Interesting. Will we have access to your completed work? Would be glad being able to have a look at it.
Yes, I also deem it to be very valuable and often surely dependable to rely on a wide range reading experience of the nikāyas. Certainly one will get a feel for the style the Buddha usually used therein, hence there will be a better judgement as to authenticity in general, I believe.
But in addition to that I believe it most efficient if both, personal bent based upon experience (much more intuition is probably not) and more or less objective facts contribute in determining and judging truth. As one example of how mere intuition might mislead some Christians I am personally acquainted with might serve. They assert fervently that Jesus is their savior – on what basis? They often ‘know’ it by intuition … Also try to imagine: If we would happen to find some stone slab which, we could date most certainly to 450 B.C. or so, on which a specific part of the nikāyas is found to be engraved, this surely would generally contribute as to how we will evaluate and read our modern scriptures.
I think the Buddha, to judge from the nikāyas, not seldomly tried to appeal to objective reason as well. I saw as one of his great skills to somehow get his interlocutor to be open to receive new information, at times objective reason, into individual bent, using specific language, getting him feeling safe to be open, showing rewards etc.
Very funny. Would make the work definitely much easier …
I think just relying on personal experience is insufficient. Moreover, the basic principles of the Dhamma are stated as facts or truths, that are incorruptible and not swayed by an individual’s views.
In AN 3.136 :
Monks, whether or not there is the arising of Tathagatas, this property stands—this steadfastness of the Dhamma, this orderliness of the Dhamma: All processes are inconstant.
And so on for the other two characteristics. This indicates that despite what our muddled and deluded minds may suggest, the nature of all phenomena remains the same.
Surely venerable the study will be available, and do not worry; I will send you a copy privately if my work is published with Cambridge, Oxford, Yale, or other such prestigious giant.
Well, venerable, on what basis have you developed your faith in something like Nibbana or the enlightenment of the Buddha?!
Faith is an absolute, in my opinion that is. There are no different qualities of faith, but only different intensities. Even in the case of a dogmatic person: dogma is not a “kind” of faith, it is only a separate quality that may or may not arise along with one’s faith. One may become dogmatic, or cease to be so, while experiencing no change whatsoever in his faith, even in the intensity of it. Thus, the nature of our faith in the complete enlightenment of the Buddha, or in nibbana, is identical to a Christian’s faith in Jesus as a saviour! Our faith is even more complex, for we pursue with it while we do not even fully comprehend what is a full Enlightenment or what is any Enlightenment at all! And imagine for a moment the faith of a Mahayana follower in the Bodhisattva ideal! Whereas “being saved” by Jesus is a far more simple idea to comprehend. And if there should be any particular emphasis on “understanding” in Buddhism it is only because that which we develop faith in is much more difficult to understand. It never means that other people’s faiths are void of understanding at all! And non of these differences make faiths superior or inferior in relation to each other. Because very much like we do, the Christian may find resonance to his faith in his mental and psychological ‘experience’ as well as we do. It is not true that the faith of a Christian (and other religions too) is not supported by reason or experience; this idea has been astonishingly advanced by sophisticated Buddhist speakers while it shows nothing other than their own inability to recognise that “blind faith” is not a “requirement” in other religions as they think, but only unique to the ways certain practitioners develop it, in all religions, including Buddhism of course. A beginner Sufi or Christian mystic can easily recognise this, while a Buddhist may never do. When we make such gross generalisations and place other religions in a tight “frame” of the making of our own imagination, we are doing exactly the same thing as when dogmatic followers of other religions condemn Buddhism for reasons which we believe irrelevant to the Dhamma that the Buddha taught, but only imagined by those condemners. It is the exact same behaviour and it is based on the exact same prejudice in the mind. You can say that the faith of ‘some’ Christians is hopelessly blind, that is a valid argument, but then you will find that so too is the case regarding the faith of ‘some’ Buddhists also, and likewise in every other religious and spiritual creed.
There is no escape from intuition even if we attempt to cover it up with a hundred thousand million layer of thought. It doesn’t mean that intuition is always right or that it always deliver us to truth; we must always take a risk, and that’s how we learn and grow at all. But your risk is greater if you are depending on rational imagination, and your learning is less! And if you ever penetrate to truth it will be only by means of the intuition, the training of the intuition, the exercising of the intuition, and understanding of and faith in the potential and capacities of intuition.
This will be a great discovery but, it will influence our evaluations of the Canon only depending on what’s written on the stone i suppose! For example if you find such stone with an inscription that says, something like, nibbana was a form of rebirth in heaven, or kamma cannot be exhausted or bhavanirodha is impossible, then although that will probably cause much havoc in our Buddhist contemporary reality, nevertheless we will relate to that ancient text with the same or even more degree of scepticism than that with which we relate to the present Canon. And that’s what I mean, the historicity of a text can only tell certain things about when and where events occurred, and even here, sometimes we cannot be sure unless we find another unrelated historical document making similar references to the same events. But whenever interpretation is involved, the historicity of a text does not contribute much in my opinion to the proving or disproving of the authenticity of any teaching or doctrine or anything abstract.
Thank you, that is very kind of you. What will be the scope? Are you planning to publish in a journal?
Of course, yes, that is true. I found many beautiful things in other religions.
Yes, sure, also among Buddhists we find people who do not question much, perhaps believe even blindly.
I agree, yes. I hope you are not mentioning this, sparked by my reference to acquainted Christian fellows, largely very fine people in character … In some particular instances I got the impression, that their already formed believes were based upon not more than unfounded intuition and that they were quite close to receive new evidence, is human though –
I think that is what I was precisely referring to, to …
Ditto
I think in the debate about intuition and processing new objective information in the building of ones views it is also needed to take into account the individual character and bent. Take for example the types mentioned in the iddhipādas . (The commentary clearly lists four individuals who used one mode each as chief). To attain samādhi based upon:
desire
energy
mind or
investigation
I am inclined to suppose that these types respond to different modes of reception in the gathering and processing of information also. The first type perhaps might not respond to objective facts to the degree in which the fourth does. Here, of course, I don’t want to discard personal experience, which I believe is the nucleus in proving the validity of the Buddha’s teaching in the end, but to say that these information can have an effect upon the decision making process, especially for beginners, who lack much more likely a basis of personal experience. In the canon we find plenty of evidence where the Buddha or one of his disciples uses objective facts to incline the mind of their interlocutor to the better and the best, from that angle it is very certain. In the believe of rebirth, for example, I personally rely merely upon objective facts: Reports of children who say can remember, claims of accomplished practitioners (in many religions) etc. My intuition here plays just a very secondary and distant role, very insignificantly. Much more it is the luck of being able to receive “neutral” information and to process them more or less unhindered by imposed believes or other restrictions. Intuition is perhaps maybe nothing much more than at some point gathered and processed information, more or less unconsciously, or habitually, (can be positive or negative) accessed at a later point.
What will be the scope? Are you planning to publish in a journal?