You realize this cuts both ways, don’t you?
Of course. Now we just need a method of investigation which controls for mere preferences and other such biases. Right?
What kind of answers would you like?
Your question seemed to presuppose that because secularists don’t try to offer a rationalization or justification of the ways of the universe - one that explains in some deep way why some people suffer more than others - than their account is deficient or lacking something.
The next time someone tells you that you are not a ‘Buddhist’ because you are skeptical of ‘rebirth’ (which has, and, tragically, will happen, on this very forum, and I assume elsewhere); quote this passage of yours.
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I’m going to be researching this controversy a bit more, and mulling it over - maybe I’ll get back to you about it later. But I don’t think I need to adopt an average iron age worldview, no - most average iron agers were not Buddhas, let alone Buddhists, let alone enlightened.
I think their claim is that overcoming that particular form of delusion isn’t necessary for awakening. They pretty much say you can never really trust your own mind’s experiences but you can still let go of craving and a sense of self, and in doing those 2 things, you can still end suffering, even if you decide not to take anyone’s experiences at face value. Their claim is that subjective feeling is really the only thing you can ever trust, not that anything is real or not, but only that you’re suffering or you’re not. Regardless of whether the reality you perceive is real or not, you know whether you’re suffering or not. Like you said, if you’re going to trust anyone’s analysis of reality, choosing the buddha is your best bet, but it’s not crazy to think that even he may have been deceived by the emptiness of experience. I say no, if he thought he it could have been a product of mind, he would have said so. But like the secularists say, back then there may not have been any reason to doubt such things. So it wasn’t a delusion per say, it was just a mistake. I don’t think that, but that’s why I don’t think it’s crazy if someone else does. As far as “loudly suggesting,” those are individuals, and maybe a majority, but it’s not fair to put that on all secularists because I know plenty who think my ideas about it are totally reasonable and so are his, and we get along just fine. I think a big problem here is that people don’t realize that sujato’s original post was not about all secularists everywhere, but those that are “loudly suggesting” as you say, which as I said may be the majority, but if you are a secularist and that isn’t you, well then his original post doesn’t apply to you. Maybe he should have made that a little more clear, but when I first read it I knew right away that’s what he meant.
It doesn’t matter what I was expecting. The unfair caricatures are intellectual cheap shots and you know it.
Removing rebirth (or reinterpreting it into something unrecognizable, which accomplishes the same thing) from the Buddhadhamma does make it deficient and incomplete. It no longer makes any sense. That’s just my view of it and clearly others see it differently.
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What method do you propose?
Is that said because of personal direct experience of the end of suffering, i.e.Nibbana, or is it a faith-based claim? If claiming the former, I have more questions. If the latter, how is it different from any other faith-based claim?
Every early Buddhist was an ‘iron-ager’; the Buddha taught about Iron Age Mt. Meru, heavens, spirits… Iron Age stuffs considered to be really-real. The Buddha treated these things as real.
Why wouldn’t you?
The basic shape of my thinking would be to examine epistemologies from the philosophy of science, after girding oneself with basic critical thinking. I’d come prepared to criticize e.g. pragmatist theories of truth, appeals to authority, and so forth.
You?
I don’t see why people who have a secular perspective can’t start with that idea or vantage point without clinging to that too much, and then progress along the path until the issue of rebirth resolves itself-- which I am convinced it does in people earnestly practicing and following true Dhamma.
These things take years, sometimes decades to be sorted. The only mistake here is clinging to the idea of secularism or asserting that you reject rebirth outright. Just don’t close the door to it. Try the idea on for size or play with it.
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How’s that going for you re: materialism, Wiccan spirits… you see? For an ardent Druid, the truth of their cosmology appears… you see?
Anecdotes and personal preference are simply inadequate here.
The Noble Eightfold Path.
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It wasn’t a cheap shot, just a straightforward answer to the question about secular thinking about the causes of suffering.
Sigh.
Well, so be it.
When you combine AN3.65, AN3.66, and SN12.70, you see that not believing in rebirth is totally fine, as long as you don’t reject it outright either. Staying agnostic about it is actually part of the buddha’s teachings, and it seems you can ride that all the way to arahantship if everything else is in place.
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That doesn’t answer my question…
Well that was only meant to mean that it’s neither. It just appears that it’s a logical inference that if suffering is caused by craving and a sense of self, once those things are uprooted, suffering is also eliminated. So it’s not really taken on faith. Nothing is taken on faith and I think that’s the point of the secularists. My reasons for taking it on faith for the time being is that the buddha’s other powers that could be verified by others seemed legitimate, as well as other people seeing eachother when they both visited those realms. But that’s neither here nor there, the point is it’s not based on faith, just on a kind of buddhist logic.
Most people have a period of exploration with ideas rather than swallowing them whole. On the other hand, sometimes people become rigidly fixed to an idea of something, even Dhamma, without actually practicing it in body, speech, and mind.
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Sounds like a lot is being taken on faith in that description.
- faith that suffering is caused by craving and a sense of self
- faith that craving and a sense of self can be identified and uprooted
- faith that one can has the capability to uproot those things
- faith that suffering can be eliminated
I think a lot of secularists rely on faith more than a lot of them realize.
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