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Love of All Wisdom

~ Philosophy through multiple traditions

Love of All Wisdom

Tag Archives: vinaya

Our need for other people

19 Sunday Apr 2020

Posted by Amod Lele in Buddhism, Flourishing, Friends, Jainism, Monasticism, Pleasure

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Alasdair MacIntyre, architecture, ascent/descent, Ayn Rand, COVID-19, intimacy/integrity, qualitative individualism, Tattvārtha Sūtra, vinaya, Yoga Sūtras

As I write this post, I, probably along with most of my readers, face severe restrictions on normal human social activity, in order to limit the rapid spread of the COVID-19 virus. Electronic communications have made it possible to continue a social life despite these restrictions – but much of this conversation tends to focus on the virus and the limitations of life under it. I find myself yearning for more conversations about other things, and you may be as well. I also do not think I have anything particularly profound to say about the virus so far. For these reasons, I am not going to write here about the virus, at least for now. Instead, for the next little while I’m going to write about other topics that I’d been planning to write about anyway, but on an increased frequency to suit my and others’ changed schedules: every Sunday rather than every alternate Sunday. This is the first such post. I was not thinking about the virus when I originally wrote it, but perhaps it takes on a different resonance now.

A good human life, in general, requires living with other human beings. Some would take this claim as a truism, but I think it’s important to establish it. The ideal of the autonomous, independent individual is not merely a modern Western conceit, as is usually thought; this ideal is held up as a high ideal by monastic traditions in ancient India, perhaps most prominently in the Yoga Sūtras and Jain Tattvārtha Sūtra which describe their highest ideal as kaivalya, aloneness.

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Unconscious illusions

04 Sunday Feb 2018

Posted by Amod Lele in Attachment and Craving, Consciousness, Early and Theravāda, Epistemology, Mahāyāna, Psychology, Unconscious Mind

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Amos Tversky, Aristotle, chastened intellectualism, Daniel Kahneman, David Burton, Franz Carl Müller-Lyer, mathematics, René Descartes, Śāntideva, Sigmund Freud, vinaya

Buddhist texts frequently stress the liberating power of prajñā or paññā, metaphysical insight. It is one of the three major components of the path in early texts, one of the six perfections in Mahāyāna. To know the truth about existence – its nature as impermanent, essenceless, unsatisfactory – is to liberate one’s mind and be unattached. In the Pali Vinaya, the Buddha’s first disciples Sāriputta and Moggallāna attain liberation from suffering as soon as they hear the Dhamma Eye: the phrase “Whatever can arise, can also cease.” Śāntideva at Śikṣā Samuccaya 264 says na śūnyatāvādī lokadharmaiḥ saṃhriyate: one who takes the position of emptiness will not be attached to worldly phenomena.

But something seems odd about these claims – perhaps especially to a beginning student of Buddhist philosophy. We might well acknowledge the tradition’s supposed truths as truths – and yet still be just as mired in suffering as we were before. I know I didn’t get liberated upon hearing that what can arise can cease, and you probably didn’t either. David Burton in his Buddhism, Knowledge and Liberation puts the problem well:

I do not seem to be ignorant about the impermanence of entities. I appear to understand that entities have no fixed essence and that they often change in disagreeable ways. I seem to understand that what I possess will fall out of my possession. I apparently accept that all entities must pass away. And I seem to acknowledge that my craving causes suffering. Yet I am certainly not free from craving and attachment. (Burton 31)

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Trans* inclusiveness as an innovation to Buddhism

14 Sunday Sep 2014

Posted by Amod Lele in Early and Theravāda, Modernized Buddhism, Monasticism, Politics, Sex

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

conventional/ultimate, Engaged Buddhism, gender, justice, Justin Whitaker, Pali suttas, Peter Harvey, transbuddhists.org, vinaya

On his American Buddhist Perspective blog, my friend Justin Whitaker recently posted an interesting interview on the experience of trans* people in American Buddhism. Justin uses “trans*” as a shorthand for “transgender”, “transsexual”, “transvestite” and similar terms – to denote people who have become or attempted to become, in some respect, a gender different from the one associated with their biology at birth. It is clear to me that trans* people in the US face various forms of unjust discrimination. Where the tricky questions get raised is when the struggle against that injustice intersects with Buddhism – as, for that matter, when the struggle against any injustice intersects with Buddhism. Justin and I began a conversation about this in the comments to that post, and I’d like to continue that conversation in more detail here. Continue reading →

Buddhists and “Hindus” against traditional family values

16 Sunday Dec 2012

Posted by Amod Lele in Christianity, Early and Theravāda, East Asia, Family, Jainism, Mahāyāna, Monasticism, Social Science, South Asia

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

ascent/descent, dharmaśāstra, Dōgen, intimacy/integrity, Jan Nattier, Jātakas, Jesus, Joel Kotkin, New Testament, Pali suttas, Patrick Deneen, Patrick Olivelle, Śāntideva, Siddhattha Gotama (Buddha), Ugraparipṛcchā Sūtra, vinaya

A while ago I wrote about how Indian traditions upset conventional assumptions about family and community being essential to premodern tradition and culture. There, I was responding to a piece by Patrick Deneen, which drew only on Western traditions. As a result, Deneen’s piece had a narrowness of focus, but within that focus it was able to attain some accuracy. Not so for a recent report by urban geographer Joel Kotkin, entitled The Rise of Post-Familialism. Continue reading →

Why was gay sex considered misconduct?

28 Tuesday Jul 2009

Posted by Amod Lele in Buddhism, Family, Monasticism, Roman Catholicism, Sex

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

Dalai Lama XIV, Janet Gyatso, José Cabezón, S.N. Goenka, Thomas Aquinas, Tibet, Tsong kha pa, vinaya

José Cabezón has an interesting article on Buddhism and sexuality in the latest (summer 2009) issue of Buddhadharma: The Practitioner’s Quarterly. The article examines the tricky concept of “sexual misconduct” (kamesu micchācāra in Pali); one of the basic Five Precepts is a vow to refrain from “sexual misconduct.” But what exactly counts as misconduct? A fellow student asked me this when I took a Goenka vipassanā course. Goenka, in keeping with his general emphasis on non-harming, himself listed only rape and adultery as examples. But premodern Buddhists have typically gone further than this.

Cabezón probes the point that the present Dalai Lama, while defending the “full human rights” of gay people, nevertheless treats male homosexual sex (and oral and anal sex more generally) as a form of sexual misconduct. Continue reading →

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