This blog follows Poul Anderson's texts wherever they take us. This can be into philosophy where, of course, we will disagree.
The agnostic prayer is addressed to whom it may concern, to whatever gods may be. Dominic Flandry goes one step further by formulating an atheist prayer, explicitly denying the reality of the Addressee:
"O God Who is also unreal, a mask we put on emptiness, be gentle to her. She has been hurt so much." (p. 432)
This prayer is perhaps Buddhist in three senses:
it is non-theistic;
it expresses compassion;
"emptiness" is the most fundamental category in Buddhist ontology.
"Emptiness" means that everything that seems to be single and substantial is really composite and transient. There is no immortal soul either in the world or in any individual psychophysical organism. The world is a beginningless, endless causal sequence. Each of its parts is an interaction between all its other parts. A human being is a temporary coming together of a set of physical and mental properties.
I think that those properties are caused by heredity, not by rebirth. Ancient teachings should be synthesized with modern scientific knowledge.
I have quoted the Buddhist verse:
"Thus shall ye think of all this fleeting world..."
- in four previous posts. See here.
7 comments:
Well, that depends on the variety of Buddhism you’re talking about. As actually practiced by the overwhelmingly numerically predominant schools, most Buddhists have definitely believed in a supernaturalist cosmology, and many varieties have a whole pantheon of gods, devils, quasi-divine types, etc.
The non-theistic varieties have been popular in the West, but that’s a small subset of Buddhism in general.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I recall reading that the Buddhism seen in Thailand comes the closest to being like the Buddhism preached by Buddha and his disciples.
Ad astra! Sean
OK. The main point being, though, that the Buddha is a teacher of gods and men.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling and Paul!
Mr. Stirling: I should have remembered that Tibetan Buddhism seems to be the most unusual of the Buddhist sects in that kind of supernaturalism.
Paul: My view is that whatever is good and true in Buddhism can be found as well in Catholic Christianity, along with much that I have to regard as errors.
Ad astra! Sean
When Tibet became Buddhist, they didn’t abandon one single aspect of their previous religions; they just gave it all a Buddhist twist. Similar things happened in Japan with Shinto, also a localist folk-religion.
That's what Buddhism did. It was an add on. It can be added onto secularism. I think the meditation works - given perseverance - and is independent of the world view through which it is expressed. This is certainly not true of either scientific or political practice but they are different anyway.
A young woman visiting the Zen monastery that I sometimes go to said she was a Christian. The monks replied, "You continue to believe that and we can teach you how to meditate."
Kaor, Mr. Stirling and Paul!
Mr. Stirling: I agree, altho I find Tibetan Buddhism far more garish than the Japanese version.
Paul: Since Catholic and Orthodox Christianity has their own traditions of meditation and contemplation, I really don't see much need for the Buddhist versions. Esp. since I believe Christian meditation focuses (in my opinion, properly) on God, the First and the Last cause, the Alpha and Omega.
Ad astra! Sean
Post a Comment