Tag Archives: New Testament

Bultmann for Buddhists

15 Sunday Nov 2020

Posted by in Early and Theravāda, Faith, German Tradition, Hermeneutics, Karma, M.T.S.R., Metaphysics, Modernized Buddhism, Protestantism, Psychology, Supernatural

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The world picture of the Buddhist Pali Canon is a mythical world picture. The world is made up of 31 planes of existence, divided into a formless realm, a fine material realm and a sensory realm. In the formless realm dwell purely mental beings; in the fine material realm dwell most of the devas (gods, angels). Some devas also inhabit the higher planes of the sensory realm; we humans live in the middle planes; and in the lower planes we find the hungry ghosts (pretas) and hell dwellers. Life is a cosmic cycle of death and rebirth between these planes, with movement upward and downward determined by the good or bad nature of one’s actions within each plane. The results of these actions affect not only the circumstances of our new birth, but also our actions and mental states in the new life, which reflect the previous ones. All of this takes place on a cyclical time scale of endless recurrence, of decline followed by renewal and more decline: once upon a time human beings lived for 80 000 years, and their lack of virtue slowly reduced this, so that now their lifespan is merely a hundred, and it will eventually decline to ten.

All of this is mythological talk, and the individual motifs may be traced to the contemporary mythology of Jainism and the Upaniṣads. Insofar as it is mythological talk it is incredible to men and women today because for them the mythical world picture is a thing of the past. Therefore, contemporary Buddhist proclamation is faced with the question of whether, when it invites faith from men and women, it expects them to acknowledge this mythical world picture of the past. If this is impossible, it then has to face the question whether the Pali Canon’s proclamation has a truth that is independent of the mythical world picture, in which case it would be the task of Buddhist theology to demythologize the Buddhist proclamation.

The words above are not mine. I have pulled these two paragraphs directly from the beginning of New Testament and Mythology, by the 20th-century German Protestant theologian Rudolf Bultmann, and simply replaced what is specifically Christian with Buddhist concepts. But I think Bultmann’s argument stands just as well when it is transposed into a Buddhist key.

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Of demands and obligations

16 Sunday Aug 2015

Posted by in Analytic Tradition, Foundations of Ethics, Generosity, Mahāyāna, Morality, Shame and Guilt

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Aeon magazine recently published an excellent popularized version of Eric Schwitzgebel’s reflections on his research indicating that professional ethicists are no more ethical than anybody else. I’ve already blogged here both about the research and about the reflections. Betsy (Elizabeth) Barre shared the Aeon piece on her Facebook feed, leading to a lively conversation on Facebook which provoked me to think further about deeper issues around it.

In that conversation I shared my earlier reflection on the topic. In response, among other thoughts, Barre noted she was surprised that Schwitzgebel hadn’t presented the reflection in terms of the standard distinction between “what is moral?” and “why be moral?” And she asked me: “I take it that you think the latter question is not as problematic as some philosophers and ethicists do?”

That question came as a surprise. Continue reading →

New pope, new hope?

17 Sunday Mar 2013

Posted by in Generosity, Hope, Politics, Roman Catholicism, Sex

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Last week I discussed the first reason you can read my dissertation on this site, and said that this week I would talk about the second reason. But I’m going to put that off until next week, to speak this week of a current event.

Pope FrancisI refer, of course, to the election of Jorge Mario Bergoglio as Pope Francis. The selection of a pope is a philosophically significant event, for a pope is in some respects among the modern age’s closest equivalents to a philosopher-king: a man trusted by millions or even billions of people to decide the truth about ultimate reality and what is good. And the selection of this pope in particular seems to me an excellent one, a man much better suited for this role than I expected him to be. Continue reading →

Buddhists and “Hindus” against traditional family values

16 Sunday Dec 2012

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

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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 →

Précis of “Beyond enacted experiences”

30 Sunday Sep 2012

Posted by in Buddhism, Christianity, Consciousness, Dialectic, Judaism, M.T.S.R., Meditation, Metaphilosophy, Natural Science, Vedānta

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I’ve been wanting to refer on the blog to the article I recently wrote for the Journal of Integral Theory and Practice. Out of respect for the journal’s hardworking editors (and the law!), I will not post the article or its text on the site. But I’d like to give a summary of what I said there, so that blog readers without access to JITP will know what I’m talking about. The argument here is not as precise or careful as that in the article, and readers will need to find a copy of JITP 7(2) to get those details.

The article is above all a critique of Ken Wilber’s method in cross-cultural philosophy, a method that Wilber himself describes as a form of empiricism. Continue reading →

Light in the darkness

18 Sunday Dec 2011

Posted by in Aesthetics, M.T.S.R., Modern Hinduism, Protestantism, Rites, Roman Catholicism

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As Christmas approaches, I return to the theme I took up two years ago of the meaning of Christmas to a non-Christian – spurred on in part by my recent reflections on single–mindedness. Ben, commenting on that previous post, noted:

Christmas appears to have a dual message in our culture. ‘Rampant consumerism’ is one half, and ‘The True Meaning Of Christmas ™’ is the second. While there are exceptions that focus more on family and loved ones and generosity, references to TTMOC largely also include references to the birth of Jesus.

I think Ben is on to something important: an unreflective understanding of Christmas can turn into a simple consumerism. So, many who do reflect on Christmas either refuse to celebrate it at all or try to make it entirely about Jesus. I think both reactions, but especially the latter, are examples of single-mindedness as a problem: an attempt to pick out one single meaning that’s most important and ignore the details. But for those of us who genuinely enjoy Christmas, the details can be the most important part. Continue reading →

Newly authentic scriptures

09 Sunday May 2010

Posted by in Aesthetics, Christianity, Confucianism, Early Factions, Food, German Tradition, Human Nature, Humility, Judaism, M.T.S.R., Mahāyāna, Social Science, Truth

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In my introductory religion class at Stonehill I was teaching about the Marcionite Christians, followers of the second-century Christian Marcion of Sinope, who wished to see a Christianity without any Jewish influence. This posed rather a tricky problem for Marcion, seeing as Jesus was born Jewish and seemed to claim the lineage of the Jewish prophets. That Jesus viewed himself as Jewish is not only the conclusion of modern biblical scholarship; it seems to have been the view present in the scriptures that Marcion himself encountered. Marcion, it seems, took the Gospel of Luke as known to him and edited out everything that looked Jewish.

Why did he do this? I suppose it could have been merely a cynical move to gain followers, but Marcionism had an appeal that lasted long after Marcion’s death; I don’t see much reason to believe that Marcion didn’t believe what he was writing. But this is still puzzling. To our eyes it seems like an awful sort of arrogance to edit historical writings according to one’s own theology. One might ask: how could he have believed any of this?

In trying to understand Marcion I can only think of the popular view expressed in the Mahāyāna Adhyāśayasaṃcodana Sūtra, that “whatever is well spoken is the word of the Buddha.” Continue reading →

Paradoxes of hedonism

11 Sunday Apr 2010

Posted by in Analytic Tradition, Christianity, Despair, External Goods, Foundations of Ethics, German Tradition, Happiness, Mahāyāna, Meditation, Pleasure, Psychology, Self, Truth

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By far the most famous portions of Śāntideva’s work are his meditations on the equalization and exchange of self and other, found in chapter VIII of the Bodhicary?vat?ra. They appear in Western introductory readers on ethics, and are considered the foundation for an entire genre of Tibetan literature, blo sbyong or “mental purification.” Personally, these are not generally my favourite parts of Śāntideva’s work; his arguments against the existence of the self do not convince me, and the meditative exercises strike me as potentially damaging. That said, they do contain one line that sticks with me, that strikes me as extremely profound and valuable: All those in the world who are suffering are so because of a desire for their own happiness. All those in the world who are happy are so because of a desire for the happiness of others. (BCA VIII.129, my translation)

I discussed this claim once before but want to return to it. The claim is, I think, overstated for rhetorical effect. Even in Śāntideva’s eyes, merely desiring others’ happiness will not make you happy – especially if you are misguided about the causes of their happiness, so that you try only to provide them with external goods rather than addressing the inner mental causes of their suffering. And yet from my experience, I would still say the claim is more true than not. There’s something self-defeating about searching after one’s own happiness itself. If one keeps one’s eye on this goal above all, one becomes too acutely aware of failures at it, too focused on one’s lack of happiness – “I’m trying so hard to be happy and yet I’m not; something must be wrong with me” – and the goal is inhibited. (In his book Power Sleep, psychologist James Maas noted a similar problem with respect to sleep: subjects offered $20 if they fell asleep quickly would take longer to fall asleep than subjects who were not offered the money.) Continue reading →