[Buddha-l] [buddha-l] Buddhism as a 'selfish' religion

[robertupeksa at talktalk.net]

An application of the Middle Way to the whole categories of 'selfish' and 'unselfish' can show that they are?extremely unhelpful?terms, because they treat what is in the interests of a given individual as what is morally significant, rather than egoistic identification. The idea of selfishness is so equivocal that many of our activities (e.g. caring for one's?child, going on solitary retreat) could easily be seen as either "selfish" or "unselfish", and the terms just do not capture what is morally significant about those activities, rather being a?nucleus for dogmatic and prejudiced responses.

For more details, see my argument at?http://www.moralobjectivity.net/Relationships.html?(first sub-section).

There is also another issue raised by the terms of your question, which is whether Buddhism needs to be seen as a pursuit of nirvana at all.?A better question, avoiding such major problems with the terms, would be 'Is Buddhism conducive to the reduction (or perhaps the weakening or stretching)?of egoistic identification'??To answer such a question you would then need to look at specific practices, rather than the religion as a whole, and assess their success in this respect.

Robert Ellis