Poul Anderson employs the Biblical phrase, "full of days," not at least twice as I said here but at least three times:
"Rossman wasn't afraid, he was old and full of days..." (p. 102)
Just before that, Mandelbaum had thought:
"Prayer? Not likely; if there was to be a religion in the future, it could not be the animism which had sufficed for the blind years." (p. 101)
As SM Stirling argued in the combox to a recent post, human beings are selected to interpret intentions and to interact with persons. A human infant is not yet engaged with changing the environment but has to know the difference between a smile and a frown and to anticipate how adults will respond to it. A baby is surrounded by humanoid forms bigger and more powerful than it, effectively omnipotent. We have projected intentions and personalities onto inanimate nature. Theists continue to do this. Buddhists contemplate mental processes and can thus detect projections. They envisage and visualize a Bodhisattva of Compassion but do not believe that such a being literally exists.
Consider a priest elevating the Host and a Zen monk facing a wall. In Mandelbaum's view, only the latter will exist in future.
8 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
And I disagree, with respect to Stirling, because I believe that God is both real and actively intervenes in the world, both when His Son became Incarnate as Man and thru the miracles recorded at Catholic shrines like Lourdes. Animism does not explain everything.
As he did so often, Anderson wrote stories touching on such issues, as in "A Chapter of Revelation." Animism is applicable only to pagan religions, not the Judaeo-Christian revelation.
Ad astra! Sean
-Some- Buddhists don't believe in the literal existence. A lot do; I've met them.
Of course I should say that Buddhists do not NECESSARILY believe in the literal existence of gods, Bodhisattvas etc. But even if a being like Kuan Yin does exist, she is not in and of herself identical with ultimate level of reality which is emptiness, not consciousness.
the ultimate level
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
And when I recall how little interest Buddha had for questions about "gods" or God, that puzzles me.
But I can see how local pagan beliefs could seep into Buddhism, many who might have been attracted to Buddhism were at first repulsed by its dryness, abstraction, remoteness, etc. So popular religion got mixed into Buddhism, as is most extravagantly seen in Tibetan Buddhism.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
Exactly. The "Buddha Dharma" coexists with local world-views. At the monastery which I visit, a woman said, "I am a Christian." A monk replied, "You will continue to believe that and we will teach you how to meditate."
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
And I disagree with that, having more sympathy for what Buddha thought, such as his disinterest in religion. I don't approve of morphing together incompatible ideas and beliefs into opposing faiths or philosophies. Which is why orthodox Christianity rejects syncretism.
Btw, Christianity has its own methods and traditions about meditation, hence no need for Buddhist methods of meditation. A Christian monk contemplates the power, greatness, glory, and infinite love of God.
Ad astra! Sean
Original Buddhism was too "dry" to be a mass religion; it needed to aquire supernatural personalities.
Post a Comment