Quite a long thread so I’ll keep my replies restricted to the recent comments (will try to catch up with the entire discussion later).
I don’t feel so sure about that. There’s tons of data remaining to be generated as far as material sciences are concerned. Do we know what Dark matter is? Dark energy? Multiple dimensions?Plenty of particles are hypothesised but still lack any concrete proof. Think of gravitational waves and the first image of a black hole…how many decades passed between the hypotheses and the actual detection! Back on Earth, about 95 % of the ocean floor is unexplored. We dont even know the material world…let alone gods and ghosts!
The current understanding of mind and mental health still points to the fact that there’s so much left to be discovered within ourselves.
This and something which was beyond all this:
"There is that sphere, monks, where there is no earth, no water, no fire, no air, no sphere of infinite space, no sphere of infinite consciousness, no sphere of nothingness, no sphere of neither perception nor non-perception, no this world, no world beyond, neither Moon nor Sun. There, monks, I say there is surely no coming, no going, no persisting, no passing away, no rebirth It is quite without support, unmoving, without an object,—just this is the end of suffering.”
There is, monks, an unborn, unbecome, unmade, unconditioned. If, monks there were not that unborn, unbecome, unmade, unconditioned, you could not know an escape here from the born, become, made, and conditioned. But because there is an unborn, unbecome, unmade, unconditioned, therefore you do know an escape from the born, become, made, and conditioned.”
There have been so many great points and discussion so far
This is a slightly different take on the matter, just as food for thought
This is such a key point regarding the Path and the gradual training, and I think the whole basis of why the Buddha says - ‘don’t believe me - put the path into practice and see the results for yourself’. It’s also why it can’t be described, only pointing towards it and teaching the method for realisation.
Exactly as Bhante says.
One of the things that I find interesting is that the Buddha consistently talked about liberation from suffering. I take from the way he taught, that he wasn’t talking about finding a state of Bliss, but of being free of suffering which then results in bliss. As Ajahn Brahm says so often, the path is not for getting anything, but for letting go of things This is important because a characteristic of what is being described is the result of an absence of something - the result is due to an absence.
An analogy: If a person has been in constant physical pain, and then all of a sudden they feel different, they feel great, they go - WOW - what is that? and realise that it is the cessation/absence of pain. So you can’t ‘look’ for the state of feeling great (not pain), it is possible to experience, only after the pain has ceased. It is impossible to explain ‘not pain’ to someone who, has only ever experienced unabating constant pain for the entirety of their life.
This is exactly the case as the Buddha teaches, where we are born into a state of (mental) suffering (due to craving and delusion) - and don’t know any other way of experiencing life… and it is only when that suffering is removed that it becomes seen - by its absence. How great is that! And when you experience the absence of something you know it is real - you don’t need any other external reference to tell you. When the pain has stopped you know it has stopped! Zero doubt!
Once you have experienced ‘no pain’ you will never willingly do those things that lead to pain again - ie seeing the unwholesome and those things that lead to suffering and recoiling from it - no more effort needed, just like it doesn’t take effort or discipline to not stick your arm into a pot of acid. Eventually, according to the Buddha, all ‘craving’ will be seen as that pot of acid - a completely alternative reality to the one where we live …
So the focus isn’t to acquire, or go hunting for, a ‘state of bliss’, instead, by putting the conditions in place for suffering to be gradually reduced/removed, then a reduction/absence of suffering is experienced. It’s really impossible to prove it, by any means other than direct experience.
However, the further along the path one goes, and reduction of suffering is experienced, resulting in a greater sense of happiness and peace, then one develops increasing faith in the teachings of the Buddha. etc etc…
According to the Buddha, the absence of craving leads to Nibbana (no more re-birth)… So, in context and given the reliability of those claims that are more easily experienced, I don’t see why one should disbelieve it out of hand.
The points made by Puerh are relevent here
It is only at the point where craving has been completely eradicated that Nibbana (no more re-birth) is knowable/experienceable… (just like ‘no pain’). So this presents a problem as empirical investigation, proving it to someone who has not experienced it, is not possible.
In practical terms, I don’t see any benefits in dismissing it, but on the contrary, by keeping an open mind, one is in the position to really practice the Path as the Buddha taught, and to investigate for oneself. So, in my opinion, ultimately it really doesn’t matter to what extent one is convinced about rebirth, as long as one is not closed off to the idea, thereby reducing the ability to follow the Path.
Added: I’ve been trying to find an adequate simile for the ‘absence’ aspect for a long time. With similes of the tadpole leaving the water (one can only know water once one has left it) as well as the chick breaking out of the egg, both these can be interpreted as though one is moving from one ‘state’ to another, and the focus can be on that, instead of the absence of the previous experience. It is through seeing/experiencing the absence of the conditions (leaving the water, leaving the enclosed shell), that results in a new experience through which one is able to identify the conditioning of the previous experience. A world devoid of ‘pain/dukkha’- a work in progress…
Let me quote the most important part of what you quoted from my summary of Sean Carroll’s views:
No, we don’t even know if it exists at all. It’s just one of the hypotheses to explain observational data that we don’t understand. And if it exists, we know it doesn’t interact with “baryonic matter” (basically the stuff we are made of, and most of other things you interact with daily). Main use for this theory is explaining movement of galaxies. Doesn’t really influence my day to day life decisions
That’s needed to explain even more distant problems that have even less impact on our life - the speed of Universe’s expansion.
These try to fill in the gaps in our understanding (the one we know we have).
What purpose does hypothesising gods, ghosts or rebirth serve? Does it help us to understand the world or does it only cloud the situation? Once there were gods everywhere, in the Sun and the Moon, storms, woods, springs, stones… everything. But once our understanding of the world grew, where did the gods go? The only ones left nowadays are those undiscoverable, unknowable… unborn, unbecome, unmade, unconditioned (I hate this kind of language, sounds lofty and inspired while conveying no meaning).
Some more reflections (will also get back to the OP promise )
I don’t think of this as a personal debate @tuvok so pls don’t feel as if I’m targeting you! At the same time, I feel its important to address some points that you as well as the OP have stated as far as Buddhism’s place in modern worldview is concerned. This will be quite long, so apologies :
It is not possible to do good stuff without good mental states. So it has to be genuinely good from the mind. Maybe we can agree on that. And goodness comes from right intention. Thats what leads to better rebirth and merit. We can’t trick the natural law of cause and effect into thinking we have done good while our minds are impure. That’s why kamma begins in mind in Buddhism, not the mere mechanical actions!
As with everything the Buddha taught, each factor of the path is has a purpose - to lead us to the end of suffering. So , even if skillful actions are good, we don’t just engage in them in and of themselves. They are the means, not the goal. Dhamma is compared to a raft whose main purpose is to help us cross over the sea of suffering. The raft maybe good and beautiful in and of itself, but it wont serve its purpose as long as we dont use it AFAIK its not a wrong intention to be free from suffering! Its the main thing which propels the struggle of all beings in the world. In fact, it was that very intention which led Siddhartha to go forth and the rest is history.
I think in the suttas, the materialistic philosophy of Ajita kesakambalin is refuted, not materialism as whole. It is possible that a materialistic person might engage in good activities because of his mental predisposition, the same way its possible that such a person might not engage in good deeds. Thats the point, there is no clear cut philosophy in the lives of such people, they might do good or might not
I would call it your belief rather than a fact. I don’t know about particle, but kamma seems more like a non-physical law.
Thats why a materialistic person is unlikely to purify his mind to the point all negative states are destroyed. Because for him its all subjective and arbitrary. And you don’t always get to see the results of negative actions( or positive) in this very life. Thats where kamma comes in.
Thats why people who do believe in rebirth and kamma will always try to develop morality and ethics to a higher level because they have a well defined standard and not because they just feel like doing it.
And because everyone is seen as suffering and undergoing rebirth, such people are more likely to empathise with others. They have the necessary knowledge to create and maintain thier goodness, even under harsh conditions. Whereas the goodness of a materialist is subject to change if he ever experiences negative feedback or is taken advantage of; he has no knowledge or skills to fall back to, to supplement his goodness.
I doubt you will ever find an objective proof or theory of that. That seems an unreasonably high standard for something not in the domain of physical sciences. Maybe one day we will be able to demonstrate it using scientific experiments, maybe we wont.
If we dig even deeper into the psychology of decision-making, we run into an area for which no scientific evidence can offer any proof: Do we actually act, or are actions an illusion? Are our acts already predetermined by physical laws or an external intelligence, or do we have free will? Are the results of our acts illusory? Are causal relationships real, or only a fiction? Even the most carefully planned scientific experiment could never settle any of these issues, and yet once we become aware of them we have to take a stand on them if we want to continue putting any energy into our thoughts, words, and deeds.
Ven. Thanissaro (Faith in Awakening )
But you can get the proof for yourself if you are willing to engage with the Dhamma on its own terms, a sort of working hypothesis.
If you have read it all till here, thank you for your time:)
(More on the way…)
If I didn’t want to discuss I wouldn’t post in the first place
Yet many people’s motivation is to do stuff to gain merit and if they didn’t believe there was merit to be gained they wouldn’t do it. To not be too abstract I’ll just mention the example of one guy I was talking to years ago. He mentioned that he wanted to become a monk. So obviously I asked: why would you do that? And the answer was more surprising than I expected, along the lines: to get some merit for the next life, before this ends (It’s not a direct quote, sorry - this discussion took place years ago).
Natural law of cause and effect doesn’t care about good and bad, these are just mind made concepts. Even the buddhist law of cause and effect doesn’t have any good/bad evaluations in its definition.
Obviously not, I think most would agree on that. But my point above was about something completely different
I have no problems with talking about freedom from suffering as the end goal. Some suttas claim that this is what the path is for.
What I have problem with is when we put “ending of the round of rebirth” as the goal. I don’t need to follow a path which as a goal has ending of something I don’t believe in.
Will they? Or will they just put the practice off for the next life? Many seem to go just that way.
There is an interesting article about rebirth by Gil Fronsdal, good to read it all, he puts this argument in better words than I seem to be able to. Here’s just the excerpt relevant to the quote above:
In addition to not knowing any compelling reason or evidence for believing in rebirth, I have some concern about unfortunate beliefs built on this idea. For example, I have known people who have decided to postpone committing themselves to the liberation practices of Buddhism until some future lifetime, ideally the next one. Rather than motivating people to practice, the belief in rebirth can function as a disincentive.
Can you back that claim with anything, or is it just your belief?
Yes, I do have high standards. That’s why I don’t consider myself catholic anymore. I expected believers to be more saint than the Pope. And that isn’t a very high standard it seems.
I did. Thanks for the time to writing it and contributing to the discussion.
This article explains why I never heard about rebirth at IMC. It’s also really mind blowing that a Buddhist scholar would have doubts that the Buddha really talked about rebirth. I’m just
He also seems to conflate that if it’s possible to learn techniques that reduce suffering without belief in rebirth then he has no reason to believe. Which maybe is the way to get started on the path for many in the west but surprising for a decades long teacher.
Maybe a scholar could comment whether there’s any validity to the scholarly elements of this skepticism?
EDIT: interview with Bhikkhu Bodhi specifically speaking about secular Buddhism’s omission of rebirth Interview with Bhikkhu Bodhi
Quoting Bhikkhu Bodhi:
I take the ideas of kamma and rebirth to be quite central to the Buddha’s world-view. The way I see the Dhamma itself, in the classical formulation, entirely rests upon the teachings of kamma and rebirth. You can extract aspects of the Dhamma, and looking at it from a particular perspective see it as applicable to this life here and now, the way the secular Buddhists have been doing. But if one wants to get what I would call the full perspective of the Dhamma, then I would say the teachings of kamma and rebirth have a very central, critical place. If one pulls away the teachings of kamma and rebirth, then the teaching of the Dhamma, in its classical formulation, almost collapses, I would say. Basically, you’re left with a rather sophisticated ancient form of – I wouldn’t use the expression psychotherapy – but a kind of psychological adjustment, or a way of dealing with the here and now.
Still another reason some people say that they believe in rebirth is that they have faith in the Buddha and since he taught rebirth, it must be true. This tendency is often strengthened when people discover for themselves that so much of what the Buddha taught is true and, since he taught rebirth, they are inclined then to give him the benefit of the doubt about it. I have several difficulties with this approach.
This part right here is completely baffling. Goodness me, where to even start… Its disturbing how allergic we are to faith in the west. There’s no proof that knowing by rationalising is superior to knowing by faith. Which sounds beyond ridiculous to even suggest to someone with strong western conditioning, but it’s really worth investigating. What is clear is that direct knowledge is superior to faith. But that doesn’t mean faith doesn’t have an important role. It can be useful to have faith in rebirth, or at least that it’s worth looking into.
Ajahn Brahmali has an excellent talk on how to relate to rebirth:
As an ex-atheist, ex-scientist I sometimes have an autoimmune reaction to my own faith, like I’m looking at a foreign invader. But what can I say…the feeling of confidence is very powerful, especially when one has benefited from the practice and learning.
Maybe what can be said to those “not feeling it” is to take what works for you and hold the rest lightly. We aren’t going to solve the problem through an internet debate
Is that a joke? The whole modern world is built upon rational thought and scietific investigation, not on faith. Faith doesn’t build aeroplanes or invent vaccines.
But you just succeded at one thing. You made me realise how pointless this discussion is. To have a rational discussion and at least a bit of hope for convincing someone you need to have a rational thinking interlocutor. There is no discussion with faith. And it doesn’t matter if interlocutor believes in rebirth, gods, flat earth or reptilian conspiracy… there is just no hope for convincing the other party.
We are allergic to faith in the west because it has held back progress for centuries. And it still does to some degree. And with all the new conspiracy theories we might just be at the top of our civilisation and starting to go downhill again.
Wow, I got pessimistic. I think I need to sit on the cushion. Thank you guys for interesting thread, it was an opportunity to learn a few things and to remind myself about truths I have somehow forgotten. I don’t think I’ll be contributing much to this thread anymore, there is just no hope here
I share your sentiments, Owl. I’ve always had a lot of respect for Gil Fronsdal and still do. I’ve listened to many, many dozens of his dharma talks and have retreated with him. He is a kind, compassionate and wise person with a lot of humility, truly a rare lay teacher in the west. Just because he has a position on rebirth that I don’t agree with doesn’t mean that I’m going to ignore him. Yet, like every teacher, lay and monastic alike, I don’t take anything for granted. I think that’s what the Buddha encouraged.
I’ve heard Gil say that if one is perplexed on the concept of rebirth, just set it aside and don’t let it be a knotty thorn. That was good advice for me. I got on with the process of learning about the Buddha and the Dhamma without having to make a decision on where I would park my view on rebirth. Being from the west and stewed in a more Christian influenced background, I bristled at the concept of rebirth as it smacked of the biblical model of heaven and hell. I’ve understood early on that Early Buddhism is most certainly not about “believing” anything. So I did indeed set it aside and didn’t lean one way or another, to patiently let the suttas and the overall message of the Buddha fill in the gaps for me. As I learned and practiced more, my skepticism waned and gave way to curiosity and openness, much like a fair and impartial juror or judge wants to get to the truth rather than to be swayed by bias and proclivities.
At some point several years ago, I realized unequivocally that rebirth makes the Dhamma make total sense and that the Dhamma without rebirth is kind of hollow. Kamma and rebirth inspires me to think, speak and act with purity as a natural spring bubbles up pure water. The Dhamma without rebirth moves more into the spectrum of self-improvement.
In the article you linked to (thank you), in my opinion, Gil has laid out very weak arguments and reasons for dismissing rebirth. Frankly, I’m quite surprised and a little saddened.
Sorry to have contributed to any pessimism! But hopefully the meditation was great
I want to be clear that, speaking for myself, I am not talking about faith as a replacement for rational thought. I was trained as a scientist, work in technology, believe in climate change and the roundness of the earth, the moon landing, and I will be getting a coronavirus vaccine as soon as it’s available to me (thank you science and medicine!).
Where faith comes into play is for things we do not have data about or where there is doubt in the ability to test. Like the afterlife, altered states of consciousness, psychic abilities, etc.
And faith does not have to be “I will die for this ideal” but can be as light as “since I do not know for sure I’m willing to hold someone else’s view as a very strong possibility and just assume it’s right until proven otherwise.”
This conversation is not about rationality vs faith, it’s a question of whether one wants to take on a hypothesis for oneself until enough data is available. As far as I can tell that’s what the Buddha asked of his disciples.
What is metaphysics? I look at it like free assumptions or concepts you don’t have to question or back up by evidence.
E.g. materialism is part of Sean Carroll’s metaphysics. Matter “just appeared” with the big bang, and everything else is the result of evolving interactions between matter (including emergent properties).
Concepts like quarks, force and electrons are metaphysical entities; they are unseen but inferred entities that live inside a larger theory that explains aspects of our empirical reality.
Are Einstein’s thought experiments of chasing after a beam of light a form of mystical experience that helped him developed the theory of special relativity? How is the many worlds interpretation of quantum physics different from deva realms or science fiction?
Part of math’s metaphysics are so-called primitives, concepts like points, lines and sets. Intuitive ideas that are never defined, yet make up the systems that allow us to build computers and send people to the moon.
IMO, like electron or force, rebirth is a concept that lives inside the theoretical framework of the Buddha’s Dhamma. It’s a term that summarizes the empirical reality of the stream of consciousness that does not cease as long as it does not run out of fuel (upadana).
The clash seems to be (IMO) between materialist metaphysics and the empirical claims of the Buddha. Materialism supposes that conscious experiences are caused by the interactions of matter.
Matter is the fundamental primitive notion of materialist metaphysics, it’s just there, and its interactions are the causal basis of all phenomena. Matter swooshes together in the womb and gives rise to a conscious being, over time matter’s composition is disrupted leading to death and the conscious being is gone.
Rebirth, as an empirical claim about reality, is therefore not reconcilable with a core metaphysical tenet of materialism that matter is the causal basis of all phenomena, including consciousness.
From my own experience, this seems to be the core issue underlying westerners’ struggle with rebirth. Rebirth is at odds with the materialist metaphysics taught in Western culture.
Is materialism a reasonable metaphysics though? This is another question
Personally, I don’t find materialism that convincing. For example, in my own experience I notice how consciousness is a prerequisite for even the idea of ‘matter’. Consciousness seems more fundamental to me.
Please, forgive me if I’m not able to arrange my ideas in a optimal or better way. I’ll just write arguments as they come to my mind:
Kant, after seeing what Newton did in his works, apparently focus his attention in trying to understand and justify how science works, instead of pondering if it works at all. I think ‘science’ (I’m intentionally not defining that word, but using it as most people seem to use it) has proven itself to be useful in its goal of giving us means to manipulate conditions of the natural world to yield expected results, and all of that using a materialistic framework (although, a more refined one than, say, what was used in the beginning of modern chemistry). So, like Kant, instead of asking whether science works or not, I think we should try to understand why it has worked so well so far using the mentioned framework and metaphysical assumptions.
Usually, theories and frameworks that criticize hegemonic views, tend to do it from an -apparent- vantage point: they stand on the useful part of hegemonic view to show why the prevalent view is wrong and incomplete, but without providing a sufficiently satisfactory corpus of ideas that could explain everything that was usefully explained (or, at least, what has proven to yield practical technical and technological results in manipulating the world). This is exactly what I tend to perceive when I read about detractors of materialism (which is not to say that materialism is right, but only that the criticism is often poorly executed).
What currently pushes me back from accepting the idea of rebirth are two points that I’m not sure I’ve expounded yet:
a) Do I have sufficient and justified reasons to abandoning the paradigm I currently hold as useful (in a explanatory and practical sense)?
I think not, mainly because there’s not a sufficiently developed paradigm to compete with and to replace my current framework. Also, I don’t think there is enough research on past-life memories done yet to make me certainly uncertain of my current views. As I’ve previously said, I have mainly been tempted to consider rebirth as a factual process because of my inclination to buddhism in the first place. But it if weren’t for that, I don’t think I would I’ve ever considered the idea (which may say something bad about me, like me being too captured by my cultural and familiar worldviews).
b) Is the position taken by the Buddha (about the reality of rebirth) justified a priori and without any further testing?
I’m not so sure. Most people seem to implicitly consider samma samadhi as a infallible point for ganing knowledge, as if it allow us to put aside for a moment all the worldviews and habits of interpretation we carry on, allowing us to transcend the phenomenon of interpretation, seeing “things as they are”, with a guarantee of being free from any possible bias. And so, anything experienced during a realsamma samadhi experience (I don’t know what ultimate criteria is used to distinguish beyond any doubts between a “real” or a “fake” samma samadhi, when every follower of the EBTs assures that they are doing it in the authentic way) has to be taken as a kind of “revelatory experience”. However, what did the Buddha (or what do the texts tell us about it) do to check beyond his meditative experience whether X individual is Y individual reborn?
I think that in buddhism, as well as in other religious beliefs/practices, there is the common and understandable trend of assuming and taking a authority source/person/tradition as a epistemic vantage point that has a “better” access to reality as it is, free from interpretations, biases, beliefs, influences, etc. I say that it’s understandable to take such position because it is intellectually and emotionally comfortable to not having to question everytime whether an idea is to be investigated or not before being adopted. There is the implicit belief in the infallibilty of the source of authority. I’m not denying the possibility of such infallibility, but I’m ascerting that it is hard for an fallible person to know whether others have such epistemic vantage point.
I agree on the idea that consciousness or subjective experience is what precedes any inference about an alleged external world. However, I don’t see -as for now- any explanatory, predictive or instrumental power in believing in the hierarchical fundamentality of consciousness over matter.
What should we do with mystical experiences that seem to contradict, or at least, to not give direct support to the early buddhist ideas on rebirth? What should we do with Tibetan Buddhism, with hinduism, with Christianity, with Kabbalism? What criteria can we use to evaluate the epistemologies of mystical experiences?
None of the above is said to “prove” that rebirth is not a real process.
Instead, this is just an attempt to explain why I haven’t changed views yet. And, tacitly, it is a way to see if I find some ideas that could guide me towards the truth, whatever that could be (rebirth, not-rebirth, or something not conceived yet).
As I said in other posts, english is not my native language, so, please, excuse my lack of clarity, or if I “sound” too harsh or if there’s any grammar mistake.
To be fair, there are numerous metaphysics in science (social-constructivism, realism, materialism, phenomenology, pragmatism, and so on).
There are also some Christian denominations that believe that the bodies of the faithful will be physically resurrected in the end times, i.e. they are materialists.
There are also physicists who are not materialists, who think even spacetime not fundamental, but derived from a deeper, non-physical structure.
I don’t think “matter is all there is” has any bearing on science, except in the way it shapes the kind of research questions scientists ask.
If you believe “matter is all there is” you would ask “how does the brain generate consciousness”. If you believed something else, you might ask a different question, but it would still be science.
I’m not a 100% sure what you mean here.
In what way is “matter is all there is” useful to you? How do you use it in daily life to explain things?
What’s your current framework? How would you evaluate metaphysical assumptions about the world?
Of the two statements “matter is all there is” and “rebirth is real”, only one of them comes with a (proposed) method of verification.
Why is a statement that it is (allegedly) possible to verify, weaker or more tenuous than one that is, as far as I can see, impossible to verify?
No worries!
Please read this reply as if it were spoken with a friendly tone of voice!
Regarding point two. One of my favorite recent defenders of an alternative and well worked out position to physicalism is Bernardo Kastrup. If you want a well argued POV of an alternative metaphysics, check out his work, particularly his “The Idea of the World”. Now, do I think its a perfect metaphysics? no. But its certainly a good one to get a different perspective than the popular materialism that is so pervasive out there.
There’s also Phillip Goff’s “Galileo’s Error” which argues with a slightly different theory, panpsychism.
Regarding point three, I think there are good reasons to abandon physicalism, if you read some of the work of the individuals I have mentioned above as well as others like Chalmers, you’ll see why many others think so. Regarding part b of 3, I don’t think the position of the Buddha is a scientific position, its remains a religious-spiritual position, so it is still based in some way on trust and so on (but also on philosophical issues, such as the pragmatic wager argument outlined by Jayatilleke and expanded on by Thanissaro. However, there are other good reasons pointing to it being true (such as the reports of numerous other individuals of past life memories and so on, as well as other philosophical arguments like Dharmakirti’s classic argument).
Regarding 4, I don’t think we need to take all tradition and all ideas in the EBTs as true, and in Buddhism (as well as in other religions), there many more nuanced perspectives than textual fundamentalism. Indeed, I think the EBTs give us various tools (such as the simile of the raft, Kalama sutta, etc) which show us how to use the texts without becoming fundamentalists.
Regarding 5, all I can say is, fair enough, keep researching!
Finally, for six, clearly there are numerous mystical experiences and there is no single system set out to analyze or compare these. Since these are subjective experiences, the only way to try to understand them is subjectively, through mental development. It’s not a perfect discipline, but then again, there is no such thing!
I must have missed the rest of your points, or did you add them later? Anyways
The difference is that Buddhism has a method for obtaining the same knowledge as the founder. In prophetic religions you have to take the profet’s word for it, they don’t tell you “go up to the mountain, and God will tell you what I just told you”.
Buddhism is basically “do this, and you’ll understand what I understand”.
I still don’t see how “matter is all there is” is a explanatory, predictive or instrumental in everyday life.
Maybe it has psychological benefits? E.g. Christianity is pretty awful in the whole “go to hell for not believing” thing, so maybe it has some utility there? No demons and ghosts to worry about?
Is this different than the contradictions that come up in various scientific fields or politics or in ordinary life?
I think ultimately we just have to pick a field, be it Buddhism, Physics, Christianity, etc and see whether it works out.
Like, the Buddha is the only one focusing on suffering and claiming to have a solution for it. Personally that appeals to me, because after considering it, suffering seems to be the primary problem.
Other religions seem to be focusing on other problems. Psychology doesn’t have an answer.
Starting from a place of genuine uncertainty, where would be a better place to go?
Hi!
After giving a lot of thought to the topic of metaphysical assumptions in Buddhism, I think that I’m in a position to summarize in a better way all what I’ve been trying to say, and I’d like to share this explanation to you, in case that it elicits some additional answers and views that could lead to reach better conclusions.
This is how I would say it today: Can we trust in the power of introspection alone to attain some truths about reality?
I’m not questioning whether the Buddha experienced the sensation of having seen past lives, or having talked to some devas or maras, or having seen how an individual was reborn. What I’m questioning is if we can assure, just by means of individual experiences and introspection, that we indeed know that what we experience has a objective correlate/reference or that what we think are explanatory mechanisms of some phenomena are indeed the real mechanisms underlying those phenomena.
Did the Buddha and his followers put to test the idea that x individual was y individual in his/her past life, or that it was a matter of fact that z deva was present in front of me a few seconds ago, etc.
If they didn’t, are we just trusting their introspective powers as privileged?
Are we trusting in the account of the followers of the Buddha just because that account coincides with what the Buddha experienced?
If mere coincidence of introspective “knowledge” o revelation is good criteria to acquire some belief, then why not to trust in the “knowledge” brought by cases of mass hysteria? (Just in case, I’m not saying that what the Buddha and his followers experienced was based on some delusion; I’m just doubting in the power of mere numbers to say that some belief points to some truth about reality).
I hope that I’m adding some relevant perspective to the conversation.
If not (if I’m just exposing the same ideas than before), then ignore this message.
EDIT: I wanted to add another example:
There are some pathologies or traumatic events (for instance, in some cases of Alzheimer’s disease, or after some brain traumas) that can cause to the individual to experience a feeling of fragmentation of the sense of self. Does that feeling necessarily points to the ontological conventionality, fluidity or dependent origination of the self?
In this case, thefeeling caused by those pathologies and traumatic events can lead to a reflection that reveals some actual aspect of reality (of the self, in this example).
However, I doubt that some cerebral process or state that could cause some feeling or intuitionnecessarily reveals aspects of reality.
I recently came over something called Ostrom’s law, which goes something like “what works in practice must also work in theory.”
So, if it’s possible to make an end of suffering in practice, it must also be permitted by whatever principles actually govern reality, whether we can comprehend them or not.
Maybe it makes sense to start with the practical, and then infer what the metaphysics permit, rather than starting with the metaphysics and trying to infer whether the practical can work?
)
At the same time, I feel its important to address some points that you as well as the OP have stated as far as Buddhism’s place in modern worldview is concerned. This will be quite long, so apologies :
