[Buddha-l] life force vis a vis Buddhism

[Richard P. Hayes]

On Sat, 2005-08-20 at 22:04 -0600, jkirk wrote:

> ==============
> Ok, grabbing the bait: self is unreal in the ultimate sense you say--
> then what is the ultimate sense?

"Ultimate sense" is the usual, but incorrect, transaltion of parama-
artha, which really means the ultimate goal or the highest good, which
in the Buddhist scheme of values is nirvana. So a truth is parama-artha
if it conduces to nirvana. Thinking of oneself as the most important
good does not conduce to nirvana. The self is a good, but it is a lesser
good than nirvana. So serving oneself is settling for a lesser good that
impedes one's attainment of a higher good.

>  I see a big word game here, unless the "ultimate sense" is the
> absence of concepts and words for them.

There's no word game at all. It's really quite straightforward. 

> At first mountains are mountains and rivers are rivers. Later mountains
> are not mountains and rivers are not rivers.

That's just Zen talk. I'm talking about Buddhism, not Zen.

> I have no problem with the notion of conventional sense, conventional
> reality, etc.

If you have no problem with that, then you have no problem with ultimate
reality. Ultimate reality is based on the idea of the good. If you can
grasp the idea of the good, then you can grasp the idea of the best.

>  I've also come across a notion of ultimate reality in the Lotus sutra
> where it is defined in verbal terms--words. 

The authors of the Lotus Sutra got almost everything wrong. They were
hopeless idiots. Let's stick to discussing Buddhism here. A good way to
do that is to ban the Lotus Sutra from this discussion.

> One of your favorite sutras, as I recall.

Yes. It's thick, and it burns well. It's a useful thing to have on a
camping trip if you happen to have a can of beans that needs to be
heated over a fire.

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

Not at all. At the level of values, the highest good is the elimination
of the root causes dukkha. At the level of ontology, which is closely
related, the highest reality is one that is not temporary. Everything
that depends on conditions is temporary. So the body, the mind, the
personality, possessions, social status, health and so forth, while
good, are temporary goods. One cannot rely on them. One cannot take
refuge in them and get satisfactory results. 

Nirvana, on the other hand, is an absence. It is nothing but the absence
of the root causes of dukkha. Absences do not have conditions. That is
why nirvana is unconditioned. All absences are unconditioned. (This is
why space is also regarded as unconditioned; space is nothing but a name
we give to the absence of impenetrable objects.) 

It is difficult to think about these matters clearly without paying some
attention to the sorts of issues dealt with in metaphysics, such as the
criteria by which one understands goodness, the processes by which some
things condition others, what absence is and so forth.

-- 
Richard Hayes