Sunday, September 04, 2011
Hinduism and Buddhism
I have read translations of many sutras and this is typical of what Siddhartha Gautama Shakyamuni Buddha taught - he may not have said these exact words but this is certainly the essence of what he taught and is also exemplified by his life for he had many teachers and practiced every sort of discipline before he had his enlightenment under the Bodhi tree. Buddha circa 6th century BCE was the start of what might today be called cognitive therapy (my glass is not half empty but half full ; do not be sorry that it is over but rather be glad that it happened) - I often doubt quotes here and go searching but this one I feel is genuine.
The Buddha would tell you that it does not matter whether he actually said it. All that matter is if you examine and practice it yourself and verify that it is true.
Siddhartha was from Maganda and spoke that language and not Pali. The teachings were an oral tradition which was gradually redacted in Pali language around 400 BCE and it was shortly after that a great split occurred between the Mahayana (Great Vehicle) and the Theravadins (Way of the Elders) [pejoratively called Hinayana or Lesser Vehicle by the Mahayanists] Sri Lanka is now the home of the Theravadins who believe that only an individual can work out or cultivate his/her own enlightenment and it is likened to learning to ride a bicycle - no one can GIVE you that knowledge; you must fall down many times in your attempts. Yana means vehicle / ark (like Noahs Ark) - The Mahayanists believe that it is so selfish to save only oneself as to be an impediment to salvation/liberation/moksha so therefore the vehicle/ark/teaching is an ark which can save all sentient beings. A bodhisattva is a being on the verge of nirvana/nibbana (snuff out, extinguish, like a candle) and might chose to escape the wheel of birth and death (that wheel is first mentioned in , I think, the Svetsvatara Upanisad and is depicted on the flag of India)... but the Bodhisattva vows to retain some blemish and to be reborn again and again and not enter nibbana until all sentient beings have been saved. A Christian missionary once told a Zen Master that he would go to hell if he did not confess Christianity and the Zen Master explained that he would gladly go to hell to help all the suffering sentient beings there. A contemporary of Siddhartha Gautama was Mahavira (great man) who founded the Jain faith which to this day has about 3 million I think in the state of Gujurat. A key principle of Jain logic is ANEKANTAVADA which means "no one view/way" (called multipointedness) and means that any attempt to express the nature of being/reality is only one aspect of reality. So from the viewpoint of anekantavada one cannot debate the truth of whether or not Buddha said such a thing but rather the truth becomes subjective and relative to you if you practice or cultivate and find truth in such words. Gandhi grew up in Gujurat and was greatly influenced by one Jain teacher to say "Ahimsa is the highest form of Dharma" or "Non-violence is the highest law/righteousness." Wittgenstein's Tractatus and Kurt Godel's Indefiniteness proof concur with the Jain notion of anekantavada. Our only instrument for thought/expression is words and as Bertrand Russell points out "the set of all sets which do not belong to themselves" is both a member of the set and not a member of the set. One may say that a flower is red or blood or a sunset but when one speaks of redness itself one gets into the problem of qualia and Plato's notion of a form or Eidos of justice, beauty, goodness, etc. Even mathematics itself is contextual in the sense that there are many different axiomatic systems which are consistent within the context of their own axioms, definitions, postulates .... Morris Kline wrote a book about the imperfections of mathematics and that it is a Sisyphean task which can never reach some teleological end of perfection or completeness. If you get the book "The Tao of Physics" then you will see that Hindu/Buddhist/Taoist models of thought/cosmologies are much closer to Relativity and Quantum Mechanics than Zoroastrian-Aristotelian-Judaeo-Christian-Islamic cosmologies or concepts of time/space. Some feel that Kant's notions of time and space are wrong in the light of today's theoretical physics. We may liken the Theravadin/Mahayanist dispute to the dispute around 5th - 6th century C.E. between Pelagius and Augustine. Pelagius believed that each person is born by nature with all that is necessary to refrain from evil and do good, whereas Augustine insisted that no one can refrain from evil under their own power but grace is necessary. The Theravadins came first and the Mahayanists were like a Protestant reformation, saying that grace or merit comes from many Buddhas and Bodhisattvas and that no one can work out their own salvation. Augustine laid down the foundation for Luther's Reformation but no one realized that until the Counter-Reformation .. The Greek Orthodox condemned both Pelagius and Augustine as heretics. The Russians where heavily influenced by the West and so called Augustine "blessed" but not "saint." Buddhism spread far and wide in a peaceful fashion unlike other religions. All of India at one point around 6th century C.E. was Buddhist and Hinduism had been abandoned but then Shankarachariya around 9th century brought about a great revival of Hinduism in India so that today there is very little Buddhism left in India. In Sanskrit, dyana means concentration/meditation, which in China became Chan (brought there by Bodhidharma) and when Chan came to Japan it became Zen so we see dyana -> chan -> zen - but it all has to do with a kind of thought activity. I have been looking at these things for so many years and listening to so many different "sermons" by different religions that I can do this from memory ... and it is essential to arrive at the point where the understanding is alive and comes spontaneously and extemporaneously. Unless and until we arrive at such an extemporaneous understanding the knowledge is not our own, which is not to say that spontaneity equates to infallibility.. actually I should post the link to a discussion I had with a psychiatrist in India who wanted to trip me up by demanding that I explain the Bhagavad-Gita in "my own words" without referring to the Gita. I will find the link and post it.I began writing on-line under the pen name Sitaram in 1998 and this psychiatrist in India used a name in Yahoo chat very similar to "Mad Shrink" http://williambuell.wordpress.com/2011/06/13/dialogue-with-psychiatrist-in-india/
Siddhartha was from Maganda and spoke that language and not Pali. The teachings were an oral tradition which was gradually redacted in Pali language around 400 BCE and it was shortly after that a great split occurred between the Mahayana (G
reat Vehicle) and the Theravadins (Way of the Elders) [pejoratively called Hinayana or Lesser Vehicle by the Mahayanists] Sri Lanka is now the home of the Theravadins who believe that only an individual can work out or cultivate his/her own enlightenment and it is likened to learning to ride a bicycle - no one can GIVE you that knowledge; you must fall down many times in your attempts. Yana means vehicle / ark (like Noahs Ark) - The Mahayanists believe that it is so selfish to save only oneself as to be an impediment to salvation/liberation/moksh
a so therefore the vehicle/ark/teaching is an ark which can save all sentient beings. A bodhisattva is a being on the verge of nirvana/nibbana (snuff out, extinguish, like a candle) and might chose to escape the wheel of birth and death (that wheel is first mentioned in , I think, the Svetsvatara Upanisad and is depicted on the flag of India)... but the Bodhisattva vows to retain some blemish and to be reborn again and again and not enter nibbana until all sentient beings have been saved.A Christian missionary once told a Zen Master that he would go to hell if he did not confess Christianity and the Zen Master explained that he would gladly go to hell to help all the suffering sentient beings there.
A contemporary of Siddhartha Gautama was Mahavira (great man) who founded the Jain faith which to this day has about 3 million I think in the state of Gujurat. A key principle of Jain logic is ANEKANTAVADA which means "no one view/way" (cal
led multipointedness) and means that any attempt to express the nature of being/reality is only one aspect of reality. So from the viewpoint of anekantavada one cannot debate the truth of whether or not Buddha said such a thing but rather the truth becomes subjective and relative to you if you practice or cultivate and find truth in such words. Gandhi grew up in Gujurat and was greatly influenced by one Jain teacher to say "Ahimsa is the highest form of Dharma" or "Non-violence is the highest law/righteousness." Wittgenstein's Tractatus and Kurt Godel's Indefiniteness proof concur with the Jain notion of anekantavada. Our only instrument for thought/expression is words and as Bertrand Russell points out "the set of all sets which do not belong to themselves" is both a member of the set and not a member of the set. One may say that a flower is red or blood or a sunset but when one speaks of redness itself one gets into the problem of qualia and Plato's notion of a form or Eidos of justice, beauty, goodness, etc. Even mathematics itself is contextual in the sense that there are many different axiomatic systems which are consistent within the context of their own axioms, definitions, postulates .... Morris Kline wrote a book about the imperfections of mathematics and that it is a Sisyphean task which can never reach some teleological end of perfection or completeness. If you get the book "The Tao of Physics" then you will see that Hindu/Buddhist/Taoist models of thought/cosmologies are much closer to Relativity and Quantum Mechanics than Zoroastrian-Aristotelian-J
udaeo-Christian-Islamic cosmologies or concepts of time/space. Some feel that Kant's notions of time and space are wrong in the light of today's theoretical physics.We may liken the Theravadin/Mahayanist dispute to the dispute around 5th - 6th century C.E. between Pelagius and Augustine. Pelagius believed that each person is born by nature with all that is necessary to refrain from evil and do good, wh
ereas Augustine insisted that no one can refrain from evil under their own power but grace is necessary. The Theravadins came first and the Mahayanists were like a Protestant reformation, saying that grace or merit comes from many Buddhas and Bodhisattvas and that no one can work out their own salvation. Augustine laid down the foundation for Luther's Reformation but no one realized that until the Counter-Reformation .. The Greek Orthodox condemned both Pelagius and Augustine as heretics. The Russians where heavily influenced by the West and so called Augustine "blessed" but not "saint."
Buddhism spread far and wide in a peaceful fashion unlike other religions. All of India at one point around 6th century C.E. was Buddhist and Hinduism had been abandoned but then Shankarachariya around 9th century brought about a great revi
val of Hinduism in India so that today there is very little Buddhism left in India. In Sanskrit, dyana means concentration/meditation, which in China became Chan (brought there by Bodhidharma) and when Chan came to Japan it became Zen so we see dyana -> chan -> zen - but it all has to do with a kind of thought activity.
I have been looking at these things for so many years and listening to so many different "sermons" by different religions that I can do this from memory ... and it is essential to arrive at the point where the understanding is alive and co
mes spontaneously and extemporaneously. Unless and until we arrive at such an extemporaneous understanding the knowledge is not our own, which is not to say that spontaneity equates to infallibility.. actually I should post the link to a discussion I had with a psychiatrist in India who wanted to trip me up by demanding that I explain the Bhagavad-Gita in "my own words" without referring to the Gita. I will find the link and post it.
I began writing on-line under the pen name Sitaram in 1998 and this psychiatrist in India used a name in Yahoo chat very similar to "Mad Shrink" http://williambuell.wordpr
