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Buddhist master, Ajahn Brahm, answered a similar question as follows in an interview with Rachael Kohn:
Rachael Kohn: I know that your message is often about happiness, and how the point of life...is all about changing one’s attitude, not
really about changing the world. And yet you would know that that kind
of an attitude can also be breeding a ...
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It's hard to answer these kind of things with a negative but I'm going to be bold and do that with caveats. I haven't heard of Stoicism itself being directly influenced by Buddhism but.....
There is evidence that Indian Philosophy was influencing Greek philosophy
The founder of skepticism Pyrrho travelled with Alexander the Great into India and was said to ...
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Buddhist not trying to accumulate money/power and use it to help people and change world, is hypocritical?
Hypocrisy is defined as:
1. a pretense of having a virtuous character, moral or religious beliefs or principles, etc., that one does not really possess.
(source)
So, the above behaviour would only be considered hypocritical if the Buddhist in ...
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causality. Action. Reaction. Cause and effect
This is agreeable with Theravada Buddhism. This is dealt in dependent origination
Choice is an illusion, created between those with power, and those without
Not relevant. As there is no one with absolute power nor are we puppets to some external force.
Having said this. We do have some degree of choice in ...
answered Sep 28 '14 at 15:41
Suminda Sirinath S. Dharmasena
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There's an article on that subject Dhamma and Non-duality by
Bhikkhu Bodhi.
The following is basically all direct quotes from that article, except very summarized (I'm extracting sentences and sentence fragments).
Non-dual system
For the Vedanta, non-duality (advaita) means the absence of an ultimate distinction between the Atman, the innermost self, and ...
7
God's plan implies a working towards some goal, or a rhyme or reason at least. Karma implies no such thing; it simply describes an orderliness to the mental aspect of reality, in the same way that physics does for the physical aspect. Karma is in fact to be abandoned, or risen above, in the end, to the extent that one performs neither wholesome nor ...
7
AN 3.38 describes Gotama having an existential crisis.
Even though I was endowed with such fortune, such total refinement, the thought occurred to me: 'When an untaught, run-of-the-mill person,
himself subject to death, not beyond death, sees another who is dead,
he is horrified, humiliated, & disgusted, oblivious to himself that he
too is ...
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If I could be as bold as to identify the viewpoint of Buddhism in terms of western philosophy, I would say Buddhist position on free will is close to that of Compatibilism (see the Wikipedia entry).
Basically, on one hand, the universe can be seen as deterministic. On the other hand, our choice-making is what objectively leads to our outcomes, so even if ...
6
In the Theravada (mostly in the abhidhamma and commentaries), "nāma" is used to describe those dhammas that are mental, i.e. the last four aggregates. Also, three of the four ultimate realities (nibbana is considered a nāmadhamma, though that's a bit of a technicality).
e.g., in the Yāmaka:
ye keci nāmā dhammā, sabbe te nāmamūlā?
Whatever nāma ...
6
However, this is exactly what Aristotle said in his definition of virtue.
Yes the ancient Greeks did have "nothing in excess" as part of their cultural heritage.
Buddhists might agree with some of the other 'wise' sayings on the page linked above, especially for example, "You should not desire the impossible".
But the ethics are not the same. Greek ethics ...
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A long time ago in Sri Lanka the Sangha began to divide itself into two sort of specialties of Monks. There were city Monks who lived in monasteries inside the cities and villages, and they specialized in the study of texts and doing ceremonial functions while the forest Monks lived either in monasteries outside of settlements or they wandered from place to ...
5
Lord Buddha definitely does talk about Past, Present and Future; but I guess your questions is mainly about, "Do we have something called time?" or "What is time?"
With regards to Abidhamma, there is no "Paramartha" dhamma which we can relate to time: i.e. there is Citta, Cetasika and Rupa and Nirvana, but no reference to time. One of the best explanations ...
5
Some scholars, notably Dan Lusthaus, have argued that Yogācāra is not a form of Idealism. Lusthaus is one of the leading living authorities on Yogācāra and author of the authoritative analysis, Buddhist Phenomenology. The charge of Idealism is simply a mistaken reading of Yogācāra. For example in the introduction to his paper, What is and isn't Yogācāra he ...
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Your question is quite interesting because it starts out with an openness regarding identity view. Awesome! You ask about what is and are puzzled at the rise of feelings pleasant, painful or neutral. You ask whether we have experimental evidence for such feelings and equations for them. Indeed, you might well be asking for the wave equation for "self" or "...
5
Say, you wanted to lose weight and stay healthy. If you have no idea about Calories, Carbs, Fat, and Exercise - you may spend years randomly trying all types of foods, fasting, etc. - your weight going up and down endlessly. But once you get a clear idea of the science behind the body weight, you start eating healthy and exercising. Then you can draw a burn-...
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Apparently Pascal is aware of the same thing that the Buddha was aware of before he became enlightened: i.e. a view of reality which was the actual incentive for Gautama to look for enlightenment, asking something like,
"How can I be happy, even as a king, when illness and death are inevitable?"
This description of the "human condition" ...
4
This is a very complex question. You start by positing an "ideal Buddhist", which cannot really exist by virtue of all Buddhists generally being human, thus flawed.
You are asking about how a Buddhist goes about reducing suffering in others - or put the other way, acting on the kindness and compassion that they practice will, hopefully, bring into being.
...
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I don't think there is any single word that's cleanly equivalent to qualia, but there are some that approach the idea from different angles.
sabhāva-dhamma: Condition of nature; any phenomenon, event, property, or quality as experienced in and of itself.
sabhāva by itself means "own-being" or "own-becoming". It describes the intrinsic nature or essence ...
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In my opinion, the Dhamma is in-between those two extremes. The Dhamma teaches us Dependent Co-arising.
One's mind is not free from the influence of past conditions. What affects the aggregates in the present will influence its future state (or the state of the next group of aggregates causally derived from and connected to a past group of aggregates). In ...
4
If there are overlaps, what are possible explanations?
It's natural that when you learn something new, you compare it with what you know already.
Not just "compare", but "see parallels" and "see contrasts" and "try to integrate with".
I'm not sure whether it's possible to do otherwise, but there are one or two mistakes to beware of.
One is to assume that ...
3
The problem as I understand it.
This is a question is ultimately about substantiation.
In using the term unique particular, you seem to be referring to the notion that there may be some sort of irreducible particle, a particle that would give objects and phenomena (dharmas) true substance, or something that would be conceptually equivalent to a true ... ...
3
The word nāma is never used by itself to mean mind, but the reason for this is the word literally means name, so it would be very hard to tell when it is being used to mean mind and when it is being used to mean name. When it is used in the compound nāmarūpa however, the meaning is clear because it's being used as part of a set expression.
There are other ...
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The presence of Greek kingdoms in (what are now) Afganistan, Pakistan and India after the time of Alexander, implies that the evolution of (some schools of) Buddhism was to some extent (small or large depending on what scholar you ask) influenced by Greek thinking. So, it might be that Stoicism influenced the evolution of Buddhism (but then there must likely ...
3
Gordon Douglas (monk),
Gordon Douglas has traditionally been seen as the first European to become ordained as a Bhikkhu in Southeast Asia although Laurence Carroll (U Dhammaloka) and others are now understood to have been earlier.1 He was ordained in Siam in 1899 or 1900 and assumed the name Bhikkhu Asoka or Ashoka.2
An online summary is Theravāda ...
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"something that takes control of the present to enable greater control of future possibilities". This is Mindfulness. By being Mindful of the present moment.One has greater control of the action that follows.
How is this related to goal of Buddhism?
The goal of Buddhism is Nibbanna.You realise it through practicing the Eight Noble Path in which Right ...
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A good question. But hampered, as are many such discussions by mismatched terminology. There is no Buddhist concept that quite matches the idea of "consciousness". We don't really notice this because the early translators used quite imprecise terminology and we're stuck with it. If there is one thing that vijñāna is not, it is "consciousness".
Another ...
3
Archie Bahm's Philosophy of the Buddha takes a different approach. Here's a blog article that covers this.
A key paragraph from the article (itself a quote from Bahm):
His historical [...] insight, that happiness can be found only in the middle way, appears to agree with other [...] Golden Mean philosophies in advising avoidance of extremes. [...] ...
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Buddhist philosophy of anatta challenges the notion of "entities" - objects with identity, independent of the rest of the world and observer.
Instead, here is an alternative: try and see the world as a connected network of causation, with a system of nominal entities overlaid on top. In other words, consider that entity is a construct of the mind. (This ...
3
the belief-desire-intention model of action
Are the "four noble truths" an example of that?
I "believe" the first three truths
I "desire" the end of suffering
Therefore I "intend" the fourth noble truth
Or "ethics":
I believe that immorality causes or doesn't alleviate suffering
I wish to avoid causing suffering
Therefore I intend to avoid immorality
Or ...
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According to Buddhism there 31 planes of existance out of one which is the animal kingdom.
Your next birth is decided by the last thought moment where you remeber a recent or grave act of Karma which you have performed. So what decides or separates us from animals the Karma which decided our birth.
answered Dec 8 '15 at 16:27
Suminda Sirinath S. Dharmasena
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