immense process, in the place where the tree at last yields its fruit, where society and the morality of custom finally bring to light the end for which they were simply the means: then we find, as the ripest fruit on that tree, the sovereign individual, something which resembles only itself, which has broken loose again from the morality of custom, the autonomous individual beyond morality (for ‘autonomous’ and ‘moral’ are mutually exclusive terms), in short, the human being who possesses his own independent and enduring will, who is entitled to make promises—and in him a consciousness quivering in every muscle, proud of what has finally been achieved and has become a living embodiment in him, a real consciousness of power and freedom, a feeling of completion for human beings generally.

First, what does the word 'will' really mean? Is it independent of external factors? Is it influenced by them? Both? Neither? Is it possible that the human will isn't immutable, but frequently prone to change? If so, what are the causes and conditions that facilitate such changes? And what does this mean in regard to the individual?

Sometimes I tend to think that I'm little more than the product of my environment and the culmination of ideas and experiences that my senses have taken in during my lifetime. That's part of the reason I sometimes think that the 'individual' is nothing more than a useful fiction we utilize in order to communicate and make sense of the world in a relative sense, but one that ultimately falls apart on further analysis.

It may all just be a matter of perspective, but having been influenced by social, cultural and other omnipresent conditionings, can the 'individual' really be said to be individual in the first place? Or put another way: Does a closed-system, biological entity truly exist?

In a certain sense, we have what appears to be a certain amount of autonomy. Will, volition or the creative spark in humankind expresses itself in a myriad of ways, and it's difficult to deny the products of that expression. Nevertheless, can an individual ever be considered a closed-system when they continually interact with their surroundings and vice versa? I fail to see how. And what of will? Can we, with any degree of certainty, say that it's truly independent? Again, I fail to see how.

If, on the other hand, we are open-systems with, arguably, a number of biological and psychological filters, is there any way to truly pull out the 'individual' as being something separate? I tend to think not. Why? Because trying to do so neglects much of what makes the 'individual' an individual by rejecting the inherent interdependence of their existence. The same also applies to the will of said individual.

Then again, perhaps not. But this line of reasoning has helped me to see that what happens in the world around me does matter to me as an individual, that trying to be active and change things is useful, even important. I quite like how Dr. Anil Rajvanshi puts it, albeit in a different context, when he says that "... each one of us lead our own separate lives which 'dart' randomly depending on the forces acting upon us yet collectively we go forward in a band which is called human evolution" (Free Will, Evolution and Chaos Theory).

What does this all mean? I'm not sure if it means anything; but when I try to piece it all together, here's what I get:

Metaphysics aside, my philosophy has always been that it's up to each individual, as far as they're able, to live their own lives and make their own choices. Nevertheless, as a good friend of mine once said to me, it's not the gods who make the world the way it is; we make the world this way. And we can make it into whatever we desire.

Perhaps Nietzsche was right about the human being who "possesses his own independent and enduring will." Perhaps that's the metaphorical godhead of human evolution, to perfect the skill of consciously creating our reality to the point that we eventually transcend our limitations and experience the world in an entirely new way. Perhaps, then, the problem lies not in the world, but within us, with our desires, our will; self-mastery being the key as well as the goal. But here's were I think Nietzsche goes wrong, at least from a Buddhist point of view.

In my opinion, Nietzsche's type of ego-development leads to an unhealthy type of individual who 'transcends' the world in order to lord over it, a hero who's the antithesis of Buddhism's spiritual egalitarianism, e.g., In Thus Spoke Zarathustra, he calls the 'lust to rule' a "gift-giving virtue"; proclaims that selfishness is blessed, wholesome and healthy; and suggests suffering can be drowned out by continuously creating and overcoming oneself.

I think this issue arises mainly from his unbalanced view of morality, i.e., his focus on the 'strong-willed individual'; and his rejection of what he calls 'slave morality,' which values actions according to their good or evil (i.e., skillful or unskillful) intentions, for 'master-morality,' which values actions according to their good or bad (i.e., pleasant or painful) consequences. This view is unbalanced in that it either overlooks, or completely denies, the efficacy of the intentions underlying our actions (not to mention its blatant disregard for others); whereas Buddhism recognizes both actions and their intentions as contributing to the experience of mental well-being and/or suffering, for ourselves as well as others.

I find that the Buddha's teachings and techniques for developing a healthy ego, on the other hand, ultimately take the opposite approach, switching self-grasping (fueling the fire) for letting-go (removing the fire's fuel), with Buddha's teachings on not-self being a "useful way of disentangling oneself from the attachments & clingings which lead to suffering" (The Not-self Strategy). As Thanissaro Bhikkhu puts it:

[The Buddha] would have you drop unhealthy and unskillful ways of self-identification in favor of ways that were more skillful and refined. Only on the highest levels of practice, where even the most skillful concepts of self get in the way of the ultimate happiness, did the Buddha advocate totally abandoning them. But even then he didn’t advocate abandoning the basic principle of ego functioning. You drop the best happiness that can come from a sense of self because an even greater happiness—nirvana, totally timeless, limitless, and unconditioned—appears when you do.

morality sans a belief in god?

While I accept that one can make a rational argument logically demonstrating the independence of God and morality (e.g., Euthyphro), I'm a little surprised by theists who attempt to argue that it's only through a belief in a creator God that one can be a 'moral' person.

Why? For one thing, we can empirically observe the fact that there are many seemingly moral people who are atheist and completely non-religious, so we can conclude that simply believing in a creator God isn't a requirement to being a moral person, i.e., someone who lives by a particular standard of what's right and wrong.

Moreover, we can empirically observe the fact that there are many religions and philosophies, including Buddhism, that have strong ethical and moral principles without being based on the idea of a creator God, many of their adherents being, at least superficially, moral people. From this, we can conclude that theism isn't necessarily the only theological/philosophical basis for morality.

Whether or not a theist accepts the validity of these systems is irrelevant.

As for the basis of Buddhist ethics and morality, which I'd say is ultimately empirical and pragmatic in nature rather than 'revealed,' the underlying principles are kamma — the idea that certain actions produce pleasant, painful or neutral feelings/results — and the principle of ahimsa or harmlessness. (For more of my thoughts about Buddhist morality, see this.)

I've also noticed that there's also some confusion when it comes to Buddhist morality in that some people ask, If Buddhism says everything is an illusion, what's the point of trying to be a moral person? Wouldn't just be a futile effort?

To begin with, as far as I'm aware, the Buddha never said that everything is an illusion (i.e., unreal or empty of substance), especially when it comes to actions and their results. In my opinion, this is most likely a misunderstanding of what the Buddha says in place like SN 22.95, which people sometimes try to apply to everything, including the principle of causality.

And since Buddhist morality is centred on the efficacy of actions and the intentions underlying them, a Buddhist can be a moral person even without a belief in God simply by constantly reflecting upon their actions of body, speech and mind, and whether they lead to self-affliction, to the affliction of others or to both (MN 61).

is lying ever ok?

When it comes to the precept against lying, it's often asked (1) whether it's OK to lie in a particular circumstance, and (2) if we have to undo and/or atone for our past, unskillful deeds. One of the most common questions being, Is it OK to lie if the Gestapo comes knocking on your door and you have a family of Jews hiding in your basement?

It's an interesting questions. I don't know if it's ever OK to lie, but I do think it can be easier to deal with certain situations by lying than not. The question is, how much effort do we want to put into observing the fourth precept? At times, I've put forth a lot, but others, not so much. Looking back at my own life, I don't think I've ever really had a good reason to lie when I did so much as I simply found it to be more expedient. And since becoming interested in Buddhism, I've found myself lying less and immediately correcting myself when I do catch myself telling a fib or exaggerating the truth.

That said, the Buddha seems to take the position that lying is never really 'OK.' Thanissaro Bhikkhu, for example, notes that throughout the 550 birth stories contained in the Jakata, the precept against lying is the only one the Buddha doesn't break. Moreover, the Buddha appears to hold truthfulness in pretty high regard (e.g., see examples of his words on truthfulness here).

Personally, I tend to agree with Aristotle that lying isn't legitimate unless overridden by some higher virtue (i.e., anything leading to the highest good), such as lying to save someone's life (which is probably a position more in line with Mahayana than Theravada). In most circumstances, if I'm forced into a position where I have to either lie or watch someone die because I tell the truth, I'm going to lie my ass off. The only issue I have with the Gestapo scenario, however, is that it (like most hypotheticals of this nature) seems to be based on the assumption that lying is the only way to protect a family of Jews hiding in your basement.

For example, one could preemptively befriend local Nazis, having a few drinks with them or whatnot, so that they wouldn't even be suspected of harbouring Jews in the first place. Or, if confronted unexpectedly, one could simply invite them in (assuming the people were fairly well hidden), offer them a drink and say, "Have a look if you want." It'd be the equivalent of saying "I've got nothing to hide" without actually having to lie.

Either way, there's not much one could do to prevent them from searching one's home if that's what they had in mind to do; although, they probably wouldn't look as hard if they didn't feel suspicious. And having an open and friendly attitude would probably help. But, like I said, I'd have no qualms about lying in this situation if I had to or couldn't think of anything better.

As for rest, there's nothing wrong with trying to correct your past indiscretions (although, it should be noted that mistakes and misunderstandings ≠ lies), but it's my opinion that you don't need to correct every lie you've ever told as long as you make a serious effort to renounce lying and do your best to cultivate the truth in the future, e.g., in AN 10.176, the Buddha says:

And how is one made pure in four ways by verbal action? There is the case where a certain person, abandoning false speech, abstains from false speech. When he has been called to a town meeting, a group meeting, a gathering of his relatives, his guild, or of the royalty, if he is asked as a witness, 'Come & tell, good man, what you know': If he doesn't know, he says, 'I don't know.' If he does know, he says, 'I know.' If he hasn't seen, he says, 'I haven't seen.' If he has seen, he says, 'I have seen.' Thus he doesn't consciously tell a lie for his own sake, for the sake of another, or for the sake of any reward. Abandoning false speech, he abstains from false speech. He speaks the truth, holds to the truth, is firm, reliable, no deceiver of the world.

Notice that he doesn't say you have to go back and un-tell each and every lie or half-truth you've ever told in the past, which would most likely be a never-ending task, but simply to make a firm effort to abstain from lying in the present. The basic idea is that, genuine self-purification comes from a combination of constant reflection and the cultivation of skillfulness in one's actions of body, speech and mind (MN 61). And the more one develops wholesome motivations, the more one becomes purified.

anatta (not-self) vs. attakara (self-agency)

Someone raised an interesting question yesterday about an apparent contradiction between two suttas, AN 6.38 and SN 22.59. The former seeming to affirm the existence of a self-doer (atta-kara), while the latter stating that the five aggregates are not-self (anatta), which raises the question, How can there be a self-doer if all of the aggregates are not-self?

To begin with, I tend to translate attakara as 'individual effort,' which I think helps avoid some of these linguistic dilemmas. Moreover, I understand this self-doing or self agency or individual effort that's mentioned in AN 6.38 to be analogous to kamma, the intentional actions done via body, speech and mind (AN 6.63).

Kamma is intention (cetana), and intention is a product of the aggregate of mental formations (sankhara-khandha). Therefore, being a product or process within one of the aggregates, which themselves are types of processes and not-self, this type of internal decision maker or will-to-do, if you will, has its own requisite conditions and is also not-self, since whatever is conditioned and subject to change can't be said to have an unchanging being or essence.

In other words, SN 22.59 is refuting the idea of a permanent and unchanging self or soul (i.e., an agent free from conditionality, and consequently, aging, illness and death) within and controlling the aggregates, whereas AN 6.38 is refuting the idea that there's no volitional choice available to us whatsoever. They're two extremes the Buddha rejects. As one erudite poster from dhammawheel.com put it:

Desire and attention and volitional choice can all be concomitant causes or effects. Freedom of choice isn't independent of other causes and conditions -- it operates within the same conditioned mind-stream. But it does operate, and it does so in consort with desire and attention, and so on. Hence there is no need for Cartesian notions of free will or Upaniṣadic notions of a permanent, unchanging Self for there to be freedom to choose. In fact, these non-Buddhist systems are not sustainable precisely because of the interdependence of phenomena: i.e. an unchanging agent cannot engage in actions, etc.

As for where the line between volitional and involuntary actions begins, I'd say it's consciousness (vinnana); although, given the complexities of this/that conditionality and the inherent interconnectedness of all these internal and external processes, I don't think there's anyway to pinpoint precisely what or where this element of intention is. For one, it's not a thing as much as a process, and this focus on processes over substances is one reason I view Buddhism as a type of process philosophy.

Basically, I think this apparent contradiction can be easily resolved by taking the context of the two suttas into consideration, as well as surmising that the Buddha essentially took the position that we, as sentient beings, have functional choice via intention operating within a broader framework of causality that conditions the choices available to us at any given time—thus avoiding the extremes of an unchanging agent (eternalism) and no agency at all (nihilism). Others in the Buddhist community see it this way, as well, e.g., Karin Meyers' paper "Freedom and self-control: Free will in South Asian Buddhism" notes:

Both Karunaratna and Nanayakkara claim that Buddhism accepts the freedom to choose between alternative courses of action as an "empirical truth," by which they mean a truth that is observed and accepted in the context of moral action. This claim is consistent with the fact that the Buddha offers copious advice as to what actions persons should take or avoid so as to reduce suffering for themselves and others and also arguably consistent with Buddhist accounts of moral responsibility, but Nanayakkara makes the further claim that freedom of choice is essential to the Buddhist concept of karma (Pali: kamma). He explains that cetana, which he describes as “the (free) will," is "equated with moral action (kamma)" in order to account for the fact that one is only responsible for conscious, deliberate actions. A number of other interpreters have made similar claims. For example, K.N. Jayatilleke explains: By 'free will' in a Buddhist context, it is not meant that there is a will, choice or decision which is unaffected by causal factors that affect it, but that our volitional factor or will, choices or decision, while being conditioned by such factors, are not wholly shaped or strictly determined by them, since there is in man 'an element of initiative ' (arabbha-dhatu) or 'personal action' (purisa-kara) or 'individual action' (atta-kara), which within limits can resist the factors that affect it. If not for this factor of human personality, 'moral responsibility' would be a farce and the forces that impel us to act would be responsible for our actions.

But this raises some difficult questions about the nature of volition and the choices we make, and I'm reminded of the causal determinism found in the Abhidhamma. True free will would seem to require an independent agent, and Buddhism effectively denies such an agency. And if our volition is itself conditioned by other factors, then it, too, must ultimately be the result of causally determined processes, meaning that it's not so much an agent as it has the appearance of being an agent. For example, Dhammanando Bhikkhu once gave me the example of a mosquito biting you on the nose: first you feel annoyed and want to squash it, but then you recall that you're a precept-observing Buddhist and so restrain yourself.

He explained that when this event is described in conventional terms, or according to the Sutta method, it might be said that you had a choice to kill the mosquito or to refrain, and that you chose the latter. But when it's described according to the Abhidhamma method, your abstention from killing wasn't due to choice but to the arising of kusala cetasikas (wholesome mental factors) such as moral shame and fear of wrong-doing (hiri & ottappa), and abstinence (virati), i.e., it was causally determined.

And there are supporting passages like this from the Dhammasangani (pp. 7-8):

What on that occasion is volition (cetana)? The volition, purpose, purposefulness, which is born of contact with the appropriate element of representative intellection - that is the volition that there then is.

And the Atthasalini (pp.147-148):

Volition is that which co-ordinates, that is, it binds closely (abhisandahati) to itself associated states as objects. This is its characteristic; its function is conation. There is no such thing as volition in the four planes of existence without the characteristic of co-ordinating; all volition has it. But the function of conation is only in moral and immoral states; as regards activity in moral and immoral acts, the remaining associated states play only a restricted part. But volition is exceedingly energetic. It makes double effort, double exertion. Hence the Ancients said: 'Volition is like the nature of a landowner, a cultivator who, taking fifty-five strong men, went down to the fields to reap. He was exceedingly energetic and exceedingly strenuous; he doubled his strength, he doubled his effort, and said, "Take your sickles," and so forth, pointed out the portion to be reaped, offered them drink, food, scent, flowers, etc., and took an equal share of the work.' Volition is like the cultivator; the fifty-five moral states which arise as factors of consciousness are like the fifty-five strong men; like the time of doubling strength, doubling effort by the cultivator is the doubled strength, double effort of volition as regards activity in moral and immoral acts. Thus should conation as its function be understood.

It has directing as manifestation. It arises directing associated states, like the chief disciple, the chief carpenter, etc., who fulfil their own and others' duties... even so, when volition starts work on its object, it sets associated states to do each its own work. For when it puts forth energy, they also put forth energy... It is also evident that it arises by causing associated states to be energetic in such things as recollecting an urgent work and so forth.

Moreover, I think this Abhidhammic position accords well with what Sam Harris writes about the illusion of free will in his book, Free Will, and I find myself being swayed from any sort of belief in free will by many of the arguments made by Harris and others who consider Buddhism to be entirely compatible with causal determinism.

However, I wonder whether an agent or self is absolutely necessary for decision making in the first place. A computer can essentially make choices and 'act' based upon imputed information and various algorithms, for example, without a soul or self in the Western philosophical conception. Having a component of our physiology/psychology that does more or less the same isn't all that far fetched. We have the mental capacity to observe, remember, make distinctions, etc., and the part of us responsible for our actions doesn't have to be an independently existing, eternal entity for decisions to be made and their effects/consequences to be analyzed within a moral framework.

And if the answer is indeed no, then the entire debate seems to be moot, at least from a practical point of view.

best dhammapada translations online

The Dhammapada, a small collection of verses attributed to the Buddha, is one of the most popular and well-known Buddhist texts. It's short, readable and full of great examples of the Buddha's wisdom.

Personally, given the inherent limitations of translation itself (which I view as more of an art form than an exact science), I don't think there's one definitive translation, especially since each translation has its own pros and cons. That said, I do think that there are a lot of good translations out there, many of which can be found online.

If someone is looking for a more poetic rendition, for example, I'd suggest Thanissaro Bhikkhu's version. If they're looking for something that represents the commentarial tradition of Theravada, on the other hand, I'd suggest Daw Mya Tin's translation, which includes the Pali text along with a summary of the background stories to each verse as related by the ancient commentator, Buddhaghosa. Narada Thera's translation and Acharya Buddharakkhita's translation are also highly regarded in the Theravadin community.

And if one wants to go really old school, they can check out Max Muller's 1881 translation; which isn't without its flaws, but still quite popular and respected despite its age.