[Buddha-l] life force vis a vis Buddhism

[jkirk]

>>From the outset a self was seen as real in a conventional sense but not
> in an ultimate sense. So unless one creates Buddhism Lite by eliminating
> the very idea of delusion, one cannot get away from questions of
> ultimate reality. Buddhism without metaphysics, in other words, would be
> like Christianity without a concept of sin.
>
> -- 
> Richard Hayes
==============
Ok, grabbing the bait: self is unreal in the ultimate sense you say--
then what is the ultimate sense? I see a big word game here, unless
the "ultimate sense" is the absence of concepts and words for them.

At first mountains are mountains and rivers are rivers. Later mountains
are not mountains and rivers are not rivers. Later still, mountains are
mountains and rivers are rivers. But this is not conventional
philosophy or metaphysics.

I have no problem with the notion of conventional sense, conventional
reality, etc. I've also come across a notion of ultimate reality in the 
Lotus
sutra where it is defined in verbal terms--words. One of your favorite
sutras, as I recall.

However, I'm not sure that definition of ultimate reality in verbal
terms is what the Buddha had in mind in the Pali texts.

"So unless one creates Buddhism Lite by eliminating
> the very idea of delusion, one cannot get away from questions of
> ultimate reality."

OK, what are such questions? if they are only the absence of
conventional reality, then we have word games again.

Joanna