Hi Marsha, I just wanted to interject here as I do so often, unwelcome.
Suffering is the term used by the West to translate the word which is phonetically written as Dukkha. It is said that Buddha said that "Life is Dukkha". To state to a Western audience that life is suffering would be like saying: "Christ died on the cross for our sins". For indeed, in the Christian West, we place much emphasis on suffering, and elevate it to some God-like endeavor. If on the other hand we translate Dukkha as "Bitter", we come away with another view. Life can be considered Bitter since as we apprehend it, there seems to be something lacking. Lacking is our apprehention of the "sweetness" which lies underneath. Therefore, Buddha provided a method for increasing the sweetness of life, and thus dispelling that nagging feeling of insufficiency or incompleteness present in popular formulations of life. So, life is not Suffering, never was, never will be. To say so will scare so many people away from Buddhism, since they Know it is not suffering. MoQ provides another way to present a grand scheme of the universe. It also has the potential to alleviate Dukkha. Many in the West are fine living life as it is presented to them in school. Others are dissatisfied and search for a better personal interpretation. MoQ can provide that, although it takes some unlearning to get it since it doesn't just flow out of Western thought anymore than the tree of life flows out of the Old Testament. Yes, the eight-fold noble path does require some reasoning, but there is of course much more involved than just intellectualizing. You mention insight as pertaining to soteriological study. Insight within the Buddhist practice is not a result of reading key ideas. It is not something that follows directly out of rational thought. Insight is like waking up after being asleep. Being asleep does not prepare one for waking up. The concept of sleeping and waking is a pendulum dichotomy that is part of this analogy. Sleep does not disappear forever once one wakes up, it mixes with waking in a cyclical fashion. Gaining insight does not mean that one's previous insight is lost, since it simply adds to what we are already aware of. There is nothing magical about insight either. It happens every time you feel hungry. That hunger is then converted to thoughts, and you do something about it. Once insight is gained, one does something with it, and it adds to one's life. It is like like suddenly "getting" one's relationship to a bicycle that one has been trying to learn how to ride. It is a hard thing to forget, but is is also not an end. It is just a useful tool for getting around when one doesn't want to walk. So, while the study of Buddhism may be soteriological, it's practice is much more than that. Buddhism does enhance one's use of pragmatism since it reveals more to the observer as fact. Buddhism is not pragmatic any more than Beethoven's ninth symphony is pragmatic. There is lots of doctrine and theory in Buddhism, at least to the student, that may not have much fact associated with it when the student begins. The facts are created by the student him/herself. It is a way of living, and cannot be used as a pragmatic tool for indoctrination. Practice does that. Regards, Mark On Tue, Oct 11, 2011 at 10:53 PM, MarshaV <[email protected]> wrote: > > On Oct 11, 2011, at 4:02 PM, david buchanan wrote: > >> >> >> Steve said to Andre: >> The question I have about this quote is what would it mean for someone to >> take his glasses off? I take it you see it as referring to Buddhist >> Enlightenment, but how do we square Buddhism and pragmatism? >> > > > Marsha: > Buddhism is soteriological. Reason, logical investigation, practices and > insights are focused towards the end of suffering. If Buddhism is pragmatic, > its usefulness is in the pursuit of promoting compassion and extinguishing > suffering. > > > > > ___ > > > 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
