I skimmed the article and it looks like it points me in good directions for further reading. Thanks! I'll probably be back with more questions if I am able to digest this.Originally Posted by Paulclem
I skimmed the article and it looks like it points me in good directions for further reading. Thanks! I'll probably be back with more questions if I am able to digest this.
My blog: https://frankhubeny.blog/
I admit I know very little about the religions coming out of India. It looks like there are 3 principle religions of India: Hinduism (linked to the Vedic literature from the Indus Valley), Jainism (linked to the Ganges river area) and Buddhism which derived from these two. My naive view of "Hinduism" is probably the Jain religion.
So, I agree that Buddhism promotes the idea of the "not-Self" which both the Hindus and the Jains oppose. I understand it claims this is neither "eternalism" nor "nihilism" through its "middle way" doctrine, but I don't see how you can have a middle way unless there is something in the middle and this has not been clearly described.
It seems that all three religions promote religious practices to allow one to escape the continual reincarnations. Where they go, if anywhere, after they escape the cycle, would differ among them.
Buddhism seems to value experience, but denies the experience of the "I", calling it a delusion, in favor of a doctrine that the "I" does not exist. It does look like the meditation techniques practiced by Buddhists are ways to convince the meditator that the I does not exist. That is the criteria I'll use to tell if a meditation technique is Buddhist or not.
I was aware from near-death experience (NDE) literature that the Tibetan Book of the Dead recounts similar experiences to those reported by people having NDEs and NDEs can be simulated and because of that do not require an actual death. My suspicion is that whatever the Buddha experienced during his enlightenment could be classed in a broad sense as an NDE which he interpreted through his culture as "nirvana".
My blog: https://frankhubeny.blog/
I don't think it's really about convincing people that the "I" does not exist. Concepts in Buddhism such as Anatta, aren't given as absolute conclusions; they're more like tools to help us make our way. I like one thing Tara Brach said; we eventually may realize Not-self, but not because we posit it at the beginning, and try to make it real. If it's real, it'll be there, and we'll be able to see it. We don't need to go into it with an idea in mind that we're trying to achieve.
Buddha basically said, "this is the way I have realized things, this is the way I've seen how things are, and the nature of my own mind." At one time the Buddha was giving a teaching, and it was new and somewhat different from anything he'd taught before. At the end the Buddha asked his disciple Sariputra if he believed the teaching was true, and Sariputra said, "No, not yet." When Buddha asked him why, he said, "I haven't seen it for myself." And the Buddha praised him and said that this was as it should be. Sariputra was his closest disciple, Buddha was supposed to be an enlightened being, and Sariputra also was an enlightened Buddha, but still he didn't expect him to believe what he taught without understanding it in his own heart.
Did the Buddha describe anywhere what his enlightenment experience was like? I may not have been searching correctly, but I don't think I've found this.
It seems that all three of the main Indian religions use their religious practices as a way to exit the cycle of reincarnation. I wonder at the moment whether that is the best use of religious practices.
My blog: https://frankhubeny.blog/
Buddhism seems to value experience, but denies the experience of the "I", calling it a delusion, in favor of a doctrine that the "I" does not exist. It does look like the meditation techniques practiced by Buddhists are ways to convince the meditator that the I does not exist. That is the criteria I'll use to tell if a meditation technique is Buddhist or not.
No, there are many types of meditations, and the way to tell if they are Buddhist is about the motivation.
We have been discussing the existence of the I, but you wouldn't start with that meditation. You begin with what your basic delusions are - anger, jealousy, pride, lack of confidence, and work on them. Not only do you have to begin to follow the Noble 8 Fold Path, but this involves right effort and right concentration - meaning, you have to develop as a meditator. This takes time, ideally with a group or a teacher.
It is impossible to rationalise or logically deduct the truth of whether the I exists or not in any significant way without a direct experience. To support what Nik says, you shouldn't either accept or reject the teachings, but try them, if you want to, with an open mind.
Your ideas about near death experience are about your perspective and worldview. You can test these out, but don't accept or reject without a proper test of their validity.
It makes sense what both of you are saying. I'm just exploring the ideas.
By accident I found Todd Murphy's article "Forgetting About Enlightenment":
http://www.shaktitechnology.com/enlightenment.htm
I've never heard of him before. If you have and think he is inaccurate, let me know. He tries to describe the enlightenment process by discussing what might be going on in the right and left amygdala and hyppocampus in the brain during the process. I think linking spirituality to the brain provides it with more credibility and allows us to explore it in a new way.
My blog: https://frankhubeny.blog/
Well, I wouldn't exactly agree with that. To give an example, I'll quote a Buddhist teacher in a Dharma talk, who describes some of her own motivations..
"To begin, I'd like to pose on of the great questions in spiritual life, which is 'What motivates us?' What really motivates us - what, at core, brings us here, or gets us to practice, or really compels us through our life. Under all the habitual grasping, and avoiding, what do we most deeply long for? I can speak for myself and say that quite a many years during my early practice and so on, I found myself flip-flopping, and one day I would say, 'what really matters is truth, I just want to know truth.' And then some months later, it would be, 'it's about love. I just want to - ' and it would depend on the context, you know, when I was doing a lot of devotional chanting, it was just love was where it was at. And in some of the depth of Buddhist retreats, I'd start seeing the emptiness of everything, and I'd say, 'ah this is truth, this is it, you know, the way to freedom.' And then I'd go and do some deep healing work and say, 'ah, compassion,' so you get the idea, I went back and forth.
"In more recent years, what's increasingly appeared to be the case is that they're inextricably intertwined. This part of us that really wants to know, "what's it all about?" and this part of us that just wants to be free to love fully, they go very hand in hand. And that's what I want to talk about tonight. Lat week I emphasized some of the great truths of the wisdom traditions, and I'm going to go back to them again, and I'd like talk about how some of these basic truths, in particular the truth of no self or emptiness goes hand in hand with the arising of compassion, that they're not separate, in the final experience of it, in a very pure way."
So, at least, for her, she's doing it to understand truth, to be able to love fully. For me, I can say that Buddhism wasn't the beginning of my path to understand, but what led me to Buddhism was my earlier pursuit of understanding myself, and others, and specifically, what caused suffering?
You know, seeing all the people in my life, and their different life choices, the good and the bad, a main focus of my efforts in this life became to understand myself and what are the causes of suffering - and of happiness? Once I began to delve into these topics, I became more aware of 'the building blocks of consciousness' or how the mind works. I became gradually aware that some modes of thinking caused me harm, and lost energy, and others brought me peace and happiness, and increased energy and creativity.
One revelation to me was how little this information was understood in our daily society and culture. Later on, I began to appreciate minds like Emerson more, and I understood that others had made many of the same strides - but even though they had, there's still a significant lack of self-knowledge in many people. (I don't speak of everyone, and I don't paint people with a brush - besides which, looking for the positive traits in people helps bring out the positive traits, and vice versa. I'm also aware that none of this is new. Emerson says, society always has the same number of great men.In other words, I'm aware of the trap of thinking our time is special, when actually it's in all likelihood, remarkably similar to all the other eras.)
I suppose what I mean is - yes, there is the 'goal' of Nirvana. But greater than that is the goal of relieving suffering of others - which involves enlightening them, which involves first becoming enlightened. In other words, it involves understanding the causes of happiness and the causes of suffering, and nourishing the former, and decreasing the latter. Does that help?
To answer your first question - yes, there are descriptions of Buddha's experience of enlightenment. But it's important to learn the rest first, so to speak. There are more esoteric sutras and teachings, but we have to build a wider base of knowledge first. The wider the base, the higher the pinnacle.
Although it's good to read around, I have a number of issues with this article.
It seems to make a correllation between Enlightenment and an experience of God. this is supposition
Buddhist ideas - not a very good approximation of reality - suggests a similarity between medieval ideas. Buddhism predates this by 2000 years. lots of aspects of buddhism - in psychology for example, have been adopted by modern medical practitioners.
Suggests Buddhism doesn't encourage questioning - but it does. See the last words of The Buddha.
Suggsts that Masters are not sure what Enlightenment is, but it is actually difficult to relate, and so it is often described using a similie or in terms of what it is not.
Refers to water into wine - Not a Buddhist idea.
Uses statements like "I have the feeling that..." which is neither scientific nor does it really encourage confidence in his knowledge of something he has purportedly got a theory for.
He also makes the presumption that Buddhists consider the brain to be the seat of the mind where in fact it is said to be in the heart.
I didn't read it all because I'd picked out so many points that I felt that the whole credibility of the article was challenged - particularly by the last point, which contains the nub of his postulations.
Having said that, there have been experiements upon Buddhsts to test the brain for the effects of meditation etc.
All good points, Paulclem. I've read a few of the articles on the site with some suspicion. I think he claims to be a Buddhist somewhere, but who knows what that means.
He also mentioned a theory for an oscillating universe rather than the current big bang creation out of nothing theory. I wasn't sure why he was even talking about that topic on this site, but it must have bothered him.
Since I know little about "neurotheology", I assume the reading will help me get some idea what this is before moving on.
I listened to Thich Nhat Hanh's Zen Garden and found it interesting on the site that NikolaiI referenced: http://diydharma.org/audio/by/artist/thich_nhat_hanh He was talking about karma and said, "Nothing can be lost. It continues always." This seemed to be a sort of permanence. I agree with "We only want to discourage the rebirth of bad karma."
My blog: https://frankhubeny.blog/
I've wondered what the idea of self-immolation shows about Buddhist ontology and whether it should be considered as an extreme form of practice or rejected.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-immolation
As the article above notes, self-immolation is not peculiar to Buddhism, or even Hinduism, but in my mind I have associated it with Buddhism. Perhaps ritual suicide makes sense with a rebirth or reincarnation belief.
My blog: https://frankhubeny.blog/
I remember the study group I was with at university asking about the Vietnamese Buddhist Monk's immolation. We asked our University Tutor, Peter Harvey, who runs part of the Samatha Trust and who was involved with the Pali Text Society in the UK.
He said that to do that a Monk would have to get permission from his teacher, and would feel no pain due to the deep level of meditation - a realisation of Emptiness means that a practitioner can choose not to feel pain. So why would a Monk's Teacher give his permission for such an act that would kill him and end his precious Human Life?
The reason is intent - the compassionate wish to end the suffering of the Vietnamese people through an act which symbolises this suffering.
It is said that the immolation had a positive effect upon the media and readers observing the Vietnam war in increasing the wish to end it.
It is unfortunate if anyone does this without the correct practice/ preparation/ permission and intent.
I agree with basically everything Paul said; I too skimmed it and found most parts I glanced at objectionable. Particularly I was struck by his statement that "The Buddhist and the Hindu concepts, like other ideas from the middle ages, may not be a very good approximation of reality." Like Paul said, Buddhism predates the middle ages by two millenia. But mainly I disagree with his statement.
Primarily in the field psychology, I've always been struck by how much further advanced Buddha and many of the masters after him have been, compared to Western psychology. The saint-poet Milarepa, as one, is an example. I have never seen any person, past or present, with the depth of wisdom of human nature as he shows. I was struck reading him, by the depth and brilliance of his understanding of psychology - although he speaks of many other subjects. I couldn't give him adequate praise. There are Westerners who have reached a lot of understanding of psychology; Abraham Maslow, Walt Whitman... and I'm sure, many others. But the Western psychologist, as a general rule, seems to be held back by many things such as this deeply rooted idea of the sinfulness of our original nature, which is so different from Buddhist understanding (and I believe, from what Christ originally taught).
That leads the discussion a little bit away; but in general, I don't think there's ever been anyone to understand human psychology as Milarepa, and certainly a few other masters.
So, like Paul, I too wouldn't be interested in reading more of the article, for the same reason. It wasn't just that - other places struck me as false as well; I won't give examples as Paul already has sufficiently.
The oscillating universe though, is I believe an interesting idea that is gaining merit scientifically; although without being deeply involved it's hard to know for sure what the main consensus of the scientific community is, or where it will go, as such things move slowly.
NikolaiI, why do you find an oscillating universe interesting? The reason I am asking in this thread is I wonder if Buddhism needs this in some way for its ontology to work correctly. People who want an oscillating universe usually want an eternal universe for some reason. The fact that our universe of matter and energy, space and time had a beginning does raise the problem of why or how it started in the first place. One now has to place whatever the eternal happens to be outside the physical universe.
The WMAP data (which is still being analyzed) so far shows the universe to be "flat" which means it will not stop expanding from its beginning 13.73 billion years ago. http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/
I agree with you about Todd Murphy. The fact that he even talked about cosmology on his site discredits the rest of what he said. I am mainly using the site to learn the terms he employs. Do you have any links about science done on the enlightenment experience and the brain that you find more scientific? At the moment I suspect Buddhist enlightenment is similar to a near-death experience. If that is the case, it could be studied by looking at NDEs. These are powerful spiritual experiences that can deeply change a person's life.
Thanks, Paulclem, for the comments about self-immolation. It puzzles me that any teacher would ask a student to do something like that, especially, a monk. These acts will be remembered long after people have forgotten what the political tensions were that originally motivated the self-immolation. It would seem to me that the most important thing for monks to do is to show others by example how to live not how to commit ritualistic suicide in such circumstances.
My main motivation in asking these questions is trying to make sense out of the religions from India. I don't trust the Anatta doctrine of Buddhism, but other than that, I find it very attractive. If the Anatta doctrine is replaced with a more traditional Jainism doctrine, I would not have any problem with Buddhism, but then I say to myself: I don't really know what any of these religions are about.
Last edited by YesNo; 05-04-2012 at 09:04 AM.
My blog: https://frankhubeny.blog/
It puzzles me that any teacher would ask a student to do something like that
The teacher wouldn't ask a student to do this. It came from the monk himself. The time place and circumstances were very specific.
I also may have made an error in describing why the Monk committed suicide. It may have been that he did this in protest against the regime that was South Vietnam. I'm sure I've seen a colour version too which may have been the later immolation I was referring to.
Suicide is regarded as unskillful in Buddhism, as is murder. Yet tthere are always conceivable situations - very specific to the circumstances - where that might be the coursde chosen. In the case of murder, you might do this in order to protect others who are weaker and who are threatened. As always the motivation is the key.
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