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Old 12-04-2011, 10:33 AM   #27
husartrof

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Oct 2005
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Tijampel,

If I have understand your last post let me issue this question. If not, let me know it.

Isn't that a kind of needed "cultural dressing" in terms of mundane human nature?

Personally I do not have a contemporary or any other kind of imagine of Buddha. When I read a sutta the only thing is that Buddha is speaking that sutta and that is all. No need to go further.

I have not found any problem at following and practicing the early teachings in this "post modern" civilization context.

Furthermore, they are devoid of any cultural dressing that should be "modernized" or updated.

That has happend with the traditions endless struggle of the "such is this" and "such is that".

You can ignore that and go to the source.

So, I haven't found that problem. I haven't found the need to bring "into context" his deliberative instructions.

As an example, in Mexico, there are at least a thousand different Christs from dark skinned ones in areas of high historical African immigration to some very European "look" in some places where we can find communities with an Italian and French descent backgrounds.

All them are nothing more than just needed cultural superstitious artifacts. The real doctrine of Christ is not known. What makes this different "Christs" fascinating and charming is all the superstition and supernatural believes around them.

The real meaning of Christ is completely lost for the masses.

Then, isn't the removal of such custom given to the image of Buddha, in dependence of the superstitious believes of many cultures along historical time, a core aspect, so to get at the root of the deliberative early teachings?

The Dhamma spoken by the historical Buddha is timeless. It was not a by product of culture but a penetration of the true nature of things, including "human nature" which precisely as its highest defilement, there are found those cultural atavisms.

But anyway, at the very end of this discussion, everybody is in its own right to hold the believe that best comforts the mind.

Hi Kaarine;

I am not sure that we disagree. My efforts are directed towards practicing what is most useful to advance my spiritual goal, not to have a satisfying, warm, or fuzzy view of the Buddha or any other being who teaches the dharma/dhamma that has the unique ability to liberate. The cultural baggage of any teacher, Buddha or "some dude" in New Jersey who discovers all this for himself (perhaps we'll call him Maitreya), will always be evident. And it shouldn't deter me from following her or his instructions, once I have decided that these teachings are the highest and best for me. Who cared about Einstein's religion, place of birth, or school grades? His theory of special relativity, at least, worked. His theories about general relativity may or may not work. As a result of just the theory of special relativity this world was (and IS) radically changed.

As Lazy Eye states; as Element has stated numerous times, there are plenty of Suttas and Sutras which reference incorrect cosmology (as it is understood today), realms and beings and states and processes, powers, and knowledges, all of which defy our conventional, Western, rational, scientific, logical....need I add any more adjectives?...understanding of what's possible.

So we can:

A. Claim that a large number of Suttas declared as Sutta by people who specialized in preserving Sutta 2400 years ago are "officially" bogus because we know better. This doesn't fly with me. Disparage them as unscientific; ignore them because they don't help you (the Buddha himself told us to use what we were able to confirm as useful), but don't claim that ..."oh these couldn't possibly have been spoken by our precious Lord Buddha himself" (as if we knew himpersonally). This, at the same time as we praise those beings who worked so hard to preserve the exact words and phrases used by the Buddha, and at the same time that we point to their reliability over the 180 or so years they carried on their tradition orally. We argue that the Suttas are reliable and trustworthy....except for....THAT ONE! It clearly doesn't fit. This won't work for me, not because I don't want it to work but because it doesn't make much sense that numerous suttas, in their entirety are bogus and, if we then start to argue that "well, the Sutta is, for the most part authentic; however, the insertion of all these references to devas, to lives occurring after the breakup and dissolution of the body, to cosmologies that make no sense...all these are add-ons by bad bad disciples. These are arhats we're talking about, who convened these councils; what motivation would an arhat have to add in references to superstitious phenomena, which the Buddha clearly (allegedly) steered entirely away from. I have to conclude that the Buddha did NOT steer entirely away from it.


B. Even worse, I think, is to take specific references by the Buddha, which appear to have a common 'face value"meaning and argue that they, in fact, have ONLY a less common meaning, ONLY a metaphorical meaning---a being who speaks constantly in metaphor about devas (metaphor for....something), about "the life to come", about the breakup and dissolution of the body after death referring to subsequent consciousness; everything becomes a metaphor; and of course the cosmology used and reused and never challenged by the Buddha. That's metaphor?

The Buddha claims to have taught Brahma himself. He is, by his own declaration, teacher of gods and men. Yes, ALL these things; all these hundreds of references may be considered metaphorical by us right here right now. They may ALL be irrelevant to our practice as well. Yet, my own legal training compels me to evaluate them in toto, in connection with, in context with all of the passages too, for example, where he clearly references birth of a mental state, death of a mental state, for example, where he references the importance of practicing in the here and now, of the importance of NOT speculating on future anything, of the uselessness of developing complex philosophies to explain phenomena, etc.

It's not possible to know what the Buddha believed personally about cosmology, future lives, etc. It is possible, however, to make a judgment about what he was attempting to convey to his students, based specifically on their abilities, beliefs, needs, on what would be most effective in pushing them towards the edge of knowledge--toward the most profound.

To unequivocally assert, however, (that is, to assert as if it's the only logical conclusion) that the Buddha expected that his audience understood his teachings on cosmology and all the other items, set forth above as mere metaphor or as references to scientifically verifiable states of mind in this life, fails to give proper credence and deference to the multitude of other supernatural and superstitious references in the Suttas. I simply can't ignore then, I can't exile or sequester them. They exist, they are considered sutta, they are considered the words of the Buddha, no matter what he actually believed, and no matter how we should best practice his teachings.

If the Buddha consistently is throwing out reference after reference to supernatural scientifically impossible things as if they're ordinary experience for him then, either they are, or he was deluded, or he was simply not challenging deeply held beliefs of his student/contemporaries. And, if all these supernatural references were really uttered then it's no stretch at all, of course, to go from there to past and future lives....as in...if that is so then anything's possible.

It seems that he at least accepted his students' beliefs (in the sense of not upsetting or challenging them) in many of these areas; he knew they took much of it for granted (for example, that Kamma had a definite effect in this life or, after death and dissolution/breakup of the body and , in the next life or in some future life is a pretty mainstream view. When the Buddha used this pretty stock phrase in his great exposition of Kamma I see it as simply accepting and not challenging commonly held belief on this topic, knowing that the real practice of Buddhism, geared towards acquiring wisdom, insight into how we misapprehend phenomena and misunderstand self.

The Buddha did not begin teaching in order to shake up people's notions or understanding of their own environment, of after death processes and the rest. He taught to liberate us from our own delusion about having a true self (through leading us to nonconceptually discern the utter lack and impossibility of any such thing), and, in doing so, to free us from all the misery that befalls us due to our ignorance on this subject.

If as a result of, what I consider to be a "realist" view regarding the historical Buddha---that he was a creature of his time and culture, and that his views were definitely influenced by it---one loses faith in his liberative teachings then that's a tragedy...even if it's just one person. But let's deal honestly with who he was, what he said, what's especially useful, what to pick up from the Suttas and what to perhaps just kind of leave on the side.
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