Marsha, You need no argumentation to convince at least me, that Buddhism used logic and purely rational philosophical methods to achieve realizations which are highly advanced, even today.
The Buddha was not only an amazing thinker and philosopher, but a superb teacher as well and his students built on his insights to an astoundingly wonderful degree. I only have had a small exposure to their teaching, a compilation of the ancient antecedents of zen, called chan where it was born, but that small exposure was enough to make me realize the extremely high quality of intellectual attainment in this line of thinking. What a gift for the world! The book was called "The Roaring Stream" and its poetry and power have left me wanting more. Another library book to order from ebay. But regardless of this high quality intellectual thinking at the heart of the east, the area under Buddha's purview seems somewhat lacking in comparison to the Christianity-dominated west. I believe this ties in to a dialogue I wanted to have with you, that I tried to raise with you on an earlier thread, but which I never found your answer. The dialogue concerns whether it is better for society to have an idea of God to struggle against and overcome, or no idea of God at all in the first place. My analogy centered on whether we should rid our children of such ideas as Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny, and just give them the straight facts from birth... Or, whether perhaps, there is an intellectual strength to be gained from attaining to atheism on your own, bucking your parental authority, bucking social authority, bucking God Himself! in order to assert your own intellectual being. See, I see that as a process. A way of strengthening and in fact creating an intellectual "muscle" that wouldn't exist unless it had something as big as God to push against. And that future generations are deprived of this musclular selfdom, by our egoistic assertions of subjective enlightenment as absolute. Is kinda what I wondered if you'd ever thought about... yours ever, John On Tue, Apr 27, 2010 at 1:12 PM, MarshaV <[email protected]> wrote: > > To recap why I think Buddhism cannot be used as an exception to > the Intellectual Level being SOM, I offer these to quotes that indicate > that Buddhism used logic and the scientific method for an objective > study of 'Mind'. > > > "... So at the beginning, in the middle and at the end of the Buddha's > path, > observation plays an extremely important role. This is similar to the role > that > objective observation plays in the scientific tradition which teaches that > when > we observe a problem we first formulate a general theory followed by > specific > hypothesis. We find the same thing happening in the teaching of the Four > Noble Truths and here the general theory is that all things have a cause, > and the specific hypothesis is that the causes of suffering are craving and > ignorance." > > " Experience in Buddhism is comprised of two components - the objective > component and the subjective component. In other works, the things around > us and we the perceivers. Buddhism is noted for its analytical method in > the > area of philosophy and psychology. What we mean by this is that the Buddha > analyzes experience into various elements, the most basic of these being > the > five Skandhas or aggregates - form, feeling, perception, mental formation > or > volition and consciousness. The five aggregates in turn can be analyzed > into the eighteen elements (Dhatus) and we have a still more elaborate > analysis in terms of seventy two elements. This method is analytical > as it breaks up things. We are not satisfied with a vague notion of > experience, > but we analyze it, we probe it, we break it down into its component parts > like > we break down the chariot into the wheels, the axle and so on. And we do > this in order to get an idea how things work. When we see for instance a > flower, or hear a piece of music, or meet a friend, all these experiences > arise as a result of components. This is what is called the analytical > approach. > And again this analytical approach is not at all strange to modern science > and > philosophy." > > > (Peter D. Santina, 'Fundamentals of Buddhism',BAUS) > > ___ > > > Moq_Discuss mailing list > Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. > http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org > Archives: > http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ > http://moq.org/md/archives.html > Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org/md/archives.html
