tiltbillings wrote:
But I am inclined to think that it is literal in the subtle sense of the Buddha.[/b]
Whatever that might mean.
I meant that the Buddha spoke subtly, regardless of literacy or non-literacy, his words were always imbued with a subtle meaning, that meaning which is of the Dhamma which is "subtle and difficult to understand". I think that it
is subtle, and when I read the Buddha's words I find there to be the subtle meaning of the Dhamma in them, a subtle meaning that speaks to the practice. A knowledge of the Buddha, in some sense.
I am familiar with the Upanishads, the Vedas, and I study Brahmanistic tradions such as Hinduism and especially the Bhagavad-gita and related texts.
I never implied that I thought they appeared out of a vacuum, I stated my position:
son of dhamma wrote:
The Buddha was using the current representation of the world to explain the reality of the cosmological structure. The people would not have understand that the world was a sphere, they would not have understand galaxies, or galactic clusters, or the universe. So, he told them about their world, about how the solar system with its sun, moon, and earth forms, and how beings come to arise on earth. And he explained how the planes of existence rise to the top of all existence, above a thousand worlds, a thousand of those systems, a thousand of those systems.
Just because the Brahmanistic ideas were so similar to the real cosmos, doesn't mean that the Buddha was just fabricating something to convince them of their fallacy. What if the Buddha arose in such a time of those ideas to correct them?...
That is what I am inclined to think on my practical experience of the Eightfold Path and experiences with meditation.
I do NOT think that we don't have a basis for argument because you are familiar with the milieu of the Buddha's time and I am not. I think that we don't have a basis because our practical experience is not the same, and that according to the scripture I think "the Brahmanistic ideas were so similar to the real cosmos... and the Buddha effectively arose in such a time of those ideas to correct them. I don't have a basis to argue this point with you, do you find one, without presuming things about me?
with metta