I never said or implied that Secular buddhists were “total morons.” Perhaps my use of the word delusional contributed to your perception of what I said? Sorry, I don’t mince words unless the situation warrants it—and it doesn’t here. What the author of the article (Ted Meissner) described here:
is a good example of what I was referring to when I said “Secular buddhists believe the Buddha may have been delusional.” If delusional is too much for you, then substitute completely mistaken in this regard or misled by his own experience or whatever else suits your fancy.
Well that’s the tricky part of it, the buddha wouldn’t really be susceptible to delusion for the secularists to be right, he would just have taken his experiences as truth when, at the bottom of it all, you could never really know. It’s kind of like the brain in a vat thought experiment, or the simulation assertion, where your own experience can never truly be trusted because it could always just be an illusion. Imagine a dream so insanely vivid that there is absolutely no reason to think it isn’t reality except for the fact that you wake up afterwards, but now imagine that your not asleep, but instead in deep meditation. How do you know you are actually transporting your consciousness, or just experiencing an ultra vivid dream? I choose to believe that somehow the buddha’s awakening, his buddhahood, and other people’s arahantship, allows them to have better reasons for why they think their experiences are real and not products of mind. But to be fair, these experiences could seem so incredibly real, that even a buddha would think they are real. I know that anything might not be real with that line of thought, but an experience in deep meditation is a little different. But as I said, with all the buddha’s other knowledge that is clearly correct, I’d like to think he wouldn’t put a major doctrine in his teachings if he wasn’t totally sure about it for whatever reason. Although again, he could have been totally sure, and without the science we have today, he would have no reason to think otherwise. It’s a tough situation, it really is, but I do fall on the side of trusting his experiences and his analysis that they were indeed real. The only other thing, that I’ll admit I am exploring a little bit these days, is that the answer lies somewhere in a third option. That he meant what he meant, and saw what he saw, but it’s not exactly how we understand it today. That there exists a kind of deeper truth to what he said that isn’t easily understood in the first place, and somehow was lost in interpretation over the years. So the texts themselves are accurate, but still the interpretation is a little off. Don’t ask what that correct interpretation may be, because I’m still studying and exploring. Either way, I’m trusting the buddha’s most important doctrines, and just remaining a bit vague with my views until further notice and more experience and information. Which the buddha promoted regardless.
Ok but what you are describing IS delusion! Thinking you are right about something when in reality you’re not. Not seeing reality clearly, imagining it to be one way and in truth it’s another way. You can’t just say “that’s not delusion” - it is a textbook definition.
No you’re right, you’re right, it’s tough. Like I said, I do fall on the side of trusting the buddha’s analysis. It’s just complicated is all I’m saying, and I don’t blame the secularists for their views. I’m just saying they’re really not being unreasonable, they just choose not to trust the guy and we do. I think we’re both being reasonable, we just come at it from a different angle.
There are some interesting questions of approach here.
As someone whose day job is science, my impression is that the Secular Buddhist approach (as in Ted’s article) shows little appreciation of other possible knowledge systems.
Personally, I don’t find looking for scientific evidence for Dhamma ideas particularly interesting. Science is a particular knowledge system that is really useful for understanding atoms and stars, and developing technology, but that doesn’t necessarily make it the right tool for awakening.
I think it’s interesting that Dave points out the similarity to other faith based systems. Is there a problem with that? Should Dhamma be defined by a Scientific World View?
This line of thinking is essentially a projection of one’s own mental limitations onto the Buddha, resting upon the view that one’s understanding of the mind is already maximized. “Because my mind can only conceive of things this far, therefore everyone else can similarly only conceive of things so far.” In short, hubris. And if there were one person you’d consider giving the benefit of the doubt to regarding claims that seem beyond imagining, it would be the Buddha, yes? But those holding to or partial to Secular buddhist views don’t do this. In fact, they do the opposite, loudly suggesting, even claiming, that the Buddha was deluded by his own experience. Again, if there’s one person who wouldn’t be deluded there, it would be the Buddha. If in your own mind, you preclude the non-delusion of the Buddha, where does that leave you? What doors are you closing or blinding yourself to the presence of by holding these views?
(I’m not asking you personally jimisommer. Your post is a helpful step stool for my soap box and rhetorical questions.)
That the Buddha taught multiple births based on his own meditative experience, is totally acceptable to me, but not RE-birth. As that, to me, includes the idea that there is something that can be identified as the same person between the births. To me that is the soul theory.
I think that if you take anattā to mean not-self, then we probably will not be able to have a mutually satisfying discussion of this. For, to me, it means ‘not soul’ as is mostly found (in the EBTs?) according to the PTS dictionary.
I do not dismiss main “religious” and “supernatural” ideas in the EBTs or the Buddha’s teaching, but I do not accept what I believe is the interpretation ‘rebirth’ of various words in the explanation of the First Superknowledge, for, to me, they require the Buddha to not teach with an open hand, to be imprecise, to not be the unexcelled teacher.
To be precise ‘re-brith’ could be easily translated as ‘punna-jāti’ or ‘jāti punna-punnam’, but that term is not used at all in the First Superknowledge description: (PDF) Accurate translations of Catu-(rūpa)-jhāna and Te-vijjā passages | Joe Smith - Academia.edu (I should relabel that ‘my accurate…’)
And as I understand ‘jāti punna-punnam’ (or punna-jāti) is not used by the Buddha in the First Four Nikayas at all.
If you could show me where in the EBTs the Buddha taught of re-birth, literally punna-jāti, that would be great, as it has escaped my research.
Instantly, Buddhism is akin to Xianity, and is not set apart the way “visible here and now” would seem to indicate. Rebirth is not visible here and now except as a wholly subjective experience re: meditation that follows on long-instantiated social expectations. Just like everywhere else.
Brahmali said once that we need to consider seriously what else the Buddha said, because of the things we can indeed know here and now. But technical skill is not a guarantee
of metaphysical accuracy, given the variables involved. The whole ideological makeup is thus put up into “as yet undemonstrated”.
(Yes, people need to understand rebirth as a central EBT concern; that’s true, Sujato. We get it, and keep saying so; some people are using a psychological model for it, but if it’s clear that that isn’t in the EBT, we’re good to go, yeah?)
The technical skills of meditation, from Buddhism and elsewhere, remain behind as something that can be investigated, with mechanisms of action clearly demonstrated, effects which are visible here & now, etc. I already said in another thread that the title “Secular Buddhism” was inaccurate; I think Sujato just wants them to remove the “Buddhism” word as well. I suggested “Contemplative”.
Is that really all this is? Secular Buddhists just oughtn’t to use the word? Maybe just say that…?
Secularists don’t generally preclude such things. There attitude is just that since the traditionalist views about the denizens of higher sense realms are extraordinary claims for which there is little compelling evidence, there is no point in making one’s practice depend on such claims.
I seriously question my own views if and when they diverge from the Buddha - If Buddhism has taught me anything over all these years, it is that “my” understanding of things is very often biased, incomplete, narrow, self-referential, and overly confident.
I suspect you would bring up Mt. Meru and 80,000 year human life lengths etc…at this point. IMO there are some things in the suttas that are not meant to be taken totally literally, and other things which may have been added over time. So an investigation of these things is necessary. Since discovering suttacentral, I can say that I appreciate reading Bhante Sujato’s in depth investigations of these texts. But alas, I have not arrived anywhere near a perfect reading of the suttas, and I cannot with complete certainty tell you which bits, if any, should be discarded. I allow the possibility that Mt. Meru could be true in some sense which is beyond my current understanding, and I have faith enough in the Buddha that this seems plausible to me.
But how often do I think of Mt. Meru? Very seldom. I cannot say the same for rebirth - I fully expect “life” to continue at death, and I know that death is on its way. This is not a trivial issue as far as I’m concerned. That being said, I don’t at all expect that everyone will feel the same - We are individuals with different perspectives (and those perspectives are not permanent) and “it’s all good!”
Thank you for sharing your perspective. But I don’t quite understand why literal re-birth would necessarily imply the existence of a soul. If actual rebirth is a process as natural as the continuation we experience in this life, and if there is no soul necessary for us to exist one moment to the next, then why should a soul be assumed necessary for the continuation of existence after physical death? It is a real process, but with nothing substantial (permanent) underlying it - this is my view.
One sees animals every day. Are they not denizens of a lower realm, marked by limited intelligence, diversity of form, and a generally brutal, fearful existence?
Some few animals are very lucky to be treated as adored pets of wealthy (on a global scale) humans. Compare that number to the number of animals in less fortunate circumstances of being…
And speaking of animals, I’m curious how they fit into the Secularist buddhist worldview. I haven’t come across any explanations of their place in it…
I’m not sure secularists all have the same view. But, by and large, I imagine they regard animals other than human beings as as constituting an extremely diverse biological assortment. They all share some traits with human animals - eating, reproducing, ambulating - but also differ from us in varying degrees according to species. Like us, they have a lifespan during which their own characteristic individual clusters and patterns of mental and physical states arise and pass away in accordance with causal conditions. And then, eventually, their lifespans come to an end and those individual patterns transform and die out.
Do you allow that it’s true the way the average Iron Age individual would have understood it? You kinda have to, if you’re going to be consistent about these things. Iron Age folk thought of it as true in a very real sense, however infrequently they thought about it. It was not an esoteric teaching, it was basically just geography to them.
Is it that way for anyone here? I’d like to hear about it.
There is no “secularist buddhist worldview”. There’s secularism as a lack of religious worldviews, and then from that place, all sorts of views can show up. Probably animals are evolved forms of life, for most secularists, such that basic biology comprises the response to your question.
You realize this rhetoric cuts both ways, don’t you?
Jayarava has written extensively on this topic, so I’ll mention a short little .pdf here: Some Problems with Believing in Rebirth. There are many philosophical problems with rebirth in general; Buddhist versions are not exempt.
Maybe Secular Buddhists should drop the word ‘Buddhist’. Buddhists, in turn, should stop claiming that their metaphysics are uniquely visible here & now. They aren’t. They are one among many.
What if we said the Buddha had great skill with a/the way to remove all dissatisfying phenomenological experiences of any kind, and then we said nothing about Iron Age cosmology or ontology?
Indeed. There are so many insects. So many. And few are loved in the manner of a cat.
Incidentally, I do not think my cat is a deva, just to be clear, since this is the internet, and one can never be sure. I meant it as a joke: the old trope of cats considering themselves God.
