Buddhism: What Do We Know?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/thomas-david-dubois/is-buddhism-agnostic-_b_1425026.html?ref=religion

Our certainty about the things we know varies on a fairly wide spectrum when one thinks about it. We take for granted the reality of things like a desk chair, our food, other people we interact with. But there are things that are believed in that aren’t necessarily fully thought out, such as our ethics, or even contemplated on as to whether they’re necessary, such as supernatural thinking of one form or another. To focus too much on whether something is absolutely or conventionally true misses the point of what I spoke about in “Two Truths, One Path,” . The fluctuating nature of existence necessitates that we take different perspectives on things, but nonetheless maintain a degree of consistency even in the vacillation. Knowledge is more difficult to remain constant on, since it supports every other action we do. We behave ethically due to beliefs about what is good and bad respectively, things are considered mistaken or accurate because of prior experience and evidence considered together logically, and even logic has a basis in what we consider valid and sound. Buddhism in particular is something that many find to be highly lacking as concerns formal knowledge. Everything seems more based in practice, which varies by the individual, be they monastic or layperson or something in between. With this in mind, it comes to the question: does Buddhism make any real knowledge claims, philosophically speaking?

No formal structure exists across all of Buddhism for karma or rebirth, two of the biggest issues in studies of the philosophy, let alone whether Buddha was simply a wise man or a figure that possessed semi divine powers of near omniscience even before he actually shuffled off his proverbial earthly coil. This creates a lot of ambivalence that I noticed early on when first studying Buddhism in a college environment five years ago. Our introduction to Asian religions course focused on Hinduism, Buddhism and Chinese folk religion for the most part, so there was more detail put into each of them. A question I recall coming up for Buddhism that reflected issues I spoke about in part with both “Seeds and Fruits, Actions and Results,” and “Rebirth, Not Reincarnation” was how a person’s karma can continue on if the person reborn is not the same as they were before? There are a few answers to this, the one I prefer being that karma is more a state of things instead of an individual person. There is such a thing as individual karma in the sense of one’s own actions and results affecting oneself primarily, but actions and results usually affect more people than we realize in one way or another. And this also solves that issue of rebirth in that karma isn’t co-opted by rebirth’s affecting any individual’s identity, subject to impermanence as they all are, particularly at death. Another answer to how a person’s karma might continue on even if the person themselves is subject to dissipation at death in some sense is that there is a stream of consciousness that is very subtly intertwined with the next rebirth, which retains the person’s memories, thoughts, etc. This, of course, brings up the more supernatural and even superstitious aspects of Buddhism as it spread out from India, though there were those that believed these things even within the founding country of Gautama’s teachings.

There is a tendency within lay Buddhism and even ordained Buddhism to follow the school that affirms Buddha was supernatural in some sense and that many aspects of Buddhism that are confusing should be answered with some form of mysterious and transcendent reality, such as Gautama Buddha being able to read people’s thoughts even in past lives, recall his past lives in vivid detail, not to mention the stream of consciousness spoken of before and the actual reality of the other six realms, particularly the lower and upper 2 where entities of a very unfalsifiable nature, however limited in their overall power, exist (hell beings, preta, asura and deva) I’m not saying this isn’t genuine Buddhism in the sense of it developing within cultures that don’t have opposition to a system as long as it can be incorporated into pre-existing beliefs. This is how Buddhism coexists so well with the animistic and polytheistic cultures that it holds high influence in today. The Buddha was notoriously silent on many of these matters, and unfortunately people take his silence as an ambivalent acceptance of the reality of things that he was emphatically against believing in just because of traditions or the like. This vague sense of “divine wisdom” we get from Gautama as depicted in many accounts of his life is what creates much of the mixed ideas that exist in Buddhism as it modernized and was incorporated into such cultures as Japan’s, where everything was believed to have a spirit in it, including mountains and rivers, let alone people and animals. Resolving the conflicts between them through syncretism is a solution, though it only muddies the waters as to what might be considered even remotely original Buddhism.

The Buddhist perspective on knowledge is not absolute in the grandest scheme, but only in those things that are beneficial to us. To know suffering is as valuable as knowing happiness, and knowing they are both fleeting is even more important. What is worth knowing and being confident, not arrogant, about are ideas that have practical applications in everyday life. Not just in isolated academic discussions, but something anyone can talk about in common language. Even if there isn’t always a structured dogma or official teaching in any sense of the word about such things as the principle of karma, derived in part from Hindu teachings that existed in the same culture with similar ambivalence, it doesn’t mean Buddhism doesn’t have certainty on other things. Life is most definitely dukkha, unsatisfactory in our initial approach to it, the cause of it is a combination of craving and ignorance, one can get over this dukkha approach to life and that is through living the eightfold path. There are also the 5 precepts and other traditions that are commonly held to have value across Buddhism, such as meditation and the virtues of metta and prajna.

To say Buddhism is cryptic and mysterious is not inaccurate, but rejecting it based on a standard of credulity requiring strict Western logic can miss the point of the nondualistic perspective that much of Eastern thought, Buddhism and Daoism especially, presents. Simply viewing things through a lens of “either/or” neglects the “both/and” answers we can see if we consider things differently, though not to the extent of throwing reason out the window. But as there are many sides to a diamond, life has many perspectives we can view it through and find different insights that we might not have discovered otherwise. That’s where Buddhism benefits: it seeks out answers wherever they may come and brings things together without reducing it in scale. The holistic nature of it doesn’t mean we neglect reducing things as is appropriate. It’s always a balance with Buddhist philosophy and practice and to come even close to perfect takes a lifetime, if not more in a sense. Until next time, Namaste and aloha.

Nirvana Is Not Nihilism

http://www.greatwesternvehicle.org/criticism/stoic.htm

http://www.thereformedbuddhist.com/2010/01/atheism-nihilism-and-anti-religion_24.html

http://www.nembutsu.info/hsrbudd1.htm

http://ccbs.ntu.edu.tw/FULLTEXT/JR-EPT/loy.htm

One of the more prominent ideas about Buddhism in terms of its goals of enlightenment, commonly phrased as nirvana in Sanskrit, nibbana in Pali, is that this idea of extinction or blowing out of desire, is nihilistic. This is based on a number of conceptions we have, usually from our ideas of monastics or just the general popular portrayal of Buddhists as very detached from the world. From these we get a stereotype that they deny the world exists or that it matters. That’s very much incorrect from my experience. Just because the world isn’t how we originally construct it doesn’t mean we still can’t find wonder and amazement at things and also have goals in mind to improve ourselves and others. There is virtually no reason to think Buddhism is anything like the nihilism you hear about through Friedrich Nietzsche, for instance, though there may be more in common than we think. But the nihilism that leads to depression, suicide and other negative thoughts and behavior is certainly not what Buddhism advises or teaches. Gautama even advocates against it, as I spoke about in part in “Moderate Beliefs Lead to Moderate Practice” , in the balance between eternalism and nihilism and annihilationism by association. Life is not strictly over absolutely when one dies, but that’s not to say we live forever either. There is a great variety to nihilism, so let’s start with parsing that out.

Now I could do a whole series on the types of nihilism, but for simplicity’s sake, I’ll try to focus on those that work with Buddhism and those that don’t. For instance, moral and epistemological nihilism are in conflict, because Buddhism doesn’t deny that there is the distinct realization of moral and epistemological objectivity through practice and contemplation. There are things that are objectively true, but there is also flexibility. Metaphysical nihilism is another one that doesn’t sync with Buddhism, but is commonly misinterpreted to be so due to a misunderstanding of Buddhist metaphysics, the nature of existence. Just because one says things are illusory does not mean you claim they don’t exist. When we perceive any illusion, it doesn’t negate the reality of the things that actually do exist behind the illusion. Whether they be visual, auditory, or any other sensory input, it is not unreasonable to still trust that our senses are reliable in most situations. Sometimes illusions are just a matter of our minds playing tricks on us, such as when we look at a Magic Eye picture. But there are illusions that are synonymous with hallucinations in that we see or hear things that literally are not there. But if we focus on the issue of illusions, the point remains that there is still substance behind what our minds mistakenly understand in some sense and this can apply to hallucinations as well in that there’s still a world you interact with, even if you’re adding to it. When I see what I think to be a monster, but am incorrect in believing so, then this doesn’t mean that what actually existed is literally not there, but simply isn’t processed by my mind in an accurate way. This is where the idea of maya, commonly translated as illusion, has relevance, though the term vipallasa, translated as distortion, is more relevant to Theravada Buddhism, which is usually understood to be the more classical school, which I also lean more towards in my practice and thought. Both of these ideas do not suggest that Buddhists don’t believe in things, for they very much do. It’s more psychological problems that inspire the beliefs of Buddhists that Westerners commonly interpret as negative and reality denying in nature. We misperceive, we misinterpret, we are misguided by our own minds and our bodies as well. But this does not lead to cynicism or pessimism, but can actually make us more optimistic that we can see reality as it is, and that becomes our goal in life. That understanding, that ideal, is what nirvana is. But I’ll get into some more nuanced ideas that are called nihilistic that might actually work with Buddhism.

Existential nihilism and mereological nihilism are the only two that even remotely fit.  Nietzsche’s form of nihilism affirming that we must forge our own path in a godless universe as entities always in flux meshes fairly well with Buddhism even though Nietzsche himself criticizes Buddhism as he understood it to be passive nihilism. Existential nihilism affirms that we have to determine our own destiny and purpose to a great extent, though Buddhism’s claim that we all are potential buddhas doesn’t conflict with that, since it’s a naturally good thing to want to become more knowledgeable and experienced about the world. It’s just that we aren’t fated or given a purpose from outside ourselves in any sense of the word. Change comes from within, as the aphorism goes in Dharmic traditions. We walk the path, the path doesn’t walk us. Mereological nihilism is much more complex, since it gets into issues that I only briefly spoke about in “Neither Determinism Nor Destiny” . Mereology is the study of the relationship between wholes and their parts as well as parts with each other, which sparks a strong relevance of Buddhist metaphysics where those relationships are very much interdependent. The whole depends on the parts, but the parts together create a whole. But mereological nihilism takes this a step further and says objects without parts do not exist. That is, there is no such thing as an object unto itself, but always in relation to a set of parts, such as elements to molecules and so forth down to the most “basic” particles like quarks. Even they, according to this thesis, may be related to smaller parts. Or perhaps there is a simple building block of all things, but we have not strictly found it. The basic assertion of mereological nihilism is that objects that have parts do not exist, though I would suggest that we interpret this in the same way we interpret the claim that existence is illusory or distorted in our perception. This doesn’t mean that objects without parts are said to have no substance, for that would get into metaphysical nihilism. In this sense, the claim is that the objects themselves do not properly exist unto themselves, since they are related by parts, but exist as we conceptualize them. A table is not a table always, nor is even a person strictly that person always, but is constantly changing on a subatomic or psychological level respectively, amongst other considerations. So there is also a deep connection, however indirect, to the truth of impermanence, in saying nothing is absolutely substantial or remaining forever, as I spoke about in “Flux and Flow,” 

I spoke about how emptiness is not anything like nothingness in the Western sense in "Nothingness and No-thingness",  Emptiness is potential, it is not the end of all things. The void in a cup is what allows it to be filled, and the lack of heat in cold is what makes the heat able to emerge through the motion of atoms. No-thingness is like this as well. Just because the identity of things is not consistent and always changes by entropy, perspective and the like, does not mean there is not significance in the meaning we grant things in each moment, each instance, each context. Even kindling from a table has purpose and meaning. We do not just trash things, and even if we do, they still remain in one sense or another. Nihilism in the normative sense of absolute meaning and absolute existence might be applicable, however mistaken it is to claim that Buddhism believes either of them, but absolute or radical nihilism in no way coincides with Buddhism, where life has purpose because you are alive and can recognize existence in part and learn more. The potential, the emptiness we initially feel, can be filled with wisdom, with love, with all things in good moderation. Until next time, Namaste and aloha.

Enlightenment and the Erotic

http://www.urbandharma.org/udharma5/sex.html

http://www.buddhanet.net/winton_s.htm

http://www.shambhalasun.com/sunspace/?p=9070

http://www.netplaces.com/buddhism/life-and-death-and-other-practical-matters/buddhism-and-sex.htm

Something I rarely talk about except specifically in relation to GLBT issues is the subject of sexuality overall and the ethical precepts people hold about it. Premarital sex is seen by many Christians as immoral, or at least taboo. Sex outside of marriage at all, even consensual, is evil, or at least wrong, for the same reason that Christians believe adultery is evil, since marriage is fundamentally believed to be the only good way to pair people off on an intimate level. Of course you also have the technicality in the Bible that, unless your partner dies or is unfaithful, you are not permitted to divorce them and remarry, since that’s cheating on them in God’s eyes. Homosexuality has been discussed many times in this blog and only a minority of Christians sees it as equal in the possibility of both good and bad use between consenting or non consenting adults. And then there’s masturbation, which is only confronted in the Bible in a nominal sense with the story of Onan, but is argued to be immoral because of the self stimulating and egocentric nature of the act instead of the unitive practice of sex between two consenting partners. Buddhism, on the other hand, has some agreement, but mostly dissonance, with Christian strictness on sexual ethics. This is not to say it condones rape, adultery, or any exploitation of humans as a means for sexual pleasure. Those would definitely be condemned for almost the same reasons: they violate another human being’s innate rights as a free agent. But homosexuality, premarital sex, masturbation and sexual desire are all seen in a different light from a Buddhist and nontheistic perspective by association. I won’t even get into the issues of gender in Buddhism, though I want to talk about it in the future, since Buddhism is often painted as very egalitarian, but is a bit ambivalent according to various texts in terms of that broad claim. Sex in Buddhism is the focus here, not gender.

Unlike Christianity, there are not commandments about sex so much as principles. Since there is not a creator in Buddhist cosmology, there is not a divine mandate about how sex should be handled. This is not to say there are not limits upon sexual behavior, but they are more implicit than explicit in that they fall under more general ethical restrictions on behavior. In Buddhism, you are expected to not be coercive, deceptive or abusive towards yourself or other human beings, and this could extend to sentient beings as well, since they feel pain in some sense as well. Sex is a mutually reciprocating act in many cases, excluding masturbation, which does not mean it is automatically deviant. Any sort of act involving sexual desire is not viewed as bad in and of itself, but instead is judged so based on the intent of the person performing the act. If I decide to have an open relationship with my future wife, we would have certain boundaries about our sexual liaisons. We use protection, we don’t coerce people into sex, and we certainly don’t rape people or have sex with people who are already involved in a monogamous relationship. And monogamous relationships are a good thing because of the similar virtue involved in all romantic pairings: fidelity. You are devoted to this person and will not betray their trust because you made a promise and commitment to that person; God isn’t necessary to make the partnership binding on both parties. And this extends to both homosexual and heterosexual couplings for reasons I’ll discuss shortly. In short, the act of sex and even desire for sex are not evil things in themselves at all. But there are differences in how we control our behavior depending on context and our own individual characters. If you are able to restrain yourself easier, then there is not so much of a bad thing in having a polyamorous sex life where you have multiple partners with no strings attached. You understand that you should not be attached to sex as an end in itself or a means to any greater end beyond pleasure unless you are willing to settle down and commit to a monogamous relationship or an open relationship with basic limits on your sexual life. Promiscuity and lust are not strictly evil, but they do tend towards excess, so there is advice in Buddhist texts to avoid such things as prostitutes or overly sexualized contexts. This is not to say laypeople cannot engage in such things as prostitutes or strip clubs, but they are expected to be responsible and prudent in their participation. I’ve brought up the Japanese monk Ikkyu Soujun before and he has a saying, “Those who keep the precepts become donkeys, those who break them become human,” Ikkyu was notorious for keeping company with ladies of the evening and wrote haiku that had very sexualized content about the male and female genitals and how they could lead one to enlightenment. It’s a paradoxical statement to claim that in embracing sex you can abandon it and no longer need it, but think of it like smoking. If you expose someone to a lot of negative reinforcement for smoking, like smoking a whole pack of cigarettes and getting horribly sick, then they will not want to smoke ever again because of the aversion they would feel at the resurfacing memories of that bad experience. Understanding the fleeting nature of sexual pleasure by directly experiencing it is the best way to start towards moderation of sexual behavior or in some people’s cases, retain their celibacy as is done in Buddhist monasteries as much as Christian ones. Sex is to be embraced, but not clung to.

There are various issues we could discuss about sexual ethics, but the most common ones include premarital sex and masturbation in terms of improper sexual acts and homosexuality as disordered sexual acts. The first two are bad for slightly different reasons than the third. Homosexuality is similar to premarital sex in the condemnation, since it is said to disrespect the marriage covenant more in not being able to bring forth children. Premarital sex is jumping the gun on marriage, homosexuality is spitting in its face, if we were to suggest a comparison and contrast. Masturbation is self directed and is considered dangerous to the development of intimacy between a couple. But Buddhists see all this in a different light and wouldn’t outright condone premarital sex, masturbation or homosexuality in all contexts, since they are not all the same.

Homosexuality has been condemned by Buddhists in particular contexts, including the Dalai Lama in certain interviews. But fundamentally, to say Buddhism believes homosexuality is disordered is missing the point of what the precept against sexual misconduct implies. It doesn’t explicitly list what acts are considered misconduct, but leaves this to discretion based on Buddhist ethics as a whole, which considers the individual as a free agent who is able to make choices with the knowledge of their karmic gravity upon themselves or others. Homosexuality as practiced in prison rape or irresponsible promiscuity are bad because they either violate a person’s consent or they risk invading into a person’s private life as they might be committed to someone else. But there are plenty of committed homosexual couples that show the value of fidelity in a romantic relationship is not something exclusive to heterosexual couples. This value of trust between two people that love each other is far more important than whether they can bring forth children or are considered normal in the eyes of a commonly heterosexual society.

Premarital sex has a similar sort of flavor that we can approach it with. Some premarital sex is bad because it is done without consideration of the risks involved, such as pregnancies that you are not able to confront as a responsible adult and future parent or STDs that are just as preventable. If you are not ready for such a result or do not wish to contract dangerous illnesses like AIDS, then using protection is a prudent practice for couples cohabitating. Marriage itself is technically a social institution, but one does not need to be married legally to act as if one is already married to the person. Making the commitment to each other in public is certainly a reflection of a communal relationship of the couple to the community as a whole, but if the couple merely makes those vows without getting a marriage license, why are they suddenly less married? I suppose there are Christians who have similar sorts of views, saying that making the commitment before God is more important than being legally bound together by civil magistrates, but if the couple behaves in such a way without even making much more than a basic announcement to friends and family that they are in a committed relationship, why should we see their eventual sexual consummation as less significant or even wrong if they behave responsibly?

Masturbation is probably the most contentious in a sense, since it is the most personal of these issues next to homosexuality. One’s personal self stimulation is not necessarily by any means wrong or misguided sexually speaking. Is it not natural to explore what makes us feel good? The difference between a hobby of reading comics and self pleasuring is that the addiction to one can be more damaging than the other. When one mindfully considers what pleasure masturbation gives one and some benefits that may result from it, such as stress relief in part and lower blood pressure by association, then the most basic boundary one can place upon oneself is self discipline about how much one does it. Excess or deficit can be damaging, but the simple act of self pleasuring oneself is not evil unless you exclude the future possibility and enjoyment of sharing the pleasure with another in an intimate partnership. In that case, it falls under the same issues of attachment to sex that I spoke about at the beginning of the article. Sex itself is not evil or wrong, it is misuse or misguided ideas about sexual behavior that are damaging.

I can’t say this article is representative of all Buddhists, especially with my secular background and general approach to Gautama’s teachings of skepticism, ethics and psychology, among other things. But even the Dalai Lama has said things to this effect, at least concerning homosexuality. The value of marriage in Buddhism may exist, but not to the exclusion of otherwise faithful relationships that don’t meet the strict requirements of marriage even by Asian standards of which I am not aware of. Sex is something we should appreciate, but neither be attached to nor take for granted as something that will always exist in a limited bubble of what we’re comfortable with. I might be more comfortable with much of this than my parents are, especially gay marriage. Interracial marriage was one hurdle, next will be this. This is not to say there aren’t instances where there is sexual behavior both Buddhists and Christians would find horrific. Rape in particular is where much agreement would exist, as well as adultery: having sex with someone who is already involved with someone else in a monogamous relationship. But since Buddhist sexual ethics are more focused on intent and the virtues of love that are connected with sex instead of the institution of marriage and childrearing as absolutely intertwined with it, there is more permissibility of things that are considered taboo or immoral to many others. But inclusiveness does not imply looseness of morality. It means flexibility with some rigidity of discipline without becoming overbearing. Sex should be a disciplined approach in some sense, but should also be open to consensual love between parties that we would otherwise not acknowledge. And even self love can be a precursor to love of others. Until next time, Namaste and aloha.

Moderate Beliefs Lead To Moderate Practice

http://themiddleway.net/?p=230

http://www.teosofia.com/midway.html

http://www.buddhanet.net/cbp2_f4.htm

http://thedailyenlightenment.com/2011/09/the-middle-path-between-nihilism-eternalism/

In Buddhism, one of the teachings most important to the praxis aspect of the system, the Latin word we get the term practice from, from meditation to mindfulness, is the Middle Path/Way. One’s initial instinct is to interpret it as total neutrality, which then leads to monastic isolation. But this isn’t the case, even if such practices still flourish in Buddhist countries and can be an edifying event even for laypeople to occasionally engage with devotees in. The middle path is most often characterized as Buddha’s advice to steer between asceticism’s self mortification of the body and hedonism’s disregard for self control in favor of pure sensual pleasure. But a better, more practical, way to explain it is the principle of balance and harmony between extremes. One shouldn’t be absolutely nonresistant pacifist, for instance, since it leads to unnecessary pain and suffering as well as death in some cases; but one shouldn’t be a strong martialist either, for this can lead to unnecessary violence and habits resulting from it in non combat situations. A mediation between the two is possible with the commonly associated training in martial arts, but only for the means of self defense or defense of others without excessive force. I’ll enumerate some examples in detail and then explain how it relates to the topic I’ll delve into in the next few weeks, the Eightfold Path.

Another important median the Middle Path advises is that intersecting nihilism and eternalism. Nihilism in this case refers to metaphysics, saying that everything is annihilated at its end. Eternalism, by its very name, gives us the contrasting idea that things are eternal in nature and persist on after death. Neither of these is technically true, though they have kernels of truth within each of them. Things are never permanent, that much is true, but there is always a sort of persistence in spite of the changing nature. Energy remains energy in one form or another, and matter remains matter, so to speak. A median point is the teaching of dependent origination, which I spoke about in “Neither Determinism Nor Destiny”. To summarize again, it is the idea that all things are dependent on other preceding or antecedent causes. While this could cause a philosophical issue of infinite regress, it is of practical benefit to focus on those things that can be observed and considered with reason as opposed to things that serve to stifle or stop thought entirely for servitude of the mind, e.g. a creator or afterlife. With belief in dependent origination, there is no need to reject evolution, for example. It is also complimentary to philosophical and scientific thought in general. Gautama advocated critical thinking, as evidenced by this quote attributed to him; “Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it,” The middle path conforms with Aristotle’s Golden Mean, which said that the best state of virtue was between excess and deficiency. Confucius also taught something similar as well in his Analects, but was only hinted at and was interpreted later.

Another important dichotomy I’ve talked about is the wavering between wisdom and compassion, in “Heart and Mind, Loveand Wisdom”. If you focus entirely on love, you neglect the use of your reason and rational faculties. But if you only care about wisdom in an intellectual or knowledge based sense, you miss out on the fulfilling relationships with people that not only enrich your life, but give you understanding of others that can improve your wisdom in its own way. They are intertwined, in a sense, so this is both a matter of balance and synthesis, which Hegel advocated in his philosophy of dialectics. Albeit there are technical differences between the modern understanding and Hegel’s own writings on it, the similarities are intriguing. You have internal contradictions of any concept, in the same way that there is a sort of absurdity of our existence leading to our nonexistence. These are the thesis and antithesis aspects of the formula.  So to solve the absurdity, we posit that, instead of being or nothing, we are becoming. Herein lies the synthesis of the two previous counteracting forces. With love and wisdom, both of them in excess or deficiency is defective to our humanity, so we must moderate them and meld them together instead of concentrating entirely on one while neglecting the other.

A few pairs that I can’t elaborate on as much, since I’d run out of space quickly, are the conventional and absolute truths, which I discussed in “Two Truths, One Path” as well as the religious and secular, detailed in no small part by “A Synthesis of Sacredand Secular”. There are so many more of these relationships I could talk about, like sophia and phronesis, the physical and mental, leisure and business, the list goes on for a mile. The point remains that the middle path is central to Buddhism in a way that the Eightfold Path is as well, but for different reasons. The 8 different areas of life it confronts are divided further into three areas of wisdom, ethics and concentration. But they all affect one another in different manners, not unlike the dual sided perspective we commonly take every day. Think of the Eightfold Path topic as going into the triangular perspective we also utilize.

Fundamentally, the middle path is a balance between extreme views and seeking to be as objective as possible, acknowledging the relative nature of things, but also absolute qualities within the transient universe. To practice the middle way is something done over a lifetime and is only maintained through disciplined practice without being overly strict. It is a paradox, not a contradiction. It appears to collapse upon itself, but can be reconciled by a particular approach that takes things as they come, but also understands things in a past and future sense. It’s definitely not an easy thing to achieve, but an ideal that is workable in a gradient sense as opposed to simply having it or not having it entirely. Until next time, Namaste and aloha.

Breaking Buddhist Stereotypes

http://www.livingdharma.org/Misconceptions.html

http://www.dhammawiki.com/index.php?title=Misconceptions_about_Buddhism

http://hubiestubert.blogspot.com/2011/02/10-myths-about-buddhism.html

http://buddhism.about.com/b/2010/05/08/many-layers-of-stereotyping.htm

http://www.rolento.com/theories/buddhism.html

This time, I thought I’d return to a more general topic with multiple areas to consider. There are many stereotypes surrounding Buddhism, mainly because of popular representations being propagated in Western culture. Movies like Little Buddha, Kundun, and Bulletproof Monk, as well as the TV series Kung Fu, give only a selective and idealized portrayal of what Buddhism entails. There are more accurate ideas portrayed of Buddhism, such as in 2012 with Tibetan monks, from what I recall, but most portrayals of Buddhism in media seem to focus on Tibetan Buddhism instead of the other forms. Even Japan is notorious for characterizing all major Buddhist characters with the robes, shaved heads and/or prayer beads in their animation and comics, but that’s at least more rooted in their culture. There are four misconceptions and generalizations that still exist among many non Buddhists even today, so we’ll dive right into them.

Probably one of the more implicit ideas surrounding Buddhism is that it is fundamentally against all forms of violence or force. This is to go beyond merely saying they’re pacifists, which composes a spectrum of beliefs, but that they are nonresistant and would rather die than defend themselves against an attacker. The middle path principle of Buddhism, which I will talk about next week, necessitates that killing is part of a Buddhist’s practice, albeit resignedly instead of willfully as sport or malicious intent.  This dispels a related falsehood that Buddhists are required to be vegetarians. While you can be healthy and be a vegetarian, some people’s digestive systems are unsuited for it, from what I’ve heard. It has something to do with processing certain foods, but I could be wrong. Fundamentally, Buddhism advocates that you should strive to not do harm, but in a sense it is very much unavoidable that we kill animals humanely in order to feed on them as livestock, as well as maintain healthy populations. But it is the humaneness of the killing that makes it less ethically problematic. There is a story about one of Gautama’s past lives where he was a captain of ship and there was a murderer on board who Gautama realized intended to kill everyone. So instead of telling everyone this and causing them to panic and kill the bandit, he mercifully killed the person himself, saving the other people from becoming murderous and stopping the negative karmic fruits the criminal would’ve brought upon themselves. Admittedly, this is an isolated example, but we can find other historical examples of Buddhists justifying war, albeit it isn’t always reasonable, such as with Japan’s nationalism that incorporated Buddhism as well as Shinto, the native belief system. Much like stereotypes of other beliefs in regards to violence and war, there are exceptions and there are mistaken ideas as well. Buddhists can be martial artists and defend themselves against attackers, demonstrated by Shaolin monks in China for an explicit example of resolving the alleged contradiction. That is what I consider myself as well, a martial pacifist; that is, one who seeks to make peace through nonviolent methods, but will utilize force when circumstances demand it in order to calm the situation. It may not always work, but I would rather not do violence to people unless I can find no other option. It requires great discipline and training to not become overtaken by the human desire for power and inflict violence upon others, but that is what I strive for as a Buddhist.

This next one is prominent enough, but connects more to our mistaken idea of what a Buddhist should appear to be, rather than just what a Buddhist believes and being wrong about. Buddhism is commonly represented through figures like Daisetsu Teitaro Suzuki (D.T. Suzuki) and Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama. They are monks who have taken vows and live a simpler life than many laypeople of Buddhism. But to say that you must be a monk to become enlightened unquestionably doesn’t hold according to Buddhist teaching, since everyone is considered a potential Buddha, a universal affirmation of the possibilities within all of us. There is a school that developed later in Buddhism called Vajrayana which suggests that in order to become enlightened in one lifetime you must become a monk. But beyond that, like other Buddhist schools, you only make progress towards liberation with sincere practice, not simply ascetic discipline, shaving your head and meditating for hours. This is admittedly a simple myth, but is not so easy to get rid of in our mindset, since we don’t have a decidedly secular idea of Buddhism in the same way Christians have propagated laypeople as being just as devout as monks. This would require a movement amongst Buddhists that would advance a similar notion that you can be in the world, but not be attached to it, just as Christians are to be in the world, but not of it. An explanation for why some people become monks is because they feel they are too easily tempted. And the same logic can apply to Christianity. There is a calling, but also a realization that you need more discipline than others. And that’s okay. We all have our own limits and understanding them is a step towards progress.

Another fairly popular myth is propagated through fundamentalist Christian critiques of Buddhism, but regardless of the meme’s prominence, it is untrue. Buddhists have never worshipped Siddhartha Gautama as if he will grant you salvation. The closest you come to this is in Pure Land Buddhism or such where you can say a mantra and your karma will be wiped clean, or so I recall. The statues of Buddha do not constitute idol worship anymore than a bust of Beethoven on your piano means you think he is deserving of piano devotionals. I’m being a bit crass, but it still stands to reason: a mere representation of something in a place does not mean one regards that as something sacred. There is a story I recall from somewhere, though I cannot seem to source it well. It goes like this: a Catholic missionary is in China and enters a Buddhist temple. He sees the monks prostrated before a Buddha statue and accuses the elder of idolatry. His observation about the monks bowing to the image seems to make sense at first. But the head monk walks up to the statue and throws it onto the ground, smashing it into pieces. The other monks continue on as normal. The story may be completely made up in terms of historical occurrence, but it establishes an idea you see enough in Zen; the trappings of piety in Buddhism are simply superficial and mean nothing in terms of whether you are really practicing the beliefs. At the most, the statue serves as a memory of a beloved mentor and teacher, in a way similar to large portraits in peoples’ homes of loved ones and relatives. It serves to make one remember all the good the person did in their life and with that memory, one seeks to emulate that person in their own lives as well. That is what monks would no doubt explain to you in their having a depiction of Gautama in their temple. Christians don’t worship the cross, they worship what died on it and the symbol the item represents to them. Likewise, Buddhists don’t worship the founder of their religion, but hold him in high regard as an exemplar of what they should strive to be like.

An image many of us encounter at some point or another in an Asian restaurant is that of an obese monk, jovial as they come. It’s also an easy leap to say that this is a depiction of the historical Buddha Gautama. The legend goes that he ate to excess and then starved himself to skin and bones in his quest for enlightenment, but I don’t think that’s quite how it goes, albeit the difference between history and folklore of Gautama’s life is very fine. The monk is indeed a Buddhist figure, though it’s also used in Chinese folk religion and Daoism. He goes by a few names, including Hotei in Japan, one of the Seven Lucky Gods, and Budai in China, called the Laughing Buddha. His connection to Buddhism is fair, since he is Buddhist in the sense of practice. A Chan monk, the Chinese equivalent of Zen, he was quite eccentric, but always very happy and joyful at life, entertaining children most often in his depictions. The notion of rubbing his belly for good luck is more folkloric in nature, most likely and the confusion of him with Gautama is mostly due to ignorance of cultural depictions in India, China and Japan, where he is tall and slender, whereas Hotei is always short and chubby. It’s not like you can’t draw Buddhist lessons from him, but to say he is the historical Buddha likely irks many Asians who have to deal with that mistake to correct, similar to myself as a person who appreciates Buddhist culture and philosophy. It will take more education through various mediums to distinguish the truth from the falsehood of this mistaken cultural gap.

On the one hand, there are many overly positive stereotypes of Buddhism on the one hand, such as it being completely passive and nonresistant, vegetarian and has an amiable, but heavyset founder. But the more troubling misconceptions of Buddhism are based in not understanding what Buddhist practice actually is: neither monasticism as the only path to enlightenment nor idol worship of the founder is part of the philosophy in the slightest. There are other stereotypes I could get into, such as the oft spoken idea that Buddhism is pessimistic and nihilistic, but that would require a whole other article to speak on. It is only through proper education and understanding of people’s initial paradigms that will advance a better perception and cognizance of what Buddhists are, what Buddhism is and what Buddhism is not. Until next time, Namaste and aloha.

Heart and Mind, Love and Wisdom

http://www.buddhanet.net/e-learning/qanda07.htm

http://buddhism.about.com/od/basicbuddhistteachings/a/compassion.htm

http://www.shambhalasun.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1832

http://www.buddhistelibrary.org/buddhism-online/bs-s16.htm

The human condition is a delicate balance between the emotional and rational. Some people strive too much towards the passionate and interpersonal, as if to please others instead of considering one’s own needs as well. Others lean only on rationality and the scientific, thinking they will be fulfilled purely by the mechanical and formulaic. But the middle path between these two is what Buddhism strives for (not exclusively, of course. There are other beliefs that value both of these in their own way as well, for instance). There are many ways to phrase the bifurcation of human experience, but I like the distinction of wisdom and compassion, wisdom being our reasoning and observant sector and compassion our sympathetic and relationship area. The two often seem to clash and this necessitates that we find a center between them, which is what I’ll try to elaborate on as we examine each of them separately and then begin to blend them together.

Wisdom might be better phrased as perception, since in our everyday vernacular wisdom is understood less as a matter of rationality and more something associated with religious virtues. While this is true to an extent, I would contend that wisdom, even in its older term, sophia in Greek, is not purely a matter of our mood or feelings, but does overlap with it in the form of intuition or instinct. There are things we experience day by day, knowledge we amass and nuances of rules that we discern through failure and discipline. All of this coalesces into a pool of information we possess: experiential, theoretical, etc. And in this way, as you begin to understand things in various ways, from differing perspectives and unify them, your actions start to be less deliberate and more a matter of impulse. This is not to say that you don’t think about things if you are unfamiliar with them, but the sort of familiarity you acquire with much experience is what gives you the capacity to act quicker and yet also more accurately without as much suffering for yourself or others. This is not to say this is always the case. If you are especially discerning, you may realize that regardless of what you do, the person you help or interact with will still suffer in some way now or in the future. But instead you will plant a seed that blooms in the person’s mind as they are faced with hopelessness in their life. Wisdom is fudnamentally multifaceted and doesn’t just focus on the theoretical, but the practical. Much like sophia and phronesis, which I spoke about partly in last week’s article “Eternal Knot and Essential Questions”,  you can’t have one without the other or you are imbalanced even just in the pursuit of further knowledge without considering both benefits and risks. If you only focus on face value information, you fail to see how it affects everything related to it as you utilize it in various situations.  But this is only one side of the issue. Even if you are able to find the medium between these two extremes, there is still another side to consider in the human psyche.

Something many friends of mine are much more adept at than myself as an Aspie, who has difficulty when it comes to matters of the heart, is compassion for other humans. This is the other half that is needed to be fully human. One can be incredibly wise or have the sympathy of a saint, but unless these are balanced each by the other, you are still incomplete. To have compassion is to be understanding of others, but not to the extent that you aren’t willing to advise them when they are in error or consider your own desires. But to discipline others harshly and not reflect a balance of both passive and active love, that of patience and correction respectively, is to lean towards love simply as a practical extension of wisdom instead of meeting it halfway. Love comes from a part of humanity that is both practical and puzzling. If we followed practicality strictly by benefits, love would not have the immediate results we would associate with pragmatic thought. Love has its own particular benefits one could perceive, but it should result first and foremost from the connection we have to fellow humans, an almost ineffable sort of realization. When you realize your own suffering matters, you see why you should be concerned also with the suffering of others. But to focus on others before yourself is the most stark example of compassion without wisdom. Wisdom dictates that a compassionate person should first work on themselves and become loving internally before trying to love externally. Any person jumping into a marriage should realize that they must be capable of both accepting and giving love genuinely instead of superficially. Love has a two sided aspect of experience both rationally and emotionally, just as wisdom has the dichotomy of theoretical and practical applications. To be compassionate is to understand the times when you must not give into emotional impulses, but is also to see when you should be a shoulder to cry on and the midway points of dialogue as well.

As with wisdom’s excess and deficit, intellectualism and tradition, there is an excess and deficit for compassion: sentimentality and duty. The fine edge we walk on both of these is such that we can cut to either side day by day, moment by moment, without even realizing it. One experience could make us think we shouldn’t be so focused on knowledge, or the inverse, thinking we are too focused on people. There is such a thing as these, but you should not abandon either entirely to focus on one. Some people have a talent for people, some have dispositions for knowledge. But both of these exemplars are not exempt from working on their weaknesses just as they naturally improve their natural skills. Neither wisdom nor compassion alone or great skill in one or the other will bring fulfillment or allows you to benefit your fellow human as much as the blend of them balanced together in your quest to aid yourself and others as much as possible. Until next time, Namaste and aloha.

Seeds and Fruits, Actions and Results

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/news/hinduism?ref=religion

http://www.buddhanet.net/e-learning/karma.htm

http://www.buddhanet.net/fundbud9.htm

http://www.netplaces.com/buddhism/karma-and-worldview/popular-misconceptions-of-karma.htm

What may be the most explored topic in Buddhist thought and also the biggest stumbling block next to anatta for newcomers is karma. The concept existed in Hinduism before and alongside Buddhism historically in its development in Jainism as well. But Jainism and Hinduism, since they’re atmanic systems, believing that a permanent and individual consciousness survives the death of the body, clash a great deal with Buddhist karmic theory, which is anatmanic, non soul based, in nature. There are also many misunderstandings of it, mostly rooted in an Abrahamic concept of a deity bestowing the world with a natural law of sorts, as well as the principles of “you reap what you sow’ and “an eye for an eye” neither of which completely or accurately reflect what is rooted in a fundamentally nontheistic and non Abrahamic system. To explain karma even briefly within the limit I place on myself in these articles is difficult, since I don’t want to go in unnecessary tangents, but at the same time there will be aspects of the study of karma that I’ll probably skip over for brevity. I’ll again use metaphors as I did with rebirth, so don’t be surprised if I utilize figurative language as opposed to exact and precise philosophical language, which I’ll nonetheless strive to use as much as I can and as clearly as I can.

To explain karma in metaphors is somewhat unclear at times and is much harder to describe discursively, since there’s overlap in part with the Hindu concept that has promulgated much more in the West and is the default understanding most people have of the  idea of “karma”. A relatively simple term to start off with is causality. We all agree on the fact of our actions having consequences. The divide comes with the nature of the consequences and how they’re determined. A theistic explanation will involve God in one sense or another, either explicitly with miraculous events and even with mundane things we take for granted, like the sun rising. The reason I find this framework unconvincing and irrelevant is not only because I find the unfalsifiable nature of the God invoked incredulous but our own actions are reduced to a scope where we have little to no actual control, since the ground of all being, God, is the one sovereign over all things. Our actions have consequences that we immediately recognize at times, but this isn’t always the case. Sometimes we get away with bad actions, sometimes we aren’t rewarded for our good actions. And in this sense, the karmic theory most people postulate, even without a God in the equation, serves as a cosmic equalizer for justice and injustice. If people get away with something heinous, it’s claimed that karma will reflect back on them in the future or even in a future life, which tends to explicitly involve the supernatural and soul-based theory in Hinduism and Jainism. We want an explanation for the inequality and inexplicable events that happen to us: natural disasters, intentional crimes against our family members or ourselves, and many other good and bad things. But explaining everything with karma in terms of Buddhism has never been the case or what Buddhists practice in explaining causality and the like. There are things Buddhists classify as not related to our volitional actions, which are what karma is referring to as a word. There are things we do that are natural and involuntary, such as blinking or genetic things we can’t do anything about, such as our eye color or some tendency towards alcoholism or schizophrenia. These aren’t things that we deserve by karma, except maybe in Hindu thought, though I imagine even that’s potentially rare amongst more modern thinkers.

There are said to be five types of causality in Buddhist thought, karma included amongst them. Two in particular are very much out of our control, what I would tentatively classify as causality of physics (weather, heat, etc) and causality of metaphysics (the basic occurrence of laws in our universe). The other two are related more to the human condition, but can extend in part to the non human world. The causality of heredity and causality of psychology are potentially more intertwined than we realize in some ways, assuming psychology is in part hereditary and genetic. But taking them separately, hereditary causality affects things we inherit in our genetics. This is how we can explain otherwise confusing results of people’s pairing and breeding. Genetics is scientific and able to be understood even more these days and thus we can see that applying karmic theory to a person’s being born blind, for example, is something even Christianity can agree with Buddhism on to be mistaken. There is the story of the man born blind and Jesus’ disciples ask if this man was made blind by his or his parents’ sin. Jesus answered neither, that this was something out of human control and meant to show the greatness of God. The psychological causality is more complicated and has been visited in my article on dependent origination, “Neither DeterminismNor Destiny”. This is just a slight delving into what can be a subject of study for a lifetime in Buddhism alone, let alone comparative religion of ethical systems and understandings of causality. But I hope this has helped bridge a gap that many might see as very vast in terms of Eastern and Western understandings of things, which I also spoke about in part over a week ago in “Looking At EasternReligion From the West” 

Karma as a term just means action, but doesn’t reflect on every action we do. Some things are benign and don’t reflect something ethical in nature. Eating meat probably doesn’t create bad karma, as it were, which could be understood as bad habits of behavior instead of some nondescript energy that has a negative quality to it. An example from the Bible, which I can’t help but reference both as someone raised Christian and a religious studies major who is curious about religious philosophy, is the idea that if you live by the sword, you die by the sword. If you live a life of violence, you shouldn’t be surprised if you yourself die in a violent way or by violence. Perhaps this isn’t always the case. But karma isn’t divine justice or equalizing right and wrong, because both of these things involve a principle or entity that is anthropomorphic in nature. Humans make ethical judgments, nature doesn’t, nor does the law of karma and vipaka. Vipaka is a concept that isn’t visited a lot in understanding karma, partly because karma is more often understood in Hindu terms, which doesn’t utilize the concept of ripening and fruit as a metaphor for the results of your actions, which much like fruits, don’t all progress at the same rate. In this way, if I had to give a technical explanation of karma and vipaka, it would be that any action that reflects a habit or ethical tendency reverberates and affects others in some sense, though the primary recipient is yourself, even if you manage to get away with murder and theft your entire life. The string of behavior that you generate through these bad actions without even considering the consequences creates a bad seed in yourself that will develop subsequently into a bad fruit that may not be anything that affects you from outside, but merely rots you away from the inside proverbially speaking. Karma and vipaka are, to simplify, principles of act and result that work both externally and internally by context and consideration of the actions themselves. To say someone has bad or good karma is only to claim they are exercising poor judgment of the gravity of their behavior and the results to both others and themselves of those actions performed for various reasons, good or bad.

To reiterate, the idea of karma should not be seen as anything like cosmic justice, since that is reflective of an overly human centered perspective on how the world progresses. Karma is virtually neutral; it doesn’t work like humans think it should necessarily. It follows something closer to nature in that it reflects our own developed habits. When you behave in a way that benefits others, you can benefit yourself, though not always. And inversely, if you behave in a way that hurts others, you can hurt yourself, though not as one might expect. I hope I communicated some of the ideas of karma as I’ve learned about them in my research of Buddhism. Next time will be a study on a symbol called the endless knot. Until then, Namaste and aloha.

Rebirth, Not Reincarnation

http://www.buddhanet.net/funbud10.htm

http://www.buddhanet.net/e-learning/dharmadata/fdd47.htm

http://www.buddhanet.net/e-learning/qanda05.htm

http://www.buddhistsagainstreincarnation.com/

http://www.knowbuddhism.info/2009/01/rebirth-in-buddhism.html

The Buddhist teaching of rebirth is one of what I would say are two of the most highly misunderstood ideas that have propagated through the West in ways that resemble Hinduism much more than Buddhism. Whenever I speak about Buddhism in relation to the subject of the afterlife and such, I use the term rebirth as opposed to reincarnation, since the latter implies that my individual soul is incarnated in a new body, which is not what Buddhism even remotely teaches. Rebirth can apply across my life and subsequent death much more loosely. We can be said to be reborn in a nominal and figurative sense across our lives. Cells die and are replaced, our mind abandons some beliefs for others, building up knowledge, etc. We are reborn metaphorically as we become part of a new community, as we affirm wedding vows or other important events in our lives. And in terms of our death and birth of other entities, there is at the very least a connection that I’ll explain with a few examples.

The idea of virtual rebirth is not so hard for us to accept, since the experience of a radical change in ourselves is commonly described as a rebirth anyway. The Christian idea of being “born again” is explained in a similar fashion. We change into a different person, but are not literally born physically again. The birth is mental, not unlike when I spoke about dependent origination and how we are born and die in a cycle that stems from our minds in “Neither Determinism Nor Destiny” Physical renewal is more subtle in that we don’t recognize it explicitly, but beyond the surface, on the cellular level, we retain very little of our original body in a sense, particularly our skin, but other parts of the body as well. So we could easily recognize that we are reborn in one form or another in every moment, be it our body or our minds as we interact with various conditions and causes/effects.  The difficult part of rebirth comes with any enumeration of an actual form of the phenomenon.

When most people think of rebirth, there is probably an instinctual association with reincarnation, if only because there tend to be a few basic theories about the afterlife, one of them closer to Buddhism in saying that an individual person basically ceases to be when they die, associated often with atheism. This is not to say that the elements of that person’s body in particular are annihilated, but that the idea of mind is interwoven with the body, so that in a sense, any individual person is not reborn as another person, but a new birth generates a new person by the basic psychology that Buddhism describes in our grasping for things and seeking permanence. There is no strict word in Buddhism that translates directly to rebirth. The closest term that expresses the reality in a larger context is bhava, literally meaning “becoming”. We are always in a state of becoming, not a static being affected by the outside but not changing in any way as individuals. This sort of thinking originates from existential thought in particular. We are not thought of as beings that simply exist in a constant state, but are in fact always in constant change and assailed by choices that we must confront and deal with the results of. In that sense, there is not any sort of nihilism that would come from believing that you essentially die, but in a sense you survive on as a flame passed onto another candle, or as a seed resulting from a tree becomes another tree. They aren’t the same, but they aren’t absolutely different either. I’m not saying that there is necessarily a strictly materialistic explanation, but from my experience, the best explanation for what happens after death is something like the circle of life from The Lion King. We are all connected. This doesn’t mean our consciousness survives in nature, ala Mufasa talking in the stars, but simply that we are all interrelated by death and life. Rebirth is, if nothing else, simpler, but also more mysterious in a sense than the more direct issue of what the soul is and how it survives, etc in that afterlife theory. If reincarnation or resurrection is true, it only changes particular things I believe. At the least I’d be obliged to recognize reincarnation if it could be demonstrated. But with the evidence I have before me, the only conclusion I have is that I will cease to be ultimately when I die and something else will be renewed or supported through dependent origination that connects in some sense to my decaying corpse and its elements; worms to birds to plants to another person, for example. Even if I don’t relate to a newborn, I sustain another person regardless, even if it isn’t technically me.

There is a basic truth to rebirth, but nonetheless people will find various reasons to disbelieve it, many of which I would find delusional or otherwise mistaken. We don’t like to see things without a lens, the harsh reality that exists immanently. We like to put some barrier between us and that presence, so we generate ideas of souls and other realms. One could point out to me that native Buddhists tend to believe the six realms spoken of in traditional Buddhist cosmology are as real as ours, but I consider myself a secular Buddhist. Those realms are reflections of the human condition in all its diversity. Some of us live like gods or devas, some of us live in torturous squalor, like is described in the hell realm. Any of the 31 realms (not always, but in some traditions) that are supposedly enumerated in Buddhist cosmology can correspond to some manifestation of a possible human life. It’s not only simpler, but it’s more relevant to what we can immediately observe about human psychology. Call me anthropocentric, but the life of a cat or dog is hardly the same as a human. But we can learn from them no doubt. I might confront that in the future.

Rebirth is a process of change, as I said before, reflected in the mark of impermanence that permeates existence. It is also demonstrative of dissatisfaction and non-self, since we are not fulfilled in believing people will survive their death, seeing that we look forward to more existence instead of accepting whatever might be the case, and we don’t truly have any abiding soul or aspect of our self that survives our death, contrary to any claims about our ability to think proving a soul exists or the long debunked experiment supposedly showing the weight of a soul. Regeneration goes on every moment in a sense with our mental and physical states, and even as we die there is a revival of sorts, albeit it doesn’t involve a soul. When anything is born (more precisely conceived), there is a reconstitution of various elements and when something dies those elements dissipate. The comparison of one’s rebirths to a flame being passed from one candle to the next is not only relevant but popular as a metaphor, since each flame is different and they aren’t identical to each other completely, but only in qualities that they have. Each person shares some properties, but ultimately we each have different experiences that develop various parts of ourselves. Some are more educated, some are more skilled, etc. Reincarnation is transmigration of a soul, rebirth is transformation of basic elements in something more holistic than reductionistic. Each part is not reducible ultimately, though there are elements of truth to that. To understand rebirth you have to see the forest along with the trees but focus on the former, not the latter. There can still be karma and vipaka, which I’ll speak about next week, even without a soul, since karma and vipaka are intertwined not with the person as some unified self, but as an interdependent web of actions and results. Some results can happen later than others and thus a person’s birth can be affected in other ways by karmic seeds bearing fruit. The karma is not something completely outside us that determines rebirth, but our own habits and behaviors as related to karma. If you develop bad habits, you will have a bad rebirth (not technically “you”, but you for the sake of simplicity). If you develop good habits, you can free yourself from rebirth, a cycle compared to a wheel that continues to spin because of your karmic actions. Rebirth is a reality that may only be escapable in our minds and in gaining serenity as opposed to actually transcending reality and achieving liberation from the cycle in some quasi mystical sense, but it is also something that can reflect badly in our minds, so it must be understood properly. I hope I aided in that process somewhat. Until next time, Namaste and aloha.

Two Truths, One Path

http://www.fpmt.org/teachings/more/truths_denma.php

http://www.noble-buddhism-beliefs.com/two-truths.html

http://sangye.org/english/two_truths.htm

http://jayarava.blogspot.com/2011/08/not-two-truths.html

http://www.virtualsynapses.com/2011/08/relative-absolute-two-truths-doctrine.html

Truth is one of the most important things to us as beings able to contemplate our own knowledge and perspective about the world. There are two schools of thought that have propagated in opposition to each other. The first is a hard type of relativism, as opposed to soft relativism, which I’ll explain in conclusion, which says all truth claims are equal in that they all originate from individuals and thus all have a similar amount of validity to them. This is invalid on its face because truth is not merely a matter of our assertions from different perspectives without considering the conflicts that may exist between each of them. I may see things a particular way, you see them another way and we could be both right, but with many situations, there tends to be one side that has the only correct answer, such as 1+1=2 or other very basic truths and facts. The second position is that of hard absolutism. It isn’t a bad thing to hold to absolute truths in the sense that they are valuable for establishing a foundation. But to hold to them inflexibly and without any sense of distinction or nuance, you become resistant to virtually any kind of change because it threatens the well established tradition that instilled those rigid values in your mind. This is incorrect for a different reason. If you put forth a truth as applicable the same way in every situation, you fail to recognize that in certain cases, stealing, lying, even killing can be permissible, albeit one has to weigh the cause and effect within those contexts, which can only be done by thinking critically about those absolute truths and applying them in a case by case contextual basis. If this is not done, you regress to a repressive and dangerous position that uses the law as your justification instead of considering the principle behind the law itself. In Buddhism, there are said to be two kinds of truth. They are the relative and absolute, or conventional and ultimate for another phrasing. Each of these should be explained in more detail as well as the relationship between them afterwards. The importance of both cannot be overstated to understanding Buddhism as a whole.

With relative or conventional truth, it is not always so clear what is meant.  Perspective is not always the factor as to whether something is right or wrong, some things are such irrespective of whether we perceive them that way or not, albeit with philosophical issues, this is never absolutely certain. With Buddhism, the idea of this first truth is accessibility to everyone. If I want to explain the teachings, I have to first speak in a way any person can understand. This can involve using parables, metaphors and other twists of language as well as colloquial expressions to make any particular point. The idea of no self, for instance, can be explained and not imply any contradiction if I also consistently refer to myself with that pronoun. This doesn’t mean I believe there is some soul that my identity consists in, but merely a way to have a cogent conversation with people who do. Having an open mind doesn’t mean you automatically accept everything as true, but are receptive to new ideas that people have so as to understand them better than if you just threw ultimate truth at them and expected them to believe it without experience or consideration of why their own beliefs are mistaken in some sense. With the truth of dissatisfaction, we can look at it relative to each situation and person and see that it is not always the same everywhere at all times. Sometimes it seems as if some group is doing great and another is failing miserably. Relative impermanence also reflects on how each of us is in a different state and cannot fully understand each others’ positions unless we were that person. We can see impermanence in particular situations, but are not always mindful of it. With no-self you have the obvious individual perspectives we have of ourselves and others which creates diversity in the world. We each have our own existential paradigm we develop as we grow up and interact with others and introspect. To value relative truth is to appreciate perspective and context without making it the final determinant factor in our appropriation of truth as a whole.

With ultimate or absolute truth there is less a sense of specific or rational/discursive explanation. A basic idea of absolute truth is that it is so regardless of one’s belief to the contrary. But this becomes very abstract to minds that commonly require concrete examples. Something being true independently of our perspective also makes it seem very distant and mechanical instead of organic as we ourselves are. In this way, Buddhist absolute truth considers things as a whole to possess an absolute truth as you experience it. The absolute truth is when you see things from a larger perspective as well as the smaller perspective. You neither miss the forest for the trees or the trees for the forest, but see trees and forests as is pertinent to a discussion or situation. Impermanence as absolute truth is that things are fundamentally without any semblance of stasis. As much as things may seem to remain the same, such as a mountain, even that slowly erodes away. Ultimate dissatisfaction is that the states we cling to are not ultimately fulfilling and thus cause us suffering as we linger on bad things and yearn for good things instead of letting things come and go as they will. Meaning comes from within, not from without. And with non-self, there is both the idea that our deaths preclude any possibility of survival after them as disembodied consciousness or the like and that we do not truly or ultimately possess anything that we come into contact with, even our own self perception which is conditioned by particular circumstances outside of our control. There are things we can control and this is where it becomes relevant to the relative. Similarly, with our individual suffering and experience of transience, we can see how our part relates to the whole and how our contribution to the whole is distinct by incidents that aid us in progression towards wisdom and subsequent enlightenment. There is both an abstract and concrete notion of relative and absolute truth through interactions of individuals with the world that can be observed, but not always explained. And even if one attempted it, as said before, it wouldn’t necessarily be effective, since some people still need to let go of particular preconceptions to even consider the possibility of many initially mystifying Buddhist ideas, many of which I’ve explained in previous articles.

There are not precisely two levels of truth so much as two expressions of truth to different minds. The two truths are not hierarchical, since ultimate truth isn’t always best when speaking to large groups or even individuals if they aren’t disposed to understanding truths in different lenses. The two truths are side by side, not one on top of the other. They might even be said to exist within one another, not unlike the idea in Chinese philosophy of yin yang, which has its own origins in the I Ching text. In contrast to the hard relativism and absolutism, you can have a soft form of each in admitting things are relative in some sense, but that there are absolute truths amongst the relative.Ultimate truth in some sense ineffable, but able to be experienced, conventional truth able to be expressed, but not expressing the fullness of whatever it is. You can’t have one without the other in either situation, much like yin and yang. Without absolute truth, the relative truth is merely pandering to people’s dispositions, but without conventional expressions, the ultimate truth is never reached. Until next time, Namaste and aloha.