Christian Mindfulness & Emptiness

[rossum]

As these things change, the expression of the universal changes- but the universal remains the same.

We have already agreed that I do not accept any universals. I suspect that we are not going to agree with each other on this one.

I ask whether gravity is temporary, and if so, how I can know it applies. You respond by saying that gravity is real for now because matter is real. I can then ask whether matter is temporary, and if so, how I can know it applies.

Matter is temporary. Do I really have to tell you how to determine if any matter is present now?

We can keep going and going. In your system, everything is temporary, and therefore you cannot say that anything must hold for the current instant. If gravity is real right now because of matter, why is matter real right now? Whatever you say in response to this, why is that real right now?

It is temporarily and contingently real, in the same way that everything else is temporarily and contingently real. There is nothing that is not contingent on something else. There is nothing that is not impermanent.

But the five aggregates are temporary, so what happens if humanity outlives the five aggregrates? If the five aggregrates are a necessary prerequisite to humanity, what happens when that prerequisite changes?

The word “human” is a convenient contraction for “an assembly of the five aggregates”. The word “triangle” is a convenient contraction for “a polygon with three sides”. We can no more have humanity without the five aggregates than we can have a triangle without its three sides. If the five aggregates are present then a human is present. If the five aggregates are not present then a human is not present. There is no soul or ‘essence of humanity’ above and beyond the five aggregates; there is no sixth aggregate.

You refuse to answer my question. I am not talking about Christianity. We can discuss Christian ethics in some other thread if you want. I am specifically asking about Buddhist philosophy. You have not yet clearly answered this question from the Buddhist perspective:

Is it possible for a Nazi-like regime to be moral in some different set of particulars?

I will continue to refuse to answer speculative “what if…” questions for reasons I have stated. Buddhist philosophy is not pure speculation, it is aimed at a purpose - enlightenment. The Buddha warned against wasting time on speculation. There is work to do.

I bring in Biblical morality because you claim that Christian morality is based on a set of fixed and unchanging principles. I am showing you that you are incorrect in that claim.

I don’t think you read my post at all. God can act timelessly even when we within time percieve His actions within time- since we are within time. Outside of time they are eternal, but we observe them through the lense of our own perception of time.

My apologies for summarising too briefly. Basically one thing cannot have two opposed properties, it cannot be both X and not-X. If that is the case then it must be at least two different things despite any appearances to the contrary. Remember that our model of reality can be deceptive.

If God can act within time than the part of God that is acting is itself within time. That part of God must change because it is within time and does different things at different times. If you also maintain the existence of God outside time then there are two different parts of God: God-inside-time and God-outside-time. The former can act but is changing. The latter does not change but cannot act inside time. Since one thing cannot both be changing and not-changing and also it cannot be both inside time and not-inside time then we have analysed God into two different parts.

You cannot have a single unchanging God who acts with in time. At the very least you need two parts of God. The analysis can be repeated for the two parts separately as required.

Of course a mirage can be killed- when you realize that in reality there is no lake in your desert of thirst. Realizing that you are actually an illusion like a lake in a desert is not a happy experience.

An illusion is dispelled, not killed. A mirage is not alive.

rossum

 

[Sarpedon]

Matter is temporary. Do I really have to tell you how to determine if any matter is present now?

My question is not so much whether matter is present right now, but how we know how long such things will exist. If some oppressive regime emerges in my lifetime and changes the particular world, then it would do me well to consider what might happen to things like morality in that course of events.

It is temporarily and contingently real, in the same way that everything else is temporarily and contingently real. There is nothing that is not contingent on something else. There is nothing that is not impermanent.

And thus you envision a world with infinite regresses. Furthermore, the lack of any self-existent and non-contingent thing breaks down the human capacity to know things.

For example, consider a dictionary. A dictionary defines something in terms of something else. However, the defining term still needs to be defined, and so on and so on. That’s why a dictionary alone could not tell someone the true nature of the world. If there is not some known, undefined, and non-contingent thing to describe everything else off of, then we really can’t describe anything- and that has serious consequences for the intellectual life and the sciences in particular.

The word “human” is a convenient contraction for “an assembly of the five aggregates”. The word “triangle” is a convenient contraction for “a polygon with three sides”. We can no more have humanity without the five aggregates than we can have a triangle without its three sides. If the five aggregates are present then a human is present. If the five aggregates are not present then a human is not present. There is no soul or ‘essence of humanity’ above and beyond the five aggregates; there is no sixth aggregate.

So you take an Aristotelian view of nature as opposed to Platonic. Aristotle said that the primary nature of things exists in the things themselves as opposed to a form. You are still defining something based on composition, which is very close to a nature.

You seem to be viewing individual things are temporary within a framework of a consistent logical order. For example, you view a specific collection of aggregates as the foundation for the term “human.” Nevertheless, if the fundamental laws of logic are temporary, than there could be a human with 7 aggregates, or a human with none at all. When logic, perception, and reason themselves are all viewed as temporary, human knowledge becomes effectively impossible. Do you think logic, reason, and perception are temporary?

I bring in Biblical morality because you claim that Christian morality is based on a set of fixed and unchanging principles. I am showing you that you are incorrect in that claim.

I already explained this in terms of universals. Your personal rejection of universals does not make the Catholic system internally inconsistent.

My apologies for summarising too briefly. Basically one thing cannot have two opposed properties, it cannot be both X and not-X. If that is the case then it must be at least two different things despite any appearances to the contrary. Remember that our model of reality can be deceptive.

Again, this boils down to the question of whether logic is temporary. If logic is temporary, then you cannot frame these statements in absolute terms.

If God can act within time than the part of God that is acting is itself within time. That part of God must change because it is within time and does different things at different times. If you also maintain the existence of God outside time then there are two different parts of God: God-inside-time and God-outside-time. The former can act but is changing. The latter does not change but cannot act inside time. Since one thing cannot both be changing and not-changing and also it cannot be both inside time and not-inside time then we have analysed God into two different parts.

God is not “inside of time” and “outside of time” from the perspective of nature. God exists timelessly and all His actions are timeless. They may appear to be within time to us, but only from our vantage point, and those appearances do not affect the nature of God.

For example, imagine a person walking along a trail. Another person sees this man as a small speck in the distance. A different person sees him from a few yards away as a full sized person. Does the initial person (whom the others saw) have dual natures of both farness and nearness? No, because he is at a single point on the trail. Observer A may see him as a speck, and observer B may see him as a large shape, but this does not mean he is simultaneously both big and small.

God is eternal and timeless. He is unchanging because his nature is unchanging. We see him as a changing being, but only from our vantage point. Our perception of Him as changing does not mean that he is actually changing, just as an observer’s perception of an object in the distance as a speck does not mean that that object is actually a speck.

 

[Sarpedon]

I will continue to refuse to answer speculative “what if…” questions for reasons I have stated. Buddhist philosophy is not pure speculation, it is aimed at a purpose - enlightenment. The Buddha warned against wasting time on speculation. There is work to do.

This is the perfect example of why Buddhism does not generally foster intellectual development. The Greeks were willing to ask the big “what if” questions, and that heritage was retained by the western world. That willingness to ask the big questions lead to all the intellectual development of the western world, along with the culture and technology that came with it.

Yes, there is work to do, but we need to know what we are doing first. Yanking the arrow out of you could be fatal. That’s why you need to understand human anatomy. We can’t create a just society (the polis) if we do not understand what that society is in the first place (politics). We can’t understand what we should direct our actions toward if we don’t understand what and whether the end of man is first. The western world was willing to engage in these grand sweeping questions before jumping right into things. You seem to want to skip this step and get right to work. My question is far from bizarre. If Buddhism can even potentially legitimize Nazi-type regimes in certain circumstances, we should consider that before jumping into politics. Your refusal to answer this question leaves things dangerously open.

 

[Daedelus76]

The difference is that Buddhism seeks to escape the world while Catholicism seeks to see the world as it really is. The Catholic ascetic looks frantically outwards because he wants to see the hidden goodness in things. The Buddhist looks inwards because he wants to escape the illusory world of “things.”

Some forms of Buddhism, such as Mahayana and Vajrayana, emphasize the “Tathata” or “Suchness” of ordinary things. There is no duality between Emptiness and Form (Objects). Seeing the hidden in all things is precisely the goal.

. Buddhism, on the other hand, views the world of things as something illusory and therefore something to be escaped.

Buddhism says there’s no other world to escape to. This is it, Nirvana isn’t some other place, it’s a state of mind and nirvana and samsara are the same thing looked at from different perspectives.

), and therefore condemns even desire for things like love, community, friendship, compassion, etc. Is this central point correct?

Real compassion in Buddhism is rooted in primordial wisdom, which only is realized in detachment from the phenomenal world.

Exactly. Buddhism condemns everything as temporary. A fresh snowfall, a crystal-clear mountain stream, joyful dinners with family and friends, and all those things are temporary and transient, and therefore we should not desire them.

The sentiment of Buddhism is more like “cherish it, because it won’t last”. Impermanence adds a bitterwsweet beauty to life. Buddhism would argue we are cheating ourselves if we do not cherish those moments fully. They are an oppurtunity to awakening. I’m reminded of the William Blake poem “He who binds himself a joy / Doth the winged life destroy / But he who kisses the joy as it flies / Lives in eternity’s sun rise.” A very Buddhist sentiment.

The Catholic takes joy in the gifts of the earth because they are ultimately a sign that points toward the underlying reality and the source of all things, which is Love.

Lama Surya Das has written about love as being “the Ground of Being”.

The Catholic embraces the world and finds the love that is behind it. That’s why physical sacraments exist (like the Eucharist) and why Catholics make art and love the good things in life.

Buddhists make art and have rituals too. They see the pain, the “cost” in life itself , rather than in the Passion narrative. There’s also alot of emphasis on gratitude, perhaps because Buddhism is highly aware that in reality, nobody actually earns or creates anything as an autonomous self. So gratitude is seen as natural in a world where all things are in some way your mother or your brother.

The differences between Christianity and Buddhim are there, for sure, and I presonally fonud some of the propositions of Buddhism absurd in the end (unlike Christianity which tends to favor mystery, Buddhism favors deconstruction, and some of the cosmological stuff is even less reconcileable with science than Christianity), but it’s important not to misrepresent what Buddhism actually is. And actually some forms of Christianity are world denying too, similar to Buddhism. Christianity is perhaps balanced out somewhat, it’s got elements that are closer to Confucianism in some ways. But overall it’s not like you cannot find world denying elements in Christianity. Eastern Christian spirituality in particular can be highly otherworldly and mystical, not totally unlike Buddhism. Maybe the big difference I see is that Christianity might have an edge in the dignity it gives to ordinary human beings, but authors like Keiji Nishitani wondered sometimes if Christianity wasn’t too anthropocentric, especially with environmental destruction present in the modern world.

 

[Fran65]

‘primordial wisdom’ within Buddhism sounds suspiciously like natural moral law - which has its foundation in the concepts of God and objective good.

In addition, it is the reason for the denying of the world that is a foundational difference between Christianity and Buddhism.

As for your final point about environment destruction - I agree. However, it is a lack of understanding of the concept of stewardship that is at fault rather than Christianity per se. St Francis and the Franciscan tradition are an example of care for all creation within Christianity.

 

[rossum]

My question is not so much whether matter is present right now, but how we know how long such things will exist.

Ask a cosmologist, they know a lot more about the long term prospects for matter than I do.

If some oppressive regime emerges in my lifetime and changes the particular world, then it would do me well to consider what might happen to things like morality in that course of events.

Will YHWH be giving orders directly to the leader of this new regime?

And thus you envision a world with infinite regresses. Furthermore, the lack of any self-existent and non-contingent thing breaks down the human capacity to know things.

Even a cursory reading of Buddhist scriptures would show you that the Buddhist universe is infinite in time. The observable universe, starting from the Big Bang, is just its current phase.At Savatthi. There the Blessed One said: “From an inconstruable beginning comes transmigration. A beginning point is not evident, though beings hindered by ignorance and fettered by craving are transmigrating and wandering on.”

• Assu sutta, Samyutta Nikaya 15.3

If there is not some known, undefined, and non-contingent thing to describe everything else off of, then we really can’t describe anything- and that has serious consequences for the intellectual life and the sciences in particular.

It is certainly possible that such an object exists, but since all of our possible sources of knowledge about it are contingent it is impossible for us to have non-contingent knowledge about it. We are back to the mismatch between reality and our mental model of reality. We can only know our mental model, and all our mental models are contingent and imperfect. The closest Buddhism comes to such an object is nirvana.

So you take an Aristotelian view of nature as opposed to Platonic.

I take a Nagarjunian view.

Do you think logic, reason, and perception are temporary?

Logic requires a mind, in the absence of a mind there is no logic. Reason also requires a mind. Perceptions require sense organs and a mind. Minds are temporary. Sense organs are temporary. We are back again to universals. No such universals exist, they are artefacts of our mental models. They are useful in ordinary conversation but they are a hindrance in philosophical discussion.

Again, this boils down to the question of whether logic is temporary. If logic is temporary, then you cannot frame these statements in absolute terms.

You take your logic as permanent, I am using your logic because I am arguing with you. In your logic a single thing cannot have both X and not-X simultaneously.

God is not “inside of time” and “outside of time” from the perspective of nature. God exists timelessly and all His actions are timeless. They may appear to be within time to us, but only from our vantage point, and those appearances do not affect the nature of God.

God must be inside time if He acts within time. If God can hear your prayers and you are praying inside time then the conclusion is obvious. By any reasonable definition of change at least part of God must change.

For example, imagine a person walking along a trail. Another person sees this man as a small speck in the distance. A different person sees him from a few yards away as a full sized person.

The person is the size he is. The apparent size is not attached to the person but to the perceiver’s perception of the person. This is not a good example.

God is eternal and timeless. He is unchanging because his nature is unchanging. We see him as a changing being, but only from our vantage point. Our perception of Him as changing does not mean that he is actually changing, just as an observer’s perception of an object in the distance as a speck does not mean that that object is actually a speck.

So since we cannot see God truly, how do you know that any statement you make about God is correct. You admit that “we see [H]im as a changing being” yet you claim that He is unchanging. You are denying the evidence of your own senses. What evidence can you produce of an unchanging God?

This is the perfect example of why Buddhism does not generally foster intellectual development.

Buddhism is a philosophy with a purpose. That purpose is not “intellectual development” but the attainment of nirvana. Your criticism is irrelevant. You may as well criticise the Bible for not containing the proof of Fermat’s Last Theorem - the Bible was not written for that purpose.

Yes, there is work to do, but we need to know what we are doing first. Yanking the arrow out of you could be fatal. That’s why you need to understand human anatomy.

Relevant questions are useful. Your questions are irrelevant. How is what might possibly happen, or not happen, 100,000 years in the future relevant to how I should act today?

If Buddhism can even potentially legitimize Nazi-type regimes in certain circumstances, we should consider that before jumping into politics. Your refusal to answer this question leaves things dangerously open.

Buddhism does not generally involve itself in politics though individual Buddhists may do so.

If Christianity can even potentially legitimize Nazi-type regimes in certain circumstances, we should consider that before jumping into politics. I refer you back to Numbers 31 and 1 Samuel 15; to me those examples appear to allow religious legitimisation for genocide.

rossum

 

[Detales]

It is not necessary want to escape the “illusory nature of things,” but to understand that the perception of things is illusory and wish to escape illusion itself.

There is nothing in Reality to or escape from, save from this investment in illusion that we accept as “original sin.” There is no where to escape to, as “This is always already the other world.” ~ Da Free John

“love, community, friendship, compassion, etc.” are actually the outcome of of understanding that the “other” is, in essence, not different from your Self. This is the reason for the two great commandments.

Your use, Sarpedon, of the word “condemn” is inappropriate and misleading.

"The Catholic takes joy in the gifts of the earth because they are ultimately a sign that points toward the underlying reality and the source of all things, which is Love. While this may be true, the Church give one an inadequate tool kit for the job. I know.

I also don’t care for the term “Primordial Wisdom” because it is misleading. For someone like Fran the term “Beatific Vision” might be more suitable.

 

[Daedelus76]

‘primordial wisdom’ within Buddhism sounds suspiciously like natural moral law - which has its foundation in the concepts of God and objective good.

Buddhism does have philosophical concepts like an ontological ground of being, it is necessary in some of the philosophy and “soteriology” (Buddhology?). However, reason is ultimately not useful for attaining this kind of wisdom, the emphasis is on gnosis (jnana), noesis and experiential/inuitive knowledge. In this respect, Buddhism is closer in tone to eastern Christian or existentialist-inspired theologies- it’s inherently mystical. I don’t think Buddhists actually deny the idea there’s such a thing as truth altogether. For practical purposes, it often is nihilistic in tone, a Buddhist would argue that a rosy picture of reality isn’t doing you any favors and embracing the ambiguity and uncertainty is part of wisdom. It will probably seem “evasive” or vague to the average Western mind, too.

In addition, it is the reason for the denying of the world that is a foundational difference between Christianity and Buddhism.

Buddhism states the obvious - suffering isn’t fun. Then it presents a cure. The Buddhist POV starts out with the glass being half empty, the world as an ocean of suffering that the average person just rationalizes away. If you want to embrace the world of suffering in solidarity with it, that requires profound courage and wisdom, from the Buddhist POV. Ultimately, when you get to that “level”, a bodhisattva, you are dealing less with legal categories and more what Christians would think of as “the sacred” and appeals to the heart. The tone of Buddhism is also therapeutic, whereas western Christianity, and especially Protestant Reformed/Lutheran tradition, sounds highly juridical in comparison.

Even a cursory reading of Buddhist scriptures would show you that the Buddhist universe is infinite in time. The observable universe, starting from the Big Bang, is just its current phase.

At Savatthi. There the Blessed One said: “From an inconstruable beginning comes transmigration. A beginning point is not evident, though beings hindered by ignorance and fettered by craving are transmigrating and wandering on.”
​

Paul Williams “The Unexpected Way” has some excellent critiques of Buddhism from an ex-Buddhist who converted to Roman Catholicism.

I think Buddhism is close to the radical empiricism of Hume and the Greek skeptics. This kind of thinking, taken to its extreme, is irresponsible, as Immanuel Kant noted. It would mean that scientific knowledge is without any epistemological justification, for one thing. Also, Buddhism is nominalist and reductionist, so of course it will conflict alot with Christianity which tends to be realist (hence the denial of universals - buddhism seems to think the mind is accidental or ultimately purposeless, whereas Christianity says there’s a correspondence between the mental world and external reality because there’s a benevolent God behind it).

God must be inside time if He acts within time. If God can hear your prayers and you are praying inside time then the conclusion is obvious. By any reasonable definition of change at least part of God must change.

Depending on the theology, you can talk about God changing. You can distinguish between God’s unchanging nature and God’s activity.

If Christianity can even potentially legitimize Nazi-type regimes in certain circumstances, we should consider that before jumping into politics. I refer you back to Numbers 31 and 1 Samuel 15; to me those examples appear to allow religious legitimisation for genocide.
rossum

Potentially you can justify alot of of inappropriate things from the Bible. I don’t think that’s fair though because outside of fundamentalists, no Christians believe the Bible interprets itself, that just leaves the individual as the final authority. And Christianity is not an individualistic religion about mere opinions or philosophizing (like Buddhism sometimes is, especially in the West), but about something organic, the Church that Jesus of Nazareth, the body of his followers. In Roman Catholicism, they have a magisterium. In Anglicanism, Wesleyanism, and Orthodoxy, it’s often a combination of Tradition, reason, and experience/common sense.​

 

[rossum]

For practical purposes, it often is nihilistic in tone, a Buddhist would argue that a rosy picture of reality isn’t doing you any favors and embracing the ambiguity and uncertainty is part of wisdom.

The tone of Buddhism as seen in the west is often different to the tone seen in the east. For example Pure Land Buddhism has only recently begun to spread outside the immigrant communities who brought it to the west. What we have in the west is a subset of Buddhism, often shorn of its more “magical” elements. This is changing slowly as more of Buddhism penetrates the west. In a few hundred years we may well have a Western Buddhism which has become more suited to the western approach.

The tone of Buddhism is also therapeutic, whereas western Christianity, and especially Protestant Reformed/Lutheran tradition, sounds highly juridical in comparison.

An excellent point.

I think Buddhism is close to the radical empiricism of Hume and the Greek skeptics. This kind of thinking, taken to its extreme, is irresponsible, as Immanuel Kant noted.

Buddhism is the “Middle Way”, it shuns extremes.

buddhism seems to think the mind is accidental or ultimately purposeless, whereas Christianity says there’s a correspondence between the mental world and external reality because there’s a benevolent God behind it

Our purpose we set for ourselves. There is no external ‘Purpose’ driving things. Buddhism provides advice as to what our purpose should be and helps us to achieve that purpose.

Depending on the theology, you can talk about God changing. You can distinguish between God’s unchanging nature and God’s activity.

Which is the point where I split God into two - the unchanging-inactive and the changing-active. Both the Gnostics and the Kabbalah have looked at this same problem, how can an unchanging God act in the changing world?

Potentially you can justify a lot of of inappropriate things from the Bible. I don’t think that’s fair though because outside of fundamentalists, no Christians believe the Bible interprets itself, that just leaves the individual as the final authority.

In a way that was my point. Sarpedon seemed to want a fundamentalist-style absolute morality; the examples I used showed the dangers of that sort of thing.

And Christianity is not an individualistic religion about mere opinions or philosophizing (like Buddhism sometimes is, especially in the West), but about something organic, the Church that Jesus of Nazareth, the body of his followers.

In the English speaking world Buddhism was initially introduced via the British Empire - Theravada Buddhism from Sri Lanka. The people who did the introducing were mostly low-church Protestants, and what they took was basically a low-church Protestant version of what they found. Later, English-speaking America with its larger Japanese immigrant population discovered Zen Buddhism; another low-church form of Buddhism. Hence the tendency in the west to see Buddhism as a very low-church religion. Since 1950 with the advent of Tibetan Buddhism in the west this image is starting to change; Tibetan Buddhism can be very high-church. More bells and smells than even SSPX, and the hats are better.

Pure Land Buddhism is only now beginning to cross over into the English speaking world. We have yet to see any major impact from Shingon Buddhism, though part of it is covered by the more magical aspects of some of the Tibetan sects.

rossum

 

[Yggdrasil]

I’m not sure I understand how you are relating Martha and Mary to this current discussion. I would not necessarily equate Martha with philosophical and intellectual endeavor. After all, it is Mary who is willing to listen to Jesus and contemplate his words, which is more philosophical than just pursuing a limited pragmatic aim like entertaining a guest.

Martha typifies the active life, while Mary exemplifies the contemplative.

I would place philosophical and intellectual endeavor within the active sphere. Kierkegaard once likened the philosopher to a man living in a crude little hovel who builds, right next to it, an elaborate and vaunted tower of thought for everyone to marvel at. But the man nevertheless has to live in the hut. Kierkegaard, of course, was a philosopher—however, he knew its limits. Saint Thomas Aquinas seems to have agreed: it is said that when he experienced a profound mystical vision late in his life, he commented that “all my works are but straw compared to what I have seen.”

Contemplation is distinct from philosophy. It is neither an inquiry nor a discourse. It entails the renunciation of desire, even including the desire to know. The Christian mystical treatise called The Cloud of Unknowing is rather aptly titled. None of this renders philosophy unimportant. But philosophy pertains to our understanding. What the mystics speak of is “the peace that surpasses all understanding.”

If we’re to discuss where Christianity and Buddhism overlap, it’s probably not in the cosmology or philosophy. Aristotle and Aquinas are not easily reconciled with the Upanishads. But the Christian mystics present an intriguing possibility. Meister Eckhart, who was steeped in scholasticism himself, remarked that “only the hand that erases can write the true thing.” Such an idea is not un-Buddhistic.

Although both involve similar meditation, the ends of each religion are vastly different. The goal of Buddhism is primarily to eliminate pain, while the goal of Christianity is to cultivate virtue. Buddhism is about losing something, while Christianity is about gaining something.

But the virtue that Christianity seeks to cultivate is the (partial) means to an even greater end: salvation. Saint Athanasius’ formula tells us that “God became man so that man might become divine,” not simply virtuous.

In common parlance, being saved and being liberated have different meanings. But they are not so distant in relation. Saint Paul used the concept of being “freed” in much the same sense that he used “saved."

 

[Sarpedon]

It is certainly possible that such an object exists, but since all of our possible sources of knowledge about it are contingent it is impossible for us to have non-contingent knowledge about it. We are back to the mismatch between reality and our mental model of reality. We can only know our mental model, and all our mental models are contingent and imperfect. The closest Buddhism comes to such an object is nirvana.

Logic requires a mind, in the absence of a mind there is no logic. Reason also requires a mind. Perceptions require sense organs and a mind. Minds are temporary. Sense organs are temporary. We are back again to universals. No such universals exist, they are artefacts of our mental models. They are useful in ordinary conversation but they are a hindrance in philosophical discussion.

You take your logic as permanent, I am using your logic because I am arguing with you. In your logic a single thing cannot have both X and not-X simultaneously.

You aren’t addressing my direct point. I know that Buddhism rejects the concept of any unchanging thing, including logic. I am arguing that such a position ultimately breaks down human knowledge and the capacity to know (and thus know knowledge of how to best pull the arrow out). Restating the Buddhist position does not address my argument.

Do you think that Buddhism fosters scientific development, given that nature cannot be expected to obey permanent and predictable laws? Does it develop a rational understanding of things in general, given that things cannot be expected to follow a permanent and predictable pattern set forth in reason?

Given that nothing is permanent in Buddhism, can you say that the temporary nature of things is in fact temporary? Is it possible for the temporary nature of things to change into something permanent? Or is that absolutely impossible?

 

[Sarpedon]

God must be inside time if He acts within time. If God can hear your prayers and you are praying inside time then the conclusion is obvious. By any reasonable definition of change at least part of God must change.

The person is the size he is. The apparent size is not attached to the person but to the perceiver’s perception of the person. This is not a good example.

God does not act within time. God acts, and we [P]percieve the action within time.

God hearing our prayers does not mean that God is actually sitting up there listening to us talk. It means the acknowledgment of our prayer, which transcends time. The Catholic view of God is not as simplistic as you are describing it. He is not some guy with a beard sitting up there listening to us speak. See newadvent.org/cathen/06612a.htm

Why is my example bad? A person has a fixed size at any given moment, and another person seeing him as a speck in the distance does not mean that he is actually a speck. God acts by nature outside of time, and our perception of His timeless actions within time do not make them a part of time.

So since we cannot see God truly, how do you know that any statement you make about God is correct. You admit that “we see [H]im as a changing being” yet you claim that He is unchanging. You are denying the evidence of your own senses. What evidence can you produce of an unchanging God?

Natural reason is sufficient to know the unchanging nature of God. The link I provided explains this in depth:

"When we say that God is infinite, we mean that He is unlimited in every kind of perfection or that every conceivable perfection belongs to Him in the highest conceivable way. In a different sense we sometimes speak, for instance, of infinite time or space, meaning thereby time of such indefinite duration or space of such indefinite extension that we cannot assign any fixed limit to one or the other. Care should be taken not to confound these two essentially different meanings of the term. Time and space, being made up of parts in duration or extension, are essentially finite by comparison with God’s infinity. Now we assert that God is infinitely perfect in the sense explained, and that His infinity is deducible from His self-existence. For a self-existent being, if limited at all, could be limited only by itself; to be limited by another would imply causal dependence on that other, which the very notion of self-existence excludes. But the self-existing cannot be conceived as limiting itself, in the sense of curtailing its perfection of being, without ceasing to be self-existing. Whatever it is, it is necessarily; its own essence is the sole reason or explanation of its existence, so that its manner of existence must be as unchangeable as its essence, and to suggest the possibility of an increase or diminution of perfection would be to suggest the absurdity of a changeable essence. It only remains, then, to say that whatever perfection is compatible with its essence is actually realized in a self-existing being; but as there is no conceivable perfection as such — that is, no expression of positive being as such — that is not compatible with the essence of the self-existent, it follows that the self-existent must be infinite in all perfection. For self-existence itself is absolute positive being and positive being cannot contradict, and cannot therefore limit, positive being.

In God “there is no change, nor shadow of alteration” (James 1:17); “They * shall perish, but thou shalt continue: and they shall all grow old as a garment. And as a vesture shalt thou change them, and they shall be changed: but thou art the selfsame and thy years shall not fail” (Hebrews 1:10-12, Psalm 101:26-28. Cf. Malachi 3:6; Hebrews 13:8). These are some of the Scriptural texts which clearly teach Divine immutability or unchangeableness, and this attribute is likewise emphasized in church teaching, as by the Council of Nicaea against the Arians, who attributed mutability to the Logos (Denzinger, 54-old No. 18), and by the Vatican Council in its famous definition.

That the Divine nature is essentially immutable, or incapable of any internal change, is an obvious corollary from Divine infinity. Changeableness implies the capacity for increase or diminution of perfection, that is, it implies finiteness and imperfection. But God is infinitely perfect and is necessarily what He is."

There is more at the link I provided. I’ve already gone over why universals and permanence is vital to a good human life. We need true knowledge to know how to pull the arrow out, and true knowledge is impossible without some non-contingent thing to base that knowledge off.*

 

[Sarpedon]

Buddhism is a philosophy with a purpose. That purpose is not “intellectual development” but the attainment of nirvana. Your criticism is irrelevant. You may as well criticise the Bible for not containing the proof of Fermat’s Last Theorem - the Bible was not written for that purpose.

Relevant questions are useful. Your questions are irrelevant. How is what might possibly happen, or not happen, 100,000 years in the future relevant to how I should act today?

Because we haven’t established the truth of Buddhism yet. In an attempt to discern whether Buddhism is true, I am examining the nature of Buddhism and the logical implications of Buddhism to determine whether or not I should place stock in its teachings. Your refusal to explain the potential consequences of Buddhism does not give me a reason to follow Buddhism in the here and now. Buddhism may have a purpose, but we need to determine whether it actually achieves that purpose before we follow it. That’s why I’m asking you to explain and defend your Buddhism. If you refuse to answer my challenges because they are a distraction from the goal of Buddhism, then there is no reason you can expect me to follow Buddhism. I certainly would not expect you to follow Christianity if I was not able to explain and defend it from a rational standpoint.

Didn’t Buddha say that Boddavisattas are those who remain in the world to bring all beings to Nirvana? How about you explain what could happen in 100,000 years as a consequence of changing morality as a way to move me towards Nirvana in the here and now?

 

[Sarpedon]

Will YHWH be giving orders directly to the leader of this new regime?If Christianity can even potentially legitimize Nazi-type regimes in certain circumstances, we should consider that before jumping into politics. I refer you back to Numbers 31 and 1 Samuel 15; to me those examples appear to allow religious legitimisation for genocide.

There are several main points to keep in mind with these instances and others like them. First of all, God can morally choose to end a life. There is nothing immoral about death itself, and God ultimately causes the life of everyone to end. Death is simply another form of birth, and immorality of murder stems from a desire to usurp the authority of God rather than simply causing death.

Furthermore, the instances in the Bible are all particular instances. They are not moral commands that apply outside of that particular instance. The Bible does not give all the details of the conflicts between the Israelites and their enemies, and so we should be careful in judging the morality of those individual instances. For example, saying that the United States attacked Iraq and not explaining the context would be very misleading.

Furthermore, the Bible is written from the human vantage point. Therefore the depictions of God in the Bible may be colored somewhat by the perception of the writer. For example, some authors may make particular note of a certain aspect, and others may ignore it entirely. It’s important to note that Catholicism is not fundamentalist Protestantism. Catholicism views much of the Bible primarily as God’s revelation to man through the human experience. Naturally this means that some parts do not fully explain the nature of God, which is part of the reason why the Bible alone is insufficient for knowing God. This is a major difference between Catholicism and Protestantism.

Furthermore, only the Magisterium of the Catholic Church can rule on what the Bible says. Therefore, this places a limit on wrong interpretations of ambiguous passages.

 

[Sarpedon]

In a way that was my point. Sarpedon seemed to want a fundamentalist-style absolute morality; the examples I used showed the dangers of that sort of thing.

I’m not saying that certain particular actions are always right or always wrong. I’m saying that the underlying universal behind the action is absolute and permanent. For example, the universal of loving your neighbor is an absolute unchanging thing. What constitutes loving your neighbor changes are the particular world changes. In one instance, loving your neighbor may mean sending your army into Europe to stop an oppresive regime. In another situation, sitting the war out may be the most loving option, depending on your capabilities and the possible consequences of involvement.

This isn’t simple fundamentalist morality. The morality of Catholicism both acknowledges the importance of considering the individual situation while also acknowldging that some things are not changeable or debatable. It will always be wrong to harm your neighbor, but that that means changes over time. In the Buddhist system, there is no universal to balance this change against some sort of standard.

 

[Sarpedon]

I would place philosophical and intellectual endeavor within the active sphere. Kierkegaard once likened the philosopher to a man living in a crude little hovel who builds, right next to it, an elaborate and vaunted tower of thought for everyone to marvel at. But the man nevertheless has to live in the hut. Kierkegaard, of course, was a philosopher—however, he knew its limits. Saint Thomas Aquinas seems to have agreed: it is said that when he experienced a profound mystical vision late in his life, he commented that “all my works are but straw compared to what I have seen.”

Sure, thought needs to be put into action for it to be fruitfull. Neither thought nor action are sufficient on their own grounds.

Contemplation is distinct from philosophy. It is neither an inquiry nor a discourse. It entails the renunciation of desire, even including the desire to know. The Christian mystical treatise called The Cloud of Unknowing is rather aptly titled. None of this renders philosophy unimportant. But philosophy pertains to our understanding. What the mystics speak of is “the peace that surpasses all understanding.”

I am not sure what you mean by “a desire to know.” If you mean that contemplation is simply prayer without directly seeking understanding, there is little problem here. It should be noted however, that such prayer is not self sufficient, for we need understanding and action in addition. If you mean that such prayer is above understanding and action, then this is problematic. Honestly, I think you are reading far more into the Martha and Mary story than is actually meant.

If we’re to discuss where Christianity and Buddhism overlap, it’s probably not in the cosmology or philosophy. Aristotle and Aquinas are not easily reconciled with the Upanishads. But the Christian mystics present an intriguing possibility. Meister Eckhart, who was steeped in scholasticism himself, remarked that “only the hand that erases can write the true thing.” Such an idea is not un-Buddhistic.

There isn’t enough context here to evaluate the quote in relation to itself.

But the virtue that Christianity seeks to cultivate is the (partial) means to an even greater end: salvation. Saint Athanasius’ formula tells us that “God became man so that man might become divine,” not simply virtuous.

Salvation is loving perfectly, and we love through virtue. Virtue in term is formed by choice, and united to a perfected nature where desire is harmonized to that proper choice. To draw a sharp distinction between having virtue to some degree and being able to love to some degree is problematic.

[QUOT]In common parlance, being saved and being liberated have different meanings. But they are not so distant in relation. Saint Paul used the concept of being “freed” in much the same sense that he used “saved."

If you are trying to tie Christianity in to Buddhism, this has no relation. Being free in a Christian sense refers to being free from imperfection so that we might perfectly desire love and perfectly choose to act in love. In contrast, freedom in a Buddhist sense is freedom from desire unconditionally. These two aspects cannot be reconciled. The Catholic seeks to perfect His desire, while the Buddhist seeks to eliminate all of his desire.

 

[Yggdrasil]

I am not sure what you mean by “a desire to know.” If you mean that contemplation is simply prayer without directly seeking understanding, there is little problem here.

That is what I mean, but I’m speaking of contemplative prayer in terms of Christian mysticism. The experience itself is ineffable. As Archbishop Fénelon commented: “we may write about it, but only experience can really teach anyone what it really is.” In this sense, it does transcend understanding.

It should be noted however, that such prayer is not self sufficient, for we need understanding and action in addition. If you mean that such prayer is above understanding and action, then this is problematic.

As far as action is concerned, do you mean the action of contemplative prayer itself? The action therein consists essentially of loving surrender. Thomas Merton averred that there is an “activity of love” in contemplation: “a withdrawal from attachment to sensible things, a liberation of the mind and imagination from all strong emotional and passionate clinging to sensible realities.”

If you meant instead quotidian action apart from contemplation, then of course the mystic has all the obligations of any Christian of his or her station. Frequently there will be a renewed ardor for the sacraments of penance and the Eucharist.

Honestly, I think you are reading far more into the Martha and Mary story than is actually meant.

I’m not alone, though. The English monastic who wrote The Cloud of Unknowing understood it in the same sense; possibly it is the common reading in the contemplative tradition.

Salvation is loving perfectly, and we love through virtue. Virtue in term is formed by choice, and united to a perfected nature where desire is harmonized to that proper choice. To draw a sharp distinction between having virtue to some degree and being able to love to some degree is problematic.

Surely, but let’s not leave grace out of the equation.

If you are trying to tie Christianity in to Buddhism, this has no relation. Being free in a Christian sense refers to being free from imperfection so that we might perfectly desire love and perfectly choose to act in love. In contrast, freedom in a Buddhist sense is freedom from desire unconditionally. These two aspects cannot be reconciled. The Catholic seeks to perfect His desire, while the Buddhist seeks to eliminate all of his desire.

I’m not trying to tie anything in to anything else. Catholic doctrine is in no way threatened here. Is it possible that you might be focusing a mite too stridently on retaining desire in the Christian scheme: might “perfectly desiring love” be equated with self-naughting? Our Lord tells his disciple in The Imitation of Christ:

*My child, renounce self and you shall find Me. Give up your own self-will, your possessions, and you shall always gain. For once you resign yourself irrevocably, greater grace will be given you.

Always, at every hour, in small matters as well as great: resign yourself, forsake yourself—I except nothing. In all things I wish you to be stripped of self. How otherwise can you be mine or I yours unless you be despoiled of your own will both inwardly and outwardly? The sooner you do this the better it will be for you, and the more fully and sincerely you do it the more you will please Me and the greater gain you will merit.

I have said to you very often, and now I say again: forsake yourself, renounce yourself and you shall enjoy great inward peace. Give all for all. Ask nothing, demand nothing in return. Trust purely and without hesitation in Me, and you shall possess Me. You will be free of heart and darkness will not overwhelm you.

Strive for this, pray for this, desire this—to be stripped of all selfishness and naked to follow the naked Jesus, to die to self and live forever for Me. Then all vain imaginations, all wicked disturbances and superfluous cares will vanish. Then also immoderate fear will leave you and inordinate love will die.*

The total surrender of the will leaves virtually no room for us to speak of “desire” in any meaningful sense, unless we can admit that it has been so perfected as to be extinguished in the fire of pure love—in which case we are still not Buddhists. But a “desire to be stripped of desire” could be considered mildly analogous. The difference is that Christian mystics are willing to apply the notion of love, and the notion of being united to the Godhead; a Buddhist surely balks at the application of any terminology at all.

 

[rossum]

You aren’t addressing my direct point. I know that Buddhism rejects the concept of any unchanging thing, including logic. I am arguing that such a position ultimately breaks down human knowledge and the capacity to know (and thus know knowledge of how to best pull the arrow out). Restating the Buddhist position does not address my argument.

Are you saying that human knowledge is permanent? Are you saying that human knowledge is unchanging? Human knowledge is impermanent and unchanging, just as Buddhism would expect.

Do you think that Buddhism fosters scientific development, given that nature cannot be expected to obey permanent and predictable laws? Does it develop a rational understanding of things in general, given that things cannot be expected to follow a permanent and predictable pattern set forth in reason?

Why do you think that impermanent things cannot be predictable? Read more about Buddhism and you will see that cause and effect, and the predictability of cause and effect, are crucial concepts. My car is not permanent, that does not prevent it predictably steering to the right when I turn the wheel to the right. You are incorrect to link permanence to predictability.

Given that nothing is permanent in Buddhism, can you say that the temporary nature of things is in fact temporary? Is it possible for the temporary nature of things to change into something permanent? Or is that absolutely impossible?

What colour socks is the father of the man who shot the arrow wearing?

God does not act within time. God acts, and we [P]percieve

the action within time.
So you say. Since you have no perception to provide in evidence, what other evidence can you provide?

Natural reason is sufficient to know the unchanging nature of God.

How can we reason from a changing universe to an unchanging God? Your source quotes: “And as a vesture shalt thou change them, and they shall be changed: but thou art the selfsame and thy years shall not fail”. My point is precisely that we can see and observe the changing vesture but we cannot see or observe the unchanging part. Again we have the separation into the two parts, changing and unchanging. You have not established the existence of the unchanging part, merely asserted it.

Didn’t Buddha say that Boddavisattas are those who remain in the world to bring all beings to Nirvana? How about you explain what could happen in 100,000 years as a consequence of changing morality as a way to move me towards Nirvana in the here and now?

Please let me know if God is going to add an eleventh commandment “You shall not eat butter on a Wednesday” at some time in the future, perhaps 100,000 years from now. How will that possible new future commandment affect what I have to do now?

First of all, God can morally choose to end a life.

In Buddhism He cannot. All living beings, gods included, are subject to moral law. Buddhism gives a different answer to the Euthyphro dilemma than the usual Christian answer.

Furthermore, the instances in the Bible are all particular instances. They are not moral commands that apply outside of that particular instance.

Which is why your questions about future morality are useless, they are also particular instances. Unless we can know all possible details about the future they are just useless speculation.

The Bible does not give all the details of the conflicts between the Israelites and their enemies, and so we should be careful in judging the morality of those individual instances.

What had the unborn children and newborns done that required them to die? For a Buddhist, God’s order to kill the Amalekite animals as well only adds to His bad karma.

I’m not saying that certain particular actions are always right or always wrong. I’m saying that the underlying universal behind the action is absolute and permanent.

It sems to me that the “universal” can change. During the Roman empire is was “universal” that slavery was allowed. Later that changed and it was determined that slavery wasn’t universal after all. Currently we seem to be going through a period when the “universal” that homosexual acts are wrong is coming under pressure and that it may also not turn out not to have been universal after all. You declare the existence of universals yet we can see that some universals are more universal than others. We are human so we may make a mistake when we declare something to be universal.

rossum

 

[Sarpedon]

If you meant instead quotidian action apart from contemplation, then of course the mystic has all the obligations of any Christian of his or her station. Frequently there will be a renewed ardor for the sacraments of penance and the Eucharist.

I mean actions in terms of using the will to pursue good. While contemplation and philosophy and both good and necessary, it is also necessary to put those things into practical action through good works.

Surely, but let’s not leave grace out of the equation.

Of course.

I have said to you very often, and now I say again: forsake yourself, renounce yourself and you shall enjoy great inward peace. Give all for all. Ask nothing, demand nothing in return. Trust purely and without hesitation in Me, and you shall possess Me. You will be free of heart and darkness will not overwhelm you.

Strive for this, pray for this, desire this—to be stripped of all selfishness and naked to follow the naked Jesus, to die to self and live forever for Me. Then all vain imaginations, all wicked disturbances and superfluous cares will vanish. Then also immoderate fear will leave you and inordinate love will die.

This is about surrending your bad desires and retaining your good desires- namely desire for internal peace, desire for freedom from darkness, freedom from vain imaginations and freedom from wicked disturbances. A Buddhist would not want to retain desires for even these things. Both Buddhism and Christianity seek the elimination of bad desires, but Buddhism goes one step further by seeking the elimination of “good” desires as well.

The total surrender of the will leaves virtually no room for us to speak of “desire” in any meaningful sense, unless we can admit that it has been so perfected as to be extinguished in the fire of pure love—in which case we are still not Buddhists. But a “desire to be stripped of desire” could be considered mildly analogous. The difference is that Christian mystics are willing to apply the notion of love, and the notion of being united to the Godhead; a Buddhist surely balks at the application of any terminology at all.

A total surrender of the will does not mean a total surrender of desire, for they are different faculties. A total surrender of the will means that you are directing all your actions towards God Who is love, which is the ultimate telos of man. At no point does such obedience to perfection negate the desire for perfection.

 

[Sarpedon]

Are you saying that human knowledge is permanent? Are you saying that human knowledge is unchanging? Human knowledge is impermanent and unchanging, just as Buddhism would expect.

Human reason is permanently capable of arriving at the true nature of things. While bad passions can cloud an individuals moral judgement, this does not affect the ability of reason itself to arrive at both knowledge of the particular and knowledge of the universal.

Why do you think that impermanent things cannot be predictable? Read more about Buddhism and you will see that cause and effect, and the predictability of cause and effect, are crucial concepts. My car is not permanent, that does not prevent it predictably steering to the right when I turn the wheel to the right. You are incorrect to link permanence to predictability.

Is there any guideline in Buddhism for how long things exist in one form before changing into another? Is that guideline changing as well?

What colour socks is the father of the man who shot the arrow wearing?

What type of poison did he put on the barb?

My question isn’t a dumb question. If the temporary, changing nature of the world can change into a permanent nature, this has major implications for all of Buddhism. If such a thing cannot happen, then we have an absolute. This question directly addresses the integrity of Buddhism itself, and therefore is entirely relevant to the matter at hand, namely Buddhism. I know you won’t address this because you don’t seem willing to answer deep questions about the nature of Buddhism. At any rate, I am not convinced. Would you be convinced of the truth of Christianity if someone walked up to you and said “Jesus is Lord, but all other questions about that are irrelevent.” We need to know the details so we can evaluate whether it is true or not in the first place.

So you say. Since you have no perception to provide in evidence, what other evidence can you provide?

God has given man the capacity to know truth through reason, and reason concludes that a world of contingency must have a non-contingent foundation for anything to make sense (this isn’t the same as the first cause argument exactly). That non-contingent thing must be self existent and infinite in perfection, which means that there cannot be an increase of decrease of perfection. This means that there cannot be change within God. This is only an outline of the link I mentioned.

How can we reason from a changing universe to an unchanging God? Your source quotes: “And as a vesture shalt thou change them, and they shall be changed: but thou art the selfsame and thy years shall not fail”. My point is precisely that we can see and observe the changing vesture but we cannot see or observe the unchanging part. Again we have the separation into the two parts, changing and unchanging. You have not established the existence of the unchanging part, merely asserted it.

Because reason is capable of taking the particular and reasoning upwards toward a universal. For example, we can observe gravity and reason upwards to a rule that applies universally in the world. It is not necessary to measure gravity everywhere in the world to conclude with a reasonable degree of confidence that gravity is a physical constant. We can experience and examine the activities of God and the nature of the universe, and arrive at reasonable conclusions about the principals behind those observations.

Please let me know if God is going to add an eleventh commandment “You shall not eat butter on a Wednesday” at some time in the future, perhaps 100,000 years from now. How will that possible new future commandment affect what I have to do now?

Because if God were ever to introduce such an arbitrary commandment, maybe that’s a sign that Catholicism isn’t real. If Buddhism can potentially legitimize Nazi-like regimes far in the future, maybe that’s a sign that Buddhism isn’t real.

Which is why your questions about future morality are useless, they are also particular instances. Unless we can know all possible details about the future they are just useless speculation.

I am not asking you whether Nazi-like regimes will become justified in the future under Buddhism. I am asking whether they can be justified under any circumstances. You are free to invent your own details in this thought experiment, for I am only asking whether such a legitimization is possible under any circumstances.