[Buddha-l] Batchelor

[JKirkpatrick]

quoting from SB:
>[...] Instead of opening to the contingent, empty nature of
things, we 
> endlessly seek for identity, security and permanence. But this
sets us 
> in a vicious circle, since in our quest for happiness we are
evading 
> Reality. In German, Batchelor notes, a vicious circle is a 
> Teufelskreis, a 'devil's circle': it is the devil who deceives
us into 
> circling, getting nowhere. In Buddhism this devil is called
Mara.
>
>    
I understand that this image of the Devil is a poetical
expression. 
Batchelor's use of ' contingency' is however at least confusing. 
Pratītyasamutpāda is a relation between events, while contingency
means that there's no relation at all. A philosopher for whom
contingency was very important was J-P Sartre. He liked movies
very much and observed that the difference between a movie and
reality is that reality has no director, so contingency is the
trademark of the real. Has Batchelor been reading Sartre?

erik
------------------
He does refer to Sartre here and there, also Camus as I recall--
I ignore references to the French existentialists, especially
Sartre. Not neccesary for understanding what SB is writing about.

Joanna