A religious movement with temples, scriptures, saints, monks, priests, rituals, vows, faith, rebirth and valuable spiritual insights, which is inscrutable to outsiders who don’t study the canon and practise the, uh, practice. No supernatural beliefs required!
Uh-huh.
You’ll forgive me, I hope, if I categorise Buddhists as ‘religious’ rather than ‘atheist’? If it bothers you, try to chant smarter not harder, and remember I don’t really exist. That is the path to freedom from suffering.
Fair enough, but rather irrelevant: first because there is obviously no such thing as a record of “what the Buddha actually said” - what we have is texts purporting to be such (as you note), and secondly and more importantly because even with that caveat in mind, the sage Nāgasena is an arahant, meaning he’s as enlightened as the original Buddha, and so his description stands as well as that of the Buddha’s own in determining what is or is not important to Theravada Buddhism.
These two things struck me as essentially dealing with the same bit of Zen Buddhism (which I practice myself–and I gotta admit, it’s odd thinking of Dio doing it).
The only REQUIRED bit of Zen Buddhism that’s arguably supernatural is the idea that the practice leads to a transcendent awareness. At the same time, as far as I can tell, that “transcendent awareness” as described by my roshi is fundamentally the same thing as Kant’s a priori knowledge. That is, rat avatar’s higher level of knowledge has been discussed in a raw philosophical context that’s divorced (or as much as Kant can be divorced) from any specific belief structures.
All of Sandwich’s monks, priests, and scriptures are window dressing to Zen. Ultimately it’s exactly as supernatural as yoga–you are using a set of techniques originally devised to exercise your physical being in such a way as to induce a specific mental state.
Now this I can definitely agree upon. Even Soto Zen which downplays the race for kenshos and enlightenment, you’re still expected to achieve enlightenment. Then Dogen plays a fast one on you and basically says, “Well, it’s not a big deal when you become enlightened. It’s so much not a big deal, that you won’t even notice it!” That’s what I got out of his writings.
Or the “climbing past the end of the rope” koans, whereby one is reminded that being attached to enlightenment is still ultimately being attached, and you are expected to dispassionately not care that you have reached that state.
I believe I’m using the terms in the common sense. Shifting a little, if there’s a large church that calls itself Christian and most other churches accept it as Christian, then it is Christian regardless of how much its beliefs coincide with the others.
I have studied the canon but never practiced it. I don’t find it inscrutable. I would find Shakespeare without annotations far more difficult to interpret.
Maybe physics is a religion: it’s inscrutable unless you’ve studied it, right?
No problem. Most Asian Buddhists believe in Buddhism’s supernatural aspects, which nobody is denying exist. But its not uncommon for others to adopt some of Buddhism’s techniques and conceptual frameworks in a more secular context. Dialectical behavioral therapy is one example.
I have shown Buddhist texts that indicate that the Buddha took a dim view on metaphysical wrangling. So there is that strand of evidence. But there are other strands as well, and I lack sufficient familiarity with form a definitive opinion. That said: sure, " the nature of karma and the cycle of rebirth is quite essential, important and significant to Theravada Buddhist thought." But all that occurs during a single lifetime anyway, right?
Sociologically Speaking
Thinking this over: Look. All I really need to do is locate a secular-friendly Theravada temple. Then the OP’s POV would either have to shift in light of new evidence, or take refuge in a True Scotsman argument.
Recall that “Mahayana” and “Theravada” are pretty wide categories. Theravadabuddhism.org claims that Theravada Buddhism takes 4 forms in the West: The Secular Buddhist Society Model, The Original London Vihara Model, The Lankarama Model, and The Meditation Centre Mode, FWIW. Number 3 is an ethnic temple. (The text appears to be lifted from this essay.)
Here’s a webpage of the Secular Buddhist Society. They focus on study of the Pali canon.
So I guess the POV in the OP would want to write off the Secular Buddhist Society. Dr V. A. Gunasekara, author of a number of articles on Buddhism, would disagree. He believes that the Secular Buddhist Society and the London Vihara tradition, “correspond substantially to the Dhamma as expounded in the Pali Canon,” while the other 2 variants do not. In his view, Buddhism shouldn’t be ethnically limited, nor should it tie itself too closely with the alleged expertise of a given Guru. Metaphysical belief doesn’t appear to enter in to his criteria.
Oh, sorry, is this discussion limited to Theravadan Buddhism? I was under the impression that we were talking about Buddhism in general.
Do I understand from the above, then, that you would say that all Theravadan arahants across time were in perfect accord about what the Buddha taught?
You might also want to take note that I didn’t say the speaker was wrong – I would have to read a lot more of the conversation between the two, in order to understand if he’s defining things slightly differently than the Buddha did (“name-and-form” in particular) – I could see me saying the very same thing he did, if I framed the argument in a certain way. I was simply stating a fact, to clarify an error in quoting the incorrect source. I hold no opinion on the correctness of his statement.
No it isn’t. It’s a guy doing a podcast. But there is “Secular Buddhist Society Model”, and the webpage has links to several practice centers around the world.
nowheat: AFAIK, the Bhante Nagasena quote is from a fairly canonical Pali text.
I thought I’d look that up for kicks. I found what I assume is the full text, and in one of the footnotes he remarks “Indeed it is doubtful whether anyone who is not an Ariyapuggala can be a teacher of the Dhamma.” which got me thinking, how exactly do secular Buddhists relate to those designations*? ISTM, that terms like “once returner” and “non returner” are a little hard to map onto a view that karma and nivana being concerned with only this life we are currently living. I guess you could just choose to regard them as as archaic titles for a meditation-mental accomplishment checklist.
That’s what I was getting at when I said “I don’t think it’s outlandish to say that the true goal is to understand the nature of the universe or your relationship with it at least”.
*Sorry if this was already addressed, but if it was I think it was in more general terms.
The Pali text you yourself cited goes on, in the part you did not cite, to describe the Buddhist concept of rebirth. It stretches the meaning past the breaking point to insist that it means “in this life”.
To repeat:
It takes a lot of creative re-interpretation to find that “born into another existence” in this context means “while you are still alive”.
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I prefer to reference Dr. V. A. Gunasekara’s own works on the subject, rather than some indirect chain of authority such as (to paraphrase) ‘Dr. Gunasekara likes the author of this podcast’.
On this site, you can read his own quite comprehensive and informative paper on the subject, entitled “Basic Buddhism: A Modern Introduction to the Buddha’s Teaching” (it’s a PDF). A relevant exerpt, from the chapter entitled “The Doctrines of Karma and Rebirth”:
The authour goes on to note that you can get some good out Buddhism even if one doesn’t believe in the cycle, because one can see the cycle in one’s own life, and so even the “extreme rationalist” (his words) may get some good out of Buddhism.
But clearly, he’s of the opinion that the Samsaric cycle of karma and rebirth is a tenent of Buddhism (and he clearly believes it is true. In speaking of past lives: “While many such reports may be mistaken or even fraudulent, some are undoubtedly genuine”).
Note that the very purpose of this booklet is to make Buddhism accessible and comprehensible to Western modern-rationalistic types. Froim the intro:
That being said, his view of Buddhism is pretty well on all fours with that of London Vihara. Certainly, the samsaric cycle, rebirth and past lives are a part of it.
Yup, we are talking about Theravada alone. From the OP:
In determining what Theravada Buddhism is “about”, I have no hesitation in referencing the Bhante Nagasena dialogue. While it is true that arhats are not considered all identical, this is as foundational a text as anything in the Pali suttas.
I can’t say this thread surprises me in the slightest. In a lot of ways I want to compare Buddhism and its variants to Secular/Cultural Judaism–it is secular, it is not secular, depending on your point of view and your needs.
There is the Buddhism that is captured in the techniques (yoga, sitting meditation/zazen, tantric practices of varying kinds, etc.) that is eminently capable of being secular, or even joined to other religions–my introduction to zazen came from a Catholic friar who used it in the course of HIS monastic life.
There is the Buddhism that is captured in the concepts of karma, cycles, dukkha and the reduction thereof, and the Eightfold Way, which is easily seen as either secular or supernatural, much of it dependent on what one views as the “enforcer” of karma.
There is the Buddhism that is captured in the idea of a wheel of reincarnation, and nirvana, and the returning bodhisattvas who sacrifice their own freedom to remain and teach to all. These things are either complete metaphor or supernatural in some sense.
It’s an interesting paralell. There are plenty of secular Jews who state that being Jewish is a matter of culture and ethnicity and not religion, and so no belief in the supernatural (in this case, the Jewish god) is necessary to be Jewish … but there are none who would deny that Judaism was originally theistic.
To my mind, that’s sort of the similar to the issue here: when discussing Theravada Buddhism, was it originally a philosophy/belief that embraced the supernatural as part of its essential make-up? Is it one today?
There is no denying that “Buddhism” per se went on to develop sects that differed considerably from the original - some of which being clearly supernatural and even theistic, others of which being more focused on developing an intuitive approach to life and not at all reliant on the supernatural. Buddhists, like Jews, lack any central authority to lay down the laws as to what constitutes “real” Buddhism or not. However, when discussing something like Theravada Buddhism, the content is not infinitely expansive.
Therevada never relied on any literal beliefs in the supernatural. That’s incorrect. Some supernatural ideas were sort of taken for granted, but they were incidental to Buddhist practice, not inherent to it or necessary to it.
