Timeline for How to avoid apathy in the absence of self?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
15 events
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| Jun 17, 2020 at 9:56 | history | edited | CommunityBot |
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| Sep 19, 2018 at 16:04 | comment | added | user14119 | @ChrisW I'd like to say more but mustn't chat anymore. Just a link that may be interesting. emptinessteachings.com/2014/09/11/… | |
| Sep 19, 2018 at 12:21 | comment | added | ChrisW♦ | @PeterJ Maybe if H. H. the Dalai Lama is right, then I have been introduced to "two truths"; but never in so many words, IMO, and not by that name. Access to Insight, for example, nowhere mentions "two truths" and only mentions four (noble) truths (reference). I don't see it as a paradox (e.g. mutually-contradictory propositions which are true simultaneously), more like different tools which do different things and you pick the right tool (or the right view) for the purpose. | |
| Sep 19, 2018 at 12:03 | comment | added | user14119 | Okay Chris. I wasn't trying to start an argument or be critical. It's just that a Two Truths doctrine is common to all schools of Buddhism (the Dalai Lama writes) and it has to be understood for a philosophical understanding, so I tend to assume most people practicing know it to some extent. This has to be my last comment here - I'm being told off for chatting. . | |
| Sep 19, 2018 at 11:56 | comment | added | ChrisW♦ | Anyway I don't think I'm the person to try to introduce Nagarjuna to the OP -- it was Andrei and Yeshe Tenley who mentioned emptiness in their answers, I wanted to complement that with another answer which didn't explicitly depend on Nagarjuna's dialectic (I saw nothing in the OP that would imply the OP is familiar with or asking about Mahayana doctrine). Anyway if you think that mentioning or explaining "Two Truths" would help the OP, perhaps you could do that in an answer. | |
| Sep 19, 2018 at 11:53 | comment | added | ChrisW♦ | @PeterJ Conversely I don't find the suttas to be mystical or paradoxical -- not "mystical" possibly because it identifies dualities ("right and wrong", "noble and ignoble") rather than trying to take monism as a doctrine (ditto the verse 78 of the Tao Te Ching which you mentioned -- IMO those words are merely true, not paradoxical; see also e.g. Tai Chi). The suttas' anatta doctrine takes a bit of explaining, admittedly, to identify what it is and what it isn't; but there are other bits of dhamma to learn, so I just wanted to remind the OP of that. | |
| Sep 19, 2018 at 11:10 | comment | added | user14119 | @ChrisW - I think you might be right about 'mundane; and supramundane'. The basic point is, as Lao Tsu puts it, 'true words seem paradoxical'. I suspect this is exactly what is confusing the OP. Nagarjuna is the man for explaining this and his fame is largely due to his explanation. He explains why the language of mysticism seems paradoxical while not actually being so. It confuses people like Melhuish and Priest who write at length about this stuff so the OP is in good company. | |
| Sep 18, 2018 at 15:32 | comment | added | ChrisW♦ | @PeterJ OK but I find that all kind of confusing ("definitive", "provisional", and so on, is all vocabulary that I'm not familiar with), and as I said I tried to base my answer on "classical" doctrine i.e. the suttas. Perhaps (I'm not sure) what you're talking about shows up in the suttas as "mundane right view" versus "supramundane right view" . Maybe that's just the kind of doctrinal split (or one-sided extreme) that was confusing the OP, though, I feared that emphasising/belabouring it in the answer would just make that "worse", so I touched on other, more concrete, topics instead. | |
| Sep 18, 2018 at 15:19 | comment | added | user14119 | @ChrisW - The Dalai Lama uses the terms 'definitive' and 'provisional' to describe teachings where the latter are relative and require interpretation and the former are 'saying it as it is'. These would be Nagarjuna's Ultimate and Conventional ways of speaking. Invariably these two ways of speaking would contradict each other. The contradiction would not be real but a didactic device. (Thus the language of the First and Third 'Turning of the Wheel'). Heraclitus shows us the way when he states 'We exist and exist-not'. Nagarjuna would deny the truth of either atomic statement on its own. | |
| Sep 18, 2018 at 14:58 | comment | added | ChrisW♦ | @PeterJ Perhaps, however I don't think I understand "the 'two truths' doctrine" or see it as a clarification. I'm not sure it's a big feature of the Pali suttas. Further to that Wikipedia sentence I once asked this question -- What are 'suttas of indirect meaning' in the Pali canon? -- but I didn't find that a very fruitful line of inquiry either. Perhaps you could use it as a clarification, in an answer of your own? | |
| Sep 18, 2018 at 14:44 | comment | added | user14119 | @ChrisW - Perhaps it would clarify things to mention the 'Two Truths' doctrine. This would say 'nothing really exists' and 'There is not really anybody who is suffering', where the 'really' would hint at the fact that to all intents and purposes in ordinary life these things do exist. | |
| Sep 14, 2018 at 21:30 | comment | added | ChrisW♦ | @Stanley My answer may be based more on the Pali canon, where other answers (except Medhini's and VeiculoLongo's) are more Mahayana. Even so I think that the Pali canon denounces "there are no other people etc." as a wrong view, and promotes sila and the brahmaviharas. | |
| Sep 13, 2018 at 3:39 | comment | added | Stanley | Thanks @ChrisW. I am reading through all of the links that you posted. Much appreciated. | |
| Sep 12, 2018 at 19:14 | comment | added | OyaMist | I'm going to have to start smoking a bamboo pipe. :D | |
| Sep 10, 2018 at 19:54 | history | answered | ChrisW♦ | CC BY-SA 4.0 |