culaavuso wrote:It seems more like the other way around: It's like flames without fire. If you look at what we call a "fire", there are flames and there are embers and there is fuel and there is heat and there is air, but there isn't really any "fire" to be found. The name "fire" is just what we call this combination of flames and embers and fuel. Much like how "fire" can not be found apart from flames, embers, fuel, heat, and air, there is no "self" that can be found apart from form, feeling, perception, fabrications, and consciousness. It's just the name that's given to this combination.NMRK32 wrote:isn't that kinda like a fire without flames?
It can be useful to take a step back from this and ask what metaphysical projections accomplish. Any idea is a tool for understanding experiences and shaping behavior in relation to those experiences. Any idea that can't be tested through personal experience has an influence on choices and behavior. So the useful question then is: when holding this belief, do greed, hatred, and delusion increase or decrease? Do the actions shaped by this belief lead to affliction or not?NMRK32 wrote: However, as Buddhism is often taught and often times expressed in the sutras and the commentaries with all its metaphysical projections it inadvertedly lends itself to those questions.
Developing apathy leads to affliction through unskillful behavior and leads to delusion as a result of lacking effort and awareness. The seven factors of enlightenment include "energy" and "investigation", and the ten perfections include "resolute determination". These are not compatible with apathy. Similarly the practices of good-will, compassion, and sympathetic joy are in direct contradiction to developing apathy.NMRK32 wrote: Do I treat it as a stress release method or as something more? Is it really a soteriological method of deliverance or just a meditational exercise into apathy?
It can help to release stress, but while there is some overlap "dukkha" is not exactly the same thing as what English means by "stress". It is a method to completely eliminate dukkha. Thus it is something more than just a way to release stress.
Dear Brother/Sister
Sorry for the late reply, life is pretty hectic when one’s on night shifts. I have only now had the chance to sit down and read your post.
Here’s my thoughts on the points you’ve raised.
The Fire Analogy
We generally agree that the being we now perceive as ourselves is just like the flames, embers, fuel, heat and air in a fire. Where I feel that I begin to disagree
with Theravada’s interpretation sometimes is the utter denial of an ultimate fire in actual terms. And here’s why.
If indeed a conscious, living being is likened to the phenomenon of fire and his/her skandhas to the constituent parts you’ve mentioned then we can draw the following conclusions.
There is no being there i.e. no fire
The constituents of fire are not fire itself by themselves
When one or all go missing or are removed we don’t actually have a fire.
So far so good. No logical objections I imagine. But let’s apply this logic in the exact same fashion to a sentient being, let’s make that being a man. Let’s call that man, Siddhartha Gautama….
There is no Siddhartha Gautama - Indeed this is a conventional, transitory ego. A term of convenience this person uses on a daily basis to communicate with other mundane creatures. His skandhas are bound together and give rise to him. But ultimately he is not the Skandhas.
His skandhas are not Siddhartha. They are not a being themselves, one by one, individually. They don’t really have a self, real or transitory. They’re just bits….
You cannot have Siddhartha when one or more go missing or their mutual bond torn apart by death. Correct?
Now if the above statements are true, then we have the following dharmic problems.
If Karma is a process, a law, impersonal and universal and the skandhas themselves are devoid of self, personality and ultimately nothing more than bits in flux then who is reborn after death? Who receives the fruits of Karma? How can the skandhas that supposedly hold nothing of the previous person give rise to a new being that receives the previous person’s karma? How come the Buddha then recalled his previous lives? There was no ultimate self inside any of his previous incarnations who retained the memories and qualities of that momentary, transitory being. Hence none of those memories would have passed on by themselves. Memories need a concrete being to have experienced them, a mind to have stored them, a brain to have processed them and a mind that retained them and carried them across to recall them. But Siddhartha who was something/someone else before is a brand new being that somehow inherited the karmic flow of those past beings…so basically the momentum of their actions but that momentum somehow retains a sense of continuity which he was able to experience and remember. His skandhas couldn’t really do all that….they’re….selfless….devoid of being….they’re impersonal, interdependent bits…..they only seem to give rise to a ‘self’ when they’re bundled up together…right?
If Siddhartha never harboured an deeper, essential Self of sorts then who observed his thoughts during meditation? Who focused on the spaces between each successive thought? Who detached himself from body, form, mental formations, consciousness and ultimately a sense of ego? Who did all the shedding of the skandhas? They can’t shed themselves….they can’t make decisions. Otherwise they would be the Self. Who turned his attention inwards? Who attained liberation? Who and how did manage to experience and then recall Nirvana after coming out of meditation? If the arahant is no longer there when he enters Nirvana, who experiences it? Who knows what was attained?
If I kill and dismember a person, I am a criminal. Would you also not say that I have just generated a lot of bad karma. But if I pull apart a mannequin then I am not. Neither will I reap the negative fruits of my Karma in another life. That’s most likely because a mannequin is made up of stuff, inorganic bits and bats. A human being however exists. Perhaps in a deeper, fundamental sense. Perhaps it’s not just a process, a flux. Would you not say?
You see for certain basic truths of the buddhist argumentation to make sense there NEEDS to be an ultimate self. Of course, this begs the question, how does one get to experience that higher Self inside him/her without attaching some sort of mental formation, a phantom to it when trying to conceptualise it? How does one describe and do justice to something outside of time, space, name and form? Perhaps that’s why Thanissaro Bhikshu often describes the buddhist path as the No-self Strategy. Because it may well be just a strategy. A non religious method, devoid of ritual and speculation to get in touch with our Higher Self. The one that does transmigrate, that never stays the same, that’s formless and so difficult to grasp, the ground of our experiences and being. The skandhas cannot be liberated. If consciousness and mind, inorganic bits that scatter after death then technically they couldn’t make the decision on their own to escape samsara. In the same way that the logs cannot remove themselves from the fire, or the fuel, or the flames. Someone needs to put the fire out or one of the constituents needs to run out. Air, or fuel perhaps. But in that case we just have nothing but a materialist interpretation of the dharma. We die, bye-bye. There is no need for a dharma. Yes, we’re transitory, whether actual or imaginary phantoms inside our brains so we might as well indulge for as long as we can. Why practice anything? Yes life is dukkha, but it’s not only just dukkha….to know dukkha, there has to be joy….I get to experience pain and separation only because I get to experience elation, coming together and joy. If life was just dukkha, there would be no joy…so why don’t I just overindulge in whatever gives me a feeling of joy? Unto my final draw of breath. Ultimately I will die and take none of the dukkha or the joy with me….So is there a point in buddhism??
The adherents of Pudgalavada Buddhism asked the same questions I ask above and they arrived at a similar conclusion at which logically one would if the teaching is to make logical sense. In my opinion Theravada went too hardcore on the Scriptures. Kinda like literal interpreters of the Bible. But like everything in life, so does the dharma need to be interpreted in a way that makes sense. And of course at the same time practiced.
If the purpose of the dharma consists basically of a temporary being, trying to ultimately die once and for all then how is that not ‘spiritual suicide’? I doubt that’s what the Buddha had in mind. In one of Thanissaro Bhikshu’s talks I heard say that the Buddha said that there’s two kinds of people who misunderstand him, those who draw inferences from things they should not and those who don’t draw inferences from things they should. I’m not saying in any way that I have understood his dharma in its totality or even at all. But logically, for certain core parts of buddhism to make sense I am beginning to suspect that buddhism needs a soul. Perhaps not one we can pin down and define as all definitions box it up, confine it, restrict it and misinterpret it but one that can ultimately be experienced.
Would you not say?