Michael writes:
> So people do have selves.
I never said they didn't. I said they have anatman (no-self). That is something quite different.
> There are different kinds individualism, if you define that as being the belief that the individual is the fundamental unit of meaning.
It is more than that. It is also the belief that individuals exist separately from others unless they choose not to. To me you cannot choose to be interconnected -- you are. You can only chose to have the wisdom to know and accept this fact. Just as gravity acts on a baby even though the baby doesn't know from gravity, the interconnected nature of reality acts upon us even if we are in denial of it.
> Personally despite your religious claim below, I believe that mature individualism and attention to mature self-interest is the only decent and possible way forward in this world, whatever one may think and hope about
the next one.
I made a philosphical claim not a religious one since Buddhism is more philosphy than religion. Western thinkers plunked Buddhism down in the category of religion since they really had no idea of what to do with it when they first encountered it. Most are still at a loss.
Now according to my dictionary at the office individual means "existing as a distinct entity; single; separate." If you are saying that mature individualism is characterized by an acceptance of the interconnectedness of being, how can this be individualism? Individualism is a doctrine of separateness. Once you acknowledge the interconnectedness of being, you have jumped the individualist bandwagon.
> Every Buddhist monk who resists injustice does so on the basis of self-consultation.
If the self you are referring to is a provisional one, I would agree, but I disagree if you are asserting there is a permanent unchanging self.
> If all people obtained mature self-interest, they would greatly reduce social inequality and greatly increase concern and action to protect and improve the natural and social basis for human life's continuation.
Again, I would agree if you define mature self-interest as the understanding/acceptance of the basic interconnectedness of all existence. At this stage of realization the separate self is subsumed into the whole except as it reforms itself provisionally moment to moment.
Brian Dauth Queer Buddhist Resister