HH The Dalai Lama has an interesting take on selfishness. He says that to be really skillfully selfish, you should be kind to other beings as this generates good karma, and raises your status in the eyes of others as a kind person.
Underlying this idea is the Buddhist method that if you practce somethng enough, you will become it. So, you may start off as being genuinely selfish in what you do for others, but repetition will make you become really unselfish.
My colleague was telling me about an experiement that was held with couples who were on the verge of divorce. As part of the experiment, they were told to be kind to their partner for a number of weeks. It was found that this had a generally positive effect upon the people and their relationships, even though they all knew the terms of the experiment, and thy found common ground again. (This is from my colleague - I can't find what he's referring to on the internet).
It's all done through thought - powerful stuff.
You are out of your element. Buddhist meditation practices actually alter the functioning and the structure of the brain. Its not bogus. It increases activity in the left prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain associated with rational thought.
The four noble truths, the doctrine of the impermanence and conditionality of all things - what exactly do you take issue with here?
I suppose that depends on how one defines the word "reality." To me the essence of Buddhism is exactly what I set forth before - the doctrine of the impermanence and conditionality of all things, especially that of the self. What about that indicates a "wholesale detachment from reality?"
The phrase is non-attachment not detatchment.
Non-attachment means to not be negatively influenced by things, people, places. It does not mean - as detatchment implies - cutting off from.
This is often wrongly equated with acetics who are on retreat, as if it is a symptom of their detatchment from society. This is not the case. A person goes on retreat to solve their own problems in order to better understand and help those in the world.
Understanding yourself helps you to understand others.
As Darcy says, it is about understanding the illusory nature of our projected self. Self delusion is like a common and unrecognsed madness. It leads to an overwhelming protection of the self - often without good cause - which leads to suffering and the development of bad karma. The worst case of defending some illusory self is the urge to war that often goes along withthe identfication of individuals wit a national identity. Lots of suffering and death result from it.
why should humanity's impermanency concerned you?
The ultimate aim of Buddhists is to free themselves and others from suffering.
Impermanence is often the cause of suffering - the greatest impermanence being the fragilityof the individual and death. Also humanity is a Buddhist's concern which is why compassion is developed.
Please explain what you mean by self deception. The aim of many meditations is self awareness and precisely the opposite of what you describe.
Buddhism has values similar to humanist values in that it promotes and has compassion for the suffering of humanty. It doesn't stop there though as it extends this compassion to all living beings.
It goes much further in the sense of understanding the mid and providing the practitioner with methods for imrpoving their daily lives - through meditation reflection and practice. It identifies antidotes for negative human emotions like anger, greed etc and maps a way of overcoming negative traits and promoting positive ones.