What is it to be Enlightened?
I'm interested in hearing what people's views are on the notion of the enlightened individual e.g., the Buddha, Socrates...?
As a half-arsed secular humanist, I am, naturally, socialized into a soulless, physicalist world, where the notion of higher consciousness is problematic. The values of The Enlightenment seem innately skeptical of the notion of enlightenment. And yet there are examples of prodigious people with gifts of almost preternatural clarity and wisdom.
The idea of enlightenment no doubt has an intricate history in Eastern spiritual traditions and can be parsed in numerous ways. But rather than getting a lesson in religious history and labels, I am keen to understand what people think the term refers to in the contemporary world and philosophy.
Does enlightenment necessarily involve transcendence and higher consciousness as understood in spiritual traditions such as Hinduism and Buddhism? Would some include 'illuminated' figures from different traditions such as Jesus? Is there a difference between wisdom/self-realization and enlightenment? Does the word enlightenment hold any real meaning, or is it just a poetic umbrella term for a fully integrated and intelligent person?
I used to be struck by this quote from Carl Jung. I am not a Jungian but he takes the idea into a different place. Illumination through darkness. Perhaps I hear Nietzsche calling.
"One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious. The latter procedure, however, is disagreeable and therefore not popular.”
? C.G. Jung
As a half-arsed secular humanist, I am, naturally, socialized into a soulless, physicalist world, where the notion of higher consciousness is problematic. The values of The Enlightenment seem innately skeptical of the notion of enlightenment. And yet there are examples of prodigious people with gifts of almost preternatural clarity and wisdom.
The idea of enlightenment no doubt has an intricate history in Eastern spiritual traditions and can be parsed in numerous ways. But rather than getting a lesson in religious history and labels, I am keen to understand what people think the term refers to in the contemporary world and philosophy.
Does enlightenment necessarily involve transcendence and higher consciousness as understood in spiritual traditions such as Hinduism and Buddhism? Would some include 'illuminated' figures from different traditions such as Jesus? Is there a difference between wisdom/self-realization and enlightenment? Does the word enlightenment hold any real meaning, or is it just a poetic umbrella term for a fully integrated and intelligent person?
I used to be struck by this quote from Carl Jung. I am not a Jungian but he takes the idea into a different place. Illumination through darkness. Perhaps I hear Nietzsche calling.
"One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious. The latter procedure, however, is disagreeable and therefore not popular.”
? C.G. Jung
Comments (912)
I think that you have raised such an important question and some may believe that 'enlightenment' is possible and others may remain sceptical of the idea completely. Personally, I am inclined to think that it may be possible to enter into peak experiences of consciousness, but such states of numinosity may not be the exclusive right of any particular 'religion' and, there may also be a danger of people who believe that they are 'the enlightened' seeing this as some form of achievement of 'superiority'.
This may throw a question mark on any who claim to have experienced 'enlightenment.' I am partly thinking of Krishnamurti, who was believed to be a future spiritual leader, and he had to step back from this and look at the nature of such a quest, rather than being drawn into the inflated ego consciousness of spirituality. There may have been so many who stepped into a sense of knowing, and as you say, Jung recognizes the way in which it may be a journey through darkness into light, with many perils along the way, and I believe that one writer, Alice Bailey, captures this in the idea of the 'dweller on the threshold'. Enlightenment may not be a simple idea but one with complex questions about knowledge of self and the glamours surrounding this, as well as the whole nature of responsibility connected to power of knowledge. However, many may even question the idea of 'enlightenment' in itself.
The typography and layout of the original was significant - the main text was set in the middle of each page, with comments and comparisons made in smaller typeface in the margins. I say that, because although the text is now available free online, the format really helped convey the meaning of the text, and reading it as a disconnected jumble of hypertext extracts undermines it. I should also note Bucke was a psychiatrist in charge of a major psychiatric facility in Canada, and that as far as he was concerned, his writing was thoroughly scientific in nature, not devotional or dogmatic.
Anyway, the reason I mention Bucke's book is because, despite its shortcomings, it was a kind of proto-anthropological attempt to frame a 'theory of higher consciousness'. And it was cross-cultural, drawing as it did on Christian, Islamic and Indian sources, and also from literature and cases from everyday life. (Read The Case of C.M.C. in Her Own Words.) At the time I read that, I also read William James, Varieties of Religious Experience, Alduous Huxley, The Perennial Philosophy, and excerpts from Ninian Smart and Huston Smith on comparative religion. From all this a pretty clear picture emerges, in my opinion: something very like Bucke's 'Cosmic Consciousness' is a real faculty, it is possessed by a very few individuals, and it provides a radically transformative understanding of the nature of existence.
I tended to associate all of this with a more 'gnostic' attitude than is characteristic of mainstream religion. In fact, I question whether it really is 'religion'. One of the things I notice on this board, in particular, is that much of this material is categorised, or should I say stereotyped, as religious dogma, therefore superstitious, anti-rational and unscientific. And that, I feel, is because of the particular intellectual history of Western culture and the way this kind of understanding has been handled and 'firewalled' from the rest of society. It's completely different in Indian culture, for example. But it means that all of these ideas are looked at through these culturally-engrained preconceptions, many of them originating from the way that the Roman church brutally suppressed the Gnostic traditions at the beginning of Western history. We're still living out the repercussions of that, but I think as of the mid-20th century, those walls are starting to crumble. (I encountered a book by an evangelical academic, Against the Modern Gnostics, which was an alarm cry from the Christian church just about this phenomenon - the encroachment of Eastern/New Age/Gnostic ideas into the public square.)
I think that this is because so many people are approaching the matter too abstractly and too passively.
The various claims being contested by so many people were/are originally part of a system of practice and a system of social relationships. Those claims don't just somehow "hang in the air", as arguments or premises, or words "with magic power". They are part of a system of virtue epistemology, where it is assumed that by doing certain practices and developing certain virtues, one will come to realize that a particular claim is true.
But many people just don't do those practices, don't develop those virtues, but instead believe that all it takes and all it should take is a syllogism, or the right mantra, regardless of what one otherwise does, how one behaves, or what else one knows.
Good call - my mum had this book and used to gently lecture me about it. I forgot all about it. As it happens Spinoza was her favorite thinker.
Quoting Wayfarer
That's interesting. I wonder too how this transformative understanding might impact upon the behavior of such a person. Are they more likely to be in harmony with others, eschew violence, have affairs? In other words and an enlightened one, do you get a humanity bypass? If not it just sounds like a case of immense wisdom in some areas and drastic failings in others.
Quoting Wayfarer
As you've noted, that's mainstream life in post Enlightenment age...
Quoting Jack Cummins
Thanks Jack. Yes, Krishnamurti has come up a few times. I find what he says very interesting and always have. But his personal life seems to have been somewhat tawdry. It this is enlightenment then it seems to have a limited purview.
Quoting baker
Yes, I think this is worth developing further.
Sam Harris is also socialized into a soulless, physicalist world, only from the point of view of an experienced meditator who studies cognitive science.
He helps dismiss the metaphysical crap thereabouts.
That is more typical of those who dabble rather than just rejecting them outright which is more typical of straight-ahead secular culture.
Quoting Tom Storm
In some ideal world, perhaps. This book was an eye-opener. And this article, which depressed me hugely when it came out.
Quoting Tom Storm
You ought to read about the dubious provenance of his PhD. Of course there are propogandists on both sides of the barbed wire fence.
How do we know that when Mr. Harris uses the same words as the " metaphysical crap thereabouts", he means the same things as the "metaphysical crap thereabouts"?
If the two are not talking about the same things, any further comparison is moot.
In your view, what do those rejectors hold as proper epistemological standards? What do they believe that it takes in order to know something?
It's mainly influenced by the British empiricist tradition, that knowledge can only be grounded in what can be experienced by the senses and/or scientific instruments, and mathematical reasoning from those same data.
Should the term enlightenment be reserved solely for use by spiritual traditions? It seems so connected to particular expressions of metaphysics.
It reminds me of the discussion I had with @Janus earlier about who can be called a Christian. Can someone who believes that Jesus is a myth and thinks all stories of miracles and the New Testament stories are nonsense, be called a Christian? I am inclined to say no but Janus and perhaps others disagree.
When Harris uses the term enlightenment is he talking about the same thing as a more traditional Buddhist?
Are we heading back to the themes in Evan Thompson's book, Why I am Not Buddhist?
The provenance of the term is that it was used by Thomas Rhys-Davids, founder of the Pali Text Society, which translated the Pali Buddhist texts into English, as the translation for 'bodhi'. Bodhi is one of those many Buddhist terms for which there is no real English equivalent, but it's often also translated as 'wisdom'.
Rhys Davids selected it because of its resonance with the European Enlightenment, as a consequence of his belief that Buddhism (Pali Buddhism in particular) was a 'scientific religion'. He was part of a phase in the Western exploration of Buddhism which came to be called 'protestant Buddhism', for that very reason - Buddhism depicted as scientific (due to the alleged absence of belief in a supreme being, and 'karma' being compared to the 'laws of motion', among other things.)
Sam Harris, I've never liked. I disliked the whole 'new atheist' thing, arguing against it is what brought me to Internet forums in the first place, although I think overall it's past its peak. Dawkins said in the preface to TGD that his aim was that Christians who picked up the book should put it down atheist. I thought it was such an appalling piece of undergraduate nonsense it had rather the opposite effect on me.
As for 'what enlightenment means' - obviously a very difficult question, maybe impossible in the abstract. As said above:
Quoting baker
Hence Jesus as being described by some as a bodhisattva.
This quote from his Waking Up website struck me as apropos:
"What is enlightenment, which is so often said to be the ultimate goal of meditation? There are many esoteric details that we can safely ignore—disagreements among contemplative traditions about what, exactly, is gained or lost at the end of the spiritual path. Many of these claims are preposterous. Within most schools of Buddhism, for instance, a buddha—whether the historical Buddha, Siddhartha Gautama, or any other person who attains the state of “full enlightenment”—is generally described as “omniscient.” Just what this means is open to a fair bit of caviling. But however narrowly defined, the claim is absurd. If the historical Buddha were “omniscient,” he would have been, at minimum, a better mathematician, physicist, biologist, and Jeopardy contestant than any person who has ever lived. Is it reasonable to expect that an ascetic in the fifth century BC, by virtue of his meditative insights, spontaneously became an unprecedented genius in every field of human inquiry, including those that did not exist at the time in which he lived? Would Siddhartha Gautama have awed Kurt Gödel, Alan Turing, John von Neumann, and Claude Shannon with his command of mathematical logic and information theory? Of course not. To think otherwise is pure, religious piety."
I've been complaining to myself that there aren't any good threads around. This is a great one. Thanks.
Great post. We can always count on you to walk the line between east and west with both sympathy and skepticism, whichever is most needed.
Quoting Wayfarer
I can see why the article bothered you, but for me it just highlighted the continuity between what we call "enlightenment" and everyday life. The experiences, whatever they are, are human experiences felt by imperfect humans. They are not occult or supernatural. That continuity is what attracts me to Taoism. It's aimed at people who are going to keep their day job, with acknowledgement that that day job may be general or prince.
This reminds me of a quote that I have not been able to find the original of. I think it's from Alan Watts. Something like this - What we call mysteries are just aspects of who we are that we have hidden from ourselves. That could be the darkness Jung is talking about. It's hard, painful, to bring those hidden parts of ourselves out into the open.
For me, enlightenment, in the way we are discussing it, is self-awareness. I know that I have become more and more self-aware as I've gotten older. Somewhere along the line, that became my path. To become as self-aware as I can in as many ways as I can. As I've said often in the forum, the difference between eastern and western philosophies for me is the difference between awareness and reason. For me, reason is fine and useful, but you have to have the experience, awareness first to give reason something to work with.
Apparently, during the process of increasing self-awareness, there comes a breaking point, a discontinuity, called enlightenment. I certainly don't have any expectation or ambition to reach that point.
Considering that it would be impossible to know anything without such a grounding it’s really not that unreasonable.
My very first lecture in philosophy was about the distinction between empiricism and rationalism. Took me a long while to grasp that distinction, and I'm still working on it. Suffice to note that in classical (i.e. pre-modern) philosophy, rationalism was concerned with arriving at, shall we say, a cosmic truth, without recourse to experience - classical examples being Parmenides and Plotinus. All very difficult texts, I know, but I thought it worth mentioning.
Thank you. :pray:
I gave it to my children as an example of a badly reasoned book.
Parm & Ploti’s minds both had a grounding in what they experienced with their senses. Without such a grounding they would not have developed minds.
Empty of virtue too it seems. :razz:
That is a noteworthy distinction and I think I understood this early on - at least in principle.
Quoting T Clark
I think I've always thought of it along similar lines. But additionally there's a flavor of being initiated into cosmic secrets. In my own life I feel that self-awareness has increased whilst other things (skills and attributes mainly) have declined. The net value of my incremental self-realization is questionable.
Is Nietzsche's self-overcoming a form of the enlightenment narrative?
Quoting praxis
Which isn’t to say that there isn’t a more fundamental grounding than the senses, understood in empirical terms.
[quote=Plotinus, Lecture Notes;http://faculty.salisbury.edu/~jdhatley/plotinus.htm]For Plotinus, man "is in some sense divine, and the object of the philosophic life is to understand this divinity and restore its proper relationship with the divine All and, in that All, to come to union with its transcendent source, the One or Good". Plotinus's philosophy is difficult to elucidate, precisely because what it seeks to elucidate is a manner of thinking that precedes what one terms 'discursive thought'.
Discursive thought is the sort of thinking we do most often in a philosophical discussion or debate, when we seek to follow a series of premises and intermediate conclusions to a final conclusion. In such thinking, our minds move from one point to the next, as if each point only can be true after we have known the truth of the point preceding it. The final point is true, only because we have already built up one by one a series of points preceding it logically that are also true. In the same way, the meaning of the sentence I am now speaking only builds itself up by the addition of each word, until coming to its conclusion it makes a certain sense built of the words from which it is constituted. Because discursive thinking is within ordinary time, it is not capable of thinking all its points or saying all its words in the very same moment.
But Plotinus wishes to speak of a thinking that is not discursive but intuitive, i.e. that it is knowing and what it is knowing are immediately evident to it [sup]1[/sup]. There is no gap then between thinking and what is thought--they come together in the same moment, which is no longer a moment among other consecutive moments, one following upon the other. Rather, the moment in which such a thinking takes place is immediately present and without difference from any other moment, meaning its thought is no longer chronological but eternal [sup]2[/sup]. To even use names, words, to think about such a thinking is already to implicate oneself in a time of separated and consecutive moments (i.e. chronological) and to have already forgotten what it is one wishes to think, namely thinking and what is thought intuitively together.[/quote]
1. This 'union of knower and known' is frequently encountered in non-dualist philosophies.
2. Signifying a form of divine union - in Plotinus case, it is described as 'henosis' and differentiated from the Christian 'kenosis' in that it is supposed to entail complete loss of individual personality. The wiki page notes:
This state is similar to what in Advaita is called 'nirvikalpa samadhi'. This illustrates the connection between rationalist philosophy and mysticism.
[quote=Parmenides, SEP;https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/parmenides/#Pro] Parmenides’ poem began with a proem (i.e. prose-poem) describing a journey he figuratively once made to the abode of a goddess. He described how he was conveyed on “the far-fabled path of the divinity” (fr. 1.3) in a chariot by a team of mares and how the maiden daughters of Helios, the sun-god, led the way. These maidens take Parmenides to whence they themselves have come, to “the halls of Night” (fr. 1.9), before which stand “the gates of the paths of night and day” (fr. 1.11). The maidens gently persuade Justice, guardian of these gates, to open them so that Parmenides himself may pass through to the abode within. Parmenides thus describes how the goddess who dwells there welcomed him upon his arrival:
And the goddess received me kindly, and in her hand she took
my right hand, and she spoke and addressed me thus:
[i] “O young man, accompanied by immortal charioteers
and mares who bear you as you arrive at our abode,
welcome, since a fate by no means ill sent you ahead to travel
this way (for surely it is far from the track of humans),
but Right and Justice.”[/i] (Fr. 1.22–28a)
Parmenides’ proem is no epistemological allegory of enlightenment but a topographically specific description of a mystical journey to the halls of Night. In Hesiod, the “horrible dwelling of dark Night” (Th. 744) is where the goddesses Night and Day alternately reside as the other traverses the sky above the Earth. Both Parmenides’ and Hesiod’s conception of this place have their precedent in the Babylonian mythology of the sun god’s abode. This abode also traditionally served as a place of judgment, and this fact tends to confirm that when Parmenides’ goddess tells him that "no ill fate" has sent him ahead to this place (fr. 1.26–27a), she is indicating that he has miraculously reached the place to which travel the souls of the dead.[/quote]
Both Parmenides and Plotinus are amongst the seminal figures of Western metaphysics.
Parmenides is also of the 'axial age' (along with the Buddha, Lao Tzu, Zoroaster, the Vedic seers).
Neither rely on or espouse empirical or sensory knowledge but aim at an insight into a 'higher truth' through visionary or non-ordinary states.
At least some of their teachings were incorporated into later Christian Platonism, where they can still be found in e.g. the Christian mystics.
And yet man being thought as in some sense divine, the philosophic life being thought of as consisting in understanding this divinity and restoring its "proper relationship with the Divine All", and "coming into union with its transcendent source", the One or Good" is either nebulous, even vacuous, or else discursive, and not a manner of thinking that precedes discursive thought; or perhaps it is both not thinking which precedes discursive thought and it is vacuous.
So, the question is whether all this conceptualization of a "goal" is necessary or whether it is all not just one of the many fancy ways of talking about the radically different disposition of one who has realized a state of non-attachment.
a.k.a. 'philosophy'.
I don't see why not if nirvana is though of in a deflationary way as being nothing more than realizing the state of non-attachment. Soto Zen conceives of enlightenment or nirvana precisely in this way as practicing zazen; that is transcending the body and mind in maintaining perfect sitting posture. Dogen equates this with enlightenment because it is impossible to sit this way while being attached to the body and mind.
The "Age of Enlightenment" commonly referred to as "The Enlightenment" was, allegedly, the idea that prevailing religious systems and beliefs caused men to grow intellectually feeble and too easily domineered by alleged "men of God" who may easily become corrupt and act against the best interests and advancement of a given society or nationhood. They saw the wonders and scientific advancements, at least the drive toward these things that perhaps men or societies with a little less dogma produced and possessed. They thought, perhaps, we're in the wrong boat, so to speak. That's one theory at least. Sapere aude.
Of course, this could merely have been just another political party aimed in changing very little other than who controls the reigns. Nothing has changed much in political philosophy since its inception. "You're missing out on this, here's why. Other people will surpass us and we will miss opportunity and/or possibly suffer and/or perish, here's how we can fix it." Etc. It's cookie-cutter psychology. Not calling it ineffective. People like simple ideas that trigger parts of their brain they can't simply understand, at least "it sticks".
So a fantasy, in other words.
None of these things are easy to understand or practice. But it doesn't mean they're unreal.
I think the idea is that it should be a living non-attachment.
You've tried and found it impossible?
You have no attachment to anything or anyone, including yourself?
I wouldn't claim that. I also wouldn't claim it is not possible for me, and even less would I be inclined to claim it is impossible per se.
It is meaningless to say that anyone doesn’t rely on sensory knowledge because minds are built on it. No sensory input, no mind.
Is it the senses that tell you that?
I would not call this having 'no attachment' but the opposite to 'no attachment' is the same as 'no attachment'. What seems to happen in these extreme altered states of consciousness is that lines of distinction fade away (or are realised as merely 'lines of convenience' rather than 'reality').
Note: I don't think such states are necessarily termed as 'enlightenment' but what I experienced is certainly something that drew me more towards an understanding of what certain historical people are said to have experienced.
@Tom Storm I think Jung is a great guide to understanding the possibilities of the human psyche. His term of 'Individuation' has something in common with 'enlightenment'. Individuation is about assimilating unconscious content with the ego to form the Self.
Jung was generally against (not the best method of approach) Western cultures reaching out for Eastern mythos as he viewed it as pointless given that Western mythos had enough immediate impact and ease of relation to get to where Westerners need to get without relearning a whole new history.
I wouldn’t claim that it’s impossible either. It is a rather dreary goal though, to be an uncaring zombie.
It is what I imagine. What do you imagine it’s like?
To a mind lacking nuance perhaps.
Minds require (are completely dependent on) sensory input to simply exist.
I will go first. It is fairly clear that someone "not attached" could be interpreted as "not caring" because they cannot care about something they have no attachment too. In opposition to this we could also state that having a degree of non-attachment will help us draw a more objective conclusion.
IF however we are saying COMPLETE non-attachment then what does this mean. That needs to be settled first I feel. Agree?
I don't understand it that way. I think it's possible to feel care, love, grief, pain, whatever to the fullest and yet be unattached to the feeling.
That, even if true, is not the point. Is it the senses that tell you that minds require and are completely dependent on sensory input simply to exist, or is it not a modern cultural presumption?
I know that my objections are off-point. Regarding how true it is, how long do you think your mind would last without any sensory input? Maybe a few months or a year?
In non-attachment, why would you love any particular person?
Why could you not? You might, although non-attached, find one tree more beautiful than another, no? Surely a saintly person would be more loveable than the misogynist, the serial killer, or the pedophile, even to the non-attached person, wouldn't you think?
A mind that would not exists without sensory input in its development. Minds don’t just pop into existence.
Love and beauty are not the same thing. I guess we now have to decide what love means.
I don't know. Imagine if there could be a person who was blind, had no feeling in their body, no senses whatever; could they have a mind? I really don't know; I'd say probably they wouldn't have anything we would recognize as a mind, but they would have a brain with at least some function, if they were alive at all, I imagine. But in any case, is it the senses that tell you that or do you reach that conclusion from something you've read or is it just an intuition you have?
For me there are different kinds of beauty. There is moral beauty for example. A saint would be morally beautiful. To admire something would be to love it in some sense it seems to me.
Even if it were something that I experienced with my senses, I couldn’t know what I was experiencing without all the previous sense experience that built my internal representation of the world.
Even a saint isn’t perfect and given sufficient time would surely eventually disappoint. How could someone experience disappointed if they weren’t attached to this moral beauty?
Yes, I am somewhat familiar with Jung and studied him in college. One of my parent's close friends was involved with the Gnostic Gospel find in Nag Hammadi and a close confidant of Jung's from the 1940's. I can see CJ's process of individuation as leading there - if one every becomes fully individuated.
Quoting Wayfarer
Understand. But perhaps they are ideas I can't use or have no use for. That renders them almost unreal.
Quoting Janus
Yes, but why waste time on eating and breathing... I'm only half joking BTW.
I'm interested in what might be a Western equivalent of enlightenment - outside from Jung's somewhat syncretistic ideas.
Does anyone have comments on Nietzsche's ideas of self-overcoming? The will to power implies significant attachment however, but perhaps I am wrong.
The secular version of enlightenment seems to be a kind of emotional and aspirational minimalism.
That he never accomplished it?
You tell us it is your point.
Because the thread title capitalizes the e in Enlightenment, I infer from “what is it to be Enlightened?” to indicate adherence to the conditions given from the particular historical human development represented by that name. Thus.....
“....Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-imposed nonage**. Nonage is the inability to use one's own understanding without another's guidance. This nonage is self-imposed if its cause lies not in lack of understanding but in indecision and lack of courage to use one's own mind without another's guidance. Dare to know! (Sapere aude.) "Have the courage to use your own understanding," is therefore the motto of the Enlightenment.
Laziness and cowardice are the reasons why such a large part of mankind gladly remain minors all their lives, long after nature has freed them from external guidance. They are the reasons why it is so easy for others to set themselves up as guardians. It is so comfortable to be a minor. If I have a book that thinks for me, a pastor who acts as my conscience, a physician who prescribes my diet, and so on--then I have no need to exert myself. I have no need to think, if only I can pay; others will take care of that disagreeable business for me. Those guardians who have kindly taken supervision upon themselves see to it that the overwhelming majority of mankind (...) should consider the step to maturity, not only as hard, but as extremely dangerous. First, these guardians make their domestic cattle stupid and carefully prevent the docile creatures from taking a single step without the leading-strings to which they have fastened them. Then they show them the danger that would threaten them if they should try to walk by themselves. Now this danger is really not very great; after stumbling a few times they would, at last, learn to walk. However, examples of such failures intimidate and generally discourage all further attempts....”
(Kant, 1784, in Mary C. Smith, 2000;
** “immaturity” in Friedrich 1949, Humphrey 1983, Schmidt 1996)
With the freedoms today, it is hard to imagine a time when people in general not only seldom thought for themselves, they didn’t even realize they could. I find it quite ironic, that two empirical revolutions, in science with the telescope and in culture with a beheading, became launchpads for a revolution of a purely rational nature.
But....like most revolutions.....the predications for which are too soon forgot.
Anytime anyone digresses (goes off on a tangent), that person is, one could say, enlightened!
Decycling! I wonder why Aristotle thought the heavens were full of circles? They are not, they're ellipses. I suppose it's easier to attain escape velocity in an elliptical orbit - ellipses are straighter in certain sectors. :grin:
I suppose that I find this subject particularly interesting now because I just finished a book called Dopamine Nation. As the title indicates, the book delves into the underlying physiology of pleasure and pain. On the most basic level, studies show that without reward (pleasure) and punishment (pain) we really wouldn’t be motivated to do much of anything. So there’s that. On another level, we are a social species, and that being the case, the opinions of other and out relationships to others matter to us. We are dependent on others to maintain our homeostasis. In our development we cannot thrive, or even survive, without the support of others. Laughably, it comes to mind that purpose of religion (including Buddhism) is to bind (form strong attachment) communities.
Isn’t it ironic that this so called “raft” strengthens what it claims to dismantle?
In recent years, psychology has moved away from hedonic models of human motivation, in favor of anticipation-prediction based theories.
How is affect somehow not hedonic?
It depends on how you define hedonic. Hedonism in S-R and classic cognitivism makes reinforcement a value property attributed to an event( a stimulus is associated with pleasure or pain), whereas in prediction-based approaches affectivity is bound up with the relationship one senses between anticipation and realization. The same event can be reinforcing or aversive depending on our success or failure at anticipating it and thus making sense of it within our system of anticipations.
A bell may or may not make a dog salivate depending on its conditioning or, as you say, ‘system of anticipations’.
Quoting Joshs
In this case isn’t affect hedonic (relating to or considered in terms of pleasant or unpleasant interoception)?
Quoting Wayfarer
I prefer the term "identification" to "attachment". As in "I identify (as half of a couple) with my wife." So I see enlightenment as the 'seeing through' the whole process of identification.
Curiously perhaps, the scientific viewpoint is a depersonalised one, so that for example, my feelings and desires are no more significant than anyone else's; they are phenomena on an equal basis. Perhaps that is why the beginnings of the scientific project are known as 'The enlightenment'. Materialism is the foremost non-dualist philosophy.
The main function of identification is that it is a process of time binding, and of the creation of the idea of a continuous self. But supposing one did not make any identifications so as to project the idea of oneself into the future, still I imagine one would eat. Why one food rather than another? I guess it's a matter of convenience. One still would like food, though it would have little importance, and I think one would still have affection for one's wife. One might have equal affection for others too, and that too is not important.
Time-binding is what gives desire its bite. People get confused about this, and suppose that it is the sweetness of sugar that makes one desire it, but of course this cannot be, because the cause has to precede the effect. Rather it is the idea and memory of previous sweetness that is projected into the future and identified with that forms the desire. Fear is the negative of desire, and suffering is the negative of pleasure. These are all aspects of the time-binding of identification: - "I" will have pleasure/ will suffer.
Incorrect. Scientific materialism is dualist through and through, based on the fundamental distinction between mind and matter, primary and secondary attributes, and the observer from the observed. The only respect in which it is not dualist is the belief that matter is the only existent. Scientific detachment excludes consideration of the qualitative aspects of existence, whereas they are essential to non-dualism proper. There is now more of a convergence between science and non-dualism, as explored by the Science and Non-Duality Conference, but it is a counter-cultural movement and hardly accepted by the mainstream.
I think you can find similar ideas to enlightenment-as-non-attachment in Spinoza, the Epicureans, the Skeptics, the Stoics and the Existentialists.
Nietzsche, as I read him, advocated a radical independence of spirit; he was a great inspiration to Heidegger and Camus if not Sartre.
I think you are right that some secular notions of enlightenment are as you say; a disposition that is motivated by the desire for comfort, an easy life and wants to avoid being disturbed or any kind of inconvenience.
Ideas generally seem to be malleable, though; so unless they are antithetical they can often to be massaged until they begin to resemble one another.
The way embodied models work, influenced by Damasio and other neuropsychologists, affective aspects are so complexly interwoven with cognitive that what one ends up with is a more nuanced motivational picture than that evoked by pleasure vs pain.
For instance , a dog may salivate , recalling the memory of pleasurable food , or it may direct its attention toward something in its environment without necessarily feeling overt pleasure. Rather, it may be drawn to something that arouses its curiosity or interest.
Matthew Ratcliffe studies disorders of affect such as depression and schizophrenia, focusing on the ways that affect makes objects salient, enticing and alluring. We don’t feel such enticements as overt pleasure, but as a basic background level of interest that we barely notice. At its core, affectivity serves more of an orienting or alerting function than as hedonic. What we think of as emotional pain and pleasure may have much more to do with cognitive appraisal than with bodily sensation.
So much of our affective comportment toward the world has the nuanced character of mattering to us in myriad ways. We can be bored, enthused, reflective, intrigued, apathetic, confused , etc.
In severe depression , such significance is missing from our world , and as a result , we feel not so much negative affect, but the lack of affect. The world ceases to matter to us at all , whether as unpleasant or pleasant.
I've always thought of that as something tacked on, not something that is intrinsic to the way of knowing. All religions and philosophies tend to draw in people who take it and fill it full of fantasy and delusion. Wish fulfillment. I've said this before - to me, self-awareness, and enlightenment I guess, is as everyday as corn flakes. Wait, no... Cheerios. No mystery except what we hide from ourselves.
I agree that we are, by and large, social beings. Maybe we would do best in small. close communities composed of like-minded individuals. This would seem to characterize Buddhist monastic life. Although non-attachment is the goal, practitioners are advised to "take refuge" in the sangha (the community of aspirants).
I seem to remember a Leonard Cohen song with the lyric line something like "Do we have the strength to be alone together?"
Que?
As I've gotten older I find myself backing out of life. Becoming less attached to things. A lot of that has to do with retirement - the loss of my "purpose," use, in life. I still love my children, wife, family, friends, but the emotion is less intense. I no longer want or expect things out of these relationships, at least not to the extent I did. I take them as they are.
I like being with people, but I don't miss them when they're gone. When I'm needed, I'm there, but they all have lives of their own. It's a more peaceful life, but it's more than that. I'm able to be a better father, brother, husband, friend now. If I could have found this 50 years ago, I would have had a happier, better life and I would have been better to people.
I remember his lyrics stating that there's a crack in everything, and that's how the light gets in.
I believe you are describing this phenomena.
The graph is probably a reflection of the process I'm talking about. I don't think I'm unique. It's a common human experience.
On the other hand, it is easy to look at the two different approaches as complimentary rather than in opposition. Two different ways of looking at the same thing. One from a biological, neurological point of view and one from an experiential one.
What would that comprise?
Enlightenment in the European context 'includes a range of ideas centered on the value of human happiness, the pursuit of knowledge obtained by means of reason and the evidence of the senses, and ideals such as liberty, progress, toleration, fraternity, constitutional government, and separation of church and state.' So notice here the explicit separation from 'the religious' as an essential component of Enlightenment philosophy (a separation made explicit in Auguste Comte's idea of the 'positive sciences' which is the origination of positivism.)
Enlightenment in the spiritual/religious sense is native to the Indian religious lexicon, in respect of which the English word 'enlightenment' was used to translate Hindu and Buddhist terms including Nirv??a and Mok?a, for which there is no easy English equivalent. It is not a term usually associated with the Christian lexicon although a possible equivalent is the divine illumination associated with Augustinian Christianity.
This form of enlightenment is associated with the dissemination of Eastern religious ideas associated with Theosophy, 'New Thought', and the activities of various Eastern emissaries to Western culture including D.T. Suzuki (who lectured on Zen Buddhism at Columbia University in the 1950's) and numerous other teachers of Advaita Vedanta and Buddhism (a stellar example being the World Parliament of Religions in Chicago in the late 19th Century, associated with the World Fair.) Such ideas have also been popularised through innummerable smaller cult and cultural groups throughout the 20th century.
Another significant source was the ideas of the 'New England Transcendentalists', best known of whom were Emerson and Thoreau, and through whom the Indian conception of enlightenment also percolated. These had considerable influence on successors such as Pierce, James, Royce, and others, down to Abraham Maslow and other transpersonal psychologists. Many syntheses of these ideas have emerged through such channels as integral humanism, group awareness training, the activities at Esalen, and others too numerous to mention.
All that said, I think there's an inherent tension between the European and Indian ideals of enlightenment. The former is an essentially individualist, pragmatic and scientific whilst the latter is based on a radically different, non-individualist conception of the nature of the self and the meaning of existence. However, culture being what it is, these two somewhat conflicting attitudes are now meeting and combining in a dialectic to produce an entirely new synthesis, encompassing many disciplines including phenomenology, biosemiotics, systems theory and the 'new physics'. I think one significant frontier emerging from this dialectic is that of 'evolutionary enlightenment' (although regrettably that term is associated with a now-discredited self-appointed guru by the name of Andew Cohen). But a fascinating paper that @apokrisis linked to a few months back is Peircean cosmogony's symbolic agapistic self-organization as an example of the influence of eastern philosophy on western thinking, by Søren Brier, from which:
So in case you'd ever wondered what an aufhebung was - now you know.
:cool:
Quoting T Clark
:up:
:100: anti-woo!
Quoting Tom Storm
"Enlightened" because they were martyrs?
I don't think so. In philosophy 'immanence and ecstatic habits' (i.e. reflective exercises) are more reliably(?) enlightening.
"Some" would, I suppose, but I wouldn't based on the canonical Gospels.
The enlightened unburden their lives in order to climb "higher" (e.g. Buddha, Laozi ... Witty) and at the summit the wise die laughing (e.g. Democritus, Pyrrho ... Zapffe)
(Check the language game/s in which "enlightenment" is used.)
Quoting Tom Storm
No. e.g. "What is Enlightenment?"
I suppose so – 'by works and not by faith' – like so many disbelieving yet observant churchgoers and dutiful ministers.
Quoting Tom Storm
Yes.
Quoting unenlightened
:100:
Since e.g. Democritus & the C?rv?ka! And also, Spinoza's "radical enlightenment" (J. Israel), et al.
:clap: :up: Thanks for giving this concept such succinct, clear expression! (Till now time-binding has been only an underdeveloped, guiding intuition to a more fleshed-out conception of moral concern (re: moral agency) consisting of 'tensed selfhood'.)
Quoting Janus
:fire:
Of course, I totally forgot about them. I keep starting Walden and not finishing it. I've always responded to the notion of society as having a depleting effect on individuals. For me self knowledge requires significant alone time. That would be my path rather than deliberate meditation.
Quoting Wayfarer
You've packed a lot to think about in that paragraph. There are contemplative traditions within Christianity (generally via monastic pathways) which would be free of the scientific and individualistic focus. Additionally, I guess Gnosis is one such tradition. And today, Father Richard Rohr (from the Franciscan tradition) is a teacher in a contemplative, enlightenment tradition it seems to me. He's pretty scathing about the materialistic spirituality of mainstream Christians.
"Truly enlightened people see oneness because they look out from oneness, instead of labeling everything as superior and inferior, in or out. If you think you are privately “saved” or enlightened, then you are neither saved nor enlightened."
Quoting 180 Proof
I'd forgotten about that essay; I encountered it as an undergraduate: looks like radical independence of spirit begins with Kant. Keeping the flame alive!
I may have misrepresented the work if I suggested that it was presented in a manner divorced from a larger picture or story, although the title alone, Dopamine Nation, should indicate otherwise.
Quoting Janus
Not sure what you could mean by that. That we can't actually see the compound function in the body? It is far more real than this 'non-attachment' concept that you appear to put so much stock in.
A major premise of the work is that biological systems seek homeostasis, and without going into the details, the basic result is that too much pleasure eventually leads to pain, and vice-versa. I mention this because of the passing thought I had while reading that ascetic spiritual practices, which may be commonly regarded as virtuous or ego reductive, simply lead to pleasure, of a kind, hence the phrase samadhi junkie.
I think it's important to spell out the different senses of the word as there's a lot of ambiguity and misunderstanding about its meaning.
Quoting Tom Storm
I do wonder if he has an open file at the CDF.
I simply mean that we don't consciously experience dopamine, just as we don't consciously experience neural networks.
Quoting praxis
Not on the experiential level.
Quoting Janus
:chin:
You’re the one who’s employed the term “non-attachment”. If you don’t mean what that appears to represent then maybe it’s not the right term.
This is from "Princess Bride," right?
That is inexplicably funny. Maybe my subconscious has a better memory than my conscious mind.
No, that's from the director's cut of "Blade Runner".
[quote=Meister Eckhardt On Detachment; https://www.theculturium.com/meister-eckhart-on-detachment/]The mind of him who stands detached is of such nobility that whatever he sees is true and whatever he desires he obtains and whatever he commands must be obeyed. And this you must know for sure: when the free mind is quite detached, it constrains God to itself and if it were able to stand formless and free of all accidentals, it would assume God’s proper nature … The man who stands thus in utter detachment is rapt into eternity in such a way that nothing transient can move him …
Now you may ask what this detachment is, that is so noble in itself. You should know that true detachment is nothing else but a mind that stands unmoved by all accidents of joy or sorrow, honour, shame or disgrace, as a mountain of lead stands unmoved by a breath of wind[sup]1[/sup]. This immovable detachment brings a man into the greatest likeness to God. For the reason why God is God is because of His immovable detachment and from this detachment, He has His purity, His simplicity and His immutability. Therefore, if a man is to be like God, as far as a creature can have likeness with God, this must come from detachment. This draws a man into purity, and from purity into simplicity, and from simplicity into immutability, and these things make a likeness between God and that man …
You should know that the outer man can be active while the inner man is completely free of this activity and unmoved … Here is an analogy: a door swings open and shuts on its hinge. I would compare the outer woodwork of the door to the outer man and the hinge to the inner man. When the door opens and shuts, the boards move back and forth but the hinge stays in the same place and is never moved thereby. It is the same in this case if you understand it rightly.
Now I ask: What is the object of pure detachment? My answer is that the object of pure detachment is neither this nor that [sup]2[/sup]. It rests on absolutely nothing and I will tell you why: pure detachment rests on the highest and he is at his highest, in whom God can work all His will … And so, if the heart is ready to receive the highest, it must rest on absolutely nothing and in that lies the greatest potentiality which can exist …
Again I ask: What is the prayer of a detached heart? My answer is that detachment and purity cannot pray, for whoever prays wants God to grant him something or else wants God to take something from him. But a detached heart desires nothing at all, nor has it anything it wants to get rid of. Therefore it is free of all prayers or its prayer consists of nothing but being uniform with God. That is all its prayer …
Therefore it is totally subject to God, and therefore it is in the highest degree of uniformity with God and is also the most receptive to divine influence …
Now take note, all who are wise! No man is happier than he who has the greatest detachment.[/quote]
1. Compare with the Buddhist '8 Worldly Concerns'.
2. Compare with the Sanskrit 'neti, neti'.
Sorry for butting in but theia mania.
Quoting TheMadFool
Is that what we should expect from an enlightened mad fool instead of the mundane madness from the ordinary mad fool? :razz:
Madmen are, as far as I know, unpredictable. Expect the unexpected is the rule.
Yes, you're on the right track.
I think apatheia is more appropriate in the context of occidental philosophy than "detachment".
Don't go patting yourself on the back for that. Everybody seems to know what I'm going to say. :grin: I should just keep my mouth shut!
If there are many ways to be unenlightened, as there seem to be, why do we expect that there is only one way to be enlightened? Are there perhaps some who do not accumulate followers, do not make like social reformers and teachers. Perhaps most of them are no bloody use to us, and not even recognisable; living in barrels or monk's cells, or begging on the street, or working in a cat's home.
We're all supposedly enlightened beings (buddha nature or something like that) but the problem is we fail to realize that (simple) fact.
So, the question:
Quoting TheMadFool
Kind of like we all - well most of us - have legs, but if you are not fully aware of them, you won't cause much walking to happen.
Something like that.
Assuming, correctly to my reckoning, that no one alive is enlightened, we could take an apophatic approach to nirvana. I believe that's the classical, textbook method that's also practised in other religions like Christianity.
Algorithm:
1. Is unenlightened enlightened? No! Out goes everything about unenlightened - none of it is the mark of a buddha.
2. Replace unenlightened with another person.
3. Go to step 1.
We would at least know what isn't enlightenment.
So is this part of a stand-up routine or what? The door hinge bit was particularly hilarious. :lol:
But by your own hypothesis this is not true. unenlightened is enlightened; he just doesn't realise/hasn't realised it. In which case, unenlightenment is a 'mistake' that one is continuously making.
"Luminous, monks, is the mind. And it is freed from incoming defilements." {I,v,10}
"Luminous, monks, is the mind. And it is defiled by incoming defilements. The uninstructed run-of-the-mill person doesn't discern that as it actually is present, which is why I tell you that — for the uninstructed run-of-the-mill person — there is no development of the mind." {I,vi,1}
"Luminous, monks, is the mind. And it is freed from incoming defilements. The well-instructed disciple of the noble ones discerns that as it actually is present, which is why I tell you that — for the well-instructed disciple of the noble ones — there is development of the mind." {I,vi,2}[/quote]
[quote=Ajahn Mun]The mind is something more radiant than anything else can be, but because counterfeits – passing defilements – come and obscure it, it loses its radiance, like the sun when obscured by clouds. Don’t go thinking that the sun goes after the clouds. Instead, the clouds come drifting along and obscure the sun. So meditators, when they know in this manner, should do away with these counterfeits by analyzing them shrewdly... When they develop the mind to the stage of the primal mind, this will mean that all counterfeits are destroyed, or rather, counterfeit things won’t be able to reach into the primal mind, because the bridge making the connection will have been destroyed. Even though the mind may then still have to come into contact with the preoccupations of the world, its contact will be like that of a bead of water rolling over a lotus leaf.[/quote]
[quote= Consciousness and Luminosity in Indian and Tibetan Buddhism]This mind is no-mind [sup]1[/sup], because its natural character is luminous. What is this state of the mind’s luminosity? When the mind is neither associated with nor dissociated from greed, hatred, delusion, proclivities, fetters, or false views, then this constitutes its luminosity. Does the mind exist as no-mind? In the state of no-mind, the states of existence or non-existence can be neither found nor established... What is this state of no-mind? The state of no-mind, which is immutable and undifferentiated, constitutes the ultimate reality of all dharmas. Such is the state of no-mind.[/quote]
1. 'No mind' is a synonym for the dissolution of self-centred consciousness with its inherent sense of 'I and mine.'
Bodhisattva means 'a buddha-to-be', ie. a person on the path to buddhahood, but not yet a buddha.
Meaning that chicken are enlightened.
And...?
Could be. The way it was taught to me was that a Bodhisattva postpones entering Nirvana in order to teach humanity. For what it is worth, I noticed that the Dalai Lama has said that Jesus may have been a Bodhisattva.
Now I am talking about a mythic traditions and they don't always compare neatly. In my worldview Jesus never existed as described in the fan fiction (the gospels). These are myths, perhaps based on original stories of an itinerant preacher.
Someone once told me that it has to do with "being better than you were before". E.g. if yesterday, it took you 15 sec to run 100 yards, aim to run the distance in 14 sec next time around. And so on; it's about improving one's results in reference to one's previous results.
Guess I'm on the right track. Although i should warn you the path of mediocrity is long and hard; it leaves a substantial amount of regret in its wonderful wake.
Quoting baker
Quoting Janus
I read Nietzsche’s self-overcoming ( will to power) as being different than you were before, not better in the sense of some kind of cumulative progress or organic growth.
“… The ‘development' of a thing, a tradition, an organ is therefore certainly not its progressus towards a goal, still less is it a logical progressus, taking the shortest route with least expenditure of energy and cost, – instead it is a succession of more or less profound, more or less mutually independent processes of subjugation exacted on the thing, added to this the resistances encountered every time, the attempted transformations.”
You don't understand it as an idea of flourishing, but simply of change, whether for the better or worse?
That's intriguing, Joshs - I know my thinking is conventional but I wonder why be different if it isn't in some greater sense, better? What is the impetus for transformation - is it being who you really are, which may not be an improvement?
You can life the most non-mediocre life in each reality. You will have no regret. As long as you take that reality as a joke. Saves a lot of misery.
The real you is an illusion. You are always you. The idea of a person behind the face, the real you, is caused by forces that make you wanna be a person you don't want to. Acting accordingly to these images of other people creates the split. Modern society especially creates an image of people many people don't want to be but have to be (or can't be but want to, which is even worse as it creates shitty feelings). The dichotomy is solved by not thinking about what others think. If you do so you can grow or change continually. Or settle in an image you like.
Surely Nietzsche would have said that "being who you really are" is preferable to not being who you really are. It seem to me this is where the existentialist notion of authenticity comes into play.
You can live more or less enslaved to what you might think are the expectations of others.
I don’t know if that has anything to do with Nietzsche, but I think Jung is making a good point.
The main problem seems to be that people want to be enlightened without being enlightened. In other words, they want to be at once what they are now and enlightened. This, of course, is not possible because when you are enlightened, you no longer are what you were before.
Instead of being “what you are now (and enlightened)”, you will be “enlightened (and what you are now)”. The enlightened aspect being the dominant element, the what-you-are-now aspect will be completely subordinate to it, which means that you no longer are what you were before, though you may appear to be so externally, i.e., to others.
Enlightenment is often referred to as a form of “liberation”. In the Western tradition, this goes back to Socrates, Plato, and others for whom this liberation (lysis) is a liberation of the conscious soul, i.e., of intelligence, from the confines of embodied existence.
Intelligence or consciousness is, by definition, the principle of life, which is a free, living and creative force. However, through association with the limited and limiting physical body it inhabits, intelligence becomes caught up in limiting modes of experience in which it identifies more and more with the objective element of consciousness, i.e., body, material possessions, thoughts, and emotions associated with these, until awareness of one’s real identity recedes into the background almost completely.
The liberation process consists in intelligence extricating itself from everyday experience that is based on material reality. But this does not mean that material reality disappears, only that it is recognized as a product of intelligence.
According to Plato, there is no Reality other than Intelligence (Nous). Even if another reality existed, intelligence would be still needed in order for there to be awareness of it. It follows that there is nothing higher than the Intelligence that sees and imparts reality to all things, and everything else is secondary to it.
This is why Plato refers to the Highest Truth or Ultimate Reality as the “Light of All” (to Phos pasi), i.e., that which gives light, and reality, to all things (Republic 540a).
Plotinus explains how individual intelligence comes to have an experience of Intelligence:
Those who have some experience of lucid dreams are in a better position to understand the true nature of consciousness. As research has shown, in the “ambient” type of lucid dreams, the dreamer is passively, though consciously, aware of the fact that he or she is dreaming. In the “active” type, the dreamer is able to actively engage with the events taking place in the dream and influence their course.
This illustrates how cognition is ultimately nothing but self-aware intelligence affected by the modifications brought about in itself by itself, and this gives us an idea of how a higher Intelligence might be able to bring about the whole of reality as a manifestation of itself.
Plato repeatedly draws parallels between the individual self and the Universal Self. The point he is making is that in the same way the individual self uses its cognitive powers to generate cognition in the form of thoughts, etc., the Universal Self uses its powers to generate the Universe.
As stated in the Phaedo and elsewhere, the only way to obtain a vision of higher realities is by intelligence extricating itself from the confines of everyday experience. Any mental state in which consciousness detaches itself from normal experience and returns to its natural state of freedom may be used for this purpose.
Such states can occur naturally, e.g. lucid dreaming or the state between waking and sleeping, etc., but also as a result of meditation or contemplation. Plotinus compares contemplation on light or light-like intelligence itself, to awaiting the Sun to rise from beyond the ocean, culminating in an experience of Oneness:
In other words, during the ascent to higher reality, the objective aspect of intellection becomes closer and closer to, and ultimately identical with, the subjective aspect.
Most modern philosophers are conditioned, or have conditioned themselves, to prefer to remain in the realm of thought. But, however “abstract” it might be, thought belongs to the objective side of consciousness. The subjective side, the thinker’s true self, is above that.
By dismissing Platonism and similar philosophical systems as “mysticism” they deliberately reject their higher self which is their true identity. This renders it impossible for them to understand the concept of enlightenment and, ultimately, to understand themselves.
In contrast, whatever philosophical systems like Platonism might seem to be to outsiders at first sight, they are first and foremost practical philosophy from start to finish, progressing upward from ethical conduct to intellectual and spiritual development and from there to realization of Ultimate Reality.
Plato explains, repeatedly and in unambiguous terms, that self-effort is required, and that this self-effort consists in a conscious redirection of our intelligence away from everyday experience and toward the Light of Reality.
Plotinus shows that the Platonic Way Upward does yield concrete results and he gives us an idea of the state of awakening experienced when individual intelligence approaches Universal Intelligence:
The concept of “darkness” or “going through darkness” in order to see the light, is equally revealing. Obviously, this can be interpreted in many different ways. But in cognitive terms, the process leading to enlightenment is often described as a process of interiorization of consciousness consisting of several distinct phases: (1) waking, (2) dreaming, (3) deep sleep, and (4) pure, awakened consciousness.
On this account, consciousness in the first three stages withdraws as it were into itself until no awareness of external, material reality is left. From this point, consciousness either (a) returns to the dreaming and waking states (which is what normally happens), or (b) goes in the opposite direction, and having overcome the darkness of deep sleep, emerges on the other side, the side of infinite light from where the material reality left behind is seen as nothing but a manifestation of the same living, creative light of consciousness that is experienced as oneself.
The whole process is based on maintaining consciousness through all the phases of waking, dreaming, and deep sleep. In the same way as we can be consciously aware of the fact that we are dreaming, we can (though with much greater difficulty) be aware that we are in deep sleep. This is when the true light of consciousness, the light of liberated intelligence, dawns on us and the enlightenment process proper begins.
This is what Plotinus and others are describing. Anything beyond that can no longer be described. But life becomes an expression of that state and the desire “to be one’s (unenlightened) old self and at the same time enlightened” becomes a fading memory.
Lao Tzu writes about wu wei, which means acting without acting. Acting that arises from your true self without intention. As to whether or not that is an improvement, I always think of lines that I love from Emerson's "Self-Reliance."
I remember an answer which when quite young I was prompted to make to a valued adviser, who was wont to importune me with the dear old doctrines of the church. On my saying, What have I to do with the sacredness of traditions, if I live wholly from within? my friend suggested, — “But these impulses may be from below, not from above.” I replied, “They do not seem to me to be such; but if I am the Devil’s child, I will live then from the Devil.” No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature.
It always makes me laugh and brings tears to my eyes.
[
Quoting Janus
I think the route to flourishing for Nietzsche was maintaining continuous movement, embracing transformation, and allowing oneself to get held captive (ascetic ideal) by any particular valuative concept of flourishing.
But Nietzsche did not believe that the self is a fixed identity. That is one reason he is embraced by postmodern philosophers like Foucault and Deleuze , who see the self as socially constructed.
“To indulge the fable of ‘unity,’ ‘soul,’ ‘person,’ this we have forbidden: with such hypotheses one only covers up the problem” ( Nietzsche)
He describes the soul as “subjective multiplicity”, and “social structure of the drives and affects”.
Stanford Encyclopedia suggests that “Nietzsche’s psychology treats the self as something that has to be achieved or constructed, rather than as something fundamentally given as part of the basic metaphysical equipment with which a person enters the world.”
We have no choice , because whether we like it or not, whatever valuative framework we choose will eventually collapse and be transformed from within its own resources( the best becomes the worst, good becomes evil) .This is the meaning of will to power as self-overcoming. We are driven to embrace schemes of meaning and then to exhaust ourselves within them and move beyond them.
Did you mean "not allowing..."?
Quoting Joshs
Regardless of what the self is, would Nietzsche not agree that you must follow your own passion and not live according to the mores and expectations of others, and that to do this would constitute flourishing?
This point really resonates. Thank you for a very considered response.
Perhaps I don't fully understand. I have certainly never had this experience but I do accept that beliefs and thought systems are not immutable.
Goodness. A profound idea.
I've been reading Whitman's Leaves of Grass and it is quite extraordinary.
Dear Harold Bloom said of Emerson: "Emerson is the mind of our climate; he is the principal source of the American difference in poetry and criticism and in pragmatic postphilosophy." Do you think this holds?
What's the difference between not having a gun (when you need it) and not knowing you have a gun (when you need it)?
:chin:
To be enlightened is to find out that you were wrong in thinking a particular thought and instead of doubling down you change your mind.
Wrong.
Apparently you're not familiar with the pun ... A famous Buddhist teacher once said that if being able to sit for long periods of time would be any guarantee of enlightenment, then chickens would be enlightened.
I love to watch when people argue about enlightenment.
Narcissism is wrong too.
:grin:
Then enlighten me about enlightenment. Am I enlightened now when I'm "wrong", or when I change my mind and agree with you?
In the East it mean the realization of emptiness. In the West it means weight-loss.
Then what enlightenment is is subjective?
How much do you weigh?
But not as something to be permanently deconstructed, overcome.
It seems that in Nietzsche's view, there should exist a series of selves; one overcoming the other.
Whereas in some ideologies, enlightenment has to do with stopping the process of selfing altogether.
Are you in the East or the West?
West, so report in pounds.
I like the way it sounds, but I don't know what it means. I've never cared for Emerson's poetry much.
Quoting Harry Hindu
Come on HH, you know the sense in which you are using "enlightenment" is different than how others on this thread are using it. You are intentionally being difficult.
Quoting Harry Hindu
Enlightenment is an experience, so, yes, I guess that means it's subjective.
16.4 stone.
Quoting T Clark
I agree, his essays are much better...he's not much of a poet.
So mu.
Mu-tha?
This is more legible
Different strokes for different folks, I say. That one is good though. :up:
Less sarcastic form of apathy.
Can you say more? Do you mean to say that unattachment is a less pejorative manifestation of apathy?
I think Mr. @Cheshire just means that he doesn't understand and can't imagine what is meant by "Enlightenment" in the context we are discussing it. That allows him to reject its value with a smug sneer.
Accompanied, I imagine, by a snooty snort.
I can say that the closest I've gotten to what I imagine Enlightenment to be like; is a moment of clarity and acceptance that happens to correspond with the state of affairs. Something along the lines of arguing a point until arriving at the obvious realization that being convincing and being right aren't the same thing. But, genuinely not really caring or maintaining an importance around this or that. I don't know what it really is; but that's how I translate it.
Always happy to be an inspiration.
Meister Eckhardt, the only medieval theologian ever tried for heresy. Not exactly a shining star of dispassion and detachment, if you see it rightly. Not his fault though, once God gets her hooks into a person they will fight tooth and nail for their beliefs.
Honestly, Eckhart Tolle is a better champion of dispassion and detachment.
Probably and branding/marketing tactic, truth be told.
And what of old Eckhardt‘s apparent attachment to his views?
Quoting Cheshire
Ok. I don't think it's uncommon for notions like unattachment and detachment and apathy to merge into a maelstrom of studied indifference in mainstream Western eyes.
It is hard to separate how the enlightened might appear versus speculating about the internal state. I'd suppose for contrast an unenlightened person being very anxious and insistent regarding their state of enlightenment.
That's an interesting, evocative, even if counter-intuitive, phrasing!
I think it comes from ignorance and an inability to understand or imagine how someone might think differently about the world than they do.
Religious attachment is next level, and dubiously justified by the notion that it’s not materialistic in nature, as though that matters when it comes to attachment.
I think also for some people, and I'm not thinking of anyone particular here, there's an emotional, almost visceral reaction to certain words. Before the person even considers the idea, the response is there already, dismissive and pugnacious - almost like a 'lizard brain', flight or fight response. You say Christianity, they immediately blurt out 'deception and pedophilia..'. That kind of thing. Maybe attachment can be added to the list of provocative trigger words. Christ knows I've been guilty of prejudging a bunch of ideas myself... :worry:
Reminds me of Varela and Thompson’s account of the zen buddhist Nishitani’s critique of Nietzsche.
“Nishitami deeply admires Nietzsche's attempt but claims that it actually perpetuates the nihilistic predicament by not letting go of the grasping mind that lies at the souce of both objectivism and nihlism. Nishitani's argument is that nihilism cannot be overcome by assimilating groundlessness to a notion of the will-no matter how decentered and impersonal. Nishitani's diagnosis is even more radical than Nietzsche's, for he claims that the real problem with Western nihilism is that it is halfhearted: it does not consistently follow through its own inner logic and motivation and so stops short of transforming its partial realization of groundlessness into the philosophical and experiential possiblities of sunyata.”
I think what Nishitami failed to grasp was that will to
nothingness is still willing. Self for Nietzsche isnt an entity but a vector of change.
I think it's tied up with distrust and disdain for the idea of mysticism.
who looks inside, awakes.[/quote]
Perhaps a little of your own thought.
[math]\phi = 1.618...[/math] [proportio divina]
Eureka! It's about beauty! Oh, shit!
I get it...always stick to the phi ratio: Quoting TheMadFool
1.618 in each hit/cap/bump/gram/tab/pill/shot/drink/&c., is the perfect dose to reach enlightenment on any substance.
[quote=NCBI]Most health care professionals, especially nurses, know the “five rights” of medication use: the right patient, the right drug, the right time, the right dose, and the right route—all of which are generally regarded as a standard for safe medication practices.[/quote]
:100:
Objectivism = ‘it really exists’. Nihilism = ‘It doesn’t exist’. The two extreme views according to Buddhism.
Metaphysically minimalistic...perhaps.
It’s always amusing when someone speaking from the firm ground of a system of meaning, Zen Buddhism in this case, talks of groundlessness.
I think to be enlightened is the realization that there are things that you don't know that you don't know.
Everyone knows there are things they don't know. But not everyone knows there are things that they don't know they don't know.
I don't know if I actually believe what I just said, but I'm throwing it out there as a kind of free-form, train-of-thought kind of thing; tossing it on the wall to see if it sticks. Feel free to destroy it. :smile:
P.S. I know I don't know how much you weigh. I also know that I don't know anything about that atom on that piece of mineral on the back side of that distant planet 12 billion lightyears from here that we've never seen and don't know exists and that no one has ever mentioned until now. But beyond that, there are things that I don't know I don't know, and I know that. Thus, I am enlightened. I am both humbled by my ignorance, and eager to know what I don't know. In fact, it intrigues me way more than the answers to those simple things that I know I don't know.
All attempted definitions are welcome. There are lots of things I don't know that I don't know. And lots of things I don't want to know. I have always made the assumption - not sure why - that in theory enlightenment comes as a sudden realization which brings with it some kind of revealed wisdom through a unity with higher consciousness. This is not a concept sustained by my secular worldview.
:up:
Quoting TheMadFool
This habit is wisdom. Enlightenment, Fool, is (the shock? of) recognizing the significance of – need, beginning with oneself, for cultivating – wisdom (aka "the daughter of experience").
Quoting James Riley
:fire: Thus, "the enlightened" live (more) worthwhile examined lives
An initial fight or flight response is entirely appropriate to all things religious, imo, because of its power to attach.
Good question. I'm not sure it is meant to be the same but I have a poor understanding of the idea, hence this OP. Would there perhaps be certain themes in common?
What if it were profoundly different for each of us? What would that suggest about the limits of intersubjective harmonization of personal viewpoints and experiences? That sounds like an awfully impoverished notion of enlightenment.
...then enlightenment is enriched by not being limited....
One can play all sorts of word games here, because there is no "intersubjective harmonization of personal viewpoints and experiences".
A sure sign that someone has not achieved enlightenment is their claim that they have achieved enlightenment. Enlightenment is attributed to someone by others. It's telling someone the colour of the beetle in their box.
Or a family resemblance? Point is, there is no fact of the matter. One man's Guru is another's crackpot.
So this thread can go on indefinitely, as the various opinions of the participants vie for prominence. It's not that nothing can be decided so much as that whatever one decides will be right.
Quoting Tom Storm
Why should the experience of an apple be the same for all of us. Why should the feeling of pain be the same for all of us. People have shared experiences that are worth talking about.
Quoting Banno
But for Wittgenstein it cannot be profoundly different for each of us because experience is profoundly relational. That insight was his enlightenment, showing the fly the way out of the bottle.
Yes.
When I hear the word "enlightened" I think of the Enlightenment, which then makes me wonder what distinguishes leaders of that era from everyone else of that era. When I look at everyone else of that era, I see folks who knew. They knew they were peasants, they knew they were clergy, they knew they were aristocracy; whatever. They knew. Everything was ordered and everyone had their place. That was the way things were and that was the way things should be.
Enlightenment = not knowing, but wondering. Examining. Questioning. And, like they said in the 60s, "Question Authority."
I worry about that last one though, because a lot of Trumpettes think they are doing exactly that. Hmmmm. But I think they lack curiosity, examination. They "know." They don't question authority. They they don't question. I guess one who questions authority should at least listen to the answers. After all, authority is not necessarily wrong simply by being authority. Might is not necessarily wrong just because it is mighty. Power is not absolutely corrupt simply because it is powerful, and maybe somewhat corrupt.
The state might actually be weaker if it is deep. When you lose a lawful election you should take your licks. If you want to consider yourself enlightened, then you have to argue with something besides a temper tantrum and threats. We're supposed to be adults here.
No reason.
But the apple - that can be the same for all of us.
Quoting T Clark
Sure. Don't let me stop you. As I pointed out, there is much that can be said here.
Sure, the box might be the same, but the beetle?
Watch a few pop films. They are written for children. Problems are sorted by hitting each other.
That's the spirit of the times.
Have a look at this post where I attempt to disambiguate the word in respect of its European and Eastern applications. (Not that it makes a lot of difference to the mob.)
If the beetle is an important part of my life, then this will be because it is an important part of my social life.
:up: Good read, thanks. I'm comfortable with the Eastern notion too, and even a combination, but, other than my theory of All (which I endeavor to explain in terms a western view might entertain) I try avoid the eastern. It seems so personal to me and I hate to subject it to the slings and arrows of those who (think) the "know" better. There is room for it in my heart, though, and I think that's good enough.
Maybe instead of defaulting the period of the "Enlightenment" I should just visualize a person with a light bulb going off over their head and a smile on their face:
Another angle that might offend everyone is "woke." :grin:
I know, right! Ugh!
I'll avoid the Eastern and religious terminology and pull out some of the English words that keep coming up. Naturally, I'm assuming words fall short in describing ineffable states of awareness.
'Self-actualization'; 'self-annihilation'; 'self-realization'; 'liberation'; 'awakening'; 'cessation'.
And there are two other words which often come up which I assume refer to a higher consciousness aspect to the term - 'union' and 'perfection'.
Looking at the on-line sales pitch from folk like Sadhguru of the yoga tradition, reminds me of my own time spent with theosophists and assorted mystics in the 1980s. I'm trying not to be cynical but clearly enlightenment still requires marketing and, these days, a website...
"Enlightenment means a conscious annihilation of yourself. For most people, it will take a certain amount of time and maturing to understand that whatever you make yourself to be, in the end, it is frustrating and not enough. However wonderful you make yourself, still it is not enough. Only when you disappear, everything becomes wonderful."
Awkward language notwithstanding - Sadhuru is getting at something people haven't raised so far on this thread. The merits of enlightenment and the concomitant experience of everything becoming 'wonderful'. I wonder (sorry) what this means. It seems antithetical to self-annihilation however. Who exactly is the self experiencing the extinguished wonderfulness? Or is this what happens when mere words are used to describe the numinous?
The merits are pleasure, because who doesn't love 'wonderfulness', and reduced anxiety, perhaps particularly existential anxiety.
Neurologically speaking, selfhood is embedded throughout the mind, I understand, though a particular network, namely the default mode network, is believed to be the problematic portion. The deactivation of this area reduces "monkey mind" and a sense of self, though there are other parts of the brain that are still aware of the environment, body, etc.
:up:
It wouldn't be. It wasn't even for the Zen masters according to the canonical texts.
'Self-annihilation' can't help but sound like suicide. I'm sure what is meant by it is much more like the quoted passage - absence of egotism or ego-centeredness. Which turns out not to be the abscence of anything, if there is no ego in the first place.
Quoting Tom Storm
Ego is basically mental activity and related physiological patterns comprising 'thought thinking about itself'. It's an inevitable function of living in an individualist culture. Basically ego is everything to the majority of people. The defacto slogan of modern culture is nihil ultra ego, nothing beyond self.
In Vedanta, the ego is dissolved into ?tman, the self of all beings. Ramana Maharishi was an Advaitin sage.
Buddhism doesn't teach in terms of ?tman but has in common the aim of ego-lessness.
Now that these ideas have become part of Western culture to some extent, it's become clear (at least to me) that they mirror some fundamental ideas in Christian culture, although Eastern religions don't carry the same historical baggage.
This reminds me of the phrase "beside one's self". It is a state, I think, where awareness exists, but it is not an awareness of one's self. It it actually a super-awareness of everything but one's self. One ceases to be, and all there is is now. No past, no future, no self. Just now. I find this in the hunt, I've found it at my child's birth, maybe a few moments of unbridled emotion. I can see how the examining of an examined life, or that eureka moment in the lab, or the middle of the night, or maybe a glimpse of something when meditation is mastered, might all be construed the same, both east and west. A flash of nirvana. But only a flash. A tease. Maybe the eastern effort to harness it, through some kind of practice, is the equivalent of domesticating something wild: the result becomes us and we like it, but it's a watered-down version what we wanted when we saw it. It is not enough.
I see that as entirely consistent with the idea of non-attachment. Attachment to things is slavery; non-attachment is freedom. Is freedom not more wonderful than slavery?
Obviously Sadhguru would not be claiming that we literally disappear, but the idea of ourselves as separate self-contained egos who consequently suffer a terrible anxiety and loneliness which can only be compensated for by "grasping" for objects of desire and distraction, might "disappear" when we become non-attached, because that is just what non-attachment means.
I think this is a mistake. The idea is not to harness "It", but to harness the ego that occludes "it".
Six of one, half dozen of the other. Harnessing the ego in an effort to "achieve" (harness) the selfless state may be doomed to failure simply for the harnessing (or effort to achieve, if you will).
This is not to suggest it is easy, far from it. I don't know for sure that it is possible to completely eliminate attachment and become permanently non-attached (enlightened). But I am humble enough to realize that I don't know that it is not possible either.
I think the idea that it is about making an effort to "harness" anything is a common mistake. It is more about an effort to keep "coming back" to and allow something more primordial.
So, I shouldn't have spoken about harnessing the ego; I think it's more about moving away from it.
It's a word choice problem that is not a problem. I'll use any word you want for "an effort to keep "coming back" to and allow something more primordial." My point was, it may be like trying to out run your shadow. Run, turn out the light, stop trying, whatever. Trying to be eternally in the now may be futile simply for the trying or cessation of trying. I'm no guru either, but I've had glimpses of something that may not be mine to have, at least perpetually.
All the best to those who want to put in the work, eastern or otherwise. Good on them. I've got a different life to live. There will be plenty of time for nirvana when I'm dead.
http://www.columbia.edu/acis/ets/CCREAD/etscc/kant.html
Though it's more applicable to his time, in some sense it pertains to the old sage, too.
I wonder if this understanding is what lubricates the Dunning-Kruger effect.
Sorry NOS, a cheap shot...
It’s a good cheap shot, in my opinion. But the Dunning-Kruger effect applies as much to the competent as it does to the incompetent.
As if it is more noble or more realistic to think that enlightenment is impossible to attain.
Quoting Tom Storm
Except that "attachment" can do all that provoking and tirggering on its own, no specific bias or prejudice needed. Because attachment is powerful like that.
You can think about it like this: For most people (not just Westerners), their feelings or emotions for something or someone are conditional. People typically like someone or something as long as said person or thing is in a particular way that is pleasing to them. And the opposite for disliking someone or something. Neutral feelings are typically interpreted as dislike (if an ordinary person doesn't feel anything particular about someone or something, they eventually interpret this as dislike -- that's that meh feeling).
An ordinary person doesn't imagine what an unconditional love (or an unconditional hatred) would be like, so in their minds detachment (not relying on persons or things to supply one with pleasures) feels like apathy.
I haven't read the above sources, so I'm just going by your quote.
This shouldn't be the case for a Buddhist, though. "The will to nothingness" is roughly equivalent to the Buddhist concept of vibhava-tanha, craving for non-existence.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ta%E1%B9%87h%C4%81
Sure, we can find a similar conception of self in Buddhism as well, by some Buddhist teachers, although this isn't mainstream.
For example, Thanissaro Bhikkhu: Selves & Not-self
He talks about the self as a strategy, as something one does (identifies with some things, disidentifies with others).
If such is the case, if enlightenment is something different for every person, then all efforts to attain it are idiosyncratic. Then no path to enlightenment can be taught, nor learned.
And if such, enlightenment becomes irrelevant, or, at best, magic.
Quoting Banno
Only if one insists on being Humpty Dumpty.
Quoting Banno
No. At least in some schools of Buddhism, enlightenment is something one knows as such.
The standard phrasing is as follows:
He discerns that 'Birth is ended, the holy life fulfilled, the task done. There is nothing further for this world.
"He"?
Who is "he"? I thought the "non-existence of self" (anatman/anatta) was taken for granted in Buddhism.
I recall a Buddha quote something to the effect that the self, or rather what constitutes the self, shouldn’t be construed as an entity but a description of suffering.
Yeah, as if. It's a good thing no one has introduced this ridiculous proposition into the discussion then.
Pretty much.
Quoting baker
Like pain, one does not know one is enlightened, one is just enlightened. The rest of us are left to decide if someone is enlightened based on the behavioural evidence. That seems on observation to involve sex and luxury cars.
And you know this, like, firsthand?
But perhaps enlightenmemt is a pain in the arse!
[Quote]The rest of us are left to decide if someone is enlightened based on the behavioural evidence. [/quote]
If your guru says so ...
Meh, kids these days. No ambition.
Oh? People tend to use their own understanding these days? A lotta folks seem to use the understanding of Fox & Breitbart News. People like yourself.
...from the analysis found in Wittgenstein. You know, philosophy. Like some do on the philosophy forum.
It looks like zen and stoicism taught you a lot.
Zen taught me to let go and stoicism taught me to hang on, so I'm basically back to where I started. :roll:
I don't think we are far from agreement. Word choice problems are indeed ordinary, and one ordinary solution is for one party to stipulate the word choice of the other, which I happily do. We are also in agreement on the abundant distractions. And we agree that not wanting a solution is no problem, unless it is. Which brings us to wanting a solution. That in itself can present an obstacle. Unless it doesn't. :smile:
P.S. If any moderators are reading: Why, when Janus replied to me, did it not register or notify me of such like it usually does? I find that sometimes people respond or otherwise properly use my name, highlighted as a link, yet I don't get a notice like I do most of the time.
It makes me wonder if I'm missing anything specifically citing my name as a link? Just curious.
You know they were talking about patience, not attachment, right?
To be concerned with virtue and well-being is to be attached.
The nature of attachment is connection or binding, and there’s no escaping the fact that we’re all connected and bound, so reason demands that we accept this enslavement. :flower:
Quoting baker
When studying my honours thesis in comparative religioin, I found a book by a Russian Orthodox philosopher of religion, Simon Frank, called 'The Unknowable'. The flyleaf had an inscription in some strange language, from Nicholas of Cusa, with a translation helpfully added: 'The unattainable is attained through its unattainment'. A very Buddhist formulation, I felt.
Quoting James Riley
That does happen sometimes. I think it's a software glitch, mods can't do anything about that.
Roger that. Thanks.
And anyway, philosophers often don't end up living very long.
We’ll don’t know about that but the TV sure has made the cave wall a whole lot more entertaining.
Nicely done. Far more vivid than some piss poor shadow puppets.
Quoting Wayfarer
That's a quote with a lot of potential uses.
Good point. Human consciousness can’t jump from "enslavement" to "liberation". At least in normal circumstances, there must be a lengthy process of emancipation in which, as Socrates says, consciousness must gently detach itself from ordinary experience and attach itself to higher realities.
So, the idea is not to immediately achieve non-attachment, which is beyond ordinary human capacity, but to progress to increasingly liberating forms of attachment until the state of absolute non-attachment has been attained.
Even imagination, which is usually contrasted with reality, can play a role in this process. For example, if we think of ourselves as free consciousness instead of self-identifying with the physical body, emotions, and thoughts, then there is a good chance of achieving a degree of detachment from ordinary experience and of opening new doors of perception that eventually lead to the desired goal.
This is also the idea behind certain visualization techniques as practiced in Indian traditions:
Mandala - Wikipedia
Even reading a book about higher states of consciousness can, at least temporarily, lift us out of ordinary experience engrossed in material things.
Essentially, this amounts to consciousness using itself as a ladder to ascend to higher states in the same way it uses itself as a ladder to descend to the lower states of ordinary experience.
(Or, as I said earlier, consciousness oscillating between states of different degrees of subtlety or wakefulness, such as waking, dreaming, and dreamless, deep sleep, and back again.)
And if pure, unconditioned consciousness is the ultimate goal, then it is necessary to acquaint ourselves with the nature of consciousness in the first place. For example, we need to realize that consciousness, i.e., that which is aware of our thoughts, is more subtle than even the more abstract and refined thought.
The situation seems to be less clear in Buddhism, though, at least in those schools that deny the ultimate reality of consciousness and of self.
The thread topic is enlightenment. Since when does philosophy concern itself with enlightenment or should have the final say over it?
This requires very careful interpretation as it is easily misconstrued. Please see this brief sutta. It comprises a question and answer between Ven. Maha Kotthita ('maha' means 'great' meaning a senior monk) and Sariputta (a.k.a. Sariputra, one of several senior teachers who often articulates the wisdom teachings in the texts.)
Kotthita asks Sariputta:
This is a reference to the jhana/dhyana states of meditative absorption. Kotthita is asking, if all the activities of the sense-gates are suspended, is there anything else?
Sariputta responds with 'Don't say that, my friend'.
The Q&A continues in the formulaic style of the early Buddhist texts, but each variation of the question elicits the same response: 'Don't say that, my friend'.
Then comes to the typically Buddhist fourfold negation of alternatives:
(an example the 'Catu?ko?i' logic later associated with N?g?rjuna.)
By this time, thoroughly baffled, Kotthita asks for clarification. Sariputta responds:
[quote=Sariputta] "The statement, 'With the remainderless stopping & fading of the six contact-media [vision, hearing, smell, taste, touch, & intellection] is it the case that there is anything else?' objectifies non-objectification. The statement, '... is it the case that there is not anything else ... is it the case that there both is & is not anything else ... is it the case that there neither is nor is not anything else?' objectifies non-objectification. However far the six contact-media go, that is how far objectification goes. However far objectification goes, that is how far the six contact media go. With the remainderless fading & stopping of the six contact-media, there comes to be the stopping, the allaying of objectification.[/quote]
This phrase 'objectifying non-objectification' (rather an awkward translation I suspect) is key here.
The translator comments
So what this is getting at, I think, is that Ven Kotthita is asking, if all perceptions are suspended, what do I see? Or do I not see anything? The 'allaying of objectification' is the cessation of all of the volitional and affective activities associated with creating the thought-world which the imagined self inhabits. So the cessation of such activities is also the melting away of the 'I and mine'.
So I think the Buddhist response to your objection is that the purported 'ultimate reality' is itself a projection of the self, a way by which the self seeks security through an imagined continuity comprising existence in some imagined ultimate or higher state. Which all too easily then becomes simply more conjecture, speculation and verbiage which in no way severs the root of afflictive emotional entanglement at the root. But this is often met with furious cries of 'nihilism!'
(See also comparisons with Wittgenstein's Ladder.)
AFAIK, the system sends out notification based on the post as it is first posted. If the post is later edited, and new mentions of people added, they are not notified.
:up: Yes accepting the inevitable is a substantial part of non-attachment.
Not that religious talk needs to make sense, and in fact it's better if it doesn't, but it sounded like you just said that attachment is part of non-attachment.
This kind of succintness is what makes Zen so easy to exploit and pervert, and to assume more familiarity with it than one actually has.
Not being attached to the fact that, when thought about in a certain way, some attachment seems inevitable, is a substantial part of non-attachment. Does that make it any clearer?
Clear as mud, as I suppose it must be.
That's odd; it seems crystal clear to me. Try this: attachment in this context we are discussing means reactivity; or better, it means being invested in your reactions, being attached to them.
I don't see how you can say that it's odd, you're not even sure that non-attachment is possible, or so you've said in this topic.
You should read more closely and try not to think in black and white. I said I don't know if complete non-attachment is possible. We all know that we can let go of attachment to things when we need to.
Inconceivable!
Since when does letting go of attachments mean non-attachment? Never.
People whose car gets stuck in the rails while they're crossing the railroad not rarely die in the collision with the train, because they refuse to leave their car. Even though they had enough time.
Or they get shot or stabbed by robbers after they refuse to give up their briefcase or purse.
Or they keep on smoking, even after they had a tracheostomy.
Clearly, not everyone knows that they can let go of attachment to things when we need to.
But maybe being on collision course with a train is not an objective clue for letting go ...
So not being attached is not non-attachment? Perhaps you are joking, being ironic; if not you're beginning to look like a troll. :roll:
You're being pedantic; the fact (if it is a fact) that a few fuckwits cannot let go of their attachments even when the alternative is dire is not relevant. It could be said that the alternative to being non-reactive is always dire; and that it is coming to see that that constitutes the greatest difficulty we face.
In order to let go of something you need to first be holding it. As you say, we all know that we can let go of attachment to things when we need to. Even our strongest attachments will eventually fade in time. Non-attachment is like a teflon pan that nothing gets stuck to, not even yesterday's reheated four cheese spaghetti sauce. Ya feel me?
Except that pretty much everyone is, to use your word, such a fuckwit about one thing or another.
Some people refuse to abandon their broken cars that are on collision course with a train. Some stay in dysfunctional, destructive relationships. Some maintain a religious affiliation even though they don't believe the tenets anymore and only pretend to do so, which is making them miserable.
One can only give up a lesser happiness when one has sight of a bigger one.
But so far, your theory doesn't seem to offer any such bigger happiness. Per your theory, one tries to become as unattached as possible, but if one's life is cut short by, say, a bus, well then, tough luck, that's it. With such prospects, what can possibly motivate a person to give up their attachments, when they've got nothing higher to live for?
The OP specifically identifies enlightenment as discussed in both eastern and western philosophies.
I misunderstood you. I'm not sure that's what @Bozo, I mean @Banno, meant to say.
You're right, but what a westerner might call vagueness, mysticism, contrariness, or irony is a real part of eastern philosophies.
Quoting baker
Right, but only those who are really fuckwits won't let go once they see that the alternative is unacceptable, or else cannot see the alternative is unacceptable when its unacceptability is staring them right in the face.
Quoting baker
But one can give up a greater unhappiness when one sees that will deliver them to a lesser unhappiness.
Quoting baker
Being run over by a bus is not a prospect but merely an unlikely possibility. People of course will not be motivated to give up their attachments until they see that their attachments are causing them to suffer, and that if they were less attached they would suffer less.
Yes, but it was knee-jerk, pointless, witless, needless, gratuitous, and not funny, so that makes it ok.
Quoting T Clark
In my OP, I was wondering if enlightenment means the same thing in different cultures. I guess I was asking if it is the case that enlightenment (if and when it takes place) transcends culture and religion.
I am somewhat surprised that no one yet has said something like 'enlightenment is a myth'.
Yes, like being a little pregnant.
My take is that enlightenment in its non-deflationary sense is a culturally mediated phenomenon. but since there are many cross-cultural commonalities of human nature there will be commonalities in the ways in which the experiential attributes of enlightenment are and have been described or evoked.
In it's deflationary sense, I think (in case you haven't noticed :wink: ) that it is simply the most radical state of non-attachment or non-reactivity possible for an embodied human being..
Yeah... doesn't really roll of the tongue and it sounds kind of dull.
That was unnecessary harsh, and you still haven’t adequately explained non-attachment. You’ve described how people get stuck on something and then let it go. This is pretty much what we all normally do, in some cases effortlessly. Non-attachment indicates no further attachment and therefore nothing to let go of once one is non-attached.
Is that relevant to whether it is the best way to understand what enlightenment is? Should philosophers only be interested in, only take seriously, ideas that "roll of the tongue" and don't sound boring?
What do you mean "harsh"? I'm using stupidity as an analogy to attachment; unlike pregnancy there are degrees. I don't believe that you don't understand what it means to be attached to things; people, desires, places, possessions, ideas, or whatever. I don't believe that you cannot see that some attachments enslave while other liberate. And I don't believe that you don't accept that enslaving attachments (at least some) may be relinquished.
Or think of it in terms of reactivity if the idea of attachment doesn't suit you. If something is not as I would wish, or is inconvenient, or is hard to bear, or is painful, unpleasant, or whatever; the more I react to that obstruction of my desire, inconvenience, pain, unpleasantness or whatever, the more I will suffer from it, no?
You don't seem to be attempting to engage with the discussion, you seem to be more intent on dismissing it with inapt objections or feigned misunderstandings. I can't tell if you are serious or just trolling.
Who mentioned philosophers? Just making an observation as a bystander to religion and philosophy.
Well this is a thread started by you on a philosophy forum titled "what is it to be enlightened".
OK, you've edited that, and now it seems that you mean that to be radically non-reactive would be "kind of dull". That's not the way it's portrayed. It's portrayed as a state of serenity and absorption in which there could be no question of boredom. Have you never experienced such times, or have you ever taken an hallucinogen? Do you remember when you were a child and you could play happily without any "props" other than your own creative imagination for hours?
Probably my attention span which is preternaturally short.
I don't think mine is much different.
I never disagreed that there are degrees of attachment or reactivity. I would disagree that there is such a thing as non-stupidity, at least in regard to human beings. I'm sure that God-fearing folk would say that God is non-stupid, similar to how Buddha-loving folk would say that Buddha realized non-attachment. Easy to claim, not easy to show.
Everything you've been claiming appears to be 'less' and not 'non'. Less can be great, but less is not non. 'Non' may not even really be desirable since we need to live in this world, and if we don't want to live in this world, a well-aimed bullet is an expedient solution.
But then, all this talk about light and darkness itself is an imposition of thought upon the world, as if the world possessed something of their values and we had access. Putting metaphors aside and there you are looking, say, in your back yard looking at trees and houses: where is this enlightenment supposed to have a place? It's not as if you have to climb a mountain as sit with Swami Rama on some rock. No, there is something about the structure of experience itself that, were you climb that mountain, you would carry with you. I think the matter goes here: when one simply opens one's eyes, one faced with familiarity instantly; always, already, if you like. Discover the nature of this familiarity and you will know what it is that stands between you and enlightenment.
The awful truth of this is that, this familiarity is the world, and to be enlightened, in the deepest sense of te term, one has to give up living in the world.
The quote, as you probably know, is Jung's - his model of human consciousness incorporated the 'shadow side' or darkness. Pretty sure he is saying that to be enlightened means to integrate all elements of your conscious being (including your evils) in the process he called individuation. When complete, you are enlightened... I guess. I think this says a lot about Jung's notions of attachment, and he is probably saying too that everyone is on a path to enlightenment but only some 'complete' this individuation process. However, I don't think he is saying that we are all partly enlightened. That sounds suspiciously like being partly pregnant. But who knows?
silences and spaces :flower:
Forget about Jung, even if Jung said some excellent things. The measure of their excellence begins with what can be affirmed in the structure of the manifest and familiar encounter with the world. If there is such a thing as, call it foundational level philosophical enlightenment (questions begged here are obvious; but then, getting beyond this takes argumentative work), and I am sure there is, it is going to be about foundational questions/assumptions and the knowledge relationship we have with all things. It is going to be about the epistemic structures that deliver the world to us, but, and this is rather a big point, unlike philosophical business as usual which seeks answers IN the talk itself, as where, say, Wittgenstein showed apriori that logic cannot explain what logic is and dismissed all the "hurly burly" of human entanglements as unanalyzable, here, the desideratum is revelatory: One is being invited to experience an alteration in the perceptual act itself.
So in this matter, the reason why you and others are skeptical about revelatory enlightenment is, it seems, because you are too fixated on a propositional conclusion that requires no foundational alterations in the act of perception itself.
in my language community "enlighten" has to do with knowledge. "Let me enlighten you as to the right way to blah blah blah". There's a connotation of preceding delusion.
So if you ask me if I'm enlightened and I say no, then I would be saying that I know I'm delusional. Delusional people don't usually know it, tho.
If I say yes, that's exactly what you'd be expect a delusional person to say.
Having said that, I'm the only enlightened person here. I'm pretty sure about that.
I agree that things can get easily misconstrued, especially when we are dealing with ancient texts.
The “melting away of I and mine”, etc., seems fairly clear. But this doesn’t answer the question of what remains in the end. In Western traditions like Platonism and Hindu ones like Advaita Vedanta, the answer would be “consciousness”.
The Buddhist answer seems less clear. The assertion to the effect that “everything is impermanent, everything is painful, everything is not-self” isn’t quite what is seems at face value.
The original text as given at the Dhammapada 277-279 actually refers to “all conditioned phenomena (samskaras)”, NOT to “everything” (sarvam) in an absolute sense.
The Dhammapada: Verses and Stories
So I don’t think this sounds like nihilism. On the contrary, it seems to suggest that after all there may be something that is “permanent, blissful, and self”, to which conditioned phenomena are contrasted as “not so” (cf. the Upanishadic “neti”/”na iti”, “not so”).
And that “something” may well be consciousness, exactly as in other systems. On the other hand, if consciousness is denied, this tends to raise a number of problems, for example, relating to cognitive phenomena like memory.
Memory (smrti or sati) is defined as “not letting go of the object [of past experience]” (Abhidharmako?abh??ya 54.22–23).
What is unclear is who is holding on to the object and how, what that object is, where it is located, what happens to it when you let go of it, etc., in the absence of consciousness.
It is not the same form of familiarity with all objects that we encounter. Familiarity can take the form of dread, confusion , hatred or enlightenment. If we gave up living on the world we would have to give up any and all forms of familiarity , since familiarity implies world. So it’s not a question of giving up living in the world , but of how we live in it. Attaining a richly enlightened state requires utilizing all that the experience of world can provide in order to transcend the experiences of confusion, despair, chaos and hostility.
I think this has been stated elsewhere in this discussion. To western philosophy, "enlightenment" generally means applying reason to answer questions and solve problems. In eastern philosophy, it means something different. There has been a lot of back and forth about what exactly that something different is.
Quoting frank
When I get in conversations about this subject from an eastern perspective, sometime during the discussion I'll usually say "I'm much closer to enlightenment than you are." For some reason, no one seems to find that as funny as I do.
No, we can enjoy non-attachment to some things, it is just questionable as to whether we could realize non-attachment to all things, and in any case that is not what is being claimed for the enlightened ones, since they are acknowledged to be attached to their practice if nothing else.
Also, you keep ignoring my suggestions that you might see it more favorably if you think in terms of 'reactivity' instead of attachment. Anyway if it's not for you it's not for you. It's not entirely for me: I have no intention of becoming a Buddhist monk or even an avowed lay practitioner, but I think the idea has practical merit. It is found in the Epicureans, the Pyrrhonian Skeptics, the Stoics and Spinoza, as well.
The east west thing was big back in the 19th Century. I think most people realize now that there's nothing to the division. Mysticism is mysticism wherever it comes from and actual Asians laugh at buddhism.
Quoting T Clark
Disciples have no sense of humor.
"What is it to be Enlightened?"
To know that the best way to keep a secret is by telling everyone.
I've always thought of you that way too, Frank. Yes, I pointed out in my OP that the 17th-18th Century Enlightenment is hostile to ideas of enlightenment. The secular vs the religious.
This was the subject of my MA thesis in Buddhist Studies. The two 'extreme views' are nihilism, which is that at death, the elements return to the ground, there are no 'fruits of actions'; and eternalism, the view that there is a permanently enduring self which persists life after life, forever. (Bhikkhu Bodhi, a scholar-monk, comments that modern Western thought tends towards nihilism, as some Western philosophers have also observed.)
The view of 'eternalism' is harder to understand, but makes sense in the context of a culture where there is acceptance of the idea of re-birth and the idea that seers can recall their past lives. I said in my thesis that what is being criticized as 'eternalism' is the belief that the aim of the religious life is to secure an unending series of lives - to live 'forever after' in propitious circumstances (which is somewhat similar to some popular ideas of heaven). That is not what Nirv??a means - it means the complete cessation of the process of rebirth. As to 'what remains', that is the subject of this sutta, where the Buddha says of the Tath?gata:
('Vaccha' is Vacchagotta, a figure in the Pali texts whose role is the asking of difficult philosophical questions.)
The problem is, if you name this as 'consciousness' or as anything at all, then you're once again engaging in the process of objectification. And the exact meaning of 'neti, neti' is 'don't do that'! I said in my thesis that the Buddha outplays the Brahmins on their own terms. They said, 'of this ?tman nothing can be said' - but they then go on to say a great deal more.
Quoting Apollodorus
This is where the Buddha eschews theories. Theories are d???i, 'dogmatic viewpoints' - about consciousness or an eternal self or anything of the kind. The word 'consciousness' was only coined in the 17th century, and besides it's something you can loose. If you start to qualify it, 'ah, that's not what I mean by "consciousness"' then you're already 'tangled in thickets of views', to quote the Aggi-Vaccha sutta again.
Of course, there's a lot more that could be said, but this is a very long post already. Suffice to say that this criticism of 'objectifying' is fundamental to Buddhist philosophy, and really understanding it is to understand a 'stance' or way-of-being which is unique to Buddhism. Few do.
Thanks for potentially diagnosing my situation, C. You may be right but your use of language is somewhat indirect and jargonistic to me - are you a denizen of academe perhaps?
What do you mean by - "too fixated on a propositional conclusion that requires no foundational alterations in the act of perception itself." Can you provide an example of a foundational alteration in the act of perception. And yes, I see how you referred to Wittgenstein earlier.
You are adding the word revelatory to enlightenment - can you spell out an example of such a phenomenon? Are you referring to the sudden attainment of higher consciousness?
You say 'forget about Jung' do you have reasons for dismissing him or is it just personal taste?
Being nonreactive sounds even less alive than being non-attached.
A Buddhist monk would disagree.
Perhaps what is familiar is an entangled affair. In it, about it, one can inquire. Maybe the world is deeply grounded after all in something extraordinary, and enlightenment is an aesthetic/ethical matter, is grounded in value first, and cognition simply follows. Reason is, after all, recalling Hume, an empty vessel. God literally could appear to a person and reason wouldn't flinch. What would is a body of assumptions about the way the world is. But these never had any claim beyond mere familiarity in the first place. And really, how far does this reach into the world? Can it even touch questions like, why are we born to suffer and die?
I strongly disagree. You see it here on the forum all the time.
You do understand that some reactions are liberating and others are enslaving, right? The distinction between negative reaction and positive response. It seems as though you are being deliberately obtuse. Is there any point continuing this?
I'm being obtuse?
I've agreed with you that being less attached can be good. Being less reactive can be good. As I've mentioned, 'less' and 'non' are different. It's the extreme (non) that I think is not natural (nature is balanced) or religious in nature.
There's no point in continuing. It's like arguing over the existence of God.
Jung was a psychologist, notwithstanding his unorthodox claims. I want to look prior to this, logically prior, into the thought that puts the idea there in the first place. This is presupposed in anything said. I am pretty simple in this: the world is NOT a closed concept. It is in fact entirely open in every way, given that any proposition you can make about the world, loses grounding instantly on inquiry. That is, there is nothing that can be said that is not contingent. If you were to give this an illustration, there would be a person at the center, and arrows pointing outward in all directions. The caption would read: human knowledge.
This is not a contrivance, but the way the world really is, and the "is" of it cannot exceed the epistemology, putting ontology IN the observable conditions of the world. Thus, the world is, in this illustration, nothing but arrows, if you will, at the level of basic questions (obviously, prior to basic questions, there is nothing but answers everywhere).
What is enlightenment? It begins with this understanding, for contingent affairs are certainly not what we are after here. Enlightenment in the familiar sense, as in, where did the money go? Enlighten me! is not what is at issue. So here we are, arrows upon all things. Then the question is, how does this proceed beyond the abstract argument, and into Real enlightenment, and into the perceptual event itself? This IS the question. Otherwise, you are just playing with logic and language (the sign of a true analytic philosopher).
Until this is acknowledged, there is no meaningful concept of enlightenment even on the table. How to proceed from here is where it gets interesting.
My own view is that this notion of enlightenment is simply tied to various narratives people hold. I am unsure whether anything meaningful can be said about the subject, except from a historical perspective - that is, locating the idea in the context of this or that worldview.
...but when the Enlightenment philosophers began to teach that this quality could be extended to the ppl at large it became a prejudice: was distorted and obscured.
The east west thing? Yeah. They're old hippies.
As Buddhism has entered the conversation then a canonical reference would not be out of place.
[quote=The Nibb?na Sutta; https://www.dhammatalks.org/suttas/KN/Ud/ud8_3.html] There is, monks, an unborn –unbecome–unmade–unfabricated. If there were not that unborn–unbecome–unmade–unfabricated, there would not be the case that escape from the born–become–made–fabricated would be discerned. But precisely because there is an unborn–unbecome–unmade–unfabricated, escape from the born–become–made–fabricated is discerned.[/quote]
'The unborn' is a reference to what is not contingent and/or conditioned; it could equally be expressed as the 'unconditioned'. A natural question would be 'what is that?' or 'What is this referring to?' And my response would be that there is nothing against which to map or translate such expression in the modern philosophical lexicon. (Perhaps if you admitted the domain of philosophical theology, then there might be comparisons to be made with the 'wisdom uncreated' of the Biblical tradition, even if in other respects there are dissimilarities between the Buddhist and Christian understanding.)
So, his interpretation (which he backs up with quotations from the Pali canon) is an non-metaphysical one
:up: (Premodern) 'Logos transposes Mythos', then (Modern) 'freethought critiques fact-free dogmas'
"Ecrasez l'infâme!" ~Voltaire
Quoting 180 Proof
That saying 'show me your original face' is a Zen koan, I believe. As others have commented, it's easy to repeat popular Zen sayings, but it's another matter to walk the talk. Harold Stewart wrote that 'Those few who took the trouble to visit Japan and begin the practice of Zen under a recognized Zen master or who joined the monastic Order soon discovered that it was a very different matter from what the popularizing literature had led them to believe. They found that in the traditional Zen monastery zazen is never divorced from the daily routine of accessory disciplines. To attenuate and finally dissolve the illusion of the individual ego, it is always supplemented by manual work to clean the temple, maintain the garden, and grow food in the grounds; by strenuous study with attendance at discourses on the sutras and commentaries; and by periodical interviews with the roshi, to test spiritual progress. Acolytes are expected to develop indifference to the discomforts of heat and cold on a most frugal vegetarian diet and to abstain from self-indulgence in sleep and sex, intoxicating drinks and addictive drugs.' (Can't say I've emulated any of those behaviours myself, but it's useful to bear them in mind.)
How could it be otherwise?
Do you know anything that isn't somehow "tied to various narratives people hold"?
Exactly my point. Enlightenment is no different to other things people believe. It isn't something outside of people to be found in some particular way. It's just a story, like so many others we tell.
I watched A Hidden Life last night. Beautifully made and a beautiful (tragic though inspiring) story.
[quote=George Eliot]The growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.[/quote]
Perhaps we could say that enlightenment is our directing ourselves toward the development of more and more useful narratives.
Sure. And, presumably, to really understand Nirvana one must experience it first.
But I think the difficulty tends to arise from what seems to be a multiplicity of Buddhist traditions and/or interpretations, in addition to apparent contradictions in the texts.
The English word “consciousness” may have been coined in the 17th century, but the concept of consciousness as “perception of cognitive processes” or something along those lines, certainly existed many centuries before together with words describing it, both in Europe and in India. Otherwise, it wouldn’t make sense to translate Sanskrit, Pali, or Greek words as “consciousness”.
The Aggi-Vacchagotta Sutta says:
And the Anguttara Nikaya:
If the Tathagata (“One who has arrived”) “understands everything that is perceived and pondered over by the mind”, “sees the disappearance of consciousness”, etc., this seems to suggest the presence of some form of consciousness or awareness that the Tathagata has.
This may not be the ordinary consciousness (viññ??a) associated with everyday experience, as the Tathagata is said to “see the disappearance” of that. But it may still be a higher form of consciousness, otherwise we couldn’t speak of “seeing” and “understanding”. Unless, of course, it is not meant literally. But if it is not meant literally, how do we know that other statements are not to be taken literally, either?
Quoting Wayfarer
I’m not sure the stance against the “objectification” of a higher reality is entirely unique to Buddhism. If Buddhists think, talk, and write about it, then they “objectify” it, anyway.
I think what tends to happen is that when people don’t know about something but they know (or are told) that it exists, the mind will compensate for the lack of information by imagining things and this can be equivalent to getting “tangled in theories”.
In any case, no one expects a full-blown theory. But a better explanation might help people to understand. If not, it amounts to saying that Buddhists have nothing to say on the topic, which doesn't seem to be the case.
Well, you should know that enlightenment isn't JUST a narrative. Even narratives are not just narratives. When we understand a narrative, we can ask questions, basic questions that are no different from anything else, since everything is given to us in a narrative; this discussion with you is a narrative. But what is IN the narrative? A scientist will deliver a narrative (lecture) about star composition or plate tectonics and so on. Philosophical enlightenment is quite different because here, we think at the level of basic questions. Here is a piece of what I would call foundational enlightenment:
Understanding the world in propositions that have some truth designation, always begs the question: What is the point? Something may be true, there are many things true about what science tells us, that my cat is a finicky eater or my front porch needs sweeping, these are all true, but then, their being true is utterly without meaning in the form of being true. That is, formal truth bearing, as Hume said (not in so many words), has no value at all. The "point" of it lies with something having value. Enlightenment is concerned with truth, and therefore, to address the begged question we are forced to affirm that value is an essential part of this.
The matter then turns to value: what is it? An argument over the nature of value is THE philosophical discussion to have. Until the nature of value is revealed, talk about enlightenment is just question begging. This makes ethics/aesthetics the first order of affair. All that talk about Buddhists, theologians and Gods, rationalists and their quest for axiomatic assurance, all of these "narratives" come down to an analysis of value and its meaning.
Begs a question, doesn't it?" What "good" is a narrative?
Good is whatever aids sense making , and sense making is anticipative. So what is good is whatever helps us anticipate events. And what’s the purpose of anticipating events? So that we will avoid being plunged into the chaos and confusion of a world which doesn’t make sense, where we do not know how to go on.
Quoting baker
Quoting Joshs
Quoting Constance
It has always seemed to me that enlightenment represents the end of narratives. I think that’s possible, although I Have no expectation, ambition, or even desire to reach that point.
On the other hand, as I noted in an earlier post, I am closer to enlightenment than any of you are.
I’ve always thought of Zen Buddhism as a joke. You follow all of the precepts. You complete all of the meditations and work. You become more and more frustrated.And then one day, you say screw this this is a bunch of baloney. Bingo, Enlightenment.
Yes, but to be completely enlightened, you’d have to understand where the disparity between you and everyone else come from, and how to equalize it.
“The universe that we presume exists has another important characteristic: it is integral. By that we mean it functions as a single unit with all its imaginable parts having an exact relationship to each other. This may, at first, seem a little implausible, since ordinarily it would appear that there is a closer relationship between the motion of my fingers and the action of the typewriter keys than there is, say, between either of them and the price of yak milk in Tibet. But we believe that, in the long run, all of these events—the motion of my fingers, the action of the keys, and the price of yak milk—are interlocked. It is only within a limited section of the universe, that part we call earth and that span of time we recognize as our present eon, that two of these necessarily seem more closely related to each other than either of them is to the third. A simple way of saying this is to state that time provides the ultimate bond in all relationships.”
“The more independent [reference] axes upon which we project an event the greater the psychological depth in which we see it, and the more meaningful it becomes to us.“ “Consider the coefficient of correlation between two variables. If that coefficient is anything but zero and if it expresses a linear relationship, then an infinite increase in the variance of one of the variables will cause the coefficient to approach unity as a limit. The magnitude of the coefficient of correlation is therefore directly proportional to the breadth of perspective in which we envision the variables whose relationship it expresses. This is basically true of all relationships within our universe.”
But then, the trick is to define, make accessible to the understanding in language and logic, what is not contingent. I think what you say is quite right, but this just puts OTHER questions before us, better questions, in analytic terms, because explanations are like what the physicists say about nature: it doesn't like vacuums, and has to "fill in" where one is exposed. Buddhist enlightenment, ot to put too fine a point on it, is. I think, exactly where all of this inquiry should be moving toward: toward the intuited apprehension of the world that yields....but then, there is the rub: SAYING what it is. It is not as if it cannot be said. Keep in mind that language as a kind of hard wired vessel that, in its pure form, has no content. Being in the world gives it its content. So then, what is the world giving out? The limitation that experiential truths are subjective and cannot spoken is simply a reflection of our inability have shared experiences. Language''s inability to "say" is grounded in the lack of experiencing the same things, as we do with everything else. Reading a preface to the Tibetan Book of the Dead, I came across the remark that it was common for monks to talk freely about their most intimate meditative experiences.
For me, the most interesting word being done is in French post modern theology/phenomenology: Michel Henri, Jean luc Marion, Jean luc Nancy and others. Why are they so interesting? Because they pursue a line of thinking that goes to the experiential "presence" itself. It is in presence qua presence of the ordinary world we live in wherein lies the clue to enlightenment.
Also begs the question: Chaos and confusion are, well, bad. Why? This is the true course of philosophical inquiry, isn't it? Follow the rabbit down the hole of analysis until the questions run out. I claim this terminal point is a question: What is the value of all of this inquiry? This puts the final question to all other questions, as all contingencies press on to something that is not contingent. Wittgenstein put a do not enter sign right there. Foolish. We can build narrativesaround meta value, metaphysics, meta aesthetics, and so on. It is not as if there is nothing "there". There is the "Other". All roads lead here, and "here" is the value of value question. By my lights, the only one left.
Because it is not the content of events which dictates value, but the organizational relationship between events and our construal of events. If we could see that events are nearly content-free, then all that determines value, sense and meaning is how effectively we assimilate events along dimensions of similarity and likeness with respect our our previous experience.
When we attribute ‘fat’ qualitative content to the world, then suddenly it seems that anticipatory sense making must be tied to some originating valuative content ( the goodness of God). That is , we’re stuck with the question of where value comes from. What is the genesis of quality? The answer is quality is a minimal place mark just substantive enough to distinguish one event from another but not substantial
enough to generate value, feeling , goodness or badness. These are a function of assimilatory dynamics
between construer and construed.
To find the originating content is not so far flung. Just observe the pain in your finger as the lighted match burns, or the love of another. Observe it, analyze it. There before the inquiring eye, there is the this originating content in the event itself. The burning sensation qua burning sensation is not a contingent "bad', for there is no way to contextualize it that would diminish its badness. No utility can touch this. In my mind, this analysis reveals the meta value that is equal to God's mighty judgment. This latter is just an anthropomorphic abstraction of this common "phenomenon" of the goodness and badness in all things. Concern, interest, appetitive wants, emotional desires, they all possess this one bottom line, if you will, of meaning that grounds the world in the "absolute".
No, no. I am, heh, heh, "far closer".
There are all sorts of ways to contextualize it that would diminish its badness. Neurospsychologically speaking, the sensation itself always emerges as what it is out of a contextual field. Any alteration in that field changes the perceived nature of the sensation. This is how accupuncture , phantom limb pain and biofeedback work, and why the concept of qualia is incoherent. There is no such thing as an intrinsic sensation
But this is about badness "as such". The phenomenon of badness, the touching the flame and the ouuuccchhh!
Clearly, anything can be contextualized. Language itself is auto-contextualizing, you might say: no context, no meaning. I recall Dennett writing about qualia, showing that such a pure phenomenon" is simply not defensible, and I agreed. Qualia is already rendered contingent the moment it comes to mind at all. But then, there is that match burning my flesh: this is not "being appeared to redly"; no even close. this is something radically different. The badness of the pain is not language bound, even though I must have language to give it transmittable meaning. No, there is something else: the world apart from my systems of understanding DOES this. Ontologically equivalent to Moses' tablets, without the anthropomorphic baggage.
This makes me a kind of meta-moral realist.
The question is what exactly it is doing. Or , from my vantage, how consequential is its effect. That leads back to how much we are trying pack into the idea of irreducible quality, value, feeling, substance. The more formidable we make the content of this black box , the more we are forced to found the world on forces of
evil and violence. This polarization of the world is a direct result of failing to reduce the basis of quality-value thoroughly enough. I believe we can reduce it to the point where we discover that good and bad are derivations of simple presence and absence. What it is that is present or absent is irrelevant to the meaning of good and bad. One would then say that the direction of the good is the world coming to know itself more and and more intimately, in a kind of condensation or invagination. Goodness is then a correlate of the ‘density’ of the presenting of presence in the flow of time.
This view explains concepts like evil, violence, god and polarization as derivatives of a more originary dynamic that is not itself any of these.
I think you are right say it polarizes the world.
But hmmmmm: failing to reduce the basis of quality-value enough. This is puzzling. Value as a derivation of presence? As you say, presence or absence is irrelevant to the meaning of (ethical) good and bad. Then how does this reduction work??
And: not evil, violence, god. This is, by my thinking, categorically confusing. God is an anthropomorphism, violence implies evil, but then, is more complex, putting an eye to what causes evil. And indeed, all terms are laden with connotative superfluities. The term I would use is meta-good, meta-evil, meta-value. With these, the incidentals can be tossed.
There is nothing more originary than presence, granted. But as such, vacuous. It is the content that gives us existence.
Quoting Constance
Not irrelevant to it. On the contrary, presence and absence are the basis of ethical good and evil.
Quoting Constance
What I see you doing (and religious metaphysics in general) is stuffing into the category of ‘content’ everything that gives ethical good and evil its force. What I am doing is taking what you have stuffed into the pigeonholed of content and rethinking f it as process.
As an example of turning content-based ethics into presence-absence based process, think of behavior by another that causes us harm due to a misunderstanding at their end.
In this case we use a process-based approach. Because of an absence of knowledge on the other’s part, we were hurt.Greater insight ( a process of learning) would prevent the problem in future. We dont need to blame wrongful intent ( content-based explanation) to explain the cause of the situation. Instead we can rely on an explanation that depends on organizational features of interpersonal understanding. What I am suggesting is that every instance of human conflict that we blame on wrongful intent can instead be understood more effectively in terms of the organizational dynamics of interpersonal cognition. Our greatest struggle is finding a way to integrate alien worldviews without our own without falling into the trap of attributing the rift to ‘wrongful motives’.
I don't understand the question;can you elaborate.
Quoting Wayfarer
I just used it to symbolize original nature, what we are before the socialization process has worked its magic.
Hurt? Problem? What is it about these that make the matter an issue at all? I am looking not at these contingencies. One can, in this line of thinking, construct multiple contexts of ethical entanglements, and I certainly agree that clearing the way for greater mutual understanding reduces problematic entanglements. Organizational features of interpersonal understanding are, I find myself agreeing, a good way to lay out a general sense of what needs to be done. But I have, in this matter, no use for this, any more than I have use for Kant or Mill. My one fascination is non contingent good and evil that emerges in the analysis of the value present in all of our affairs. Extreme examples are the most poignant, hence that match to the finger: what is that horrible experience? What IS it in the "present at hand" sense of IS, if you will? Heidegger misses this, or, talks around it. Even Levinas misses this.
Frankly, I find it a little bewildering, this move toward what is NOT pain at all, to provide an explanatory context for what it is. Others make the move toward evolutionary accounts, neurophysiological reductionism, relativism in the inconsistencies of ethical systems and aesthetic taste, and so on. I don't take issue with these.
I look plainly at the phenomenon before me. Phenomenological reduction is the only way to even approach ontology, for here, entanglements suspended, incidentals dismissed, and core features of ethics are revealed.
I think you're right. Won't quibble with that. It's not as if 'the Tathagatha' is not conscious. There is a stream in Buddhist philosophy about buddha-nature, Tath?gatagarbha, which bears some similarity to the idea of a higher self, more evident in East Asian schools than in Theravada. It distinguished itself from Vedanta but it's still a higher self.
[quote=Wiki]Buddha-nature has a wide range of (sometimes conflicting) meanings in Indian and later East Asian and Tibetan Buddhist literature, and the idea of Buddha-nature may refer to, among others, the luminous nature of mind,[7][8][9] the pure (visuddhi), undefiled mind,[7] "the natural and true state of the mind";[10] sunyata, an emptiness that is a nonimplicative negation (as emptiness is seen in madhyamaka);[8] the alaya-vijñana ("store-consciousness", a yogacara concept);[8] the interpenetration of all dharmas; and the potential for all sentient beings to attain liberation.[/quote]
there's a lot of arguments over such matters in Buddhism itsellf.
I also acknowledge there is a confusing proliferation of schools in Buddhism, although part of that is a consequence of the 'knowledge explosion' of modern times, where knowledge about everything is so freely available. When the British colonised India, it took a century or more for them to realise that there had once been a religion called 'Buddhism' in that land. In traditional Buddhist cultures, one only ever had exposure to the dominant school or schools.
Quoting Constance
They do sound interesting but I don't know if I'll ever read them, life is short and books are many. (But glancing at Marion's wiki entry, I read something that immediately resonates, "We live with love as if we knew what it was about. But as soon as we try to define it, or at least approach it with concepts, it draws away from us." :ok: I've also encountered Michel Henri's critique on barbarism which is applicable to a lot of what passes as 'philosophy' in modern culture: 'This negation of life (associated with technocratic society) results, according to Michel Henry, from the "disease of life", from its secret dissatisfaction with the self which leads it to deny itself, to flee itself in order to escape its anguish and its own suffering'. I think that is an exact diagnosis of "eliminative materialism".)
Quoting Constance
But then that is within a domain of discourse where such expressions are meaningful, there's a shared understanding of what these experiences are.
Quoting Constance
That is the area of hermenuetics, the interpretation of texts. It's a topic within Buddhism itself, because of doctrinal disputes that arose in the early part of the tradition. Some of the Mah?y?na Sutras (e.g. ?rya-sa?dhi-nirmocana-s?tra) purport to present the 'definitive interpretation' concerning various difficult or disputed points of the earlier tradition. In any case, the central concern of all the schools is with realising that state of enlightenment.
Careful, the joke may be on you. (Although on second reading, maybe I didn't pick up your intentional irony.)
Perhaps enlightenment is a pissing competition recast as a meta-narative... :razz:
What is an argument over the nature of value? Step it out if you have time.
I am sympathetic to the view that there is no capital T truth out there to be found. Humans make truth. Utility seems to me to determine the traction or value of any given narrative. How well does it work for us to meet our goals.
They are working outward from Husserl's phenomenology. Husserl, for me, made a profound discovery. Of course, this is something that had been in place for centuries in the east, but Husserl revealed how this could be broached in the otherwise prohibitive tradition dominated by Christian metaphysics, rationalism, empiricism, positivism, and other isms.
Quoting Wayfarer
Certainly. Shared experiences is what makes language possible. I only want to say that it is not right to say something is beyond language. The only thing beyond language is the ability to explain language, which would require language to do so. But so what. Language as a possible vehicle to explain things is open and free. It always has been.
Quoting Wayfarer
I observe a blade of grass. Now where is the basis for interpretative disagreement? It lies within the language that was there prior to the observation. One does not enter into observation and inquiry without already having been enculturated. It is those pesky extraneous affairs and "traditions" that obtrude into the saying what something IS that undoes the purity of the event. In this, Hegel was right, I suppose: it will take time and dialectical struggle to work this out; but then, this IS the conversation humanity has to be having with itself.
If I have time? Sorry, but yes, I do have time. I like writing about this because it reminds me of what I actually think. Hope it's not too long.
Any analysis imaginable, if taken to the very end of its logical output, turns to value, for in the end, once all concepts have been exhaustively examined there will remain the question that all along has attended the entire enterprise: what was the point of all this analysis? The question of what good the whole affair is hovrs over all that is done. If it were finally and definitively determined that God does exist, what good would this proposition be? God, after all, is not about the successful positing of a creator Being of infinte power; no, all along it has been about us, our desire for something wonderful beyond all reckoning, and a deliverance from suffering. Bring on all of this, and God just disappears as pointless.
All possible endeavor vanishes into the air if there is no value in what is done, and thus, value deserves first place in our philosophical priorities, for all that would compete for this position beg the value question. I see no way around this: the human enterprise, call it, is not one that seeks truth, for truth is propositional-- only sentences bear truth and we are certainly not struggling to achieve the greatest sentence possible. Rather we are looking for the greatest experiences possible, that is, the greatest joy, bliss, rapture, the deepest and most profound, with all the superlatives one can think of thrown in. Find this, and then construct the true proposition: this is just fantastic! and you have found yourself in greater proximity to what is sought after.
So this love affair with truth has to end: truth, in the end, is contingent on value. Trivial truths, like the bath water being too cold or there being 12 inches to a foot, are facts, and facts have no value as facts. (Of course, the pragmatists are right: talk about facts qua facts is just an abstraction, for such things do not exist. A fact is "of a piece" with the structure of experience itself, and value is there in the fact-value event).
Value needs to be given its due: what IS it? This piano sonata is beautiful, a splinter is painful, this study is interesting, and so on. It first has to be understood that this kind of thing is utterly pervasive. We don't have valueless experiences (Heidegger does an extraordinary examination of this kind of thing in his "deficient modes of Being with" in his Being and Time. This guy is an amazing philosopher.). So when we speak of value, we are not referring to this experience ot that, but to the entire stream of experience itself.
As to what it is, this needs analysis. Value is the existential core of ethics. No value, no ethics, or aesthetics. If no one cares about anything, then no one can be harmed or delighted, hence, no prohibitions or rules that would govern these. Then, value itself: Take a radical example: being scalded by boiling water. This has two dimensions, the incidentals: the hot water, the sensate vulnerabilities, the anatomical experience making systems, etc.; and the pure phenomenon of pain, which is evident and irreducible. The incidentals are variable. It could have been that a couch fell on your head or your were stabbed in the liver and the ethical dimension would still be there, so the incidentals are dismissed as nonessential to a determination of the nature of value. Something certainly caused the pain, but the pain is the essential feature, not the couch.
Finally: consider that there are two kinds of good and bad. there are contingent goods and bads and these are very common. This is a good coffee cup because it's easy to hold, has good thermal qualities, etc. The "goodness" is contingent several things. But note how this goodness works: this is a good knife because it's sharp and balanced and so on; but then, if it is going to be used for Macbeth, you don't want a sharp knife at all! Someone could get hurt, and now what was good is now bad, just like that. That is contingency.
The other kind of good and bad is non contingent, or, absolute, and this is where value finds its analysis. Take the pain mentioned above of being scalded. There is a "bad" in this pure phenomenon of pain that cannot be diminished in any possible way. To illustrate this, consider a scalding and other lovely tortures of someone for an entire weekend. Then consider any possible way you might ethically choose to inflict such torture on someone. Perhaps a solid utilitarian choice sits before you: do this or thousands of others, children, in fact, will suffer not for a week, but for a thousand years! Now, I think there is a very good argument here to choose against the thousand year alternative, but note: unlike the sharpness of the knife, the contingent nature of its goodness easy undone by circumstances changing, the torture for the weekend is not at all diminished in its "badness", as dumb and awkward as that term sounds.
One has to look, I hold, long and hard at this claim. thik about the difference between being tortured and its badness, and the sharp knife and its badness for the use in Macbeth. These are very different meanings of BAD. There is nothing even imaginable that can diminish the pain's ethical dimension, its badness; therefore, this badness is an absolute, (notwithstanding the problematic of explaining absolutes. There is more argument to this, but I have given the essentials) .
There is the idea that Buddhism isn't about metaphysics, that it eschews metaphysics. Many people take this to mean that it doesn't concern itself with abstract cosmologies/cosmogonies, ontology, or pretty much any idea that seems "out there" (so such people cast away the notions of karma and rebirth on account that they "are metaphysical").
The way I understand things is that "metaphysics" is what one does when the views/theories/doctrines that one holds far exceed one's attainment.
A simile is instructive:
To do metaphysics would be to see a large elephant footprint and to conclude "there is a bull elephant here" and look no further (or, at best, spend a lot of time, even the rest of one's life examining that one footprint and trying to establish from that and that alone that it is the footprint of a bull elephant (and that the bull elephant is still in the forest)).
Most organized religion/spirituality works like this, it's metaphysics: You're shown something (or you see something), and then you take this as evidence of something much much bigger, more complex, you commit yourself to that view (as a matter of your honor), and then you leave it at that.
Buddhism, too, can be approached this way: one perhaps has a few insights or experiences that draw one to Buddhism, and then one learns and internalizes a vast theory, a vast doctrine, sets up a meditation or other practice, but all this without having the personal attainment to back it up.
But Buddhism can be done another way as well: as walking a path, a combination of theory and practice. The practice being the foot on the ground, and the theory being the one off ground and looking for a place to put it. This is a "minimalist" approach. It's on principle incompatible with organized religion/spirituality. But it is realistic, in the sense that one only works with whatever one currently has and knows, and however far one currently sees.
For a person approaching Buddhism this way, the multiplicity of Buddhist traditions and/or interpretations, in addition to apparent contradictions in the texts, are not a problem.
Of course, actually living this minimalism can be very difficult, esp. if one takes it up after first having approached Buddhism the usual, metaphysical way. Because a move toward such minimalism will likely mean that one will be faced with accusations (from other people, as well as from oneself) of lacking faith, "having commitment issues", being stupid, worthless, one will probably lose one's Buddhist friends and not make any new ones, one will not fit into any Buddhist group/school/lineage. One will probably have trouble making sense of much of the Buddhist literature. At the same time, one is likely going to feel alienated from the ordinary, non-Buddhist folks and society at large as well.
By minimalism I'm here refering to working on things one knows, one is sure of, those areas of one's experience where the Dhamma currently seems to apply. Chances are that this isn't going to be much, hence minimalism. This could include some elements or portions of the Four Noble Truths or the Noble Eightfold Path, or not. It could be inspired just by some small statements in a sutta or in a Dhamma talk. Something that one currently sees as right and true and is able to act accordingly.
This way, one will probably not be a good Buddhist, but at least one will be true to one's experience, and preserve some measure of sanity.
I think the salient point here is that the Tathagata doesn't "make any new karma". He understands, sees things in a way that doesn't lead to suffering, to rebirth.
An arahant still has functioning eyes, ears, nose, tongue, skin, intellect, he still has volition. But the way he sees, hears, smells, tastes, touches, thinks, and wills is such that it doesn't give rise to suffering, it doesn't give rise to rebirth.
(We, as ordinary unenlightened people, cannot see things the way an arahant does, we cannot see things from his perspective, so we cannot describe the way things look from his perspective. Yes, from our unenligtened position, we cannot but think that an arahant sees things from a particular perspective.)
(We could perhaps also take up minimalism and not get into discussing topics that by far exceed our attainment.)
Quoting Apollodorus
It's easy to lose sight that the center point of Buddhism is suffering and the end of suffering. The Buddha said that he teaches only one thing: suffering and the end of suffering.
Glossing over this, and instead trying to chart Buddhist doctrine in ontological and epistemological terms characteristic for some other philosophies/religions, is to miss the whole point of Buddhism.
The question is how far you can go with this letting go.
So far, we've mentioned gross examples of people refusing to abandon their cars which are stuck on collision course with trains, refusal to stop smoking despite severe health damage from smoking, and such.
Perhaps you'll go so far to accept that there may be situations in which one has to sacrifice a part of one's body in order to save the rest, such as cutting off an arm that got stuck stuck under a rock in a mountaineering accident.
But how about letting go of your body altogether, once keeping it seems unacceptable?
Not in my experience. Unhappiness is unhappines, one cannot make deals with it.
I'm talking about the inevitability and unpredictability of death.
Your life and your project of giving up your attachments could be cut short by a disease, a vehicular collision, a robbery, any number of things. People die every day, at all ages, for a number of reasons. Why couldn't you?
This is your prospect: an inevitable and unpredictable death. And since you don't believe in karma and rebirth, the death of this body of yours is the end of you.
In the face of this prospect, with a view such as yours, what can possibly motivate a person to give up their attachments, when they've got nothing higher to live for?
Sure, and the Epicureans and the others that you mention have whole systems of metaphysics into which they embed their notions of letting go. Those systems make sense of the letting go, and so they also make it meaningful and easier.
But what do you have? You're against metaphysics to begin with!
Quoting Janus
If one is creative enough, one can "back up" all kinds of things with the suttas. The difference is that the suttas say a great number of things that Batchelor doesn't say, or where he and the suttas are in conflict.
Quoting Janus
We can be something before/outside/despite socialization?
As mentioned by some others, those pithy Zen sayings are part of a vast and complex system of doctrine and practice. Once considered that way, they cease to seem vague, or mystical, contrary, or ironic.
- - -
Quoting Tom Storm
Look at what people say that enlightenment means to them. Do they all mean the same thing by it?
Quoting Tom Storm
But what you're saying above about stories isn't itself a story?
Quoting Tom Storm
Enlightenment, regardless of what in particular is meant by it, appears to be such that people tend to generate hostility or envy around it.
Have you ever met anyone who would be happy about another's claims of enlightenment?
I've always assumed spiritual practices and beliefs generated just as much acrimony and division as anything else constructed by human beings. You have done way more work in this area - what do you think enlightenment looks like?
Spiritual systems all seem to coalesce around an etherial endgame - a blissful realm that humans can achieve with the right attitudes or practices. Enlightenment seems to be one of these stories. The endless quest for perfection and arrival.
In The Shape of Ancient Thought, McEvilley makes some rather interesting observations on the close parallels between Greek and Indian thought:
McEvilley points out that the problem identified by some Buddhist schools was how to explain karmic consequence when the only reality was momentary states of mind:
The problem posed by the Buddhist doctrine of momentariness or impermanence (k?a?ikav?da) is very similar to the problem posed by the impermanence of the material world in Greek philosophy, and the solution to it is also similar, with Plato and others positing a permanent, immaterial reality on which material reality depends.
If the objects of sensory consciousness (prav?ttivijñ?na) are momentary, a higher, more permanent form of consciousness (?layavijñ?na) is needed, and if that is also not permanent, a final, absolutely permanent consciousness is required. Otherwise, enlightenment itself would be impermanent.
This is why three basic levels of consciousness and being are common to Buddhism and Platonism alike - each level of reality being superseded by the next higher one that generates it, until the Ultimate Source of all is reached.
The “obliteration of consciousness” that is supposed to take place in enlightenment may well be only the obliteration of lower forms of consciousness. This would make the real Buddhist position compatible with that of other systems like Platonism and Advaita Vedanta, as McEvilley suggests.
That’s why I don’t think there is much difference between Buddhism and other systems.
Quoting baker
Well, when you have a number of competing systems, I think it is legitimate for people to want to learn more about each of them. After all, anyone can claim that they can show you "the way to Nirvana”, only to take you for a ride.
The general view in the old days was that Western systems (especially those based on Christianity) were superior to anything the East had to offer. These days the attitude has been reversed. It has become customary to belittle all things Western and to idealize and idolize everything Eastern (or non-Western).
The way I see it, this new trend is mostly rooted in ignorance of Western traditions, which is part of the general cultural decline in the West.
Yes. The West has an energetic tradition of self-loathing too it seems to me. Much of this an understandable by-product of reactions to the horrors of imperialism and Western expressions of colonization.
I recall Buddhist groups and yoga groups I attended in the 1980's where much time was spent bemoaning the crassness of Western spiritual traditions (only half-understood) and celebrating the group's genius in moving away from the superficial West to embrace Eastern orientations - sometimes right up to wearing fancy dress (Eastern robes and decorative elements).
Can't help but agree, even though I know those kinds of suggestions are fiercely rejected by many Buddhists on dogmatic grounds. (It appeals to the theosophist in me.) You could say that they're commensurable even if they differ - they agree and disagree about something that they all hold to be real, even if what they say about it and how they approach it is very different (whereas none of them are commensurable with materialism).
But we still have to be extremely wary about positing 'higher states' and the like on the basis of conjecture. It easily devolves into 'mere belief'. I think where Buddhism really excels is its insistence on 'knowing for oneself' through the mental discipline of mindful awareness (which of course very few truly actualise to high degree.)
(Another interesting and relatively brief essay on this with cogent comparisons to Western philosophy is What Is and Isn't Yog?c?ra , Dan Lusthaus.)
Well, for starters, there aren't many who actually make that claim.
Second, you would want to first see some evidence in support of that claim.
Third, you would need to know (a) what enlightenment is and (b) what enlightenment means in the case of the person making the claim.
So I think that, statistically, the chance of anyone being in a position to congratulate others for being enlightened is pretty small .... :smile:
Sorry it took so long for me to respond. I was out of town all this weekend. Yes, sure, there was irony in what I said. I always say that "The Tao that can be spoken is not the eternal Tao" is a joke. It's an intentionally and knowingly absurd statement. Absurd and profound. I see other eastern philosophies the same way.
I know from personal experience and watching other people that one way of gaining wisdom is through frustration. If you beat your head against a wall long enough, eventually you may say "Wait a minute, this doesn't make any sense." Then there is a flash of recognition, surrender. This is especially true of adults, perhaps especially people of accomplishment and ambition. It seems to me that a large part of Zen Buddhism is intended to frustrate expectations and desires for accomplishment, advancement, and approval to the point that people surrender to the futility of trying not to try, desiring not to desire, working to accomplish a rejection of accomplishment. That's the joke I was talking about.
I have been out of town, so it took me a while to respond. There is no reason that something that is part of a vast complex system of doctrine and practice might not seem vague, mystical, contrary, or ironic. It seems to me that the two contrary ways of seeing things is part of the plan. That's why I called it a joke. I always fall back on Lao Tzu's "The Tao that can be spoken is not the eternal Tao." You can be aware of what might be called the absurdity of a statement like that and still see that it represents a profound understanding.
I think that's pretty true although it risks makes light of 'the great matter' (as it is referred to in the literature).
Quoting Apollodorus
I would have argued vehemently against that 30 years ago but I'm now starting to see some truth in it. But the Church was in a lot of ways the author of its own misfortune in this regard. When you study the role of religion in European history it was often incredibly bloody and vicious. Sure there were episodes of comparative enlightenment and calm, but the religious wars, inquisitions and crusades were phenomenally bloody. And the inner meaning of the philosophy was hardly self-evident.
If my views have changed, it's because studying other such traditions has made me re-assess the one I was born into, although I can't see myself returning to it.
It makes sense to me that seeing beyond "the great matter" is the whole point. As I see it, nothing about enlightenment is great. Again, it's a surrender. Surrender to the mundanity, quotidianism, of the truth. Just wanted to use that word. If it is one.
It is true that Zen is replete with sayings like 'to chop wood, to draw water' but there really is a purpose and an aim in Buddhism. To mistake it for saying there is no aim and no purpose is a nihilistic misreading, in my view. That's why those who are engaged in Zen actually live under a highly disciplined routine and very hard work. It sounds to me as if the surrender you're speaking of is just abandoning the idea that there is anything worth understanding, which is far from the truth.
Do you have an actual canonical reference for backing up this very popular claim?
Sure, in such general terms, ideas of enlightenment seem to be similar across numerous cultures, traditions, religions, etc. But once one looks more closely, the similiarities end.
Both the middle class secular Westerner and a Buddhist monk have ideas of "perfection" and "arrival", and use the same words. But they mean very different things by those words.
Good question. Suppose that statement is false/a half-truth like so many fake Buddha quotes doing the rounds on the www, what, in your opnion, is the correct proposition Buddha made, long, long ago?
What other system is organized around the idea of a complete cessation of suffering?
Yes, the idea of suffering and the idea of making an end to suffering can be found in many religions, ideologies, etc., but these systems differ greatly in the relative importance they ascribe to the problem of suffering. To the best of my knowledge, no other system but Buddhism gives such prominence to suffering (although Jainism is close).
This is true only for academics and academically minded people with too much time on their hands. Pretty much everyone else decides within seconds as to wether something is worth paying attention to or whether to dismiss it with an idle hand gesture.
This is a trend, sure, but I don't see it as the main one. There is also another trend, and that is to dismiss everything from the East as "Eastern nonsense". Where I live, this latter is prevalent. Even people who are into yoga and meditation approach them with a politically corrected, Westernized attitude, so that the only thing that is "Eastern" about their yoga is the name.
Western philosophy and Western religion have brought this upon themselves, though. Not just with bloody religious wars, but with blatant classism, elitism, and a general callous disregard for other people and other beings.
Part of the reason why "Eastern wisdom" seems so atractive to some Westerners is because it seems so available. Western philosophy is largely impenetrable for a person without a formal education in philosophy, while the Eastern one seems to be available and ready-to-use for everyone, regardless of their socioeconomic status and education level. (Of course, as some Westerners eventually realize, this isn't quite so, it's just a "seems," and Eastern philosophy is still classist, elitist, and requires formal education.)
Quoting Apollodorus
And all this is said by scholars who have not practiced any of the paths they are discussing ...
Must by just my karma that I've met some!
No. Things don't work like that. But I suppose that to understand this, one needs to have first-hand experience of witnessing someone making the claim.
Usually, people are so restricted and defined by their day-to-day concerns that they don't get involved into such things, and instead just shrug their shoulders when hearing claims of enlightenment.
The topic was how come claims of enlightenment generate so much hostility.
I don't mean to denigrate Zen. Eastern philosophies have something profound to tell us about ourselves and the nature of reality. I think you can, at least theoretically, get that same experience from western philosophies, but it's covered up with the trappings of "reason" to the point that it is almost unrecognizable.
For me, making light of something serious is at the heart of my philosophy, my intellect, and my way of seeing the world. That goes along with my intellectual commitment to understanding the underlying simplicity, clarity, and quotidianism (again!) of our world. Philosophy tends to be too highfalutin for it's own good.
Of course, as long as one is ignorant of said system.
Except that the apparent paradox has an explanation.
I remember an example of this from a Hindu text: The Lord walks and he doesn't walk. This is followed by scriptural commentary explaining how it is that the Lord walks and how it is that the Lord doesn't walk.
Paradoxes and contrary pairs are sometimes just literary and mnemonic means. They can sound like catchy phrases, witticisms, but sometimes they are just summaries of complex topics. Of course, if one doesn't know those topics, one doesn't know that either.
That there is suffering.
Here's a discussion of this:
Life Isn’t Just Suffering
https://www.dhammatalks.org/books/KarmaOfQuestions/Section0004.html
I have done some basic reading about Zen Buddhism and Buddhism in general, but most of my judgement about eastern philosophy comes from my experience with Taoism, which I have spent a fair amount of time with. Based on that, I see recognition of the contradictory, seemingly absurd, nature of reality and especially our place in it as a deep part of what eastern philosophies are about.
That is an interesting observation. I've never taken any real interest in these sorts of 'pithy' statements but good to know that often there is a foundational underpinning. The idea of them being a mnemonic is interesting too.
:ok:
Quoting Tom Storm
One of the first books with 'Zen' in the title that me and millions of other people read in the 60's and 70's was Penguin Book called Zen Flesh Zen Bones:
It was over a hundred anecdotes - most not strictly speaking 'Zen Koans', but 'teaching stories', often amusing and invariable pithy. Many have entered popular culture.
(There's a similar collection from the Islamic world called 'the tales of Mullah Nasudin', many of which are absurd and/or hilarious.)
True. But to be fair, it must be said that the Church was not just a religious organization. It was heir, political, administrative, military, economic and cultural, to the Roman Empire.
The Empire had been largely Christianized, but the Western part saw itself overrun by one wave of Germanic tribes after another. The East itself had to fend off Germanic, Slavic, Bulgar, and other invaders and was almost completely overrun in the process, with Pagan Slavs penetrating deep into the Greek peninsula. The East later came under constant attack from Arabs, Vikings, and Turks who all dreamed of making Constantinople their capital. The Greeks managed to repel the Vikings, but losing Syria and Egypt to the Muslim Arabs and Anatolia to the Turks was a disaster from which the East never recovered.
The loss of these territories was also a blow to Christian spirituality, as pilgrims from all over the Empire had been visiting monasteries, hermits, saints, and holy places in Egypt and elsewhere.
Arguably, the Church was forced to operate in extraordinary circumstances, with nothing less than its own survival, and the survival of European civilization, at stake. It was literally a struggle for survival where dissent, potentially leading to fragmentation, disintegration, and annihilation, was a very real danger.
If the role of religion in European history was often incredibly bloody and vicious, it is because history itself was bloody and vicious. And not only in Europe. It is easy to construct India as a nation of enlightened sages devoted to prayer, meditation, and the study of scripture. In reality, India has always been a jumble of hundreds of different kingdoms speaking hundreds of different languages and following hundreds of different religious cults, that were often in conflict and at war with one another. And the same goes for the Muslim world.
Despite all this, the works of Plato and Aristotle were faithfully preserved (that's why we are able to read them now) and Classical philosophy was taught without interruption, under the umbrella of the Church. In fact, from the early centuries of the Christian era, Classical philosophy was seen as a step to higher Christian education. The result was that the wisdom of Ancient Greece continued to be available to those who took an interest in it, at least in the East.
There is no denying that excesses did happen, but they are just one facet of a complex story. Every civilization or culture has its low points and its high points. If we ignore this fact, we can fall into the trap of opting for the wholesale denial and rejection of Western civilization and it is doubtful that going down that path can lead to much good.
For many centuries, Platonism was regarded as a spiritual path, not just mere philosophy, and Christianity itself, often under Hellenistic influence, developed its own spirituality. Christian monasticism that emerged as early as the 300’s A.D. was a spiritual movement with spiritual practices that were in no way inferior to those of Buddhism or Hinduism.
The belief that earthly existence is painful; observance of abstinence and strict dietary rules; moral and spiritual purification through control or eradication of negative emotions and impulses, and cultivation of opposite inclinations; the attainment of detachment and impassibility (apatheia); meditation and contemplation, etc., are found in Western (Greek, Christian) and Indian (Hindu, Buddhist) traditions alike.
As pointed out by McEvilley, modern prejudice about Greek culture has led to a number of erroneous beliefs such as that introspection is inherently alien to Greek thought and that anything that sounds inward-looking in Hellenistic schools must be the result of “eastern” influence! Needless to say, business-minded and nationalist Indians have sought to emphasize such Western misconceptions about Western culture in order to sell their own tradition as “superior”. Spirituality in India has long become a multi-billion dollar business with some “gurus” being as wealthy as the maharajahs of earlier times.
It is part of human nature to think the grass is greener on the other side, and when this is exploited for commercial or political ends, it can result in distorted perceptions of one’s own culture. If we are using the Crusades to reject Western culture and deny its spiritual aspects, then we can equally use aspects of Indian culture (caste discrimination, untouchability, child exploitation, child marriage, female infanticide, violence against women, religious intolerance and violence, barbaric penal code, etc.) to reject Indian religion and spirituality many times over.
Incidentally, it is interesting to see that the same critics who see nothing good in Western culture, are quick to find examples to their liking (“Celtic spirituality”, “Druidism”, “Witchcraft”, etc.) when it suits their agenda.
Ignorance of Western forms of spirituality may have been excusable in the aftermath of two devastating world wars, when Westerners believed in a “new age” as a means to put the past behind them, and there was a quasi-religious need to follow the hippie trail to the East - which also coincided with the rise of Hindu nationalism and the emergence of anti-Western narratives in South Asia. However, with the possibilities offered by the latest information technologies, I think it would be advisable for Westerners to first acquaint themselves with what is best in their own culture, before uncritically embracing other traditions. Certainly, when claims of “eastern superiority” come into the picture, a good dose of caution seems indicated.
If we think about it, there aren’t many enlightened people in India despite its population of more than one billion and there is no logical reason why this should be any different with Westerners following, or imitating, Indian traditions. (One of the things humans are naturally very good at is consciously or unconsciously imitating others.) If anything, what these Westerners have to offer is an enhanced feeling of inner happiness and peace (and perhaps a certain degree of self-importance), all of which may be equally achieved with practices that are available closer to home.
In fact, the term “enlightenment” itself is of Western origin and is not used in Indian traditions. So this may be a case of Westerners Westernizing Eastern traditions and believing their own perception of them as a substitute for the Western spirituality whose existence they choose to deny in the first place. If so, then the whole thing may have more to do with psychology than with spirituality as such.
Ha! Some years back, as part of my own quest, I summarized my quest as "how to be a genuine fake".
Then I googled it. Turns out someone else had that idea too! But I wasn't impressed with Watts' work.
I think you need to be young in The Summer of Love for him to hit home.
Quoting Tom Storm
:party:
Quoting Apollodorus
The West has done a pretty thorough job of obliterating its own cultural heritage, unfortunately. Somewhere along the line the thread was lost, but analysing it in depth is a hard task. But I think, from my own perspective, in the 1960's when I came of age, the 'Eastern' perspective offered something that I couldn't identify in my own culture.
Quoting Apollodorus
'Cultural dynamics' have a lot more to do with it.
In my own quest, I went to Uni as an adult student and pursued my own curriculum. I had gotten into Uni on the back of a long-discontinued custom, the 'adult entrance exam', which comprised a comprehension test on a long passage from Bertrand Russell's 'Mysticism and Logic', which was just the kind of subject I wanted to study. I was interested in enlightenment, whatever that meant, but I was convinced that it meant something, because I had had a foretaste of it. So I pursued that subject through philosophy, anthropology, comparative religion and psychology (the last was a write-off, although I did meet my future wife through it, so not completely.)
I formed the view that almost all modern philosophy was grounded in 'anything but God'. There was a kind of tacit agreeement that whatever fundamental ground could be sought, it couldn't have anything to do with God. Of course, there was the customary liberal tolerance for individual belief, but any beliefs of that kind that one harboured were matters of conscience, the public square was to be resolutely secular. It was very much a 'don't mention the war' kind of attitude.
My view was that the germinal experience or 'realisation of non-duality' lay at the heart of whatever was worth understanding about religion, but that this insight was generally absent from mainstream religion. This kind of realisation was what was to be sought through meditation, which at that time I had just encountered. (The novelty has somewhat worn off since then.) I had the view that this kind of realisation was probably what animated the early gnostics, who had been ruthlessly suppressed by the nascent Roman Church in the early period of Christianity. I found a lot of support for that argument in the writings of Elaine Pagels and others. I lost interest in pursuing that line of research but I still think the case can be made.
Much more recently, I read an interesting book called The Theological Origins of Modernity, by M A Gillespie. He too is concerned with cultural dynamics and, I suppose, a kind of Hegelian dialectic between (scholastic) realism and nominalism. He argues that contrary to popular opinion theological arguments have had an enormous influence on the formation of modern secular culture (which is visible in the form of contradictions and conundrums inherent in modern thought.)
But now there is a new synthesis beginning to emerge, which is neither the standard-issue neo-Darwinian materialism or old-school theological. I mean, nobody can plausibly argue against the empirical evidence, whatever philosophy you have has to be able to accomodate that. But if you let go any form of literalism with respect to the interpretation of ancient texts, and read them allegorically, then it's possible to arrive at a holistic understanding based on both scientific discovery and spiritual principle.
And what use is that understanding?
Maybe she worked out you were not someone to con? :smile:
Maybe you're the kind of person who just likes to know things for the sake of knowing, someone who enjoys knowing.
I'm not. Knowing things should help one do this and that. Or knowing itself should do something, make a difference.
It made me feel shitty. I saw her praising the others. But I was again the black sheep.
Guilty as charged.
I never understood that. To me, India has always first and foremost been a country of cholera and poverty. And cholera. A dreadful country I hope I never have to visit. I wish to have nothing to do with it. Or any Eastern country.
Sure, but they differ in the level of detail and in how actionable their advice is.
They also differ greatly in how approachable they are, depending on a person's level of formal education and socio-economic status.
Moreover: Western spirituality has no equivalent to (serial) rebirth or reincarnation, thus making a person limited to what they have here and now and to what they can do here and now. For many people, this means that they are facing the prospect of not accomplishing much and dying miserable. Hardly something to look forward to.
The Dalai Lama advises people not to convert to Buddhism easily, but to first make the best they can out of the religion and culture they were born into.
Such as by reading Machiavelli?
Sure. In some of the Buddhism I have come to know there is actually a lot of criticism of Westerners, similar to what you're saying. But the mainstream Western Buddhism is usually louder and stronger.
Suffering is certainly central to Christianity. The goal of Christianity is salvation from suffering and death, which is also the goal of Platonism and Buddhism.
Life is painful due to ignorance and sin (i.e., wrong conduct). This is what motivates all three traditions to engage in ethical conduct and seek higher knowledge.
I don’t think scholars need to personally practice any of these systems in order to identify parallels between their intellectual frameworks.
If you happen to live in Eastern Europe it is probably correct to say that non-European systems there are not in general highly regarded. But in the West the reverse is often the case, especially in large cities across the English-speaking world.
I’m assuming that Eastern Europe was also spared the West’s counterculture movement of the 60’s and 70’s, at least to some extent. The movement had been instigated after WW2 by CIA operations like the Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF), purportedly "to combat communism", but the most notable result was that it turned whole generations against Western culture, and the trend has remained strong ever since ....
Congress for Cultural Freedom - Wikipedia
Of course. The West has never produced anything other than Machiavelli. And India does not have its own Machiavellis.
Quoting baker
Not true.
This is exactly what Plato is saying in his dialogues like the Phaedo:
Interestingly, Plato describes reincarnation as an “old doctrine”, which suggests that it had been in circulation for some time.
Platonism of course places less emphasis on reincarnation than Buddhism and Hinduism. But this is exactly what one would expect from a system that focuses on liberation.
Quoting baker
I don’t know about cholera, but leprosy and poverty, definitely.
The country itself is beautiful, for sure. Some places are like heaven on earth, even though poverty, disease, and death are never far. But the most shocking of all is the extreme materialism that can surpass even what we see in the West.
Having said that, even Nepal and Tibet aren’t much better. Apparently, before it was annexed by China, Tibet outside Buddhist monasteries was ruled by war lords, bandits, and large packs of stray dogs.
This is one of the reasons why I think that Buddhism’s ability to create an ideal society is more wishful thinking than reality. And if that is the case, claims of Buddhist or eastern “superiority” should be taken with a large grain of salt.
The way I see it, in order to find spirituality you need to be spiritual yourself. In which case you will tend to find spirituality wherever you are.
Realistically speaking, “Nirvana” or whatever we choose to call it, is either (a) unattainable (which is the case in the vast majority) or (b) it is attainable through meditation or introspection.
If (b), then Nirvana or enlightenment cannot be something distant, or different, from the meditator. If it is experienced, then there must be an experiencer. And the experiencer is the consciousness that gradually disengages itself from lower forms of experience until it experiences itself.
We may not be in a position to say what is beyond that, but I think all forms of meditation, Platonist, Buddhist, or Hindu, must logically lead to a point where consciousness experiences itself qua consciousness, i.e., not thoughts or consciousness of things.
If we posit a reality other than consciousness, we need to explain what that reality is, which is an impossible task especially in non-materialist terms. Even if we were to deny the existence of consciousness we would merely confirm it, as consciousness is needed to conceive that denial.
Christianity threatens with eternal suffering -- eternal suffering -- everyone who fails to pick the right religion in this lifetime.
It takes more imagination than I have to portray that as being concerned with "salvation from suffering and death".
Picking the wrong religion is an eternal death sentence, according to Christianity.
This assumes that it is possible to ascertain the truth of a religion without practicing it.
It's not clear how such is in fact possible. And if it is, it means religion is nothing more but a process of going through the motions.
I wouldn't know. 30+ years ago when I went to school, a public, secular school, in a (nominally) secular country, it was the norm to consider Christianity (and by this was meant Roman Catholicism) the one and only true religion, and everything else was dismissed as wrong or nonsense. Secular academics (!!) had that attitude as well. Many still do.
(You can see this reflected in secular university curricula for philosophy. There is usually a course called "The existence of God", but all the course material is about Western, implicitly Roman Catholic notions of God, no hint of Hindu theism.)
Or it means that religions are explanatory systems around which rituals and practices are constructed, and as such one can compare their explanatory structures from a critical distance.
Quoting baker
I'm no expert but there are earlier Christians traditions of universalism - all people will be saved and no one burned. Hell being a more recent idea in the history of Christianity. David Bentley Hart writes a lot about universalism and the early beliefs from patristic sources. If you read Christian writers like Father Richard Rohr, Thomas Merton, Cynthia Bourgeault (and Hart) you can see there were and remain other traditions utterly opposed to the judgmental, punishing, evangelizing tradition so well known to us all. Contemplative prayer (essentially mediation) plays a big role in this expression of Christianity, along with allegorical readings of scripture (which Hart maintains were the original readings in most cases).
You misread my tone.
The topic was Westerners who went East and what they have to offer being an enhanced feeling of inner happiness and peace (and perhaps a certain degree of self-importance), all of which may be equally achieved with practices that are available closer to home.
I think that much of what goes on under the heading of "religion" and "spirituality" is actually right-winger mentality. I'm not sure it is even possible to be religious/spiritual without being a right-wing authoritarian.
It's not clear it's even possible to get "an enhanced feeling of inner happiness and peace" from studying Plato and acting accordingly. Or from following the principles in De Imitatione Christi. The Prince, on the other hand, seems a more likely source. It's not a conicidence that religious/spiritual people tend to associate with right-wing political options, and that right-wing political options tend to associate with religion, insofar said religion has been a majority religion in the region for a long time (and that can be Roman Catholicism in traditionally Catholic countries, or Buddhism in traditionally Buddhist countries). Most Western Buddhists I know fit the right-wing profile, some are even vocal supporters of Trump.
I don't appreciate your tone and you ascribing to me some kind of secret admiration for the East, or specifically, India. I've thought about writing you a long list of things I resent about the East, or, specifically, India. I decided against doing so. But if you persist, I might change my mind.
My only interest is in the Pali Canon, and because of this, I'm actually resented by Easterners and Westerners alike.
This is the type of attitude one usually gets if one is interested in the Pali Canon.
The passage is too short to be able to discern much from it. It seems to be compatible with some more secular, "generous" versions of Christian doctrine, but it's not clear how far it is compatible with Buddhism.
Folk Buddhism "places a lot of emphasis" on rebirth. In the suttas, rebirth is mostly part of cautionary tales.
How does one achive liberation according to Platonism?
Does Platonism have a teaching on dependent co-arising?
What a strange idea. The Buddhism of the Pali suttas is not concerned with creating a society at all, ideal or not. It gives some pointers on how to make do when living in a society, but its aim is to leave the process of rebirth (and with it, social life) altogether. The Buddhism of the Pali suttas is, essentially, a self-terminating project.
In the course of this thread (or a similar theme), people have posted links to articles talking about secular Buddhism and how it can contribute to society, or help create a better one, and such.
I have no interest in such "Buddhism". I do not believe that Buddhism can in any way create a better society or help toward it. Given its origin, I think it's actually rather bizarre that it had become a major religion in the world.
I generally dislike the term "spiritual", "spirituality". I do not consider myself "spiritual". I feel sickened if I read about "spirituality".
What do you mean by "which is the case in the vast majority"? That most people cannot attain nirvana?
Again, back to dependent co-arising.
I refer to the emic-etic distinction.
Quoting baker
The article you linked to concluded:
“When these two approaches are combined, the "richest" view of a culture or society can be understood.”
I dont conclude from the article that one has to be a practitioner of a religion in order to combine the emic and the etic.
And what use are those other traditions?
Unless a person feels "in their heart of hearts" that one of those other traditions is the right one, why on earth would anyone want to go anywhere near Christianity, other than out of fear of eternal suffering?
What you describe also strikes me as an awfully self-indulgent spirituality, apparently devised to be more palatable to people who are not all that interested in might makes right or who don't want those interests of theirs to show.
You think you can have insider knowledge without being an insider?
I think you can have better than insider knowledge by subsuming insider thinking within a more encompassing framework that transcends its limitations. Lapsed Catholics , former cult members and reformed drug addicts are examples.
You think taking failed insiders, who are therefore not insiders (anymore) at all, are the best source of insider knowledge??
That's like saying that college drop-outs are the best sources on what college is like and what it is supposed to be like.
"Anonymous Christianity" means that a person lives in the grace of God and attains salvation outside of explicitly constituted Christianity. A Protestant Christian is, of course, "no anonymous Christian"; that is perfectly clear. But, let us say, a Buddhist monk (or anyone else I might suppose) who, because he follows his conscience, attains salvation and lives in the grace of God; of him I must say that he is an anonymous Christian; if not, I would have to presuppose that there is a genuine path to salvation that really attains that goal, but that simply has nothing to do with Jesus Christ. But I cannot do that. And so if I hold if everyone depends upon Jesus Christ for salvation, and if at the same time I hold that many live in the world who have not expressly recognized Jesus Christ, then there remains in my opinion nothing else but to take up this postulate of an anonymous Christianity.[/quote]
And of the apparent huge divisions between different religious conceptions:
[quote=John Hick, Who or What is God; http://www.johnhick.org.uk/article1.html]The basic principle that we are aware of anything, not as it is in itself unobserved, but always and necessarily as it appears to beings with our particular cognitive equipment, was brilliantly stated by Aquinas when he said that ‘Things known are in the knower according to the mode of the knower’ (S.T., II/II, Q. 1, art. 2). And in the case of religious awareness, the mode of the knower differs significantly from religion to religion. And so my hypothesis is that the ultimate reality of which the religions speak, and which we (Christians) refer to as God, is being differently conceived, and therefore differently experienced, and therefore differently responded to in historical forms of life within the different religious traditions.[/quote]
There is even a book, explaining via linguistic analysis that the Bible doesn't actually talk about eternal damnation. My knowledge of this is a bit rusty by now, but if I remember correctly, there was a church council at which they decided, on a vote, how to translate certain phrases in the Bible, and that's how we got "eternal damnation". When the Bible actually talks about "long term damnation".
However, none of this matters. Christian culture today is what it is. It's built on the doctrine of eternal damnation, or on efforts to oppose it. Going anywhere near Christianity, one has to deal with the issue of eternal damnation one way or another.
For me in particular, this is actually co-incidental. I'm not trying to "get close to the original meaning", this has never been a theme for me. From the beginning, I felt in my heart of hearts an interest in the Pali Canon, and that was all.
I think there is a difference between the kind of analytical meditation that you find in Advaita and Buddhist philosophy and the practice of petitionary prayer, where the supplicant prays for favour or some important outcome. On the village level, the practices are similar - in Buddhist cultures you will endow the local monastery or support the monks on the daily round to acrue merit (or good karma) in hope of a propitious rebirth.
Nevertheless from a theoretical perspective, the emphasis in (for example) S?t? Zen meditation is never to practice with some idea of gain or any ulterior purpose. The principle is always to develop insight into the innate tendencies and habitual patterns that generally drive us to 'act out' in certain ways. I was always struck by the convergence of that principle and the Socratic dictum 'know thyself'. It seems such an open-ended command, but it does have definite scope, in some ways. I mean, I see in myself and others, that we 'act out' all manner of unexpressed feelings or subconscious thoughts on a daily basis.
Which leads to a point that needs to be made about enlightenment, more generally, in that it is a mode of understanding or of being that requires a fundamental change in the disposition of the seeker. (There is a term in later Greek philosophy, 'metanoia', which describes this. It is often translated merely as 'conversion' but I don't think that does justice to the cognitive implications of the term.) The subject of the understanding is not, like objective methodology, known at a remove or at a third-person. So the idea of 'concepts', as in 'concepts of God' or 'concepts of enlightenment' are wildly misplaced, as the kind of understanding that is required is non-conceptual. And that is alien to our culture as we are so utterly immersed in conceptual knowledge and sensory experience.
[quote=Karen Armstrong]Religious truth is...a species of practical knowledge. Like swimming, we cannot learn it in the abstract; we have to plunge into the pool and acquire the knack by dedicated practice. Religious doctrines are a product of ritual and ethical observance, and make no sense unless they are accompanied by such spiritual exercises as yoga, prayer, liturgy and a consistently compassionate lifestyle. Skilled practice in these disciplines can lead to intimations of the transcendence we call God, Nirvana, Brahman or Dao. Without such dedicated practice, these concepts remain incoherent, incredible and even absurd.[/quote]
Hence the supremacy of the emic.
You can bet that in Buddhist cultures there will be some monks who will teach that Christians and Muslims are all doomed for the Buddhist Avici hell unless they convert. Fundamentalism is cross-cultural.
Quoting baker
For those who haven't encountered it, 'In anthropology, folkloristics, and the social and behavioral sciences, emic and etic refer to two kinds of field research done and viewpoints obtained: emic, from within the social group (from the perspective of the subject) and etic, from outside (from the perspective of the observer.
But the situation of today's global culture tends to blur that distinction. I'm not meaningfully Buddhist in any ethnic or even cultural sense, so am an 'outsider', like a lot of Western people who have encountered Buddhism through popular books and visiting teachers. And I'm often suspicious of Westerners who adopt Buddhist cultural trappings as it so easily seems like pretence.
Earlier on I referred to a book by Evan Thompson, 'Why I am not a Buddhist'. Which is surprising coming from him, as he is a thought-leader in the translation of Buddhist principles into the dialogue concerning meditation, phenomenology and cognitive science. But he's also very sceptical of many of the claims of 'Buddhist modernists', that Buddhism is a scientific or rational faith. Not that he doesn't hold Buddhist principles in high regard, and his writing certainly evinces intimate familiarity with them.
It's a complicated world, nowadays.
"Meditation" is such a broad term. Descartes wrote "meditations".
The Buddhist key term is bhavana.
Or it’s like saying that if I grow up in a homophobic household where such views are connected to a fundamentalist religious belief system, and I emancipate myself from those homophobic beliefs, I have a choice that the other members of my household don’t. I can live within the insular and narrow view that is their only option (they being stuck ‘inside’ that narrow framework) , or I can shift to a decentered thinking in which I subsume their parochial view within a more flexible framework. Thus I can shift back and forth between empathizing with their perspective and freeing myself from their cage.
I might generalize from this and suggest that enlightenment is nothing other than the endless progression in which one moves being encased within a worldview to seeing it as a mere step ion the path to a richer perspective.
“… yesterday's alarming impulse becomes today's enlivening insight, tomorrow's repressive doctrine, and after that subsides into a petty superstition.”(George Kelly).
I don't see it as "fundamentalism" in the sense of some kind of abuse or perversion of the genuine teachings. I see that simply as part of their doctrine.
I think the emic-etic distinction is useful and relevant when discussing matters on the metalevel, like we're doing here.
When referring to oneself in relation to some group, the emic-etic distinction can be taken as a dynamic process of self-identification and self-analysis that can go on for a long time.
It's for the academic writing a study that the emic-etic distinction is final, has a sense of finality.
The irony is that if you don't let go of that vision, and of the need to "accomplish much" you will likely "die miserable". If you "look forward" honestly you will see that there is nothing to be had in the future, All you have and all you are is what you have and are now, and this will equally be so in the future. If you can live fully now, then you will likely not die miserable, and that alone would be a singular.and sufficient achievement.
When I studied comparative religion, I noticed that that Old School approach, personified by the avuncular head of department, was, I suppose 'curatorial' - that religions were to be studied as aspects of history and culture but very much arms-length, there was never any suggestion of personal interest or soteriological intent. That very much began to change in the 1960's with the idea of the 'scholar-practitioner' (Jay Garfield, Robert Thurman, et al.) So through that, the distinction is breaking down to some extent - at least when it comes to Eastern traditions.
Quoting Tom Storm
It's very similar to the Eastern teachings. I have Rohr's book Falling Upward, and very much like it. (Although some say he sails pretty close to the wind in terms of Christian orthodoxy, see here). But since Thomas Merton, this kind of Eastern~Christian hybrid has become increasingly influential. John Main taught something similar. It naturally resonates with me even if it makes some mainstream Christians anxious.
I kept my own meditation practice up for many years but it has fallen off since end of 2019. I have to affirm that I'm intending to return to it (ever mindful of the warning that the road to hell is paved with good intentions.)
Good thread.
I think this a blatant misrepresentation, to be quite honest.
The way I see it, Christianity does not "threaten" anyone. It is simply stating what it believes to be a fact, namely that those who do not follow a path of ethical or righteous conduct will suffer in the next life.
It's like warning someone not to go in a certain direction because there is a danger there, e,g., wild animals, a waterfall, dangerous road or bridge, or whatever. It is important to distinguish between warning and threat. The two are NOT the same thing.
Buddhism and Hinduism say very much the same about hell, however "temporary" that may be. Why is temporary less threatening? Is it because it means you can disregard it? If yes, then why insist on Buddhist emphasis on suffering being so "unique"?
In reality, it is not a threat but a warning. There are two possibilities: (a) the warning is based on fact, in which case it is advisable to heed the warning, or (b) it is a lie, in which case we don't need to pay attention to it. The choice is ours. People are free to believe or disbelieve as they think fit.
I can see no logical necessity for the Buddhist version of hell to be any more real or credible than the Christian, Hindu, or Greek ones, or indeed, than the view that there is no hell. As others have pointed out, it is also possible to interpret things allegorically.
If the passage I quoted from Plato is "too short to be able to discern much from it", then so is the passage I quoted from the Dhammapada, which is even shorter!
If the Buddhism of the Pali suttas "is not concerned with creating a society at all", then it has little practical value. At least other systems do aim to create a better society.
If you have "no interest in a Buddhism that can help create a better society", what does that say about your concern (or lack of it) for other people?
Quoting baker
Interesting. Maybe it does have to do with psychology after all, as I suggested.
Quoting baker
Are you sure it's just "interest", or more like "obsession"? And how do you know the Pali Canon is any better than other Canons, or for that matter, than the scriptures of other systems?
Finally, if you think it is "not possible to be religious/spiritual without being a right-wing authoritarian", does that make you a left-wing authoritarian? If I'm not mistaken, someone mentioned the phrase "Red Guard" in connection with your comments .... :grin:
Some hellfire preachers often seem to appear deliberately threatening but overall I agree with you.
Quoting Apollodorus
Well, it's not a social or political philosophy, but then, the Buddhist sangha is arguably the oldest continuously self-governing order in the world today, so that must say something.
Quoting Apollodorus
Thanks for reminding me to be more mindful in my remarks.
The NT does have passages like the following:
The verb used is hypodeiknymi, “to make known (as a warning)”.
Of course some (self-appointed) preachers do use "threatening-sounding" language.
The Church itself can threaten with excommunication, for example, as this lies within its power. Casting people into hell is a totally different thing. It is not within the power of the Church. The Church can warn of the possibility (or likelihood) of hell, but it has neither the power to judge nor to carry out the judgment.
So, the talk of hell as punishment in Christianity must be seen as a warning, not a threat, similar to a road sign warning of danger ahead. The sign does not "threaten", it merely warns us by informing us of a potential danger.
Here are some more passages:
Plato’s Theory of Recollection (Anamnesis) is based on the belief that the soul is immortal and lives many lives, which is why mathematical and ethical knowledge, for example, is not learned but recollected.
Reincarnation (metempsychosis) is very much part of Platonism.
The Dhammapada says:
This seems to imply that all (conditioned) life, including pleasure, is suffering from the perspective of the wise (pa??ita).
Excelente! Pleasure is suffering. :chin: I suppose that's in terms of how powerful it can be as a distraction, a honey trap in a manner of speaking. Maya, if a movie I watched is to be believed, first attempts to scare Siddhartha in meditation and when that fails, offers beautiful maidens (his gorgeous daughters I presume) to break Gautama's concentration. A very unique and singular interpretation of suffering. Heaven is its own kind of hell.
That seems to imply that the wise can’t feel.
Numerous Christian schools make it clear: if you fail to pick the right religion and fail to become its member, you're destined for eternal suffering, regardless of how you've otherwise behaved.
Except that we never actually get to see any of those wild animals, waterfalls, or whatever other dangers we are being "warned" about.
And of course, the people issuing the "warning" are usually not people one would want to have anything to do with. In fact, they are the threat.
Why did God, in his infinite wisdom and goodness, design the world such that the retaliation for not following "a path of ethical or righteous conduct" isn't apparent in the here and now?
And what is that, even, "a path of ethical or righteous conduct"? All kinds of things get to be called "a path of ethical or righteous conduct", it's far from universal.
Remember, the RCC did not excommunicate Hitler, but it routinely excommunicates girls who abort the pregnancies conceived when they were raped by their uncles or priests.
Because Buddhism promises an intelligible way out of suffering. Christianity does not. Christianity is a gamble.
There are more possibilities. Such as the possibility that the ones presenting the "warning" don't know the whole picture.
And suffer eternally for their choices.
Neither do I.
And what use is that?
The passage from the Dhammapada was your choice. I don't know why you chose it. For references for Budhist doctrine, I would first turn to the four Nikayas, not a short summary text like the Dhammapada.
I asked you whether Platonism teaches dependent co-arising.
To you.
Learn your doctrines, young padawan. Religions teach that the world is incorrigible, transient, a lost cause, the vale of tears. Insofar as religions teach betterment, it's only in the sense of being good stewards of what God has entrusted people with, and to use it as a means to serve God. Or else, in non-theistic religions, to make the best use of what is available. "Creating a better society" so that we can all eat, drink, and make merry is a secular goal, even when it is promoted under the guise of religion.
Envy is a capital sin.
I don't know such. You seem to think that I came to Buddhism by rejecting the other systems. This is not the case, though. I admit that I capitulate before Christianity. I find it unintelligible and impossible to live. I don't know how Christians do it, esp. Christian women.
Red paranoia.
And yet you have a retirement fund, don't you?
Also, some people feel burdened by ambition. Some don't.
Christianity is, basically, telling you to throw the dice, and if you don't get the number they tell you you should get, they think you deserve to suffer in hell forever.
The Church is God's fully empowered representative on earth, it functions that way. Nobody gets to God except through the Church.
The only catch is, which church is the Church?
In Platonism, individual intelligence is an emanation of Universal Intelligence.
Though immersed in material or conditioned existence, embodied individual intelligence or soul remains in perpetual contact with Universal Intelligence.
When the soul looks downward, to material existence, it is dragged into it by the force of attraction generated through the psychic energy invested in it. In contrast, when the soul looks upward and sees the higher reality of Universal Intelligence, it is pulled upward by the force generated by the recognition of its own identity with Universal Intelligence:
Liberation or release lysis is attained by a redirection of consciousness away from material, conditioned existence and toward immaterial, unconditioned reality.
The process of “enlightenment” in a Platonic sense is the elevation of individual intelligence to increasingly higher modes of experience until intelligence experiences Intelligence.
Some souls have a natural ability to elevate themselves above ordinary experience. But in most cases, this elevation is brought about by means of certain practices resulting in the purification (katharsis), illumination (ellampsis), and deification (theosis) of the individual soul, i.e., a maximum degree of purity and perfection, that enables it to attain a state of oneness (henosis) with Ultimate Reality.
As “enlightenment” or liberation is a process of increasingly greater transcendence, “dependent co-arising”, interesting though it might be on an intellectual level, loses its importance on the higher levels.
So says the Preacher:
[i]Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher,
vanity of vanities! All is vanity.
3 What does man gain by all the toil
at which he toils under the sun?
8 All things are full of weariness;
a man cannot utter it;
the eye is not satisfied with seeing,
nor the ear filled with hearing.
13 And I applied my heart[f] to seek and to search out by wisdom all that is done under heaven. It is an unhappy business that God has given to the children of man to be busy with. 14 I have seen everything that is done under the sun, and behold, all is vanity[g] and a striving after wind.[h]
15 What is crooked cannot be made straight,
and what is lacking cannot be counted.
16 I said in my heart, “I have acquired great wisdom, surpassing all who were over Jerusalem before me, and my heart has had great experience of wisdom and knowledge.” 17 And I applied my heart to know wisdom and to know madness and folly. I perceived that this also is but a striving after wind.
18 For in much wisdom is much vexation,
and he who increases knowledge increases sorrow.
2
I said in my heart, “Come now, I will test you with pleasure; enjoy yourself.” But behold, this also was vanity.[a] 2 I said of laughter, “It is mad,” and of pleasure, “What use is it?” 3 I searched with my heart how to cheer my body with wine—my heart still guiding me with wisdom—and how to lay hold on folly, till I might see what was good for the children of man to do under heaven during the few days of their life. 4 I made great works. I built houses and planted vineyards for myself. 5 I made myself gardens and parks, and planted in them all kinds of fruit trees. 6 I made myself pools from which to water the forest of growing trees. 7 I bought male and female slaves, and had slaves who were born in my house. I had also great possessions of herds and flocks, more than any who had been before me in Jerusalem. 8 I also gathered for myself silver and gold and the treasure of kings and provinces. I got singers, both men and women, and many concubines, the delight of the sons of man.
9 So I became great and surpassed all who were before me in Jerusalem. Also my wisdom remained with me. 10 And whatever my eyes desired I did not keep from them. I kept my heart from no pleasure, for my heart found pleasure in all my toil, and this was my reward for all my toil. 11 Then I considered all that my hands had done and the toil I had expended in doing it, and behold,
all was vanity and a striving after wind, and there was nothing to be gained under the sun.[/i]
Correct. It seems that Buddhism threatens its followers not only with the suffering of hell but also with the horrors of heaven. The message is "Forget everything and attain Nirvana right now, or else!" :smile:
I need to check: What do you think dependent co-arising is?
Good point.
Systems like Platonism advocate detachment or impassibility accompanied by consciousness and bliss, intelligence freed from conditioning being by nature blissful, i.e., its happiness is (a) unlimited and (b) independent of all other things.
Buddhism seems to advocate impassibility only, which would make Nirvana a form of annihilation or nothingness.
For illustrating the emic-etic distinction, how come you're using only examples of people giving up on an insider status?
You completely ignore examples such a tribe membership, membership in a language community, membership in a professional community. Ie. the type of examples that are usually used to illustrate the emic-etic distinction.
The "endless progression"? Do you believe in rebirth/reincarnation?
Such social memberships are based on shared understandings underlying shared practices.
Quoting baker
No more so than the scientist who supports Popper’s view of scientific inquiry as oriented teleologically toward an asymptotic approach of truth.
Not Christianity. Your interpretation of it.
You seem to have little knowledge of other systems and are just out to put them down as a means to idealize Buddhism (or your version of it) and convince yourself that you have discovered "the only true religion".
Not very different from what you single out for criticism in others .... :smile:
Sure, but this isn't Christian doctrine.
You are changing the subject, aren't you?
My response was to your claim below:
Quoting baker
Platonism is one Western spirituality that does have an equivalent to (serial) rebirth or reincarnation. In fact, as you can see for yourself, a very close one.
No, on the ground level, when one approaches actual Christians and actual Christianity, this is exactly what it is like.
Are you an actual member of an actual Christian congregation? Are you? Have you ever tried to be?
How have you conducted your choice?
How do you know you have made the right choice?
Wrong. What I don't do is prejudicate which particular system is right. The rest is the product of your sectarian tendency.
You're talking about yourself. And proving my point about Christians.
Criticism? What you think I criticize about Christians, I am sure they believe is their virtue.
"Sectarian tendency"? You know absolutely nothing about my religious beliefs, as I have never discussed them publicly and never will!
Your criticism of other systems amounts to claiming that Buddhism (or your version of it) is the only right system.
Personally, I think this is the wrong attitude. If someone is interested in "enlightenment", then they must acknowledge that there are different ways of attaining it.
IMO "elevating" yourself by putting others down has more to do with psychology than with spirituality. By your own admission, you can't stand the concept of spirituality. This may be indicative of other issues.
Is there a church of Platonism? If Christianity is to be seen as the direct heir of Platonism, then reference to Christian doctrine matters.
In the first passage you provided, it wasn't clear whether it talks of serial rebirth or not; whether it talks only about the life immediately after this. The second passage you provided says more.
So you made your point, okay. But it's still not clear how it matters, if there is no church of Platonism. If Platonism exists only in books, it's quite a stretch to consider it a spirituality, Western or otherwise. An individual person picking up a book and believing what it says -- you'd call that spirituality?
Well, this only demonstrates that you are not familiar with Platonism.
Quoting baker
That's another misunderstanding of yours. Platonism has been taught and practiced as a spiritual system (and even as a religion) from the time of Plato. Perhaps less now than in the past, but it is a system with clear beliefs and practices, not "an individual person picking up a book".
Of course it can be practiced individually by following the texts or in groups with a teacher. There is no need of a "church".
Moreover, even if there were a "Church of Platonism", you would dispute that it is the "right Church", as per your comment below:
Quoting baker
That's your projection.
It's quite ironic that you project this on me, given that you show you clearly don't know the scope of my interest in Buddhism, which I have disclosed at the forums several times. I told you before, I'm not a Buddhist. It's a piece of information that you have so far refused to remember. I'm interested in seeing where the Buddha was wrong, if he was, and for this, I have to, for the sake of the argument, start with some assumptions and see how they hold up.
They must?
If that is true, if there are "many ways to the top of the mountain", then there are certain metaphysical tenets that one would need to hold (to the effect of metareligious egalitarianism, ecumenism). But such tenets are incompatible with actual religions. Because actual religions are exclusive and each of them considers itself to be superior to the others. They may grant that the others have some elements of truth in it, or that the others are a preparatory phase for the right religion, but they do not relativize their own supremacy.
The idea that there are "many ways to the top of the mountain" is an ecumenical artifact, a suprareligion, an imposition on the existing religions, abolishing their relevance with that "must", "If someone is interested in "enlightenment", then they must acknowledge that there are different ways of attaining it."
A bold move, to be sure, but with what guarantee of success?
Quoting Apollodorus
Buddhism is frequently accused of nihilism - by Brahmins and also Christians. But it is not - it defines 'nihilism' as the belief that at death the body returns to the elements, there are no consequences of actions in this life. And Buddhism doesn't accept that.
Quoting baker
Greek philosophy had a profound influence on the formation of early Christian orthodoxy. The Greek-speaking early Christian theologians including Origen and Clement of Alexandria, then later the mysterious figure now referred to as Pseudo-Dionysius, created a synthesis of Neo-Platonist and biblical teachings which laid the groundwork for the classical Christian doctrines. In the 9th century - the 'dark ages' - an obscure scholar from what is now Ireland named John Scottus Eriugena (John the Scot from Ireland) astonished the learned scholars in Paris by completing a translation of Dionysius' works. It was later to have a profound influence on the now-famous Meister Eckhardt. These philosophers and seers were thinkers of great subtlety and depth which now, alas, is almost entirely forgotten in the culture they helped give birth to.
The Platonist side of Christianity is more obviously evident in the Eastern Orthodox Churches, whereas Aquinas absorption of Aristotle gave him a greater prominence in Catholic theology. But Aristotle, despite his differences with his master, was also a Platonist.
Incidentally, regarding belief in re-birth, the Cathars, who were deemed an heretical sect by the medieval Catholic Church and subjected to the most horrific mass murders, believed in reincarnation. That belief is an undercurrent in various, mainly underground, sects and movements in the West. But it was ruthlessly suppressed in the early days of the Church and as a result is largely a cultural taboo in Western discourse. (Actually stumbled on a book about this yesterday.)
Never said I was.
Sure. I thought it was a thing of the past, a "dead religion" as they are called.
If there is no living tradition with unbroken continuation, then your Platonism faces the same type of problem as, say, Celtic revivalism (which we already discussed).
What reason do you have to think that Plato would think you have the right understanding of his teaching?
You gloss over the problem of religious choice and the implications thereof for Christianity and the prospect of eternal damnation.
An ecumenist still believes that he has the superior view.
No, what I said was that I thought your remark about the 'rolling of the dice' in respect of Christianity was arrant nonsense.
Quoting baker
I was born into a Christian culture, although I recall at age about 7 when we were asked at school which Christian denomination I belonged to I wasn't sure. I guessed Church of England but had to ask my parents later. They were religiously non-committed, but I attended a C of E private school and dutifully filed into Chapel for a twice-weekly service. When it came to Confirmation, aged about 13, I decided not to go ahead, which my very non-religious father had no problem with. Personally I was never atheist, and am still not, although my understanding of God is completely different to the way it is generally depicted in atheist polemics.
In my teen years, as I said earlier in this thread, I then became attracted to the kind of pop mysticism that was filling the airwaves in the 1960's. That's what sparked my interest in Buddhism. Over the years, I underwent some genuine conversion experiences to Buddhism. But I don't feel any hostility towards Christianity as a result (although I reject many of the idiotic things that are done and said in the name of Christianity, especially by those on the American right. Nor do I think the Catholic Church deserves any kind of respect for its appalling history of persecution and pedophilia.)
But, that said, Christian Platonism is one of the three forms of philosophy that I admire the most (the other two being Advaita Vedanta and Mah?y?na Buddhism.) Had I encountered someone who really understood and taught that approach in my youth it might have turned out differently. Sometimes I consider whether I ought to return to the Christian faith, but in the end I'm resolute in my conversion to Buddhism. However I don't think it means, therefore, that all other traditions are wrong. There are worthy people and unworthy people inside and outside all those traditions.
You are misunderstanding. I'm not saying there won't be anything in the future, but that when there is something it will be the present. Those who don't feel burdened by ambition must enjoy their striving for its own sake. Nothing wrong with that.
Quoting Wayfarer
Are you claiming there is a totally reliable objective standard of worthiness? If not, then what do you make of the fact that one's spiritual master is another's charlatan?
According to the phenomenologists, the very structure of the present itself is such that it intends, anticipates beyond itself. And the present is the fulfillment of a previous moment’s anticipating beyond itself. So one could say that to be in the moment is to experience a particular degree of intimacy with respect to one’s past and future. For the depressed person the present moment will appear as a disappointment of prior expectations as well as an anticipating of further disappointment.
I have been dissillusioned at times by things that have been discovered about various spiritual teachers, but they're not all tarred with that brush.
As for 'objectivity' as we've discussed there are criteria beyond the objective. Or put another way, what is truly excellent is more than what is just objectively the case. Objectivity is always conditional, if there is a true good, then its goodness is more than simply objective, it's transcendent (i.e. transcends conditions.)
[quote=Neil Ormerod, The Metaphysical Muddle of Lawrence Krauss; https://www.abc.net.au/religion/the-metaphysical-muddle-of-lawrence-krauss-why-science-cant-get-/10100010]That reality is intelligible is the presupposition of all scientific endeavours: that the intelligibility science proposes is always subject to empirical verification means that science never actually explains existence itself but must submit itself to a reality check against the empirical data. This existential gap between scientific hypotheses and empirical verified judgment points to, in philosophical terms, the contingency of existence. There is no automatic leap from hypothesis to reality that can bypass a "reality check."[/quote]
I read that book recently and one of the main reasons he is not a Buddhist seems to be because he dislikes modern Buddhist "exceptionalism"; the idea that Buddhism is superior to other religions insofar as it is believed to not be based on faith, but personal experience and "direct knowing". He rejects these ideas, and says that Buddhism is every bit as much based on faith as other religions.
He also rejects the absolutist notion of enlightenment, and says that it is very much a culturally mediated phenomenon. It seemed to me that his only argument with so-called "secular Buddhism" is that, without those traditional beliefs in karma and rebirth and the the ritual practices that attend those beliefs it cannot be rightly called Buddhism. I don't agree with this attitude, because Buddhism, if nothing else, has been one of the most syncretistic religions. It has adapted to the new cultures it has found itself in, and incorporated the foundational beliefs of those cultures.
You're going off on a tangent it seems. What I mean is whether there are criteria whereby it could be determined that it is in fact the case that a spiritual teacher is worthy or not worthy, or whether it remains a matter of opinion, or faith if you prefer. The "transcendent" tells us nothing.
Quoting Joshs
I agree with that view. The future and the past have no existence (for us at least) except in the present. That is pretty much just what I was trying to say.
And I gave you my answer. But let me put it slightly differently, though the gist of it is the same.
Pa?iccasamupp?da or prat?tyasamutp?da refers to the Buddhist Theory of Origination (or Cause and Effect). Basically, it states that ignorance (avijj?) results in craving (ta?h?), craving results in attachment (up?d?na), attachment in “being” (bhava), and “being” in decay and death (jar?mara?a).
In other words, a chain of cause and effect arising from ignorance and resulting in suffering, that can be broken through knowledge.
In fact, you can collapse it even further and say that ignorance leads to wrong action or “sin” (in the form of wrong acts of volition, cognition, etc.), and wrong action leads to suffering.
Not much different from what other systems teach.
In Platonism, the root ignorance is ignorance of one’s true identity as pure, unconditioned and free intelligence. So it is a matter of correct self-identity.
If, as a result of ignorance, you self-identify with the body-mind compound, you generate mental states and a whole inner world that limits and conditions your intelligence, leading you further and further away from your true self.
You are creating what Plato calls a “clever prison” (Phaedo 82e) made of sense-perceptions, imagination, cravings, attachments, passions, thoughts, etc. In contrast, philosophy (i.e., the quest after true knowledge) sees that the prisoner himself is “the chief assistant in his own imprisonment”:
So I for one see nothing special, unique, or "superior" about Buddhism, though I wouldn't reject it wholesale, either.
However, if we are serious about philosophy in the original Greek sense of "love of, and quest after, truth", then I think we will get there in the end, with or without Buddhism.
That's a very big "if", though, isn't it? Very little is known about Celtic religion and even less about Celtic spirituality.
By the time any records of it appeared, Celtic religion was largely Romanized and later Christianized.
Platonism is a totally different story. We have the original writings of Plato and many other Platonists (Plotinus, Proclus, etc.) from Ancient Greece into the Middle Ages - in the original language.
We also have an abundance of knowledge about the Hellenistic religion on the background of which Platonism thrived for many centuries.
There is Christian, Islamic, and (possibly) Hindu Platonism, again, with an extensive literature.
Last but not least, Platonism has been taught without interruption down to the present. In Greece, for example, it has never "died out".
Moreover, as I said, you don't need a "Church" to follow the teachings of Plato if you so choose. The point is that Platonism is available where there is an interest in it.
Quoting baker
What reason do you have to think that Buddha would think you, a 21st-century Westerner, have the right understanding of his teaching?
In light of the fact that Buddha never wrote anything, you can't even know beyond reasonable doubt what his exact teachings were or, for that matter, that he existed in the first place.
Also, there is no evidence that he was "enlightened". And even if he was, as no one can explain exactly what "Nirvana" is, it's all just speculation if you analyze it objectively.
You were asking as to what criteria to judge a spiritual teacher. I said the criteria are not objective, because what is objective is contingent, and the 'true good' is not contingent.
That made me think of that article I linked to. It provides an analysis of why scientific realism can only ever deal in contingent facts, and the 'anxiety' sorrounding this (c.f. the 'cartesian anxiety'). He brings in Lonergan's analysis:
That 'animal extroversion' refers to what naive and perhaps scientific realism operate in terms of. But, he says,
Thought it might be of interest as you have previously mentioned Lonergan.
There is considerable archeological evidence of the Buddha's life recorded in many languages and scripts, dating back to within a couple of centuries of his death. The oral tradition of course dates back his lifetime. And if you have no understanding of what is meant by 'Nirv??a', then surely it is just a word. The Buddha explained very clearly what Nirv??a/Nibbana is, and many of those around him and his successors realised it. For example there is a voluminous collection of texts, Theragata and Therigata, 'Verses of Elder Bhikkhus' (male and female, respectively) attesting to the reality of nibbana. So the lack of understanding of that is not evidence for anything other than the lack of understanding of it. Surely it is not an objective matter, but as I have been discussing in the post above this one, such matters are not amenable to purely objective analysis.
Pleasure, addiction, what's the difference? Addiction is bad say psychologists, shrinks, and doctors.
It may be argued that a "couple of centuries" is a long time and "oral tradition" is not infallible record.
Quoting Wayfarer
I think that's exactly what Nirvana is to most people.
Quoting Wayfarer
1. I think there is a difference between claiming to have realized something and actually realizing it.
2. By what criteria can we determine that what was "realized" by others is exactly identical to what was realized by Buddha?
3. My point was that there is no evidence that Buddha would think @baker has the right understanding of his teaching any more than that Plato would think Platonists have the right understanding of his teaching.
Otherwise said, if Buddhists can have the "right understanding" of Buddha's teachings, then Platonists can equally have the right understanding of Plato's teachings, Christians can have the right understanding of Jesus' teachings, etc., etc.
There is no logical reason to believe that Buddhists have an exclusive monopoly on the "right understanding" of their founder's teachings.
Exactly, you were born into a Christian culture, and as such, the decision as to which church to prefer was made for you by external circumstances (however little commitment you or your parents might have had).
Other people who contemplate religious conversion are not in such a situation. To someone like me, all Christian denominations seem equally plausible. Choosing among them would be no different than rolling the dice. After that, I can see nothing more than Pascal's Wager.
And like it or not, most of them threaten with eternal damnation.
Prior to the covid situation, I could walk through the city on any given day and in the course of a month be approached by Christian proselytizers of various denominations: Catholics, Protestants, Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, and some others whose names escape me. The essence of their message was always the same: Join our church, do as we say, or burn in hell forever. I would sometimes point out to them that their competitors say the exact same thing, except that they of course advertise their own church to the exclusion of all others. To this, they don't reply, or make some dismissive remark about me, or claim that the others are wrong.
So how am I supposed to know which one to choose??
I asked about being an actual member of an actual Christian congregation and how have you conducted your religious choice because I think you and @Apollodorus are underplaying the importance of actual religious membership, underplaying what it means to actually function as a person of a particular religious denomination.
That's one of the perks of Buddhism: what you're talking about isn't a problem, as long as one is humble enough.
Of course I strive to have the correct understanding of what the Buddha taught, but, as per Buddhist doctrine, one can only know whether one has the correct understanding once one reaches what is called "stream entry". This can be described as a cognitive event at which one realizes that one has the correct understanding. As I have no such realization yet, I know that I don't know.
Sure. But such things are a problem only if one wishes to go to war over religion, or pick fights, or some such.
Buddhism as I understand it is first and foremost discoursive, and as such, tentative; it's not about claims that one is supposed to internalize. This is how it differs from most religions and ideologies.
It's comparable to crossing a frozen lake on ice plates: one accepts the prospect that the ice might not hold one's weight, but one begins walking anyway; one steps on what seems like a strong enough ice plate and from it, leaps onto another one, and so on. If one were to stand still, the plate might not hold and one might sink.
Most religions and ideologies are not like that, and even many, if not most Buddhists, don't approach Buddhism that way either.
From the Kalama Sutta:
[i]"So, as I said, Kalamas: 'Don't go by reports, by legends, by traditions, by scripture, by logical conjecture, by inference, by analogies, by agreement through pondering views, by probability, or by the thought, "This contemplative is our teacher." When you know for yourselves that, "These qualities are unskillful; these qualities are blameworthy; these qualities are criticized by the wise; these qualities, when adopted & carried out, lead to harm & to suffering" — then you should abandon them.' Thus was it said. And in reference to this was it said.
"Now, Kalamas, don't go by reports, by legends, by traditions, by scripture, by logical conjecture, by inference, by analogies, by agreement through pondering views, by probability, or by the thought, 'This contemplative is our teacher.' When you know for yourselves that, 'These qualities are skillful; these qualities are blameless; these qualities are praised by the wise; these qualities, when adopted & carried out, lead to welfare & to happiness' — then you should enter & remain in them.[/i]
Does Platonism have the type of "stream entry clause" mentioned above?
Does it teach that all of one's knowledge (of Platonism) is merely tentative, provisional, until it reaches a critical point from whence on one has realization?
This doesn't follow. What is true about Buddhists has no bearing on what is true about Christians, Platonists, and so on. Unless you think Buddhists are setting the stage for everyone else ...
By this, do you also mean that non-Buddhists can have the right understanding of the Buddha's teachings?
So the "true good" is subjective, meaning it is a matter of opinion? I agree that science can only deal in contingent facts, but I can't see what that fact has to do with what we are discussing. Unless you are wanting to say that there is no fact of the matter as to whether someone is enlightened or not? If that is so, then it would just come down to a matter of opinion, wouldn't it?
The other possibility is that you are saying there is an absolute (non-contingent) fact of the matter as to whether someone is enlightened or not, in which case we are left with the problem as to how that absolute fact, granting that it might be such, could ever be determined by anyone.
It is on account of this problem that I see the question of someone's purported enlightenment to be a matter of faith, even for the one purportedly enlightened, because I think it is fantasy that any mere human could ever be infallible. That is why I deflate the notion of enlightenment from the idea of absolute knowledge to the more modest (and I believe realistic) idea of a liberated disposition. And liberated dispositions comes in degrees.
And what if you believed with all your heart that you had reached "stream entry", but were deluding yourself? The possibility of that cannot be ruled out; which undermines the very notion that anyone could ever be infallibly correct, as opposed to merely subjectively certain, about that. Of course I don't deny that a feeling of absolute certainty might be gratifying enough to satisfy those who possess it; maybe that's all they are looking for.
I actually went to the official phone directory for the country I live in, looked up Platonism, and got no hits. Then I went to the official government website for religious communities here, checked whether it contained any entry that could be associated with Platonism -- none. Like it doesn't exist here. I suppose I could try searching other countries in Europe.
The bottomline is that it doesn't seem like a viable religious option.
This is strange in so many ways. The idea that there can be religiosity without a religious community is problematic in many ways, it deserves its own thread.
Why would religiosity not be possible without a religious community? Religious communities are founded on religiosity that exists prior to their foundation, no? Or?
Also there is philosophy as a transformative practice; which necessitates no formal community, but involves an informal community of inquirers.
I believe that such delusion is not possible.
Eh. For one, the number of people interested in this approach is, I think, very small. I am confident that those who actually do take that route, given how ardous it is, would not make the kind of mistake you talk about. And they would not seek the kind of lowly gratifications you suggest. I know such people, so I know what I'm talking about.
And I suppose you find satisfaction in doubting others the way you do, assuming very bad things about people.
In short, it's like studying a textbook for a foreign language, and then claiming you have mastered the language.
So that's 'the real Christianity' in your mind? A problem with religion (and a lot of other cultural forms), is that it has been packaged and repeated in various formulae for thousands of years, often by proponents with very peculiar ideas of their own, it's been corrupted and perverted and strayed far from its origins. But to me that is not representative. I agree with @Apollodorus, that strictly speaking the admonitions by Christians about hell are warnings more than threats. Besides in traditional Buddhism there are voluminous descriptions of hell realms, in fact in Buddhism there are a number of them.
What I'm trying to do in that analysis is to sketch out the issue in a philosophically consistent way. If everything is merely contingent, then you're sailing pretty close to all-out relativism or nihilism. The question is, what is the ground of values? As you know, Wittgenstein had something to say about that
[quote=TLP, 6.41; https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Tractatus_Logico-Philosophicus/6]The sense of the world must lie outside the world. In the world everything is as it is and happens as it does happen. In it there is no value—and if there were, it would be of no value.
If there is a value which is of value, it must lie outside all happening and being-so. For all happening and being-so is accidental.
What makes it non-accidental cannot lie in the world, for otherwise this would again be accidental.
It must lie outside the world.[/quote]
This is a clear reference to the transcendent source of values. Getting clear about that is what I have in mind. Arriving at a point where you can understand what it means is a large part of philosophy.
Quoting baker
Good for you. I think that in itself is a deluded belief.
Quoting baker
There are people who devote their lives to all kinds of gurus and religious leaders and arduous practices. That you believe the small subset you are familiar with must be the only authentic one says more about you than anything else.
Any such criteria would be liable to the same criticsm you put forth to begin with, because they would be set by a person.
You solve nothing by focusing on the external like that.
And it makes you feel all giddy inside to say this, doesn't it.
Dude, this is a philosophy forum, even if this is a religion thread. Get your thinking straight.
So, you have nothing to say but to speculate about how I, someone you know very little about, feel?
Quoting baker
Now that's a powerful rebuttal! :roll:
That was exactly my point; that there is nothing "external'; nothing publicly shareable, to go by other than the internal, subjective feeling; which cannot be argued for because it is not inter-subjectively assessable.
That's the difference with philosophy; there things can be argued for on the basis of common experience, even if it is not as determinable as empirical science.
*sigh*
It's Christianity as it is real for me. I've always been clear about that.
A problem with religion (and a lot of other cultural forms) is that people tend to invent a lot of politically correct narratives about it, narratives that stray very far from the actual doctrines of religions and from how religions are actually being practiced, on the ground level, as opposed to what things look like in books.
One of the consequences of this political correctness is that such people cannot meet others in their religious quest or help them make sense of it, thus making an often a traumatic experience even worse. It's like when women are told they are "hysterical".
But one isn't promised an eternal stay in them (except in one case, the Mahayana doctrine on inchantikas).
Yes, massa.
If I were to put aside a Euro for every time someone told me or every time I heard or read who I supposedly "really am", I could easily pay for a luxurious dinner.
Few things are as common as people making claims about what "true identity" is.
*shrug*
Buddhism concerns itself with suffering.
I figure the notion is not bound to various explanations of what might be true but asserts that a particular experience reveals the truth.
The problems surrounding such a proposition are many. But the idea itself seems simple enough. The assertion is that one is presented with the truth, and it is readily misunderstood as such.
So, not an argument against a possibility but a problem with possibility as such.
You’ll have to forgive his American slang.
This applies to any other system. Which makes your original question a rhetorical one.
Quoting baker
People, including Buddha, make many claims about many things. Are you going to place a ban on language? Or do you have a problem with identity as you seem to have with spirituality?
Quoting baker
So do other systems.
Quoting baker
I didn't say "must". I said "can", as a logical possibility or probability.
Unless you can show that Buddhists are the only people on the planet who can have "right understanding" .... :smile:
Quoting baker
You keep mentioning religion. This thread is about enlightenment. There is no evidence that enlightenment requires a religion.
And you obviously don’t understand Platonism. Platonism is a fundamentally spiritual system aiming to elevate human consciousness to an experience of unity with Ultimate Reality a.k.a. “the One” (called henosis) - or at any rate to the highest possible level of experience.
This is why Platonism does not depend on any formal religion and can operate within any religious tradition. It was this fact that has enabled many Platonists to attach themselves to Christianity, Islam, and other religions outwardly, whilst inwardly remaining faithful to Platonism.
Similarly, many Christians had the highest regard for Platonism and carefully preserved Plato’s works in monasteries and libraries throughout the Greek-speaking world down to the present.
In the 1400’s the Greek Platonist Gemistus Pletho re-introduced Platonism in Italy. Under his influence, Marsilio Ficino founded a Platonic Academy at Florence.
Gemistus Pletho - Wikipedia
Pletho also founded a center of Platonic scholarship at Mystra in Greece, which was also the seat of the last Byzantine Greek imperial dynasty. This flourished for several centuries, along with other schools of Classical Philosophy across the country that are still in operation today. So there is no question of Platonism “dying out”, certainly not in its country of birth.
Of course, most Platonists today are Christians, especially Greek Orthodox. A Platonist may be officially a Christian, privately a Christian Platonist, and inwardly a Platonist. Some may follow the example of Pletho and openly subscribe to Classical Greek religion. There are many Hellenic groups, in Greece, in any case. Others may follow other traditions, or no tradition at all.
This is entirely consistent with traditional Platonism which prescribes three different, though related, paths to liberation or levels of practice: (1) religious or ritual (theourgia) with emphasis on action, (2) contemplative (theoria) with emphasis on knowledge, and (3) esoteric or initiatory (ta mysteria) with emphasis on will-power.
Moreover, Platonists do not normally call their system "Platonism". The correct designation is "Philosophy in the tradition of Plato" or simply, "Philosophy". "Platonism" has always been taught as "Philosophy" and "Platonist schools" also included other philosophers like Aristotle. When someone studied Philosophy, they studied Plato (and others). In general, Platonism was Philosophy and Philosophy was Platonism.
The same applies even now. There are many philosophy circles or groups all over the world that study the teachings of Plato. But they would typically call it "Classical Philosophy" or just "Philosophy".
In any case, from a Platonic perspective Philosophy transcends religion. If it is religion you are after, then that's what you have to look for ....
Very voluminous. And very detailed. (As can also be found in the Hindu Puranas.) Which could be interpreted by some to mean that Buddha threatens people with hell if they don't do as he says ....
Nicely succinct clarification.
This is an important point. Some modern metaphysics will remove this necessity, that reality is intelligible, to posit a fundamentally unintelligible "chaos" as the first principle. This is the consequence of materialism. Under Aristotelian principles, form is intelligible, matter is not. Giving priority to matter renders reality as fundamentally unintelligible.
The importance is not the question of which perspective is true. It could very well be true that reality is fundamentally unintelligible. However, since we are in a position so as not to know which is true, we must posit that reality is fundamentally intelligible, in order to support the scientific endeavours required to determine which is true. If we take the materialist perspective, and posit that reality is fundamentally unintelligible, there will be no motivation toward determining the true nature of reality, this being designated as impossible. So this perspective, that reality is fundamentally unintelligible, is demonstrably the wrong position to take, regardless of whether or not it is true.
You said:
Quoting Wayfarer
Now assuming you meant something with those words and that they aren't just a routine phrasing, how do _you_ know who is who, namely, who is worthy and who isn't?
If you say there are "worthy people" and "unworthy people", how do _you_ distinguish them? For you must be able to recognize each category and distinguish it from the other, before you can write a sentence like
Quoting Wayfarer
Obviously, "Yes, massa" is the only appropriate reply to being patronized.
"Massa" is black slave speak for "master".
Do provide some reference for this, because I've never seen anything like that anywhere outside of Buddhism.
Normally, religions/philosophies/ideologies present claims. The relative epistemic status that those claims have in one's mind remains the same from the time one first heard the claim to the end of one's life.
Pretending to be obtuse does not suit you.
A Christian tells me that my true identity is A.
A Hindu tells me that my true identity is B.
A Muslim tells me that my true identity is C.
A Platonist tells me that my true identity is D.
A psychologist tells me that my true identity is E.
Tom tells me that my true identity is F.
Janus tells you that you're deluded about what you think your true identity is.
And so on. You see no problem with that?
Having all these numerous claims as to what one's "true identity" is is like having a thousand different answers to "How much is 2 + 2 ?"
I see no reason to think that they can actually facilitate the end of suffering. On the contrary, they're very good at causing more of it.
Now you're being pedantic.
I know a Hare Krishna brahmacari who utters sentences like
"Krishna Consciousness is a fundamentally spiritual system aiming to elevate human consciousness to an experience of Ultimate Reality"
and he also uses terms like "henosis" and "henology".
(Except that the Hare Krishnas believe that desiring to serve God is actually higher than desiring to be one with him.)
Further, many "spiritual" and other systems claim to "elevate human consciousness to the highest possible level of experience". Having heard it so often, from so many different sources, and so many things being claimed as that "highest possible level of experience", I can't really take it seriously anymore.
You folks should get together and decide which one of you really has the keys to the "highest possible level of experience".
Why would a Platonist do such a thing? It's subversive, to say the least.
Another thing common among religious/spiritual people: to claim that theirs is not a religion, but a philosophy, the Truth, the "how things really are" and so on.
Of course. But they are not just social memberships, they are epistemic memberships, being a member of an epistemic community.
In order to know what members know, one has to become a member oneself.
There are knowledges that outsiders, even if they study the insider accounts of insiders, cannot have. Unless they themselves become insiders, members of the specific epistemic community.
Two parallels intersect in infinity ...
Does it help to know the secret handshake?
The standard list is the one with twelve items. I brought up dependent co-arising because you kept talking about consciousness and how after enlightenment, there must exist some other consciousness.
But it looks like you didn't read the list with the twelve items.
No, early Buddhism doesn't think that chain can be broken through merely with knowledge.
Sure, but this is extremely general.
Does any of them teach that "from the remainderless fading & cessation of that very ignorance comes the cessation of fabrications"; and that "from the cessation of fabrications comes the cessation of consciousness"?
If we are "pure, unconditioned and free intelligence", then why are we here in an embodied state, suffering, and not being sure who we are?
But whence ignorance?
Do you mean that enlightenment is inevitable and that everyone is destined for it?
If you yourself don't taste a mango, you'll never have the first-hand knowledge that the epistemic community of mango tasters have.
Yes, I know and was being ironic. I was not patronizing you I was questioning the validity of your statements and asking for arguments to back them up.
They're not easy questions. Some of the teachers I had admired were later caught up in scandals. There's a saying that 'all power corrupts', and that happens inside spiritual movements. The first experience I ever had on an ashram, in my late teens - years later, but not that long after I left, the resident Swami became a perpertrator of horrific sexual abuse against young girls.
Obviously you have to use common sense, observe and do your homework, if there's any question of a 1:1 relationship with a spiritual mentor or guide, as per the Kalama Sutta that you already mentioned.
:up:
Hey, leave qualia out of this... :razz:
This
Quoting Janus
is your projection, entirely of your doing.
I'm not going to defend things you merely imagine I said.
Quoting Janus
Jesus. This is why I hate spirituality. These power games, the accusing of another of stances they don't hold and expecting them to defend them, the misrepresentation, always acting in bad faith, this assuming that the other is an idiot.
You make some bold accusation against me, and then what am I to do? Defend myself? If I explain myself and show where you've misrepresented me, then you've won, you got away with not reading. It's right-winger tactics.
If you do disagree I would like to know precisely what you are disagreeing with and why, otherwise discussion is pointless. All this talk about me feeling this or that, and me projecting this and that is pointless. I'm not interested in that.
There's a well-known Buddhist text call The Questions of King Milinda (Milinda Pañha). It originated within the Greco-Bactrian culture of Alexander the Great - King Milinda is thought to be Menander, an historical figure, although the monk is not known outside this dialogue. It comprises a long question and answer session between the King and a Buddhist monk, Ven. N?gasena.
Part of the text contains the well-known 'analogy of the chariot'. The gist is that the King asks Ven. N?gasena about the Buddhist teaching of anatta (non-self). Addressing the assembly, he says:
The dialogue then proceeds through the physical form of N?gasena and also the list of skandhas (five aggregates), asking of each, is this N?gasena? to which the answer is invariably negative.
This is where the analogy of the chariot is brought in. N?gasena asks the King, did you come here by chariot?
Now, it occurs to me that this interchange, which is taken as conclusive proof of the doctrine on anatta, overlooks something important. At that time in history, a few centuries either side of C.E., the invention of the chariot was a deciding factor in the rise and fall of empires.
[quote=Encyc. Brittanica]The introduction of the horse as a draft animal in about 2000 BC was the final step in the development of the chariot into a military arm that revolutionized warfare in the ancient world by providing armies with unprecedented mobility. Chariotry contributed to the victories, in the 2nd millennium BC, of the Hyksos in Egypt, the Hittites in Anatolia, the Aryans in northern India, and the Mycenaeans in Greece. [/quote]
So, whilst it is trivially true to observe that none of the component parts of a chariot are actually a chariot in themselves, nevertheless the 'idea of a chariot' is something real, and its construction and possession is a real good from the perspective of nation-building. So, 'the idea of a chariot' is what really constitutes 'the chariot', not this or that particular piece of the chariot. Furthermore, even if the particular chariot on which the King arrived was to be destroyed or stolen, then another could be constructed, but only by those who had knowledge of the principles of chariot building.
It seems to me a lot of early Buddhist polemics about non-self are likewise undermined by a naive understanding of what constitutes agency and identity, although I think this is one of the shortcomings that was later overcome by a more sophisticated understanding of ??nyat?.
I think it is the function of the chariot that is constitutive, not merely the idea, but the actuality.
No need for reference. It is part of any learning process. You start by not being sure and then comes a point where you feel you got it right ....
Quoting baker
I don't think I am any more obtuse than yourself.
Quoting baker
"Subversive" of what? Platonism and Greek Orthodox Christianity have always been very close to one another. Many Church Fathers were Platonists. Platonism is part of Greek culture and is widely accepted by philosophically-minded Christians.
Quoting baker
That is your personal opinion.
Quoting baker
Who's being pedantic now? I said "basically". Or "my abbreviation", if you prefer. But you never pay attention.
Quoting baker
They do teach the first. Obviously not the second because "cessation of consciousness" is just nonsense.
Quoting baker
I am not suffering, and not being unsure. Maybe you are. The rest I have already explained.
Quoting baker
Why not? What makes you think that only you can find enlightenment? If souls keep getting reincarnated, it is perfectly possible for each of them eventually to become enlightened.
Quoting baker
If you can't see the difference between philosophy and religion, there is nothing I can do about it.
Quoting baker
That's why I'm saying that you seem to have an identity issue, as you admittedly have with spirituality.
Quoting baker
So what? I know New Agers who think that everything Western is evil ....
Incidentally, the historical origins of the New Age movement can be tracked back to the Theosophical Society and the Fabian Society.
The Theosophical Society was formed in 1875 in New York by Helena (Madame) Blavatsky, a Russian who claimed that she received “secret messages” from “spiritual masters” living in Tibet, in the form of handwritten letters.
The Theosophists’ agenda was to create a new religion based on elements of Platonism, Hinduism, and Buddhism and pass it off as “the true spirituality of mankind”.
The Fabian Society was formed in 1884 in London by members of the Fellowship of the New Life, a group of liberal intellectuals influenced by socialism and Tolstoy.
The Fabian agenda was to “remould” and “reconstruct” Western society by “modifying” culture, for which purpose they used various movements like Theosophy, Freemasonry, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism.
Annie Besant joined the London Fabian Society in 1885. In 1891 she joined the Theosophists and took over their Indian section. She also became president of the Fabian Society of Madras, India. As a leading Theosophist and Fabian, Besant was involved with India’s Nationalist Movement and its anti-European agenda.
In 1907, the London Fabians set up the Fabian Arts Group with the aim of using arts and philosophy for the advancement of Fabianism and bought the influential left-wing magazine The New Age to promote their agenda.
The magazine was bought with cash provided by G B Shaw, a leading member of the Fabian Society and a radical, whose idea of good statesmanship was “to blow every cathedral in the world to pieces with dynamite”. (Shaw was Irish and dynamite was used by the Irish Nationalists, whose movement the Fabians supported, in attacks on the British.)
In 1950, the CIA convened a large gathering of American and European intellectuals in Allied-occupied Berlin, and formed the Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF) to combat communism through culture.
Though the CCF was ultimately controlled by the CIA and funded by Rockefeller and Ford foundations, it was largely run by European operatives of the Fabian Society and their associates, many of whom had been involved in political and psychological war operations during the war.
Though the main CCF objective was directed against communism, the Americans and their left-wing European collaborators also viewed traditional European (and Western) culture as “reactionary” and “resistant to change”. When Stalin died in 1953, the focus shifted to “liberalizing” Western culture itself.
It was this mixture of African American (and later Caribbean) music, anti-imperialism and nationalism (Indian and African), Fabian “New Age”, Theosophy, and Mysticism (Hindu, Buddhist, and Islamic), that was used by the CIA’s Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF) and associated organizations to wage its culture wars on the West. As the CIA also liked to experiment with psychoactive substances, large quantities of cannabis and LSD became an inevitable part of it.
The result was that, whatever may have been its impact on the spread of communism, its main impact was on Western culture. Over time, this snowballed into the current anti-Western culture wars.
‘Rockers and spies’ – how the CIA used culture to shred the iron curtain – The Guardian
When people today use the Crusades as a stick to bash Christianity and Western culture, it is most likely a result of the post-war counterculture movement and has little to do with history. This doesn’t mean that the Crusades never took place. Only that it is not the whole truth and that the popular narrative is a highly politicized and distorted version of events.
True philosophy revolves on examining our beliefs and this includes examining beliefs about historical events. These are just as important as religious beliefs are because they form an important part of who we are, of our sense of self-identity.
Nothing can exist without identity. Buddhism may affirm that there is no self, but even if there is no self in the sense of a conscious soul, there is still a living entity with a personality and a physical and mental identity.
As regards religion, there is no doubt that it answers real psychological and spiritual needs. But this doesn’t mean that it is absolutely necessary, especially in the attainment of enlightenment.
Platonism has a hierarchy of realities and of divine beings, ranging from demi-gods and spirits to the Olympian Gods of traditional Greek tradition, Cosmic Gods, Creator-God, and the Ineffable One.
Accordingly, religion in the Platonic tradition has several levels involving (1) worship and rituals, (2) meditation and contemplation, and (3) direct experience of divinity or reality.
Plato doesn’t say that he attained enlightenment. He studied the various philosophical systems of his time and synthesized what he thought to be the best into one system that enables philosophers to discover the source of all knowledge and all truth by means of mental training, philosophical inquiry, contemplation, and insight.
Platonic philosophers may start at any level of religion or metaphysics or begin at the bottom and work their way up to the highest level.
This means that religion in the conventional sense is not necessary for higher spiritual realization.
The Buddha’s case is an interesting one. According to tradition, he is supposed to have died of food poisoning and to have had a vision of Mara (the Demon of Death) who used his beautiful daughters in an attempt to tempt him away from enlightenment.
Maha-parinibbana Sutta: Last Days of the Buddha
The situation is not entirely clear. What is the source of this story? Did Buddha himself relate this to his followers? Do enlightened people have visions of beautiful women trying to seduce them? Are beautiful women (or women in general) a problem?
An enlightened or “awakened” person is described as one who has “woken up to the true nature of reality and sees the world as it is”. Buddha is also said to have attained the “triple knowledge” consisting of knowledge of past lives, divine vision, and extinction of mental tendencies that bind one to the world.
So Nirvana does not appear to be “complete extinction”. In fact, it seems hard to tell exactly what Buddha ultimately attained, given that the only witness to a person’s liberation is the liberated himself/herself.
In any case, whatever it is that Buddha attained, he seems to have attained it by means of meditation, not by religious practices.
This being the case, perhaps you don't understand Buddhism, after all? :smile:
Correct. This is why, as noted by McEvilley, Vasubandhu introduced the concept of alayavijñana ("store-consciousness"). And if you admit a "store-consciousness" for memory, you might as well admit a Universal Consciousness as Advaita Vedanta and Platonism do.
In other words, consciousness cannot be quite as easily dismissed as some Buddhists would like to think.
I wouldn't be too cynical about that. At the time - late nineteenth century - culture was in a huge ferment, ideas from all over the world were becoming known, the whole world was being changed through the industrial revolution. Their motto was 'no religion higher than truth', and they tried to create a synthesis of these divergent ideas from other cultures. I was amazed to learn that one of the companies I worked for a couple of years back had its headquarters in Theosophy House in the most upmarket sections of Sydney (which is a decidedly up market city.) In the early part of last century they were a big popular movement. (Krishnamurti was supposed to walk on Sydney Harbour, an amphitheatre was built in the plush suburb of Mosman to witness the event - or non-event, as it turned out.)
So - I agree that Blavatsky might have been a charlatan, but I don't know if that is all she was. The Adyar Bookshop was an indispensable resource in my younger days (before the Internet) and I always had a soft spot for Theosophy even knowing they were dotty Victorians. I don't know much about the Fabian Society but they seem a respectable socialist organisation from what I can glean. They're not Q-ANON. I hadn't heard that theory about the CIA and the culture wars, but until I learn more about it, I'd be inclined to take it with a pretty large grain of 'conspiracy theory' salt. Besides, the Guardian article says the aim of the CIA subversion was Communist Russia, not Western culture, so it doesn't even support the point you're making.
Quoting Apollodorus
I think there's a lot of misunderstanding within Buddhism itself about what 'no self' means. It does literally mean 'there is not a self'. When asked if the self exists or does not exist, the Buddha did not respond (maintained a noble silence, in the traditional telling.)
But when asked by on another occasion, “Venerable Gotama, I am one of such a doctrine, of such a view: ‘There is no self-doer, there is no other-doer’ the Buddha rejects such an idea, saying that 'when there is the element of initiating, initiating beings are clearly discerned'. The translator's comment is 'Some people might have expected the Buddha to have approved highly of this naïve negative doctrine (i.e 'no do-er'). The fact that he very succinctly and effectively refutes it is extremely instructive and of great significance for gaining a better understanding of the depth, subtlety, and holism of the Buddha’s actual teaching. Although the Buddha taught that there is no permanent, eternal, immutable, independently-existing core “self” (att?), he also taught that there is “action” or “doing”, and that it is therefore meaningful to speak of one who intends, initiates, sustains and completes actions and deeds, and who is therefore an ethically responsible and culpable being. It should be quite clear from its usage in this sutta, and from the argument of this sutta, that k?ra in atta-k?ra must be an agent noun, “doer, maker”: this is strongly entailed, for example, by the Buddha’s statement: “?rabbhavanto satt? paññ?yanti, aya? satt?na? attak?ro aya? parak?ro”, “initiating beings are clearly discerned: of (such) beings, this is the self-doer, this, the other-doer”
https://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/an/an06/an06.038.niza.html#fn-1
So, nowhere is it said 'there is no self'. It is said all the time that 'nothing is self' (or alternatively that all phenomena are not self, devoid of self.) What is always denied is that there is a self that is 'permanent, eternal, immutable, independently-existing'. There is nothing, according to Buddhism, which answers that description. To anyone who says there is, the response is surely: well, show it to me! And that cannot be done. All that can be pointed to is a belief that there is such permanently existing immutable self.
But there nevertheless is 'a do-er', an agent who performs actions and suffers (or enjoys) the consequences. Hence,
Quoting Apollodorus
The reality of the alayavijnana is not accepted by all Buddhist schools, and even by those that are, its nature is disputed (thus putting the claim that Buddhists don't engage in arcane metaphysical disputes to the sword.)
There's a fascinating stream within Buddhist thought called the tath?gatagarbha, literally the womb or embryo of the Tathagatha (Buddha). It is usually translated as 'Buddha-nature'. The key point is that the Buddha nature is also not conceived as something eternal, immutable and changless. Or rather, you could say it's changeless in the same sense that 'everything changes' is an unchanging principle. It's like a capacity, not like an unchanging entity.
Rather than try and summarise it, here are some sites
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddha-nature
https://buddhanature.tsadra.org/index.php/Main_Page
Quoting Apollodorus
I think the doctrinal foundation is clear. What the Buddha is being 'tempted' by here is non-existence, oblivion. Knowing he is to die a painful death, Mara ('the Devil') whispers to Him saying, 'come on now, we can this over with very easily'. But the Buddha refuses, out of compassion for the Sangha. (On reflection, this of course anticipates the Bodhisattva vow.)
Bear in mind, all of the '64 wrong views' listed in the voluminous Brahmajala Sutta ('Net of Views') come down to one or another version of, either: 'I will be' (eternalism) or 'I will not be' (nihilism.) And at the root of that is always self-concern, even if in very subtle form.
As an old man Gandhi used to lie in bed with naked young women who were decades younger than him. This, apparently was a celibacy test and an attempt to prove he was beyond temptation. Wanker...
Correct. I've read about it. It raised many eyebrows even at the time and there could be more to it than is "officially" acknowledged. But he preached that Western civilization is the "Kingdom of Satan" which made him the hero of the anti-Western Left ....
How would Gandhi’s celibacy tests with naked women be seen today? - The Guardian
An odd kind of piety: The truth about Gandhi’s sex life - The Independent
Sharing a bed with naked teens is perhaps not the biggest problem. A bigger question is the exact nature of the "celibacy test", how it was conducted, and what results it yielded.
Also, how many of those "accidents" occurred?
And why was it necessary to keep repeating the "test" or "experiment"?
The Theosophists were consciously and deliberately concocting a new religion that they claimed to be inspired by "Tibetan Masters" portraits of whom show them as looking anything but Tibetan, with eyes strangely resembling Blavatsky's .... :smile:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theosophy#/media/File:Koothoomi.jpg
Of course, there was some truth in their teachings as they lifted them from existing traditions. So I'm not denying that.
The problem is, few people like to admit that they've been conned.
But the Theosophists weren't the key actors. That was the Fabians. The Fabian Society founded the British Labour Party as well having close links to the Liberal Party and thus dominating the Left (i.e., the intellectual classes) throughout the British Empire.
In 1951, the Fabians and Labour founded the Socialist International through which they set the agenda for the socialist movement across the globe. The fact that they wielded enormous political and cultural influence internationally - by any standard - should not be underestimated.
As I said, the culture war was against communism, but it was mainly directed at communism in the West (the CIA having no access to the Communist Bloc) and promoting "alternative" cultural trends obviously eroded traditional European culture. The way I see it, it would be difficult to argue that jazz, rock, and the rest of the New Age counterculture, especially the Eastern elements, was "Western".
Quoting Wayfarer
Sure. But that still leaves some questions unanswered.
Anyway, the texts assert that the enlightened person sees that his/her consciousness has ceased, etc.
Who sees that? How do they see it? Who reports what they have seen and how?
This only makes sense if (a) the cessation is of a lower form of consciousness, and if (b) a higher form of consciousness persists after enlightenment.
Apparently, Buddhism originally posited two forms of consciousness, prav?ttivijñ?na and manovijñ?na:
1. prav?ttivijñ?na – five sensory faculties
2. manovijñ?na - “common sense” that integrates the activities of the 5 senses
But these were insufficient to explain all acts of cognition, sense of identity, etc. Therefore, the Yogacara School introduced additional forms of consciousness:
3. manasvijñ?na - thought, sense of self
4. ?l?yavijñ?na - store consciousness, subconscious/uncounscious (memory, karmic seeds, etc.)
5. amalavijñ?na - pure consciousness, state of awakening or enlightenment
It can be seen that these correspond to the states I mentioned earlier as found, for example, in Advaita Vedanta:
Waking State - prav?ttivijñ?na, manovijñ?na
Dream State – manasvijñ?na
Deep (Dreamless) Sleep - ?l?yavijñ?na
Fourth State – amalavijñ?na, pure individual consciousness
What is missing is the Universal Consciousness that holds all individual consciousnesses within itself in the same way the store consciousness holds memories and karmic seeds within itself in the case of the individual.
If the individual alone existed, the Fourth State would be final. But since there are many individual consciousnesses having common, integrated experiences, there must be a Universal Consciousness.
Therefore, a fifth and final state is posited:
1. Waking State (j?grat) – sensory perception
2. Dream State (svapna) – thoughts, imagination
3. Deep Sleep (su?upti) - unconscious
4. Fourth State (tur?ya) – pure individual consciousness
5. Beyond Fourth (tur?yat?t?) – Universal Consciousness
This brings Advaita into line with Platonism, with Buddhism lagging behind and some Buddhist schools not coming anywhere near.
Spiritual ignorance consists in lack of awareness of the Fourth and Beyond Fourth States.
In Platonic terms, Deep Sleep or Unconscious is the Dividing Line that separates "life in darkness" (the Cave) from "life in the light" (Sunlit Outside World).
Despite the Dividing Line, the two worlds are not completely separate, though. Some light from the Outside World does penetrate to the Cave and makes knowledge of it a possibility, however difficult to attain.
As for 'new age' beliefs, I think it's unwise to put them all in the same basket. They range from the obviously wacky to the profound. In fact I would include myself among its adherents, although I don't worship dolphins or crystals. I think the ecclesiastical religions, as I said already, had failed in crucial ways although going into why that was, is a huge topic in its own right. Suffice to say they put too much emphasis on believing and not enough on insight. (See Karen Armstrong's Metaphysical Mistake.)
Quoting Apollodorus
I don't think that is ever at issue.
Quoting Apollodorus
[quote=Aggi-Vacchagotta Sutta; https://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/mn/mn.072.than.html]Freed from the classification of consciousness, Vaccha, the Tathagata is deep, boundless, hard to fathom, like the sea. 'Reappears' doesn't apply. 'Does not reappear' doesn't apply. 'Both does & does not reappear' doesn't apply. 'Neither reappears nor does not reappear' doesn't apply."[/quote]
The development of Advaita Vedanta was strongly influenced by Buddhism - Sankara was censured by some other Hindu schools for being too near to Buddhism. There are many resemblances between the early Buddhist texts and the Upani?ads, which formed a part of their shared cultural heritage. Where the Buddha broke from the Brahmins was, first, in the total rejection of all forms of animal sacrifice; in the reliance on rites and rituals as methods of purification; on the birthrights of the Brahmins; and on the authority of the Vedas as the sole source of wisdom. I think the Buddha recognised a unique path and way of liberation. And also that study of the Pali texts reveals a consistency, clarity and unity of understanding that is of a higher order than those found in any of the other ancient literature.
All that said, I believe there is a higher consciousness - that there is a vertical scale as per this well-known diagram:
And if that makes me 'New Age' then so be it.
That's a little gem. I remember discovering Armstrong back when her History of God came out.
She makes a consistent case from the role of compassion in attaining enlightenment - not sure this has come up all that often so far. In her autobiography The Spiral Staircase she writes:
Quoting Karen Armstrong
I read both those books of Armstrong’s. I didn’t much like her book on Buddhism but overall she’s on my favourites list.
I remember I minor epiphany in my youth, crossing the Harbour Bridge on a bus. I suddenly saw that a lot of what bothered me was only me; that everyone else on that bus had exactly the same concerns. And that it really didn’t matter. It was just fleeting, not a big deal, but I remember it being a very liberating moment.
The greatest problem seems to have been materialism. Economic, political and cultural movements that made the promotion of materialism part of their program must have played a role.
Quoting Wayfarer
Different traditions tend to influence one another, especially when they belong to the same geographical and cultural sphere.
Quoting Wayfarer
Buddha is said to have attained liberation through meditation. And he apparently learned meditation from his teachers like ?l?ra K?l?ma.
Whatever it was that Buddha attained - which is difficult to establish with 100% certitude - there were preexisting teachings and practices that seem to have contributed to his attainment.
In the Pali texts, the Buddha always refers to himself in the third person, i.e. as Tathagatha, unless he's talking about his physical self, such as in a text where he reflects on his old age and the state of his body, where he refers to himself as his personal name, Gautama.
But Buddhism also says the Buddha is a type - that the or a Buddha will appear at different times and places in history, for the benefit of humankind, and that they will teach the same tenets. Mah?y?na Buddhism even posits that the Buddha appears on other planets! (Remember that Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake for saying that there were other solar systems.)
Quoting Apollodorus
I've read some of the Catholic critiques of The Enlightenment. They pin it on The Renaissance, where culture became completely human-centric, instead of seeing the human as part of or an expression of a higher order. Of course another massive argument but I think there's an important truth in it.
Science is mistakenly taken by modernity to be omnipotent, literally capable of knowing anything, or at any rate, of anything that is worth understanding. But science relies on a stance, an attitude, a way-of-being in the world, which is inherently situational in some fundamental sense. Scientific method starts by omitting or bracketing out what is not relevant to understanding a specific question, but then it forgets that it has done that as a first step and tries to turn it into a metaphysic in its own right. This is where science becomes scientism. That's the thrust of one of the OP's on my profile, about Habermas' reassessment of the shortcomings in secular culture:
The diagram is probably not far from the truth. As I said, there is some truth even in New Age .... :smile:
That’s why we need to make use of our power of discrimination (diakrisis) to separate the grain from the chaff (Plat.Soph.226b-c).
While the young women were there, or after they left?
And always I suppose?
Yes, and it also reminds me of Pyrrhonism, because we, absent one or another set of groundless assumptions, have no good reason to believe either that there is an afterlife or that there is not an afterlife. I think people mostly cling to one or another belief in order to justify their ethical stances or mollify their fears. Most of the people I've met who oppose any belief in an afterlife with a belief in no afterlife are those who have had a strict Catholic upbringing, and were, in their phase as believers, terrified of the idea of eternal damnation (can't for the life of me understand why :roll: )
On the other hand most of the people I have known who believed in an afterlife have been unreflective, complacent Christians who simply assume they're going to heaven, New Agers who believe everyone lives many lives which are constantly improving, and/or people who have seemed to me to be quite obsessed with the idea that their lives must have some (ever) lasting value or else life is utterly meaningless. I think of this last as a cult of the self; a kind of narcissism.
Salvation is not to be found in an afterlife, but must be found, if at all, in this life, and belief in an afterlife or lack of an afterlife would seem to be a hindrance to ataraxia, a state of mind which would more likely come with a wholeheartedly lived suspension of judgement. Also note that lack of belief in an afterlife is not (necessarily) belief in a lack of afterlife.
It is axiomatic in Buddhism that regardless of your beliefs, actions will reap consequences either in this life or some other. Belief that at death the body returns to the elements and that there are no further consequences of actions is classified as nihilism. I recognise that this is a major stumbling block for secular adherents of Buddhism, in fact it's the watershed issue that divides secular and traditional Buddhism. I do think it's true that salvation must be found in human life, but it seems to me that is found by very few in any given life. If by 'salvation' you mean realising the state of 'Samm?sambodhi', perfect enlightenment, then sadly I am of the view that neither you nor I nor anyone else I know will realise such a state in this life.
I've noticed a book by Sam Bercholz, who was the founder of Shambhala Books, the largest US publisher of Buddhist books. 'Sam Bercholz was devoting himself to teaching Buddhism after retiring from his successful publishing company, when suddenly he was blindsided by a heart attack. As he succumbed to clinical death in the hospital, he found himself entering a classic near-death experience--but the last place he expected to end up was Buddhist hell.' Scary idea, but I have to say I'm inclined to believe it.
Fixed.
Since the idea of Karma was an almost universal belief in India at the time of Gotama, does not entail that it should be "axiomatic" to Buddhism. It is not axiomatic to secular Buddhism, and I think the judgement that secular Buddhism is not "really" Buddhism is an example of the 'no true Scotsman" fallacy.
I have never seen any good argument for thinking that belief in karma is essential to Buddhist practice. Why would it be essential to the practice of zazen, for example?
If you want to learn a practice, any practice: art, music, literature and so on, guidance from those more experienced is, if not essential, at least an advantage. I see no reason why it should be any different with practices designed to transform consciousness and the self.
Although it seems to me that there must be a time when something which calls itself X may not actually be X. It just depends on how we decide where the line between authenticity and dissimilarity lies. How do you know when something which calls itself Buddhist or Christian is no longer one of these? Or is it the case that the name applied is all which matters?
The difference, in a word, is religion. The purpose of religion is not to produce graduates but to bind communities. Graduates or 'free' individuals may not be as inclined to move with the herd. If a religion like Buddhism were actually interested in 'transforming consciousness and the self', wouldn't it do a better job of it after over two thousand years???
How come noone wonders what happened to those women afterwards? By Hindu standards, they would not be eligible for marriage anymore, and their only choices for a livelihood afterwards would be begging or prostitution.
I think that if one feels the need to test oneself as to whether one can resist a certain temptation, then this already is a sure sign that one cannot resist it. Such "testing" is simply another excuse to yield to it.
Other than that, we're talking about Indians, Hindus. It wouldn't be a surprise to find that more men did such things, or worse. This is a culture that expects a newly widdowed woman to commit suicide by throwing herself into the funeral pyre of her husband (if she doesn't, she apparently didn't really love him).
ISKCON's founder, Srila Prabhupada, married a woman he specifically did not like, on the conviction that this would help him curb his sexual desire. And then he blamed her for the failed marriage.
Overcoming sensual desire also means that one can be a better servant to God (or, even better, a servant of a servant of God). Because acting on lust means that one is trying to enjoy separately from God, which brings one away from God, and thus into misery.
Servitude to God is something Hindus have literally written into their names. The element "das" (for men) and "dasi" (for women) means 'servant'. So Mohandas Gandhi was a servant of Mohan, Mohan is one of the names for God.
You don't say!
Manly pride? Interesting. I note that celibacy is often used throughout religious and mystical traditions as evidence of serious spiritual devotion. I also note that the great Catholic mystic and putative hermit, Thomas Merton had a girlfriend - is this evidence of hypocrisy, or a man leaving the church and seeking union with the female principle?
The Early Buddhist doctrine of anatta is about what is fit to be regarded as self and what is not fit to be regarded as self. Things that are subject to aging, illness, and death are not fit to be regarded as self.
So far, the EB anatta doctrine is actually in accord with various attavada doctrines. Where I think it differs from them is that it assigns to those attavada doctrines also the status of being subject to aging, illness, and death, in the sense that doctrines, consisting of ideas are subject to conception, deterioration, and cessation, they come and go.
In one's unenlightened state, whatever one would conceive as self would necessarily be subject to aging, illness, and death, it would be a proliferation, papanca, simply on account of it being an idea. As such, not fit to be regarded as self.
Part of the problem with the "there is no self, ever, in any way" type of anatta doctrine (which is by now the dominant anatta doctrine in Buddhism) is that it's due to theoretical efforts to construct a coherent Buddhist doctrine, based primarily on the suttas. The Abhidharma tries to summarize the suttas into a coherent system. For this purpose, it sometimes has to fill in what seems like blanks, but this way, inadvertedly, creates a doctrine that is in discord with the suttas.
In contrast, an assumption that one can find among Suttavadis is that the Path was never intended to be approached in a wholesale doctrinal manner (by first theoretically working out the entire system in the abstract), but in small steps, according to the person's actual attainment at any given point in time.
Just read over these two suttas:
https://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/an/an05/an05.075.than.html
https://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/an/an05/an05.076.than.html
I always laugh at the imagery.
See the above suttas.
Although in Merton's defense: Attempting celibacy with nothing else as a foundation for it but Catholic doctrine is a demanding task. Those with a Dharmic foundation have a better chance at it.
It's a big 'yuk!' from me.
The issue isn't even about qualia. It's about interpersonal verifiability among epistemic peers within a specialized field of knowledge.
For example, a doctor with proper training can discern, simply with the use of a stethoscope, the various sounds that the human heart makes and is able to asses whether the heart is healthy or not. Other doctors with such training can also discern and evaluate those sounds. They can also recognize whether a particular other doctor has discerned the sounds correctly or not. In contrast, people who are not thusly trained are unable to discern those sounds or recognize whether another person can discern them or not.
I contend that such interpersonal verifiability among epistemic peers within a specialized field of knowledge applies also to religion/spirituality. While @Janus thinks that I am deluded to think this way. Perhaps he thinks this way also about doctors, engineers, musicians, atheletes, anyone who has expertise in a specialized field of knowledge ...
One still needs to earn a living, ensure one's place in the world, fight the struggle for survival, for status, for respect.
So those things that "bother one" are a big deal, they do matter, even if everyone has them.
Generally agree with you. I hadn't known of the connection between the chariot analogy in the Upani?ad and Plato's Phaedrus, although I should have realised there would be a connection. @Apollodorus might find that of interest.
Quoting baker
Agree with this also. I have previously put it in terms of 'domains of discourse' within which such interpersonal validation exists. But most people here think that science is the only proper method of peer validation of anything considered knowledge.
Quoting baker
Of course. The realisation was about my attachment to my own emotional states and other such ephemera, which I saw through at that moment. Not that I was forever relieved of self-concern, but it was a momentary, but real, insight into what it meant. 'My life has been a whole series of crises, none of which ever occurred.'
Why not? But it does sound like the idea that all forms of knowledge are ultimately grounded on lived experience and intersubjective agreement that phenomenology talks about.
The manner in which you're conducting this discussion is part of the discussion.
Religion, as it understands itself, has multiple purposes. Salvation, however variously conceived, is probably the most primary. The binding of communities it simply a natural outcome of the like-mindedness that attends religious conversion.
How would you know about the transformation of consciousness or lack of it that has occurred over the millennia?
I guess that's always a subjective judgement call. Could there be a fact of the matter?
I read the wiki page, of course. :brow:
I haven't seen any explanation as to how their could be determinable inter-subjective confirmation re religious experience, or any other kind of subjective experience and judgement (aesthetics). In the sciences there are theories that generate predictions and observations which make those predictions, if confirmed, seem more likely to confirm the soundness of the theories that produced them. But this doesn't constitute any kind of absolute certainty. I don't see why it should be thought that there could be more certainty with religion/ spirituality; if anything for the reasons I go into below, I think it should be thought that there must be less certainty in this domain. If you have an argument I'm ready to listen to it.
In regard to everyday observations of the world it is easy to check if everybody is observing the same thing. We all see the sun come up, the rain fall, the traffic streaming on the roads, the people in the streets, and so on. So, there is far more certainty in this domain of visual perception than in either science or religion. Although that said science (and religion and everything we do) relies on this confirmably shared visual field in order to even get off the ground. Religious experience, since the experiences in question are not directly publicly shareable, but can only be described, is not directly determinable as to its veracity or level of "spirituality" or whatever you want to call it. But as I said, if you have an alternative argument or explanation, please present it.
Nonsense. Most of the women he slept with were already married.
Eighteen-year-old Abha was married to Gandhi's grandnephew Kanu Gandhi.
Gandhi told women at the ashram not to sleep with their husbands (unless they wanted to have a child) or even share a bed with them as a sign of "devotion to their guru”, but asked them to sleep/share the bed with him.
That was the point his critics were making.
Manu continued writing books and delivering talks on Gandhi.
Abha carried on her life with her husband.
Sushila Nayar, Gandhi’s personal doctor, became a health minister in the Nehru government and a writer.
None of them became “beggars or prostitutes” or had that as "their only choice"!
The Chariot Analogy was one of the points I made a few months ago:
Quoting Apollodorus
Unfortunately, we can't tell if there is a connection in this particular case. Greeks and Persians are mentioned in the Mahabharata and other Hindu scriptures. So if there was any influence it could have come from either direction.
Having said that, chariots, by definition, are associated with control as anyone familiar with horses knows. Control over senses and mind is also common to all advanced cultures.
So it looks like it must remain a mystery for now ....
So you’re an enlightenment denier?
BTW, I looked at the wiki page you linked and it deals with the sense of 'enlightenment' which is not under discussion so, unimpeachable as it might be in its domain; it is irrelevant here.
Quoting baker
And the manner in which you, etc....no shit!
Glad we agree. :up:
Quoting Wayfarer
The Fabians certainly dominated culture and education as this is what they had set out to do from the start.
They founded educational and research institutions like the Royal Economic Society, London School of Economics and Political Science, Imperial College London, National Institute of Economic and Social Research, etc.
They established or took over education authorities like the London School Board and London County Council, responsible for elementary and secondary schools, in addition to the Technical Instruction Committee and the Public Control Committee.
They created professorships, teachers’ and students’ unions like the National Union of Students, the Universities Socialist Federation, and Fabian University Societies in every single university across the country.
Fabians were on the boards of all key cultural institutions like the Royal Society of Arts, Society of Authors, Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, League of Dramatists, etc.
Fabians also founded other influential organizations like the Christian Book Club and the Left Book Club which ran summer schools and seminars, and the propaganda outfit Socialist Propaganda Committee to propagate their views.
The Fabians founded the British Labour Party which they have controlled ever since with Fabians serving as Party leaders and Prime Ministers. By the 1940’s, the Fabian Society had a membership of several thousand, Labour had more than 400,000 members, and all Labour (and some Tory and Liberal) members of parliament were members of the Fabian Society, i.e., they dominated parliament.
In 1940 Labour formed a coalition government with Churchill’s Tories which enabled it to build a solid power structure for itself (and for the Fabian Society).
In 1945 Labour came to power, which means that the Fabians now ruled not only the United Kingdom but the whole British Empire with a total population of more than 400 million.
During the war, thousands of leading European intellectuals and politicians had fled to London where they were led, organized, funded, and indoctrinated by the Fabians and Labour.
In 1951, the Fabian Society together with Labour (which now had about one million members) founded the Socialist International, a worldwide association of socialist parties. With Labour Party General Secretary and leading Fabian Morgan Phillips acting as chairman of the International, and funding provided by Labour and the Fabian Society, the International greatly amplified the Fabians’ already extensive influence in Europe and elsewhere.
In August 1949, a group of “former communists” met in Frankfurt, Germany, to develop a plan where the CIA could be persuaded to fund a left-wing but anti-communist organization. This plan was then passed onto Michael Josselson, who was chief of CIA’s Berlin station for Covert Action.
Congress for Cultural Freedom – Spartacus Educational
When the CIA founded the Congress for Cultural Freedom (CFF) in 1950, it put Josselson in charge of its European operations. Josselson hired a team of intellectuals, including Fabians like Bertrand Russell and Arthur Koestler. Fabians were also heavily represented at CFF congresses.
For example, at the 1955 CFF congress in Milan, Italy, there were nineteen British delegates, most of them with key positions in the Fabian Society and the Labour Party, such as Hugh Gaitskell (who became party leader later that year), C.A.R. Crosland, Richard Crossman, Denis Healey, and Roy Jenkins.
The CIA also funded influential magazines in a number of countries, such as Partisan Review (USA), Encounter (England), Preuves (France), Tempo Presente (Italy), Cuadernos (Spain), Quest (India), and Quadrant (Australia) which, together with other publications, promoted various shades of “liberal anticommunism”, i.e., Fabianism.
Regarding the CFF the Wikipedia (quoting historian Frances Stonor Saunders) says:
Congress for Cultural Freedom - Wikipedia
There were many other organizations involved, like National Committee for a Free Europe and European Youth outfits.
The same people became leading figures in subsequent cultural and youth movements like England’s and Europe’s “cultural diversity” a.k.a. “multiculturalism” movement of the 1960’s and 70’s, with former Fabian Society chairman Roy Jenkins, a multiculturalism leader, becoming President of the European Commission (the body that runs the European Union) in 1977.
So to believe that the Fabians had no influence or had nothing to do with anything is not entirely correct. Of course it can be argued that these cultural trends were already underway. But they were not independent of trend-setting individuals and organizations. The involvement of intelligence services meant that Western governments were now involved in giving shape and direction to a worldwide movement that was to have wide implications for the Western world.
Though the New Age movement was a mass movement, it was not a movement of the people, but a middle- and upper-middle-class movement led by individuals and groups (“subcultural or countercultural pioneers”) with a subversive political agenda. There is no doubt that Anglo-American culture and language were dominant, and the Fabians were the leading vanguard that provided the anti-establishment, anti-tradition, and anti-Western narrative and ideology that facilitated the propagation of the countercultural tendency.
And it was not just Blavatsky’s Theosophists, there were many other self-appointed, i.e., fake “gurus” like Ram Dass, Osho, Sathya Sai Baba, Idries Shah, etc. many of whom liked to experiment with psychedelic drugs as a “shortcut to enlightenment” ….
New Age Gurus: Dispensers of Nonsense – Psychology Today
As I said, there may have been some truth in the New Age movement, but a lot of it was unnecessary and destructive nonsense. The way I see it, if there is anything “wrong” with Western religion and culture, then it should be reformed and improved, not wholesale replaced with something else. Even if it were to be replaced, it should be replaced by consensus, not forced on us by self-appointed elites.
In any case, what we increasingly see with the relentless spread of Anglo-American language and culture is not spirituality, or even Theosophy, but the anticulture of guns, drugs, and other antisocial trends.
On the Fabians see:
Patricia Pugh, Educate, Agitate, Organize: 100 Years of Fabian Socialism
Ettore Costa, The Labour Party, Denis Healey and the International Socialist Movement
Quoting Wayfarer
This can be deceptive, though.
I think it takes more than just neatly formulating your philosophical propositions. Buddhism did receive quite a bit of criticism from other systems, such as Advaita, and from the Bhakti movement that was quite popular.
This tends to show that not everyone was convinced. And, at the end of the day, Buddhism became a small minority in India and has remained that way ever since. It appears to have largely thrived where no serious competition from rival systems existed.
The idea that “Dharmic” systems are in any way “superior” in this (or any other) respect seems unfounded to say the least.
The “Dharmic foundation” didn’t work in Gandhi’s case. And if it didn’t work for Gandhi, I don’t see why others would stand a better chance.
I think people either are made for spiritual life or they are not. If they aren’t, then no amount of suppression is going to work.
What tends to happen is that some Westerners are motivated by a certain inferiority complex to have blind faith in everything Indian (or "Eastern"). Unsurprisingly, some Indians start to believe in their own superiority and play the role of “gurus” to confused and gullible Westerners.
The truth of the matter is that for a long time India’s female population has been declining, leaving more than 3o million men (!) without a chance of finding a partner. This has resulted in rising numbers of Indian men joining religious movements and becoming “celibate monks”, and has given the false impression of India being “more spiritual” than Western countries.
List of states and union territories of India by sex ratio – Wikipedia
This explains the rise in fake "spirituality", Hindu nationalism, male aggression, religious violence, violence against women and other negative trends seen in Indian society.
Interestingly, similar trends can be seen in other repressive societies like Muslim countries and China.
Along with reactionary politics, political and economic corruption, environmental destruction, and utter ignorance of any form of spiritual insight or philosophical depth.
I don't agree with your analysis of new age nor with your peremptory dismissal of Pali Buddhism, but thanks for the taking the time.
Correct. The negative effects of any cultural and political trends, whatever they may be, should not be ignored.
Regarding the Fabians, they had close links to the British Colonies from the start, Fabian founders Sidney Webb and Sydney Olivier being employees of the Colonial Office.
Being increasingly active in parts of the Empire with large populations like Africa and India, and pursuing an overarching geostrategic agenda, they gradually sided with the non-Western world.
Originally “enlightened imperialists”, the Fabians progressed to self-rule and then independence for the Colonies, supporting even violent pro-independence movements, and from there they developed an anti-imperialist and anti-Western ideology.
Olivier became Secretary of State for India in the 1920’s and Webb became Secretary of State for the Colonies a few years later, positions they used to consolidate Fabian power structures in the Colonies.
Another early member of the London Fabian Society was Annie Besant. As she was scouting for new ways of promoting Fabianism, she discovered Blavatsky whom she befriended and proceeded to divert the Theosophy movement in a Fabian direction.
She became president of the Theosophic Society, president of the Fabian Society of Madras (the main Fabian branch in India that was conveniently located not far from the Theosophical Society headquarters at Adyar), president of the Indian National Congress, and one of the key instigators of India’s anti-Western movement.
The reason why the Fabians promoted an “alternative” religion like Theosophy in India was that they wanted to Fabianize the subcontinent by transforming it from a traditional society into a Theosophized one, with leading Indians being invited to join.
In fact, some Indians were systematically groomed by Besant and other Fabians to become leaders of the new Fabian-controlled Theosophy cult – and India’s future leaders.
Of course, honest Indians like Krishnamurti, for example, saw through the Fabians’ machinations and distanced themselves from Theosophy which all intelligent and educated Indians identified as a scam.
Gandhi himself joined the Fabian Society in 1920 together with Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan, and became a leader of India’s independence movement.
When India became independent in 1947, it did so under a Fabian-controlled Labour government, it was a Fabian Socialist republic with thoroughly Fabianized Nehru as Prime Minister, and a constitution written by Ambedkar, an alumnus of the Fabians’ London School of Economics.
If an organization has members with even a fraction of the influence and power of Gandhi, Jinnah, and a few others, it cannot be said to be without influence and power.
Of course, many Indians disapproved of Fabianism. Over the following half century Hindu nationalists gradually infiltrated and eventually took over the Fabians’ power structure, dislodged the Fabianized Indian National Congress from power, and placed their own people, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in government. They are now Hinduizing and Indianizing not only India but the West.
But what I’m saying is that the way I see it, philosophy is about looking beyond appearances. Gandhi’s example is a perfect illustration of why we shouldn’t take every popular narrative at face value.
In any case, the New Age movement needs to be looked at from different angles, not just from that of starry-eyed New Agers (no offense intended). And the same applies to Buddhism (or the Western interpretations of it).
Krishnamurti's rejection of Theosophy (and his eventual if partial rapprochment with it at the end of his life) is well-documented, but I really know how much Fabian Socialism had to do with it. From Krishnamurti's public and often-repeated statements he rejected every form of cultism and indeed every formal religion. Most of what I know about Theosophy was because I became captivated by Krishnamurti's books in my mid-twenties. I still think a great deal of him, in some ways his teaching has become part of my outlook on life. As I said, I recognise that the founders were highly eccentric in some ways, but I'm not going to demonise them either. They're one amongst a myriad of influences on culture, and overall I think they're among the more wholesome.
As for looking at Buddhism from different angles, of course I agree that a critical attitude must be taken. I'm not wanting to convert anyone to Buddhism.But what I said, and I believe, is that the attitude and principles expressed in the Pali Buddhist texts show great insight, depth, and consistency. It is not the amalgamation, not to say mish-mash, the comprises many of the seminal texts of many other traditions. And that is because the culture of ancient India was of such a nature that the Buddha was able to live and teach for 45 years, without being interupted by politics or war or religious conflict. I note how many of the dialogues start with 'Such and such approaches the Buddha and paid respects to him, then sat to one side and asked questions'. Many of the Suttas are like that. Many others are obviously exhortations to the monastic community. At times the Buddha can appear angry, especially with those whom he says deliberately misrepresent his teaching. But overall the entire corpus is a model of clarity and peaceful discourse with great philosophical depth. I acknowledge I've only scratched the surface and that it is unrealistic to expect to assimilate the wisdom of that ancient tradition without becoming deeply engaged with it, and that it might not even be practical or possible to do that. I've already mentioned Evan Thompson's book, Why I'm not a Buddhist, and I get it. But that's how I see it, and I intend to try to keep deepening my understanding and practice, whether I 'really am' a Buddhist or not.
As for India, I don't have too many illusions about that either. I've only visited once, aged 12, we disembarked an Australia-bound passenger ship for a bus tour of Bombay. Really it felt like I'd landed on another planet! Of course the filth, squalor and poverty of India are absolutely shocking when seen for the first time, and I have no desire to return. We then stopped by Kandy, and did bus tour there too. I thought the plaster Buddhist sculptures vulgar, but I must have been impressed by the monks, because about ten years ago I was looking at slides and saw a picture of a group of monks that my Dad had taken. It jolted a memory in me of my first contact with Buddhism.
In any case, 'the Orient' is not a physical place or country or location. I recall in my teens, being in a backyard in Sydney, and I suddenly had an acute and overwhelming sense of the presence of India - the Orient - just over the horizon, as it were. There was a kind of inner shift associated with that.
One of the books that influenced me in comparative religion was by sociologist Peter Berger, called 'the Heretical Imperative'. Very insightful. He says that 'heresy' literally means 'making a choice' (as distinct from simply accepting the teaching as received.) But, he says in our day and age we're required to decide. We don't live in a monoculture. And he says one of the primary choices is Athens or Benares. You would have to read it to get all the argument, but I found it very meaningful.
I don’t think I am demonizing the Fabians, actually. I just think they’ve had much more influence on events than is generally assumed (in fact, most people have never even heard of them). And they certainly weren’t highly regarded by ordinary people, though they did appeal to liberal intellectuals like themselves – which is not surprising considering that they had been educated in schools founded and run by Fabians!
Of course I’m not saying that the Fabians are (or were) all and everything. I have given them as an illustrative example, the main point I was trying to make being that not everything is what it appears to be.
Ignorant and gullible hippies and others in the 60’s may have thought of Theosophy as some new dispensation sent from heaven for the “new age of enlightenment”, but if you take a minute to look behind the façade, you will find some disturbing facts which it would be unreasonable to ignore. In fact, most thinking people would certainly not ignore them if they were aware of them.
I haven’t read much by Krishnamurti, but just reading a few pages is enough to see that he was an intelligent guy who took philosophy seriously. Unfortunately, you also see the Theosophic influence (under which he had fallen at the age of 14) which makes you suspect that he could have become a truly outstanding thinker, had he been raised by authentic Indian philosophers instead of Western charlatans with a subversive agenda.
As regards Buddhism, I am not dismissing it at all. My main criticism was directed at the idealized and exaggerated view of it apparently taken by some Westerners.
I don’t think the style of Buddhist suttas is necessarily a reliable criterion by which to judge spiritual attainment. A piece of poetry can convey as much truth as a mathematical formula. Human intelligence is perfectly capable of detecting and responding to truth no matter how it is presented. Rigid, formulaic expressions may actually be just another type of conditioning.
If someone insists that there are exactly twelve links (nid?nas) in the chain of causation and not five or three, for example, then I think this is more dogma than spirituality. Endless, mechanic repetition of suttas can have the opposite effect to the one intended. Meditation on just one verse serves the purpose of providing a counterbalance.
Meditation is definitely one of the positive points about Buddhism. The fact that meditation and contemplation are prescribed by all major systems, Eastern and Western, suggests that meditation may indeed be the path (or at least one path) to enlightenment.
As I said before, we cannot tell with 100% certainty what Buddha attained. But whatever it was that he attained, it is said to have been attained through meditation.
Another interesting point is the belief that Buddha defeated Mara or Death.
The theme of overcoming death and attaining immortality and “divinity” (i.e., a higher mode of experience or plane of existence) is common to many systems, including Western ones like Platonism and Christianity.
Christian texts may not speak of “Nirvana” but conquering death and attaining eternal life is absolutely central to Christianity.
The victory of life over death is the victory of light over darkness and of knowledge over ignorance.
This is what Christians celebrate every Easter.
The NT says:
The Greek word used is Hades, which is not “hell” but the Underworld as the Kingdom of Death (or “Mara” in Buddhist terms).
In other words, Death will not prevail against those who walk in the Way of Christ.
Incidentally, the NT nowhere calls the Way of Christ “Christianity” but “the Way of God” (Mat.22:16), “the Way of Truth” (2 Peter 2:2), and “the Way of Righteousness” (Mat. 21:32).
Christ, according to the NT, is “the Truth”, “the Light of the World”, and “the Word of God”, i.e., the Light of Divine Truth that reveals the Way of Righteousness to mankind.
The Way of Righteousness (analogous to Indian Dharma) is the observance of the Twelve Commandments, i.e., the Decalogue - to not worship other Gods, not make idols, or commit blasphemy, murder, adultery, theft, false witness, not covet the neighbor’s house, wife, or other belongings, but to observe the holy day, and respect one’s parents - and the Two Great Commandments, (1) “to love God” and (2)” to love your neighbor as you love yourself” (cf. Mat.19:16-19).
The culmination of the Way of Righteousness is renunciation. The righteous must renounce all attachment to earthly life in order to attain eternal life, just as Christ laid down his own life in order to conquer Death.
So we can see that Christ conquered Death and attained eternal life, and his teachings enable his followers to do the same. Which means that the "Way of Christ" is in no way inferior to the "Way of Buddha".
And of course meditation is as much part of Christianity as it is of Buddhism. As it has been said:
In other words, God, who is the Light of Truth, is to be found within us, through mental transformation, prayer, and meditation (Romans 12:1-2; 1 Corinthians 7:5; Acts 6:4; Matthew 6:9–13).
Similarly, Platonism teaches us how to attain the Source of Knowledge and Truth through the cultivation of virtues, mental training, introspection, and contemplation.
This shows that Buddhism is not necessarily “superior” to Western systems. When Westerners uncritically turn to Eastern systems, they often do so out of ignorance of their own tradition. And acting out of ignorance does not seem to be a good start. Ignorance can cause us to fall into all kinds of traps.
I certainly don’t buy into some people’s apparent belief that “my enlightenment is better than your enlightenment”. :smile:
And I agree that the true “East” (or "Orient") is not a geographical location but the place deep within us, in our own consciousness, where the light of Reality shines on us and enables us to see things as they are.
And if we see the "machinations of Mara", we should also see the machinations of others, whoever and wherever they may be ....
Thought is always 'of the order of time', in Krishnamurti's talks. Thought is matter - but is there a state so 'completely quiet' that thought is in abeyance? 'Find that out', he says. I think this is a reference to samadhi - there's a stage in meditation, called 'nirvikalpa samadhi' - 'nirvikalpa' means 'the negation of mental formations'. But if you put that to him he would of course reject it, probably because you'd read the word somewhere and thought you knew what it means. If you just repeat the term, he says, you're not seeing the meaning. And about 99% of all 'spiritual teaching' is like that.
Quoting Apollodorus
It's not style, it's the content, the meaning. I think you're evaluating it based on it being 'Buddhism' as distinct from 'Christianity' as distinct from Platonism, etc. It's viewing it as symbolic of one or another set of symbolic values which can be compared. But Buddhism is really about teaching you to 'deconstruct' the cognitive-affective-emotional complexes that bind us, dissolving our illusory ideas of ourselves. It's very close in meaning to Krishnamurti although as said, Krishnamurti always rejected such comparisons.
The meaning of the 'parable of the raft' in the Buddhist suttas - that the teachings are 'a raft to cross the river' but are to be ultimately left behind, and not to be clung to (or idolised which is ironic, considering how much idolisation there is in Buddhism.)
That was exactly what I meant, Philosophy in the original Greek sense of love of and quest after wisdom or truth.
Of course Krishnamurti eventually freed himself from Theosophic doctrine, which only demonstrates the fraudulence of the Theosophy project.
But in the early years he wrote (or was made to write) stuff like:
These are not the words of an Indian Jñ?ni (he says so himself!), they are the words of an English-educated or -indoctrinated Indian. You can almost hear Blavatsky or Besant speaking through him. :smile:
If we look through the smokescreen of New Age mythology and propaganda, I think the reality is that the whole thing started as a British operation that combined Freemasonry, Unitarianism, Occultism, and Spiritualism in order to reform Hinduism and Islam and harmonize them with Christianity by creating a universalist cult that would take the sting out of interreligious tensions (between Christianity, Hinduism, and Islam) that were on the rise across India.
Theosophy was essentially Reformed Hinduism (or Neo-Hinduism) that appealed to Indians by telling them that India was “the original source of all wisdom traditions”, whilst also appealing to Europeans with its belief in a “Great White Brotherhood of Enlightened Masters (Mahatmas)” who allegedly directed mankind from a secret location in the Himalayas or Tibet.
We can see the contradiction here that gives away the intention behind the narrative: India was "the source of all wisdom", but the "Masters" of this wisdom were White men conveniently ensconced in out-of reach parts of the Himalayas!
The truth of the matter was that India was “the Jewel in the Crown” for the British Empire. England needed India to control the Indian Ocean as well as for resources and as a market for English goods. The recruitment of Indian troops was also becoming increasingly essential with the growing competition between England and Germany.
Moreover, if England had lost India, it could have fallen into the hands of Russia or France which would have been the end of the Empire and possibly of England itself (as it would have upset the European balance of power on which British hegemony was based).
So, a lot of what was happening on the international scene in the period of roughly 1850-1950 had to do with British imperial interests in India and Africa and, more generally, with Anglo-American geostrategic interests.
The ground had been prepared by Thomas Macaulay of the Council of India (the body that assisted the British Governor-General of India) who introduced English education on the subcontinent in the 1830’s.
In 1885 (just one year after the formation of the Fabian Society) the British created the Indian National Congress (INC) whose founder A O Hume was a Theosophist who funded Blavatsky’s publication The Theosophist.
In 1893 Fabian and Theosophy leader Annie Besant, who later became president of the INC, represented the Theosophical Society at the World Parliament of Religions in Chicago.
All the key people involved in the new movement had close links to the British.
Vivekananda, Yogananda, Aurobindu, Krishnamurti, Gandhi, all had received a British education either in British schools in India or in England, or were directly indoctrinated by the Theosophists. Aurobindo, for example, studied at Cambridge, England, Gandhi was a lawyer trained at Inner Temple, London, Krishnamurti was trained by Besant, Anagarika Dharmapala was a Sri Lankan Christian converted to Buddhism by Blavatsky and sent to preach “Theravada Buddhism” around the world, etc.
Mark Bevir, Theosophy and the Origins of the Indian National Congress – UC Berkeley
Basically, what these guys were doing was promoting ideas they had largely absorbed from the West.
Blavatsky was definitely a charlatan because if you look into her case there is clear evidence of deliberate deception and there were calls within the Theosophic Society for her to be expelled, but they decided that they couldn’t expel their own founder in spite of multiple evidence of fraudulent behavior.
But others may have been delusional - or delusional and charlatans.
Gandhi was clearly delusional. Apparently, when fighting broke out between Hindus and Muslims, he declared that this was his fault because he was “impure”, and that therefore he had to carry out those “experiments” with women to prove to himself and to the world that he was not impure and, presumably, to stop the violence.
Even if we leave the soundness of his “experiments” to one side, I think blaming religious violence on the inability to suppress one’s sexual arousal is hardly an indication of a sane mind.
Besides, by his own logic, as the violence only got worse, this amounts to evidence and proof to the world of his own total failure to achieve "purity".
In any case, if we are saying that the Fabians “had nothing to do with anything”, the Theosophists “had nothing to do with anything”, the CIA “had nothing to do with anything”, the Brahma Kumaris “had nothing to do with anything”, the Hare Krishnas “had nothing to do with anything”, etc., etc., then we are left with the puzzle of no one having had anything to do with anything, and with the even bigger puzzle as to why so many claim, and the facts suggest, otherwise.
Ultimately, though, the key question that must be asked is not only “Who were the protagonists of the New Age era and what was their intention?”, but more importantly, “What has been achieved?”
If traditional culture, with all its faults, has been merely replaced with an artificial pseudo-culture with its own fabricated mythology and propaganda, and revolving on Harry Potter, Game of Thrones, the Kardashians, gangsta rap, posing on Instagram, and wearing face masks, then it seems difficult to claim that it has been an unmitigated success.
If the time, energy, intelligence, money, and other resources invested in the promotion of New Ageism had been utilized to promote authentic spirituality (both Western and Eastern) then perhaps the world would be a better place today.
Personally, I believe that far more than New Ageism itself, the critical examination of it (and of other world events) contributes to the enlightenment process because it elevates our awareness and expands our consciousness, liberating it from its prescribed grooves.
At the end of the day, if we don’t even know things that happen on this small planet of ours, how can we grasp the larger realities of higher planes? If we think about it, so long as we haven’t reached enlightenment we still live in this world, so we can’t completely ignore what is happening here.
But this is just my opinion.
Quoting Apollodorus
Again, it's a stretch to attribute this to Fabianism or theosophy or any other single cause. Traditional cultures are under threat from myriad forces in modernity. Modern culture tends to dissolve any tradition that comes into contact with it.
Quoting Apollodorus
Not through being historians, if that is what you mean.
Quoting Apollodorus
One can agree they played their role without attributing them as the sole cause of the 'downfall of the West'. (You do seem to have an ax to grind in their case.)
You left out Marvel and Star Wars, (the replacements for Homer and the Old Testament) the true source of Mythos for most Westerners these days.
Is Belief in Rebirth Necessary?
What we believe or not believe about the "afterlife" influences how we act in the present.
If one disbelieves in rebirth, or lacks belief in rebirth, one acts as if though it doesn't exist. But one acts differently if one believes in rebirth, or considers it a possibility.
As for people who disbelieve in rebirth, or who lack belief in rebirth, I have observed the following in regard to enlightenment (one or a combination of more can be seen in such a person):
1. they generally lack ambition in spiritual life;
2. they believe they are already enlightened;
3. they believe they are inevitably close to being enlightened;
4. they believe enlightenment is an ancient, "highfalutin" idea that has no place in modern life;
5. they flat-out don't care about whether they become enlightened or not.
You may be right. I have no grounds to believe in rebirth. Not sure I believe in enlightenment either. But I do believe that people might develop personal qualities that some might describe as enlightened. A type of sagacity perhaps? I think I am somewhere between a one and a five on your list.
Of course not. Personally, I like to look into historical facts when discussing them because I know that what we are being fed is often just propaganda. As I said, Gandhi’s case is a perfect example of how things are idealized and mythologized for political and ideological reasons.
If we agree that Philosophy is a quest after truth, then I think we should demonstrate that we are actually looking into the truth of popular narratives and assumptions and that we don’t accept things uncritically just because they happen to fit our preconceived ideas.
I think there is no excuse for denying historical facts when they are freely available online.
The Indian Ocean (and the wider Indo-Pacific region) remains a strategic focus of Anglo-American interests (represented, for example, by NATO) even now.
The British knew that they couldn’t hold on to India for ever and that they had to let go of it eventually. But they didn’t want India to fall into the hands of rival powers.
So the plan was for India to have independence (a) as peacefully as possible, (b) as gradually as possible, and (c) to remain under British influence for as long as possible even after independence.
Accordingly, the British tried to make the Indians as British-friendly as possible.
They began by replacing Persian with English as the official language and by founding English schools and universities where they introduced Indians to European culture and religion, and trained them to become members of the British administration in India.
The second step was to tell Indians that the British government supported their aims but that India was not yet ready for independence and it would be unable to rule itself because it had been under foreign (Muslim and European) rule for centuries. Indians had to be patient and first learn democracy in the same way they had learned European culture and religion.
It was for this purpose that the British founded the Indian National Congress (INC) Party to pacify the Indians and provide a political platform for them, whilst educating them in “European democracy”.
However, as the British were dragging their feet on independence, the INC soon split into two factions, the Moderates and the Radicals. The Moderates were led by Gopal Krishna Gokhale and were more interested in “social reform” than in home rule.
The Radicals were led by people like Bal Gangadhar Tilak (“the Father of Indian unrest”) and advocated full independence first, including through armed struggle.
Besant sided with Tilak’s Radical faction and founded the All India Home Rule League (later Swarajya Sabha), which became a focal point for the independence movement.
Gandhi was part of the British plan. He was the “non-violent” face of the Indian independence movement and the British used him to turn Indians away from armed struggle.
It is important to understand that a growing number of Indian nationalists were looking to form alliances with England’s adversaries like Germany and Japan. This made it absolutely vital for the British to stick with Gandhi as the less bad of two evils.
So whether he liked it or not Gandhi was a tool in the hands of the British, which is why he was killed by the nationalists. On his part, he used the British to play his favorite role of “saint” and “god-man”, and to become the martyr of his own narcissistic personality cult.
But there is no doubt that this was all part of British imperial strategy and that all Indians involved had been exposed to extensive European influence.
A popular view in the West at the time was that the origins of the “Aryan” race was somewhere in the North, near the Arctic. Even some Hindu nationalists like Tilak (The Arctic Home in the Vedas) had bought into the idea of Indians being Aryans and having their origins in an “Aryan homeland in the Arctic”. This was obviously modeled on existing Pangermanic ideology and especially on the ideas of W F Warren.
Other Western influences on Indian culture were Sir William Jones and Max Müller. Such influences were eagerly absorbed by many Indians like Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan who became President of India in the 60’s i.e., exactly in the New Age era.
In fact, as admitted by Tilak and others, Indians had great difficulty in understanding their own scriptures, especially the Vedas and were largely dependent on the interpretations of Western scholars.
What actually happened is that during the 1700’s traditional education in India stagnated and declined due to political upheavals. The British were at first indifferent to the situation but gradually began to take control of education through Christian missionary schools and other institutions run by the East India Company.
Indian education came to be controlled by missionary schools that aimed to instruct Indians in European culture and religion and by Company schools that generally taught Indian culture using Sanskrit texts with some European texts translated into Sanskrit and other Indian languages.
This means that Indian society was thoroughly penetrated by Western culture. In fact, the British controlled not only education but the publishing companies that published the teaching material, including Sanskrit and other vernacular works.
This has led to claims by some Indians that even their scriptures were tampered with by the British.
How did the British fabricate and destroy the historic records of India and misguide the whole world?
Though some of these claims seem exaggerated, the fact is that British outfits like the Asiatic Society and the East India Company had the means to edit texts held in their libraries, publish them, and then put them into circulation via educational institutions. And we have the Theosophical Society as an example of deliberate fabrication.
Quoting Wayfarer
Correct. But as I said before, there is a difference between saying something and actually experiencing it. In India any guru who dies is automatically said to have attained “mahasamadhi” or some type of “samadhi”. But (as in Buddha's case) even the closest disciples have no means of establishing that, and we even less. So we are necessarily in the realm of belief or opinion in this regard.
By the way, if you are an admirer of Krishnamurti, who is against following any particular path, how would you reconcile this with your defense of Theravada Buddhism and personal preference for Mahayana Buddhism?
Quoting Wayfarer
To me, that sounds rather vague. It might be helpful if you could quote a sutta or two as it is difficult to tell what you are referring to without some concrete examples.
Quoting Wayfarer
Of course. But I never said the Fabians and Theosophists were "the sole cause". I just disagree with the assessment that they "must rank a pretty long way down the list".
You didn't show why they "must" and didn't say who, in your opinion, would be at the top of the list.
If I have "an ax to grind in their case", it is equally possible that others have a soft spot for them. After all, you did say you were influenced by them. If so, then they can’t be that far down the list, at least in your case .... :smile:
So I did. Thanks for reminding me! :grin:
I agree. I think if they make an effort in that direction, they certainly can.
If we think about it, enlightenment itself is a quality ....
And how could they be convinced! People are generally given to eating, drinking, and making merry. Of course a religion that takes a dim view of eating, drinking, and making merry isn't going to be popular. At all.
This also explains why modern versions of Buddhism try to cast it as yet another system of eating, drinking, and making merry.
*sigh*
I don't understand Mahayana, Vajrayana, Zen, modern Western Buddhism, various local/national varieties of Buddhism. I never claimed that I understood them. I also wish to have nothing to do with them.
It's you who keeps propping them up as "The Buddhism". Suit yourself.
The irony is that there are Mahayanis and Vajrayanis who eat guys like you for breakfast.
Quoting Apollodorus
What a brainfart.
Do you know what was Gandhi's starting point? When he was at his father's deathbed, he wanted to have sex, and then had sex with his wife while his father was dying in the other room. This troubled him deeply, and he sought to overcome it.
Just the kind of thing a Hindu would say.
You'll have to do a lot better than that to convince me that you actually care about women.
I guess that's what good Christian women do, they "renounce all attachment to earthly life in order to attain eternal life" when they TOLO for their boyfriends and husbands. I guess that routinely risking health and life with hormonal contraceptives, unwanted pregnancies, and abortions all makes sense and is made worthwhile by the prospect of attaining eternal life.
This is aimed at me, right. Heh. Whatever. I've actually given Christianity at least three involved (and fairly expensive) attempts over the years. My reason for not becoming a Christian is because the prospect of becoming a "good Christian woman" or having to look up to "good Christian women" has been too repugnant.
If that makes me inferior and unspiritual, so be it. I've been accused of inferiority my whole life, you can't suprise me.
Those are fine observations. Are you suggesting that any of them are a problem? If so, why?
I suppose people banging their heads against walls are also not a problem ... sort of ...
Other than that, modern rebirth skeptics tend to be a drag to be around. They are authoritarian people, to say the least. But you're right, we can always leave them to heaven and to those thorns that in their bosoms lodge to prick and sting them.
So you believe those observations indicate a problem but can't explain what the problem(s) are.
And yet people have been doing it for millennia.
It's not about whether everybody is observing the same thing.
It's that we can mostly take for granted that everyone has the same capacity for observation as far as everyday things go.
But as far as less everyday things are concerned (such as the workings of the LHC), not everyone has the same capacity for observation.
The salient difference isn't in the things that are being observed, but in the different levels of capacity for observation that different people have.
In order to meaningfully observe the LHC and understand how it works, one has to have the according education. Without such education, the LHC does't make sense (or makes sense only indirectly/vicariously, via the faith that one has that scientists are doing meaningful things and not magic).
It's similar in other fields of human knowledge.
Quoting Janus
If no kind of Buddhism may be classed as "true Buddhism", then there is no true Buddhism.
It would be a breach of the TOS to do so.
How does anyone actually stomach words like these? Or is it that they believe _other_ people should be like that, ie. that _other_ people should have compassion, _other_ people should overcome their egos, etc.?
Your explanation would contain malware, pornography, spam, or otherwise violate property rights? Don't be silly, or sillier than not being able to explain your beliefs.
On the Buddhist understanding of rebirth, from a purely egotistical viewpoint how could the conditions a future life enjoys or suffers, since it is not me, possibly matter to me? If I have already overcome the egoic orientation to a degree that would allow it to matter, then the belief would be irrelevant, because if all I was concerned with was how my actions might affect the conditions that future beings find themselves in, then I could reasonably be more concerned with my actions and their effects on people in this present everyday life.
Quoting baker
All we know is that they thought they were doing it; no guarantee that they were correct in thinking that.Quoting baker
Yes, but whether or not someone understands the workings of the LHC is itself completely determinable; whereas whether or not someone is enlightened is not. If we think of enlightenment as a matter of a certain lived disposition then it would be determinable in terms of their behavior, just as the greatness of a pianist can be manifest in her playing. (and even this much is not precisely determinable, as the understanding of the workings of the LHC would be).
If we take enlightenment to involve the possession of some special, propositional knowledge then it is impossible to determine if someone has it.That's why I say it is like an art, not like a science.
I think compassion is something you either understand or don't. A little like having theory of mind - not sure it can be taught.
Wow. You must have thought (or "meditated") really long and hard to come up with that. Shows what Buddhism does to brainwashed (or braindead) Westerners.
Quoting baker
Yep. You sound pretty deeply troubled too.
Quoting baker
Just the kind of thing a self-radicalized Buddhist extremist would say .... :grin:
Absolutely. Not only that, but it is doubtful whether Buddhists actually believe in rebirth in the normal sense of the word. In which case they would seem to exclude themselves from having any spiritual aspirations.
This may explain statements like this:
Quoting baker
Pretty much says it all.
The scope of the projects one undertakes is connected to the time and resources one believes or hopes are or will be available. You're not going to start building a skyscraper if you only have a 100 dollars, and you're not going to start a project that you estimate could take a 100 years to complete (at least not as long as you see yourself as the person solely or mainly responsible for its completion).
But you're right, people are diverse, and some indeed start on projects for which they don't have the time and the resources to complete ...
It's not just about statistical analysis of empirical observations, it's also about considering the possible permutations.
But for all practical intents and purposes, it is you who gets reborn.
By all means, go ahead then.
I guess we can't burn them at the stakes then, at least not with a clear conscience ...
Only by people who have the requisite education about how the LHC works. It's safe to say that most people on this planet do not have said requisite education.
I, for example, couldn't tell whether someone understands the workings of the LHC or not. I watched a couple of documentaries about it, but I forgot in the meantime, and highschool physics and chemistry are far too far back for me to remember.
It takes a physicist to know a physicist; it takes a good pianist to know a good pianist; it takes an enlightened person to know an enligthened person. Enlightenment is nothing special, in this sense.
What Armstrong is describing there is closer to what is termed "idiot compassion" (look it up, there are several understandings of the term) or pathological altruism.
People desperate to appear to be "good persons", desperate to appear "compassionate", "not selfish", and such.
They not only fail to practice what they preach; what eventually becomes evident is that they want _other_ people to practice what they themselves preach. It's similar to how morality is so often intended to mean "this is how other people should behave", while the proponent of said morality deems themselves exempt from what he wants others to do.
What a truly, deeply, spiritually spiritual comment.
It takes a physicist to know a physicist, to be sure, because it is a determinate body of knowledge. It doesn't take a pianist to know a good pianist, even if a pianist might have some advantages when it comes to making such judgements. Whether someone is a good pianist or not (apart from the sheer manual dexterity and fluency is a matter of opinion. I see no reason, and you have not offered any, to think that judgements as to whether someone is enlightened are not akin to aesthetic judgements, that is they are not matters amenable to precise determination, like judging one's knowledge of physics
I think Baker enjoys being a contrarian just for the sake of it. I can't think of any other explanation for the absurd and cynical generalizations she comes up with.
That's a very negative reading of Armstrong's few words on compassion. I've tried a few times to re-read it wearing my cap of cynicism and still can't see what you see in those words. That said, Armstrong may well practice a form of idiot compassion in her life, but this isn't clear from those few sentences.
Good to see that you agree! :smile:
And seeing that we are in agreement, I am sure you will also agree with my analysis, below.
In the 1800’s, under the influence of Protestantism, Liberalism, Romanticism, Freemasonry, and Marxism, there was growing rebellion against tradition and a lot of intellectuals believed that they should start creating. i.e., inventing, their own religion or cult.
Max Müller was a German Lutheran (Protestant) and Spinozist who lived in England. His ideas of the “Arctic home of the Aryans” and of the need to “reform” Hinduism were taken up not only by the British imperialists but also by Blavatsky, who claimed to have links to the Freemasons, and Olcott, who was a Freemason. The third key figure was Besant who was a Fabian and a Freemason.
1. Blavatsky had been good at telling stories since childhood and she remained a fantasist for the rest of her life.
2. Her collaborator Olcott was a journalist who promoted Blavatsky’s fantastic tales and became president of the Theosophical Society.
3. Besant who embraced Theosophy for her own Fabian purposes and became the Theosophical Society's president after Olcott, claimed that her adoptive son, Krishnamurti, was “the new Messiah and an incarnation of Buddha”!
So we can see that the Theosophist trio, not to say “trinity”, was a fraudulent one through and through.
A fundamental mistake made by Westerners is to take the teachings of Eastern "gurus" as evidence of "knowledge", "enlightenment", and "spiritual superiority" without making the slightest effort to see what is behind it.
The reality is that anyone with a certain degree of intelligence can learn how to give "enlightened" answers in a matter of weeks. In fact, if you look into it, this tends to be the case with most Indian and New Age “gurus”. They are being asked the same questions over and over again and they give the same answers – or variations on the same theme.
If a spiritually ignorant Westerner attends one session or “satsang” with a “guru”, he might feel “blown away” by the sheer “spirituality” apparently emanating from that “guru”. But after a few sessions a normal person will begin to see through it. The quickest way to expose them is to not listen to what the supposed guru is saying and just pay attention to their voice, facial expression, body language, etc.
Most of them aren’t even good actors. They simply rely on the general atmosphere, the incense, the religious robes, the chanting of mantras and verses from scriptures, the adulation of disciples, the publicity and propaganda surrounding their image.
In contrast, if the Westerner has read Plato’s warning about false philosophers or the NT warning about false prophets, then he or she will have a much better chance of keeping their head on their shoulders and see that it is all just a show.
The original texts may be a different matter. They tend to have a greater degree of honesty and you have a chance to think about the claims made in them. But even then, in most cases, what you find in them you can find in Western traditions.
Incidentally, a lot of Indian texts are quite late.
The so-called “Heart Sutra” (Prajñ?p?ramit?h?daya) of Mahayana Buddhism, for example, is said to go back to the 7th century AD. Buddhist philosophers like Buddhaghosa and Vasubandhu lived in the 4th-5th centuries AD and later.
The Hindu Puranas have been dated to between the 3rd century and 10th century AD.
The oldest Indian text, the Rigveda, is mostly unintelligible at present. As I said, the British East India Company held copies of Indian scriptures in its libraries and controlled their publication. A copy of the Rigveda was made available to Max Müller who edited and published the text.
Müller was an inspiration not only to Blavatsky and Olcott but also to many of India’s religious reformers who felt attracted to his reinterpretation of Hinduism, such as Vivekananda who wrote about Müller in his usual style:
In any case, the idea of Hinduism being a “monotheistic” religion began to take root at this time under Western influence:
Rigveda - Wikipedia
However, like Krishnamurti, Dayananda, Aurobindo, and many others distanced themselves from the Theosophists. Vivekananda himself wrote:
Stray remarks on Theosophy – Vivekananda Complete Works
Of course, Blavatsky, Olcott, and Besant were also behind the Neo-Buddhism they promoted in India and the West.
Like Krishnamurti, they “adopted” the Sri Lankan Anagarika Dharmapala, converted him from Christianity to Buddhism, and told him that, because of his "purity", he was permitted to have contact with the “Himalayan Masters” (the Theosophists' secret "White Brotherhood").
Dharmapala became the new guru or messiah of Theravada (or “Protestant”) Buddhism with the backing of more than 300 Buddhist schools founded by Olcott and as prescribed in Olcott’s books like A Buddhist catechism and The Golden Rules of Buddhism.
In the Preface to The Golden Rules Olcott writes:
But the story doesn’t end there, because like most other thinking people, Dharmapala eventually saw through the Theosophists’ plans and rejected their teachings.
Unfortunately, he also became a committed anti-Christian and taught that Buddhism is superior to any philosophy in the West. A few decades later his teachings became part of the New Age “spirituality” together with other anti-Western tendencies ….
The narrative around Sinhalese (Sri Lankan Buddhist) nationalism was based on the idea that Sinhalese culture was being Westernized and under attack from foreign languages and immoral customs, and was in need of being “purified” and “restored to its former glory”.
Essentially, this was an anti-Christian and anti-Western movement motivated by nationalism not by spirituality.
Dharmapala thought, spoke, and behaved exactly like a Christian missionary:
According to Dharmapala even the Buddhist high priest didn't know Buddhism!
There is no doubt that Dharmapala’s understanding of Buddhism was influenced by the views of the Theosophists and the Orientalist scholars of the London Pali Text Society. He was an officer of the Buddhist Theosophical Society and he later openly admitted that Blavatsky and Olcott were his mentors.
Clearly, Dharmapala was not an “inspired god-man” but more an impostor groomed by the Theosophists and radicalized by Sinhala nationalism (and by himself). And he had the same narcissistic obsession with diaries and “purity” as Gandhi.
Which I think demonstrates that the “superiority of Dharmic foundation” is just a self-serving fiction in the mind of some Buddhist zealots ....
Michael Roberts presents a good expose of Dharmapala in his essay:
M. Roberts, HIMSELF AND PROJECT. A SERIAL AUTOBIOGRAPHY. OUR JOURNEY WITH A ZEALOT, ANAGARIKA DHARMAPALA, Social Analysis: The International Journal of Anthropology Vol. 44, No. 1 (April 2000), pp. 113-141
Oh, for crying out loud. I want to know the truth about "spirituality". So far, the most plausible conclusion is that "spirituality" is a form of sublimation, specifically, of sublimating the Darwinian struggle for survival into terms that seem more palatable.
All I see is that you have way too much time on your hands, and that you are unable on unwilling to engage in honest communication with me.
What am I to Dharmapala or what is Dharmapala to me? Nothing. Or any of the dozen people you've brought up so far. So why bring them up?
Yes, we already know you're well-read. Other virtues we yet have to see from you.
Let's see what she says:
No, it hasn't been advocated as such, certaintly not by "all the great faiths".
Mahayana emphasizes it, but not as "the safest and surest means of attaining enlightenment".
That's idiot compassion.
This describes zoning out.
She should read the whole poem.
New Age talk.
There's a lot more I could say ...
From what I've seen, professional musicians believe that musical proficiency is amenable to precise determination.
Similar with the other arts. How else do you think they can write whole tomes of art criticism?
If it is merely "sublimation" and the whole enterprise is deluded as to its provenance from the start, then what does that say about claims to be enlightened?
Quoting baker
Musical proficiency, i.e. being able to sight read, possessing perfect pitch, and the speed with which one can play an instrument fluently can be precisely determined. The greatness of a musical composition, the profundity of a musician's interpretations of Bach, Beethoven or whatever canonical composer you like, cannot be precisely determined.
There are critics who write about works and their qualities, and there are many other critics who have quite different ideas about what any critic has written, so no, not precisely determinable. The same goes with spiritual questing; one person's guru is another's charlatan.I don't see how you can claim to be familiar with the world of spiritual self-cultivation and yet disagree with that.
'The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom' Proverbs 9:10
Quoting Apollodorus
I don't have an exclusive relationship with any of the above. I was an admirerer of Krishnamurti in my twenties, but to be ruthlessly honest, this might have been a product of my own wish for a kind of 'instant enlightenment'. Actually I found that in digging out that passage I quoted earlier in this thread that I understood some things in it that I would have missed when I read him earlier in life. I'm still of the view that he was a true jñ?ni.
The three philosophical traditions I most admire are Christian Platonism, Advaita, and Mah?y?na. I'm an eclectic reader, I can't see how you can help that in this day and age. There's so much information available from so many sources. So I'm still studying, although I do ask myself why.
Quoting Apollodorus
We're referring here to the Pali texts. The style is often repetitive due to their original form as an oral tradition but I'm saying, they possess degree of coherency and philosophical depth that I don't think is found in any other single source, but I'm not going to try and argue that at length.
Quoting Apollodorus
Top of the list is the abandonment of Platonism in the late middle ages and the subsequent ascendancy of philosophical and scientific materialism. That is the underlying dynamic of which most of the things we discuss here are footnotes. (See this conference keynote speech given by Bhikkhu Bodhi.)
By the way, on that note, I've just encountered Lloyd Gerson's most recent book, Platonism and Naturalism: The Possibility of Philosophy. 'Gerson contends that Platonism identifies philosophy with a distinct subject matter, namely, the intelligible world, and seeks to show that the Naturalist rejection of Platonism entails the elimination of a distinct subject matter for philosophy. Thus, the possibility of philosophy depends on the truth of Platonism. From Aristotle to Plotinus to Proclus, Gerson clearly links the construction of the Platonic system well beyond simply Plato's dialogues, providing strong evidence of the vast impact of Platonism on philosophy throughout history. Platonism and Naturalism concludes that attempts to seek a rapprochement between Platonism and Naturalism are unstable and likely indefensible.'
So he says that naturalism and Platonism (which he says is philosophy) are fundamentally incommensurable, which is a point I constantly make. I'm attempting to educate myself but Gerson is really hard to read, as his work is so deeply embedded in the Classical literature, it's full of allusions and subtle counter-arguments to some obscure academic or other or some point made by some commentator on some obscure passage. And to become conversant with the whole corpus would take years of going back over the original dusty tomes which are voluminous and subject to millenia of commentary. Sigh. Anyway beneath all this verbiage, there is a genuine spark of enlightenment, or so I hope.
I studied the non-technical essays of Sigmund Freud as an undergrad - Totem and Taboo, The Future of an Illusion, Civilization and its Discontents. This is more or less his view. I don't agree with it, but I do agree that 'spirit' and 'spiritual' are rather threadbare terms. Maybe that reflects the poverty of current English lexicon on this respect.
I appreciate the effort but this just demonstrates a difference of opinion with Armstrong's reading and use of language. That's part of the territory. I still don't see a case for idiot compassion much as I would like to.
I don't think this is about me being "well-read" at all. I think it is more a case of some people being intellectually lazy and in denial but still trying to lecture others ....
I’m not saying he wasn’t. He may well have been “a true jñ?ni”. My point was that we have no hard proof that he was.
But it is probably safe to say that he was more a jñ?ni than Blavatsky and Besant ....
Quoting Wayfarer
And I’m not going to ask why you won’t give us some examples.
However, to be fair, all Buddhist schools sought to systematize, polish, and refine the earliest suttas. And they had centuries at their disposal to do so.
Quoting Wayfarer
Good point. As Heraclitus said, “Learning many things does not teach understanding”. :smile:
Sometimes we are better off leaving lots of things ununderstood and aim to understand the one thing that matters, first.
Quoting Wayfarer
I agree that Gerson tends to beat about the bush a bit and sometimes almost gets lost in the details. I much prefer writers who get to the point.
I think Gerson’s main merit is that he shows that despite some original reinterpretation of Plato, Platonism (including what some choose to call “Neo-Platonism”) is nevertheless very much based on Plato. His From Plato to Platonism does an excellent job in this regard.
Aristotle and Other Platonists is another good book. But, as you say, when reading Gerson, you need to have all of Plato’s works at hand as well as those of Plotinus, Proclus, and many others. And make ample use of a pen and notebook. So this is perhaps something for the more academically-minded.
This is why I think when reading any author on Plato it is imperative to always keep Plato’s essential points in mind and add to them whatever seems necessary for your particular purposes as you go.
We also need to remember that later Platonists like Plotinus, Porphyry, Proclus, were teachers in their own right and this necessarily involves a degree of interpretation of the original texts. But the original texts remained the main teaching material at all times and students could make up their own mind on how to read them. The main thing was for them to attain the goal.
If Philosophy (i.e., philosophy in the original Greek sense) is about finding Truth, then we must start from the premise that Truth exists but it is obscured by un-Truth.
Philosophy then becomes a process of unearthing Truth by removing un-Truth which in the first place is nothing but human erroneous perception of Truth.
This means that Philosophy (a) entails the critical examination of the information received from others and of our own beliefs and assumptions, and (b) it must ultimately lead to Truth.
This is why Plato introduces the concept of Ideas (or Forms) as realities that transcend ordinary experience and identifies the Source of all Knowledge and all Truth as the greatest subject of human inquiry.
Moreover, if the constant transcendence of increasingly higher levels of experience leads to Ultimate Reality, which it logically must, then no process can be higher than the process that leads to that Reality, i.e., Philosophy.
It follows that Buddhism, for example, cannot be higher than Platonism, unless it can be demonstrated that Buddhism leads to something that is higher than Ultimate Reality. So far, no one has been able to demonstrate this.
But the bottom line is we cannot accept things uncritically and simply repeat what we are told by others. We need to use our own intelligence and do our own independent research as part of our inquiry into truth.
This is why I brought up the Fabians, the Theosophists, and their New Age followers. The fact is that we must acknowledge that to a large extent they idolized Neo-Buddhism and Neo-Hinduism but demonized Western traditions. Besant preached that the Christian Gospels were “not authentic” whilst claiming that her “son” Krishnamurti was the Messiah and the Buddha, and knowingly promoting fabricated tales about non-existent “Himalayan Masters”.
This is not only hypocritical but also logically inconsistent. If Eastern systems like Hinduism and Buddhism can be reformed, then so can Western systems, should there be a need to do so. The fact that the Theosophists and their New Age followers insisted on replacing Western systems with reformed or invented Eastern ones, shows that there was an anti-Western agenda behind the whole project.
Of course there was much more to it than Fabianism and Theosophy but it all tended to move in the same anti-Western direction and this often happened for political purposes and other reasons that had little or nothing to do with spirituality.
Part of the same trend was the 60’s myth of the “Mother Goddess”. It was claimed that the earliest human society had been matriarchal after which it became patriarchal. This was started by fiction writers like Robert Graves (The White Goddess, 1948) who was also involved in the reinvention of “Celtic Spirituality”. A number of fraudulent characters like James Melaart attempted to find archaeological “evidence” for the Goddess myth. It was later discovered that Melaart had forged many of his “finds” and that his apartment was a “forger’s workshop”.
Famed Archaeologist 'Discovered' His Own Fakes at 9,000-Year-Old Settlement - Live Science
Another anti-Western cult that emerged at the same time as Dharmapala’s Neo-Buddhism was America’s Nation of Islam that combined with the civil rights movement to morph into Black Power, the Republic of New Afrika, and Western Africanism. The “We are Aryans” myth of the early 1900’s was replaced with the New Age “We are all Africans” myth. White women, and apparently some men, started perming their hair to make it look curly and “African”. The latest manifestation of this is “blackfishing”.
What 'Blackfishing' means and why people do it – CNN
This shows that New Age “spirituality” is largely rooted in ignorance and psychological and cultural identity issues. It also shows how ridiculous and easy to manipulate people can be.
In any case, it is clear that a lot of fraudulent activity was involved in the whole New Age project. And the problem is that once people buy into a false narrative it becomes increasingly difficult for them to face the facts. This results in a great deal of denial and attempts to sweep things under the carpet and cover up inconvenient truths by means of more propaganda, disinformation, and lies.
When indoctrination kicks in, the indoctrinated mind’s defense mechanism springs into action and the indoctrinated person may bring up topics like the Crusades which, incidentally, is a typical or “standard” argument. The very same people object and loudly protest if anyone else brings up other aspects of history that are less convenient to the indoctrinated person’s agenda. For them, Western history is “the Crusades” and nothing else exists or matters.
So self-identity, including cultural and historical identity, does seem to be the key not only to mental and emotional well-being but also to truth and spiritual realization.
As an illustration, suppose someone decides to self-identify with their shoes. As shoes probably do not have a great deal of knowledge, that person’s knowledge will be severely reduced. And so will their power of action, causing them to become immobile and just sit there waiting for someone to put them on and walk them. Presumably, feelings, thoughts, and emotions will likewise be close to zero. The same holds if they identify with their clothes.
But if the same person self-identifies with the physical body, the situation will change dramatically. There will be signs of life in the form of heart beat, breathing, motion, feelings of cold and heat, hunger and thirst, etc.
If they go a bit higher and self-identify with the mind, their experience will change further still. There will be knowledge, reason, memory, emotions, imagination, and other activities of consciousness that define a human being.
And if they go even higher and self-identify with consciousness itself, with the witnessing awareness of all those mental and physical states and experiences, then they will no longer be bound to all the things that condition and restrict consciousness but will be free, unconditioned and unaffected consciousness.
This is why Plato says that the true philosopher is one whose soul or intellect turns its attention away from the material world and the body-mind compound and toward itself and realities like itself. It is a process of detachment from what is not true self and self-identification with what is true.
In the final stages of this process, the philosopher will no longer be a person but pure Intelligence, or Truth, itself.
Plotinus describes different levels of consciousness and defines Philosophy as a process of self-identification with increasingly higher levels until the highest possible is achieved. See also D. M. Hutchinson, Plotinus on Consciousness.
But, as I said from the start, this is not what people want. People want to be enlightened whilst remaining unenlightened. They don’t want to be Truth or Ultimate Reality. What they want is to be humans with superhuman knowledge and power. And this is impossible because that which is unreal or less real cannot have power over that which is Real and of which it is a manifestation or imitation.
So we can see that though Philosophy in the Ancient Greek tradition shows the way to Truth, some insist that truth can be found only by reciting Pali suttas (or some other such activities).
This is not to say that religion is useless. It is useful to the extent that it focuses our mind on a higher reality. But religion must ultimately be transcended in order to attain higher levels of consciousness or truth. If religion, or at least the lower forms of it, is not transcended then it can become an impediment instead of being of assistance.
So long as the human ego is in charge, and there is a craving for religion, for cults, and for myths, there can be no enlightenment but only more self-deception along with the strategy and tactics intended to defend it at all costs. The ego can be extremely resourceful and cunning, and self-preservation is its sole concern. That’s why the ego is the real “M?ra” or dragon that the philosopher needs to tame or slay.
And this can be done only if the philosopher identifies with something higher and takes position on a higher ground ....
It’s the kind of thing for which hard proof is never possible.
There is no need to keep labouring the point about the evils of theosophy and the New Age, I get it.
Quoting Apollodorus
You ought to consider why, in the early Christian era, many of the Greek-speaking fathers of the Church, for example Origen and Clement, who were thoroughly versed in Platonism, thought it nevertheless necessary to proclaim the truth of Christ. What did Jesus Christ embody that was not to be found in the doctrines of Plato? I'm not asking you for an answer but it is a question that ought to be considered. The Christian view is that the Biblical faith provided a revelation of the ultimate truth that was only partially realised by the Greek philosophers. That is why the early Christian church incorporated the Platonic corpus, retrospectively declaring Plato and Socrates 'Christians before Christ'. But they were all of the view that Jesus Christ was of a higher order than the philosophers, even while incorporating Platonic ideas to provide the philosophical scaffolding for their own theology (in the process creating Christian Platonism.)
[quote=SEP, Origen; https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/origen/]Origen undertakes to show that the simplest disciple of God’s word knows Him better than the philosophers who seek him by their own methods (Against Celsus 7.42), that Plato misrepresents the fall and diminishes the Creator, that if his myths are deep, the biblical allegories are deeper and less perverse.[/quote]
Quoting Apollodorus
This is one of the fundamental ideas in all world religions and cultures. A version of it is the doctrine of the original sin. In The Fall of Man and the Foundations of Science Peter Harrison examines the way that early modern science arose in part as a means to overcome the degradation to man's senses as a consequence of the original sin. The Hindu 'veil of m?y?' and the Buddhist 'ocean of samsara' are also grounded in the idea that humans are ensnared in an illusory realm from which they can only be delivered by life-changing wisdom or spiritual awakening. (At last! Back at the OP.)
One point I want to call out in this regard, is that there is really nothing corresponding to 'enlightenment' in the Christian lexicon. In the philosophical lexicon, there is the ideal of the Sage, an archetypical figure. In the Buddhist and Hindu milieu, there is acceptance that there are incarnations or avatars of wisdom. Whereas in Christian doctrine, there can only ever be one God and one Son of God, destined to appear again at the End of Time. According to them, all who involve themselves in Eastern doctrines or philosophy or anything else are hell-bound, no matter what. I think that deep-seated cultural belief unconsciously influences nearly everything said about it.
Quoting Apollodorus
I noticed in the Encyclopedia of Philosophy's entry on Pierre Hadot, this caveat on Hadot's appraisal of Plotinus, who surely amongst the ancient philosophers was a 'philosopher of the ultimate'.
[quote=IEP, Pierre Hadot]For all of Hadot’s evident enthusiasm for Plotinus’ philosophy, however, PSV (Plotinus Simplicity of Vision) concludes with an assessment of the modern world’s inescapable distance from Plotinus’ thought and experience. Hadot distances himself from Plotinus’ negative assessment of bodily existence, and he also displays a caution in his support for mysticism, citing the skeptical claims of Marxism and psychoanalysis about professed mysticism, considering it a lived mystification or obfuscation of truth (PSV 112-113). Hadot would later recall that, after writing the book in a month and returning to ordinary life, he had his own uncanny experience: “. . . seeing the ordinary folks all around me in the bakery, I . . . had the impression of having lived a month in another world, completely foreign to our world, and worse than this — totally unreal and even unlivable.” [/quote]
Quoting Apollodorus
[quote=The Parable of the Raft (paraphrase); https://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/mn/mn.022.than.html]A man traveling along a path came to a great expanse of water, rough and hazardous. The farther shore appeared safe and peaceful. The man looked for a boat or a bridge and found neither. But with effort he gathered grass, twigs and branches and tied them all together to create a makeshift raft. Relying on the raft to keep himself afloat, the man paddled with his hands and feet and reached the safety of the other shore.
Now, what would he do with his makeshift raft? Would he carry it along with him or leave it behind? He would leave it, the Buddha said. The Buddha explained that the dharma is like a raft. It is useful for crossing over, but not to be held onto.[/quote]
Correct. This is why claims of someone being a "true jnani" or "enlightened" must necessarily belong to the domain of belief. And this applies to Buddha himself.
Quoting Wayfarer
I don't think we can infer from this that there is no enlightenment in Christianity. Christianity does have the term "illumination" (photismos) that leads to deification (theosis), just as Platonism also uses the term "illumination" (ellampsis) leading to oneness (henosis) with the Absolute.
Quoting Wayfarer
Christianity may have its own myths, but I think they are just as easy to debunk as those of the New Age movement.
Here is a possible answer:
1. "Thoroughly versed" in a particular system is not the same as thoroughly practiced and experienced in that system.
2. Those with actual practice and experience of Platonism, e.g., Plotinus, Porphyry, Proclus, Syrianus, Damascius, and many others, did not embrace Christianity.
3. When the Platonic Academy at Athens was closed in 529 AD by Christian emperor Justinian, its members preferred to leave for Persia rather than embrace Christianity.
4. The vast majority of the population that converted to Christianity were simply Pagans, i.e., followers of the Hellenistic religion prevalent at the time, not necessarily Platonists. We must not confuse religion with philosophy.
5. One possible reason for Christianity’s initial success in attracting followers is that it appealed to emotion and it promised salvation through faith. But, again, this applies to the general population, not necessarily to spiritually advanced Platonic philosophers.
6. If Christianity itself admittedly adopted aspects of Platonism, and the Platonic corpus was preserved and continued to be studied by Christians, it may be argued that there was something missing in Christianity.
In any case, I don’t see the “superiority” of Buddhism over Western traditions (or of Eastern enlightenment over Western enlightenment) as established …. :smile:
Rather a sweeping claim, don't you think? But as the OP is about 'enlightenment', I will return to that theme. The Christian view of why Christianity superseded Greek philosophy was that Jesus represents the living realisation of truth which the philosophers didn't fully realise, even though they were sharing similar intuitions. This commonality is what allowed the Greek-speaking theologians to incorporate many doctrines from Platonism - which ultimately gave rise to the 'Christian Platonism' which I think is the actual mainstream of Western philosophy. (You're right in saying that Platonism provided something absent from the Biblical lexicon, namely, the philosophical framework.) That is the tradition which gave rise to the modern science which has now largely forgotten its own heritage. (That is what I am constantly having glimpses of. It's literally like the process of anamnesis, of recollecting something known in some distant mythical past.)
My interpretation of the significance of Jesus, is that Jesus is the archetype of 'the realised being'. I know there's a lot of new-age claptrap written about such ideas, but the convergences in the principles of otherwise diverse traditions is support for that. (That is what I studied through Comparative Religion.) That is where, again, the Eastern perspective provides an explanatory framework. The 'realised being' is the point towards which all existence is evolving. In the Eastern worldview, although such beings are exceedingly rare, they are an archetype, not a single unique instance, which is what Christianity claims Jesus to have been. (This is explained well by John Hick's article, Who or What is God?. I recall reading that Plotinus claims to have had a vision of the state of supreme realisation only twice in his entire life.) So in this understanding, the 'realised being' is what all of humanity is evolving towards - very much the idea behind R.M. Bucke's Cosmic Consciousness, that I referred to in my first post in this thread.
Do you think that in early Christianity God was understood more along the lines of the Logos? Certainly this informs the Gospel of John's orientation. I guess we could call Christian enlightenment salvation and ponder what it might be to seek union with Logos rather than follow the commands of Yahweh. To my thinking this neo-Platonic philosophy underpinning the work of a wandering teacher certainly provides Christianity with a more mystical framework towards self-realisation and not just (but not merely) the Golden Rule.
I don't believe it should be taken as an endorsement of 'lazy syncretism' either. I think individuals have to choose a path (although maybe it's true that the path chooses them). But the fact of commonality across all of these traditions makes sense from an anthropological point of view as a dimension of human potential.
I don't see it as a "sweeping claim" at all. Every system has its own myths. Christianity, too, has some truths and some myths. The mythical elements, e.g., that "Platonists" converted to Christianity en masse can be easily debunked as I have just shown.
Similarly, the idea that the concept of "enlightenment" has no equivalent in Western traditions seems unfounded to me. In fact, the concept probably originated in the West where as I said we find terms like "illumination" (ellampsis, photismos) going back to Plato and the Church Fathers.
In contrast, Indian terms do not seem to derive from "light". They tend to be based on concepts like "cessation" and "liberation" or "release". "Liberation", "salvation", do occur in Western traditions.
The exact significance of Jesus in Early Christianity is difficult to determine at present. Jesus was probably seen differently by the masses than by the Hellenistic-educated or -influenced classes. The masses left few written records of their beliefs, so we are left with the views of the educated classes and they do seem to have interpreted Jesus in a way that was compatible with Hellenistic religion in general and with Platonic philosophy in particular.
We need to bear in mind that Hellenistic culture was the dominant cultural element at the time especially in the eastern parts of the Roman Empire. This is precisely why the NT was written in Greek and Jesus himself was iconographically represented in Hellenistic style, either as a human teacher wearing a Greek philosopher's mantle (during his mission on earth) or (following his ascension to heaven) as God seated on a celestial throne like Zeus.
Even Buddha got a Greek-style robe in Indian temple art:
Greco-Buddhist art - Wikipedia
So, I for one, tend to agree with @Tom Storm.
Philosophy (i.e. philosophy in the Greek tradition) is love of and quest after Truth.
Platonism aims to attain union with Truth.
Christianity aims to attain union with God, who is Truth.
Basically, if any system enables its followers to attain Truth, then that system is good enough for me.
Plotinus is said to have attained some experience of Reality. We do not know whether this amounted to "supreme realization". But it was more than twice.
He says:
Plotinus himself never publicly proclaimed this and his writings were published after his death. It was his pupil Porphyry who said that he witnessed this on four occasions during his time with his teacher and that he attained this himself once:
It follows that Greek philosophers were familiar with concepts such as “illumination” (ellampein) leading to “awakening” (anegeirein) and "liberation" (lysis) which is a state of perfection (teleiotes) “beyond the realm of becoming”.
There's an oft-quoted sutta of the 'luminous mind':
[quote= Pabhassara Sutta - Luminous; https://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/an/an01/an01.049.than.html]"Luminous, monks, is the mind.[1] And it is defiled by incoming defilements." {I,v,9}
"Luminous, monks, is the mind. And it is freed from incoming defilements." {I,v,10}
"Luminous, monks, is the mind. And it is defiled by incoming defilements. The uninstructed run-of-the-mill person doesn't discern that as it actually is present, which is why I tell you that — for the uninstructed run-of-the-mill person — there is no development of the mind." {I,vi,1}
"Luminous, monks, is the mind. And it is freed from incoming defilements. The well-instructed disciple of the noble ones discerns that as it actually is present, which is why I tell you that — for the well-instructed disciple of the noble ones — there is development of the mind." {I,vi,2}[/quote]
This text is often said to be the foundation of the later 'Buddha-nature' sutras.
Marvellous passage from Proclus, and thanks for it. Indeed I think ancient philosophers were entirely conversant with the idea of spiritual illumination, of which that passage is a splendid example. There's an SEP article on Divine Illumination, which starts like this:
Note that the author claims that the theory was 'decisively refuted' i.e. abandoned as part of Christian doctrine. I'm going to revisit that article to understand why. For now I simply note that enlightenment or illumination is rarely encountered as part of regular Christian discourse.
I think the article is not the only thing you will need to revisit. :smile:
1. There is a difference between (a) divine illumination as an explanation for everyday cognitive processes and (b) divine illumination as an activity leading to union of the soul with the divine (theosis).
2. Divine illumination in sense (b) has not been “refuted” or “abandoned” in Christianity. It remains part of the spiritual progress consisting of purification (katharsis), illumination (photismos), and union with the divine (theosis) culminating in “enlightenment” proper.
3. There is a difference between the mind itself being “luminous” and the mind being illuminated by a higher intelligence resulting in enlightenment.
Here is an illuminating quote from Christian writings:
- Dionysius the Pseudo-Areopagite, The Heavenly Hierarchy (ca. 400-500 AD).
4. If some Buddhist texts refer to the mind as “luminous” it does not follow that the Indian terms “Nirvana” and “Moksha” are derived from a word denoting “light”.
5. The word “enlightenment” itself may not be used very often in Western traditions but there are still equivalent terms such as henosis (“union”) in Platonism and theosis (“deification”) in Christianity.
Please extend the courtesy of refraining from condescension.
Quoting Apollodorus
Pseudo-dionysius is the Christian Platonist par excellence. He is hardly representative of today's ecclesiastical Christianity.
Quoting Apollodorus
You will find precious little reference to it outside Orthodox Christianity and some specific mystical texts. It's practically non-existent in Protestant theology. Likewise the terms you refer to in (5). All of these kinds of ideas are preserved in Orthodox Christianity but hardly visible outside it.
Quoting Apollodorus
Didn't claim that they did. The point was simply to illustrate the use of light as an analogy for enlightenment.
You will find precious few Buddhists constantly referring to "Nirvana" (though indoctrinated Western Buddhists or New Agers may be a different matter).
And, as I was saying earlier:
Quoting Apollodorus
However:
- M. W. Austin, The Doctrine of Theosis.
I'm sure you are not the only one. It shows that some Westerners are more knowledgeable about Eastern traditions than about Western ones. It's a phenomenon I come across every day ....
By the way, I wasn't being "condescending" at all, I was just wondering whether as someone who has studied comparative religion, you really don’t know the difference between divine illumination as an explanation for cognitive processes and divine illumination as an activity leading to union of the soul with the divine, or you were just taking the mickey. That's all.
And since we were talking about "Nirvana", here is another interesting perspective that I think should not be ignored:
Nirvanaless: Asian Buddhism’s growing fundamentalist streak – Religion News Service
I don't know how much of a difference there is ultimately. You go back to the Aristotelian understanding of 'nous' as being 'that which sees what is real'. That is embedded all through the Greek philosophical tradition starting with Parmenides. What differentiate the Western philosophical tradition from Asiatic is that reason, 'nous', is seen in some sense as a supernal faculty from the outset. It's that esteem for reason which differentiates the West.
I was perusing a small site called https://aquinasonline.com/about/ yesterday which has some good content, although sketchy. The author links to his book on Amazon. 'Challenging cognitivist and functionalist interpretations, this book argues that Aristotle believed the mind to be unmixed, or separate from the body [i.e. a form of dualism]. Through careful textual analysis of De Anima and other key texts, the author shows that the Greek philosopher made a clear distinction between perception - an activity realized in material sense organs- and thinking - a process that cannot occur in any material organ.' Then from the wikipedia entry on nous [my comments in brackets] - 'In the Aristotelian scheme, nous is the basic understanding or awareness that allows human beings to think rationally. For Aristotle, this was distinct from the processing of sensory perception, including the use of imagination and memory, which other animals can do. This therefore connects discussion of nous to discussion of how the human mind sets definitions in a consistent and communicable way [i.e. this is the theory of predication based on Universals] and whether people must be born with some innate potential to understand the same universal categories in the same logical ways [as anticipated in the Meno. Both those principles were to be abandoned by nominalism and empiricism.]
Deriving from this it was also argued, especially in classical and medieval philosophy, that the individual nous must require help of a spiritual and divine type [so, back to the doctrine of illumination]. By this type of account, it came to be argued that the human understanding (nous) somehow stems from this cosmic nous, which is however not just a recipient of order, but a creator of it [hence, 'objective idealism'].
You see the connections I'm trying to make here.
Ultimately, this is also connected to 'the argument from reason' - which I won't rehearse here.
Now, all that said, I agree there is plainly a distinction between the philosophical sense of reason and 'divine union' or theosis. But I think in the grand tradition of Western philosophical theology, these are understood to be points along a continuum, rather than being radically separate and that philosophy, maths and science, whilst not of the very highest order, nevertheless are reflections of it. So these ought to be understood as complementary rather than conflicting. The book which I think I really must get hold of and read is Jacques Maritain's The Degrees of Knowledge, which draws all of these together. (It's also why I have the Maritain essay on my profile page.)
Quoting Apollodorus
But the Christian Church brought that on itself. Millions of people, myself included, found in the influx of Eastern teachings that occured in the twentieth century, ideas and teachings that you would never hear of through 'churchianity' as it was taught to us. Had I been in contact with a truly alive Christian teacher earlier in life, it might have turned out differently. But in my school days, Christianity was something to be learned by rote and beaten into you with a cane. No dice. A book that had a huge impact on me (and many others) was Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, Shunryu Suzuki, which was the foundational text of the San Francisco Zen Centre. I still stand by that book, it's an invaluable teaching, very straightforward and quite simple, but also profound. And it's grounded in the Shobogenzo of Dogen, which in terms of philosophical insight and depth of intuition will stand up to anything comparable in the Western canon. We're living nowadays in a global culture. And now, later in life, I am able to begin to appreciate the value of the Western tradition, but I had to take a long detour to get there.
I've had plenty of experience with Asian Buddhism. What Western converts see in it, is often very different to what it is for those for whom it is the native culture. See Mosts Buddhists Don't Meditate. The 'meditation movement' that Westerners practice is a kind of hybrid or offshoot off the tradition, although that doesn't necessarily invalidate it.
And whose problem is that?
What I find so ironic about you, and I do so to the point that I actually laugh out loud, is how you ascribe to me that I am a Buddhist. I'd been around Buddhism for more than twenty years, and in all that time, no Buddhist considered me a Buddhist, at least not a proper one. A few considered me a newcomer, some a beginner (but not in the good, Zen sense). I still vividly remember the contempt that one Buddhist had for me and how he told me that I was "outside, looking in". Another one who told me I had "no interest in the Dharma" and that my time would better be spent elsewhere. Then all those who called me dumb, clueless. Then the Buddhist Asian supremacists who dismissed me on account of my being white. Then the Buddhist male supremacists who dismissed me on account of being female.
Most of all, I don't consider myself a Buddhist, and I've made that clear many times.
To then have someone accuse me of being a Buddhist is, well, laughable, to say the least.
Not my circus, not my monkeys.
They can. This is the normative aspect of art theory.
While I don't know how the art critics do it, they appear to be fully certain that it can be done, that it should be done, and that they are doing it.
Given that they fight over whose interpretation of some music piece is the right one, for example, it's clear that they are operating with the idea that there _is_ such a thing as "the best interpretation" or "the correct interpretation". If it would truly all be about opinions and subjectivity, they couldn't fight about different interpretations.
(And this isn't triflesome: a student's academic success depends on correctly identifying the professor's standards for evaluating musical pieces; higher up, careers in art are made or lost over such matters.)
The difference of opinions about a work says nothing about the quality of said work.
Someone being one person's guru and another's charlatan doesn't make that person a guru, or a charlatan.
The student-teacher relationship depends as much, if not more, on the input of the student than on the input of the teacher.
Some people, when they are in the position of a student, can act only as sycophants, so in that relationship, their teacher is going to be a charlatan.
But with that same teacher, a different student, with a different outlook on the student-teacher relationship, can perceive the teacher in an entirely different manner and make an entirely different use of the relationship.
E.g. from Mormon doctrine:
Heh. I turned to Buddhism in order to figure out which Christian religion is the right one. (It seems absurd in hindsight, but this is how it happened.)
At some point, which is now quite long ago, I was desperate with trying to choose a Christian church which I should join. I was terrified of the prospect of eternal damnation. Some Christians told me that I should look at the various Christian denominations truthfully, without bias, and that then, I would know for sure which one to join. But how does one do this " truthfully, without bias"? I had no idea. But I faintly recalled from somewhere that Buddhism taught how to overcome all biases. So, driven by the fear of eternal damnation, I took to Buddhism, with the plan that I shall first become enlightened, and then, once free of all biases, I would be able to pick the right Christian denomination. Time was of the essence.
Needless to say, that didn't exactly work out as planned.
You keep focusing on these externals and incidentals, as if they would be the defining factors of Buddhism, or, more specifically, the Dhamma. They are not. The cultural, historical, social, economical, and political realities of life in some traditionally Buddhist countries and elsewhere are not what defines the Buddha's teachings.
Granted, for many people who consider themselves Buddhist, regardless of their provenance, those are the defining factors of their identity as Buddhists. Such identity, however, is not what the Pali suttas are about.
Secondly, part of the reason for the radicalization and nationalisim that we can see in some traditionally Buddhist countries is that they are a defense against aggressive Christian missionaries. These missionaries are using food, medical services, and the prospect of employment as means to lure in people. They sometimes try to subvert Buddhism into a kind of "preparatory religion for Christianity", claiming that God has sent the Buddha to teach the people morality, so that now they would be ready for Jesus Christ. They also generally disparage and misrepresent Buddhism.
I didn't study Freud, I observe people who claim to be religious/spiritual.
Why not?
How do you explain the consistency with which religious/spiritual people don't act on what they preach?
How do you explain that when conversing with so many religious/spiritual people, there is a palpable contempt or hatred, sometimes blatant, sometimes just under the surface on their part? Why all the religious wars?
It's hard to argue that those are just "flaws", "human failings", "human imperfections". Religious/spiritual people are just too consistent in their behaviors, too deliberate in them, too proud of them, for us to still think those were merely "mistakes" or "flaws".
I see no problem with the word itself.
Ultimately, none. That's why "Christians" who reject the one are undermining the other. And that's how we end up with clergy who are not sure if God exists or whether they should be Christians or something else ....
Quoting Wayfarer
With some help from the outside, yes. However, the real Church is not the organizational structure but the people. And they have no reason to abandon what is valuable in Christian teachings. On the contrary, especially in this day and age of spiritual ignorance, disorientation, confusion, and darkness, a degree of return to tradition seems advisable.
Quoting Wayfarer
Correct. And most Asian Buddhists neither meditate nor worry about "Nirvana". In fact, a lot of them want to be as Western as possible, which is rather ironic IMO.
Anyway, the way I see it, Westerners would be better off learning more about their own traditions instead of getting involved in things they often don't understand.
I think a first step in this direction is to not try too hard to see differences between Platonism and Christianity. If we leave external and superficial aspects aside, their deeper teachings show that there is more that unites the two traditions than divides them.
The symbolism of light found in both of them is a good example. As is well-known, Jesus says "I am the Light of the World" and the NT has many references to light:
We know that Greek was widely spoken in the Roman Empire and the Egyptian city of Alexandria (founded by Alexander the Great), which was an important center of Hellenistic philosophy, exerted significant influence in the region at the time of Jesus. St Paul himself was well-versed in Greek philosophy and in the school of his teacher Gamaliel students were instructed both in Jewish and Greek wisdom:
What is unquestionable is that the concept of divine knowledge as an enlightening force is central to Christianity as it is in Platonism where the Good, the Source of Knowledge and Truth, is compared to the Sun who illumines the world.
The final goal is clearly stated in Christian texts:
Plotinus and other self-realized teachers of Platonism explain:
Of course, like today, there were some who liked to philosophize and speculate about the nature of God, his relation to the soul, etc., but those who were serious about spiritual realization got with the program and got on with the actual practice, and achieved what they had set out to achieve without much talking.
So personally, I can see little justification for rejecting Western traditions in favor of reciting Pali suttas, chanting mantras, and walking around in a sari. Though I am sure some would disagree.
Pretty much the way Buddhists and Hindus disparage and misrepresent Christianity.
In any case, there can be no doubt that fraud is the most frequent crime worldwide, after domestic violence and rape. Most of it is banking and ATM fraud but religious or “pious fraud” is also widespread. Though more difficult to prove and prosecute, it doesn’t mean it isn’t happening. And a lot of Eastern "gurus" and their Western imitators are obviously fake.
In addition to religious fraud, religious violence is also on the rise. The anti-Christian and anti-Western movement started in the 1900’s has now turned into hundreds of attacks on Christians and churches across India:
Violence against Christians in India – Wikipedia
I think it's probably safer to not even think about it .... :smile:
I don't agree with Freud's diagnosis, because of his scientific materialist outlook.
Quoting Apollodorus
Protestantism generally rejects Christian Platonism. There are exceptions but on the whole that is true. The 'treasures of western culture' that you constantly refer to are never part of the educational curriculum in public schools, I guess you might encounter them in Catholic schools.
Quoting Apollodorus
Stereotyping, verging on racism. The reason is the Occidental classical tradition you’re referring to is to all intents more remote from modernity than the Eastern schools which have maintained their relevancy and occupied the vacuum caused by their collapse.
The 'treasures of eastern culture' that you constantly refer to are never part of the educational curriculum in any public schools that I am aware of.
I guess it might be different in Australia though. :smile:
Quoting Wayfarer
"Relevancy" and "modernity" of Pali suttas? In the Western world? "Relevant" to whom?
Even in India, Pali suttas are something that only a very small minority know of. Buddhists are 0.70% of the total population!
I think the real reason for the spread of "alternative" systems in the West is that they have been promoted by people with an anti-Western agenda ....
They cannot. There may be some consensus, but there will also be dissension, among critics.
Quoting baker
As Kant tells us, when we make aesthetic judgements we all take them to be, and by default intend them to be, universalizable, but they are not.
Quoting baker
The difference of opinions shows that there is no objectively determinable quality of art works, music and literature.
Quoting baker
The fact that someone can be one's guru and another's charlatan just goes to show that there is no objectively determinable fact of the matter about whether anyone is a guru or a charlatan.
Or does it just say that determining the difference is very hard?
To be fair this applies to many (if not all) areas of human behaviour not just religion. The same thing happens in most organised value systems - especially politics - where people regularly betray their ostensible principles. There's a reason there's a word for hypocrisy...
The kinder explanation for this would be that those folk are stuck in dualistic thinking and divide the world into winners and losers, with scorn and hatred constantly on the boil. In other words, their spirituality is shallow and ritualistic and they are unable to partake in the good or the true.
Nice story just popped up on the ABC Newsfeed.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-01-02/vietnam-war-veteran-zen-buddhist-monk/100731206
I guess it depends on what it means to be enlightened. If it is, as I argue, just a disposition of non-attachment, and if having self-cultivated to realize that state gives one the ability to teach others how to realize it, or at least help them to, it would then seem to follow that, if we can determine whether or not someone is non-attached, by definition we could determine whether they are enlightened, and hence whether they are a potential guru. Lotta "ifs" there!
Correct. Very hard but not impossible. And in some cases, like Blavatsky, as a classical example, not even so hard.
What matters at the end of the day is to use our judgement and avoid blindly accepting a "guru" and his teachings just because they meet some psychological need we may happen to have.
And, let's face it, humans in general tend to be emotion-driven creatures which is what makes it so easy for them to be manipulated.
The objective analysis of facts indicates that it is this psychological trap that people tend to fall into and once they are in there they will do everything in their power to convince themselves and others that it isn't a trap.
If we start from the premise that Philosophy in the original or true sense is love of, and quest for, truth and that systems like Buddhism also aim to discover the truth, then it becomes clear that those who have fallen into the "guru-trap" may be taking the quest for truth less seriously than they should.
For example, from what I see, there is no evidence that Buddha attained enlightenment.
There is no evidence that Buddha’s enlightenment, if he attained it, was better than the enlightenment attained by people from other traditions.
There is no evidence that Buddhists on here have personally attained enlightenment by means of Buddhist practices, etc., etc.
I'm not saying that this applies to Buddhism exclusively but, basically, what tends to be the case is that what we’ve got is evidence-free assertions that are being defended by means of other, similarly evidence-free claims.
Even when we are (or think we are) on the road from appearances to truth, traveling in the wrong direction remains a very real possibility that should not be ignored ....
Because when foreigners invade your country, the only sensible thing to do is to kneel before them and let them have your country, right?
Or is that only when Christians invade your country ...
The difference of opinions shows only that there is a difference of opinions. Nothing more.
I'll translate this into language that you might be better able to understand:
Harry: Hey, I got laid last night. Susan is really good in the sack!
Dick: Really? I want to hit that too!
(a week later)
Dick (to Harry): You liar! You told me Susan was great in the sack! I did her last night, but it sucked. Man, you made a fool out of me!
Question: Is Susan to blame for Dick's bad experience of the sexual relation between them?
No, it means it's advisable not to be a dick.
You guys have been displaying here a pervasively passive attitude toward religion/spirituality. As if religion/spirituality was something that is done to you, that others do to you, or that others manifest (or fail to manifest) for you. As if you played no part in the matter, or as if what you do has no bearing on the quality of the interaction between yourself and the prospective teacher. And as if the quality of the interaction between yourself and the prospective teacher is entirely and solely the responsibility of the prospective teacher; or at least that as far as you are concerned, you can do no wrong.
This is the stereotype about men and sex; you are replicating it in reference to religion/spirituality.
Wrong. Buddhism isn't after the truth in the general sense you're using the word here. For the Buddhist quest, most truths that people tend to be after are irrelevant.
Guess what? There is no Buddhist who is losing sleep over your not seeing any evidence that Buddha attained enlightenment.
But, more importantly, you don't care whether they do or don't.
Upon which you pile on more evidence-free claims. But wait, that pile is evidence!
Quoting Tom Storm
The simpler explanation is that religion/spirituality is exactly as it appears, exactly as it is practiced by religious/spiritual people.
Thus:
It _is_ religious/spiritual to be eager to assume and take for granted the worst about others.
It _is_ religious/spiritual to act in bad faith.
It _is_ religious/spiritual to make empty promises.
It _is_ religious/spiritual to quickly resort to ill will.
It _is_ religious/spiritual to promote one thing and do another.
It _is_ religious/spiritual to have double standards.
And this is not to be repudiated. Religion/spirituality is the triumph of Social Darwinism, an evolutionary success.
So lay it out for us, Baker: how is the correct opinion ( the one that you seem to be claiming would reflect the fact of the matter) be identified?
Quoting baker
This is completely irrelevant. The question we are looking at is whether those who claim they are spiritual masters could be identified as either deluded or liars on the one hand, or the real deal on the other. The question about the contribution that must be made by the student is not at issue.
If you want to discuss this, then stop coming up with poorly conceived analogies and address the actual question. Support your apparent claim that there is a determinable fact of the matter as to whether someone is enlightened or not
The sense is "ultimate reality", whatever that may turn out to be. But thanks for clarifying that Buddhism (or at least your version of it) isn't after truth.
Quoting baker
Well, if Buddhism isn't after truth, of course Buddhists won't lose sleep over lack of evidence for their beliefs. They say that ignorance is bliss, but in your case it looks like ignorance is the shortcut to "Nirvana".
Quoting baker
I don't know about that, but your own "evidence" seems to consist in having a very short fuse. Another sure sign of indoctrination and self-radicalization IMO.
Maybe "religion" is not your only complex, after all .... :smile:
You're just providing further evidence for my points.
Wrong. You're just providing more evidence for our points. Maybe it's time to re-examine your assumptions and revise your whole approach to the issues discussed?
Haven’t read most of this thread but I’ll join the chorus and opinionate. To start with, I’m a fallibilist, so I can’t speak for some form of definitive evidence of anyone being or having ever been enlightened, this because I can’t think of any definitive proof (or, else, of any type of infallible experience or justification) in respect to there being (or of there not being) such a thing as ultimate reality - “The Real” as some have termed it.
But as far as the significance of the term “enlightened”, it seems reasonable to me that it is fully contingent on whether or not there ontically is such a thing as an ultimate reality. If and only if there is, then it stands to reason that it might be possible for some to have some epiphany whereby this ultimate reality becomes understood. Logically, given that truth in general is a conformity to what is real, this apprehension of ultimate reality would entail a psyche-filtered (likely even psyche-predispositioned and, hence, biased) awareness of Truth with a capital “T”. An awareness which then might govern their awareness of all other truths with a lower case "t". Then, for the roundabout reasons of why we all bicker with each other about what the nature of reality is on this website, it stands to reason that at least some such persons would then want to convey this understanding of the nature of reality to others. But such a person would likely be contextualized by differing cultures, languages, semantics, preestablished beliefs and norms, and so forth - this in conjunction to holding their own individual types of intelligences, perspectives, personal desires, and common knowledge: so their conveyance of this same, unitary ultimate reality would differ ... in part, so as to make it as understandable as possible by the language, norms, preestablished beliefs, etc. of the society they find themselves in.
Iff there is an ultimate reality, then I see no reason not to take a cross-cultural perennial-philosophy approach to enlightenment. As Plotinus says:
Quoting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Real#In_philosophy
Yes, Socrates and Plato might have both been as enlightened as was the Buddha, or as was JC - each in different contexts; why not Kant, or even Hume?; why not so many others? This whole “deification” motif of being enlightened, to me at least, might be an utterly wrongminded approach to it. Iff there is an ultimate reality, that is.
Iff there is not an ultimate reality, then all such accounts - and not just those given by wannabes and charlatans looking for access to extra capital - are, at best, mistaken.
Quoting Tom Storm
To me at least, aesthetically reminiscent of William Blake’s “Auguries of Innocence”. Who also gives some inklings of having been enlightened. Maybe.
You mention Kant and and Hume. I see no reason why a philosopher couldn't be enlightened. The Buddha and Jesus were philosophers first before becoming the source material for movements in their name.
I recently saw a 2007 interview with Dr Hubert Dreyfus, the great Heidegger scholar. He considers H to be possibly the greatest philosopher 'of all time'. Enlightened? Well if Kant is then... Yet there is the Nazi Party membership issue and Heidegger's belief in Hitler. What do we do when one of the smartest philosophers of all time (debatable, sure) buys into possibly the most evil 20th century movement? Dreyfus says he can't find the words to explain it.
Well, for a layperson like me, it tells me not to confuse genius with sagacity or decency. A lesson we need to re-learn periodically. So I keep coming back to virtue as being a key element of enlightenment - if we are going to accept this loosely understood doctrine as a phenomenon we might encounter in the world.
Aptly pointed out and well put.
The human condition is such that individuals are subject to various forms of poverty through the context of their environment. This is assuming the individual is constitutionally healthy at birth. These situations are burdens of ignorance as well as superstition, religion, and the supernatural. If the constitution is a healthy virgerous one then the context becomes all-important. Where one is free of the aforementioned it is at least free of the toxicity of environmental sacred ignorance.
The United States is presently an example of a regression back to the darkages, in the sense of its anti-intellectualism and anti-science, creating the environmental context that preceded the enlightenment. This again is an example of the fact that one cannot separate subject and object. We process the environment to create our apparent reality, thus, with a regression like this, the environment of the United States is an ever growing stiffling of an enlightened environment, which means a stiffling of the enlightenment of the population. Ignorace under said conditions is a generalized poverty. Different forms of poverty create ignorance.
This is how I see it, too.
As stated before, religion may assist the Philosopher (i.e., the seeker after truth) in disengaging from mundane activities and experiences and focus his or her conscious attention on higher modes of experience. Religion also has an ethical import. But religion or at least the lower forms of it must ultimately be transcended, especially if the ultimate goal is a state in which human consciousness and "ultimate reality" are in a state of unity with one another.
Plato (and Platonism in general) aims to do precisely this by offering a metaphysical framework that starts with the deities and ethical code of conventional Greek (Athenian) religion and progresses upward to cosmic gods, to the universe as a divine, ensouled being, to the creative intelligence that generates the universe, and culminates in the "Ineffable One" which is the source of all intelligence, knowledge and truth.
We also need to bear in mind that the word "divine" in this context need not have the usual religious connotations. It may simply refer to a state of "perfection", "eternity", etc. In fact, this is how it is often used by Plato and others.
With the intention of complementing your statements, divinity appears to be intimately related to that which is sacred in nearly all, if not all, situations.
Western culture tends to have many religious branches which want to divide that which is sacred from that which is profane. Compare A) the first Council of Nicaea’s beliefs of the Christ as the incarnation of the Creator Deity as trinity (here, utterly other in relation to mankind, which is deemed profane) which will redeem some of humankind by granting them a place in heaven, this as subjects of the supreme being of the Christ; with B) the beliefs of the Ophites, an ancient Gnostic sect (else grouping of such) predating the first Council of Nicaea (which found this and like sects heretical): the sect identified the Christ with the serpent (if not valuing the serpent more than the Christ); in essence, then, identifying the Christ with a being seeking to enlighten all humankind to the divine knowledge of right and wrong (thereby intending to make all humans endowed with this divine wisdom, i.e. to make everyone equally enlightened; and, hence, more or less equally divine). Within such prevalent Western contexts, then, to be enlightened would seem to necessarily imply being a transcendently sacred psyche - i.e., a supernatural deity; e.g. Jesus Christ as God - which, then, stands in an unbridgeable relation to the common man (which are here taken as profane subjugates or, at the very least, followers).
It’s in this roundabout sense of deification that I made the statement that viewing enlightened persons as deified might be utterly wrongminded.
Yet, by comparison, Eastern culture tends to have many religious, spiritual, and/or philosophical branches which want to integrate that which is sacred with that which is profane while yet acknowledging a distinction: framed in a western point of view, the world as at least resembling a pantheistic, or panentheistic, system wherein nature itself is divine and, in this sense, an integral aspect of divinity.
To this effect, some easterners will traditionally bow to themselves in acknowledging each other’s literally divine, or sacred, aspects of being. As a different example, the Dalai Lama is held to be the incarnation of the Buddha of universal compassion, and, hence, as a divinity; and yet no one views him as a transcendently sacred psyche, as a supernatural god, but simply as one who is inherently enlightened of ultimate reality. One intending to enlighten ideally all of mankind. (The current Dalai Lama, at least, has published quite a bit. Last book I read by him was “The Middle Way: Faith Grounded in Reason” … mentioned because I really like the subtitle.)
These common enough Eastern perspectives hold much more in common with the view you’ve presented of Platonism which, for the sake of brevity at the cost of some inaccuracy, I’ll abridge into the belief in logos (in the sense of an anima mundi). Here, tmk, there can usually be inferred closer and further proximities that sentient beings can hold in relation to the “Ineffable One”—thereby allowing for a cline of beings’ sacredness, this in contrast to some transcendent sharp divide in the nature of psyches—yet, despite the polarities of this cline, here also all the cosmos is deemed to be in at least some sense divine, sacred.
This, again, is not the sense of deification that I intended. But for a westerner, the two senses of divinity do tend to become convoluted most of the time, at least in my experiences.
Interestingly for me, whereas easterners tend to view the enlightenment of all humankind as a good to be hoped for, we westerners have typically been enculturated into viewing it a sin, if not pure evil, this via our mainstream tellings of the acquisition of knowledge of right and wrong so being.
[quote=Edward Conze, Buddhist Philosophy and its European Parallels]The "perennial philosophy" is...defined as a doctrine which holds [1] that as far as worth-while knowledge is concerned not all are equal, but that there is a hierarchy of persons, some of whom, through what they are, can know more than others; [2] that there is a hierarchy also of the levels of reality, some of which are more "real," because more exalted than others; and [3] that the wise of old have found a wisdom which is true, even though it has no empirical basis in observations which can be made by everyone and everybody; and that in fact there is a rare and unordinary faculty in some of us by which we can attain direct contact with actual reality--through the Prajñ?p?ramit? of the Buddhists, the logos of Parmenides, the Sophia of Aristotle and others, Spinoza's amor dei intellectualis, Hegel's Vernunft, and so on; and [4] that true teaching is based on an authority which legitimizes itself by the exemplary life and charismatic quality of its exponents.[/quote]
Whereas, in secular culture, there are no criteria for such a distinction. Hence all the argument about 'how to judge the Enlightened' (which is a fair question from the secular POV.)
Quoting Tom Storm
Discovered Philosophical Religions from Plato to Spinoza: Reason, Religion, and Autonomy by Carlos Fraenkel last year. Probably not going to add it to the never-ending list (especially as it retails for $160.00!) but it's worth noting the argument that 'Many pagan, Jewish, Christian and Muslim philosophers from Antiquity to the Enlightenment made no meaningful distinction between philosophy and religion,' whereas on this forum, and in today's culture, it's almost universally assumed that they're at loggerheads.
Quoting javra
In the West, the 'original sin' was triggered by 'eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil', in which the snake appears as symbol of the fall. Edward Conze points out that in Eastern culture, snakes are regarded as symbols of the divine - the name of the Buddhist sage N?g?rjuna literally translates as 'king of snakes', and his iconographical depiction is like this:
At a very high level of generalisation, the 'Western' view of the human condition is that we're 'ensnared in sin' as a result of the Fall. The 'Eastern' view is that we're ensnared in ignorance, avidya, as a consequence of beginningless karma. So the 'Western view' is volitional, a corruption of the Will, whereas the Eastern view is cognitive, corruption of the intellect (in the sense of the organ of knowledge).
However in my view, these are not quite as far apart as many would expect. I've had some exposure to Pure Land Buddhism, which also views human nature as intrinsically corrupted - that all of us are bombu, 'foolish mortal beings' - who can no way save ourselves by engaging in meditation. Those practices are respected but regarded as 'the hard path' which is only open to the real sages (such as N?g?rjuna) but which are unnattainable by foolish mortal beings. Pure Land has been compared to Calvinism, which is true in that one respect, but doxologically (in terms of belief) they're literally worlds apart.
Of course, I took this as read. I was applying the term very loosely and from our perspective. I guess it might have been more accurate to say these figures were not working towards founding a new religion.
Can you clarify your views as to how this speaks to the Western vilification of enlightenment when enlightenment is understood to minimally entail knowledge of right and wrong? Else the whole issue of virtue not being integral to enlightenment.
As to the divinity of the serpent of the garden of Eden, its been often enough identified with Lucifer, the "lucid one" and, in accordance to genesis, the serpent was not a physical serpent for it did not slither on the Earth prior to being condemned to so do by "the Lord". If it didn't slither the earth when conveying info to Eve my initial reaction is to interpret it as spiritual, flying within the heavens. In relation to function, I in many ways liken the myth of the serpent to the myth of Prometheus (who was punished by Zeus for the crime of bringing divine fire, wisdom(?), to mankind). At any rate, the divinity of the serpent has a long heritage in Eastern and Western cultures alike. I'm thinking of Greek mythology, for instance, and if not then earlier western religious beliefs.
Quoting Wayfarer
Well, I certainly qualify as a bombu most likely. :smile: But, again, how does this relate to the cultural evaluation of the ideal of everyone obtaining enlightenment?
The fact that I am is about the only thing of which I'm indubitably certain.
Quoting javra
There are several dimensions to this.
The point about the implications of knowledge in the sense of 'enlightenment', is that the Eastern conception of avidya (translated in some texts as 'nescience') carries the implication that real knowledge is itself salvific. I think you find that in Platonism and ancient philosophy generally - true knowledge (or wisdom) comprises the 'unitive vision', of how everything hangs together. (You even find echoes of that in, for example, Albert Einstein's cosmic religious views.)
In the Indian context it is taken for granted that liberation (vidya) comes from discerning 'how things actually are', seeing the true nature of things. That is actually the meaning of 'vidya'. That 'seeing things how they are' has soteriological benefits would have been expected, and is just another way of articulating the ‘is’ and ‘ought’ dimension of Dharma. - the ‘ought’ (pragmatic benefit) is never cut adrift from the ‘is’ (cognitive factual truth).
The ‘is/ought’ distinction is a modern one, first articulated by Hume, but is now very much a part of modern life. It is generally taken for granted that science assumes a Universe which is inherently devoid of value; that values and meaning are internal to human minds and are ultimately derived from, and reducible to, the requirements of successful adaptation. They're the products of an evolved homonid brain.
So 'Enlightenment' philosophy is naturally suspicious of Eastern views, because they sound religious or at any rate a long way from naturalism and empiricism. (Although through the inevitable syncretism of today's global culture, you now find them mixed-and-matched in for example New Age movements such as 'evolutionary enlightenment'.)
And on the other hand, many strands of Christian thought are hostile to Eastern views because they seem pantheistic. After all Hindus worship millions of Gods, and the Buddhists don't seem to worship a God at all (leaving aside the sense in which the Buddha is depicted in some Buddhists cultures as a kind of deity.)
But there's a lot of complexity in this topic. Christian Platonism has many philosophical resonances with the philosophical views of both Advaita and Mah?y?na Buddhism. I think this is because they all have roots in the 'axial age' philosophies and are products of a similar stage of cultural development. That's why, I think, in today's world, Catholicism is much more open to a kind of multi-faith attitude than Protestantism, on the whole - it still carries much more of the Greek philosophical heritage, so is nearer to Christian Platonism. But many Protestants are suspicious of Christian Platonism and some reject it as outright paganism. ('What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?') Protestantism is first and foremost a religion of faith in the One True God, so it's naturally suspicious of anything that sounds like acceptance of other religions. (I recall perusing a book by a Protestant polemicist, 'Against the Modern Gnostics', which depicted the interest in 'enlightenment' as the resurgence of gnosticism - not innaccurately, in my view.)
There are very many complexities in all of these arguments and no one single perspective. That's what makes it interesting!
Brings to mind the only means I've so far found of making any type of reasonable sense of JC's statement that "truth shall set you free": but I think this requires one to hold a more Ophite-like interpretation of things. Where truth is interpreted with a capital "T".
Eh, I don't know.
Thanks though for the input.
Of course, secular culture does not rely on authority. The following has already been posted in this topic but sometimes you just can't help hitting repeat.
[quote=Immanuel Kant]Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-imposed nonage. Nonage is the inability to use one's own understanding without another's guidance. This nonage is self-imposed if its cause lies not in lack of understanding but in indecision and lack of courage to use one's own mind without another's guidance. Dare to know! (Sapere aude.) "Have the courage to use your own understanding," is therefore the motto of the enlightenment.[/quote]
'nihil ultra ego'
Quoting javra
When I studied the Gnostic texts, a book drew attention to the two statements 'He who believes in Me shall be saved' and 'you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free'. They were said to be representative of the pistic and gnostic attitudes, respectively (where 'pistic' is derived from the Greek 'pistis', belief or opinion.) Historically 'pistic' Christianity (symbolised by the fish symbol in the ancient catacombs) carried the day, triumphing over the gnostics - and history was written by the victors. The Gnostic Valentinus came with a couple of votes of being elected Pope in the early days. I often wondered how differently things might have unfolded had he won.
Conze describes the necessary basic structure of religion, a hierarchy of authority indistinguishable from a hierarchy of truth or reality. Secular culture makes a distinction and is so freed from this terrible chain of being.
Correct. By definition, knowledge is salvific in the sense that it saves the knower from ignorance and from the suffering resulting from it.
This is also implied in philosophy as a quest for truth, knowledge, or wisdom. At the very least, ignorance
causes uncertainty, doubt, confusion, etc. that results in mental suffering. Knowledge eradicates the root cause of suffering and the absence of suffering leads to happiness.
This is why higher states of consciousness and, in particular, self-consciousness or self-realization (i.e., awareness of one's true self) are universally associated with enhanced peace of mind and a sense of happiness.
Mythology, religion, and storytelling all have something in common, they are all trying to be informative giving some sense of orientation. Mythology as a form of storytelling being mutable to time place succeeds with its orientation. Mythology, as religion written in stone and not relative to time and place is a failed attempt at orientation. You might say that all these forms were attempts at enlightenment but religion is a failed attempt at orientation to the physical world and its nature. I suppose one could say enlightenment is successful orientation of both the individual and the individual's societal context -- an ideal, similar to Plato's Republic. Remembering a fallen self, Carl Sagan, a candle in the dark.
When I do a search I get this pokeman jellyfish thing and I think to myself “what could Wayfarer be trying to say” :chin:
That is not necessarily the case, clearly. What's also clear is that in religion it is exclusively 'nothing more than the tribe of fellow believers'. That is a necessary constraint not shared (in its necessity) by enlightened secular culture. I will also point out that identity of any sort, secular or religious, is based on ego. Is an identity bound to a tribe any better than bound to one's self, or is it worse? Better to transcend all limitations, right?
No. It's that people so often approach the matter of enlightenment in an externalizing manner. They refuse to look at their own intentions, their own words, their own actions, and just focus on the other person. Seeking the answers out there.
"Is this person a genuine teacher or is he a charlatan?" is the wrong question. The right question is more along the lines of, "Whom am I looking for? A genuine teacher, or do I just want someone who will provide me with another fancy layer of denial and delusion?" Asking oneself the latter question makes the former one redundant.
I don't think this helps much. I think a lot of people start with this latter question and still end up with a charlatan - but I get your point.
No, my dear brothers and sisters, true enlightenment lies in the realization that one can see reality in more than one light, and that the light reflected depends on the light used to enlighten. This realization truly sets free and truly saves. Not from ignorance and lie, but from the dark powers that are settled in the depths of human nature which can overtake us and send the world into a state of the great tyrants and their wicked ways.
So brothers and sisters, let's hold hands and pray! Let's show gra... Ah well, fuck that...
I'm not sure we're on the same page here.
Can you say why "Is this person a genuine teacher or is he a charlatan?" is the wrong question?
(Aww, look at those claws!)
Because when someone calls you "braindead" and such, the most rational thing to do is to bow to that person and become their devotee. Riiight.
Religious/spiritual "authorities" have brought the disrespect that they so eagerly complain about upon themselves. People can endure being treated like shit for some time, but not indefinitely. Sure, blame the people, what else. Blame them, blame their selfishness, their stiff-neckedness, whatever suits your purpose, whatever detracts from your acknowledging that if you truly knew better (as you want others to acknowledge), you should act differently than you did.
How do you, or Dreyfus, explain why Nazism is so evil?
If you want to set yourselves up as judges over Heidegger's enlightenment status, then surely you should have the words to explain Heidegger's involvement with Nazism.
Since I don't really accept the idea of an enlightened person in the first place, I have nothing to explain. People are flawed and support ideas and do things that cause suffering. I can't speak for Dreyfus.
Quoting baker
Maybe we aren't. So your enhanced proposed question is:
quote="baker;638847"]do I just want someone who will provide me with another fancy layer of denial and delusion?"[/quote]
Often people end up following paths by accident or without planning to. The questions you pose (which are highly self-aware in a particular way) would make no sense since they are not locating themselves as searchers of truth. In other words, if you are not shopping, you won't have a list.
There's a second group who are consumers of truth. From what I have seen they do ask those questions already and these are generally buried inside the question 'Is the teacher a charlatan'. When you drill down, which I have sometimes done, they generally will say things like - "I don't want to be deluded by false ideas or by a teacher who is misguided or a hypocrite who just tells me what I want to hear.'
There's always been the inherent problem that if you are not enlightened yourself, how do you, a flawed creature, have the capacity to wisely asses what path to follow in the first place? Surely it is bound to go wrong (sometimes horribly so) for most.
That question is more suited to this thread.
No wonder it's a nightmare!
So you believe that there is suffering, but that potentially, there is no respite from it, no end to it?
I think this is nowhere near the problem that it is often made out to be.
A question like "Is this a genuine teacher or a charlatan?" and seeking an answer to it conveniently externalizes the whole issue, presenting the prospective student as an innocent (!) consumer (!) of spiritual guidance. A person with such an outlook never looks at their own intentions and actions. And when something goes wrong, they blame other people. It's a question that essentially puts in place a no-fail strategy, so this is part of its allure ("if I succeed, I will take credit; if I fail, others will be blamed while I am innocent").
In a person with a normally constituted conscience, looking at one's own intentions and actions should have both a sobering and a guiding effect. Such a person will not make grave mistakes in their life.
Also, problems typically occur when someone tries to take on more than they can carry, tries to make a bigger step than they have the capacity to make. For example, when a person feels enormous pressure to decide about whether a particular religion is the right one and to resolve the matter within a month. They ponder and ponder, read, discuss, and debate, but get nowhere, while the pressure keeps rising. This is a clear case of trying to do something that one, at that point, is unable to do.
In such a case, the wise thing to do would be to pare things down, minimize, to the point when one arrives at the level of decisions that are actually actionable for one at the time.
What exactly those decisions and actions are will vary from person to person. I think most people are not in a position where they could meaningfully, actionably answer questions like "Which religious path should I follow?"
Why do you say that?
Pain makes/keeps it real! Ever bled or broken a bone while playing a hyperviolent RPG? Come to think of it there's one who...
Being under "enormous pressure" to decide whether a particular religion is the right one "within a month", doesn't sound like a typical situation to me at all.
The vast majority of people opt for sticking with the religion they were born into. So the "problems" occur in a small minority only. And this may well be rooted in identity issues, insecurity, and other psychological factors that cannot be resolved by converting to another religion.
An interesting case is that of Irish singer Sinéad O'Connor who has been struggling with mental health issues in addition to being a heavy cannabis smoker for decades. She was born a Catholic, became a priest, and eventually converted to Islam, without this solving any of her issues.
What is particularly interesting is that it seems to have started from an attitude of rebellion against her parents and tradition in general, and ended in hatred of Christianity and white people.
In a comment on Twitter, she wrote:
So we can see how something as "trivial" as rebellion against parental authority (which may itself be a manifestation of an inability to assimilate and adapt) can lead to other issues that seldom solve the original problem and can even aggravate it ....
[quote=Thích Nh?t H?nh d.2022]There is no enlightenment outside of daily life.[/quote]
:up: :chin:
Does that mean nirvana itself is maya?
:up:
Having given a thumb up, one doesn't have to look far to realize daily life usually is a dark, cold, scary life which needs at least some enlightenment from the outside. Or does even daily shit got its intrinsic enlightenment?
IIRC, nirvana amounts to recognizing daily that the distinction of nirvana / samsara is maya.
:clap:
That doesn't mean that every mug punter is enlightened, otherwise the world would be entirely different. It means, don't go chasing after fantasy images of enlightenment, if it is to be found anywhere it is in daily life, but it's still far from evident in the lives of most of us.
This also could use some historical explication. Originally Buddhism was a strictly renunciate movement, revolving entirely around the monastic order (sangha) which was supported by the lay population as an act of meritorious spiritual conduct. The monks and nuns lived in strict seclusion and under the vinaya rules of monastic conduct, from which members could be expelled or sanctioned for infractions. The difference between wordly life and renunciate life was radical and complete.
Gradually over the succeeding centuries after the Buddha's passing, a new Buddhist ethos began to emerge, the Mah?y?na, which was based on a different kind of ideal principle, that of the bodhisattva, one who serves the enlightenment of all beings, as distinct from the solitary arhat, one who pursues their own enlightenment.
It was at this time that the radical distinction between Nirv??a and Sa?s?ra was called into question by the nondualist Indian teachers such as N?g?rjuna. However it should be understood that in traditional Buddhist terms this is a radical understanding, and was never adopted in the Theravada Buddhist cultures which characterise most of South-Asian Buddhism (Thai, Cambodian, Sri Lankan). However it became embedded in East Asian and Tibetan Buddhism and imported into the West due to the activities of their emissary representatives in the 19th and 20th centuries.
It is these schools which taught the doctrine of the non-distinction of Nirv??a and Sa?s?ra. Which becomes, in the internet meme age, a really easy way to rationalise a kind of 'anything goes', 'I'm already enlightened' type of attitude, which has been a considerably useful marketing tool for the absorption of Buddhism into global consumer culture. But I think it's very different from the realities of Buddhist life.
If so, nirvana can only be arrived at by accident and not deliberately. We have to stumble upon it via random walks instead of arriving at it with the aid of a well laid out strategem. The level of mindfulness (recommended buddhist practice) required to pull this off is clearly too great for description. It would require complete awareness (self/other) 24/7 for even the slightest sound, the briefest flash of light, a drunk's swearing, etc. could enlighten a person.
Perhaps there's a sense in which liberation cannot be attained by a deliberate strategy. Nevertheless, in Buddhist cultures, there are strenuous regimens of disciplined practice that are undertaken. Take Antai-ji Monastery - it's a S?t? Zen monastery that accepts foreign students for residential retreats (subject to qualification and on the basis of being fluent in Japanese.) It's typical of many such centres, and every day comprises a structured routine of several hours zazen, cooking, cleaning, gardening and maintainance. (Here's their summer retreat daily schedule. A walk in the park, it ain't.)
It's true that Zen literature has stories of monks who 'became enlightened' when hearing a sound or seeing a particular sight, seemingly spontaneously. But it ought not to be forgotten that in the traditional setting, many of these individuals had been living that strenuous discipline for many years or decades. There's an old saying, 'the harder I work, the luckier I get'. A lot of Zen lore came into the US through popular books by Alan Watts and the like. There's nothing the matter with them, but they don't convey the actual culture very well. It's not at all happy-go-lucky and doing as you please, far from it.
I'm on the mailing list of Zen teacher, Ven. Meido Roshi. He has built a monastery in Wisconsin, https://www.korinji.org/. I've visited there and met him, although I've never committed to following his style of Rinzai Zen teaching, it's very rigorous. Nevertheless I consider him a genuine Buddhist teacher. He has a couple of books out and online training. Worth checking out.
No plan is the plan! :chin: I have no idea why philosophy (religions inclusive) are riddled with paradoxes like this.
I agree with the rest of what you said - it's possible to manipulate the environment and reorganize our lives (zen monasteries/retreats) to put us in the right frame of mind to notice those small details which may be the key to nirvana, details which we gloss over in ordinary settings.
I don't know about "nirvana" but I tend to doubt that enlightenment can be arrived at "by accident". The enlightened person must have gone through a process of inner transformation for the final "enlightenment moment" to happen.
This transformation must in turn be the result of an effort, conscious or subconscious, on the part of the individual in question.
A conscious intention that initiates this effort or process seems to be necessary as most people who are said to have attained enlightenment (or some form of spiritual realization) seem to have started from a deliberate effort to attain this.
If we start from the assumption that there is a higher reality behind the world of appearances or phenomena, then the initial intention is an intention to see behind and beyond this world.
This is why Plato says that discovering the source of knowledge and truth, i.e the source of ordinary reality, is the highest thing to learn. As the faculty of optic perception plays a dominant role in the experience humans have of reality, he recommends tracing the source of beauty, for example, to arrive at Beauty itself which stands, as it were, at the threshold of a higher level of reality.
Following Plato, Plotinus says:
The process of discovering reality, then, is a process of "purification" (katharsis) of individual consciousness which trains itself to increasingly remove unreality from its field of perception by looking behind and beyond appearances until the "light of reality" dawns on it in an act of "illumination" (ellampsis) that reveals not only "objective reality" but also the true identity of the "subject":
Obviously, the vast majority of mankind just want to get on with their daily life and have no time for anything of this sort. And even from among the small minority who take an interest in these things and try their best to have a realization of them, very few actually succeed.
But the main confusion arises from a lack of understanding of what "enlightenment" actually is, which is not surprising given that many definitions or descriptions are offered, often by individuals who have no personal experience of what they are defining or describing, and is compounded by the general attitude of consumerism prevalent in modern society based on the belief that everything is (a) personally achievable and (b) achievable on command, which belief is often little more than an expression of the desire to gratify one's ego and tends to lead in a direction that is contrary to the one leading to anything resembling enlightenment ....
No wonder most people don't even try.
Vision and Routine, Bhikkhu Bodhi
Complete awareness or what Buddhists call mindfulness is paramount. You never know when or where an opportunity for nirvana might present itself. You have to be on high alert 24/7, but that drains you physically and mentally. What you need then is practice of mindfulness until it comes naturally, is second nature to you, and most importantly, is effortless.
-G
That sounds like a very brief journey to enlightenment then. "I am ignorant without philosophy; I wonder if there is something new up on Netflix..."
I wasn't using the term journey literally. :wink:
If you wake up from a clueless state you are still clueless. That's my point about a brief 'journey'. Recognizing you are clueless is an important step but in philosophical terms, is this not to enlightenment what premature ejaculation is to sex?
I'm not sure what you mean by 'philosophical tradition'. Do you mean all of them? Every one?
The Pragmatic Buddhists eschew the very notion of enlightenment as a dangerous fantasy or pitfall, instead focusing on a gradualistic increase in self- and world-awareness. Or, say, a gradualistic decrease in ego-illusion.
Worth mentioning.
Reminds me of the 20% (forgot the actual figure) rule in hypertension: Only 20% of hypertensives are diagnosed. Of them, only 20% are actually treated. Of those treated, only in 20% is the hypertension actually cured.
That feeling has always filled me with a kind of dread. :wink:
Quoting ZzzoneiroCosm
Yes, that is worth mentioning.
Not so. 'Sudden vs gradual' was a debate that ran for centuries in Chinese Buddhism. I've never read any reference to 'pragmatic Buddhists' in this regard. See https://www.amazon.com/Gradual-Approaches-Enlightenment-Chinese-Thought/dp/8120808193
To reiterate: enlightenment, in Buddhism, is the English word that was used to translate the Buddhist word 'bodhi', which can also be translated as 'wisdom'. The Buddhist term 'Nirv??a' means 'a state in which there is neither suffering, desire, nor sense of self, and the subject is released from the effects of karma and the cycle of death and rebirth. In Hindu religions, the equivalent is mok?a, also translated as 'liberation', meaning 'freedom from all suffering and from the cycle of birth and death through knowledge of the Self'. Both of these are completely different from the Enlightenment of 17th-18th century Europe which occurs in a very different cultural and historical context.
Don't forget the oral tradition. :smile:
http://www.pragmaticbuddhism.org/
It came out of the mouth of the founder of the organization I linked you to.
Do you think the 'spiritual' use of the word enlightenment is useful? It seems to me a theme here has been those who think of it as knowledge (in the more rationalist sense) and those who see it as part of a contemplative tradition - emerging, let's say from the logos?
I don't like the word 'spiritual' much but I think English doesn't have many useful equivalents. I found this passage in one of the essays of Nishijima roshi.
That avoids the problem of reification or objectification associated with using the word 'spirit'. I sometimes reflect on the meaning of spirit as 'gist' - like 'the gist of a story'. So spirit is like the gist, the meaning. Does it exist? I think 'exist' is not the right word. But it is real nonetheless. What is real is much greater than what exists. Hard idea to get.
(Note the similarity with TLP 6.41 "The sense of the world must lie outside the world. In the world everything is as it is and happens as it does happen. In it there is no value—and if there were, it would be of no value.
If there is a value which is of value, it must lie outside all happening and being-so. For all happening and being-so is accidental.
What makes it non-accidental cannot lie in the world, for otherwise this would again be accidental.
It must lie outside the world.")
I think this is wrong on account of treating matter as "raw" particles, understood as utterly devoid of meaning, which ignores the fact that beings which are nothing other than material, in any substantive sense, create meaning in interaction with environments which are nothing other than material.
What matter is on the basic level does not exhaust what it can be on the cellular and sentient fleshly levels.
Quoting Wayfarer
Hard to get because it is impossible to explain, meaning it is not a discursive idea at all (since any discursive idea can be explained). So, really it is nothing but an intimation, a kind of feeling; the stuff of poetry; which is certainly not without value, since it opens up the human imagination; a faculty of equal or greater importance than the intellect. But it is certainly not something that can be cogently argued for or demonstrated to be true.
Thanks. Yes, spiritual can be problematic. As you say there are so few simple words that can be used as an alternative in a plain English discussion of such matters. Happy to hear from anyone with a useable alternative. I think I generally use spiritual as an alternative to idealism.
One of my teams at work is called Spiritual Care and while that might sound delightfully vague, it does significant work helping people who are sick and in palliative care make sense of death and loss and find hope and connection to others. So part of me uses the word without irony and without quotation marks.
Quoting Wayfarer
I have a sense of this. Reminds me of that quote often erroneously (I think) attributed to Einstein - “Not everything that can be counted counts and not every thing that counts can be counted”?
I suspect anyone who as worked with suicidal people knows that what is real is often greater than what exists. For me this is the nature of minds, if nothing else.
What about the word enlightenment - should we abolish it in its numinous guise?
Oh, and I think that is a bona-fide Einstein quote. Goes with another of his, '“It would be possible to describe everything scientifically, but it would make no sense; it would be without meaning, as if you described a Beethoven symphony as a variation of wave pressure.”
Of course. There the context gives it the intended meaning. Rather than as a token in a philosophical debate.
Good point. And if one wanted to, one may add the crucial difference that in this case the evidence of cure seems to be absent ... :smile:
"Spiritual" is a fitting word. It conveys the vagueness of the "spiritual" endeavor and sets the task at hand, namely to clarify things for oneself.
It's good that "spiritual" has so much baggage; this way, one at least stands a chance to figure things out on one's own. Otherwise, "spirituality" would be yet another zombification activity.
Is this "Spiritual Care" mandatory?
The irony just goes on and on!
It does, doesn't it? I for one can see nothing wrong with seeing the funny side of things. I certainly don’t see enlightenment as reason to be overly despondent and in a bad mood. Quite the opposite, actually.
To revert to the phenomenon of religious conversion and “pressure to decide which religion to choose”, I think the factors that lead to such a situation should not be ignored.
What seems to be the case is that some people start with adaptability issues and rebelliousness which expresses itself as rejection of parental authority, and progresses to rejection of one’s own (i.e., the parents’) religion, culture, and in extreme cases, even race.
The pop singer Madonna grew up in the 60’s and 70’s. Though she had been a Catholic for most of her life, she joined a “Kabbalah” sect in the 90’s and later took an interest in Indian religion before taking up the study of Islam as well as getting herself a Muslim boyfriend.
In one of her statements she says:
Madonna 2013 Interview – Harpers Bazaar
Of course, with characters like Madonna it’s difficult to tell if they are serious about something or they just do it for the publicity-driving “shock value” of their statements and actions. But I think it does illustrate how adaptability issues can play a role in people’s decision to reject their own religion in favor of some “exotic” substitute.
Identity issues also seem to be involved as religious conversion often entails some kind of identity crisis.
The fact that (a) the substitute has to be alien and (b) the conversion has to be seen as “daring” (i.e., challenging the norm) at all costs, is worthy of further investigation, but it does suggest that there is a close link between rebelliousness and identity issues as causes of conversion.
In Madonna’s own words:
We can see that even one’s professional career and whole life can be used as an expression of underlying psychological issues so that the whole person and their life becomes little more than an expression of those issues.
In any case, a key motivating factor in conversion is the desire in the convert for a radical change in his or her life. And that desire is rooted in other issues connected with adaptability and identity.
Given people’s tendency to mythologize themselves, it is tempting (and easy) to put a “spiritual” spin on it, but the fact remains that if we take the time to look beneath the surface, it often boils down to psychology and ego. In some cases it’s pretty plain and obvious without further analysis.
Obviously, there is nothing wrong with “being daring”, but when it is done as a method of “self-expression” (i.e., ultimately, self-promotion), the whole thing may turn out to be little more than an ego-enhancing exercise.
Another aspect of the problem is that Western culture is currently under threat from external and internal developments. Without the support of its culture, the whole Western world is in danger of collapse. Some may argue that turning your back on your own people at this time is a sign of selfishness.
So, all facts considered, things are not necessarily quite as simple as they might appear to be, and a degree of critical analysis can’t be a bad thing. Unless we choose to not analyze the inconvenient bits that most people prefer to overlook or cover up.
See also:
Zinnbauer & Pargament, “Spiritual Conversion: A Study of Religious Change Among College Students”, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 37(1), 1998, 161–180.
How about 'transformative'?
No
Quoting baker
Interesting perspective.
I can see some uses for this. The issue is it could be used to describe both enlightenment and The Enlightenment and I am trying to find words to distinguish projects.
Of course none of us can guess at Madonna's motivations, but this all seems to be the typical trajectory of a restless showbiz type who constantly playacts with charged but superficial images and appearances in an endless quest, and by association with such images, to remain relevant and interesting. I wonder if it's all just surfaces for her and if there is any depth at all.
Quoting Apollodorus
Indeed. The perennial philosophy and the New Age movement were as popular as Netflix when I was young (I mixed in those circles for a few years) and it frequently seemed to be fuelled by a resentment of the Christianity of the West and often the West in general. I often think this is an outcome of the modernist mindset to go against the West's own presuppositions.
The religious impulse of the sixties must be rescued from the wreckage and redeemed. The exposure to Hinduism and Buddhism that my generation had to get haphazardly from contemporary literature and music should be formalized and standardized for basic education. What students need to negotiate their way through the New Age fog is scholarly knowledge of ancient and medieval history, from early pagan nature cults through the embattled consolidation of Christian theology. Teaching religion as culture rather than as morality also gives students the intellectual freedom to find the ethical principles at the heart of every religion.[/quote]
Close to what we're trying to do here.
Quoting Tom Storm
...framed in contrast to some spiritual quality he can only imagine exists. Maybe clinging to fantasy casts the world as solulless physicalism, obscuring the miraclulous nature of everyday reality with gaudy decorations constructed from human imagination.
Not a terrible attempt at doing a reading of my OP. But I did mention there I was a half-arsed secular humanist. It might pay you to speculate what the other half might be...
Here are the questions that have so far led to 26 pages of divergent responses. Why don't you have a go at something substantive?
Quoting Tom Storm
Worth noting that Paglia is a strong atheist. The problem is people hear atheism and think Dawkins when they might well be closer to Nietzsche.. :gasp:
The other half is also arse! It's half-arsed, as opposed to fully arsed. It's not half arse half-man! That aside, I have my views about the nature of reality and consciousness - if that's what you mean by something substantive, but I'm more interested currently in how the so-called enlightenment period - I thought you were alluding to when I clicked on the question; clearly described as such with great optimism, in time amounts to your half arsed, secular humanist soulless physicalism? Because to my mind, scientific truth is far more amazing than the fairy stories of our dim distant ancestors!
What is a scientific truth? How is it true?
I don't believe in the God that a lot of atheists dispute the existence of, but I'm not atheist. I suspect it has to do with what the popular imagination makes of the idea.
Quoting karl stone
is extremely adept at disguising itself
As far as I can recall Paglia doesn't believe in idealism or any transcendent guarantees. Which is why I find it odd in her essays on aesthetics that she talks like a Platonist (truth beauty goodness). I think some forms of ardent Darwinism end up sounding like idealism possibly based on some notion that certain dispositions and states of affairs are reified by the evolutionary process.
Is it? Did I do a funny? You'll have to point it out to me! Maybe I can do more!!
Quoting Tom Storm
Do you not know? How absolute is your lack of knowledge on this subject? I haven't the time or the patience to give you lessons in scientific method and epistemology!
The Western tradition is fundamentally Platonist~Aristotelian. Materialism is parasitic on it. (Don flak jacket.)
Quoting karl stone
Thank heavens for small mercies.
I'm going to assume you are a high school kid. Go well, Son.
More solid evidence you're an idiot!
Ah, good 'evidence' keep going we may get to an actual idea soon...
— karl stone
Quoting Wayfarer
If by that you mean reality is complex, then I agree - which is part of what makes it so astounding. There are 26 letters on a keyboard, from which can be constructed about 200,000 english words, that can be strung into a virtually infinite number of meaningful sentences. Similarly, there are 118 chemical elements, and four fundamental forces - and that's before we get into quantum physics, from which all the diversity of life on earth is written. If you're not amazed by that - and feel some yearning need to string up philosophical fairy lights and set off fireworks to make reality special, then you're missing something!
This reminded me of Wittgenstein.
“Wittgenstein told his audience that what he was doing was 'persuading people to change their style of thinking , . He was, he said, 'making propaganda' for one style of thinking as opposed to another. 'I am honestly disgusted with the other', he added. The 'other' he identified as the worship of science, and he therefore spent some time in these lectures execrating what he considered to be powerful and damaging forms of evangelism for this worship - the popular scientific works of the time, such as Jeans's The Mysterious Universe:
“Jeans has written a book called The Mysterious Universe and I loathe it and call it misleading. Take the title ... I might say the title The Mysterious Universe includes a kind of idol worship, the idol being Science and the Scientist.”
(Ray Monk’s Wittgenstein)
I was required to read Wittgenstein at university, and loathed him almost as much as I hated Heidegger. I consider them both 'obscurantists' - whose jargonistic philosophy creates devotees. All this 'being in the world, and sein und dasein - is metaphysical hocus pocus. Any philosophy worth reading begins with epistemology; and the epitome of epistemology is scientific method.
How about philosophy that ties into cutting edge science, like cognitive theory or perceptual psychology? As an adherent of ‘scientific method’ I would assume you try to keep up with actual research results in such cutting edge fields. If so you may notice increasing attention paid to phenomenology. For instance, check out the journal Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences
https://www.springer.com/journal/11097
Shockingly, no - I do not. I did read Piaget on developmental psychology, with reference to Freud and Jung, but more for an overview of the feild. Generally speaking, I take a behaviourist approach - if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it probably thinks it's a duck!
Is it actually transformative?
That's what I've been arguing in this thread and elsewhere; that enlightenment is not a matter of knowing anything like "the ultimate nature of things", or what happens after you die, or any supposed metaphysical "truths"; it is a matter of dissolving the overarching concern with the fate of the self. Ironically, the search for personal salvation is basically a cult of the self in my view.
I think it is doubtful that there can be much depth there. A lot of these pop culture celebrities tend to come from dysfunctional backgrounds and have little experience of relating to the world in a “normal” way which is why they often also have difficulties in forming proper relationships.
Their lifestyle also causes them to be pretty isolated and confined to a small circle of friends, so that they come to experience the world almost exclusively through their shows and through public reaction to them. If you add the high levels of professional stress plus alcohol and drugs, you get a situation in which it can be difficult to realistically develop a healthy and balanced personality.
And the reality is that once you have started on the path of “being daring” for the sake of attracting attention by any means conceivable, so that it has become a form of addiction, it is easy to go down a self-destructive slippery slope from where it is may be difficult to come back up again.
Madonna’s relationships do not seem to last very long, some of them being over after just a few months, while others like Lenny Kravitz, are mere flings. What is interesting is that many of her dates dumped her pretty fast. Dennis Rodman for wanting his baby, Tupac Shakur “for being white”, the Muslim Brahim Zaibat for her involvement with Kabbalah, etc., etc.
Again, if it is difficult for outsiders to tell what is publicity stunt and what is reality, this might be equally difficult for Madonna herself. In any case, though she’s got the “daring” and the cash, something seems to be missing somewhere. The age factor probably does play a role as some of her dates could have been her sons or grandsons, but this doesn’t explain everything.
If we consider Madonna’s apparent preference for black and Latino (i.e. non-white) boyfriends and children, we can see how she is applying the cultural-replacement tendency to all areas of her life. This seems to be consistent with a desire to obliterate and replace one’s original cultural and ethnic identity and clearly points to unresolved identity issues.
Obviously, Madonna is an extreme case, but I thought it is a good illustration of the point I was making. Even on the assumption that identity is a matter of personal choice, the question still remains of how that choice is made and why. What is certain is that it is not made in a cultural vacuum or independently of external influence.
Humans being imitative creatures, they tend to follow the example of others. Older stars like Madonna are followed by the younger ones like Britney Spears who are in turn followed by the next generation, and the whole lifestyle and the mindset that comes with it become quasi-institutionalized and assimilated as a matter of course both by the stars and by many of their fans.
Ultimately, the whole trend becomes like a new religion that merely replaces the old without bringing any significant benefit to the believers. “Being daring” by kissing someone of the same sex onstage, wearing a dress made of raw meat, using obscene language, etc. might give one an inner sense of satisfaction and “achievement”. But this is normally associated with teenage behavior and one would hope that in later years people have moved on and are ready to learn some new tricks. Unfortunately, this would not appear to be the case.
Quoting Tom Storm
It probably is. It also seems to be connected with a more general inclination, encouraged by the mass media, to uncritically discard the old and embrace the new just for the sake of it. If we take the case of Greece, for example, there is a growing trend to use English words and expressions, to wear t-shirts with English slogans, and even Greek music is being replaced with African American and Latin American genres. Another musical influence comes from the Mid-East, with many songs being basically Arabic or Turkish music with Greek lyrics.
Obviously, no culture is perfect and some self-critical analysis is necessary. But when criticism becomes a lifestyle and, like Marx we develop an attitude of “criticism of everything (Western)”, it can become counterproductive because a fixation with criticism of one’s own culture can easily turn into uncritical acceptance of other cultures.
And this can be a dangerous game as your adoptive culture will likely have its own faults that ought to be identified, exposed, and addressed instead of being covered up.
This is one of the reasons why there is often a higher level of fanaticism among new converts than among those who were born into a particular culture, arising from a need to reinforce their adopted beliefs to the exclusion of old ones, which results in the tendency to respond to criticism of their new culture or religion by (a) justifying what is being criticized, (b) denying the validity of the criticism or (c) attacking the critics’ own culture or religion.
In the final analysis it looks like the road to “enlightenment” can be a long and perilous one especially when it involves conversion, and I tend to agree with the Dalai Lama’s advice to Westerners not to convert to Buddhism easily, but to first make the best they can out of the religion and culture they were born into.
Though apparently not enlightened stricto sensu, the Dalai Lama seems to be more enlightened than those who claim to be enlightened ....
Nice thoughtful response.
Quoting Apollodorus
Yep. That's always been my concern - swapping and romanticizing.
Quoting Apollodorus
Agree. You certainly see this with Islamic fundamentalists.
Quoting Apollodorus
Could be, I have not followed his career. There's a trick many spiritual teachers employ - it's the art of staying humble whilst presenting as enlightened. You say things like, "Hey I'm a perpetual beginner, just like everyone." Meanwhile all your marketing and key people strongly suggest or even say outright that you are enlightened.
I'd be interested to know how you feel traditions of enlightenment (however this is understood) might apply to the Eastern Orthodox faith tradition. Are there any figures currently living who might be described as such?
I've often been drawn towards Eastern Orthodoxy, mainly through my affinity with Christian Platonism, although I find it culturally challenging as it is associated with Russian, Serbian or Greek culture. I've liked some of David Bentley Hart's books (see his forthcoming https://g.co/kgs/Jf5wn4).
But the image of the 'uncreated light' really speaks to me.
Why?
Codependent people, for example, engage in behaviors that indicate a disposition of predominant concern for others, but we don't consider codependent people to be enlightened.
If one's aim is to discredit others, that's usually easy.
To me, her spiritual quest is simply a spiritual quest, the way so many other people are on a spiritual quest. It's just that in the case of a celebrity person, their spiritual quest because of their celebrity status becomes much more visible to more people and is otherwise magnified in ways that doesn't happen for ordinary people.
I wouldn't judge celebrities and their spiritual quest by the principle of noblesse oblige. For that, I would first need to consider them noble.
Riiight. Let's go to a slaughterhouse or an abortion clinic where we can observe the "the miraculous nature of everyday reality".
I don't agree that codependent people do that at all; I think they manifest inordinate concern with themselves; others are not seen as important in themselves but only insofar as they are needed by the dependee. If that were not so, they would not be codependent.
And even if a codependent person did manifest overweening concern for those on whom they were codependent, that would not be manifesting concern for all others, without prejudice, which was the point.
I often reflect on this when I see the kindly Christian ministers intoning their Easter or Christmas messages, which is about the only time the media gives them any attention. Their message is invariably one of the importance of compassion for others, loving-kindness, and so on, which nobody would disagree with. But they’re tied to (some would say hostage to) a specific historical narrative and set of beliefs, many of which seem completely anachronistic to post-industrial culture.
Which explains why new religious movements have such a ready audience - amongst all of those who feel the need for a mythological or spiritual framework around life, but who are completely lost to the ‘sheep and fields’ tropes of Biblical theology.
In theory at least, if the unenlightened can pretend to be enlightened, the enlightened could equally pretend to be unenlightened …. :smile:
However, if it is difficult for the unenlightened to correctly identify the enlightened, it must be even more difficult for them to identify the enlightened pretending to be unenlightened, and they may end up losing their way in the more obscure recesses of their imagination (or in the cannabis smog, as the case may be).
So, the question is, why would the enlightened pretend to be unenlightened? After all, all the enlightened need to do is carry on with their physical life as before. There would be no need to “pretend” to be unenlightened in the same way there would be no need for them to shout from the rooftops that they are enlightened.
This is precisely why the idea of anyone declaring to be enlightened needs to be treated with a good amount of caution, no matter who they are. Thinking or believing, however reasonably, that someone is enlightened, is not the same as knowing that they are enlightened and even less knowing what their state of enlightenment actually is.
This means that what really matters to the genuine “seeker after enlightenment” is not whether someone is enlightened but whether and to what extent someone can assist him or her on the path to enlightenment.
So, the question of whether the Dalai Lama is or is not enlightened becomes irrelevant and even potentially misleading. What we can do, however, is take his advice and genuinely first make the best we can out of our own religion and culture before we even think of converting to other traditions.
As the saying goes, seek and you shall find. This is perfectly true in more than one sense and it obviously involves some personal effort. And this is where the difficulty lies, because if we want enlightenment to fall into our lap or to be served to us on a silver platter, then it is a different matter. In that case, even if we find the real thing, the attitude is counterproductive, placing us in the position of outsider so that we “have” the truth but we can’t access it, comparable to a relationship where you may be physically close to someone but you have no full access to their heart and mind.
If we think about it, the various spiritual traditions of the world have sufficient elements in common for truth to be discoverable in any of them, and this includes Western ones. But if we start from the premise that “Light comes from the East, and form there only”, then we are already on the wrong path and we are unlikely to find what we seek even though we might convince ourselves otherwise.
The seeker must constantly remember that it is he who has to achieve what he is seeking. Therefore, the first question must be, What can I, personally, achieve and how? And since it is the seeker who has to achieve it, he must start the journey with himself, making use of whatever guidance can be obtained closest to himself.
The second question is, Does Christianity really have nothing to teach? Do Ancient Greek philosophers really have nothing to say? I believe that the honest inquirer is sure to find something of interest and as (1) he discovers the deeper truths behind the superficial exterior and acquaints himself with them, (2) he will begin to see where those truths are manifested, put into practice, and realized. And he will discover where advice and guidance can be found. But there are no shortcuts so step (1) must be made first.
As I said before, I see idea of “enlightenment” as a Western one. This is not to say that there are no parallels in the East. But the concept of the individual being illumined by the light of a higher reality and thereby elevated to a higher mode of experience is certainly found in the Western traditions of Platonism and Christianity.
Historically, the concept of intellectual or spiritual enlightenment (ellampsis) goes back to Ancient Greece and was adopted by Platonists like Plotinus and the early Church Fathers.
“Enlightenment” proper in the sense of “highest spiritual realization” is “henosis” (“unity” or “oneness”) in Platonism and “theosis” (“deification”) in Christianity. But the concept of enlightenment as a process of “illumination” is certainly central to both traditions.
In Christianity, the Philokalia, a collection of texts on spiritual practices, is described as the means by which the individual’s intelligence (nous) is “purified, enlightened, and made perfect”.
In the Greek Orthodox tradition the term “enlightenment” or “illumination” (photismos) is still in use. For example, you might hear it being said that if you follow the prescribed practices “your mind will become enlightened” (“tha photistei o nous sou”) the verb used being photizomai (“become enlightened”). Or someone might say “May God enlighten you”, etc.
So, the concept of spiritual illumination is very much part of (Orthodox) Christianity though, admittedly, this is not widely known to the general Western public. In addition, there is this false impression that Christianity is “against enlightenment”.
The truth, of course, is that Western "opposition to enlightenment" is a recent development and it has largely to do with the “enlightenment” traditions imported from the East in the 60’s and 70’s via the “hippie trail”. The reason it came to be associated by some with “evil” is that it often amounted to little more than an ego trip with no spiritual content in addition to displaying anti-Christian tendencies. It also involved drugs, etc., and it could literally do more harm than good.
So just as it is wrong to say that all Eastern enlightenment is “evil”, it is wrong to say that there are no enlightenment traditions in the West.
The Orthodox Philokalia tradition goes back to the early centuries of Christianity when there was a fusion of various contemplative schools, and is based on the practice of stilling and centering the mind through watchfulness or watchful attention (nepsis) and interior prayer (proseuche) leading to a state of stillness or hesychia, hence the term Hesychasm. This prepares the mind for spiritual experience and, eventually, spiritual realization or perfection.
Crucially, the practitioner of hesychast techniques is said to attain an experience of the divine as “uncreated light” (aktiston phos). This is said to go back to Jesus' transfiguration experience (metamorphosis) on the mountain and St Paul’s vision of a “blinding light” which, again, highlights the importance of spiritual illumination in the contemplative traditions of the West and clearly shows that the claim these traditions lay on being authentic enlightenment traditions is fully justified. In fact, it was never doubted until recently, when criticism of everything Western became a mandatory fashion accessory of the “politically-correct” and “progressive” classes who are in turn followed by the misinformed and miseducated masses.
In any case, the systematic observation, analysis, and control of psychological processes, concentration, etc., are sufficiently similar to the practices found in Eastern systems like Yoga and Buddhism. Arguably, the particular experience they lead to may not be identical in every respect, but the way I see it, once a higher mode of consciousness or experience has been attained, and one has “seen the light”, even in the distance, there will be greater clarity regarding the path one has to take in order to reach the desired goal. And this can’t be a bad start by any standard, on the contrary, I think it is preferable to seeing no light at all.
Quoting Apollodorus
I suspected this might be the case.
Quoting Apollodorus
The contemplative prayer tradition. Thanks for the word 'Philokalia'.
Quoting Wayfarer
Indeed. And it has to be said that no one does Christianity the kind of disservice that Christianity has done to itself, with its emphasis on shallow-faith literalism and punishment.
More later..
Generally I agree with a lot of that. That’s what drew me to comparative religion and also the perennial ist/traditionalist schools. I’ve explained the dimension I see in the ‘East’ (which is a much a pole as an actual location) so won’t do so again (although that’s why the Catholic Zen teachers resonate). But at this point in life, I personally have to narrow down the field somewhat as there are so many schools, so many teachings. And always remembering Suzuki-Roshi’s advice, ‘give up all gaining ideas.’
What do you hope to gain by giving up all gaining ideas? :lol:
Can you explain - It sounds tantalising and I am a little slow today.
Edit - Oops - just saw @Praxis' similar question.
I eat meat, and I respect a woman's right to choose - if and when she commits to the economic life changing, body morphic trauma that is bringing another life into the world.
I've worked in a slaughterhouse - chickens, but still, I eat chicken. There's nothing like hot chicken breast on brown bread with mayo. It produces a transcendent, almost orgasmic pleasure in me. And it does strike me as miraculous all these ingredients can be harvested, and cooked together in various combinations, that provide endless delight to the human palate? How could evolution possibly have designed plants and animals so consistently improved by cooking, and so wonderously edible?
I think one has to respect a woman's right to choose, precisely because we are the only animals who cook, rather than simply eat. An animal killed in nature suffers a worse death by far than humane slaughter at the hands of humans; and there's a parallel to a child brought into the world unwanted - in that, your bleeding heart humanity would be the cause of greater suffering of which you'd wash your vegan pro-life hands.
Maybe one day, we'll transcend this material veil of tears; I think, hope, pray, humans have that potential, but if there's a heaven to discover, or create - it will be humans that find it, not chickens!
The book I’m referring to is Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, by Shunryu Suzuki who founded the San Francisco Zen Centre.
He’s a S?t? Zen teacher. S?t? is based on zazen practice which is sitting meditation. Part of the philosophy is not trying to seek experiences or get something from it. Which is not to say there is nothing to be gotten from it, but that its real lessons only become clear when you put aside the attempt to gain or to get something, whether that be enlightenment or some other kind of power.
But that said, the practice of zazen is really pretty arduous and takes place in the context of a rigorous discipline. So I think it’s an admonition against the sense that the practice is going to generate some great power or result, as that too is a form of grasping or clinging. It’s essentially self-centered, still. S?t? constantly deprecates the idea of ‘attainment’ or of reaching some special state, but at the same time it’s really pushing you out of your habitual comfort zone.
Like a lot of people I read that book and many other Zen books, but I also came to realise that it really is not something you can get from reading books about Zen. In practice Zen is a tough and austere discipline and very demanding. Where that saying is coming from is outside the ego-logical point of view through which we automatically interpret everything. That’s what triggers the incredulous response, ‘what, you get nothing from it?’ There’s a saying in the Diamond Sutra which is one of the core texts of Zen, where the Buddha says ‘I have realised the supreme, ultimate truth, and I have gained nothing from it’. It’s a very hard saying, that, as we automatically interpret everything through the lens of gain and loss. It’s in our DNA, you might say.
Thank you. Pretty interesting, even to a layman...
Who is "we'? I know the truth also. It's freeing. I don't wanna get power or any goods. Not interested. But why shouldn't it be enlightened if you do want so?
If only people really did reason according to strict principles of validity more often. In truth though, it's the rare occasion that we do.
Quoting Wayfarer
It's unbelievable simply because it's not true.
Quoting Wayfarer
It's actually very easy to say. Religious leaders are forced to mystify because if their preachings weren't mystifying they would not be needed.
What did the Buddha realize? Emptiness. Emptiness is not a something, so in that sense, he gained nothing. You might say that he actually lost something, his sense of self. And if that were the case then there would have been no one to gain something, so even if there were something to gain there was no one to gain it. What's gained is a beneficial experience, to put it plainly.
The Philokalia tradition has an interesting history. Greek philosophy had long been the dominant philosophical system in Greece and, later, in the Roman Empire. Its prestige was such that all educated (and even some uneducated) men and women wanted to be associated with it. This went so far as for wealthy Roman citizens to have portraits or statues made of themselves wearing philosophers’ robes to enhance their status in the public eye.
Inevitably, unprincipled individuals styled themselves “philosophers” and purported to teach “secret doctrines” or “higher truths” in exchange for cash. To distinguish themselves from such individuals, Christian leaders, who incidentally also wore philosophers’ robes (as does Jesus in early iconography), decided to call their system “philokalia” (“love of the beautiful”) instead of the more traditional “philosophia” (“love of wisdom”).
This was in reference to the Christian aspiration to moral and spiritual perfection that was to be attained through the love of the beautiful as a revelation of Truth, in contradistinction to what was regarded as the more worldly wisdom of mainstream philosophy.
The Philokalia itself began as a collection of ascetic and mystical texts compiled in the 300’s AD and it became central to the contemplative tradition within Orthodox Christianity down the centuries.
When the secularizing tendencies of Western Europe began to penetrate the Orthodox space in the 1700’s, the leaders of the monastic orders of Mount Athos resolved to launch a counteroffensive by compiling and disseminating the various texts bequeathed by the spiritual masters of the tradition which by then amounted to many volumes. This compilation was published in 1782 under the title of “The Philokalia of the Neptic (Watchful) Saints by means of which the intellect (nous) is purified, illumined, and made perfect”.
In addition to its title, there are numerous references in the compiled texts to spiritual illumination or “enlightenment” which parallel those of the “Psalms of Illumination” or “Photagogica Hymns” of the modern Byzantine Rite and other prayers:
As the Gospel also says:
We can see that Christian spirituality is right here, in front of our own eyes, at least for those who, as the Gospel says, have “eyes to see and ears to hear”. And what can be easier to see than light?
These few passages are more than enough to reveal the core of a veritable spirituality of illumination based on the multiple function of light as a guide on the path, as an opener of eyes, as a purifying, darkness-dispelling, and enlightening force, and as the salvific and life-bestowing light of Truth which is the goal of all spiritual endeavour, all in one.
In all these cases, the force that performs these functions is consciousness or intelligence itself, the source of all knowledge and all truth. This is why in the Western tradition, intelligence or nous which is the soul’s faculty of intuition, insight, illumination, contemplation, and transcendence, plays a central role in the enlightenment process.
And because that intelligence (a) shares the nature of divine Intelligence, (b) is within us, and therefore (c) we literally are, “the temple of God, and the Spirit of God dwells in us” (1 Cor. 3:16), there really is nowhere to go in search of light. It follows that the true, spiritual “East” as the source of light is not a geographical location, but a place outside time and space, where the Sun of Reality or “Light of the World” shines eternally, and that is at once in us and beyond us but never far from us “in some distant and exotic land”.
This I believe to be the inescapable conclusion that honest inquiry into comparative religion leads to. The individual who has genuinely found even a scintilla of light in the East cannot fail to see the light that he has left behind in the West and which he now knows to be shining always and everywhere. For if beauty is found everywhere, the light by which beauty is seen must be present everywhere even more. As for the source of that beauty and that light, what can we say that can be expressed in words, heard by the ear, or grasped by the mind? And who can understand except those who are able to understand?
On a different level, another thing which I believe to be important in understanding Eastern Christianity and the Philokalia tradition is to have some knowledge of its invaluable musical and artistic heritage. Without a personal visit to remote monasteries, hermitages and retreats, this small Bulgarian, Greek, Syriac, Armenian, and Russian sample cannot but convey some idea, at least as far as this is possible from sources in the public domain:
Megaloschemos II (Bulgarian Orthodox Hymn) - YouTube
Kabarnos - Agios O Theos (Greek) - YouTube
Aramaic rendition of Lord’s Prayer in honor of Pope Francis - YouTube
Komitas Vardapet: Patarag, Armenian Divine Liturgy - YouTube
Jesus Prayer (Russian) - Female Choir - YouTube
Byzantine chant - ????? ???? - YouTube
Though the music of the Eastern Church may at first seem to have an "alien" ring to it, it is essential to bear in mind that, as St Augustine says, the songs of the Western Church (as represented, for example, by Gregorian chants) originated in the East.
*The Jesus Prayer in English translation is "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me” which is repeated mentally as a device for disengaging the mind from other thoughts and focusing it on an higher reality. In Greek, this is often shortened to “Kyrie eleison” (“Lord have mercy”) and is used as such as a liturgical formula in the liturgy of all Christian denominations.
Again, it can be seen that spiritual content is present everywhere in Christianity, if we only know how to see it - and if we take the time to look. In any case, the spiritual progression in the tradition entails a “practical”, “natural”, and “theological” stage. The practical is the development of virtues (aretai), the natural is the attainment of detachment or dispassion (apatheia), and the theological is the attainment of knowledge (gnosis), all of which clearly follows a similar pattern to those of other enlightenment traditions.
So, though each tradition understandably likes to assert its own superiority over others, the reality is that, in practice, they tend to have much in common.
I think back to J. D. Salinger. Sweet Franny illumined the meditative path - repetition of any name of god - in my hour of desperation two decades ago. And although I don't always find content - or seek content - in that pliable and procrustean word, its quake-and-tremble powers continue to console.
It's the experience, the revelation, of a previously not seen truth that's enlightening. Like the epiphanies all of us experience once in a while.
Unfortunately, I haven’t read any of Salinger’s books, but apparently his wife had a copy of The Way of a Pilgrim which was based on the hesychast tradition of the Orthodox Church, and may have been an influence on Salinger himself.
I don’t suppose God would be too concerned over what we call him. What matters is the inner attitude with which one approaches the divine. In any case, spiritual exercises do seem to stimulate some form of energy in the practitioners that has a transformative effect on their lives.
Mt Athos is definitely a very interesting place.
The way I see it, Christianity is inextricably linked with the Roman Empire - which was really a Greco-Roman entity – and, in particular, with the Hellenistic areas of the eastern parts.
Not only was Greek the original common language of Christianity, but the very backbone of Christian spirituality was located in the Greek-speaking churches, monasteries, and hermitages of Greek-controlled Egypt, Syria, and Anatolia.
When Islam conquered these territories, the Christian spiritual centers there continued to operate for some time but eventually disappeared, with only a handful of them surviving due to their remote location, such as St Catherine’s, St Antony’s, and St Paul’s monasteries in the Egyptian desert.
It was at this time that Mt Athos in Greece began to grow into a spiritual center on Greek soil and it has remained a focus for the contemplative traditions of the Orthodox Church to this day.
Incidentally, some of the monasteries on Mt Athos, e.g., Simonopetra, are quite similar, even in architecture, to the Buddhist monasteries of Tibet.
What is also interesting is that when the leaders of the monastic orders of Mt Athos published The Philokalia in the 1700’s, they didn’t neglect to also translate and publish some of the writings of leading figures from the Catholic tradition, like Loyola’s Spiritual Exercises and Scupoli’s Spiritual Warfare. Clearly, there was an awareness at Mt Athos of a continuation of spiritual practices present in other parts of the Christian world.
The Philokalia itself was translated from Greek into Slavonic and a Russian version based on the spiritual exercises of the tradition appeared in a 1930 English translation entitled The Way of a Pilgrim. Apparently, it was at this point that Western Europe “discovered” the contemplative practices of Orthodox Christianity as a living tradition.
In any case, it is indisputable that the concept of spiritual light and illumination is central to Christian spirituality.
In addition to references to light in the Gospels where Jesus himself says he is “the Light of the World”, the earliest extant Christian hymn is Phos Hilaron (Gladdening Light) and the very practice of the hesychast tradition is said to lead to an experience of God’s “uncreated light”. In fact, a whole light-based or "illuminist" philosophy could be constructed on the basis of the available ascetic and mystical texts of the tradition.
If I were to characterize Christian spirituality in two words, it would be silence and light. It begins with the hermits of the desert, among whom John the Baptist is an early example. The word “hermit” from Greek eremites, “desert dweller” refers to the solitude (eremia) and silence (hesychia) of the desert or wilderness which stands for the state of inner stillness in which the light of knowledge and truth can dawn on the seeking soul or nous.
My wife's family are devout members of a small Christian sect. At funerals (there have been a few, we've been married a long time) they often sing a hymn called Guide Me o thou Great Redeemer, from which I notice this verse:
"Open thou the crystal fountain
Whence the healing stream shall flow;
Let the fiery, cloudy pillar
Lead me all my journey through."
I'm sure that's an esoteric symbol of illumination.
The historical narrative of Gotama's enlightenment is really no less apparently anachronistic, I would say.
:up: Those evangelical mega-churches with their spangled 'pastors' are bogus, in my view.
Of course Buddhist orthodoxy is dependent on the narrative of Gotama's perfect enlightenment, just as orthodox Christianity is dependent on the narrative of Christ's resurrection. But of course you're primed not to see that through your New Age spectacles.
Quoting Tom Storm
I think it's the attempt to separate spirituality, in the sense of personal transformation, from belief systems which are not based on evidence. The interesting question is as to whether people can contemplate the parables of religion as such; not seen as as literal truths, but as poetic invocations to transformation of being.
I think he's a much better thinker that that, Janus. I'm an atheist and sometimes don't agree with Wayfarer either, but for my money he's well read, acute and serious about the subjects he studies.
When you've seen things, and you know, that's all you've got. There's no reason at all you should also be eloquent or 100% understanding.
I think Wayfarer is well read in comparative religious studies, but not so much in philosophy. He shows this in misunderstanding my perspectives as positivist. I think this is understandable as it is a "bogeyman' for him, against which he constantly rails. Unfortunately it seems to be mostly a straw bogeyman, which feeds into his blindspots regarding positivism and materialism.
I see his thinking as based on the "perrennialist" tradition, which is really the basis of Theosophy and the New Age movement in general. I'm not saying there is nothing in all that either, since I have read extensively in theosophy, anthroposophy, Aurobindo, Ramana Maharshi, Osho, and so on; all of which has fed into modern "new-agism". There are more or less sophisticated thinkers within the New Age paradigms just as there are within religion and philosophy in general.
So, it's not really a matter of agreement or disagreement, or being well-read or not, but of subtle points of (mis)understanding.
I also want to stress that I am not closed-minded to the idea of being convinced by intellectual intuitions of metaphysical ideas for the individual, but I have never seen any convincing argument that such intuitions could ever form the basis of any open and unbiased inter-subjective discourse.
Christian writings do use fire, sun, moon, etc., as a symbol of purification, illumination, perfection, or simply spiritual guidance, depending on the context.
Your wife's hymn seems to have originated in the 1904–1905 Welsh revival movement. She mustn't be particularly interested in the Pali suttas then .... :smile:
He is probably right. Like politicians, some may genuinely believe what they are preaching, but many are obviously fake. There is a lot of counterfeit stuff out there from fake watches to fake news, cosmetic surgery, and artificial intelligence.
Which tends to make it increasingly difficult to distinguish between appearance and reality until one day all distinctions are blurred. But some, apparently, call it "progress" ....
I call it "diversity".
Disputes over who is and is not a Christian are as old as Christianity itself. We can go back even further to the faction between Paul and Jesus' disciples.
The early followers of Jesus were diverse, and guided by inspiration - in indwelling of spirit. The Church Fathers tried to put an end to that in their attempt to establish a unified catholic church with a single agreed upon, official message.
Hart's own identification as Eastern Orthodox is indicative of the disputes over who the true Christians are.
Well, to be quite honest, I've always thought of Australia as a place where you have this perpetual sunburn, endless bbq's on the beach (not sure if it's supposed to be crocodile or kangaroo), and everyone sleeps with everyone else's wife.
So it's good to hear that there are some normal people, too. But so long as you're having fun, it can't be too bad. And, fingers crossed, perhaps you won't need to come back as a worm, after all .... :smile:
But overall, Australia's a great place to live, wouldn't live anywhere else.
There was a celebrated conversion about ten years ago, of an academic by the name of Williams, who had written what were considered to be some of the best textbooks on Mah?y?na Buddhism. Anyway, he suddenly announced that he was renouncing Buddhism for Catholicism, which was documented triumphantly in a Catholic blog site. And he said he had a terror of being re-born as a cockroach! I mean, I'm very unclear about the ramifications of re-birth but I couldn't help think this a wildly misplaced fear.
For the Buddhists I know and socialise with (whom I haven't seen much of since COVID struck), rebirth is not something that is ever really discussed, it's kind of a background issue, although I have got the Kindle edition of this book.
Sure. I can see nothing wrong with a nice kangaroo burger or crocodile steak washed down with a cool pint of beer. Providing, of course, it isn't a reincarnated neighbor or relative :wink:
But the way I see it, there seems to be a certain tension between the desire to attain “Nirvana”, i.e., a sort of personal annihilation, on one hand, and the belief that there is some personal continuation and repeated existence, on the other.
The original Buddhists seem to have taken reincarnation pretty seriously. In fact, the doctrine is fundamental to the whole system. So, if you start denying reincarnation, this raises the question of where to draw the line and whether it is still Buddhism or something else.
I've sometimes wondered this too. There is so much divergent thinking around what it is to be a Buddhist, it seems almost anything is possible in this space. I remember a very influential Buddhist monk and teacher in my city some years ago who drank a lot of booze. A bottle of whisky in a session was not unusual. He explained his addiction to me in some doctrinal way which I have long forgotten and no one close seemed especially concerned. I guess the point is religions, as man-made artifacts, can bend in whatever direction they wish as long as no special outrage is created amongst core followers. And if there is outrage it may be opportune for a new sect or interpretation. Islam and Christianity have managed this process for centuries.
I wasn't denying the doctrine of rebirth myself, I said this professor's purported 'fear of being reborn as an insect' was unwarranted. And, technically, rebirth is not reincarnation, there is not an entity that migrates from one life to the next, but a continuing series of cause and effect giving rise to continued existence.
Actually you do encounter a saying in some Chinese Buddhist texts given as admonitions to students that if you believe such and such or have this kind of attitude you will 'find yourself in the womb of a cow', which is a very vivid way of putting it.
Well, I think either they are trying to confuse us, or else they aren't sure themselves .... :smile:
But you are right, there are many different denominations within Buddhism and different views within each denomination, including subjective idealist ones like Yog?c?ra. So, I suppose, one may end up with a situation where you are tempted to pick and mix your own personal religion.
My suspicion is that this might be the reason why Buddhism was so popular with the New Age movement and why there was widespread opposition to organized religion in general, and to Western religion in particular, among its followers.
Quoting Wayfarer
I didn't mean you, personally. But from what you were saying, I got the impression that reincarnation or rebirth does not always seem to be taken literally, or even seriously, among Western Buddhists.
I understand that, at least according to some interpretations, what is reborn is not a personal entity. But the way Buddha's lives are described in some traditional accounts like the Jataka stories, it sounds very much like that.
It's something of a watershed for Western Buddhists. Belief in rebirth is a taboo on two grounds in Western culture. Firstly belief in metempsychosis, as it was called then, was anathematized by one of the early Church councils, and declared a heresy, although it's always persisted underground, for example amongst gnostic sects (and amongst the Druze.) Secondly because it can't be accounted for in terms of current science, as it suggests some means by which causal connections act between apparently separate existences. It is often the cause of acrimonious debates on Buddhist fora. I had a look at the Secular Buddhist forum and there are many sophisticated critiques of it, although I don't see how Buddhism really stacks up without it. (See Facing the Great Divide, Bhikkhu Bodhi.)
Quoting Apollodorus
The cause of rebirth is the same drive that causes any birth - in the Pali suttas, it is invariably presented in terms of the twelve-fold causation. There is no self who is reborn, as there is no self apart from the aggregates of being. So the idea that 'I will be reborn' or 'this same consciousness will be reborn' is strongly rejected (see Mah?ta?h?sa?khayasutta.)
Philosophically, I think the gist is that concern with self - what will become of me? Where have I come from? Where am I going?, etc - are basically rejected as examples of self-concern (or egotism in plain language). The emphasis is always on seeing through the 'me and mine'-building activities of the self. That is what liberation consists of.
In any case, if you have even casual familiarity with Tibetan Buddhism, the idea of the reincarnate lama is central to it. Buddhists will say, again, there is no unchanging self that appears from one life to the next, that it's more like a process that unfolds over lifetimes, but I myself feel some scepticism about that dogmatic rationale. As I've elsewhere said, I find the issues of agency and responsibility very difficult to square with any simplistic interpretation of the no-self doctrine. There is the well-known 'analogy of the chariot' in which the monk Nagasena argues that, just as a chariot does not exist apart from its various components, so too there is no 'real Nagasena' over and above the aggregates of the body and personality. As I pointed out in respect of that verse, however, there is the idea of a chariot, which can be created over and over again, but without which, there can be no chariot, and that chariots, in the context of ancient cultures, were culturally highly significant. I think maybe this is my own culturally-engrained Platonism begin to assert itself. Currently I have no resolution to that dilemma.
(I'll also add that doing research for my Buddhist Studies degree, I found the Pudgalavada school, a now-extinct group of schools within Buddhism which was essentially a form of Buddhist personalism. There's quite a good encyclopedia entry on them here https://iep.utm.edu/pudgalav/. I will also add, I think a pop interpretation of no-self easily morphs into nihilism. I'm sure I've observed that in some of the online dialogues I've had with Western Buddhists, although it's an impossible point to prove, just a feeling I have.)
This is what I was referring to. If you take the case of Tibetan Buddhism and other traditional examples (the Jataka stories, etc.) then rebirth, irrespective of who or what is reborn, seems to be absolutely central to Buddhist teachings.
This much seems to be certain especially in view of the fact that it is consistent with the prevalent Indic religion (Hinduism, Jainism, etc.) of which Buddhism, after all, was a mere offshoot.
So the problem really arises from the divergent interpretations of "rebirth" and "self".
As I was pointing out earlier (page 11), the Dhammapada 277-279 says:
This is sometimes interpreted to mean that everything (sarvam or sabbe) is not-self, and therefore, "there is no self". But, clearly, the reference is to conditioned phenomena as being "not-self" or perhaps "without self", i.e. without substance or real existence.
However, if Nirvana exists and is a permanent reality, then it may be argued that the state of Nirvana is "with self", i.e. with substance or existence and, by extension, one's real self. If Nirvana is an eternal reality, then it already exists here and now as the background of individual or personal existence and, therefore, it is our "real self".
Obviously, not a personal self, but nonetheless a "self" in the sense of "having existence or reality", somewhat akin to the Platonic "Good or One itself".
The terminology seems to be pretty close as regards Indic atman/atta and Greek autos, and so is the concept of the "impermanence of phenomena" that is fundamental to both traditions.
I think the main confusion arises from the vast range of interpretation and, in particular, from the divergence of popular vs. philosophical or "educated" views.
This statement doesn't make sense because, if nothing else, all philosophical or "educated" views are not in agreement.
Well, if they aren't in agreement this increases the divergence of views and resulting confusion as to which of them is the "correct" view. If even scholars can't agree, one can't expect any better from the uneducated.
If you had only one educated and one uneducated view, the options would be reduced to just two, making it much easier to choose.
In religion, the only "correct" view is the one coming from religious authority and the view that most people believe is true. It's not known to be true of course but believed to be true. It's a matter of faith.
Quoting Apollodorus
Does God exist? An educated person could probably make a better argument one way or the other, I suppose, but in the end only experience matters, unless it doesn't matter and the point is other than spiritual.
I think you misunderstand my comment.
I was talking about the "correct" view in historical terms, i.e., the view about "self" actually held by Buddha as opposed to what later Buddhists (and non-Buddhists) believe to have been his view.
In other words, not whether Buddha's view was correct, but what his view was - as far as this can be determined by the evidence available.
I would agree, but this misses an essential point about Buddhist philosophy. This is that the assertion that 'the self exists' is a dogmatic belief (d???i) - but so too the view 'the self doesn't exist'. This entails the suspension of judgement, which is close to the original meaning of scepticism.
I thnk I've referred to it before already but the germ of this idea is expressed in this verse. The Buddha is asked, does the self exist? and declines to answer. Not answering is not the same as either yes or no. (It's also salient that this is about the only place in the Pali texts where 'the self' is spoken in the nominative as distinct from the adjectival sense.)
But as I've already said, in my view many people act as though the answer was 'no' - that the Buddhist teaching is that there is no self. But that can't accomodate this verse.
(If you're interested I'll pm you a link to the thesis I did on this topic if I haven't previously.)
How so?
Anyway, I guess my point is that because religion is based on faith rather than reason, an uneducated but charismatic person could do just as well if not better than an educated person in establishing the "correct" view.
I'd be interested in reading that. :smile:
Correct. He clearly says:
To me, this sounds like it confirms my suspicion. In which case the "no-self" doctrine may be a Buddhist doctrine, but not necessarily Buddha's own view, and this seems to bring Buddha much closer to Greek philosophy than generally assumed!
It also raises the question of where the idea of "no-self" actually comes from. Definitely not from the Dhammapada, unless we insist on putting a "Buddhist" spin on it ... :smile:
BTW, the device I'm currently using doesn't always like pms but you can send me the link, anyway. Thanks.
Well, I wouldn't say religion is based exclusively on faith. But in general I agree with that statement on the "correct" view. This is why I for one prefer philosophy to religion.
I can't stress enough that this is not correct. In fact speculative ideas of the higher self (etc) are anathema to the Buddha:
'Believing in a higher self' is just that - a belief. The Buddha frequently says that one that understands correctly doesn't believe, but sees the principle of dependent origination. The mind that really understands is transformed by that understanding, which is not a belief, but prajna, a meta-cognitive awakening.
I agree that there are paralells with Greek philosophy, but please don't believe they're both 'saying the same', because it distorts the meanings of both. I think it's also the case that Buddhism became a 'religion of belief' over time, because grasping the liberative insight (prajna) is a very difficult thing to do - hence popular sects and cults based on avatars or incarnations of the Buddha. Not that these are in any way wrong or false, but it's important to grasp the unique insight at the core of the teaching.
Now pinned to profile page.
Sure, of course he would say that. But this is common sense. Experience has precedence over belief whether in Buddhist, Hindu, or Greek philosophy.
And if belief in higher self is "just a belief", then so is belief in "Nirvana". After all, Buddha is said to have attained enlightenment not as a result of belief, but by practicing meditation which he admittedly learned from non-Buddhists.
In the final analysis, belief is irrelevant to direct experience of reality, and all that really matters is introspective inquiry leading to insight (a) into the self and (b) into whatever turns out to be beyond the self, exactly as in Platonism.
And to achieve that, one need not be a Buddhist or follow any particular religious system ....
Thank you! :smile:
Well, it may sound “theosophical” but I don’t believe in Krishnamurti as an incarnation of Jesus and Buddha who is going to “save of the world”, and all that stuff :smile:
Incidentally, Theosophy’s logo “there is no religion higher than truth” should be something that I think all philosophers can subscribe to. Unfortunately, despite its logo, Theosophy is doing the opposite, which is trying to sell (invented) religion as truth.
And I think this brings us to the crux of the matter, because a lot of your statements seem to suggest that you haven’t yet decided in favor of truth and that despite your apparent disclaimers you are speaking from the perspective of someone who is at least in part psychologically committed to Buddhism as a belief system or religion.
From what I see, Buddhism isn’t really so different from Platonism.
If Buddhism claims that phenomena are not ultimately real, so does Platonism.
If Buddhism posits a higher reality (assuming Nirvana to be real and not imaginary) that can be achieved through meditation, so does Platonism which aims for an experience of ultimate reality through introspective inquiry and contemplation.
If Buddhism teaches that man must gain insight into the true nature of the self, so does Platonism. “Know thyself” is central to all Greek philosophy.
Both Buddhism and Platonism use terminology like “release” or “liberation” from conditioned existence.
Even the Buddhist tathagata, “one who has arrived at the final goal”, has its equivalent in the Greek teleios anthropos, “one who is accomplished, perfected, who has reached the goal or telos”. The very practice of authentic Greek philosophy is a continual process of perfection that has no upward limit aside from ultimate truth itself.
Of course it may be argued that there are different degrees or levels of accomplishment. However, assuming that ultimate reality is one, and that there is nothing higher, how can one who has attained an experience of ultimate reality be more spiritually accomplished than one who has attained the same (or even similar) experience?
Again, one could argue that only Buddhists are capable of attaining the highest possible experience. But this hasn’t been demonstrated to be the case. So, the way I see it, it boils down to personal (and unproven) belief, i.e., exactly what Socrates and Plato (and, apparently, Buddha himself) are warning against.
And, as we have seen, there seems to be a difference between belief and actual knowledge even when it comes to Buddha's own teachings ....
Quoting baker
Whence the idea that enlightenment would have something to do with a disposition of predominant concern for others?
Even if you define enlightenment in terms of "overcoming one's ego" or similarly, this doesn't yet entail that the thusly enlightened person will be concerned with others.
In fact, someone who has overcome egoic thinking as such will have no regard for other people's egos as well, and will thus exhibit behavior that is usually considered rude, a callous disregard for others.
Quoting Janus
"Unbiased" discourse? What is that??
I find their non-communication and hostility are what tends to put people off.
I'm not talking about the politically correct "woman's right to choose". I'm talking about the supposed "miraculous nature" of living a lifestyle in which having to have an abortion is always in sight.
What is so "miraculous" in damaging one's health with hormonal contraceptives, and, if they fail, with abortions?
You think it's "miraculous" to TOLO, like a robot?
I wonder what you have to say about people who don't feel that way about food, animal or plant based.
You missed the forest, not just the tree to bark at.
To _deliberately_ achieve anything, one needs to follow a system. To follow a religious system, one has to become a member of a religion.
*tsk tsk*
Blimey, religious/spiritual people competing as to who is most exalted!! How ordinary.
Neither did he.
Quoting Apollodorus
That's because of your prior inclinations. And that's what I mean by 'theosophical' - small 't', right? Not a member of the Theosophical Society, but an attitude which sees common truths in different spiritual traditions.
They have some things in common, but they're worlds apart in other ways. There are no forms/ideas in Buddhism, and no chain of dependent origination in Platonism. Buddhist philosophical logic is strictly nominalist and differs fundamentally from Aristotelian metaphysics.
Quoting Apollodorus
What is the Platonist/Greek equivalent for mok?a, as a matter of interest?
Platonism uses several terms, one of them being lysis, i.e., liberation or release from conditioned existence, which is the equivalent of Hindu mok?a.
The Platonic Forms are not ultimate realities, so they must not be confused with the highest truth.
And the Platonic goal is to discover the "source of all knowledge and all truth", i.e., the source of all things, which in my view, is very much what Buddhist practice is aiming to achieve.
Incidentally, your (admittedly well-written) paper says that:
Clearly, then, something remains after “everything has been abandoned”.
If everything is being abandoned, then presumably there is an agent that performs the act of abandoning. We don’t know what it is, but there must be something there following Nirvana, as otherwise the consciousness that sees or experiences the Nirvanic state would disintegrate and the awakened (buddha) or arrived/gone beyond (tathagata) individual would have nothing to report, if he or she even existed at all.
Another question that is left open is whether there is any difference between the individual who has attained Nirvana while the body-mind complex is still alive and after the death of the same.
If I am not mistaken, it appears from the available texts that Buddha spoke about Nirvana while still living and not after he died. Therefore we have no direct information regarding his post mortem state or the permanence or otherwise of the Nirvanic state.
This raises the possibility that there may, indeed, be nothing left after Nirvana in which case it would be incorrect to say that Buddha “conquered Death”, for example. It would be more correct to say that Death conquered him.
So, the puzzle seems to remain unsolved ....
Correct. However, your two statements aren't necessarily logically connected, as "system" is not the same as "religion".
Quoting baker
Well, we can't let you have all the fun, can we? And as a Buddhist, you ought perhaps to be less self-centered .... :smile:
I agree, but the point I'm obviously failing to make, is that believing it and seeing it are different things. Put another way, dogmatic belief in it is not the same as liberating insight into it. And yes, that is a difficult line to draw.
BUT, I'm very enamoured of the Buddha Nature teachings. And it is they which seem most like Advaita, as they seem to posit the buddha nature as a higher self. However even that is qualified, as the distinguishing feature of Buddha Nature is that it is utterly devoid of self!
I've recently discovered a very well-produced site about this topic https://buddhanature.tsadra.org/index.php/Main_Page
Quoting Apollodorus
Why, thanks (kind of.)
do you have a reference for that? None of the sources that come up for me support that.
D T Suzuki compares the Platonist 'metanoia' with the Buddhist 'paravritti'.
Greek lysis ("liberation" or "release") and similar terms occur in Plato's dialogues. Liberation from ignorance and union with the Ultimate are central to Platonism.
Metanoia is more like transformation of the mind or consciousness, i.e., a process that leads to the final state of release or self-realization.
I think that language belongs much more to Plotinus than to Plato, and even more so to later Christian Platonism. Do you think you might tend to evaluate Platonism from a Christian Platonist perspective?
When look up Lysis in Platonism, I get
To be honest, before I started this OP, I had a view that enlightenment was probably understood just as @Apollodorus has so succinctly described.
The area I find most interesting at the moment is the idea of this liberation from ignorance. Or the attainment of divine knowledge (what is the best term?) In the tradition that @Apolloduros has described, is it generally understood that union and knowledge are always concomitant?
Science, mathematics, logic, phenomenology. Any discourse which depends on observation and reason, and does not depend on authority. Any discourse, that is, that is in principle at least, defeasible and endlessly revisable, and wherein expertise can be gained by understanding clearly defined ideas, principles and observable or self-evident facts.
Any religion, including Buddhism, cannot be an unbiased discourse, because it depends on faith. I'm not saying that's a bad thing, by the way, but in order to respect intellectual honesty it should at least be acknowledged. Talk of "direct knowing" is a nonsense, inter-subjectively speaking, and can never constitute an unbiased discourse.
:smile: That Lysis is a personal name!
For the noun I would try dictionaries like Liddle Scott (Greek-English):
https://lsj.gr/wiki/%CE%BB%CF%8D%CF%83%CE%B9%CF%82
Or Bailly (Greek-French):
http://gerardgreco.free.fr/IMG/pdf/bailly-2020-hugo-chavez-20210815a.pdf
And if all fails, you can always refer to good old Wiktionary:
?????? • (lúsis) f (genitive ???????) From ??? (lú?, “loosen”) +? -??? (-sis)
1. loosing, releasing, release
2. deliverance
3. redemption
4. parting
5. emptying
6. solution
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%CE%BB%CF%8D%CF%83%CE%B9%CF%82
In Plato, e.g. the Phaedo, it is used in the sense of release of soul from body, etc.
I like what you said, but couldn't it be countered that these ostensibly defeasible disciplines also develop their orthodoxies and may be resistant to new ideas or approaches they view as outliers and heretics?
The way I understand Greek philosophy and, in particular, Platonism, philosophy, by definition, is the quest for wisdom or knowledge (sophia), where "love" of wisdom is not a passive state but an active desire to attain wisdom or knowledge that manifests itself in all areas of life.
This is why, like Socrates, the genuine philosopher in the Greek tradition begins from a stage of ignorance, or more precisely, of awareness of one's own (and others') ignorance, and progresses onward and upward toward knowledge all the way to the very apex and beyond - if there is such thing.
This means that philosophy is a process in which the intelligent principle (nous) in man progressively sheds all ignorance or non-intelligence until knowledge or intelligence itself alone remains. And at that point, the seeking intelligence becomes united to knowledge.
At the same time, it is also a process of self-discovery or self-realization in the sense that (1) when all that is left is intelligence, one is nothing but that, and (2) the ultimate goal is attained through introspective inquiry as described in Plato's Phaedo, where intelligence or nous gradually dissociates itself from the physical body, sense-perceptions, and thoughts, and abides "alone, itself by itself". This is the culmination of the celebrated maxim "know thyself" (gnóthi seautón).
This is why religion is not necessary in this process, the only required belief being belief in truth and in one's own ability to discover it.
This doesn't mean that we must discard religion altogether in the same way as it doesn't mean we must give up science or basic comforts and needs like food, clothes, shelter, relationships, work, and everything that amounts to "normal" life. On the contrary, self-realization is best achieved in the midst of a full life.
The withdrawal from the "unreal" is purely inward and is in no way incompatible with "external" reality as one's experience of it is completely transformed and no longer represents a "hindrance" to be avoided.
Thanks. That does indeed appear synonymous to Mok?a. As I don't read Greek, do you know any instances in Plato's dialouges?
Quoting Apollodorus
I can't help but agree. I think this is how Pierre Hadot understands it, but he's a bit of a lone voice in the sea of arid analytical philosophy.
Quoting Tom Storm
Ignorance in Eastern traditions is 'avidya' - the negative of 'vidya'. Vidya (Sanskrit: ??????, IAST: vidy?) figures prominently in all texts pertaining to Indian philosophy – mean science, learning, knowledge and scholarship; most importantly, it refers to valid knowledge, which cannot be contradicted, and true knowledge, which is the intuitively-gained knowledge of the self. Vidya is not mere intellectual knowledge, for the Vedas demand understanding.'
Avidya is usually contrasted with the Judeo-Christian 'sin' on the grounds that vidya is cognitive whereas sin pertains to the will. So, avidya is corruption of the intellect as opposed to sin being corruption of the will.
Of course there are many deep issues behind that. Western Buddhists will often insist that there is no word for sin in Buddhism, but there are a couple of terms, klesa (usually trs as 'defilements') and asava (usually trs as 'outflows') which have at least overlapping meanings with 'sin'. I think one of the factors behind that, is that Western Buddhists equate the idea of sin with stuffy Western religiosity.
Yes, I agree, but I think that the development of orthodoxies is intrinsic to religion while not being intrinsic to those other disciplines, and is actually counter to their spirit of inquiry. I think orthodoxy is intrinsic to religion because it (at least any organized religion) is lost without authority.
Perhaps there's an inherent conflict between the philosophia perennis and liberalism, on account of that in the latter, the individual is the sole nexus of moral authority, and so the idea that there could be a source of moral authority outside the individual conscience is rejected. And I think that is a sound principle, IF the individual does pursues and conforms with a scrupulous, rational and philosophically informed ethical code. But the problem is, this seems far from the default for most individuals - certainly for myself. It is just the sensed absence of that kind of internal guidance system which lead me to seek out the wisdom embodied in those teachings.
A woman's right to choose is not related - in my mind, to political correctness. It's more fundamental than that. It's about freeing women from the imprisonment of biological fate. There are some men; indeed, some cultures that would rather keep women barefoot, pregnant and chained to the kitchen sink. These cultures are invariably over-populated and poor. Women's rights are an enlightened value, fundamental to the prosperous sustainable future I'm working for.
(That's when I thought by 'enlightened' the OP meant secular democracy and scientific rationality - and not psuedo-spiritual hocus pocus. )
Quoting baker
I'd say, if not a consequence of some medical condition, in all likelyhood, that their thinking is warped by a false distinction between the spiritual and the mundane, inherent to religions. It's a fundamentally abusive dynamic - to require acolytes to disregard worldly possessions, bodily integrity - and things like the enjoyment of food. Aesthtic religions set people up to be robbed, sexually abused and starved. Hallelujah!
It's also a dynamic carried forth in the subject/object distinction in western philosophy - wherein over-empahsis on the subjective frees governments and industry from real world responsibilities.
"I think one has to respect a woman's right to choose, precisely because we are the only animals who cook, rather than simply eat. An animal killed in nature suffers a worse death by far than humane slaughter at the hands of humans; and there's a parallel to a child brought into the world unwanted - in that, your bleeding heart humanity would be the cause of greater suffering of which you'd wash your vegan pro-life hands."
Quoting baker
Huh?
Sure:
Essentially, the release or liberation of consciousness from the body-mind complex, i.e., from conditioned experience or existence, is common to both Platonism and Indic traditions such as Hinduism and Buddhism.
In any case, the underlying idea seems the same to me. And so is meditation or introspective inquiry as the means of attaining that state. The only matter of debate seems to be the exact state or experience denoted by the term “release” (lysis or mok?a).
And if Greek lysis and Sanskrit mok?a are synonymous, what other parallels are there? Is it not the case that parallels can be found by looking for parallels instead of focusing exclusively on differences?
My feeling is that an understanding of Platonism may help us better understand some aspects of Indian philosophy and vice-versa, an understanding of Indian philosophy may help us understand aspects of Platonism - more so than looking at either tradition through modern eyes.
Hadot, Suzuki, and others are alright as far as modern analyses go, but I think the key to understanding Plato is to read Plato.
Thus far we've got:
1. The world of phenomena as unreal or impermanent "appearance".
2. Existence centered on appearances as "painful", "unhappy", or "unsatisfactory" and leading to more "pain/unhappiness/lack of satisfaction".
3. Knowledge leading to release from the world of appearance and mental states associated with it, as the solution. (It is interesting to note in this connection that Greek lysis means "release" as well as "solution".)
4. Meditation or introspective inquiry as the practical means of attaining insight into reality and, ultimately, the final goal.
5. The importance of dissociating one's consciousness from the physical world, body, emotions, and thoughts.
6. Development of virtues and adherence to ethical patterns of thought and behavior.
I think this is quite a handful already .... :smile:
Problem is unless you're reading Plato in his original language (and even then you will be imposing interpretations native to yours) you are reading Plato as interpreted by speakers of your language and as rendered in that language with all the implicit presuppositions that involves.
That said, someone who has studied Ancient Greek language, culture and philosophy for a lifetime would arguably be better at avoiding such prejudices than a Greek language neophyte would, so you are probably better off reading translations. But still scholars differ in their renderings and their interpretations, and it seems no one can completely escape their native assumptions, which means that Plato for us is always going to be Plato-for-us.
Of course, Plato should ideally be read in the original Greek. But I think even an English (or any other modern) translation will convey enough of Plato's actual teachings for the reader to form a fair idea of what he is talking about.
The crucial approach is to read Plato himself before reading modern interpretations of him. What is interesting is that in my experience at least, if you do that, you will be far more likely to find traditional readings like Plotinus and Proclus more in agreement with your own than those of modern scholarship.
To me, this suggests that a break must have occurred at some point in the interpretative tradition and that modern scholars have hopelessly lost the thread - and sometimes the plot - as noted by Gerson.
Incidentally, another key element that can be added to the list of East-West (or Greek-Indian) parallels is the conception of spiritual or philosophical practice as a process of purification, which goes hand-in-hand with the concept of liberation or release:
Again, "purification" here may be interpreted as a process by which consciousness is gradually cleansed of ignorance until the knowledge or wisdom inherent in consciousness or intelligence alone remains.
But what I find particularly interesting, and commendable, is the "whithersoever-it-leads" attitude which indicates a rather philosophical openness that I believe should form the basis of authentic philosophical or spiritual effort.
Quite so. I've often commented on the idea of the forgotten truths of the wisdom tradition, generally to either indifference or scorn. (Not that that bothers me.)
Quoting Janus
Subjectivism, again.
Correct. One typical objection is that if those truths were forgotten, then we have no means of knowing what they were and therefore we can't claim that we know that they were forgotten in the first place.
This objection is only superficially valid as we may have indirect knowledge of the existence of something that has become forgotten. For example, we know that the Etruscan language was widely spoken on the Italic peninsula and that it survived into the 1st century AD, because we have the historical evidence to confirm this, even though all that currently remains of it are a few words. And what is true of forgotten languages is equally true of religious, philosophical or spiritual traditions.
Moreover, in some cases, ancient teachings are not forgotten in the literal sense that they have disappeared without trace, but only that they are no longer part of common or mainstream knowledge. Plato's teachings are a good example of this. They are obviously there, in the Platonic corpus, but because of scholarly bias they are not recognized as such.
This has led to the absurd situation where even the natural reading of some passages is dismissed on the grounds that it would sound "Neoplatonic" and therefore Plato must have meant something else - preferably something that is in harmony with the preconceived opinion of modern "scholarship"!
Anyway, having seen that there are so many fundamental similarities between Greek and Indian philosophical traditions, I think it is not unreasonable to consider the possibility, or probability, of similarity or identity of final goal. Could henosis (“oneness”), moksha (“liberation”), and nirvana (“extinction”), all be so totally unlike one another as often assumed?
I for one do not think it would be entirely wrong to take the first to be “oneness with knowledge or truth”, the second, “liberation from ignorance (i.e. from psychic activities and processes constituting an obstacle to knowledge)”, and the third, “extinction of ignorance”, all of which practically amount to the same thing.
Another thing worth considering is the relationship between the enlightened and the world. Once the enlightened have left this world, for example, if they have attained that state at the end of their embodied existence, they are of no concern to the unenlightened.
In other words, the only practical value an enlightened person might have for the unenlightened, would be in a capacity of adviser on matters relating to enlightenment or to practical, daily life.
It follows that what the whole business of enlightenment really boils down to is practical wisdom or phronesis, exactly as stated by Plato and other Greek philosophers who, after all, were no dreamers but practical, and pragmatic, people. The very terms "practical" (praktikós) and "pragmatic" (pragmatikós) are Greek.
Contrary to modern anti-Platonist propaganda which seeks to portray Platonism as “world-denying”, its view of the world is not negative as clearly evidenced for example, by Plotinus’ criticism of the Gnostics:
Plotinus was certainly not indifferent to earthly life. According to Porphyry, he attempted to rebuild a settlement in Sicily called “the City of Philosophers” that was to be organized on Platonic principles. And Plato himself had taken an interest in the running of Greek cities in Sicily under Dionysus II.
One last issue that may be of some interest is Greek-Indian cultural interaction. I don’t know how much Indian influence there was on Greece, but there seems to have been considerable Greek influence on North-West India, especially on religious art. There are numerous artistic representations of Buddhist monks and even of Buddha himself wearing Greek-style robes, Greek-style Buddhist reliquaries, etc.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-Greek_art#/media/File:StupaCircumDevotees.jpg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-Greek_art#/media/File:TNMStandingBuddha.jpg
Apparently, this gave rise to the cultural phenomenon known as “Greco-Buddhism”. According to Wikipedia:
Indeed, the Greek-style representations of Buddha may have been the first anthropomorphic representations of him ever, the prevalent tradition prior to this having been aniconic. Greco-Buddhism seems to have been influential in the spread of Buddhism to China and other countries before the reconquest of India by Hinduism began in the 400’s AD.
Conversely, there is some speculation that the pre-Christian school of the Therapeutae represented a branch of Therav?da Buddhism. But evidence of Buddhist or Hindu influence on the Greek world at the time of Socrates and Plato or before is more difficult to find, which means that the similarities discussed earlier remain unexplained for now.
I still think it's dangerous to simply say that all religions point to the same goal, but then, Jesus did say 'In my Father's house there are many mansions' which could be interpreted to support a rather pluralist idea. And I would agree that they're more like each other, than any of them are like scientific materialism (which is why materialism tends to regard all of them as equally fallacious).
We all know humility is your forte.
I've said several times in open forums what my stance on Buddhism is, and I told you specifically so in a PM. But you choose to ignore all that, and instead callously insist on ascribing to me stances I don't hold. Clearly, you're not interested in having an actual conversation, but are only trying to get a rise out of me by hitting me where it hurts. So typically spiritual.
And he also said that many are called but few are chosen.
Some say that "Buddhism" (note the ism) is a construct of Western religiology and culturology, and that it has no equivalent in what we call "traditionally Buddhist countries".
In those countries, one normally has an affiliation with a particular lineage, monastery, teacher, without necessarily having any sense of a "bigger picture" of how this particular lineage, monastery, teacher is part of something bigger, a "religion".
What is it to be a Buddhist? If anything, it's to live up to a construct of Western religiology and culturology.
Well, I think first we would need to establish why it is “dangerous”. Do you see it as a danger to yourself, to people in general, or … ?
Second, it is important to distinguish between religion as a system of beliefs and ritual practices, on one hand, and philosophical or spiritual systems operating within a particular religion (or independently of it), on the other.
Even within the same religious denomination, there is a hierarchy of beliefs and practices having different aims and results, corresponding to the emotional, intellectual, or spiritual capacity of individual believers.
And this raises the possibility or probability that while lower levels of religion can be totally distinct and mutually incompatible, the higher levels are incrementally similar and eventually identical. At least this is what I understand to be the position of Plato and of Platonism in general.
Were this not the case, we would need to posit more than one ultimate reality, and my guess is that this might be even more dangerous …. :smile:
Of course, the “bad guy” is always me. How predictable.
But I’ve never claimed to be “spiritual”, have I? Besides, why would you want me to be spiritual, when by your own admission, you hate even the word?
How predictable. You cast the first stone, then cry foul.
Oh, my hating even the word doesn't impede my acknowledgement that religion/spirituality is evolutionarily advantageous.
We've been over this at least once.
Just because a person has internalized a discourse to the point that it seems self-evident, objective, neutral, unbiased, doesn't make it so.
If you were raised in a strictly religious setting, you'd believe that the discourse you learned there depends on observation and reason, and does not depend on authority, and that it is in principle at least, defeasible and endlessly revisable, and wherein expertise can be gained by understanding clearly defined ideas, principles and observable or self-evident facts. (It's, for example, how a person's understanding of God is sometimes conceptualized in religion -- as a matter of (infinite) progressive revision and refinement.)
The internalization of the scientific discourse depends on faith. Learning science in school is the same kind of going through the motions as religious education.
Again, it depends on who those others subjects in the "inter-subjectively speaking" are. Who and what are they? Does just any random person, regardless of age, education, socioeconomic status, etc. qualify as your potential fellow subject?
I haven't anywhere said "it makes it so". The third person disciplines are inter-subjectively corroborable in ways that religious belief is not is all I'm pointing out, because the former are based on what is publicly observable.
The other side of that is that religions posit entities and realms that are not publicly observable, and theories, like karma, rebirth, enlightenment, resurrection, divine judgement and so on, which are not inter-subjectively testable.
You might assume it is, in a common-sense sort of way, but it's far from a given. All other species on Earth seem to have survived this far without it. What's behind it may even prove to eventually end us.
I wasn't aware that we were "casting stones" here. And I didn't "cry foul", either. I found your comment amusing, actually.
Quoting baker
I'm sure it doesn't. I still never claimed to be "spiritual", though .... :smile:
Well, perhaps you should look at yourself first before commenting on other people's looks. :wink:
More generally, I think you are getting carried away by your own pro-Buddhist narrative (or propaganda).
The truth of the matter is that according to Buddhist teachings, Buddha attained “Nirvana” after many lives. This suggests to me that the Buddhists who expect to attain Nirvana in this life, are probably kidding themselves, not least by imagining that they can surpass Buddha! :grin:
The other fact is that Buddha is said to have attained “Nirvana” not by reciting Pali suttas or even following “Buddhism”, but through meditation or introspective inquiry, which he had learned from others (possibly Hindus or Yogis).
It follows that even according to Buddhism the key to attaining “Nirvana” is meditation, NOT religious observances, Buddhist or otherwise. In other words, there is no need to be a Buddhist to attain enlightenment.
Unfortunately, your main concern seems to be not enlightenment, but religion. And this is because new converts are known to have this urge to draw others into their own cult. Without much success in this case, though ....
You know, this could have been the beginning of a beautiful friendship. But you just don't want to be friends. :wave:
I bet it would’ve been. That’s why I’m glad it never was … :smile:
You still haven't answered my question:
Quoting baker
It seems to be an important theme guiding a good deal of the classical figures in western philosophy.
It's certainly true that our science has increased considerably, but this shouldn't lead us to believe that our epistemic situation has changed much.
And then again most people who are labeled as being "enlightened" very much reject being called such a thing.
Not subjectivism, but inter-subjectivism. Scholars who devote whole lifetimes to studying ancient thinkers are better placed to understand them than laypeople, particularly when you consider that laypeople will be reading translations replete with the interpretations of the scholars who translated them. So, the best guide to understanding Plato would therefore be following contemporary scholarly consensus (if there be such). Otherwise you would be left to your own subjective devices (subjectivism).
You keep avoiding the point that the "public" you're refering to, the "subjects" in your "intersubjectively testable" is a very specific group of people, not just anyone.
The claims made by a scientist from a particular scientific discipline are testable only by people with a comparable scientific background. Most certainly not by just anyone.
It's the same in religion: The claims made by a religious person from a particular religious discipline are testable only by people with a comparable religious background. Most certainly not by just anyone.
It is not the case that science is somehow open to all, while religion isn't; or that science is objective, while religion isn't, like you keep arguing. Both require special knowledge and education for the testing of their claims, respectively.
Of course it does. That's the whole point. That's how there exist whole schools in religions, lineages where thousands of people are trained to discern and develop the same things.
Of course it is. People trained in the same tradition as you can observe it. They can asses whether a particular person has come to a certain attainment or not.
Religion/spirituality isn't simply about "introspection". It is supposed to bring about a change of consciousness, a change in one's moral status, and more, and this is something that other people can observe, in accordance with the standards of their religion/spirituality.
They can assess behavior according to some criteria, but they cannot know the other's experience and hence cannot know that the other (even granting that the other could know themselves) that they are enlightened.
In any case, people can be morally superior without believing, thinking or "knowing" anything about being enlightened, so superior moral behavior is not going to tell you anything about whether someone is enlightened. People who are believed to be enlightened can also be morally inferior; think about the notorious "bad behavior" of supposed gurus and enlightened ones.
Anyway if you can't come up with anything more than assertions I'm over this conversation, Baker. You are not providing arguments, much less convincing ones, you are just saying "no it isn't" to my "yes it is" and "yes it is", to my "no, it isn't", we are not getting anywhere and it's becoming boring, so let's leave it there, eh?