[Buddha-l] Buddha's Meditation

[JKirkpatrick]

" If it doesn't ultimately matter whether a redwood or rhinoceros
lives or dies, then one can love it as one extinguishes it."

This doesn't work. 
Restated as, "If it proximately matters whether a redwood etc
lives or dies, then (because we live within proximate rather than
in ultimate conditions within the span of our and other
contemporaries' lives) one has a moral choice to love it and try
to preserve it.

As usual, I object to the application of ultimacy to any
conundrum.

Joanna
 

-----Original Message-----
From: buddha-l-bounces at mailman.swcp.com
[mailto:buddha-l-bounces at mailman.swcp.com] On Behalf Of Dan
Lusthaus
Sent: Thursday, July 07, 2011 7:58 AM
To: Buddhist discussion forum
Subject: Re: [Buddha-l] Buddha's Meditation

Franz,

> You know that scene in "Finding Nemo" where

'fraid not. Never seen it. Sorry.

>I think that, as Bruce Burrill points out, The Lotus Sutra  is 
>triumphalist.

I enjoy the first half of the Lotus (the upaya stuff). The second
half makes my skin crawl and strikes me as about as unbuddhist as
a text can be. Says something about Mahayana that this text gets
so much attention. Note that in China it is one school alone
which gives it preeminence -- Tiantai. In Korea the Lotus never
received that preeminence -- they've heaped that esteem on the
Awakening of Faith. It is Japan -- which has its own issues,
historically and currently, with militancy and triumphalism --
that made it the premier Mahayana scripture. Nichiren clearly was
a triumphalist of sorts.


>But is the early layer of the suttas? Perhaps not in  the sense
that 
>the Abrahamic scriptures demand followers to be. So  should
employ a 
>different word for Buddhist self-pride? In the face of  real 
>relativist/universalist views, I don't think we can simply say
such 
>pride is "normal."

You are assuming that relativism/universalism is the preferred
default position which supplies the criterion by which everything
else is to be evaluated. I don't. Both are insidious and
dangerous.

 >Can we find a middle word here?

Call "pride" pride. A Buddhist who doesn't think Buddhism is
providing something not found elsewhere has no reason to be a
Buddhist, and should stop being one immediately. Hence it is
"normal" for a Buddhist to value Buddhism more highly than other
traditions. What attitude a Buddhist (or anyone else) takes
toward OTHER religions is a separate question. Don't conflate
them. Some religions want to actively exterminate the
competition. 
That smacks of triumphalism. Others are more tolerant. There are
degrees of tolerance. Muslims accept "people of the Book" as
legitimate, and have extended honorary status of "people of the
Book" to Plato and Aristotle, and Hindus (Jews and Christians
were its original referent). But that "tolerance" has an uneasy
and some may think unseemly history and reality, e.g., dhimmi
status. These days it is not dangerous to be a non-Muslim in
certain places, it is dangerous to be the wrong kind of Muslim.

Vatican II was an expression of the realization that the age of
imperial conquest, and thus missionaries backed by military
force, was over. The strategy shifted to "interreligious
dialogue", a less compulsive form of persuasion to conversion
(beginning with the denial that that is its telos). 
As Christian militant conversion declines, Islamic militant
hegemony-seeking increases to fill the international void.

These are obviously simplistic, broad-stroke sketches -- the
reality is more nuanced, varied, and complex, but there are
generalizable attitudes toward the Other that one can easily
discover in the history of each, and tracking that against the
varying degrees of prominence of triumphalism in both would
illuminate some of the nuances -- a task for a different e-list.

 > Or, with a bit more nuance, wouldn't you agree that the point
of the
> repeated mentions of "Sravakas, Pratyekabuddhas and
Bodhisattvas" is 
> to praise those beings (and Buddhas) who have *got it* when one
else 
> does?

I think you are missing the absolutely extraordinary implications
of including Pratyekabuddhas on that list. It is a Mahayana list
(though Pali texts have a good deal to say about paccekabuddhas
as well), so it consequent discussions the bodhisattva --
representing the mahayana ideal -- is assigned the higher,
preferred status. But the pratyekas are NON-Buddhists. They are
an OTHER. And while there are legendary stories in the classical
literature of this or that pratyekabuddha, this is not a category
indicating some contemporary individuals or groups who need to be
acknowledged in accepting terms for sociological or cultural
reasons. The category means that one does not have to be a
Buddhist to figure out what causes duhkha and how to eliminate
it, nor to overcome ignorance and samsara. What is to be
"gotten", to use your term, is not something "buddhist", but
something that is the case for any sentient being. No "Jesus is
the only way", or even revelation from something/someone else.
Simply figuring it out. One derivation of the word associates it
with pratyaya, "conditions", so it is simply figuring out the
"causes and conditions" by oneself (eka, "one," alone).

Which other religion has a comparable category? Muslims have
people of the book, but as mentioned, that is a problematic
status. Jews have the Noahide laws (google it), so that righteous
gentiles are just fine -- unlike Christians and Muslims, Jews are
not intent on converting anyone, much less the whole world, to
Judaism, and don't consider non-Jews condemned or damned or any
other such silliness. Other can go about believing and doing
whatever they want, although ethical behavior -- since that
impacts others -- is important; the only thing that really
concerns Jews about non-Jews, the only request they make, is to
not kill or persecute Jews. As 2000 years of history clearly
shows up to the present day, despite all the self-proclaimed
moralisms of other religions, that humble request is always
asking too much. 
Universalist/relativists can accept all other religions, as long
as they acknowledge that the best of their tradition is the
universalist/relativism of some sort of perennial philosophy that
transcends their particularity. 
Only the particularity of universalism (and it is a particular
among others) is superior enough in vision to recognize that.

>So perhaps we're talking about a kind of triumphalism not of
Buddhism, 
>but of awakening. That distinction might help.

No, it continues the misconstrual. Triumphalism is not simply the
idea that I or my group is right about something -- Heaven forbid
anyone should realize they are right about something! -- but the
expectation, actively pursued, or earnestly anticipated, that my
group will vanquish all opposition, kill off the foes.

> I shall still try to be the more loving one. And that is, I
hope, 
> moral.

yes, but self-contradictory. If it doesn't ultimately matter
whether a redwood or rhinoceros lives or dies, then one can love
it as one extinguishes it.

When the Cistern monk Arnaud (or Arnau) Amalric advised a soldier
who wondered how to distinguish Catholics (the good guys) from
the Cathars (bad
guys) to "Kill them all. For the Lord knows them that are His,"
[otherwise
rendered: Kill them all, let God sort them out (Caedite eos.
Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius)] he too thought his advice was
moral with the sanction of the highest moral authority. And an
expresion of God's divine love.

Dan


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