Great post, and I agree with nearly all of it. But if "a Buddhist is someone who explicitly and purposefully pursues some form, any form, of practice whose purpose is ultimately to identify and ameliorate the causes of suffering," why is what you deride as "militant nihilistic iconoclasm" a far enemy of it? What the atheists I know are against is not the alleviation of suffering but the promulgation of an irrationalism that has been so useful in exploiting people. My own hope is that the kind of practice you describe so well in this piece may help convince people that religious belief is not necessary in order to address the human needs religion has served, and so we can do without religion's toxic and persistent side-effects. Am I wrong?
I prefer not to have my name shortened and therefore rendered meaningless. I have been of this opinion all my life, and always resisted my Chistian/civil name being shorted also. Thanks.
I think I need to insist on the distinction between atheism generally and what I call militant nihilistic iconoclasm. I am an atheist after all. But some people seem hell bent on attacking religion in all it's forms as a bad thing. "Religion", they say "is all bad". Buddhism is not exempt from this.
Because even when it is irrational, religion is not without value. Religions do not always seek to exploit people, and indeed most religious people are religious because they feel it is to their benefit and the benefit of the world to be so. My 73 year old mother is a very sincere fundamentalist Christian missionary and despite being an atheist I have no hesitation in managing her mission blog: Footprints in Africa. She's quite irrational about her belief in God, but doing a lot of good in one small village in Zambia!
I think the idea that religion is necessarily toxic is a wrong view. Religious institutions are no more or less toxic than any other human institution - more than some, and much less than others. I would say less, on the whole, than any current Western government for instance! Similarly religious organisations are on a pah with other human organisations for irrationality, and again I would cite Western governments. In the UK they really are completely mad, and I feel we are doomed whoever we vote for.
These altruistic people you speak of - are they interested in relieving suffering or only pain. You grasp the distinction I am making? I wrote about this a while back as Pain & Suffering and again as Happiness & Unhappiness. I think this is a vital distinction in this discussion. It's not a distinction that secularists are good at making, and I am quite convinced that even when they do understand the problem, they do not have the tools to deal with it.
The rationality of people is vastly over-stated. Reason has value, but it is not enough on it's own. The problem of irrationality of people is also overstated. We must take people as they are - provide reasons for things no doubt, but also to make empathetic connections that are nothing to do with reason.
"religion" has become a scapegoat. And the attack on religion is deflecting attention away from bigger issues - the corruption of multi-national companies, the way they exploit people for profit, the irrationality of Western governments and their approaches to well being. The baleful influence of the media which is far more toxic than the average sunday sermon. Religion is the least of our problems these days. I think the problem may be on a larger scale in the USA as religious groups there have more power, but companies, the military and governments also have proportionally more power.
The church did not invade Afghanistan or Iraq. The church did not pollute the Gulf of Mexico. Could religions do better? Yes they could. But let's get things in perspective. In the west religion is not the problem it's made out to be.
...just a short note to say thanks for the thoughtful words. It does help to hear others express their reservations with articles of faith such as rebirth and karma. It is empowering to share the belief that alleviation of suffering is the main goal, and is a sufficiently weighty task. The rest of it, the metaphysics and accompanying window dressing is optional.
I too like the smells and bells - what I call the atmospherics of Buddhism. I guess that is my love of the religious experience, to become caught up in the majesty of the tradition. I love the emotional swoon that carries me away into an imagined shared experience with my Buddhist brothers and sisters down through the ages. That type of connection is a big part of what sustains me emotionally. It brings magic into my life, and I feel embedded in some kind of continuity.
This experience doesn't need any metaphysical underpinning for me. I suppose I could point to the karmic nature of it, and to see the rebirth potential in successive lives as a Buddhist practitioner, but I don't need to do that. I'm OK with not knowing the grand plan. I'm just going to go with the emotional quality and be thankful that the tradition is provding me a means to lessen my suffering.
Thanks for your perspective. It can be hard to balance wholehearted participation and engagement with doubts and reservations.
As you say an experience doesn't need a metaphysical underpinning. Perhaps it does not even need explanation or interpretation at all. Though I think our natural tendency is to try to understand experiences. I suppose the best we can do is try to undermine our conditioning - to un-see (to take a notion from a recent China Mieville novel) our views - and allow the experience to speak to us.
I think we may say that right-view does not consist of imposing a Buddhist framework on experience. The fear for many people, I think, is that when they allow experience to speak for itself, it doesn't speak like a Pāli text, a Mahāyāna Sūtra or whatever. I also suspect that there are people in whom the opposite is true, and experience is very much like the texts.
But for most of us, we struggle to find a match, and so we face a dilemma. Do we deny the experience? Or deny it's validity? Do we explain it away? Do we interpret it in terms of the dogmas we've been bought up with (and revert to being Christian, Hindu or whatever); or in terms of the dogmas we've got from Buddhism? If any of these decisions are made consciously it would be remarkable.
In the end I think we have to be pragmatic. Not all views are problematic; not all experiences are life changing; not all dogmas are true; not all myths move us. And yet we are alive, and we do suffer, and we are equipped to respond to suffering in ourselves, but more importantly to respond to others as living, feeling, suffering beings like ourselves. We have this remarkable ability to enter into empathic relationships not only with close kith and kin, but with strangers, with non-humans, and even more amazingly with non-sentient beings and even inanimate objects. In short we can love.
I went to a multi-faith meeting last night in order to offer support to Muslims who want to build a new mosque in town, but are being opposed by the English Defence League (Think of the Illinois Nazi scene in the Blues Brothers - but with British flags). I was surprised by how often, across many faiths and cultures, the words "God's love" was used (though it was notably absent from the Imam's contribution). I wonder if "God's love" is just a cypher for the kind of Universal empathetic connection I've been talking about. Loving those beyond our circle of friends and family is difficult for most of us social primates. By assigning it to God, we depersonalise and universalise it - it's not ego but id. This makes it easier to opperationalise and act out. I'm pretty sure this is what my dear old mum does in Zambia under difficult and sometimes harrowing circumstances. Perhaps our love just needs a mythic mote around which to crystallize, because it feels to big for us? I think Amitābha and Avalokiteśvara play the same role in Buddhism. We might also say that certain leaders seem to be bearers of the archetype of universal love. The Dalai Lama, whatever else you might say about him, does genuinely seem to be an incarnation of Chenrezig (maybe not literally, but at the very least figuratively.)
I would just add that I think that the way humans teach each other and themselves about the complicated lessons of life (moral principles of behavior, thinking about and coping with death of others and ultimately ourselves, etc) is through story telling. We tell stories, recounting events, very often its all fiction. But the story tells us about ourselves. It's just an aspect of the human psyche. To think that this can be stopped or changed to non-fiction is to me -- well, like pouring bleach onto culture and killing it. And that is largely what the science-inspired secular West has been doing the past couple generations. And the result is ... the three poisons are running rampant more than ever. People have meaningless economic lives and not much else. That to me is as much evidence that the Buddhist perspective is a real one than anything else.
Sunday, July 10, 2011
Adam said...
Thank you, Jayarava, for another thought-provoking post!
I see some parallels with tai chi and buddhism regarding sectarianism.
You mentioned tai chi as a method that is not traditionally associated with buddhism yet can help on the buddhist path.
Although this is generally true, I believe buddhism has had an influence over certain styles/schools of tai chi due to the religious affiliations of the originators of those styles and their geographical proximity to centres of Chinese buddhism.
This influence can be seen superficially in the terminilogy used, for example, in Chen style tai chi.
At a deeper level I have the impression that some "buddhistic" styles of tai chi emphasise a calmness of mind in order to achieve insight and "know oneself", then use this as a foundation for healthy and compassionate interaction with others. This would differ from the styles that identify more with daoism where the true purpose of tai chi might be that of internal alchemy in order to achieve various degrees of invulnerability and immortality for oneself. This is just what I have noticed and is, of course, alongside tai chi as a method of keep-fit and self-defence.
Interestingly, there are also tai chi fundamentalists who cling to one or another particular philosophy that informs the art and would ironically seek to overstate the importance of these beliefs over the true fundamentals of practice. A lot of hot air has been exchanged over the issue of buddhism corrupting the original daoist essence of tai chi vs. the daoist origins being fantasy and not historically verifiable. The reality is so complex and mixed-up I don't think we will ever know the truth.
I like that, as far as I have seen, all of the most accomplished practitioners of tai chi see these issues as extraneous to a rigourous personal practice, from which one can ascertain experientially what works and what does not. Differences in culture, tradition, and human character ensure a number of paths exist, but many lead to the same goal.
I don't know the TaiChi community beyond my own little class - and we are not very traditional. But I know the kind of thing your are talking about from my other martial arts training.
I was talking with my teacher the other day about doing what we call partner work. People like to talk during this but I find it all a bit tedious. The important thing is the experience of doing it, and you can't learn by talking about it. A post-mortem after every 'push' is hardly helpful.
I find TaiChi a very helpful samatha practice. I regularly experience 'flow' while doing my form practice for instance.
Thanks Jayarava for your thoughtful response to my comment. I like what you said about the urge or need we have for universal empathetic love and how it often gets expressed as "God's love". Many of us do need this mythic mote to help crystallize our feelings. It is perhaps more challenging to experience it as abstracted emotion. Putting a face to it helps and, I think, can deepen the feeling.
Despite saying this, I've never really made the conversion to the adoption of a divinity that was truly there for me, as I imagine some people experience their Christ. Chenrezig is the closest for me, but there is still a gulf I experience. I suppose being raised a fifth generation Unitarian locks me out of the 'born again' option. I'll just have to go with the flood of emotion that comes when I feel kinship with fellow seekers. The brother/sisterhood in the shamanic sense is what moves me.
I did find your comment made me think more about this so thank you.
My only other observation would be that splitting off our ability to love strangers, and assigning it to some external agency, has a down side. Too often justifies not exercising the facility!
My own view is that no version of a creator God makes sense. I rarely cite poetry, but here#s a bit from a New Zealand poet called Gary McCormick. He's just heard that one of his senior contemporaries (Bruce Mason) has got cancer:
"It is difficult to contemplate a God Who strikes so ruthlessly At the best. His is a queer sense of humour And if He were a man like you or me --If you'll excuse for a moment, the blasphemy, We'd quarrel in a bar. And I'd be bound, thinking of you To kick him in the balls. Before leaving, as he lay there having, To drop into his hand A copy of your plays."
Gary's a good bloke, but he doesn't go far enough in his blasphemy. Buddhists do better with their demotion of all gods to the realm of saṃsāra. I don't remember the exact words, but many years ago Saṅgharakṣita said something like: "It is better not to believe in God. If one does believe in God, then one should at least disobey Him. To both believe in God and obey Him, is pathetic."
Hi, Jayarava! This is Karmakshanti from over on David Chapman's blog. I have some questions for you that are really not appropriate to burden David's posts with. While I find you to be a quite erudite and entertaining skeptic, I'm a little puzzled as to your actual views outside of what you disbelieve.
Over there you describe yourself as a "scientist". What is your field? Do you publish in it? What, if anything, does it have to tell you about "suffering"?
I have a pretty good idea of what you think is "unreal": God, karma, prior and future lives, siddhi, and so on. But what do you conceive to be real? There is no need for capitals, just what objectively exists outside and independently of our own perceptions.
If anything like this does exist, what causes it to exist, what is your view about the role of causality in the objective world? Are there both "caused" things and events and "random" things and events with no particular cause?
Some examples: for a time Bill Gates was the richest man in the world, so are there any actual causes for that specific individual to have done so, or could any individual have been the person to do this? Stalin and Mao committed homicide by proxy on a scale of millions, but died in bed. Is there any compelling reason for these things to have happened outside of random chance?
Is a mental process like suffering real in the same way that physical objects are real? You speak of the causes of suffering, what do you personally believe those to be? And do these causes arise ex nihilo or are they effects of prior causes. If they are such effects, do you think there is any kind of a First Cause?
You say the following:
Scientists did not destroy all notion of cosmic order. They replaces the traditional notions of cosmic order with modern ones. Indeed you could say that scientists – physical scientists – are precisely concerned to observe and elucidate the cosmic order as it actually is: hence they seek harmony, symmetry, and regular mathematical expressions.
What is your view then, of the relation of sensation and perception to physics? Does perceptual constancy of objects in the mind present a true picture of objects despite the fact that no single sensation or perception exactly matches it?
Further what is your stance on the reality of numbers? And do you think that multiple gyrations we put them through to do physics derive from propositional logic or from somewhere else? That being the case, is Algebra as real as Arithmatic, and are either of them as real as the physical order they describe?
As an example, 2 pi r=pi d=the circumference of any possible circle. Do these, then = the numerical value of every possible circle?
Is there any identifiable reason or cause for the Universe "as it actually is" to exhibit harmony, symmetry, and correspondence to mathematics, or do you think are arbitrary happenstance?
Now, of course, I have a Buddhist reason for all these questions. I do take "karma, cause, and effect" and "past and future lives" on trust as unprovable axioms. Whether this is "dogmatic" or not I leave others to judge.
If I do this, the Karma Kagyu Buddhist system I have studied, allows me to come to a rational answer to most, if not all of these questions. Such rational answers leave open the realistic possibility of siddhi and of many of the other things in which you disbelieve.
The answers referred to are not only rational, they are internally consistent, and match my interior experience both when meditating and in ordinary life to the degree that this is possible for me to judge.
Given this, it seems to me that a demand for "evidence" to prove these things that I take on trust, is beside the point, just as it would be for a mathematical axiom.
I have a B.Sc in chemistry, with a focus on analytical chemistry, but never published in that field. My first publication was a citation analysis of the New Zealand Library Journal (1991).
My statement is more a reflection that aged 9-20 I was deeply immersed in studying science and that this informs my world view. I continue align myself with scientists because I believe the scientific method provides results. And partly because I feel embattled and surrounded by muddle headed Romantics it seems necessary to emphasise my rejection of Romanticism by stating that I am a scientist. The B.Sc after my name gives that a minimal credibility.
I have no opinion on what is real and what is unreal (or at least I try to have no opinion). Having written a long commentary of the Kaccanagotta Sutta I consciously try to avoid the existent/non-existence dichotomy in all its varieties. I've come to see that Reality as a concept is irrelevant to being a Buddhist. I don't think God is a useful concept for me. I am agnostic on the subjects of karma and rebirth, mainly for the sake of form, but I find them extremely unlikely and therefore give them very little weight in determining how I should live. All of these concepts are more or less irrelevant unless one has blind faith; and I don't. Their reality or otherwise is also irrelevant.
I have no idea why things happen to people - and anything I could say would be mere speculation. It seems pretty random though, doesn't it?
My view on the relationship of the subjective and objective is the Buddhist one: experience arises in dependence on their being a sense object and a sense faculty, which give rise to sense consciousness and the three together constitute contact which is the condition for vedanā. Vedanā is the deepest level to which we have direct access as far as I can see. About the nature of the sense object I, like the Buddha, remain silent, though I find it very difficult to make sense of my experience if the world is not independent of my observing it (any other view leads to absurd conclusions). I think in meditation we can get knowledge of how mental states arise and be free from certain afflictions such as greed and hatred. I have some experience of this.
I don't have a stance on the reality of numbers. They are useful, I find, but reality is not a concept I could say anything about.
Smilarly I have nothing to say about the origin or nature of the universe except to say that I find physics a more reliable guide to navigating the world, than traditional cosmologies.
If you do take things "on trust as unprovable axioms" then that is a perfect example of the blind faith that we Buddhists do not indulge in. Either you are anomalous (and I would say that you are not) or the idea that Buddhists don't go in for blind faith is a lie.
I'm working on a post which looks at how in the early Buddhist texts faith is always faith in the Buddha, and not the ideas he spouts. In early Buddhism faith is a positive quality of relationship with another person, not a philosophical stance towards ideas. In which case most of the discussions of faith in English to date are barking up the wrong tree.
You are quite quite. Given any set of postulates it is entirely possible to proceed logically from that point on, and it will seem reasonable. But as you yourself say the postulates are unprovable so any conclusion which rests on them, however reasonable it seems, is also unprovable - it's just something that appeals to your mind. We don't make rational judgements (on the whole) we make emotional judgements and rationalise them. So what appeals to us seems reasonable, and what doesn't appeal to us seems unreasonable. Anything is justifiable through this method. Literally anything. When our ideas of right and wrong are founded on such blind faith then we can simply choose our starting postulates so as to make our behaviour seem reasonable. And this sends a shiver of fear up my spine!
I don't demand evidence, but I do say if you think you have the answers, on the basis of logical progression from some unprovable postulates, then you are not asking the right questions!
It's true that mathematics has the incompleteness theorem. In any symbolic system there will always be true statements that cannot be represented in that system. But I cannot think of a single application in which the reality of otherwise of numbers has any impact at all on my life.
I see the search for certainty through intellectual activity as a dead end. What intellectual activity does is shed doubt on what appeals to us. Hence the tone of my writing is often challenging cherished ideas. If you think you've found the answer, then perhaps you don't ask any questions (which is spiritual death). If you meditate to prove a dogma, then you will discover only the dogma or perhaps it's opposite. Why not start from ignorance, doubt, uncertainty and explore what presents it to your mind. Why do we need to know for certain before we even set out on the journey?
I sorry if my answers seem evasive, but I'm not that into the framework from which you were asking you questions. I see it as deeply problematic and I prefer not to participate in it if I can help it.
This essay is another breath of fresh air. Thank you.
You are wise to stay away from Buddhist Fora, and it is hard to argue with fundamentalism of any stripe. However, I do wish to report that the infamous 'E-SANGHA' forum is back as a forum called "Dharma Wheel" with many of the same people and intolerant games, supposed orthodoxy and the like, although often in a more subtle fashion (I suppose they learned from their e-sangha days to be less obvious about it).
If you basiclly reject everything that is buddhist, which you seem to do based on this and other posts, then there is no buddhism left. One would venture given that the thing you keep there is suffering the problem might much more easily be solved by a little pill. Why have buddhism at all when all that is needed is some drugs?
I certainly do not reject "everything that is Buddhist" and I wonder why you are indulging in this lazy and defeatist reading of this essay. Buck up!
Many Buddhists are perfectly happy to practice while holding radically different ideas of what their practice signifies. The doctrine is secondary. And most of it is pretty second rate as philosophy.
This need not stop anyone getting on with their practice while those of us who don't mind thinking about ideas sort out what we think should be said about practice and the fruits of practice.
Honestly why not just go stoic or epikureean it seem like a much better choice if one does like the buddhist doctrines except for the psychology stuff. you reject karma which is the foundation of quite a lot of the teachings. If all one foes is meditate Im hardpressed to se why one would call oneself a buddhist.
See for instance: Confessions.
"If science proves some belief of Buddhism wrong, then Buddhism will have to change. In my view, science and Buddhism share a search for the truth and for understanding reality. By learning from science about aspects of reality where its understanding may be more advanced, I believe that Buddhism enriches its own worldview." The New York Times (12 November 2005) [via Wikiquote]
see e.e. Rebirth and the Scientific Method; and Hierarchies of Values.
Note that Euripides's estimated dates coincide exactly with the most recent estimations for the dates of the Buddha.
18 Comments
Close this window Jump to comment formJaya --
Great post, and I agree with nearly all of it. But if "a Buddhist is someone who explicitly and purposefully pursues some form, any form, of practice whose purpose is ultimately to identify and ameliorate the causes of suffering," why is what you deride as "militant nihilistic iconoclasm" a far enemy of it? What the atheists I know are against is not the alleviation of suffering but the promulgation of an irrationalism that has been so useful in exploiting people. My own hope is that the kind of practice you describe so well in this piece may help convince people that religious belief is not necessary in order to address the human needs religion has served, and so we can do without religion's toxic and persistent side-effects. Am I wrong?
Friday, July 08, 2011
HI Mark
I prefer not to have my name shortened and therefore rendered meaningless. I have been of this opinion all my life, and always resisted my Chistian/civil name being shorted also. Thanks.
I think I need to insist on the distinction between atheism generally and what I call militant nihilistic iconoclasm. I am an atheist after all. But some people seem hell bent on attacking religion in all it's forms as a bad thing. "Religion", they say "is all bad". Buddhism is not exempt from this.
Because even when it is irrational, religion is not without value. Religions do not always seek to exploit people, and indeed most religious people are religious because they feel it is to their benefit and the benefit of the world to be so. My 73 year old mother is a very sincere fundamentalist Christian missionary and despite being an atheist I have no hesitation in managing her mission blog: Footprints in Africa. She's quite irrational about her belief in God, but doing a lot of good in one small village in Zambia!
I think the idea that religion is necessarily toxic is a wrong view. Religious institutions are no more or less toxic than any other human institution - more than some, and much less than others. I would say less, on the whole, than any current Western government for instance! Similarly religious organisations are on a pah with other human organisations for irrationality, and again I would cite Western governments. In the UK they really are completely mad, and I feel we are doomed whoever we vote for.
These altruistic people you speak of - are they interested in relieving suffering or only pain. You grasp the distinction I am making? I wrote about this a while back as Pain & Suffering and again as Happiness & Unhappiness. I think this is a vital distinction in this discussion. It's not a distinction that secularists are good at making, and I am quite convinced that even when they do understand the problem, they do not have the tools to deal with it.
The rationality of people is vastly over-stated. Reason has value, but it is not enough on it's own. The problem of irrationality of people is also overstated. We must take people as they are - provide reasons for things no doubt, but also to make empathetic connections that are nothing to do with reason.
"religion" has become a scapegoat. And the attack on religion is deflecting attention away from bigger issues - the corruption of multi-national companies, the way they exploit people for profit, the irrationality of Western governments and their approaches to well being. The baleful influence of the media which is far more toxic than the average sunday sermon. Religion is the least of our problems these days. I think the problem may be on a larger scale in the USA as religious groups there have more power, but companies, the military and governments also have proportionally more power.
The church did not invade Afghanistan or Iraq. The church did not pollute the Gulf of Mexico. Could religions do better? Yes they could. But let's get things in perspective. In the west religion is not the problem it's made out to be.
Friday, July 08, 2011
Hi Jayarava,
...just a short note to say thanks for the thoughtful words. It does help to hear others express their reservations with articles of faith such as rebirth and karma. It is empowering to share the belief that alleviation of suffering is the main goal, and is a sufficiently weighty task. The rest of it, the metaphysics and accompanying window dressing is optional.
I too like the smells and bells - what I call the atmospherics of Buddhism. I guess that is my love of the religious experience, to become caught up in the majesty of the tradition. I love the emotional swoon that carries me away into an imagined shared experience with my Buddhist brothers and sisters down through the ages. That type of connection is a big part of what sustains me emotionally. It brings magic into my life, and I feel embedded in some kind of continuity.
This experience doesn't need any metaphysical underpinning for me. I suppose I could point to the karmic nature of it, and to see the rebirth potential in successive lives as a Buddhist practitioner, but I don't need to do that. I'm OK with not knowing the grand plan. I'm just going to go with the emotional quality and be thankful that the tradition is provding me a means to lessen my suffering.
Thanks again, Andrew
Friday, July 08, 2011
Hi Andrew,
Thanks for your perspective. It can be hard to balance wholehearted participation and engagement with doubts and reservations.
As you say an experience doesn't need a metaphysical underpinning. Perhaps it does not even need explanation or interpretation at all. Though I think our natural tendency is to try to understand experiences. I suppose the best we can do is try to undermine our conditioning - to un-see (to take a notion from a recent China Mieville novel) our views - and allow the experience to speak to us.
I think we may say that right-view does not consist of imposing a Buddhist framework on experience. The fear for many people, I think, is that when they allow experience to speak for itself, it doesn't speak like a Pāli text, a Mahāyāna Sūtra or whatever. I also suspect that there are people in whom the opposite is true, and experience is very much like the texts.
But for most of us, we struggle to find a match, and so we face a dilemma. Do we deny the experience? Or deny it's validity? Do we explain it away? Do we interpret it in terms of the dogmas we've been bought up with (and revert to being Christian, Hindu or whatever); or in terms of the dogmas we've got from Buddhism? If any of these decisions are made consciously it would be remarkable.
In the end I think we have to be pragmatic. Not all views are problematic; not all experiences are life changing; not all dogmas are true; not all myths move us. And yet we are alive, and we do suffer, and we are equipped to respond to suffering in ourselves, but more importantly to respond to others as living, feeling, suffering beings like ourselves. We have this remarkable ability to enter into empathic relationships not only with close kith and kin, but with strangers, with non-humans, and even more amazingly with non-sentient beings and even inanimate objects. In short we can love.
I went to a multi-faith meeting last night in order to offer support to Muslims who want to build a new mosque in town, but are being opposed by the English Defence League (Think of the Illinois Nazi scene in the Blues Brothers - but with British flags). I was surprised by how often, across many faiths and cultures, the words "God's love" was used (though it was notably absent from the Imam's contribution). I wonder if "God's love" is just a cypher for the kind of Universal empathetic connection I've been talking about. Loving those beyond our circle of friends and family is difficult for most of us social primates. By assigning it to God, we depersonalise and universalise it - it's not ego but id. This makes it easier to opperationalise and act out. I'm pretty sure this is what my dear old mum does in Zambia under difficult and sometimes harrowing circumstances. Perhaps our love just needs a mythic mote around which to crystallize, because it feels to big for us? I think Amitābha and Avalokiteśvara play the same role in Buddhism. We might also say that certain leaders seem to be bearers of the archetype of universal love. The Dalai Lama, whatever else you might say about him, does genuinely seem to be an incarnation of Chenrezig (maybe not literally, but at the very least figuratively.)
oṃ śāntiḥ śāntiḥ śāntiḥ
Saturday, July 09, 2011
I would just add that I think that the way humans teach each other and themselves about the complicated lessons of life (moral principles of behavior, thinking about and coping with death of others and ultimately ourselves, etc) is through story telling. We tell stories, recounting events, very often its all fiction. But the story tells us about ourselves. It's just an aspect of the human psyche. To think that this can be stopped or changed to non-fiction is to me -- well, like pouring bleach onto culture and killing it. And that is largely what the science-inspired secular West has been doing the past couple generations. And the result is ... the three poisons are running rampant more than ever. People have meaningless economic lives and not much else. That to me is as much evidence that the Buddhist perspective is a real one than anything else.
Sunday, July 10, 2011
Thank you, Jayarava, for another thought-provoking post!
I see some parallels with tai chi and buddhism regarding sectarianism.
You mentioned tai chi as a method that is not traditionally associated with buddhism yet can help on the buddhist path.
Although this is generally true, I believe buddhism has had an influence over certain styles/schools of tai chi due to the religious affiliations of the originators of those styles and their geographical proximity to centres of Chinese buddhism.
This influence can be seen superficially in the terminilogy used, for example, in Chen style tai chi.
At a deeper level I have the impression that some "buddhistic" styles of tai chi emphasise a calmness of mind in order to achieve insight and "know oneself", then use this as a foundation for healthy and compassionate interaction with others. This would differ from the styles that identify more with daoism where the true purpose of tai chi might be that of internal alchemy in order to achieve various degrees of invulnerability and immortality for oneself. This is just what I have noticed and is, of course, alongside tai chi as a method of keep-fit and self-defence.
Interestingly, there are also tai chi fundamentalists who cling to one or another particular philosophy that informs the art and would ironically seek to overstate the importance of these beliefs over the true fundamentals of practice. A lot of hot air has been exchanged over the issue of buddhism corrupting the original daoist essence of tai chi vs. the daoist origins being fantasy and not historically verifiable. The reality is so complex and mixed-up I don't think we will ever know the truth.
I like that, as far as I have seen, all of the most accomplished practitioners of tai chi see these issues as extraneous to a rigourous personal practice, from which one can ascertain experientially what works and what does not. Differences in culture, tradition, and human character ensure a number of paths exist, but many lead to the same goal.
Monday, July 11, 2011
Hi Adam,
I don't know the TaiChi community beyond my own little class - and we are not very traditional. But I know the kind of thing your are talking about from my other martial arts training.
I was talking with my teacher the other day about doing what we call partner work. People like to talk during this but I find it all a bit tedious. The important thing is the experience of doing it, and you can't learn by talking about it. A post-mortem after every 'push' is hardly helpful.
I find TaiChi a very helpful samatha practice. I regularly experience 'flow' while doing my form practice for instance.
Monday, July 11, 2011
Thanks Jayarava for your thoughtful response to my comment. I like what you said about the urge or need we have for universal empathetic love and how it often gets expressed as "God's love". Many of us do need this mythic mote to help crystallize our feelings. It is perhaps more challenging to experience it as abstracted emotion. Putting a face to it helps and, I think, can deepen the feeling.
Despite saying this, I've never really made the conversion to the adoption of a divinity that was truly there for me, as I imagine some people experience their Christ. Chenrezig is the closest for me, but there is still a gulf I experience. I suppose being raised a fifth generation Unitarian locks me out of the 'born again' option. I'll just have to go with the flood of emotion that comes when I feel kinship with fellow seekers. The brother/sisterhood in the shamanic sense is what moves me.
Blessings, Andrew
Wednesday, July 13, 2011
Hi Andrew,
I did find your comment made me think more about this so thank you.
My only other observation would be that splitting off our ability to love strangers, and assigning it to some external agency, has a down side. Too often justifies not exercising the facility!
My own view is that no version of a creator God makes sense. I rarely cite poetry, but here#s a bit from a New Zealand poet called Gary McCormick. He's just heard that one of his senior contemporaries (Bruce Mason) has got cancer:
"It is difficult to contemplate a God
Who strikes so ruthlessly
At the best.
His is a queer sense of humour
And if He were a man like you or me
--If you'll excuse for a moment, the blasphemy,
We'd quarrel in a bar.
And I'd be bound, thinking of you
To kick him in the balls.
Before leaving, as he lay there having,
To drop into his hand
A copy of your plays."
Gary's a good bloke, but he doesn't go far enough in his blasphemy. Buddhists do better with their demotion of all gods to the realm of saṃsāra. I don't remember the exact words, but many years ago Saṅgharakṣita said something like: "It is better not to believe in God. If one does believe in God, then one should at least disobey Him. To both believe in God and obey Him, is pathetic."
Wednesday, July 13, 2011
Hi, Jayarava! This is Karmakshanti from over on David Chapman's blog. I have some questions for you that are really not appropriate to burden David's posts with. While I find you to be a quite erudite and entertaining skeptic, I'm a little puzzled as to your actual views outside of what you disbelieve.
Over there you describe yourself as a "scientist". What is your field? Do you publish in it? What, if anything, does it have to tell you about "suffering"?
I have a pretty good idea of what you think is "unreal": God, karma, prior and future lives, siddhi, and so on. But what do you conceive to be real? There is no need for capitals, just what objectively exists outside and independently of our own perceptions.
If anything like this does exist, what causes it to exist, what is your view about the role of causality in the objective world? Are there both "caused" things and events and "random" things and events with no particular cause?
Some examples: for a time Bill Gates was the richest man in the world, so are there any actual causes for that specific individual to have done so, or could any individual have been the person to do this? Stalin and Mao committed homicide by proxy on a scale of millions, but died in bed. Is there any compelling reason for these things to have happened outside of random chance?
Is a mental process like suffering real in the same way that physical objects are real? You speak of the causes of suffering, what do you personally believe those to be? And do these causes arise ex nihilo or are they effects of prior causes. If they are such effects, do you think there is any kind of a First Cause?
You say the following:
Scientists did not destroy all notion of cosmic order. They replaces the traditional notions of cosmic order with modern ones. Indeed you could say that scientists – physical scientists – are precisely concerned to observe and elucidate the cosmic order as it actually is: hence they seek harmony, symmetry, and regular mathematical expressions.
What is your view then, of the relation of sensation and perception to physics? Does perceptual constancy of objects in the mind present a true picture of objects despite the fact that no single sensation or perception exactly matches it?
Further what is your stance on the reality of numbers? And do you think that multiple gyrations we put them through to do physics derive from propositional logic or from somewhere else? That being the case, is Algebra as real as Arithmatic, and are either of them as real as the physical order they describe?
As an example, 2 pi r=pi d=the circumference of any possible circle. Do these, then = the numerical value of every possible circle?
Is there any identifiable reason or cause for the Universe "as it actually is" to exhibit harmony, symmetry, and correspondence to mathematics, or do you think are arbitrary happenstance?
Now, of course, I have a Buddhist reason for all these questions. I do take "karma, cause, and effect" and "past and future lives" on trust as unprovable axioms. Whether this is "dogmatic" or not I leave others to judge.
If I do this, the Karma Kagyu Buddhist system I have studied, allows me to come to a rational answer to most, if not all of these questions. Such rational answers leave open the realistic possibility of siddhi and of many of the other things in which you disbelieve.
The answers referred to are not only rational, they are internally consistent, and match my interior experience both when meditating and in ordinary life to the degree that this is possible for me to judge.
Given this, it seems to me that a demand for "evidence" to prove these things that I take on trust, is beside the point, just as it would be for a mathematical axiom.
Any thoughts?
Thursday, July 14, 2011
Hi Karmaksanti,
PART I
I have a B.Sc in chemistry, with a focus on analytical chemistry, but never published in that field. My first publication was a citation analysis of the New Zealand Library Journal (1991).
My statement is more a reflection that aged 9-20 I was deeply immersed in studying science and that this informs my world view. I continue align myself with scientists because I believe the scientific method provides results. And partly because I feel embattled and surrounded by muddle headed Romantics it seems necessary to emphasise my rejection of Romanticism by stating that I am a scientist. The B.Sc after my name gives that a minimal credibility.
I have no opinion on what is real and what is unreal (or at least I try to have no opinion). Having written a long commentary of the Kaccanagotta Sutta I consciously try to avoid the existent/non-existence dichotomy in all its varieties. I've come to see that Reality as a concept is irrelevant to being a Buddhist. I don't think God is a useful concept for me. I am agnostic on the subjects of karma and rebirth, mainly for the sake of form, but I find them extremely unlikely and therefore give them very little weight in determining how I should live. All of these concepts are more or less irrelevant unless one has blind faith; and I don't. Their reality or otherwise is also irrelevant.
I have no idea why things happen to people - and anything I could say would be mere speculation. It seems pretty random though, doesn't it?
My view on the relationship of the subjective and objective is the Buddhist one: experience arises in dependence on their being a sense object and a sense faculty, which give rise to sense consciousness and the three together constitute contact which is the condition for vedanā. Vedanā is the deepest level to which we have direct access as far as I can see. About the nature of the sense object I, like the Buddha, remain silent, though I find it very difficult to make sense of my experience if the world is not independent of my observing it (any other view leads to absurd conclusions). I think in meditation we can get knowledge of how mental states arise and be free from certain afflictions such as greed and hatred. I have some experience of this.
I don't have a stance on the reality of numbers. They are useful, I find, but reality is not a concept I could say anything about.
Smilarly I have nothing to say about the origin or nature of the universe except to say that I find physics a more reliable guide to navigating the world, than traditional cosmologies.
If you do take things "on trust as unprovable axioms" then that is a perfect example of the blind faith that we Buddhists do not indulge in. Either you are anomalous (and I would say that you are not) or the idea that Buddhists don't go in for blind faith is a lie.
I'm working on a post which looks at how in the early Buddhist texts faith is always faith in the Buddha, and not the ideas he spouts. In early Buddhism faith is a positive quality of relationship with another person, not a philosophical stance towards ideas. In which case most of the discussions of faith in English to date are barking up the wrong tree.
You are quite quite. Given any set of postulates it is entirely possible to proceed logically from that point on, and it will seem reasonable. But as you yourself say the postulates are unprovable so any conclusion which rests on them, however reasonable it seems, is also unprovable - it's just something that appeals to your mind. We don't make rational judgements (on the whole) we make emotional judgements and rationalise them. So what appeals to us seems reasonable, and what doesn't appeal to us seems unreasonable. Anything is justifiable through this method. Literally anything. When our ideas of right and wrong are founded on such blind faith then we can simply choose our starting postulates so as to make our behaviour seem reasonable. And this sends a shiver of fear up my spine!
Thursday, July 14, 2011
Karmaksanti
PART II
I don't demand evidence, but I do say if you think you have the answers, on the basis of logical progression from some unprovable postulates, then you are not asking the right questions!
It's true that mathematics has the incompleteness theorem. In any symbolic system there will always be true statements that cannot be represented in that system. But I cannot think of a single application in which the reality of otherwise of numbers has any impact at all on my life.
I see the search for certainty through intellectual activity as a dead end. What intellectual activity does is shed doubt on what appeals to us. Hence the tone of my writing is often challenging cherished ideas. If you think you've found the answer, then perhaps you don't ask any questions (which is spiritual death). If you meditate to prove a dogma, then you will discover only the dogma or perhaps it's opposite. Why not start from ignorance, doubt, uncertainty and explore what presents it to your mind. Why do we need to know for certain before we even set out on the journey?
I sorry if my answers seem evasive, but I'm not that into the framework from which you were asking you questions. I see it as deeply problematic and I prefer not to participate in it if I can help it.
Cheers
Jayarava
Thursday, July 14, 2011
@ Jayarava
Superb post -- personal, insightful and honest. Nice combination. I learned something. Thank you.
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
This essay is another breath of fresh air. Thank you.
You are wise to stay away from Buddhist Fora, and it is hard to argue with fundamentalism of any stripe. However, I do wish to report that the infamous 'E-SANGHA' forum is back as a forum called "Dharma Wheel" with many of the same people and intolerant games, supposed orthodoxy and the like, although often in a more subtle fashion (I suppose they learned from their e-sangha days to be less obvious about it).
Gassho, Jundo Cohen
www.treeleaf.org
Thursday, June 28, 2012
If you basiclly reject everything that is buddhist, which you seem to do based on this and other posts, then there is no buddhism left. One would venture given that the thing you keep there is suffering the problem might much more easily be solved by a little pill. Why have buddhism at all when all that is needed is some drugs?
Thursday, April 02, 2015
Andreas
I certainly do not reject "everything that is Buddhist" and I wonder why you are indulging in this lazy and defeatist reading of this essay. Buck up!
Many Buddhists are perfectly happy to practice while holding radically different ideas of what their practice signifies. The doctrine is secondary. And most of it is pretty second rate as philosophy.
This need not stop anyone getting on with their practice while those of us who don't mind thinking about ideas sort out what we think should be said about practice and the fruits of practice.
Thursday, April 02, 2015
Honestly why not just go stoic or epikureean it seem like a much better choice if one does like the buddhist doctrines except for the psychology stuff. you reject karma which is the foundation of quite a lot of the teachings. If all one foes is meditate Im hardpressed to se why one would call oneself a buddhist.
Thursday, April 02, 2015
I got sick of this line of questioning from unimaginative people a few years ago and wrote down an answer.
Why I am Still a Buddhist.
Thursday, April 02, 2015