If I say we met at sunrise and we did in fact meet then what I said is true, despite it being false. The sun doesn’t rise. The Earth revolves. Us meeting at sunrise is true, from a certain point of view. The Buddha used worldly conventions, even if ultimately they aren’t true. For example, was he lying when he told village folk they they would be reborn? From a certain point of view, their point of view, they would be reborn. From a higher perspective, there is emptiness. I don’t see an issue with the Buddha saying there are 4 elements if really he knew there were atoms, or some higher scientific understanding
“Luke, you’re going to find that many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view.”
Obi-Wan Kenobi
As a more sagely alternative, he could have simply remained silent on cosmological issues, and if anybody inquired on that subject, he could have pointed out the uselessness of wondering about such matters. But that’s not what the suttas portray - instead, the Buddha (supposedly) told exquisite tales about seven suns consuming Mt Meru, the origins of humanity from devolved devas, etc.
The best way to communicate with people is to use language they understand. This is why many complicated religious ideas are framed in simple terms in many religions.
This point seems logically unconnected from the truths the Buddha taught which,as he said, were from his his direct experience.
They offer teachings which lead beings out of saṁsāra, so best not to throw out the baby with the bathwater.
The Buddha said to let go of the raft after one has realized the “other shore” of liberation, as in MN22:
“Mendicants, I will teach you how the Dhamma is similar to a raft: it’s for crossing over, not for holding on.”
The teachings are not to be blindly clung to but they’re needed to clear out the defilements and to develop the insight needed for final liberation.
In this way, they’re precious and extraordinarily valuable.
From the conventional point of view, it is true that the sun ‘rises’ (from our perspective). However, from that same conventional point of view, it is false to say that the sun orbits around Mt Meru. There is no ‘perspective’ in which that would be true, other than the perspective of ignorance. It’s the difference between 2+2=4 (a conventional truth), and the horns of a hare (a conventional falsehood).
The texts state that the Buddha’s enlightenment was based on his recollection of past lives and his destruction of the taints. Logically, if he was delusional about the former, then it would follow that he could have been delusional about the latter.
The offer teachings which take beings out of samsāra, so best not to throw out the baby with the bathwater.
The teachings are not to be blindly clung to but they’re needed to clear out the defilements and for final liberation.
I completely agree. There is profound wisdom in the suttas, so I do not want to throw the baby out with the bathwater. However, I do want to keep the baby, and flush away the bathwater. And the claims of past life memories in the suttas are beginning to smell like bathwater to me.
From the perspective of Iron Age Indians, it was true. The sun also arose for them, because the earth was flat. It was accepted as true back then, like the earth element. Today there is no such thing as an earth element. Science of course never arrives at what’s true, just what’s the most likely current theory.
But, again, how one comes to suspect the Buddha’s seeing and understanding of past lives, as directly known and experienced by him, as possibly dubious because people at the time did not know the shape of the earth appears logically unconnected.
In either case, as mentioned in a prior post, his teachings remain effective and beneficial whether the earth is spherical or flat.
We’re dealing with different sorts of truths and purposes here.
Scientific truth in itself does not lead to liberation from dukkha and the Dhamma does not, and is not meant to, explain the physics of supernovas.
‘A noble disciple with right immersion truly sees any kind of form at all—past, future, or present; internal or external; coarse or fine; inferior or superior; far or near: all form—with right understanding: ‘This is not mine, I am not this, this is not my self.’’
It seems there are no facts regarding the Material World other than that it is a composed thing. Composed things are regarded dukkha so we should let it go.
I suppose any reference to the physical world is merely used to point to its dukkha nature. Wether earth is flat or not simply doesn’t matter with regards to nibbana.
Well, civilization in the Indus valley could go back at least 8000 years, giving plenty of time for rise and collapse of more organized civilization, one which could have contained the Buddha Kassapa – who would be an echo of a distant memory (perhaps) in the time of the Buddha.
This is such a harsh way of expressing your feelings about the EBTs. You must know this is likely to be very unpleasant to read for many here on D&D?
From what I can gather, the Aryans arrived in India around 1500 BC, so that permits maybe 1000 years of Brahminical society in the Kosalan region before Gotama Buddha.
This is such a harsh way of expressing your feelings about the EBTs. You must know this is likely to be very unpleasant to read for many here on D&D?
I don’t wish to offend anybody, but who said seeking the truth was supposed to be pleasant? We have to be willing to challenge and let go of all our preconceived notions and views if there is to be any chance of finding freedom. In my experience, using mental gymnastics to justify objective falsehoods in ancient texts is a form of suffering.
But the Aryans could have adopted a system that was already in place, which seems to be a pretty common tactic used by invaders.
Also, a 1000 years is a lot, maybe it’s enough for a rise and fall, who knows…
Agree 100%
For general history, I highly recommend The Dawn of Everything by Graber and Wengrow. It’s not about Indian history, but it gives a sense of the vast diversity of past societies.
I would also recommend learning more about the scientific process in general in my experience, people tend to overestimate modern science’s ability to produce objective facts about the world.
I appreciate the recommendation, but I am hesitant to spend my time on a book written by an anarchist activist (or a proponent of any other extremist political ideology). I just read the summary on Wikipedia and it seems interesting, but I get the sense that the author wanted to see a version of human prehistory which confirmed his anarchist views, so he found it.
Regarding the value of science, when I look at the world around me, I see the fruits of the scientific method everywhere. You and I are having this conversation right now due to those fruits. Perhaps I am simplistic, but when it comes to the objective world, I am relatively content with accepting the broader scientific consensus (rather than the niche views of political extremists, or questionable claims in ancient texts).
He covers this in suttas such as SN 22.95. The Buddha’s contemplation around ‘delusion’ is on the nature of reality rather than the contents of reality.
I also have this feeling about the suttas, but more specifically directed towards references of human beings living for thousands of years. Tbh, there is still a certain cognitive dissonance arising from time to time, like “this sounds so incorrect” or “isn’t this type of mistake exactly what we would expect from a wrong religion?” But I still think there are better reasons to follow than to abandon Buddhism.
Because he taught according to his insight, he couldn’t teach wrong facts. If he did teach wrong things, then this brings into question the whole Dhamma since all teachings derive from the same thing: insight into reality.
As @stu said, delusion refers to not understanding the nature of reality, but I think it’s still possible for him to believe in wrong things. In fact, there are examples in the suttas that show mistakes made by the Buddha. However, these are not derived from his insight per se. I think these are simply worldly errors, like thinking a monk understood a lesson correctly when he actually didn’t.
When the suttas refer to the Buddha’s knowledge of past lives, they usually show as if he could remember past lives as many times as he wanted, but not as if it was constant knowledge in the back of his mind.
whenever I want, I recollect my many kinds of past lives. That is: one, two, three, four, five, ten, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty, a hundred, a thousand, a hundred thousand rebirths; many eons of the world contracting, many eons of the world expanding, many eons of the world contracting and expanding. I remember: ‘There, I was named this, my clan was that, I looked like this, and that was my food. This was how I felt pleasure and pain, and that was how my life ended. When I passed away from that place I was reborn somewhere else. There, too, I was named this, my clan was that, I looked like this, and that was my food. This was how I felt pleasure and pain, and that was how my life ended. When I passed away from that place I was reborn here.’ And so I recollect my many kinds of past lives, with features and details.
MN 71
To me, it sounds like he didn’t remember ALL his past lives, but a significantly large number of them, even because recollecting literally all past lives would take infinitely long.
I think these two are almost enough to explain weird claims made in the suttas. However, I don’t think that the Buddha could make use of parables unless he also expected his audience to see them as parables. That is, telling a parable as if it were true only reinforces people’s misunderstanding, and, even worse, it’s essentially a lie. What may have happened, though, is that most of these parables ended up being interpreted literally with time. This actually makes sense since people in the past didn’t have scientific evidence to cause any cognitive dissonance, so interpreting suttas literally was always the best strategy: if the sutta was indeed intended to be taken literally, then you would get the correct interpretation, but if it wasn’t, you wouldn’t have science to tell you that you were wrong anyways.
The second possibility also seems to be the case. Comparative studies show that many suttas were added after different oral lineages were created. Since changes happened after the division, we should expect that some occured before as well. However, what we do have great certainty is that late tradition didn’t change doctrinal suttas, so things like the noble eightfold path, dependent origination, rebirth, and kamma are the earliest things in Buddhism. Suttas giving precise descriptions of past lives, though, may or may not be early. Most of the Jatakas, for example, are not.
Also, I think it’s important to point out that many of these changes were probably not done out of bad faith. If they were, why should we even trust modern monks if even the earliest ones weren’t trustworthy? Mistakes do happen from time to time, and many of the suttas are actually not intended to be taken literally to begin with. For example, I remember reading that the late commentary admits that sometimes Mara in the suttas refer to a mind state instead of a real god. Buddhagosa also admits that many additions had been made to the mahaparinibanna sutta, which also shows that people were already aware that the suttas weren’t 100% accurate. Moreover, it’s actually not possible to be a fundamentalist Buddhist these days since the Buddha said in AN 8.51 that the true Dhamma would last 500 years at most. The primary purpose of the texts is to provide understanding of the Buddhist path, but the stories told don’t need to be always true. Sometimes, in order to provide understanding, the sutta needs to be both useful and correct, like in doctrinal passages. In these cases, I agree that it would be worrisome for Buddhism as a whole if they were disproved. Fortunately, most Buddhist doctrine is either scientifically correct or unfalsifiable.
Another thing that I’ve noticed recently is that there are just too many suttas for all of them to come from the Buddha. The whole Sutta Pitaka contains more than 17,000 suttas. The Buddha taught for 45 years (from 35 to 80). If we calculate it, there would be at least a sutta for every single day of the Buddha’s career! Of course, a few come from later disciples and many others are quite short, but the size of the sutta Pitaka is still impressive, so I honestly doubt that most of the suttas actually refer to real interactions or that the phrases are exactly what the Buddha said in the real life. They’re likely to be either reconstructions from hearsay or doctrinal teachings expressed in fictional cenarios, instead of accurate historical records. This means that we should expect some mistakes here and there, but we can still expect that the core teachings wouldn’t be changed since they would be present all throughout the canon. Therefore, it doesn’t seem reasonable to reject the whole Dhamma because of a few suttas.
When we make a judgment, we base the judgment against our current understanding and standard. However, our understanding could be wrong or limited, and our standard is simply what we currently accept. Moreover, the current standard could also be wrong too.
I have found most of the accusations sound pretty good to the accusers and they really believe in them because the ideas fit their current standard and understanding. However, with different understanding and different standards, these accusations seem to be totally wrong. Therefore, I think it is always better to hold our judgments especially to the noble ones since our understanding obviously is far lower than theirs. This is for our own future benefit, and to avoid making terrible mistakes for ourselves.
I am very surprised to see monastics involved in these actions since I think monastics should be the last in the world to do so because of their faith with the Buddha and the Dhamma. I hope that they have different intentions.
It is not very easy to explain everything that people question, and it is not very easy to please everybody. However, I have tried to show a different understanding of some problems. If we can accept it, then we will think differently.
Here are the 2 most complaints that I found:
Teaching body contemplation to monks who subsequently committed suicide.
Here was my different understanding that I explained long time ago
Obviously, there could be different meaningful understandings that we currently do not think of. So, how can we know for sure that our current understanding is correct? Moreover, our understanding and vision obviously are far lower than the Buddha, and we really never directly see or hear anything from him. How can we judge him correctly?
I do not say that my understanding is correct, but I just try to show that there could be different explanations and understanding that we do not know or think of. Therefore, it is always better to hold our judgments to the noble ones, especially the Buddha. This is for our future benefits.
I have noticed that I do this quite often when reading the suttas. I will interpret a sutta in one way, when in fact it was meant in another way. A few years later I discover that what I was interpreting as literal was in fact an idiom in Pali or there was a subtle joke going on (maybe a play on words) that I wasn’t aware of. This non-understanding of what is going on with words plagues many, if not all, translators too. Ajahn Brahm talks about the English idiom “It’s raining cats and dogs”, if a non-native speaker were to take that literally, they are going to want a more substantial umbrella!
I’m not sure that science helps us that much in this case due to things such as the half-life of facts and that the suttas were constructed so very long ago that it’s easy for us to misinterpret them. A better way to gain an understanding of this is to get our meditation to the level of (for example) seeing past lives for ourselves. Then we would be in a position to understand how these memories are interpreted by our 21st century minds and how we might communicate them to a modern audience.
The instructions and tools to do this are certainly still available to us all and they are the easier parts of the EBTs to understand because they are progressively verified by our own practice. It’s that investigation utilising the eightfold path that brings an end to doubt.
This might well be another case where we misinterpret what is being said in the suttas. When the Buddha says something like manussattaṁ labhati - it could mean something like “each time a being is reborn as a human”, but some translators might suggest that it means “the first rebirth (in a chain of) human existence”. I think that rebirth seems to be based on ethics in the suttas, and the ethics of each realm is distinct from the others, so it would not be surprising to find continuation in one mode of being over many lifetimes. This is something that we can verify for ourselves of course, if we do the practice.
There are products in the supermarket which I don’t purchase as they’re not relevant to me, don’t interest me and/or are boycotted due to excessive nagvertising. From time to time, it makes me doubt whether the store manager is truly free of all delusion, but they do offer a bunch of other items that I need/want so I return.
I’ve heard Ajahn Brahmali say a number of times in dhamma talks words to the effect of “it’s not a question of if the teachings have been corrupted, rather where and how much”. Seems like a realistic, pragmatic and honest position to take.
I agree, I can’t accept the notion that the Buddha knowingly taught tall tales to his audience.
To me, it seems more practical to just accept the existence of karma & rebirth in some form, rather than spending excess time and effort trying to experimentally verify the stereotyped formulae & mythology of the suttas.
Do you view the owner of your local supermarket as near-omniscient and perfected in wisdom? In that case, I’m not sure the analogy holds.
I think it’s true that we can’t ever be sure that our understanding is right, but there’s definitely more evidence that humans haven’t ever lived thousands of years than evidence that we have, so I can’t take the suttas literally.
I agree that we can’t ever be sure in this case, but I don’t think it’s actually possible to hold our judgment all the time we encounter something odd in the suttas. There are quite a few cases of unscientific beliefs in the canon that require some explanation. Holding judgment, instead of trying to understand whether the sutta is right or not, causes quite a lot of cognitive dissonance, which isn’t good for practice either. At least that’s been my experience so far.
in my experience, people tend to overestimate modern science’s ability to produce objective facts about the world.