There's a thing that isn't well-formed in my mind yet but I consider it SO important on my path to maturation, something like: you can engage earnestly with something without fully agreeing with it / making it a part of your worldview 4ever / needing to defend all its parts

More and more, the question for me is not "is this true" but "is this helpful"

Been reading more IFS lately. Is it really true that our minds are *actually* a bunch of sub-personalities all interacting with each other? I don't fucking know. I don't even know what that question means. But if I engage with the practices outlined, does life become better?

If yes, does that mean I now believe this model of the mind as a True Thing? Not really, as far as I can tell. It's a useful frame, and it seems to be making me into a healthier person, but that's as far as I can take the claim.

Same goes for Buddhism

Clearly I'm very embedded in Buddhist stuff at this point in my life. But I don't actually CARE about Buddhism, per se. I care about what i'm learning (unlearning?) through practicing it, I care about how my life and the lives of those I affect are impacted.

A friend was once criticizing Buddhism, and then said to me "sorry for shit-talking your religion" and i legit did a double-take. My what?

(I'm not gonna get into the argument about whether Buddhism is a religion or a philosophy, that's not the point. both/and, or whatever.)

But criticizing Buddhism as a whole just doesn't really feel like something that impacts me much. Maybe a bit? But usually only when people make clearly ignorant/unsubstantiated claims, and that seems more from the part of me that values rationality and good faith

(fwiw, some of the biggest critics of Buddhism I know are Buddhists, and I love listening to their criticisms)

On the topic of attaching to a worldview: Years ago, during a retreat, Soryu said something like "If what you are getting from this is that Buddhism is the right frame to look at the world with, you're not getting it. You need to be able to put down the frame of Buddhism too."

I think I started trusting him more when he said that.

Last spring, before getting lay-ordained, I told him "I'm not willing to commit to Buddhism, but I'm willing to commit to the thing Buddhism points to. It's not clear to me that Buddhist language will always be the right way to talk about it"

Anyway, I think I'm getting away from my original point, though this is all relevant.

If I needed to be convinced that Buddhism (or even monasticism) is the ~Best Way Forward~ before being willing to engage with it at least a little, I'd have done myself a huge disservice

Someone asked me a while ago what enlightenment is and whether I'm trying to reach it.

I don't know?

What I know is that as I engage with these practices more, my mind gets clearer, my heart gets more loving, and I act more skilfully. So I don't really see a reason to stop yet. And maybe after enough time of not stopping, I'll reach "enlightenment" or whatever.

I kind of want to pivot this back to IFS / emotional clearing / trauma healing, because i think there are a lot of parallels in how people engage (or don't) with those

but

I think I have to save it for another thread

I'm tired and it's tangled.

Also I've read over this thread a bunch of times and there are so many caveats I'd like to add but twitter does not make for easy nuance, so I guess try to interpret charitably?