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Buddhist atheism

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Comments

  • BunksBunks Australia Veteran

    I've said it before and I'll say it again.

    You guys think too much...

    Jeroenseeker242federica
  • JeroenJeroen Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter Netherlands Veteran

    Perhaps you’re right @bunks...

    On the practice cushion there is no God.

  • federicafederica Seeker of the clear blue sky... Its better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak out and remove all doubt Moderator

  • personperson Don't believe everything you think The liminal space Veteran

    @Bunks said:
    I've said it before and I'll say it again.

    You guys think too much...

    A friend of mine once said something in passing which stuck with me when getting lost in my inner world. He said, "think well, but not long", or something to that effect.

    federicalobsterBunks
  • Back to the question about if Buddha is a god I think one difference is that I think most everyone agrees anybody can follow the path and become an arhat by learning what Buddhist taught and then the Mahayana believes anyone can become a Buddha. I don't know too many theistic religions with that idea though I guess the Mormons have a similarity to that.

    And then to my knowledge in the Mahayana there is a disagreement over what type of primordial wisdom the Buddha has. One or two types? One type most (all?) agree is that Buddhist knows the fundamental nature of phenomena as empty of self nature though this is expressed and thought about differently and has its own doctrinal disagreements. But number two is controversial is Buddha omniscient?

    Some say that the complete, perfect Buddha possesses understanding of the ultimate meaning, which is the wisdom of actualizing reality as-it-is, but does not possess the wisdom of conventional states, which is called the primordial wisdom of omniscience. It is not that Buddha is unaware of something that could be known, but there is no conventional level and therefore the primordial wisdom of knowing it does not exist.

    :another passage:

    There are different opinions about Buddha's primordial wisdom. Some say that Buddha does not possess discursive thought as well as primordial wisdom. Some say that Buddha does not possess discursive thought, but does possess primordial wisdom which is very clearly aware of everything. Others say that the continuity of the primordial wisdom has ceased. Some say that the Buddha never had primordial wisdom.

    :another passage:

    Formerly actualizing reality as-it-is without discursive thought, he engages in an unconfused equipoise state. Later, knowing all conventional knowledge with conceptual thought, he engages in the confusion-appearance.

    :contrasting the previous:

    The Tathagata achieves nothing after attaining the direct, complete Buddhahood. This is because there are no objects to be known.

    :another view:

    Some heretics say that liberation is a place to go. When you achieve the completely peaceful state there is nothing left, like an extinguished fire

  • personperson Don't believe everything you think The liminal space Veteran

    @Shoshin said:
    It would seem for the believers the idea/concept of a God or gods can ( more often than not ) mean different things to different believers ....Like 6 blind people trying to describe an elephant ...

    Hey the narrator's name is John Godfrey :)

    @Shoshin said:
    In the long run "god" is just a word and like any other word, if repeated over and over again it becomes non-sense...

    “We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further.”

    ~Richard Dawkins~

    Even though some may not like what he stands for...credit where credit's due...he does have a point...
    :):):)

    These posts came to my mind today. I really like both of these ideas and think that they are both true. And yet, they are contradictory at some level that points to what I think is an important point to be made here.

    The first says there is something that all are experiencing but the way it manifests itself to them differs. The second says since they are all describing different things there probably isn't anything real they are referring to.

    Sam Harris is an atheist ally of Dawkins that has also meditated for many years. He would say that the elephant is the psychological transcendent spiritual experience that is common to all religious systems and not a truly existent "spiritual" realm or being. Others might say that Sam is just one of the blind men touching a different part of the elephant.

    Shoshin
  • JeroenJeroen Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter Netherlands Veteran

    @person said:
    Sam Harris is an atheist ally of Dawkins that has also meditated for many years. He would say that the elephant is the psychological transcendent spiritual experience that is common to all religious systems and not a truly existent "spiritual" realm or being. Others might say that Sam is just one of the blind men touching a different part of the elephant.

    To me it seems inevitable that there is some truth to the view you have ascribed to Sam Harris above. It makes perfect sense that facets of the human spiritual experience inspire sources of religion, and remain there for people with a religious inclination to discover.

    But at the same time, religion can also be inspired by psychotic visions. Someone who experiences occasional psychosis under stress can be a very convincing prophet, but as we now know, those visions usually contain a personal truth which doesn’t extend well to other humans. We are still in the very early stages of examining psychotic experiences clearly, most often they are not examined by doctors.

    So what is eventually passed down to us by religious tradition in holy books is a mixture of the spiritually inspired, the psychotic, and what is added or edited by ancient priests for their own purposes. To take any of it at face value, without evidence, seems very unwise to me.

    The more I look at it, the more I begin to think that all tales of the supernatural are to be regarded with great scepticism. Everything from fairy tales to conjectures of alchemy to stories of the gods seems to carry a similar level of unlikelihood.

    person
  • JeroenJeroen Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter Netherlands Veteran

    @Jeffrey said:
    Back to the question about if Buddha is a god I think one difference is that I think most everyone agrees anybody can follow the path and become an arhat by learning what Buddhist taught and then the Mahayana believes anyone can become a Buddha. I don't know too many theistic religions with that idea though I guess the Mormons have a similarity to that.

    And then to my knowledge in the Mahayana there is a disagreement over what type of primordial wisdom the Buddha has. One or two types? One type most (all?) agree is that Buddhist knows the fundamental nature of phenomena as empty of self nature though this is expressed and thought about differently and has its own doctrinal disagreements. But number two is controversial is Buddha omniscient?

    I think it is hard to call the Buddha a god, as he doesn’t have the legendary creative powers. On the other hand it is said of arhats and the enlightened that they have a number of supernatural abilities. Which I think one can justly be sceptical about.

  • vinlynvinlyn Colorado...for now Veteran

    @Kerome said:

    I think it is hard to call the Buddha a god, as he doesn’t have the legendary creative powers. On the other hand it is said of arhats and the enlightened that they have a number of supernatural abilities. Which I think one can justly be sceptical about.

    Not to mention that he's dead.

    Bunkslobster
  • BunksBunks Australia Veteran

    @Kerome said:
    Perhaps you’re right @bunks...

    On the practice cushion there is no God.

    I was joking to some degree but I think there's something to be said about reducing the amount of thinking we do.

    Particularly about things that steer us away from the path.

    Shoshin
  • VimalajātiVimalajāti Whitby, Ontario Veteran

    @vinlyn said:

    @Kerome said:

    I think it is hard to call the Buddha a god, as he doesn’t have the legendary creative powers. On the other hand it is said of arhats and the enlightened that they have a number of supernatural abilities. Which I think one can justly be sceptical about.

    Not to mention that he's dead.

    God's dead too. Sounds like more things they have in common!

  • personperson Don't believe everything you think The liminal space Veteran

    @Kerome said:

    @person said:
    Sam Harris is an atheist ally of Dawkins that has also meditated for many years. He would say that the elephant is the psychological transcendent spiritual experience that is common to all religious systems and not a truly existent "spiritual" realm or being. Others might say that Sam is just one of the blind men touching a different part of the elephant.

    To me it seems inevitable that there is some truth to the view you have ascribed to Sam Harris above. It makes perfect sense that facets of the human spiritual experience inspire sources of religion, and remain there for people with a religious inclination to discover.

    But at the same time, religion can also be inspired by psychotic visions. Someone who experiences occasional psychosis under stress can be a very convincing prophet, but as we now know, those visions usually contain a personal truth which doesn’t extend well to other humans. We are still in the very early stages of examining psychotic experiences clearly, most often they are not examined by doctors.

    So what is eventually passed down to us by religious tradition in holy books is a mixture of the spiritually inspired, the psychotic, and what is added or edited by ancient priests for their own purposes. To take any of it at face value, without evidence, seems very unwise to me.

    The more I look at it, the more I begin to think that all tales of the supernatural are to be regarded with great scepticism. Everything from fairy tales to conjectures of alchemy to stories of the gods seems to carry a similar level of unlikelihood.

    I think I'm mostly in agreement with you. I do make a distinction between some spiritual claims and others, I don't think they're all equally dismissible. I give more weight to the mystical traditions that rely on years of personal contemplative experience. I think at that level of familiarity with the transcendent spiritual experience, subtle nuances are likely detectable to sort out better and worse or higher and lower more so than occasional or one off experiences or even psychotic revelations. Not only is it more likely that their understanding is better from their own time spent but others are able to replicate their methods to obtain the same understanding.

    There absolutely often is a difference between the way things seem to us in our minds and the way they actually are objectively, but I think it is reasonable to make a distinction between claims. I agree we shouldn't take their claims at face value, without evidence. But I disagree that we should as easily discard it as we do creation stories.

  • JeroenJeroen Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter Netherlands Veteran

    @person said:
    I think I'm mostly in agreement with you. I do make a distinction between some spiritual claims and others, I don't think they're all equally dismissible. (Snip) But I disagree that we should as easily discard it as we do creation stories.

    I do agree with that, when I say “treat with skepticism” i do mean exactly that. I’ve seen enough of the world that I know there are things that are not so easy to explain. But that doesn’t mean I won’t treat extraordinary claims as if they are simple or straightforward.

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