Between Two Enlightenments: Chaumer Essays

The Enlightenment's emphasis on reason and progress has led to a loss of identity, relationships, and a fragmented mind. We need to prioritize consciousness and experience over material possessions and activities, and seek a more Buddhist detachment to restore our lives.

Format: Hardback
Length: 128 pages
Publication date: 02 September 2021
Publisher: Maclean Dubois

Has the almost complete takeover of culture by the thinking of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment come without a cost? The sequel to the Enlightenment, known as modern life, has expanded our horizons enormously but it has also reduced and restricted us. We have lost identity and relationship and our minds have become fragmented and are often little short of foolish. In particular, we have not found a way of prioritising, as we must, the only things we surely have: consciousness and (hence) experience. These things are what the word 'life means.

We need some form of detachment from the empty counting and measuring that are at the heart of the Enlightenment project. We need to focus less on having and less even on doing, when our task is being. A more Buddhist detachment may restore our own experience to us and get us beyond the impasses of politics and mechanical science. We need less focus on the outside and more on the inside, for that is where our lives are actually lived.

The Enlightenment project has been a great success in many ways, but it has also led to a loss of identity and relationship, as well as a fragmented and foolish mind. We need to focus less on having and more on being, and a more Buddhist detachment may restore our own experience and get us beyond the impasses of politics and mechanical science. We need less focus on the outside and more on the inside, for that is where our lives are actually lived.

Weight: 314g
Dimension: 138 x 207 x 18 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780956527899