Comments on: Omniscience and manipulation http://loveofallwisdom.com/2009/12/omniscience-and-manipulation/ Philosophy through multiple traditions Thu, 09 Sep 2010 15:56:50 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 hourly 1 By: michael reidy http://loveofallwisdom.com/2009/12/omniscience-and-manipulation/comment-page-1/#comment-722 michael reidy Sun, 13 Dec 2009 02:02:18 +0000 http://loveofallwisdom.com/?p=727#comment-722 Amod: A quick answer would be yes because the relationship with a teacher is a personal one that is both reflective of your present level of attainment and also enabling you to move beyond that. What sincere seeker has not occasionally experienced the providential word or book that is an answer or an instruction? Certainly this is a march on the razor’s edge between the folly of self delusion or presumption and sraddha. The penny catechism has this pithy definition of presumption. Q: What is presumption? A: A foolish expectation of salvation without making use of the means necessary to obtain it. Amod:
A quick answer would be yes because the relationship with a teacher is a personal one that is both reflective of your present level of attainment and also enabling you to move beyond that. What sincere seeker has not occasionally experienced the providential word or book that is an answer or an instruction? Certainly this is a march on the razor’s edge between the folly of self delusion or presumption and sraddha. The penny catechism has this pithy definition of presumption.
Q: What is presumption?
A: A foolish expectation of salvation without making use of the means necessary to obtain it.

]]> By: Amod Lele http://loveofallwisdom.com/2009/12/omniscience-and-manipulation/comment-page-1/#comment-720 Amod Lele Sat, 12 Dec 2009 21:38:19 +0000 http://loveofallwisdom.com/?p=727#comment-720 So are you suggesting that people in a sense choose the level of <i>up?ya</i> that they themselves will receive, that the bodhisattva merely actualizes their natures in that respect? So are you suggesting that people in a sense choose the level of up?ya that they themselves will receive, that the bodhisattva merely actualizes their natures in that respect?

]]> By: Amod Lele http://loveofallwisdom.com/2009/12/omniscience-and-manipulation/comment-page-1/#comment-719 Amod Lele Sat, 12 Dec 2009 21:36:27 +0000 http://loveofallwisdom.com/?p=727#comment-719 What really interests me about Adams's worries is that I think they're <i>not</i> predicated on a lack of selflessness or compassion. The omniscient being, on Adams's reckoning, could be completely selfless and compassionate; but would still be manipulative in that selflessness, in some sense. The practitioner of <i>up?ya kau?alya</i> is using other beings for their ends rather than for her own, but she is mevertheless still using them. What really interests me about Adams’s worries is that I think they’re not predicated on a lack of selflessness or compassion. The omniscient being, on Adams’s reckoning, could be completely selfless and compassionate; but would still be manipulative in that selflessness, in some sense. The practitioner of up?ya kau?alya is using other beings for their ends rather than for her own, but she is mevertheless still using them.

]]> By: michael reidy http://loveofallwisdom.com/2009/12/omniscience-and-manipulation/comment-page-1/#comment-714 michael reidy Fri, 11 Dec 2009 14:43:51 +0000 http://loveofallwisdom.com/?p=727#comment-714 When the magnet is passed under the iron filings on a sheet of paper they align themselves. Was it the magnet that did this or their own nature? When you come into the field of a bodhisattva everything becomes permeated by satya. I suggest that even the events of your life take that orientation. Situations are devised in the general debacle. The level of teaching that you can assimilate presents itself to you. This is not an exam where there is a correct answer and you can fake understanding. When the magnet is passed under the iron filings on a sheet of paper they align themselves. Was it the magnet that did this or their own nature? When you come into the field of a bodhisattva everything becomes permeated by satya. I suggest that even the events of your life take that orientation. Situations are devised in the general debacle.

The level of teaching that you can assimilate presents itself to you. This is not an exam where there is a correct answer and you can fake understanding.

]]> By: Justin Whitaker http://loveofallwisdom.com/2009/12/omniscience-and-manipulation/comment-page-1/#comment-713 Justin Whitaker Fri, 11 Dec 2009 02:18:45 +0000 http://loveofallwisdom.com/?p=727#comment-713 Lots of great issues raised here, Amod. I don't know where to start. First, I suppose, if one is omniscient, does one have "choices" any more? Can one "use" others as objects of desire? If not, as in the case for Buddhists, then Adams's worries are for naught. Adams's worries are placed in a thought-experiment that seems to allow omniscience without selflessness, or omni-wisdom without omni-compassion. For ??ntideva this would no doubt be further fodder for our need to develop bodhicitta at the offset. Lots of great issues raised here, Amod. I don’t know where to start. First, I suppose, if one is omniscient, does one have “choices” any more? Can one “use” others as objects of desire? If not, as in the case for Buddhists, then Adams’s worries are for naught.

Adams’s worries are placed in a thought-experiment that seems to allow omniscience without selflessness, or omni-wisdom without omni-compassion. For ??ntideva this would no doubt be further fodder for our need to develop bodhicitta at the offset.

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