DiscussWorldIssues - Socio-Economic Religion and Political Uncensored Debate - View Single Post

**oranowdenda** · 11-21-2010, 12:32 PM

When I run across people who propose any sort of cosmology or ontology and base it on excerpts from the suttas, I try to remind them that, although the Buddha was definitely a philosopher, he wasn't a system-builder like Heidegger, Hegel and so forth. He said what needed to be said in order to show the listeners at the time how to advance further, with little regard for the sort of internal consistency that we expect these days.

I don't know if the Buddha himself actually believed in those realms or if he simply couched his message (the importance of the 4NT) in those terms because his listeners at that time believed in them. I can imagine how he would've seen their belief in those realms as a relatively trivial issue compared to the message of the 4NT.

11-21-2010, 12:32 PM	#11
oranowdenda Join Date Oct 2005 Posts 434 Senior Member	When I run across people who propose any sort of cosmology or ontology and base it on excerpts from the suttas, I try to remind them that, although the Buddha was definitely a philosopher, he wasn't a system-builder like Heidegger, Hegel and so forth. He said what needed to be said in order to show the listeners at the time how to advance further, with little regard for the sort of internal consistency that we expect these days. I don't know if the Buddha himself actually believed in those realms or if he simply couched his message (the importance of the 4NT) in those terms because his listeners at that time believed in them. I can imagine how he would've seen their belief in those realms as a relatively trivial issue compared to the message of the 4NT.
	Quote