Paul Williams & Intellectual Consistency

To me, if someone converts out of Buddhism, he/she has never really understood what Dhamma-Vinaya is all about.

Beside that, given the impersonal and natural way the Dhamma eventuates liberation, if anyone has contact with a glimpse of right view, one way or the other, over a long enough length of time, and possibly lifetimes, its effects will come about.

For us who like to call ourselves Buddhists now, all this only serves as a reminder of how easy it is to slip back and away from the eightfold path in a future birth if we don’t take up the challenge to make all we can to attain to stream entry this very lifetime.

This is for such kind of abandoning and denial of the four Noble truths is a very strong possibility for anyone not yet attained to the first of the fruitions the Dhamma has the power to eventuate …

:anjal:

If Pure Land Buddhism is true, then those who call on the name of Amida Buddha are equal in status to non-returners, due to no merit of their own. This is a religious belief which may or not be true, but I personally find it more attractive than leaving Buddhism entirely.

Fair enough. Trust the Dhamma in whatever shape or form you find it. Evaluate its practical implications and subsequent results. That is my motto anyway…

As per many EBTs , if it is effective in reducing what is unwholesome and increasing what is wholesome , and offers glimpses of peace and freedom from suffering , go for it …

:anjal:

There is really no point in attempting to argue with people about their faith-based religious choices.

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I don’t personally believe that Amida Buddha is a historical Buddha, but millions of Buddhists do, and they find the same kind of spiritual fulfillment that Paul Williams seems to be looking for.

I agree with the Rinzai Zen Master Bassui Tokusho that the celestial buddhas and bodhisattvas of Mahayana scriptures, including Amida Buddha, are symbolic expressions of the one Dharmakaya:

Everyone who has realized this Mind, attaining to Buddhahood, wants to make it known to mankind. But men, clinging stupidly to superficial forms, find it hard to believe in this purposeless Dharma-kaya, this pure, true Buddha.

To give it a name Buddhas resort to such metaphors as “Treasure Gem of Free Will,” “Great Path,” “Amitabha Buddha,’” “Buddha of Supreme Knowledge,” “Jizo,” “Kannon,” “Fugen,” “One’s Face before one’s parents were born.” The Bodhisattva Jizo is the guide through the Six Realms of Existence, he being the symbol of the power which controls the six senses.

Every epithet of a Buddha or a Bodhisattva is simply a different designation for the One-mind. If one believes in his own Buddha-mind, it is the same as believing in all Buddhas.
https://sites.google.com/site/esabsnichtenglisch/bassui-tokusho-the-letters?tmpl=%2Fsystem%2Fapp%2Ftemplates%2Fprint%2F&showPrintDialog=1

Non-Buddhists might not like the diversity of interpretation within Buddhism, but I believe it to be one of Buddhism’s greatest strengths as a religion that it can accommodate many different understandings for many different types of people.

Just as Amida Buddha represents the one Dharmakaya, the Pure Land is symbolic for the realm of Nirvana. Shinran described rebirth into the Pure Land as “the birth of non-birth,” just as the Buddha described Nirvana as “the unborn.”

The Tibetan version is that they, including the pure lands themselves, are the sambogakaya expression (the Tibetans are more literal, but I take it as symbolic) since dharmakaya is the empty form/dimension and sambogakaya is the lumininous one. Shakyuni Buddha and the enlightened historical gurus are the nirmanaya. But I think the Tibetan explanation still comes close to the ch’an/zen teachers who dabble in or incorporate pure land.

Within Tibetan Buddhism, as well as Mahayana Buddhism more broadly, there’s debate as to the meaning of emptiness and what it entails:

The debate between Yogacara and Madhyamaka has been going on for over a thousand years, but these two schools of thought need not be mutually exclusive.

In Tibetan Buddhism, the ultimate goal of Pure Land practice is to realize Amitabha Buddha as one’s own Buddha-nature, rather than simply an external being. This is also true in Ch’an/Zen.

Yes, but this isn’t the same debate as shentong-rangtong, per se, which is closer to the Dhātuvāda-Śūnyavāda debate in Japanese contemporary “critical” buddhology.

Contemporary mainstream Chinese Buddhism is said to be situated at the intersection of Yogācāra and Madhyamaka.

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I have studied in both Geluk and Nyingma. So I am very aware of the shentong-rangtong debate and the arguments on both sides. This has no bearing on the interpretation of the pureland and amitabha as sambogakaya—just on the details of how all of that is described. All four tibetan buddhist schools accept pure lands regardless of where they fall on the rangtong-shentong (or comparable) divide.

That’s exactly what I’m most comfortable with, instead of too heavily relying on either extreme.

I was talking about how they interpret the ultimate nature of reality, the Dharmakaya. According to Yogacara, the Dharmakaya is more than just emptiness. I am not qualified to discuss this more in depth.

Ah yes. Fair. I am not qualified either, though. It’s been too many years since I studied these schools in detail! And yogachara is rough on the brain!

If Williams finds fulfillment in Catholicism that’s cool. His conversion doesn’t invalidate his previous work.

There’s lots of interesting stuff in the Bible. I’d recommend checking out Jordan Peterson’s lecture series The Psychological Significance of the Biblical Stories. There’s a rich tradition found in the Hebrew Bible & New Testiment.

If you are attached to there being a permanent self or a soul then the saddhamma isn’t for you. Seems reasonable to me.

I am sure the historical Jesus would be shocked by the Gospels and Paul’s letters just like the historical Buddha Gotama would be shocked by Amida Buddha worship.

Pure Land Buddhism sorta throws a little dust in the face of the Noble Eightfold Path and I personally do find marginal issue with that, but it is also a rich tradition, just clearly not saddhamma. There is zero merit or attainment gained in reciting Amida Buddha’s name. To me that’s ludicrous.

That being said, my favorite temple/monastery has an absolutely massive Amida Buddha statue and that doesn’t bother me one bit. It is one of the only places(in the USA) I’ve found where all Buddhist practitioners regardless of tradition or sect are openly welcomed and encouraged to congregate. Most claim to be welcoming, but really aren’t.

If someone is easily converted from Buddhism to Christianity or Islam for-that-matter who really cares? I don’t. I wasn’t raised Christian so I am not sore on them nor threatened by them either.

[quote=“DKervick, post:24, topic:11443, full:true”]
There is really no point in attempting to argue with people about their faith-based religious choices.
[/quote] 100%!!

The Dalai Lama is spot on in his campaign for religious harmony! If only…

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I think this is a total exaggeration. I don’t believe in a creator God, so Buddhism makes more sense to me. If it weren’t for the creator God thing, though, there are so many reasons I would pick an Abrahamic tradition over Buddhism, and namely, it’s the Abrahamic traditions’ emphasis on social justice. Just in another thread we were talking about Buddhism and the caste system and slavery and how the Buddha preferred to opt out right than fight these systems of oppression. I can’t tell you how much this seriously bugs me. But, I know plenty of engaged Buddhists doing great stuff and I am still primarily inspired by the Dharma/dhamma.

But yeah, I am inspired by Jesus’ hanging out with the poor, fighting debtors, confronting the Roman state, etc. Sometimes I feel like you can tell the Buddha came from a privileged class/caste just in terms of how little he wanted to rock the boat of lay society. Like the prohibition on slaves and indebted people from ordaining. Which by the way today, bars a huge per centage of milenials in countries where higher education puts you in lifetime debt with poor job prospects to boot. Islam and Christianity (historically speaking) totally find usary and debtors to be the problematic ones, not the indebtors. And Judaism offers an entire struggle from enslavement and oppression.

Anyway, I am not trying to say the Abrahamic traditions are better. There are plenty of things that leave me sour in them too. I am just point out, that when it comes to social justice, their teachings do it better. If you are motivated by compassion and loving kindness and ending/lessening suffering on this planet, they offer some tempting teachings for that.

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I thought about putting an edit in my above post… but I will just say it here, so that it is clear: I am not saying I find these traditions superior to Dharma. I just wanted to provide some examples of what these traditions have to offer. I find religious harmony important, and to me, that includes not belittling people’s choices of what religion to practice. One could make similar claims that people who left Catholicism didn’t understand Catholicism. I wonder if my mom would have converted to Buddhism had she grown up around Franciscans instead of french catholic nuns in Brazil who made the children of poor parents clean the school grounds instead of letting them play during recess. Or if she had come across the contemplative traditions of the carmelites. There is a richness of tradition there that she didn’t see and therefore left the Catholic Church to find something that spoke to her more on these issues. But in the end, she found Buddhism, it spoke to her, and that is the tradition we practiced. Just as there is no point on belittling Buddhists who convert to Christianity, one shouldn’t belittle the Christians who come to Buddhism. There are a lot of life experiences and intellectual reasonings that lead us to pick a tradition. And it is wonderful that we live in a world where we can choose what spiritual traditions speak to us.

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What do you expect from your religion? :slightly_smiling_face:

I am in the midst of coming out of a several year crises of faith in the Dharma. And I am slowly coming back to it now. So that is a difficult question to answer on a forum like this! But at this point, some good wisdom and guidance to decrease suffering in my life and to continue to develop kindness and compassion towards others. Buddhism has been and continues to be the primary framework for this, even during my crises of faith. But I don’t close my eyes to how other traditions offer guidance in this. In fact I have found a lot of wisdom in interreligious dialogue with Christians in terms of deepening my own relationship to the Dharma. And when it comes to social justice issues, I have often turned to catholic liberation theology to find inspiration in how I can draw from the Dharma to address issues of social justice.

I care deeply about how social institutions foster dukkha by encouraging hatred, greed, and ignorance and am not content to just address this in my own life in meditation (though I think this is important too). Even though I am not convinced the Buddha did a great job at addressing these structures in lay society, I do think he provided us with a framework that can be used to address this. I am okay with that. But I understand if that is not enough to inspire all 8 billion people on this planet and they find inspiration elsewhere.

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I wonder if Buddhism is the least harmful religion?

As religious and/or political institutions, I don’t think it always is. The marriage of buddhist monasticism and the state, ethnic cleansing of Muslims, homophobia by certain monastics, etc.

Speaking of homophobia. When I was a queer teenager on dharmawheel reading that gay sex was “sexual misconduct” led to a lot of depression and angst. I was lucky that that didn’t lead to suicide. And suicide among queer teens is a problem all over the world.

All of our world religious traditions have extremists with blood and forms of oppression on its hands. They also all have voices that speak out against these behaviors from within these traditions. I certainly don’t think the Buddha or the authors of the Mahāyāna sutras would condone these forms of violence.

Anyway, I think we should be a bit more humble in regards to the history of our own traditions and accept that there are countless virtuous paths out there. I am not enlightened, there is no way for me to know that my path is the right one. It seems to be, for me. And I am inspired by the countless people that appear to have attained some or all the fruits of the path across the Buddhist traditions. Good enough for me. But I won’t go around saying, “we are the best.” Just strikes me as a lot of grasping and ego with that.

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You mind explain a bit ?