St. Robert

Adam Who:

Many Christians do accept God's saving grace and don't mature in Christ. James descibes this as dead faith. In comparison to the eight-fold path, Christians are asked by God to exchange their imperfection for Christ's perfection. It's a surrender or offering of the self as a living sacrifice. This doesn't happen over night, because we tend to resist change. We call this process santification or becoming more holy (more Jesus-like). The difference between the two is that one requires a sold-out devotion to a person while the other requires devotion to a process.

Eudaimonist

Then I fail to see much difference. Neither produces perfection immediately, and might only involve ever-improving approximations of perfection. (Many Christians insist that even the "saved" are not morally perfect.) Both involve giving up something imperfect about oneself. And devotion to a person as a role-model or guide is still devotion to a process (that of sanctification).

[ May 11, 2002: Message edited by: Eudaimonist ]</p>

St. Robert

Buddhism and Christianity are very similiar in terms of their objectives, but they are worlds apart in their approaches. Christianity seeks to restore the self. Buddhism seeks to eliminate the self. One acknowledges the existence of a personal God, the other does not.

We are wired to be relational beings. We long to be known and loved. It's very difficult to find life in, have relationship with or be known/loved by a process. You can, however, find life in, have relationship with and be known/loved by a person.

[ May 11, 2002: Message edited by: St. Robert ]</p>

Eudaimonist

Actually, both seek to eliminate one's self, since Christianity demands that one replace one's own imperfect self with Christ, so that one may be "selfless" towards others.

That doesn't seem to be a difference in terms of approach, but I'll grant that it is a difference.

This is true, though I wonder if the Buddhists view themselves as achieving a better relationship with all of existence through their "process". Perhaps boneyard bill can comment again.

victorialis

I hear this view expressed often. If it's as valid as many seem to think, what is the practicing Buddhist's focalizing scheme for subjective experience?

How would subjective experience, as the vehicle of meaning, be organised? I'm not implying it wouldn't be organised anymore; I just don't grasp how, because it seems the whole perceptual scheme is being revamped by realization of true self-nature. There's no subject anymore, in the way there used to be. That would seem profoundly disorganising.

Does meaning and its organisation simply cease to be problematic?

boneyardbill says, "It all centers around the Buddhist claim that the ego is an abstraction, an illusion. And because of this faulty identification with a mere self-concept, we are alienated from our true nature and misunderstand the nature of existence as well."

Maybe ego does operate entirely as an abstraction: a concept for which there is no specific evidence, other than (1) broad popular agreement, with nothing to challenge it empirically -- and (2) subjective experience, which is not evidence to anyone but the illusory self. The self could actually amount to no more than participation mystique; a big set of self-reinforcing conjoined subjectives; a mere custom, rumour, habit or superstition.

With this self-concept as a (shared) primary illusion, perception of the nature of existence would, of course, be skewed from the outset, and shared perceptions would never rise above a rather low threshold of reliability; error would multiply. That means perception of everything is skewed (including one's understanding of Buddhism), until one gets one's orientation straightened out.

So: Assuming that reason is still to be used by Buddhists, how does a Buddhist use reason and empirical knowledge, without self-reference? What does the reasoning and knowing?

Let me be more specific: When you understand your true-nature at last (and surely that's a logical place to start), wouldn't this understanding/realisation be comparative? If it's a given that everything perceived before was substantially incorrect, what validating power can the comparison have? If none, then how does one know...?

That I've misunderstood the nature of existence is easy to imagine. What's hard to imagine is the resolution of that state along these particular lines.

AdamWho

victorialis:

Very nice language in you post.

A Buddhist is on a path where at every stage they use the tools of "understanding" at hand (just like all of us), whether they be reasoning, feeling, or their practice.
The logical problems with questions like "how does a completely enlightened person use reasoning, function, make descision ect" are the same problems that arise whenever we use absolutes, such as absolute power, knowledge, love, ect.
I think if a Buddhist (or Christian) is focusing more on that "end game" then living in the "here and now" then they are missing the point.

victorialis

AdamWho, I kept thinking the idea of absolutes was relevant here, but I wasn't sure how. And I agree that the endgame is not the point, and shouldn't be.

I go down that road which approaches absolutes in sympathy with your idea that Buddhism's "best practices" are extractable. Lacanian psychology has attempted to do exactly that, in some ways... not successfully, to my mind.

Heheheh... this is why I stay away from suttas. I'd only make a stationary bicycle out of them and pedal my little legs off!

boneyard bill

Adam Who writes:

Yes. And according to Buddhism the underlying psychological state that causes a person to suffer is the illusion of self which I understand as being an identification with a self-concept, the ego, which is an abstraction that has no real existence.

I think Mahayana Buddhism clearly regards suffering as an illusion. Samsara (the world of appearances) and Nirvana are one, according to the Mahayana. I'm not sure that the Theravada accepts this however.

Does anything whatsoever have any meaning to any of us outside of subjective experience? What other kind of experience is there? However, the very question, "What does life mean to ME." Puts it in a self-centered context that demands a certain type of meaning. And that type of meaning is impossible to come by. When I ask what is the meaning of life for ME, I'm already presupposing that life must have some sort of meaning that is relevant to my own self-concept. There a 6 billion other people out there asking the same question, and we can't feel confident that the whole of creation came about with just one of those 6 billion in mind.

boneyard bill

St Robert writes:

I think you miss the point. Buddhism does not call for devotion to process. Process is the nature of the world and we must come to know that and to accept it. But there is nothing in the process to be devotional about. That would be like saying that Christians advocate the worship of mammon. Buddhism is devotional about nirvana, the unborn and uncreated. The ground of existence.

[ May 12, 2002: Message edited by: boneyard bill ]</p>

boneyard bill

Eudaimonist writes:

Excellent point. Couldn't have made it better myself. Paul did make the point better, however. "I liveth not, but Christ liveth in me."

Only to elaborate on what I've already said. Process, in Buddhism, is what existence is all about. But it's nothing special. Non-existence is what is special. But they are really the same thing since process is not existence but a continual flow of coming into existence and going out of existence all the time at once. "We are re-born every moment" the Buddhists like to point out. So the realization of this point is special and yet not special since we're always realizing something new.

At one time, perhaps even today, the Buddhist acolyte was called upon to meditate on the claim that world both exists and does not exist at the same time. This is the paradox of reality. Because, in fact, the world of this moment does not exist in the next moment. So there's no substance to the world. It doesn't exist at all in that sense i.e. the world has no "self." And the world does, most certainly, exist in another sense. There really is something there even if the something is always already something else.

Now, after meditating on this point long enough, the acolyte is expected to come up with another realization and that is that his "self" also exists and does not exist at the the same time.

So now maybe "non-existence" as used by Buddhism makes a little more sense. It is like the other side of the coin. Non-existence is necessary for existence to be. It is a negative but not a nullity. Death is non-existence because it defines what existence is. So process is one side of the coin, but it isn't side that needs be worshipped. You don't worship either side. It is the totality that is the object of devotion. But here's the trick. The totality exists quite apart from the existence/non-existence dichotomy. If the universe disappeared and there were no existence and non-existence, there would still be the totality.