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I'm trying to get a handle on the metaphysics of Buddhism and am running into some problems. If someone could help me here, I'd really appreciate it. Why is it called rebirth? If there is no self, if nothing is preserved after death (and indeed before death, death is nothing special because you cannot annihilate that which doesn't exist), why is it "re"birth? I don't understand the sense in which there is any repetition of what came before. Of course the "re" might be just a way of noting that life-suffering-death is a causal process that happens over and over again. If that's right, then what repeats is living, and suffering, and death as such even though there is no ontological unit in which life, suffering, and death inhere that itself repeats. The above worry seems to be connected with karma somehow. As I understand it, an action is karmic if it is intentional or one of its causes was itself karmic. The results of a karmic action are karmic results. Put another way, if an action is a karmic result, then that action is a karmic action. Karma (or perhaps better, karmic-ness) propagates and multiplies through causal interaction. The measure of an action is the intention behind it. Ill-intentioned actions eventually bear suffering as a fruit. If I understand things correctly, if I get hit by a bus that is the result of a multiplicity of actions, but we can roughly say that it was the result of unwholesome/ill-intentioned actions. But it's not like my actions in a past life are coming back to haunt me or anything, because I have no past lives. I am ephemeral and personal identity is an illusion, so personal identity across deaths is of course wrong. By "ill-intentioned" above I don't necessarily mean malicious, as someone that has lots of attachments could perform lots of "ill-intentioned" actions and therefore cause lots of suffering without doing so on purpose. Earlier someone said that karma isn't just your actions producing results, and that the view of karma as mere "actions have results" is indeed Western atheists talking down to people and generally being jerks. OK. But from what I've articulated above, the truth of the matter is almost that (and so I'm thinking that I'm missing something). Actions have results (though not in 1:1 correspondence as each occurrence is the result of uncountably many actions coinciding, and I imagine that trying to reify "actions" and "results" into discrete and distinct units is a mistake), and these results are determined by the intention that produces them. So that's how I understand the Buddhist conceptions of rebirth and karma. Is that close, or have I inadvertently imported a bunch of Western atheist jerkery (or otherwise gone wrong)? I very much appreciate your help!
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Feb 16, 2014 21:53
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Paramemetic, I've been looking at your previous posts and have found them very helpful. Thank you! To both you and Quantumfate, thank you for the IM offer! I will keep that in mind! My computer access generally doesn't mesh well with using instant messaging programs, so please do not take it as a slight or lack of care if I don't get in contact with you immediately! Regarding rebirth, it is beginning to look as if the "re" comes from my being identical with everything (or perhaps just everything sentient?) because I am fundamentally empty/nothing (or maybe better, a manifestation of fundamental nothingness/emptiness). It is in the same sense that I am identical with you that I am identical with that which is the karmic fruit of my actions: we are all both the origin and the result of karma. So we are identical to all things in the karma-process/all things to which we are karmically connected (including future beings). Are we only identical to sentient things (ie things with Buddha natures), or are we identical to all things, like plants, dogs, rocks, etc? From the Pelden that Paramemetic quoted and his or her discussion after, it looks like dying as such is a major cause of birth as such, to such a degree that they can be placed into 1:1 correspondence (though the birth might be "as" an animal or in another realm). Is that right? How one understands this question seems to me to be fundamental to how amenable Buddhism is to the standard Western atheist. If there's no 1:1 correspondence, then I am "reborn" as all the results of my actions, some of which will be births. But if there is 1:1 correspondence, then I am reborn as precisely that being whose birth is Achmed Jones fucked around with this message at 01:39 on Feb 19, 2014 |
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Feb 18, 2014 23:41
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For the metaphor to speak to my question re: correspondence, we need to know whether the candle goes out (insofar as candles represent a person, at least). When you light one candle, does the previous candle extinguish such that there is 1:1 correspondence between candles lit and candles extinguished, or could I light three candles with a single one, or use two candles to simultaneously light a third? I read What Makes You Not a Buddhist last night. I think that the author would say that the answer to my question isn't particularly important as long as one accepts the four seals. And of course one could work out a metaphysics of the four seals and answer my question either way. It also wouldn't surprise me if there isn't a single Buddhist answer, and different schools/teachers/etc have different worked-out metaphysics. So perhaps the question is beside the point. I suppose it was silly of me to think that there was a Buddhist answer, when really there are Buddhists' answers. I am gratified to find out that the question I asked is not one that is all that important: having an opinion one way or the other isn't like rejecting the shahada or existence of God or whatever for Western religions. It was especially silly to think that way since it's a question in, more or less, academic philosophy and the Buddhist tradition has been doing academic philosophy for a couple millennia now. I was pretty naive to think there'd be a settled viewpoint on an esoteric question within a practice that spans thousands of years and many more thousands of miles. edit: Brahmajala Sutta posted:118 (131). "Therein, bhikkhus, when those recluses who are eternalists proclaim on four grounds the self and the world to be eternal — that is conditioned by contact. That they can experience that feeling without contact — such a case is impossible.[11] In the spirit of the above, I conclude that while it might be both entertaining and interesting to work out a complicated metaphysics of e.g. rebirth or karma or what-have-you, getting too worked up about it is a form of clinging. No wonder I wasn't satisfied with the answer to that specific question: it was a bad question to ask. Now Paramemetic's advice of meditation makes much more sense to me (and not as if I'd asked for a mango and received a breadfruit  )! Thank you all again for your help! I will probably be back with more questions at some point if you all don't mind.
Achmed Jones fucked around with this message at 19:36 on Feb 19, 2014 |
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Feb 19, 2014 18:17
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Wafflehound, would you mind commenting on my past questions in this thread? You have quite strong views as to what counts as "really" Buddhist. I'm trying to understand the system, so I would very much appreciate your input, particularly with respect to my question regarding bijection between death and birth. My conclusion there was that it doesn't matter too much, but it looks like your view might be that a particular understanding of the mathematics of rebirth is very important after all. e: Another way to put this would be, I understand that all things have many causes/conditions. Is it right to say that exactly one death can and must be involved in any single birth, or that a bunch of deaths (along with all sorts of other actions) could be causes (jointly, perhaps) for a bunch of births (and a bunch of other actions besides)? If it is the latter, I do not really understand how the view is different from bog standard causation supplemented with the causal rule that bad intentions/unskillful actions yield suffering, and as such I do not really understand what a rejection of it would look like beyond rejecting the supplemental rule I just mentioned. Achmed Jones fucked around with this message at 00:24 on Feb 21, 2014 |
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Feb 21, 2014 00:14
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What several folks are calling "philosophy for Westerners," "intro to philosophy class," etc. is the exact type of stuff that philosophers try to keep out of the philosophy thread in the academics forum. I constantly tell my students that when we interpret texts we have a lot of power, but that if you're saying that the text's best interpretation is p when the words on the page say ~p, there are probably going to be problems. From my non-Buddhist perspective, as a teacher, the most compassionate thing I can do is help my students come to have true beliefs and have the ability to come up with true beliefs on their own. For my part, I'm trying to give the texts I read the best interpretation I can. If I make a statement of the way I'm understanding things, in my discipline that is an invitation to be corrected with an argument that demonstrates the mistake and (if one is lucky) also an argument for the correct view. I, of course, don't expect anyone to conform to the norms of my discipline, but I would like to go on record as saying that I'm doing the best I can to interpret what I have in the best way possible. One aspect of this involves giving the text its most plausible reading by my lights (who else's lights would I use?). I would very much prefer to be told that I am wrong, and even better why I am wrong, than to be humored as too stupid or prejudiced or whatever to understand the actual view. I have not got the impression that I am being so humored, but I wanted to get out in front of it. Telling me I'm wrong will not cause me to suffer. WAFFLEHOUND posted:Sorry if I missed it or overlooked it, do you mind clarifying what the question was and I'll try to get to it? Can births and deaths be placed into 1:1 correspondence? For context: It looks like dying as such is a major cause of birth as such, to such a degree that they can be placed into 1:1 correspondence (though the birth might be "as" an animal or in another realm). Is that right? How one understands this question seems to me to be fundamental to how amenable Buddhism is to the standard Western atheist. If there's no 1:1 correspondence, then I am "reborn" as all the results of my actions, some of which will be births. But if there is 1:1 correspondence, then I am reborn as precisely that being whose birth is occasioned caused by my death (pace the obvious, that the self is an aggregate, is not an essence, etc).* Another way to put this would be, I understand that all things have many causes/conditions. Is it right to say that exactly one death can and must be causally involved in any single birth, or that a bunch of deaths (along with all sorts of other actions) could be causes (jointly, perhaps) for a bunch of births (and a bunch of other actions besides)? If it is the latter, I do not really understand how the pure metaphysics of the view is different from a standard view of causation supplemented with the causal rule that bad intentions/unskillful actions yield suffering, and as such I do not really understand what a rejection of it would look like beyond rejecting the supplemental rule I just mentioned. I ordered Living Yogacara the other day, it should arrive today or tomorrow. I am hoping that it will have a clear statement of the belief structure. Achmed Jones fucked around with this message at 19:09 on Feb 21, 2014 |
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Feb 21, 2014 18:56
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Well, I understand (and appreciate!) your answer. As you say, though, I don't at all understand how that is reconcilable with anatman. But, I mean, that's not really a problem for Buddhism or Buddhists as much as a statement of "Non-Buddhists ain't gonna find this intuitive." But as you say, transubstantiation, the trinity, and all that aren't intuitive either. Thanks for your help! e: If anyone could recommend some reading regarding specifically what is reborn, it'd be great! Achmed Jones fucked around with this message at 20:14 on Feb 21, 2014 |
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Feb 21, 2014 20:11
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This is a tremendously, tremendously helpful explanation Quantumfate (and yours too, Wafflehound)! Thanks a million! I have the Nagarjuna text heading to my Kindle as well.
Achmed Jones fucked around with this message at 01:24 on Feb 22, 2014 |
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Feb 22, 2014 00:37
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I have taught Sartre at the college level, so here are my thoughts. I do not claim to say anything true about Buddhism, but I'm solid on Sartre. There are some good parallels with existentialism in Buddhism (I'm thinking Sartre and de Beauvoir here), but there are also good parallels with almost every other philosopher that's worth two shits so don't get too excited. The main thing people jump up and down about is that Sartre talks about transcendence (ie freedom, ie consciousness, I am speaking loosely here) as 'nothingness.' Nothingness (aka being-for-itself) 'negates,' which means that it gives value to its environment. That environment - called 'being-in-itself' or 'facticity' - has no inherent value, its value is entirely determined by and for being-for-itself. This sounds Wow Buddhist, but this is nothing new in Western philosophy, so while you might be able to make hay if you wanted to, there's no reason to go Sartre over Epictetus. And the nothingness that Sartre talks about has little to nothing to do with Buddhist emptiness (more on this later). Sartre's big thing is that humans are inextricably tied to both being-in-itself and being-for-itself. We have bodies and histories, and these things cannot be changed (well, we can cut our hair, but you follow me). And while our past - our facticity - can make certain choices look better than others, nothing can determine us to choose one thing over another. All our choices are free, because we are fundamentally being-for-itself. It hurts to be free and we try to convince ourselves that our facticity determines our choices, and that is bad faith. It also hurts to be tied to a history, and so we try to convince ourselves that we aren't really the person that did those things in the past. That's also bad faith. We must accept that we did what we have done, but it does not determine us to so behave in the future. Ackonwlege that you did A Thing, but don't freak out. To quote Sartre, "I am what I am not, I am not what I am." That's pretty Buddhist from a practical standpoint, but it's not uniquely Buddhist. It's also stoic, Epicurean, early Jewish, Kantean, Aristotelian, utilitarian, et cetera. It's something that everyone should agree to, really, unless they have a very particular silly view of the soul/mind. Yogacara talks about our past actions altering our character one way or another. It's called storehouse-consciousness and there's talk about perfuming, but the idea is pretty much the same (though there's more to it - I'm not saying this is exhaustive). This isn't fundamentally different from an Aristotelian view of character. And Sartre could agree with this, because this sort of character doesn't determine action - rather it's more of a probabilistic prediction of future actions based on past behavior. If we steal most of the time when given the opportunity, that's our character and it's not unlikely that we'll continue to do it in the future. But of course (and Aristotle wouldn't disagree for the most part), we could choose not to steal. And indeed we often like to think of ourselves as determined by our character - "I go to work because I am a teacher," "I meditate because am Buddhist," "I wear X because I belong to group Y." But of course we aren't fundamentally those things. I could quit showing up and shave my beard. I don't because I freely choose to keep on keepin' on, but it isn't because my character (or, in Sartrean terms, my history/facticity/being-in-itself) determines my actions. Now, there are some metaphysical parallels. Existentialists are cool with us always changing and there being no essential self with one (enormous) caveat. If you try to say that humans aren't free, then the existentialist will laugh at you because that is simply wrong (by their lights). There's an argument to be made that Buddhism and existentialism are incompatible since the freedom posited by the existentialist is indeed fundamental to humanity, but I think that the necessary freedom is present in Buddhist doctrine, even if implicitly. After all, if people weren't free in this way, there'd be no point in attempting anything at all and you'd get the same weirdness that falls out of e.g. Calvinism. The Buddhist could also object that being-in-itself is not a fundamental part of being a person, but the existentialist Buddhist has a few outs: (1) Maybe it isn't part of being free, but it's part of being human. All bets are off when you come back as a zebra or a hungry ghost or whatever. Indeed, the existentialist Buddhist can identify freedom/transcendence with Buddha-nature such that being potentially-enlightened just is being free. Something without Buddha-nature isn't free, and that's neither surprising nor a problem. (2) The Standard Western Reply that much of Buddhist metaphysics is time-and-location-specific and so Westerners (particularly early 20th century French philosophers) can play with things however they want so long as they keep A Few Important Bits That Buddhism is Really About. Insert convenient understanding of what Buddhism Really Is here. To return to emptiness and nothingness, there's not a ton there. The main reason for this, is that the Buddhist doctrine of emptiness is not very metaphysically robust. Things change, no poo poo, nobody's surprised unless they already had goofy-rear end views about souls or whatever. Buddhism's more about a way to deal with the metaphysics than the metaphysics themselves (more on this later). All you have to do to make something Buddhist-acceptable is add "And it constantly changes." Being-in-itself is given value by transcendence, so always changes. Transcendence is always facing choices, and so changes. A human's facticity is constantly going forward in time, accruing new properties (even if they are boring like 'was sleeping at t1'). I think the biggest problem would be the essential freedom that is transcendence, but again Buddhism pretty much assumes that anyway, so no biggie. OK, so let's talk about the real problem: what to do in life. Buddhism says do what causes the least suffering. Existentialism says do whatever your project is and don't be in bad faith. Why not be in bad faith? gently caress YOU IT'S CALLED 'BAD FAITH,' THAT'S WHY. Really. Even if we accept that bad faith is bad because we e.g. don't want to live a delusion, the only way that murdering or whatever is going to be really wrong is if (1) It goes against my project or (2) It leads me to bad faith. Of course, almost everybody has "Be a normal loving person" as part of their project, so most of us are trivially not murderers. But tons of people don't care about suffering on the other side of the world, or of animals, or whatever and there is nothing at all wrong with this from an existentialist viewpoint. Buddhism answers the question with simple egoism and so it is quite easy to understand why one would want to e.g. not let others suffer (One could gripe on the grounds that "If you're doing it for egoistic reasons instead of Pure Altruism it totally doesn't count but let's not get silly). Of course, one could graft Buddhist morality (and some metaphysics, depending on how traditional one wants to be) onto existentialism incredibly easily for the most part. That's because existentialism lets you do anything you want for whatever reason you want, so long as you acknowledge your freedom and facticity. Buddhism basically tells you "Here's a way to reduce suffering." If you're an existentialst that makes reducing suffering your project, and you faithfully believe that Buddhism is the way to reduce that suffering, then boom, you're an existentialist Buddhist. edit: Rhymenoceros posted:The Buddhas teaching don't really make sense without rebirth, because then dying would mean the end of suffering, and then there's no need for a teaching about the end of suffering. The whole point of the practice is to not be reborn again. There's no need for a teaching on this if you don't actually get reborn. Only if pure egoism is the only foundation for ethical behavior. Anybody who thinks that is right there with the "But how could you be moral if there is no God?!" brand of Abrahamic goose. All you have to do to make rebirth unnecessary is say "Actions have consequences that propagate through time, these actions (can) cause suffering, reducing suffering as such is good." Rebirth is only necessary if the only suffering one cares about is one's own, and if that's the case then one is probably a pretty lousy human being. Seriously: if the only reason somebody doesn't steal from me is because they want freedom from suffering, then that person really sucks. Buddhist normative ethics is well-developed, but the naive metaethics needs some serious supplementation. But something tells me that a millenia or so ago some Pali- or Chinese- or Tibetan-language book was written that provides a rich and robust non-egoistic metaethics for Buddhism, and that also this happened dozens of times and there are competing schools within Buddhist thought  Don't get me wrong - it's nice to have an egoistic metaethical rider with any ethical system so that moral action doesn't end up sucking horribly all the time (but see Kant). I'm pretty sure that basically all Buddhists take the primary motivator for their Buddhist practice to be the reduction of suffering as such, and not just their own suffering - I don't want to paint the lay Buddhist as some sort of sociopath. It's just that Buddhism tells sociopaths how to behave rightly in a way they can understand (and this is a good thing, though of course rather common). I expect that any normal person has prosocial behavior born into them such that they really do care about others' suffering (and indeed to such a degree that reducing others' suffering automatically reduces their own suffering, though it is crucial that we understand others' suffering as prior in this relation). Achmed Jones fucked around with this message at 10:18 on Mar 1, 2014 |
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Mar 1, 2014 07:56
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Quantumfate posted:All said: there are two problems with your quoted edit here: The first is that rebirth is still necessary -because- there is no cessation of your actions, your karmas, upon your death. I am curious how the foundation of ethics coming entirely from the ego equates to "Abrahamic goose". Paramemetic had it right, so I won't repeat his or her words here Note: I'm going to articulate/defend the position for a while because it seemed that we were talking past each other a bit. I think that your objection as stated doesn't work for weaselly reasons, but that a very similar objection does work, so the system I was articulating pretty much gets reductio'ed. So if you aren't interested in reading an ultimately faulty response, just skip to the end. I do think that it's a pretty good (if very rough) working-out of the no-rebirth position, at least until it can't meet the final objections. Of course, there might be no-rebirth folks out there that have responses to the objections, but I couldn't think of any on my own. quote:As far as the reduction of suffering- even that ultimately is something personal, something which emerges because the suffering of others only hurts us- We cannot perceive the reality mediated by others, only by ourselves. When we inflict suffering on someone, ultimately our only way to tell that is to rely upon our own mediative measures. If we undertake actions without compassions, the perfuming of our later actions is such that what occurs will be a difficult experience for us- indeed that much of our own actions are perfumed by the results of a precedent birth. Of course for most people the experience of suffering is such that we naturally do not wish to see the suffering of others, hooray for being social beasts. But when you atomise this, it occurs purely within one's own realm of experience. You are right here, but the impossibility of immediate access to the world doesn't imply egoism in the way that I'm using the term. Egoism (as I am using it, at least) says that self-interest is the only motivator for ethical behavior. That can be accepted or denied regardless of what stance one takes with regards to immediate access to the world. You're right that access is mediated, but care can still be other-directed even if "other" is a postulate of reason and not something that is actually accessible to us. quote:With regards to the cessation of karmas, rebirth might be mixed up here with reincarnation. Which is strange to me, because you seem to have a good grasp on what rebirth is- if consciousness is something that arises as a result of phenomenon, that consciousness producing phenomenon needn't be linked to one jati, (literal birth). If there is no rebirth, then the karmic chain of actions, indeed for mahayanists the tathagatagarbha (Buddha-seed) extinguishes within the realm of one jati. But this just is not- death is itself a phenomenon and a chain of causality persists. A chain of causality directly causing consciousness to arise birth after birth after agonizing birth. I'm not making the reincarnation/rebirth mistake (I hope!), but rather saying that the position I'm describing (though not endorsing!) would say that the chain of karmic actions doesn't stop at death. It would just deny the 1:1 correspondence that I was asking about before - I do an action, and lots of things happen as a result. One of these is that two people meet that never would have without my action, and they have a kid. My causal chain results in a birth, and so I "am reborn." And I "am reborn" again when that kid has a kid, and a grandkid, and ten generations later and on and on. I put "reborn" in scare quotes there because this position would be boneheadedly stupid if it tried to say "The texts really mean that" or "Buddha was lying to people so they'd get on board" or whatever. Rather it'd be mangling the poo poo out of traditional Buddhism to make it palatable to an audience of French existentialists or American atheist epiphenomenalist neuroscientists or whoever. Whether that is fundamentally different from what other Buddhist traditions have done is open to debate. quote:If I am agrotrastha pudgala then outside of the buddhadharma my karmas will never ripen into karmas that will lead me towards seeking the buddhadharma or attaining pratyekabuddhahood within my pudgala. Without rebirth this also includes the jati I am experiencing. If I am hypothetically in such a place that within one lifetime I will never witness the buddhadharma and if I wish to experience freedom from the results of actions, freedom from the suffering of others, can I not simply put a gun to my head and pull the trigger? My actions will cease when I die, and a consciousness will never arise from my being. Death is the end, an annihilation of myself in totality. This is, as you have pointed out, something covered in Buddhism in the form of early heresies. I don't know what "agrotrastha pudgala" means and Google turned up no hits, so I might go wrong here . But the position I described would have problems with some of the above. Specifically, the no-rebirth understanding would say something like "An action is fixed in time but its consequences infinitely propagate forward. Even after we are dead, our actions continue to propagate and thus create (or alleviate) suffering. You stop generating new actions when you die, but your actions never cease in a meaningful way." One could put it in more Buddhist language by saying that our actions constantly "birth and rebirth" new effects even after we are dead, that we are our actions (they affect our ever-changing character, and our ever-changing character is borne out in our actions), and so we "are reborn." But that's not the 1:1 karmic death->birth causal chain of course, it's weaseling around.quote:Specifically one of six sramanic preachings concurrent with the Buddha and the mahavira, IIRC the sramanapala sutra ... quote:Anyways, if there is an utter annihilation, then there is no call for buddhadharma. Right, but the attacked version of annihilationism is always "There is no rebirth, and therefore anything goes, drink and fight and steal." If an epiphenomenalist or materialist or whoever can say "There is no rebirth and there is good reason to behave justly, then they're on much better ground than the annihilationist. There needs to be an argument as to why materialism/epiphenomenalism/whatever implies freedom to be a jerk. You don't need the 1:1 causal rebirth that can properly be called "rebirth" to get propagation of "character" after death. quote:Death solves suffering and all temporal angst felt by Buddhists. That's not a negation of morality entirely only that of a Buddhist orientation- naturally if death is annihilation then we do not want to go around killing each other and all that civil secularism and rights of man stuff- but if your fate is suffering no matter what, and there are no consequences then death is your release. Sure there are consequences. People will still suffer. It's just not your suffering. Killing yourself would cause tons of suffering. If one is taking an empirical idealist view (Berkeley, basically) of the way that we exist with, give value to, and interact with our environments, then sure - might as well punch that ticket since esse est percipi, there's no God, and if we stop perceiving then all suffering stops being. But if we're being a bit more precise about it (if we're being transcendental idealists instead of empirical idealists) - Kantian or neo-Carnapian or whatever - then we can say something like "All interaction requires the application of a conceptual model to the raw uninterpreted data that is the world (this world is also an ideal postulate of reason, not accessible in a non-conceptually-mediated way, etc) and through habituation and thought we can alter this conceptual model in many ways. The mountain is just a meaningless hunk of rock until I look at it and value it as to-be-climbed or to-be-avoided. But the mountain is still there (even though it is constituted by me as a mountain). Similarly, I cannot but experience the world through a largely self-created (with help from the surrounding culture or biology or whatever, it isn't too important) conceptual schema, but that doesn't mean that when I die the world stops existing. My actions continue having an effect on those around me and increasing (or decreasing, if they are right actions) the total amount of suffering (this may or may not actually be mathematically coherent, but let's pretend it is for now). I cannot experience these people's mental states as I experience my own, and I can only tell what's going on by their external behavior, but I'm pretty sure that they are minded and free like me, and that they will stick around after I am dead. If I suicide, then my fiancee* will be sad. If she is sad, she might do a bad job at work. If she does a bad job at work, people might die, and so their kids go into foster care, and so, and so, and so. I think that line works very well with normal socially-integrated people. But then you think of the outcasts and the hermits and all, and it's not clear how the no-rebirth position could account for their suicide causing anyone else's suffering. They go out into the woods and never come back, no friends or family miss them, and some wild animals get a snack. Big whoop. If "Gently disengage from social life such that no one cares about you and then kill yourself" is a good strategy in a system, we have a pretty messed up system. Similarly, if there were a way to quickly destroy the entire world without causing suffering, the no-rebirth "Buddhist" should mash that doomsday button. And I think that these are pretty damning critiques of the system. I mean, there are textual objections that one could make too, but if someone is taking such a position they've already explicitly rejected the necessity of paying attention to the words on the page, so the objection isn't too pointed. But "Your system endorses the actions of suicidal hermits and Bond villains" is a pretty damning internal critique, I think This line of argumentation against the no-rebirth view hadn't occurred to me until responding to you here - to be clear I was wrong when I said that one could sensibly divorce rebirth from the system earlier. One can do that, but then one gets a suicidal-hermit and Dr Evil as paragons of virtue, so let's just toss that system out! Thank you for your (constant, gentle, pointed) help! Rhymenoceros posted:It doesn't come from egotism but from understanding; the only reason to steal is if you think that there can be some gain in doing so, but because of the law of karma there is not. This is a great point, and makes it obvious why someone who is enlightened shouldn't be able to steal, kill, etc. It's not that they can't, but rather that they see doing so as just dumb and so there is no temptation that they must quell. The jerk doesn't steal because he doesn't want to suffer, the good person doesn't steal because she doesn't want to cause others to suffer, and the enlightened person doesn't steal because they understand karma, so why would they even consider it? Thank you! Rhymenoceros posted:What does a critique of Buddhist thought look like? The Buddha is saying "reality is like this" and he can either be right or wrong about it. Wouldn't using, for example, science be the best way to confirm or disconfirm it? If the conceptual structure is internally contradictory/incoherent, then it is false. You don't need empirical testing for that. Rhymenoceros posted:I just wanted to make the point the Buddha is pretty much says "there is rebirth, there is the law of karma" and that these are not beliefs or metaphysics but statements about the nature of reality. I'm not quite sure what you mean by "metaphysics," but I don't think it's quite how I use it: metaphysics is the study of what exists, ie the nature of reality. I also don't know what you mean by "belief." Perhaps something that is closer to what I mean by "opinion"? In my book, our beliefs are the way that we expect the world to be. When the world actually is that way, the belief is true. Some of these beliefs are about the nature of reality and about what sorts of things exist, and those beliefs are metaphysical. Some beliefs are about other things. * Tomorrow I will marry her, and then I will be out of town for a couple weeks. I hope to catch up with the thread then. Thank you all for being awesome I also apologize for being fairly scatterbrained here. Thank you for bearing with me!
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Mar 1, 2014 23:24
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PrinceRandom posted:Nietzsche would have a field day with people naturalizing religion Could you expand on this?
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Mar 20, 2014 00:54
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If you’re interested in Yogacara, Living Yogacara is pretty good
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Sep 20, 2019 05:06
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Because it isn’t a wasted opportunity. A human is very fortunate. A human that hears the dharma is more fortunate. A human that practices still more so. A human that devotes themselves to practice even more so. Do what you can, try to prevent suffering, and maybe the next time around your circumstances will be more conducive to becoming enlightened The above isn’t intended as a cop out for not practicing or whatever. I really mean “do what you can,” but also know that if you’ve got a family depending on you or one of a million other good reasons, maybe going forth (or otherwise devoting your life to practice) isn’t the right thing to do Edit: yeah this: Nessus posted:A human incarnation is precious, but you have to take the long view here, I figure
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Nov 4, 2019 01:31
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mike12345 posted:I started meditating again after a five year absence, mainly due to sleep issues. Like, I wake up too early. So I figured I might as well just meditate. During one of my meditations in the early morning hours I experienced such a trip that I'm almost afraid to go deeper into meditation again. I mean I'm still doing it, but in the back of my head I got a little bit of fear of entering a deep trip-like state again. Does anyone else have similar experiences, what do you do in that case? Ive experienced what you're talking about but it never occurred to me to fear it. Why do you fear it? I have a suspicion that a lot of the more, uh, startling stuff is hovering between being asleep and being awake. I've had pretty intense sits during the day, but I only remember the real wild poo poo being early morning/late night for whatever reason.
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Jan 8, 2020 01:14
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Sitting at your desk for 90 seconds or meditating for five minutes laying in bed is better than nothing at all. Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good
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Jan 8, 2020 02:21
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I don't think it's very probable that a lay practitioner will reach enlightenment. I think it's really hard and things like "raising my son" and "going to work" make it very much harder than if all my efforts were focused on practice and the monastery. I can know all the Buddhist Facts that I want, but integrating them into my momentary consciousness during normal life takes a lot of hard work and meditation. I'm almost certainly not going to become an enlightened master even with a "rigorous" sitting practice of "every day, except 80% of the time when I skip it because I need to finish this $WORK_THING" I was lucky enough to hear the dharma in this life and to try to practice it. Maybe next time I'll be a monk or something and will be able to devote myself fully. In the meantime, my practice reduces suffering for myself and others so the fact that I'm not the ideal isn't a problem for me. What I'm saying is that the monk or nun is not an artificial ideal. It's just that it's not realistic for me, and I'm not going to let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Just as someone can care about global poverty without being forced to forsake all luxury, someone can be Buddhist without aspiring to be a monk in this lifetime. I say all this in terms of lifetimes, which is kind of funny because I have doubts about the metaphysics of rebirth. But it gives me a vocabulary to express things that I think are fundamentally true, even if I have, uh, non-traditional views of the foundational metaphysics.
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Jan 15, 2020 16:40
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It's better than no buddhism, but only just. mostly because unlike many corporate-sponsored mindfulness and meditation programs, at least it's honest that it's taking a rich and beautiful tradition and removing large chunks because people feel weird about approaching stories in a way other than "is either literally 100% true or is nonsense". Tbh it's not like it's the individuals' fault here; that is how a lot of communities approach christianity and it makes a lot of people bad at reading texts. But yeah. I'm glad that people are getting a watered down and inferior version of the dharma as opposed to nothing, but I'd obviously rather they get the full deal
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Jan 19, 2020 05:19
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I struggled a lot with this issue for a long time. I wouldn't call myself a buddhist because I didn't want to be that guy, and I had some metaphysical hangups that I briefly described above, so I thought I wasn't a "real" buddhist. But I was wrong. It's fine to struggle with or not believe certain things. As long as you believe the four noble truths you're probably good. "I just don't see how x could be the case" is very different from "Well ackshually, when Buddha said 'rebirth' he didn't mean it and was just skillful-means-ing at those dumb Indians. I will now tell you what he really meant, and it will blow your mind." I'm not saying that secular Buddhists are doing that, just to be clear - that's what I was worried about coming off as. I think a lot of westerners just don't get that the metaphysics of rebirth, hells, etc aren't, uh, dealbreakers, and nobody is going to care as long as you're not being a jerk about it. As far as picking a school, what I did was to strongly identify with a historical school and then get hung up on how it's not really practiced anywhere, and it's only very recently that I've come around to it being okay with just finding a zen center or tibetan group or smth. I recommend skipping straight to not worrying too much about it - just find a group you like
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Jan 19, 2020 18:24
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| # ¿ May 9, 2024 13:03 |
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It depends what you're after
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Feb 2, 2020 22:15
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