Articles on death . . . and transmigration?

Just when I was deciding 'rebirth' made no sense, I looked at another article at The Center for Naturalism after reading an article by Clark at the Pragmatic Buddhism newsletter site.

Death, Nothingness, and Subjectivity and Chapter 9 of Metaphysics by Default both present a case for a naturalistic version of 'transmigration' in the sense of a 'subjective continuity' of experience.
The MBD version is a little more baroque, but they are both very interesting.

A severe criticism of modern Theravada

I have been wondering about the apparent vitality of Mahayana and Tibetan Buddhism compared to Theravada, and now I find one answer: Theravada is rather ossified, particularly in its own cultural context. A footnote in Wikipedia led me to this site, which is mostly in German, look for Ven. Dhammika and "The Broken Buddha".

He has a blog here: Dhamma musings.
He mentions that his book "The Broken Buddha" is being translated into Indonesian here. At least he is trying to act as a reformer.

Ven. Dhammika's assessment of Theravada is pretty disillusioning. His view is that the Insight Meditation folks in the US are the most vital of western inheritors of Theravada. He also thinks Bhante G.'s emphasis on metta is not very impressive, because there is no emphasis on social engagement. I was wondering about this. Nhat Hahn is more impressive, I am beginning to think, though Bhante G. did make a good meditation manual.

Anatta and Parfit

Reading about anatta on Wikipedia has led me to Derek Parfit.

I read a little of his Reasons and Persons on amazon.com. Unfortunately my local libraries don't seem to have it. Sigh.

Pragmatic Buddhism?

These look really interesting: The Center for Pragmatic Buddhism, and their newsletter site: The Pragmatic Buddhist

I will look at these a while . . .

Anatta and Atoms and 'I'

And Democritus? I find it fascinating that Leucippus and Democritus came up with atomism in the so-called 'Axial Age' while early Buddhism was developing. The Epicurean ideas that followed, as preserved in Lucretius, really strike me as similar to 'anatta', no-self, particularly the idea that 'death is nothing to us' because our selves dissolve away in the flux of atoms when we die.

I also read a recent article in Scientific American Mind by Jesse Bering on the subjective difficulty of imagining one's own death.

There are also interesting papers referred to in the above article by Shaun Nichols.

What's this all about?

Due to a recent meeting with another person interested in modern Buddhism, I have become interested in vipassana meditation and renewed a long interest in Buddhism. I have been reading a couple of books by Bhante G. from the Bhavana Society, and also my new friend pointed me to Access to Insight. which is a Theravada resource site.

I am interested in Theravada because it strikes me as being sort of a 'minimalist' Buddhism, although my recent reading has made me aware it is only one of the original conservative schools of Buddhism.

Why am I interested in Buddhism? I lean towards being a 'physicalist' in the sense described by Galen Strawson --- and I think Buddhism is an interesting 'spirituality' to fit in with this.

Really I've been interested in Buddhism for most of my life, along with Taoism. My original contact was through Zen references in the old TV series Kung Fu. (Yeah, yeah, I know . . .) I just haven't been looking at if for a while and I really think it is the most congenial 'religion' to my outlook on life