I appreciate your “what about the bairn” question. Not sure what a bairn is, but assume it’s something tangible.
There are a couple ways to go with this, so this is gonna be a long one. Get yourself a nice beverage.
First, I notice a repetition of the mistake of separating mind and body. I’d thought of this mistake as a Western thing. You’re showing me that it also appears in Buddhism.
In essence, mind/consciousness is an emergent property of body. There is no real distinction between “physical” and “psychological” torture, for example, because both produce both physical and psychological effects. It shows up in other ways as well, as George Lakoff and Mark Johnson describe in Philosophy In The Flesh (New York: Basic, 1999).
Taoists often notice when actions backfire. Buddhists, you note, rely on “non-attachment and equanimity to self.” Yes, you’ve nailed that. But what the Taoist will notice is that seeking to detach from one’s body, only produces a louder attachment from the body. Take away the body and the mind will disappear.
Indeed, in an article I read on a near-death experience, the patient reported a sensation that her consciousness had dissolved. I disagree with Lakoff on a bunch of stuff, but it sure looks to me like he got this right.
Which overlaps with the second point. Which is like what I say of solipsism. Solipsism is actually right: We do in fact only know what is in our minds. What we think we see, hear, smell, taste, and touch is filtered through perception and we cannot be certain of what lies on the other side of that perception. The theory that our perceptions somewhat correspond to the external reality is the correspondence theory of truth and that we cannot be certain of that relationship is a particularly fatal flaw.
The trouble is that solipsism isn’t actually good for anything. It’s like, okay, that then, now what? And by the way, whatever you all think of my “perceptions,” I perceive some food that I’m stuffing into that rumbling belly. And by the way, if I don’t pay the rent, I’m going to be out in the cold. Solipsism sure ain’t letting me alter my perceptions of that external reality, because no matter how much I wish and hope, I can’t make it go away.
Confronting this, Buddhism says I need to meditate more or something, so I can make it go away. Otherwise, I am insufficiently devout. Which really does sound a lot like “The Secret’s” Law of Attraction, where if you’re still attracting bad stuff, it’s because you’re harboring bad stuff in your consciousness. In both ideologies, it’s all my fault, excusing everybody else from any duty to other human beings.