Gary:
This is not the venue for debating the similarities and contrasts between
traditional Occident and Orient. I'll respond as briefly as I can, and we
can proceed through personal e-mails if you like. First, an agreement: if
you abstract all particularity--an example would be Huxley's The Perennial
Philosophy--then, yes, most of the world's religious world views look
somewhat alike. They all encourage us to get our egos out of the way to
serve the Absolute, whether God or Brahma. But I suggest when you get down
into the trenches, into the details where the devil lurks, the differences
do matter. If you really believe that the "deepest currents of culture in
East and West differ mostly in accidental respects such as terminology, and
it behooves us to see through the differences," in spite of all that has
been written to the contrary by both eastern and western scholars, I doubt
that anything I say will change your view.
To deny what I said of the Bhagavad Gita, you have to deny what is written
there. I've seen Ghandi's commentary, and whether he liked the Gita or not
is irrelevant. He, in fact, treated the Mahabharata War as allegorical. But
would he assert that the principle of selfless action as illustrated is
wrong? If a real Arjuna argued with a real Krishna that killing all those
people was unthinkably wrong, should he go with his ego rather than with
god-defined dharma? Even as allegory, my point remains: Arjuna was not the
author of the deaths of his kinsmen and others on the battle field, and had
no responsibility for "his" actions. There was no him or his. That is all
maya, an illusion of ego. How can there be personal responsibility in
selfless action? But Ghandi's life provides a good illustration of the
difference between East and West. Imagine the difference in outcome of his
passive resistance had he not been dealing with the British but with an
Arjuna of his own religion. Was Ghandi deficient in conscience? If he had
one, yes. Arjuna had a conscience, and that was his problem. Conscience is
a western ego-thing. Dharma knows no conscience.
I should add, I don't think religion defines a culture. Ego is a human
phenomenon; after all, eastern wisdom literature wasn't aimed at westerners,
but at its own people. Enlightenment is probably as rare in the East as
saints are in the West. But as ideals, different religions make great
cultural differences. One of the most persistent mistakes the West makes in
foreign relations is the "pigs is pigs" fallacy: people are people.
I don't think there are any easy moral equivalencies to be made between
traditional East and West. Obviously as secularization and western-style
industrialization of the East proceeds (rapidly), the differences shrink. In
my own views, I'm probably more Taoist than anything else, and I certainly
don't think western culture is the Way to go. On the other hand, I think it
is the western view of the individual life as valuable and to be nurtured in
self actualization rather than exploited by the state that has given rise to
the idea of human/civil rights/liberties that was not present in the
traditional Orient.
Bill
Gary F wrote, in part:
Bill, & list,
I'm surprised to see this part of your message though:
[[ One of the strong-holds of the unitive world-view you seem to prefer
has been the traditional Orient, where life has historically been
cheaper than dirt and mass exterminations of humans nearly routine. A
modern example is Maoist purges and the rape and pillage of Tibet. Mao
and Stalin each surpassed Hitler's atrocities. ]]
So did the European invasion of what we now call the Americas. History
does not at all bear out your suggestion that genocide is an "oriental"
phenomenon or that life is cheaper on the other side of the world.
[[ For the human to assume responsibility is an act of hubris. Isn't
that the message of the Bhagavad Gita? So kill away, oh nobly born,
and forget this conscience thing, an obvious lapse into ego. ]]
No, that is not the message of the Bhagavad Gita. You might have a look
at Gandhi's commentary on it -- Gandhi (1926), ed. John Strohmeier
(2000), The Bhagavad Gita According to Gandhi (Berkeley, CA: Berkeley
Hills). Gandhi acknowledged the Gita as the main inspiration for his
life and work. Would you say that he was deficient in conscience?
As i hinted in my previous message, i see a close parallel to Peirce's
ideal of scientific method (or of the motivation for it) in the
bodhisattva ideal of Mahayana Buddhism, which is simply that one vows to
work for universal enlightenment, not for private salvation or personal
attainment of nirvana. The more i study them, the more i'm convinced
that the deepest currents of culture in East and West differ mostly in
accidental respects such as terminology, and it behooves us to see
through the differences.
However i don't cling to this thesis tenaciously ... if you can present
evidence to the contrary, by all means do so!
---
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