What I was trying to convey is that the Buddha’s ideas were through direct experimentation, observation, deductive reasoning and, finally, intuition derived from his mystical experiences. Another mystic would come up with different ideas based on what they bring into the mystical experience. In fact, the Buddha’s ideas weren’t that different from many of the ideas floating around India at the time. It seems to me that the emphasis was different, along with some details. For example, Hindus also have a Nirvana and to get there you must let go of your ego to find your true self or Brahma. All Karma, etc. is reliant on this Brahma. For Buddhism, there’s not even really a Brahma. Sure there’s a universe, but pretty much all the troubles are not because people are not in sync with Brahma but they are delusional and clingy. But the hallmark and most unique emphasis in Buddhism is that people cause their own suffering and they also can stop their own suffering.
Evidence that by using the teachings of Budda to enter that altered physiological and psychological state is causative of some higher level of knowledge that allows them to reduce suffering in the world.
That is the claim that is made, I find it extraordinary and thus ask for evidence.
The claim is that this state is available to everybody. Everybody can reduce their own suffering.
Certainly, the Buddha appeared to believe that there was no permanent self - but he didn’t restict this insight to dying and being reborn. There was no permanent self while you were alive, either.
The two (dying & being reborn, and being alive in this life) were treated much as a muchness - there is ‘something’ that continues, but it is not some sort of perfect, immortal form. All is ceaseless change, itself a source of suffering.
This self is indeed conceived of using the metaphor of a flame. But this doesn’t mean that the Buddha had a totally naturalistic and rational approach. The flame itself keeps going, fueled by the laws of karma, through life after life (hence the image of monks shedding a literal ocean of tears for the repeated deaths of mom & dad, another memorable metaphor from the Pali suttas) - until it is snuffed out. The flame isn’t some permanent “you” because there is no such thing - even in a single life, let alone over many.
Theravada tends to take a gradualist view - that this snuffing out can, in many cases, take more than a single lifetime. Some Mahayana sects, on the other hand, believe it comes in flashes of insight.
Yep!
Ya know what? I think I’m going to start up again. I have to admit that zazen was difficult for me even though it seems simple. I had to mix in vipassana body scans or labeling or metta meditation.
I’m not sure what you mean by someone reducing the suffering of the world. Do you mean the Bodhisattva vow? Just because you vow something doesn’t mean it’s going happen. Even if it never happens, it also doesn’t mean someone is going to stop trying.
The same text continues on to state, on P. 235, as follows:
“Behante, if it is not the same name and form that is born into the next existence, is one not freed from one’s evil deeds?”
“If one were not born into another existence,” said the elder, “one would be feed from one’s evil deeds; but, your majesty, insomuch as one is born into another existence, therefore is one not freed from one’s evil deeds”.
One of the illustrations used to illustrate this point (at P. 237) is that of a young girl being puchased for marriage by a guy who goes off - if another man was to later marry that girl when she’s grown to be of marriageable age, he can’t argue that he’s “really” marrying a different girl.
So, the process of death and rebirth is likened to both a flame and the growing of a girl into a women - it is not “the same” person, but nor is it a “different” person.
This can easily be interpreted in relation to karma. In fact, the last few examples were used in the context of being free from evil deeds.
“In exactly the same way, your majesty, although the name and form which is born into existence is not the name and form which is to end at death, nevertheless, it is sprung from it. Therefore one is not freed from one’s evil deeds.”
IOW, whatever you do in life, there will be consequences even after you die. Thich Nhat Hanh calls these the “seeds” that you plant in this life that affect you in this life but also can affect others after you die. Again, someone can interpret that as a supernatural something or other that moves into the next life. However, it is not required to interpret it that way. (Unless you’re a monk and your tradition wants you to interpret it that way.)
Buddha explicitly stated that questions about the nature of the universe were “questions that tend not to edification”.
*"Malunkyaputta, any one who should say, ‘I will not lead the religious life under the Blessed One until [he] shall elucidate to me either that the world is eternal or the world is not eternal,…or that the saint neither exists nor does not exist after death’ --that person shall die Malunkyaputta, before the Tathagata has elucidated this to him.
It is as if, Malunkayputta, a man had been wounded with an arrow thickly smeared with poison, and his friends… were to procure…a physician or surgeon; and the sick man were to say, ‘I will not have this arrow taken out until I have learned whether the many who wounded me belonged to the warrior cast or the brahman caste, or to the agricultural caste, or to the menial caste.’ "*
Also, while the historical Buddha may or may not have believed in Gods and whatnot, he certainly didn’t think they were important in the context of what he was teaching, chiefly because they were also trapped in samsara and the wheel of rebirth. This made them, at best, students of Buddha. There’s a nice story about a frog who is killed while listening to one of Buddha’s sermons who become a god of the suite of the 33. He then comes and asks the Buddha for teaching and becomes enlightened." This is also in Warren’s Buddhism in Translation (Harvard University Press), but page 301 is missing from Google books. I did dig out my own copy, just for you. 
All this god stuff is great, but it’s a bit hard to tell how much of it Buddha gave a damn about. He certainly used gods as figures in his teaching, but he certainly made them irrelevant to the main point of his teachings.
Thanks Attack from the 3rd dimension! Buddhist teachings in general warm my tiny heart – which somewhat is problematic as they also cloud my judgment.
I’ve studied Buddhist texts and read selections of a few books about Buddhism, but I don’t believe I have a solid understanding of Buddhist practice. So I’ve read this thread with some interest.
My understanding is that the Buddha’s prime stated goal was the cessation of dukkha. You or someone else will have to explain to me how this relates to understanding the universe. (No snark intended - I simply lack the background to make propoer sense of that claim.) I do find it plausible that an Asian who grew up with Buddhism might see things that way.
As I perceive it, the Buddha accepted gods before he sat under the Bohdi tree. Nothing he did under the Bohdi tree really affected that acceptance one way or another, assuming the battle with Mali was metaphorical. Admittedly, I trust that a number Mahayana and even Theravada Buddhists believe in the Mali battle literally. But if you’re focused on reducing suffering, it shouldn’t matter one way or the other within this framework. [1]
I understand that Buddhist monks have been studied with EEGs. The Buddha indeed said that his goal was the cessation of dukkha: my take is that such an implicit claim was exaggerated. Gurus have been known to utilize PR and showmanship. It happens. Substitute “Ameliorate” for “Cessation”. Or redefine dukkha accordingly. [2]
Malthus: IMHO, the supernatural certainly figured into the Buddha’s presentation and worldview. It just doesn’t seem especially essential to Buddhist philosophy or practice. I will say though that in the absence of reincarnation (as understood by the West) the incentive to take a Buddhist path decreases, though does not disappear.
[1] Within a super-secular or even Western philosophical framework, it most certainly does matter though.
[2] When I ran cross country in high school, I found that with practice I could tune out some of the physical discomfort: I entered a certain zone. It was like perceiving pain from a vantage point where it didn’t matter. Is it inaccurate to say that the pain went away? (I think it is somewhat inaccurate.) Then again, Patrick Mcdermott once noted that there is a tradeoff between accuracy and clarity. Sometimes a rough and somewhat inaccurate characterization is clearer and more helpful than a lengthier but more learned discourse.
I would modify that. I would say if somebody attends church and self-identifies as a Christian then he is Christian. By way of example, a Unitarian from the 1800s believed in the divinity of Jesus, but not in the Trinity. Every other denomination equated belief in the trinity with Christianity. In my framework, Unitarians were nonetheless Christians in the 1800s. Tying religious affiliation with Belief Y or Z is problematic in practice.
Yet Christianity is a social construct. I accept Bricker’s distinction between being an Xist and having a personal take on X. But I would clarify that if there was a church that called itself Christian but thought that Jesus was the Greatest of All Prophets, Son of Man and Our Savoir but not the Son of God, then that church would still be properly thought of as Christian. I furthermore think that this would be using the term “Christian” in the common sense. (ETA: I suppose that those who disagreed with the church might say that they’re not really Christian. But that’s a different statement. Christian but not really Christian.)
(Sorry to drop in out of left field like this.)
Does Buddhism require a faith in the supernatural?
(1) Buddhism, being that thing that people all over the world practice, well, the majority of authorities in power within the structures that are anything like official, traditional Buddhism would probably say “Faith in the Buddha first, and the Buddha taught rebirth, so ‘Yes’.”
(2) Buddhism, being what the Buddha taught, as represented in the Pali canon since it’s the oldest comprehensive version we have, then, no. The Buddha said repeatedly that we need to be able to see for ourselves. Presumably if you’ve seen rebirth for yourself it’ll not seem supernatural anymore. Nowhere does he say that a belief in rebirth is necessary.
As for what he can have meant by his references to rebirth, we need to keep in mind that it was the primary paradigm of the day, and he says quite explicitly that one with a liberated mind speaks to others in the way of their worldview “without clinging to it” – so he has told us that he describes things in terms of what people believe, but he doesn’t have to believe it to do this. When asked why he tells kinfolk where their monastic family members went after they died, he says, “Not to deceive people, not to impress them… but for their comfort and to tend them toward higher goals.” He tells us repeatedly that he goes out of his way to not argue useless points of doctrine. Take all that together with a recognition of what he knew about language and points of view – empty, empty, all empty – and every word becomes a metaphor. To look for him to be “speaking literally” on any given point is asking for trouble (the very trouble we have in trying to understand what he said).
In his description of dependent origination he defines what a “being” is – it is composed of the five aggregates – that’s anatta, the not-eternal self, our sense of a lasting self. It is that which he describes as being born, and it looks to me like that’s what he’s describing as being reborn. He talks often enough about his followers having “at most seven more births” and it’s probably no coincidence that there are “seven stations of consciousness of beings” – so my best guess (I’m still studying) is that he’s seeing “rebirth” as major revisions of how we see ourselves on the road toward enlightenment.
If that is the general framework we accept, then I agree that being a Buddhist does not require a belief in anything supernatural.
I just don’t believe that’s a particularly useful model, because the value of language is a common framework of communication.
Certainly this process was in relation to the laws of Karma. It is the whole ‘laws of karma - cycle of rebirth - deeds leading to suffering through multiple rebirths’ background that appears to be, in essence, a supernatural belief. In the above text, the Buddha is quite adimantly stating that this “something” that passes through rebirth is, in a way, you - of course not some eternal and unchanging “you”, but as much “you” as a young girl who grows up to be a middle-aged woman is the same woman (he uses that exact analogy!).
I cannot agree that this is something external or minor in the Theravada tradition. A historical analysis indicates its centrality to that tradition; it is, as we have seen, a major part of the Pali dukkas. I will not say it is necessary to “Buddhism” because that term of course includes many different traditions and interpretations, including modern re-interpretations as we have seen.
Certainly the Buddha was not terribly interested in gods, devils and creation mythology - the battlefield doctor anecdote has already been discussed - gods and the like may exist and may not, but if they do, they are bound to the wheel along with the rest of us.
However, the nature of the wheel interested him very much, since it was bound together with the nature of suffering - relief of which was his main goal.
To this, I cannot agree (at least, if we are talking Theravada here).
I agree that the existence of gods and the like is not important to Buddhist practice (well, except for those Mahayana sects which essentially elevate Buddha- figures into gods, of course).
However, the nature of karma and the cycle of rebirth is quite essential, important and significant to Theravada Buddhist thought. Many of the Pali texts focus on that very subject.
It’s true that language is valuable as a common framework of communication. In certain disciplines, there are bright-line definitions: in medicine, for example, it’s very clear what is and what isn’t a bacterial infection, and that’s not subject to debate. When you’re working with computers, something either is or it isn’t an optical drive. A child either is enrolled in kindergarten or she is not.
Some religions work this way, too: if you claim to be a Scientologist, but the Church of Scientology disowns you, I’ll believe them over you. Same thing if you’re a Catholic. (Not that I’m in any other way comparing Scientology to Catholicism–they’re just the two clearest examples I can think of of hierarchical religions).
But other religions don’t work this way, and the fuzziness is built into them. That’s also true of certain artistic discplines (is a certain novel magical realist? Is a certain song grunge-punk? Is that painting postmodern?). Efforts to come up with precise, bright-line definitions miss the point, and do more to harm communication than they do to facilitate it.
Theravada Buddhism appears to me to have more in common with grunge-punk music than with Scientology.
The literal conceptions of samsara held no interest to him at all, actually. He certainly did not think such beliefs were necessary to reduce dukkha and explicitly said so. These beliefs are also utterly irrelevant to Theravada practice.
In fact, at least in Zen (which is what I’m most familiar with) the vows are literally impossible - “Sentient beings are numberless; I vow to free them”, etc.
[QUOTE=heatmiserfl]
“In exactly the same way, your majesty, although the name and form which is born into existence is not the name and form which is to end at death, nevertheless, it is sprung from it. Therefore one is not freed from one’s evil deeds.”
[/QUOTE]
But it’s not the Buddha speaking.
[QUOTE=wikipedia]
The Milinda Panha is a Buddhist text which dates from approximately 100 BCE…It purports to record a dialogue in which the Indo-Greek king Menander I (Milinda in Pali) of Bactria, who reigned in the 2nd century BCE, poses questions on Buddhism to the sage Nāgasena.
[/QUOTE]
In trying to sort out what the Buddha was describing I’ve found it’s important not to confuse what later interpretations say he meant with what he actually said. What he actually said is confusing enough without it getting pulled in all directions by others’ views.
and all the usual caveats apply to “what he actually said” (we don’t have the literal words, etc etc) but taking what’s in the Pali canon as most representative of what he said.