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Meditation as Deconstruction
Buddhists have a tendency to put a heavy emphasis on meditation. They also tend to disparage or dismiss thinking. The only question is why. Is Buddhism intrinsically anti-intellectual?
Much of the human world is filled with social constructs. They are what historian Yuval Harari (author of the book, Sapiens) refers to as “useful fictions” or objects of our collective imagination. Why do we think of paper money as valuable and can be used to purchase real goods and services when the paper itself has little or no value? We may say that paper money’s value is symbolic in nature. It is dependent on our collective trust, or collective imagination and our collective consensus on its value. The same logic can be applied to our notions of “God,” country, corporations and human rights. The “reality” of these things is highly dependent on our collective belief. A corporation, for example, is a “legal fiction.” Its existence will continue even if all its physical assets are gone and all its employees are gone.
It is the same with our ideas of “personhood.” Will I still exist if I get a replacement of my hips, my lungs or my heart? Or, will I still exist if I completely change my political ideology, religion and worldview? The public’s notion of me is that I am a person of certain appearance, group association, beliefs, values and preferences. But all these can be changed and my…
