All religious paths lead to the same goal

The Watercooler
22

yes that is exactly what I am referring to.

I think that you are right to say there are right and wrong views, and I may be misinterpreting what your saying, but I don’t think that “see for yourself” means eventually seeing views as right or wrong, I think the point is that ALL views are transcended so that “superior” “inferior” “equal” and other terms one might attribute to a given pair of views are moot and unarisen in the awakened mind, as per the simile of the raft and with dīghanakha and of course in the Paramatthaka sutta itself.

so right views are right and wrong views are wrong, but ALL views are conditional and liberation is impossible without letting go of them.

However I am not really talking about the deep philosophical meaning of the dhamma, more the simple fact that beating ones chest to loudly proclaim that Buddhism is the “ultimate” religion and all others are in some way imperfect or inferior, is exactly what is criticized in the Paramatthaka sutta REGARDLESS of the truth or falsity of the claim;

If, maintaining that theirs is the “ultimate” view, a person makes it out to be highest in the world;
then they declare all others are “lesser”; that’s why they’re not over disputes.

If they see an advantage for themselves in what’s seen, heard, or thought; or in precepts or vows, in that case, having adopted that one alone, they see all others as inferior.

Experts say that, too, is a knot, relying on which people see others as lesser. That’s why a mendicant ought not rely on what’s seen, heard, or thought, or on precepts and vows.

In fact the poem goes furthest and implies it is the very act of publicly declaiming that the view is the best one that is evidence of the speakers conceitedness and superiority complex, and speaks to thier motivation.

I want to add that though I don’t have the suttas to hand to provided references there are to my memory plenty that bang on about how the dhamma IS superior and everyone and everything else IS inferior and I think that this is a problem for those who contort themselves into pretzel shapes in order to explain everything in the suttas as the word of the buddha, precicely becasue that flatly contradicts the 3 suttas i refrence (and others I don’t have time to find) I am spared from such considerations by simply not believing for one second that everything in the canon is the buddhas actual words, and that the canon developed over hundreds of years with obvious religious, propagandic, literary and other motives and is after all another conditioned phenomena.

I think that the 3 suttas I have referenced do accurately reflect what made and still makes Buddhism radical and interesting compared to other philosophical and religious literatures, but I am not convinced that this precludes people in other traditions achieving the ultimate spiritual peace, after all the Buddhist tradition itself acknowledges paccekabuddhas who never heard the dhamma.

Metta

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23

Well, yes and no. The see for yourself (ehipassiko) reference is just a term in the suttas (as you may already know) that there is no truth claim one must take on faith, and it isn’t necessarily a reference to views; however, there will eventually be right views and wrong views that are important for making progress on the path insofar you are able to come as you are, and discover what is helpful and not helpful without clinging to rights and wrongs as you have spoken on. It is true that clinging to any view (right or wrong or neutral) is as you say “moot” but we are left in a tricky place, don’t you think? Because we must make some choices, and we are always evaluating. To not evaluate or place any correctness or incorrectness on various subject matters or paths one may walk, is a strange situation to be in. This is where the nuances of this tradition and such come in haha. Always keepin’ us discoursing on this stuff. To add a quick bit, it is like desire … there is good desire and bad desire that is elaborated on at various points. Because we must desire to make progress on the path, otherwise we wouldn’t do it. Right?

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24

yes I think that is all right and proper, the raft isn’t abandoned until AFTER we have crossed the flood, otherwise we drown! so there is for us mere mortals still the necessity of distinguishing between the mundane right and wrong and helpful and unhelpful, but that is precisely where I think the anti-pereniellists are at their weakest, argument wise, as it seems pretty clear, to me at least, that there have been great minds and great works of religious and philosophical literature created in all civilizations and cultures and the idea that all of Plato is “wrong” and “unhelpful” because it doesn’t recognize annata anicca dhukka is just plainly concieted, and not jsut concieted but ignorant and dumb, and if someone really thinks in thier head that Plato, or Lao Tzu, or Avicenna, or Wittgenstien or Fanz Fanon is all just useless or “Wrong view” then they are nowhere near the Buddhas path IMO and much more likely to be ignorant ideologues self soothing with their in-group.

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25

Haha! Let it rip brother. I am a naturalist at heart, so even sometimes the Buddhist stuff has me like “come on, really?” So, I totally understand where you are coming from, I think. There is much to be appreciated outside the bounds of dogmatic approaches to any particular philosophical system, and everything must be considered and looked at from various distances and positions.

26

I think your argument would be stronger if you dropped Frantz Fanon as an example. Fanon advocated for violence as necessary in overcoming colonialism. I have sympathy for your general point that many traditions have produced wise, ethical people. But I think Fanon’s position on violence is a pretty striking example of Wrong View from a Buddhist perspective.

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27

Perennialism doesn’t actually need a formal creator god as such. Buddha-nature (tathāgatagarbha) does come rather close to being something like an underlying permanent ground of reality in some schools. Maybe often not quite perennialism but IMO heading in its direction.

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28

Thanks, What a great sutta. I think the crux is in (translation Thanissaro):

When dwelling on views
as “supreme,”
a person makes them
the utmost thing
in the world"

I think there it goes wrong. Making it the utmost thing.Making view /dhamma-knowledge the utmost thing, one can even become angry, greedy, irritated, tend to disputes etc. Disputing about what is pure Dhamma, the only true explanation, the final and definitive meaning etc. I belief Buddha warns against this tendency in us.

I did this myself too, i sometimes still do. Making interpretations, views, knowledge the utmost. Defilements arise guaranteed! I have this tendency within me to make views and knowledge the utmost and that is, i can feel, no quality. I i see others have this tendency too. We often very much depend on knowledge.

It is like not seeing what is really important; detachment, freedom from knowledge, letting go, openness, loving kindness, compassion, warmness of the heart, having an inner smile.

-Abandoning what he had embraced, abandoning self,
not clinging, he doesn’t make himself dependent even in connection with knowledge;
(Snp4.5, Thanissaro)

Not making oneself dependend even in connection with knowledge.

To be honest, i can feel in myself that dhamma knowledge often becomes only a cause for more attachment and does not lead to dispassion or inner peace. I know that one can judge….then you are doing something wrong…Oke.

I think it very much relates to what this sutta describes. It is not easy to practise Dhamma in a really sincere way because the mind is corrupted and likes battling, grasping, has sectarian tendencies, wants to be seen as wise, likes knowledge, fighting, debating etc.
Those defilements and passions are smart. They always seem to find a new way and object to feast and feed their belly.

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29

While it’s possible that some Mahayanists interpret Buddha nature as a ground of being, this is not really the classic view of the teaching found in the Indian Mahayana sources. Indian Mahayanists were well aware of the doctrine of Brahman and they took pains to distance Buddha nature from it. This concern, to differentiate Buddha nature from Brahman-atman theories, remains a live one in modern Mahayana. So I don’t really think Mahayana is heading in the perennial direction, even though it can sound like it sometimes. It’s a bit like the whole “primal mind” thing in Thai Buddhism - when you really dig into it, its not really an atman in most cases (but there are some exceptions, like Dhammakaya…there are always exceptions).

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30

OK, no problem, I’ll take your word for it (I have a cursory enough knowledge of Mahayana TBH). I attended some talks last year where the American speaker had a Chinese Chan background (and read another book some months back where the author was more in the Korean Chan tradition) and I very much got that general feel from both of them. However, two samples from two people is probably far from representative! As you alluded to, I’m not sure how accurate my impression was and if it would really hold up if I looked deeper. :man_shrugging:

31

I mean, like I said, there are exceptions, its possible that there are Mahayanists who believe in a ground of being, but the same is true in all religious traditions. But the mainstream Mahayana sources, Nagarjuna, Vasubandhu, Asanga, don’t really agree with this.

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32

In this Vesak message HH the Dalai Lama provides a clear distinction between the buddhadharma and other religious traditions, without being condescending.

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33

The Ratnagotravibhāga, the central text on buddhanature, characterises this nature in an ironic fashion by way of the four aspects of atman: highest purity, highest permanence, highest bliss, and highest self, only to turn the characteristics against themselves. Thus the 15th century Tibetan master Gyaltsab Je parses ‘highest self’ as:

“By reversing the attraction to the Tirthankara outsider philosophy that views the appropriated75 aggregates as the self of persons and the self of phenomena, thereby holding something that does not exist to be a self, and by meditating on the perfection of wisdom that perceives directly that there is not a trace of person or aggregate existing by their own nature, one attains the result of the perfection of the highest self, which is the ultimate dharmakāya, divorced from all elaboration of self of persons and of phenomena.”

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34

I came across the following article by Richard K Payne which i found relevant to the topic in hand:

35

Which is perfectly in keeping with a strategy used by the Buddha in the suttas, take a widely used and popular Indian religious term (like Brahmavihara, which meant dwelling with the god Brahma) and turn it on its head completely. It’s shocking, its attractive and its effective.

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36

I like that the Buddha was teacher of gods as well as humans. It is surely helpful that if people from other paths do get to heaven, they will have their God teaching them some lovely Buddha-Dhamma.

I’m the one who asked Brahmā
in the Hall of Justice before the assembly:
‘Sir, do you still have the same view
that you had in the past?
Or do you see the radiance
transcending the Brahmā realm?’

And I’m the one to whom Brahmā
admitted the truth when asked.
‘Good sir, I don’t have that view
that I had in the past.

I see the radiance
transcending the Brahmā realm.
So how could I say today
that I am permanent and eternal?’

Thag20.1

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37

An example can be seen in DN 13 where the Buddha teaches some brahmin the “path to Brahma”.

38

How can you be sure that it was a strategy of the Buddha to take the Brahmavihara and turn it upside down? If so, then the Buddha behaved like just another sneaky salesman.
Could it be that the Buddha saw that emptiness and the viharas were the same “stuff”?
If that was so, then it wasn’t a strategy. It was a clarification.

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39

It’s not a sneaky strategy, its just a rhetorical / teaching device, many spiritual leaders use such a strategy because its effective

For example, early Christians used the idea of the “kingdom of god” but instead of taking it to mean an actual kingdom in israel, they used it to mean a spiritual way of life.

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40

In Buddhism, there are three doors to enlightenment (vimukthi).
These are:

  • Seeing the impermanence of everything (animiththa vimukthi)
  • Seeing the non-self in everything (shunyatha vimukthi)
  • Seeing the unsatisfactory nature of everything (appanimitha vimukkthi – i.e., knowing that there is no use in craving anything whatsoever.)

Different people may develop the above three in different proportions as they walk towards enlightenment and these individuals can come from any religion because all religions practice meditation, etc. However, I think Buddha’s guidance is very useful for understanding all three, especially the non-self nature, but as I see it, other religions hint at all three aspects, although they don’t explain things clearly - they explain mostly in abstract terms. So, my conclusion is, people of any religion can walk towards enlightenment.

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41

There is another saying that each person has his/her own religion, that religion is at personal level, no two person share the same believes … By Dalai lama.

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