Emptiness misconceived
Below is an excerpt from my forthcoming book… © Mahabodhi Burton 4 minute read This excerpt is from Chapter 4: ‘Postmodernism and the academic mindset.’ Sunyata Those casually or more deeply involved with Buddhism often bandy around the word Sunyata (pronounced shun-yata) or Emptiness, without necessarily comprehending—or even getting very close to—its true meaning: they assume it means something like ‘nothing is real.’ The truth is that the ‘mother of all (Buddhist) doctrines’—and the basis for sunyata—is praticca-samutpada or Dependent Arising: in short, Conditionality. This doctrine expresses the Buddha’s central insight that ‘all phenomena are dependently or conditionally arisen,’ thus they have no ‘own-nature / inherent-existence (svabhava).’ Nothing is self-supporting; nothing exists independent of (other) conditions. Sagaramati: ‘Sunyata means that some “X” is “empty [sunya] of inherent existence,” that’s all. As we have said, sunyata and praticca-samutpada are the self-same doctrine seen in two ways. Therefore the doctrine of sunyata does not negate phenomena, but only negates that which has never existed, i.e. the illusion of “self-nature” that we attribute to phenomena. After insight into the emptiness of phenomena, the “same” phenomena are leftover: pots still carry on being pots; They don’t suddenly disappear into some fictitious emptiness. Fire still produces heat to keep us warm, etc. All that changes is our deep seated attitude to things: the way we are attached and dependent on them, the way we see and relate to them and cling to them for a sense of who we are, a sense of identity.’[1] In fact, according to Nagarjuna, sunyata, praticca-samutpada and the Middle Way are coterminous in meaning: ‘Whatever is dependently arisen (praticca-samutpada) That is explained to be emptiness (sunyata,) That, being a dependent designation (prajnapati,) Is itself the Middle Way[2] Non-self The Middle Way is the path between the two extreme views of ‘Eternalism’ and ‘Annihilationism,’ where Eternalism is the belief in fixed unchanging essences, such as an eternal creator God or an unchanging fixed self. Annihilationism is the belief that at death nothing of the person continues. These two views lead to the corresponding extreme religious outlooks of puritanical theistic religion in the former case and laissez faire hedonism in the latter. As with most things, the helpful option is somewhere in the middle: that is, acknowledging that there is some moral structure to the Universe, but approaching that humanely: in a way that is based in awareness and experience rather than dogma and religious doctrine. There is a self, an agent, but that self can be changed, for better or worse (ethically) moment-to-moment. The reaction of Lauren...
The theme of ‘Change’ in Postmodernism
Below is an excerpt from my forthcoming book… © Mahabodhi Burton 8 minute read This excerpt is from the chapter ‘Postmodernism and the academic mindset’ and follows the section on Postmodernism. The theme of ‘Change’ [Mathew] Mullins gives an example of the ‘change theme’ from postmodern fiction: ‘Perhaps the best illustration of this notion of change comes from Octavia Butler’s unfinished Parable Trilogy. In the two completed novels, Parable of the Sower[1] and Parable of the Talents, Butler’s protagonist and primary narrator Lauren Olamina records her experiences in a not-so-distant apocalyptic future where the infrastructure of the US government has withered, and the rule of law has become legend. After her walled neighborhood is attacked and burned by local drug addicts, Lauren leaves her hometown and her father’s orthodox Christian religion behind and strikes out with two other survivors on a northbound journey in search of jobs and safety.’[2] Image by qimono on Pixabay. Earthseed ‘Along the way she develops the religion she had begun to craft for herself as an alternative to her father’s faith, a set of verses she calls Earthseed. The God of Earthseed is change: All that you touch You Change. All that you Change Changes you. The only lasting truth Is Change. God Is Change. ‘God is change, and change is also God. Each of the Earthseed verses either directly or obliquely speaks to the nature of change, and the most important aspect of change is its ubiquity, its atmospheric, foundational, state-of-things, all-encompassing nature. …’ ‘As Lauren develops her religion, she retains the language of “God” to talk about change. Various characters question this approach: “But it’s not a god. It’s not a person or an intelligence or even a thing. It’s just … I don’t know an idea,” says a young man named Travis. ‘Her new religion changes traditional Christianity by reimagining God as an impersonal force rather than a personal being. When Travis points out that no one worships impersonal forces such as change or the second law of thermodynamics, Lauren responds, “I hope not […] Earthseed deals with ongoing reality not with supernatural authority figures.”[3] Here we are in the realm of secular religion: ‘Most of Butler’s characters do not struggle with Earthseed as a practice. They struggle with changing their minds about who or what God is. They struggle with “ongoing reality.” Postmodernism deals with ongoing reality.’[4] In other words, they struggle to accept a religion whose concern is not with discerning an ethical structure to the Universe and aligning oneself with it, but: ‘with the processual nature of...
Views
Below is an excerpt from my forthcoming book… 10 minute read This excerpt is from Chapter 8, ‘Mindfulness the Undiscovered Foundations,’ in which I explore the Four Foundations of Mindfulness (Pali: satipatthanas,) and here, ‘Mindfulness of Mental Objects (Pali: dhammas.) I am particularly concerned to clarify this key section of the Satipatthana Sutta: current interpretations of ‘mental objects’ and ‘dhammas‘ have lacked conviction amongst commentators. Views I have arrived at ‘Views’ as my translation of dhammas, and this is how. Dhamma roughly is ‘what can be remembered’ or ‘what can be borne in mind’ (Pali: dharetabba), hence the translation of dhammas as ‘mental objects’ and sometimes as ‘phenomena.’[1] ‘Mental objects’ doesn’t tell us very much about what dhammas are, although two things we do hold in the mind are ‘concepts’ and ‘images.’ Buddhism teaches that we have not just five but six senses, with the mind being the sixth sense called manas. As humans we have evolved to make assessments about the world around us. These assessments can be at the level of thought, although prior to thought, evolution taught us the more gut-level instinctual response of fight or flight, where information resides at the visceral level on a ground of learned experience. According to Sagaramati, a view is a deeply ingrained attitude, not simply an opinion; it arises on one or all of Buddhism’s grounds for faith: reason, intuition and experience. When we come across something that meets one of these criterion as a means either for survival, to avoid pain, or to bring joy and fulfilment, we don’t need to consciously make an effort to place that ‘mental object’ in our mind, it naturally gets stored there. In this way views naturally arise based upon a mix of feelings, gut instincts, and reasons; in fact, often it is emotion that plays the bigger role, only for us to later come up with rationalizations for the views we hold. The process of bearing a mental object in mind, i.e. in the mind-sense manas[2] (Pali,) involves apperception or recognition (Sanskrit: samjna; Pali: sanna.) Through life we are taught the conventional conceptual meanings of concrete objects and abstract concepts: chair, desk, popularity. Once we know these as names, we can recognize them when we see them. But we also recognize images: a person’s face, a landscape, a painting, a visualized Buddha. ‘Although when manas is translated as ‘mind’ dhammas tends to be rendered accordingly as ‘thoughts’ or ‘ideas’, note that dhammas qua the object of manas as the sixth sense faculty refer not only to thoughts, ideas or concepts, but to mentality in its broadest denotation:...
Visitors since 20 March 2024
Users Today : 26
Users Yesterday : 23
This Month : 483
Total Users : 13911Subscribe via Patreon
Subscribe to my YouTube channel
