Craft, Art, Science of Buddhism?
lobster
Crusty Veteran
From another thread:
I don't really care much for a "Science of Buddhism" if it's going to relate to cosmology and all that jazz, but a "Science of Enlightenment" would be nice. I do consider enlightenment to be a causal process that could theoretically be explained in scientific terms in time (not likely anytime soon; we're only to the point of studying meditation's effects on the brain and emotions... not enlightenment per se).
There is an imprecision or rather diversity of needs in the application to needs. Is Buddhism a potential superseded primitive psychology? A philosophy? As a religion is Buddhism prone to the same mired thinking that alchemy presents to chemistry?
Is it a craft of skilful and varied means? Is Dharma a precise map to enlightened being? Is Buddhism an art, practical only when practiced?
Maybe Buddhism is just a cushion cover?
Comments
To me, Buddhism is the oldest psychological system in the world.
You could putter up and down the 4NT and the N8P at will all day, independently of your religious beliefs, even being an atheist, and still find the way to make your life work for you without even bringing the name Buddha into the picture.
A roadmap to Enlightenment? I don't know.
To roadmap to an enlightened life? Definitely.
The science of enlightenment?.....where the farther you take it....the less that such a transcendence of subject & object will help a scientific approach.
The science of Buddhism where the predictability of a desired outcome is invariably inversely proportionate to the degree of it's desirability.. like a snake trying to swallow it's own tail!
A roadmap to enlightened life? I thought the precepts already had that covered.
Hmmm
I got nothing.
I've heard Buddhist meditation called a 'technology', which didn't set my teeth on edge, it sort of fits. I won't bother arguing or discussing 'how far' that might go.
Transcending dualism doesn't mean excluding it, it just means INCLUDING it within a greater 'as it is'.
It certainly appears to be a psychology in the true sense of that word. It does not surprise me one bit that it was comprehensively understood 2500 years ago (or whenever), it's not something you need advanced technology to understand.
"A craft of varied and skillful means' seems a better fit even than technology. Sure, a science of enlightenment is in it's infancy. It may never accommodate a set of strict rules of predictability, or maybe it will, our instruments just haven't developed the sensitivity? Or the 'scientists' are doggedly looking in the wrong place and asking the wrong questions?
lol = all the way to the bank!