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CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA on Buddhism, Why write this ?
Observations allow us to determine what theories are correct and what theories are incorrect. Creation theory has proven to fall into the latter category by a significant margin.
But let's use the same standard of proof to something most Buddhists tend to believe. That during enlightenment, Buddha was given a view of all worlds and times. Go ahead. Show me the proof.
You can't. And yet, that seems to be what most Buddhists believe.
Buddhists are no more scientific than Westerners. And in fact, far more scientific discoveries throughout history have come from the Western world than the Buddhist world.
I can't show you proof, and you cannot show me any evidence that he did not either, that is the difference I can show you evidence that creation theory is a load of rubbish. By the same measure if you had overwhelming evidence to prove that rebirth was a load of rubbish, then I would no longer believe in that either.
As I have said, if people believe in a creator God that is fine, I respect that, I have no problem with it what's so ever, but surely if someone is preaching about a topic such as creation theory, this can be criticized since this theory as described by fundamentalists, completely contradicts what is observed in the world and universe.
Zid, I think perhaps you are misreading what I am saying. So just for the record, this former paleontologist doesn't believe in creation theory. But keep in mind, while I was earning my degree the geosciences, every professor that I had, and who taught any aspect of paleontology, evolution, etc., was also a Christian church-goer.
I understand what your saying vinlyn, all I am saying is that there is nothing wrong in pointing out the short comings of beliefs which have been disproved by so much observational evidence. The example of creation theory was just one example, in which I think a Buddhist can voice their arguments against it, as I am sure Buddha would have if he were alive today, in my opinion.
though it is practical to make a theory out of observation, it can be limiting as well. that theory cannot serve the basis for every observational phenomena for that is the assumption most people assert with their theories.
all we can do is examine with observations in every situation. a theory is just a record of that examination, but it should not be carried into the next observation because it has the potential for distorting the present observation.
truth moves in this way. truth moves in the mystery. truth is fluid. truth cannot be a framework or theory. truth is what is observed in the moment.
As for the 1910 Catholic Encyclopaedia, would you use the 1910 Britannica or 1910 comments on, say, women's roles?
This was my thought also, Simonthepilgrim
This is a very good point, which makes it even more surprising that the authors of the CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA can't be bothered to update it. Instead the keep these silly conclusions about Buddhism, that are outdated, and in most cases just plain wrong.
New Advent is a private site ran by one person and focusing exclusively on the 1913 encyclopedia. It is not, and should not be taken as, being maintained, hosted or endorsed by the Vatican. It certainly is not any kind of modern Catholic encyclopedia. The Catholic Church itself has published new and revised encyclopedias several times over the past century (as recently as 2003 I believe).
So if for example there were three people, one a Buddhist, one a Christian missionary and one a villager from a remote area of say Mongolia. If the Christian started to preach to the villager about creation theory and how God created the universe and man 10000 years ago, as a Buddhist you would not say anything ? I think I would begin to criticize the Christians belief here, as there is overwhelming evidence to suggest that this belief is simply not true, and I could not sit back and listen to someone trying to brainwash this belief into someone who may not have been exposed to the understanding of science, that you and I have.
Whoa.
Why is it brainwashing if the Christian preaches, but not if you, the Buddhist preaches?
And while I disagree with the idea that the world was created in 4004 B.C., as originally deduced by Archbishop Usher, I don't know many Christians who believe that anymore. And there is a lot taken on "faith" in Buddhism that is no more provable than some Christian beliefs.
Instead of arguing, why not simply present a Buddhist view?
I agree with these ideas.
I think that one of the big changes in Catholicism since that piece of writing is that it would no longer be considered necessary to have a Catholic encyclopedia; at the time it was published Catholics were not encouraged to even read the Catholic Bible themselves, let alone explore the writings or beliefs of other religions.
I have witnessed what I experience as lot of preaching behaviour and dogmatic holding of views in Buddhist online forums, since I started visiting over the past 3 years or so, which whilst human, detracts from the intention of the teachings as I understand them.
I guess we can take the Catholic Encyclopedia as a historical document, with the views that many in the time may have had.
From wiki
"It also offers in-depth portrayals of historical and philosophical ideas, persons and events, from the Roman Catholic point of view. On issues that divide Catholicism from other churches and Protestant ecclesiastic communities, the text consistently presents matters from the Catholic point of view."
Which is clear to see, and wiki also says
"Since the encyclopedia was first undertaken in 1913 and has never been updated, many of its entries are out of date either with respect to the wider culture or to the Catholic ecclesiastical world. In particular it predates the creation of the Vatican City State and the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965), which introduced many significant changes in Catholic practice."
so I would hope the Catholic church would now disagree with the slurs written in it about Buddhism and I am sure other religions.
A large portion of buddhists are similar to the cittimatra view and believe the world was created by awareness. In which space and time are also created by that awareness. However not in 7 days so its a bit in between.
A large portion of buddhists are similar to the cittimatra view and believe the world was created by awareness. In which space and time are also created by that awareness. However not in 7 days so its a bit in between.
This reminds me of the question
"If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it does it make a sound?"
There are classical (nature of sound waves) and Quantum ( observers and the collapse of wavefunctions) answers to this question from a physics point of view, so I guess the same would apply to the cittamatra view, which obviously takes the Quantum view on this.
A large portion of buddhists are similar to the cittimatra view and believe the world was created by awareness. In which space and time are also created by that awareness. However not in 7 days so its a bit in between.
This reminds me of the question
"If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it does it make a sound?"
There are classical (nature of sound waves) and Quantum ( observers and the collapse of wavefunctions) answers to this question from a physics point of view, so I guess the same would apply to the cittamatra view, which obviously takes the Quantum view on this.
Zidangus what I mean by a tree falling isn't quantum. Its an experience. Thats the argument of the mind only. Our world is an experience, whether it is thinking about quantum, which is thinking, conducting a measurement of quantum, which would be measurement, or giving a research talk about quantum, which would be speaking.
For example if scientists hooked electrodes up to your brain and said you were thinking of an elephant but you were thinking of a giraffe... would you believe your own experience or the scientists? Which is authoritative? Rationalization or experience?
"The conscious moment and the wave function collapse are the same event."
This is a speculation. Even if they could measure quantum collapses which they can't I imagine. Even so it is merely that they observe quantum collapses. It is not proof that consciousness IS quantum collapses. What I mean by consciousness is an experience, not a collapse of quanta. What I mean by love is not oxytocin docked with a receptor. That is sawdust.
Conditional phenomina....
Samadhi Raja Sutra
Know all things to be like this: A mirage, a cloud castle, A dream, an apparition, Without essence, but with qualities that can be seen.
Know all things to be like this: As the moon in a bright sky In some clear lake reflected, Though to that lake the moon has never moved.
Know all things to be like this: As an echo that derives From music, sounds, and weeping, Yet in that echo is no melody.
Know all things to be like this: As a magician makes illusions Of horses, oxen, carts and other things, Nothing is as it appears. The Buddha
The major conceptual barrier to the appreciation of the one-mind doctrine would seem to be the persuasiveness of the brain-model of mind phenomena: that the phenomenal structures reported by one person have an isomorphic relationship to some class of events in the brain of that person. Since different persons have separate brains, they cannot share phenomenal experience. Let us now examine carefully just what this isomorphism means.
p.217
It does not mean, when we are speaking in a phenomenal language and so are able to speak of phenomenal events, that mind is identical with brain events, or is simply a different way of reporting brain events, or any such thing. The phenomena of my experience are independently referenced, in a phenomenal language, from the phenomena observed by the neurophysiologist. It would be possible, for example, to compare ones own phenomenal experience of, say, music, with ones own brain events by watching electric tracings from ones own auditory areas, and to observe that the two classes of appearances are different.
The isomorphism that is postulated on current evidence is of a purely logical nature: it is a correspondence between events in the brain and the moments elementary contents of the field of consciousness, such that the correspondence preserves a certain relational structure on each class of events. For example, if there are greenness and a circle in my phenomenal field, and in fact the circle is green, then some brain event corresponds to circle, some event to green, and some event that is a relation of these events corresponds to the fact that it is the circle that is green.
Just as we do not expect to see in the brain a miniature picture of the world as on a movie screen, neither should we expect any relation of phenomena to go over into the same relation of brain events; the logical concept of isomorphism requires only a corresponding relation. Thus, experiential spatial relations and temporal relations will not correspond merely to spatial and temporal relations between the brain events. For example, a spatial relation of phenomena may correspond to the logical event that the brain events corresponding to phenomena A and B are, e.g., interacting through one neural network rather than another.
Once isomorphism is understood, we arrive at the basic question: Why are there two such classes, of mind and brain events, with their structures isomorphic? Why the isomorphism? The answer proposed makes sense only in a combined conceptual-phenomena1 language, but there it takes on an almost analytic character. It has been proposed before by Bertrand Russell, as we shall see. Let us assume (speaking conceptually) that there is an "outer" (to human experience) world of indirectly known events, which are the causal matrix of the world of experience. The sentient being is capable of "reflecting" or "mapping" this outer world, as a means of survival in its causal fabric. That is to say, the continuous process that we call a sentient being includes, among mechanisms that maintain its continuity, a mechanism for mapping the events outside of itself. Thus it avoids dangers, finds food, and so forth. This mapping is not perfect; it is an abstraction from outer events and their
p.218
under some coherent definition of the mapping. The map is the structured field of consciousness of the sentient being. We assume that there is an outer world that the field of consciousness maps, but the rest is definition. In particular, that the field of consciousness is part of the process of the sentient being, and "in" the universe as a whole, is definitional, of "sentient being" and of "universe."
Now we note that, in the conceptual model we are constructing, the reflection of the outer world by mind is a kind of causal process. Therefore, mind is to some extent embedded in the causal fabric of the outer events, and it is not implausible to expect that mind could to some extent "catch a glimpse of" itself. The same causal transformation that takes conceptual outer events to mind could take mind events (as outer events) to mind. If this happens, we should expect to find in mind something like a reduced map of the structure of the rest of mind.
But brain events, as the scientist experiences them, are precisely such a reduced map within mind, of mind (as reported by the subject of neurophysiologic observation). So, if we can make this identification of brain events as we observe them, it becomes an analytic fact that brain is a reflection of mind (not vice versa), has less information than mind, follows mind slightly in time (the time of the causal process from the subjects mind to the scientists mind where "brain" is being observed), and is the subjective image of what objectively is mind.
One may want to say that the brain is not merely our observations of a brain (as required by phenomenal language), but the conceptualized reality behind those observations. But the most plausible and least redundant hypothesis as to what is really behind those aspects of brain action corresponding to the phenomenal field is the phenomenal field itself.
Now let us note Russells statements in this connection:
The light from a star travels over intervening space and causes a disturbance in the optic nerve ending in an occurrence in the brain. What I maintain is that the occurrence in the brain is a visual sensation... What you see when you look at a brain... is part of your private world. It is the effect in you of a long causal process starting from the brain that you say you are looking at.[20]
The question confronting us now is: By what right can we speak of "one-mind," if the individual portions of it are obviously separated in conceptual-causal space, as indicated by the fact that we have separate brains?
Similar considerations apply to all phenomenal properties: the appearance of a brain that is seeing redness is a phenomenal falsification (although a causal-logic representation) of phenomenal redness, which is the reality meant by "red." Color, spatial depth, value qualities, etc., and the sharing of these, are themselves the realities of the phenomenal world.
I am not saying there is no difference between Quantum mechanics and experience as you define it Jeffrey, but the world is an illusion and nothing is as it appears sounds like something a Quantum physicist would say, so maybe Buddha had direct insight into Quantum mechanics, just a thought :rolleyes:
Oh I didn't really understand that Zidangus. I like the parallels but sometimes people read into science too much I think. For example they equate the uncertainty principle to emptiness. When they need not do that. There is already uncertainty in life in that we could die any day.
Comments
that theory cannot serve the basis for every observational phenomena for that is the assumption most people assert with their theories.
all we can do is examine with observations in every situation. a theory is just a record of that examination, but it should not be carried into the next observation because it has the potential for distorting the present observation.
truth moves in this way. truth moves in the mystery. truth is fluid. truth cannot be a framework or theory. truth is what is observed in the moment.
interesting topic though.
I think that one of the big changes in Catholicism since that piece of writing is that it would no longer be considered necessary to have a Catholic encyclopedia; at the time it was published Catholics were not encouraged to even read the Catholic Bible themselves, let alone explore the writings or beliefs of other religions.
I have witnessed what I experience as lot of preaching behaviour and dogmatic holding of views in Buddhist online forums, since I started visiting over the past 3 years or so, which whilst human, detracts from the intention of the teachings as I understand them.
From wiki
"It also offers in-depth portrayals of historical and philosophical ideas, persons and events, from the Roman Catholic point of view. On issues that divide Catholicism from other churches and Protestant ecclesiastic communities, the text consistently presents matters from the Catholic point of view."
Which is clear to see, and wiki also says
"Since the encyclopedia was first undertaken in 1913 and has never been updated, many of its entries are out of date either with respect to the wider culture or to the Catholic ecclesiastical world. In particular it predates the creation of the Vatican City State and the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965), which introduced many significant changes in Catholic practice."
so I would hope the Catholic church would now disagree with the slurs written in it about Buddhism and I am sure other religions.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Encyclopedia
"If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it does it make a sound?"
There are classical (nature of sound waves) and Quantum ( observers and the collapse of wavefunctions) answers to this question from a physics point of view, so I guess the same would apply to the cittamatra view, which obviously takes the Quantum view on this.
For example if scientists hooked electrodes up to your brain and said you were thinking of an elephant but you were thinking of a giraffe... would you believe your own experience or the scientists? Which is authoritative? Rationalization or experience?
http://www.quantumconsciousness.org/documents/EnlightenedNext.pdf
This is a speculation. Even if they could measure quantum collapses which they can't I imagine. Even so it is merely that they observe quantum collapses. It is not proof that consciousness IS quantum collapses. What I mean by consciousness is an experience, not a collapse of quanta. What I mean by love is not oxytocin docked with a receptor. That is sawdust.
Conditional phenomina....
Samadhi Raja Sutra
Know all things to be like this:
A mirage, a cloud castle,
A dream, an apparition,
Without essence, but with qualities that can be seen.
Know all things to be like this:
As the moon in a bright sky
In some clear lake reflected,
Though to that lake the moon has never moved.
Know all things to be like this:
As an echo that derives
From music, sounds, and weeping,
Yet in that echo is no melody.
Know all things to be like this:
As a magician makes illusions
Of horses, oxen, carts and other things,
Nothing is as it appears.
The Buddha
V. MIND AND BRAINS
The major conceptual barrier to the appreciation of the one-mind doctrine would seem to be the persuasiveness of the brain-model of mind phenomena: that the phenomenal structures reported by one person have an isomorphic relationship to some class of events in the brain of that person. Since different persons have separate brains, they cannot share phenomenal experience. Let us now examine carefully just what this isomorphism means.
p.217
It does not mean, when we are speaking in a phenomenal language and so are able to speak of phenomenal events, that mind is identical with brain events, or is simply a different way of reporting brain events, or any such thing. The phenomena of my experience are independently referenced, in a phenomenal language, from the phenomena observed by the neurophysiologist. It would be possible, for example, to compare ones own phenomenal experience of, say, music, with ones own brain events by watching electric tracings from ones own auditory areas, and to observe that the two classes of appearances are different.
The isomorphism that is postulated on current evidence is of a purely logical nature: it is a correspondence between events in the brain and the moments elementary contents of the field of consciousness, such that the correspondence preserves a certain relational structure on each class of events. For example, if there are greenness and a circle in my phenomenal field, and in fact the circle is green, then some brain event corresponds to circle, some event to green, and some event that is a relation of these events corresponds to the fact that it is the circle that is green.
Just as we do not expect to see in the brain a miniature picture of the world as on a movie screen, neither should we expect any relation of phenomena to go over into the same relation of brain events; the logical concept of isomorphism requires only a corresponding relation. Thus, experiential spatial relations and temporal relations will not correspond merely to spatial and temporal relations between the brain events. For example, a spatial relation of phenomena may correspond to the logical event that the brain events corresponding to phenomena A and B are, e.g., interacting through one neural network rather than another.
Once isomorphism is understood, we arrive at the basic question: Why are there two such classes, of mind and brain events, with their structures isomorphic? Why the isomorphism? The answer proposed makes sense only in a combined conceptual-phenomena1 language, but there it takes on an almost analytic character. It has been proposed before by Bertrand Russell, as we shall see. Let us assume (speaking conceptually) that there is an "outer" (to human experience) world of indirectly known events, which are the causal matrix of the world of experience. The sentient being is capable of "reflecting" or "mapping" this outer world, as a means of survival in its causal fabric. That is to say, the continuous process that we call a sentient being includes, among mechanisms that maintain its continuity, a mechanism for mapping the events outside of itself. Thus it avoids dangers, finds food, and so forth. This mapping is not perfect; it is an abstraction from outer events and their
p.218
under some coherent definition of the mapping. The map is the structured field of consciousness of the sentient being. We assume that there is an outer world that the field of consciousness maps, but the rest is definition. In particular, that the field of consciousness is part of the process of the sentient being, and "in" the universe as a whole, is definitional, of "sentient being" and of "universe."
Now we note that, in the conceptual model we are constructing, the reflection of the outer world by mind is a kind of causal process. Therefore, mind is to some extent embedded in the causal fabric of the outer events, and it is not implausible to expect that mind could to some extent "catch a glimpse of" itself. The same causal transformation that takes conceptual outer events to mind could take mind events (as outer events) to mind. If this happens, we should expect to find in mind something like a reduced map of the structure of the rest of mind.
But brain events, as the scientist experiences them, are precisely such a reduced map within mind, of mind (as reported by the subject of neurophysiologic observation). So, if we can make this identification of brain events as we observe them, it becomes an analytic fact that brain is a reflection of mind (not vice versa), has less information than mind, follows mind slightly in time (the time of the causal process from the subjects mind to the scientists mind where "brain" is being observed), and is the subjective image of what objectively is mind.
One may want to say that the brain is not merely our observations of a brain (as required by phenomenal language), but the conceptualized reality behind those observations. But the most plausible and least redundant hypothesis as to what is really behind those aspects of brain action corresponding to the phenomenal field is the phenomenal field itself.
Now let us note Russells statements in this connection:
The light from a star travels over intervening space and causes a disturbance in the optic nerve ending in an occurrence in the brain. What I maintain is that the occurrence in the brain is a visual sensation... What you see when you look at a brain... is part of your private world. It is the effect in you of a long causal process starting from the brain that you say you are looking at.[20]
The question confronting us now is: By what right can we speak of "one-mind," if the individual portions of it are obviously separated in conceptual-causal space, as indicated by the fact that we have separate brains?
Similar considerations apply to all phenomenal properties: the appearance of a brain that is seeing redness is a phenomenal falsification (although a causal-logic representation) of phenomenal redness, which is the reality meant by "red." Color, spatial depth, value qualities, etc., and the sharing of these, are themselves the realities of the phenomenal world.