Category: buddhism

This category is about everything Buddha and Buddhism, which teaches that:
1) everything is marked by impermanence, to believe in any permanence is to suffer, and the the ultimate cause of suffering is the rejection of the non-permanent self.
2) Enlightenment (contentment) can be found through the understanding of the true nature of existence (trilaksana) as stated here, and by living in accordance to such an understanding.

Non-self, bundles, non-ownership, selflessness

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Buddhism rejects the self and accepts a notion of non-self. It preceded bundle theory and no-ownership theory, which is in some way a formulation of this.

Hume pushed the bundle theory but could not understand what is there if it were only experiences. What he seem to left out is memory.

The self is just a collection of this matter-related memories. In this way, it does not go against the principles of one being “created” by the environment. A person is not independent of the place and time he or she is at or in. She or he is a product of it.

Property is theft, said Proudhon. Self-property is to steal and rob from the world of what you could contribute to it. That could be rightly called selfishness. To act without being the owner of the spirit is selflessness.

Pramāna

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There are six pramāna (knowledge or valid cognition) in Indian philosophy.

Pratyakṣa (perception) is the sense data, essentially your intuition (Hume’s term) or experience. In Buddhism there are six senses – visual, aural, scent, pallet, tactile, and mind. Each have their corresponding “objects” – sight, sound, fragrance, taste, touch, and mind-object. Perception may correspond to sensation in psychology and not processed content.

Anumāna (inference) is similar to logic. One thing causes another by being inferred.

Upamāna (comparison and analogy) is to link two different unrelated situations or objects through similarity. This may include simile and metaphor.

Arthāpatti (postulation, derivation from circumstances) is implication by knowing the consequences of one action to another. Unlike anumāna it is long term and not immediate.

Anupalabdi (non-perception; negative cognitive proof) is the affirmation of the absence of the positive situation.

Śabda (reliance on past reliable testimony) is the reliance on past evidence given by others.

Buddhism, under Tibetan Buddhism system, recognizes that only perception (pratyakṣa) and inference (anumāna) as valid. All else are denied. This is interesting considering that the Buddhist sutras are taken to be sacred texts. On this count we must wonder how the rejection of śabda works here.

The misconception of Buddhist suffering

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The Buddha said life is suffering (dukkha). Suffering is the condition of unsatisfactoriness. Immediate pain and sadness is of course suffering. But in happiness, in avoidance of pain and sadness, we are still in the condition of suffering.

To understand this and to change one’s mindset one can end suffering or end the illusion of suffering. True “happiness” is not temporal happiness but a seemingly transcends time and space. By extension even this true happiness is illusionary. Nonetheless we must pursue it as if it is there even though it is not there.

Existence and observation

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The observation of an object does not change anything of its existence. Observation neither makes something more nor less existent. Quantum mechanics may say something different but in pragmatic terms it does not change or affect how we face life and death. It is about experience and not about existence.

Objective reality

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An abandoned house has a fridge with food in it. It has been there for at least six months. And it has spoilt. Flies are having a good time feasting upon the rotting organic matter. What or who observes it? The flies? The fungi? God? Are we arguing that a perception-less universe cannot exist?

The subject is never necessary in my opinion. There are only objects. The subject is accidental.

Truths are a process of a subject (a thing), and not a thing-in-itself.

A clear understanding of what exists and what are processes of existent things is necessary. From observation we can judge this. While this judgement is not perfect or complete it is the only method with which we have to judge. To chase any other method would be to deny the fact of this impossibly and be inauthentic to the reality.

The (social) medium is the message

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The medium is the message. It always has been. It always will be. There is no escape from the medium.

Freedom?

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What does it mean when we say “we are free to do anything we want”?

It means we are deluded into thinking we are isolated individuals outside of an interconnect world. Everything I do affects everything else around me, so long as I related to it in some way.

So the question is is there any thing, space or time from which we are not related to all else? Experience tells me no. Some may argue that freedom is in the mind. But if the mind is located in the body, in the brain, then it is itself a relational operation. There is no thing which operates outside of things, space and time. Every action has real consequences. To think that even your thoughts do not have consequences is to be sorely mistaken. For although they do not have immediate “outer” consequences they have “inner” ones. They affect the body that thinks. To think is in itself an action.

Svabhava – the doctrine of no intrinsic nature

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There is no intrinsic nature (svabhava) to conditioned phenomena. All conditioned (samskara) and unconditioned (dharma) phenomena are without self (anatman) and are empty (shunyata). All conditioned phenomena are impermanent (anitya) and unsatisfactory (duhkha).

With this as base Buddhism teaches enlightenment (or release) (nirvana) that ends all rebirth (samsara, reincarnation).

Chicken soup for the non-soul

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“So if there is no self, non-self, non-soul or no- soul what is it that gets reborn or reincarnated?”

This is question I often get from Westerners new to Buddhism. How can there be no soul? Who or what is doing these good and bad things?

The Buddha always starts with the idea of impermanence. All real things are impermanent. Real things do no stay the same. This much most people can understand and agree with. Then the Buddha moves on to the idea of unsatisfactoriness. All real things are unsatisfactory. This too most people can agree upon also. But then most people get tripped up by the last statement of the truth of reality. All real and unreal things have no inherent self. Real things are seen to have no coherent core, just as unreal things (ideas and concepts of the of the imagination) do not have any core.

What makes a rock a rock is not anything. There is no “rock-ness” of things. If there is a rock-ness then would that not entail a permanent “something”?

There is also another suggestion here with this formulation – that there is something permanent but without a self. Real things are impermanent and unsatisfactory. But Unreal things are “permanent” and “satisfactory” in some way even though they are without a self. But what can be permanent if it is unreal?

This kind of formulation is not dissimilar to that of God or soul. Since God and soul are permanent and satisfactory. This is the conundrum. So, does God and souls exist or not? According to Buddha they must be unreal but unreal things have no self. But real things have no self either.

The only way forward, I feel, is to deal with these issues separately. Understand the nature of real things before we deal with understanding what the nature of unreal things are.

*Remember that book? Sorry. Clickbait title.