Curiously enough, when we ordained bhikkhunis this is exactly the argument used against us by those who would defend discrimination against women.
It seems I have to keep making the same point again and again. My criticism is not that they have doubts about rebirth, which I think is reasonable (even though I have a different opinion), but that they imply or argue that rebirth wasn’t central to the Buddha’s teaching. These claims are wrong and undermine their self-image as being based on reason and evidence.
True, but I’d like to think that the buddha’s mind was sufficiently advanced that he could tell the difference between an actual experience of projecting your consciousness to another realm or experiencing the arising and passing away of beings in the world, and just an hallucination inside his mind. The buddha must have known that it’s possible for someone to experience something that’s just like real life but is actually a delusion, so there must have been something that led him to believe it was real. Maybe by uprooting all delusion in his mind, he knew that what he was experiencing must be real, or maybe he was so in tune with his own mind, that he could see that what he experienced wasn’t just neurons firing like in a dream, but that his consciousness was actually witnessing something external. I assume he could tell the difference between external and internal, and although even that could have been a delusion, he must have seen that the probability that it was all true was actually far more likely in those instances instead of it all being in his mind. It really comes down to whether you trust the buddha’s analysis of his own experiences as real, or whether you think he was mistaken and essentially, delusional. Once you realize it comes down to that, it’s easier for me to accept the former, but I do understand if people choose the later instead, it just doesn’t seem most likely to me. Also, it is just my temporary standing, I would never cement my view until I have these experiences myself and also decide that they are real and not just products in the mind. So it is that final piece of my view that I think most skillfully marries wisdom and faith.
This is the main issue, of course. But which parts of the Path require this belief in rebirth? Because, as the article here mentions, there’s a perfectly suitable idea about kamma in play for Secular Buddhists, and jhana is a state that many contemplative folk attain, secular & not.
So really, this idea of grouping these things together looks like a subtle way to try sneaking rebirth in the back door. However, rebirth really does stand apart with respect to its lack of demonstrability. Sure it’s in the texts; so maybe “integral” in this sense. And, some people really take to the idea. But to say that it’s “necessary” for practice seems incorrect.
(As for keeping the Coke the real thing, I’m going to suggest that it’s already a Fanta-sy thinking that one has such a thing in the first place. )
…and you know what, actually, that reminds me of a question I sometimes ask: which part(s) of Iron Age Indian culture are requisite vis-a-vis Buddhist practice? I’d love to hear responses to this.
Maybe nobody’s mind is, or could be, sufficiently advanced that they can infallibly tell the difference. We also have to appreciate how difficult a struggle it has been for human beings to develop sophisticated understandings of how their minds work, a struggle which is still ongoing.
The Buddha had a theory of sensory consciousness according to which sensory consciousness occurs when the sensory organs in some sense make “contact” with an external object of some kind - described as a “form”. This sounds a bit like a variety of similar theories of vision held in the ancient Greek world around the same time, theories that have since become known as intromission theories - where a form or eidos enters the eyes and makes contact with their internal surfaces - and extromission theories - according to which rays of some kinds are emitted by the eyes and make contact with external objects. They were nice theories for their time, but have since been fairly decisively refuted, as a more sophisticated empirical understanding of both light and the anatomy and function of our sensory organs has been developed.
Those earlier understandings made it more difficult to understand how hallucinations and other kinds of mental fabrication and construction could occur, so it was natural for people in the grip of such theories to assume that if they had a visual or auditory experience of any kind, the apparent object of such an experience had to have some kind of external, independent reality. The Buddha might have been no different from others in this regard in believing this.
Fortunately for us, it makes little difference. We are like people in a little boat on a wild sea, attempting to find a place of peace and stillness. Is the sea 50 feet deep and filled only with plankton and guppies? Or is it 50,000 feet deep and filled with dragons and nagas and other fantastic sea monsters? It doesn’t matter.
It really doesn’t set itself apart from other faith-based claims, unfortunately. I guess this is simply where the Secular mindset prioritizes critical thinking.
You don’t believe that ‘contact’ happens? Please forgive me, but which aspect of the Buddha’s teachings do you actually find convincing?
To think that the Buddha was basically a schizophrenic madman, hallucinating weird things and confusing them for reality, and then to devote your life to following his teachings? What can this be but madness?! lol - but I don’t want to discourage anyone away from the Dhamma. Of course, anyone is free to take from it what they find valuable. Nor do I want to argue endlessly about rebirth - I just want to say that to some people it does matter: Was the Buddha perfectly enlightened and did he teach the path to true, permanent liberation, or was he some kind of a philosopher who suffered from auditory and visual hallucinations? I’m placing my bets on the former, but I understand that not everyone will agree…
Yes, I think this is the main thing that separates Secular buddhists from traditional Buddhists. Secular buddhists believe the Buddha may have been delusional whereas traditional Buddhists believe he was fully awakened. How far being “fully awakened” extends is debatable and speculative, but it surely extends beyond our everyday knowledge and surely precludes the belief that he was delusional. Perhaps this is just my bias speaking, but it seems that traditional Buddhists’ foundation of how they view the teachings is one predominantly of faith whereas Secular buddhists’ is predominantly of doubt.
Anagarika, you will have to forgive me for being uninterested in responding to the “call”. I hope most Buddhists decide to stick to their practices, and avoid the painful, and probably mostly pointless and embarrassing, intellectual proliferation that this kind of debate will generate. In the end, a Buddhism which insists on putting a protective wall around a massive body of fundamentalist orthodoxy and mindless traditionalism will embroil itself in a mass of scandalous and easily discredited pseudo-science, which will ultimately harm it.
I tried to articulate my own reservations about secular Buddhism above, since I regard the most important, and most viable, teachings of the Buddha to be his views and instructions on the nature and causes of suffering, and his views and instructions on the possibility of the end of suffering and the path leading to the end of suffering. I take it that the achievement of this goal is really only possible for people who are finally willing to renounce worldly life and its illusory values utterly, turn their backs on that life, and seek complete liberation. I take it that many secular Buddhists don’t really believe in the possibility of such and end of suffering and such a path, and so they focus on using the teachings only as a thoroughly lay technique for alleviating a certain amount of unnecessary pain in the pursuit of worldly goals. And they also don’t seem to see any reason for supporting the living of the holy life, and a community of renunciants unwaveringly dedicated to living it. I think the latter is essential for the dhamma to survive, since even the survival of the dream of true liberation is only possible if there are people striving with all their might to come within reach of it, and others who venerate those efforts, and the goal of purity and freedom toward which they are directed.
But these efforts require an intense focus on the psychic processes taking place in this “fathom-long body”, and nothing else.
Dan, it’s cool. I do feel that the Dhamma of the Buddha is important, and I perceive this Dhamma as being available and easily understandable. What is one person’s Dhamma and another’s “fundamentalist orthodoxy” is OK with me; reasonable and thoughtful people will have different approaches to the Path and practice, and you’re right that perhaps too much energy is spent in online debate over matters in dispute. One commenter to Ted’s essay was a perception that the Middle Way had been forgotten in these discussions, and that secularists were perhaps too extreme and dogmatic in their own approaches to issues such as rebirth. So perhaps what you’re embracing is, for you and for many, a thoughtful and insightful middle way that works, and I completely resonate with that approach. I’m all in with the full Dhamma; what I’d call a “mindful traditionalism,” to borrow your phrase somewhat, and it’s great that we can dialogue this way here on D&D in this way.
Well I totally see what your saying but to be clear I’m not saying that. The way you phrased that was pretty leading, it’s not about whether he was delusional or fully awakened, because he could be fully awakened but still not know if what he experienced was real or not. Your mind could be reacting 100% as if it was real and it still isn’t. The real question is whether you trust the buddha’s analysis that there is a higher probability that it was real than it just being a product of mind. The way you phrased it makes it seem like secular buddhists are total morons, but they’re really not, they’ve just decided that the probability is higher that the buddha’s more beyond experiences were just a product of mind. Obviously between being delusional or fully awakened, anyone will say fully awakened, even secular buddhists. But between trusting his analysis that his beyond experiences were real or just a product of mind, that’s a little more nuanced and accurate description of the difference. Secular buddhists say no the buddha shouldn’t have taken his experiences as real, true buddhists say the buddha would have known if they were just a product of mind or at least would have said if there was any doubt. I am with the latter group, but temporarily suspending my disbelief until I can have those experiences myself. But those in the former group, the secularists, theyre not crazy or stupid to think that way, to them it just seems more probable. Those of us in the latter group just have more faith in the buddha’s analysis, so you are certainly correct in that it does come down to doubt, just not unreasonable doubt, just as the faith true buddhists have is not unreasonable faith.
I agree with you in spirit, but I still can’t understand why someone would think the Buddha was fully enlightened (aka 100% free from delusion) and yet still somehow subject to massive delusions…I mean you are literally talking about mutually exclusive alternatives here! (the only way to reconcile this would be to radically redefine what enlightenment means - in the end what this amounts to is substituting your own views for those of the Buddha IMO)
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.)
)