In my previous post I talked about how a book called Buddhism published by a Sikh'ish, Hindu'ish Indian organization, Radha Soami Satsang Beas, distorts Buddhist reality.
So far I've only read one chapter in the book, "A Perspective on Buddhist Views on Soul and God." Here's a PDF file of the scanned chapter pages, complete with my often skeptical highlighting (yellow question marks in the margins).
Download Buddhist Views on Soul and God chapter
I hope other people more knowledgeable about Buddhism than I will read the chapter and leave comments about this question: Does the author, K.N. Upadhyaya, correctly describe mainstream Buddhist teachings about "soul" and "God"?
I see no sign in his book that he submitted his manuscript to Buddhist scholars, or even practicing Buddhists, for review and comment, so this strengthens my suspicion that Upadhyaya allowed his personal religious views to sway his analysis of Buddhism.
So does my reading of the "In Search of the Great Watchmaker" chapter in an interesting book, The Quantum and the Lotus, by Matthieu Ricard and Trinh Xuan Thuan. Ricard is a Buddhist monk and the French translator for the Dalai Lama. He's also scientifically trained, as is Thuan.
The subtitle of their book is "A Journey to the Frontiers Where Science and Buddhism Meet." In the above-mentioned chapter, Ricard and Thuan discuss whether there's any need to posit a religious creating God, a secular organizing principle, or a philosophical first cause in order to explain the universe.
Rather surprisingly, Ricard, a practicing Buddhist, turns out to be more ungodly than Thuan, an astronomy professor. Ricard says that Buddhism sees no need for the sort of Hindu "Brahman" that Upadhyaya feels is part of the Buddha's teachings.
As far as Buddhism is concerned, the idea that there is some principle of organization that is supposed to have tuned the universe perfectly so that the conscious mind could evolve is fundamentally misguided.
...The universe has not been adjusted by a great watchmaker so that consciousness can exist.
...Why shouldn't a chain of causes be infinite in time and complexity? What law of nature does that contradict? How many causes must we have before saying, "That's enough. I can't keep going back in time ad infinitum, so let's adopt a causeless creator"?
...To sum up the Buddhist alternative way of thinking, which requires no principle of organization, in the Buddhist world of appearances, each instant is a perpetual end and beginning because of the basic impermanence of the phenomena produced by the laws of cause and effect.
In terms of absolute truth, all past, present, and future events are identical in that they have no intrinsic existence. Thus they have no real end or beginning.
If nothing is really "produced," there is no need to look for an end. And so it isn't necessary to search for a principle of organization that is supposed to have made everything and have been made only by itself.
So Matthieu Ricard, a monk who has studied and practiced Buddhism for over forty years and is close to the Dalai Lama, disagrees with the contention of Radha Soami Satsang Beas and K.N. Upadhyaya that the Brahman/God worshipped by Hindus also is part of Buddhist teachings. Even more, Ricard says that Buddhism sees no need for any ultimate organizing principle, even secular/scientific.
Such is in line with the "What Buddhists Believe" web site, which contains descriptions of core Buddhist tenets, including The Origin of the World and The God-Idea.
The third school of thought says that the beginning of this world and of life is inconceivable since they have neither beginning nor end. Buddhism is in accordance with this third school of thought. Bertrand Russell supports this school of thought by saying, 'There is no reason to suppose that the world had a beginning at all. The idea that things must have a beginning is really due to the poverty of our thoughts.'
...If man is created by an external source, then he must belong to that source and not to himself. According to Buddhism, man is responsible for everything he does. Thus Buddhists have no reason to believe that man came into existence in the human form through any external sources. They believe that man is here today because of his own action. He is neither punished nor rewarded by anyone but himself according to his own good and bad action. In the process of evolution, the human being came into existence. However, there are no Buddha-words to support the belief that the world was created by anybody. The scientific discovery of gradual development of the world-system conforms with the Buddha's Teachings.
In another post I'll show that the RSSB "Buddhism" book also is wrong about how soul is regarded in Buddhist teachings.
Brian, I've seen these sort of interpretations many times before. The problem lies in the fact that there are occasional passages and quotes, especially in later Buddhism that seem support this perspective. Two and a half thousand years of Buddhism has inevitably given rise to many sects, teachings, cross-fertilizations, interpretations and reinterpretations.
So it's all a bit messy. But I would say that the teachings of Nagarjuna (approx 2nd CE) would be a fairly reliable place to begin an investigation. Most if not all Buddhists would agree that the writings of Nagarjuna were an attempt to reinstate the core Buddhist doctrines that may have become distorted over time (and at this point we're only 700 or so years in!) His philosophical writings are firmly rooted in the original teachings of the Buddha.
His teachings (and the teachings of the Buddha) rigorously deny the existence of fixed essences of any kind. The idea of a God or eternal soul in Buddhism is just a ludicrous non-argument (about as nonsensical as a teleological interpretation of evolution.)
As for nirvana, it's stated by Nagarjuna that nirvana is samsara rightly seen. It's not a transcendent place where the 'wise' get to hang out. He famously states “there is not the slightest distinction between samsara and nirvana. The limit of the one is the limit of the other.” The key here is that a deep seeing of no-self, of the reality of dependent arising, is samsara rightly seen. This is the 'unborn' nature of reality. There never was an independent you that was born and will die and transmigrate and suffer the endless rounds of rebirth etc. All there is is the flux of conditioned arising - or the turning of a great event. (Of course this is not to deny the conventional sense of persons and the forms that surround us.)
Now this conditioned arising or unborn nature of reality might possibly be interpreted as some kind of mysterious ultimate reality - but on this the Buddha was silent.
Posted by: Jon | February 08, 2012 at 08:54 AM
A magnificent summation, Jon. I always knew I was a Buddhist in drag!
Posted by: Willie R | February 08, 2012 at 11:02 AM
Jon, thanks for the thoughtful comment. I was hoping you'd weigh in on this subject, given how much you know about Buddhism.
Yes, the Buddha apparently (he never wrote anything himself) was silent on several important subjects. What irks me, though, is the attempt by RSSB to fill that silence with unfounded assertions about what the Buddha supposedly REALLY meant to say, as if anyone knows.
Posted by: Blogger Brian | February 08, 2012 at 11:27 AM
I also think Jon did a good summation.
However, how do we know what the Buddha said or didn't say, taught or didn't teach? How do we know this character even existed as such...THE Buddha? Nepalese records indicate he may have been the last of six or seven patriarchs of the Nepalese "church" that was in revolt against the Brahmans whose teachings were brought to full fruition by Sakyamuni. Of course I don't know if this is true or not.
Many buddhists or buddhist scholars think they know, but it is most likely a tradition that they have been taught to believe, or believe to be authentic through opinion based on research that will always be questionable. In other words, whatever the consensus is, it is still just opinion.
The words of this supposed Buddha person were not put into writing until four centuries after his death and in a language different than his. Four hundred years. different language.
So, whatever words were recorded, they were not his. He is credited with so many different words by various scholars that if he had said them all he probably died of a throat hemorrhage.
And now RSSB purports to know what he said or intended.
Posted by: tucson | February 08, 2012 at 12:45 PM
Churchless! What dark fear drives this constant need to demonstrate the "wrongness" of so many others, old chum? In what way could divergence of opinions on such esoteric matters be relevant to vastly more pressing questions about how we should conduct ourselves on this earth?
Posted by: Brian from Colorado | February 09, 2012 at 10:36 AM
I have a need for reality, for truth, for honesty. When I see people claiming that something is true, and it isn't, that bothers me. As noted before, and will be noted again, "I like..." is a lot different from "I know."
The author of this "Buddhism" book, and the publisher, claimed that certain statements about Buddhism are true. I provide evidence that they're not. I'm not arguing that what Buddhism says is absolutely, scientifically, evidentially proven -- just that what is said in the book about Buddhism, and what Buddhism says about itself, are quite different.
Have to ask... Why are you concerned about what I write on my blog? Why do you feel the need to criticize what I choose to write about? Check out the First Amendment. Free speech is a wonderful thing. Disagreeing about what is said is fine; disparaging the act of saying itself is something else.
Posted by: Blogger Brian | February 09, 2012 at 10:42 AM
So TRUE
There is only movement in this universe space-time movements called DHARMA
First centrifugal seeking more ego , next centripetal seeking less ego?
without much free will, . . alltough
you are free to like what you experience , relatively 'DO' or not like
At All times :
YOU GO WHERE YOUR HEART already IS !
God is just ONE BIG LOVE GENERATOR
a Principle, . . the reason for an all times/spaces creation
and the vertical Community of the Saints is the embodiment of that
One per universe is Huge even !
Long live the centripetal Anahabad Shabd to bath in
777
.
Posted by: 777 | July 24, 2013 at 01:26 AM