[Buddha-l] Where does authority for "true" Buddhism come from?

[Vicente Gonzalez]

Richard Hayes wrote:

RPH> You have it backwards. The science of buddhology in the hands of the
RPH> selfish becomes Buddhism.

no, you have it backwards.


RPH> Although I have no personal experience with this, I do have friends who
RPH> would dispute that claim. Addiction to opiates and to alcohol tends to
RPH> increase, not reduce one's afflictions.

just a problem of money so they are forced to make pauses.
With tons of drug in their hands and believing that reducting dukkha
also is a religious goal, don't doubt that they will inject morphine
without pause until death.

In fact, with overdoses many times it's the same case. Many times drug
addict people are more aware of dukkha than the rest. For this reason
they are addicts to higher happiness.


RPH> This would come as a big surprise to just about every Buddhist I have
RPH> ever studied. The end of ignorance is always regarded as a means to
RPH> achieve the end of dukkha.

Prof. Hayes, it is not only the dukkha that you imagines. The end of
ignorance also is the knowledge of deathless. That there is not
beginning and there is not an end. That we never were born and we
never will die. For this reason, not only rebirth but also non-rebirth
are false ideas, because there is not a -self to die.
Meanwhile, we cannot say that rebirth is false or we are strengthen
the belief in the existence of a self: the self who can die.

Although also the rebirth it's a false idea, it avoid the person to be
closer to anatta by giving transcendence to his existence inside time
and space. For this same reason, non-rebirth was illogical for many
western philosophers. And when they investigated space, time, and
causality, soon they realized that metempsychosis was more able to
conciliate them. Read Hume, Voltaire and many others.

Your non-rebirth is not the same of Buddhadasa. And when we don't stop
the false belief in that non-rebirth, another being can appear to fix
the error. Maybe a republican one.


RPH> Attachment to any theory can cause a huge amount of unnecessary misery
RPH> and mischief. Being attached to denying rebirth is as pernicious, no no
RPH> more pernicious, than being attached to affirming it. That's why I keep
RPH> saying that probably the best thing is just to forget about it
RPH> altogether. If some people believe it, let them continue to do so. If
RPH> others deny it, let them continue to do so. But whether one believes it
RPH> or denies it, heaping contempt on those who disagree can only be a major
RPH> obstacle to Buddhist practice.

so there is not correspondence between your words and your messages.
Because you are defending the insertion of non-rebirth in Buddhism
instead rebirth. I write here to defend rebirth only because you and
more people are defending non-rebirth.

You and more people know that rebirth drives to -self but at same
time ignoring that such non-rebirth also drives to the -self.

I cannot be a chorus of these deliriums. And it is a public space then
I write my owns. Are you a democrat?


RPH> I wouldn't know. I have never read any nihilistic interpretations of
RPH> Buddhism. Could you suggest a few, so that I can check them out for
RPH> myself?

in your own messages. In the claims about death as the end of the
-self. It is pure nihilism. The eternalism of the nothingness.
Obsession with the -self.

Buddha never teached these things.


br,