Sunday, August 01, 2004

Subject: Re: [analytical-indicant-theory] Re: [Abhinavagupta]

'PROGRESS': In Religion

Gary. C. Moore: "Very human" indeed, in fact, wholly human. By the intellectual definitions of the elite theology of any religion God is wholly unknowable, wholly other. Quite literally then this leaves God wholly outside ANY human consideration, a completely null term.

Richard Sansom:

I am not sure whether or not you are including any or all varieties of Buddhism in this remark. If Buddhism is considered to be a religion (a problematic assertion by many, including me) then the knowledge of God is not a profitable venture of thought, since “God” (taken to mean the kind of God we hear about in the West) is of little or no concern. The question might end up as a semantic one – must “God” be involved in religion or, if something is called a religion, must “God” be invoked? The Taoist and the Buddhist both paid scant attention to the numerous “Gods” that abounded – perhaps in a manner similar to Plato’s waving the gods aside in serious matters of life and thought. Buddhism and Taoism are concerned with how one lives their life; morality is born out of action, responsibility, caring, equity, etc – not out of dogma that attempts to transcend and ignore the daily problems of living. Suggesting that “By the intellectual definitions of the elite theology of any religion God is wholly unknowable, wholly other.” means that “God” is something that has the potential for being knowable – i. e. he/she/it exists – somewhere and somehow. This is not to be found in Buddhism or Taoism. Monotheism, which is the founding concept of Western religion, does not exist in the Eastern faiths, and I believe this makes all the difference in what the faith really means – i. e. that there is a single cosmic reality or force that manages all the elements of life and thought. If there was anything that denied personal freedom, to entrap the human spirit in a system of dogmatic and guilt ridden beliefs and fears, it was monotheism. I know that monotheism is applauded for its appeal to a system of Aristotelian hierarchy, but it also did a grave disservice to us by clamping down on the parameters of free and non-guilt ridden thought. If there is a single God, to which we can never have any real connection or knowledge, where the hell does that leave us? Ultimately stupid and helpless in the face of all that life throws at us. I will take Buddhism any time.

But there is something else involved in this gravitation towards monotheism: the desire or necessity to find a singular or unitary force or truth that wraps up everything in some neat package that makes ultimate sense. And makes sense scientifically as well – witness the lust after the TOE – the “theory of everything.” Some wish to find a single, and quite parsimonious equation, as simple as E=MC^2, that contains all scientific truths in one fell swoop. All this is borne out of the monotheistic urge. Whence comes this urge? Does the urge come out of Moses, or out of some deeper and more ancient construct that in fact resulted in the Mosaic laws? Why is one God “better” than many? Why is one unitary scientific truth better than ten?

This question leads me even further into a warm connection with Lao Tzu and Basho and Buddha, since they embrace something entirely foreign to its basic tenet: Life, or human life, with our big brain, our cleverness in building better huts and weapons, in growing our lexicon to over 675,000 words, somehow leads us to a living peace, one in which we smile and hug more than we frown and throw things – and upon the slightest reflection we can see that this is not at all the case. That single force, God or one small equation is as Quixotic as any venture our species has pursued. We seldom give way to the valuable noise of the mind, and suppose that there is a place that we can find that quiets that noise, and we should know that that quietitude might just be the death of things important -- valuable and interesting things.

I will shut up now.

Gary. C. Moore:

You can't include them all under the same umbrella. Consider Judaism. It is a political ploy by both anti-Semites and Zionists to consider all 'Jews' basically alike and that it has been this way throughout history! Total bullshit! If one goes back like Karl Marx says one must always be able to do and study the material facts from which such a generalization is derived, you will find no two Jews agree. Many times over the course of history the divergence is outrageous. Paganism and tolerance of pagan practices AMONG JEWS was THE primary debate within Judaism before the fall of the Temple and the end of a line of High Priests with names like Janneus Alexander. This is both perfectly obvious and just as perfectly ignored. Unity in religion is merely a political ploy of some sort. With the Jews, 'disagreement' was institutionalised. If you made a statement within the very general context in a form that was not outrightly offensive, it was acceptable in discourse if not like by the majority. This is exactly how the OLD TESTAMENT was constructed. There are reflections of explicit paganism, especially in GENESIS, and throughout. You have ECCLESIASTES which is so implicitly atheist it boggles the mind that it is there. And in between all spectrums can be found, for instance, THE SONG OF SONGS. But it is all Jewish heritage. So how do you nullify what you don't like? Make it sacred text, and, as sacred text then, obviously it can mean only one thing, right? What the present expositor is espousing and that is all. The TALMUD is created on a similar principle. Speculations on the Messiah range from he is coming soon to destroy the hideous gayer to there is no messiah at all. However, in context, disagreement is highly restrained in its actual possible effects. As how can there even be a Judaism without a Messiah? The Rabbinical Jews hated the Karites who only believe the Old Testament was the only valid Jewish text. And the Falassa from Ethiopia who believe in Temples and animal sacrifices on altars really causes numerous problems.

So Buddhism as a unity? Ludicrous. What we see in America is purely an appeal to those who think they are an intellectual elite. Real Buddhists from real Buddhist countries, however, are a real embarrassment to, for instance, the Dalai Lamma whose American concern is based on promulgating precisely an appear to an "American intellectual elite". Real Buddhists, even the elite, are just like Jesuit missionaries that incorporate everything they can get away with from indigenous religion -- sometimes the Pope interferes as with China, but then China became a Jesuit validating example of their policies -- so you have literally thousands and thousands of demons and gods and the validation of astrology, all the things the so-called 'pure' texts of Buddhism must at least implicitly condemn. Unity is power, and religious unity a political endeavor. That is a constant theme, once again, on Hume.

Richard Sansom:

If Buddhism is considered to be a religion (a problematic assertion by many, including me) then the knowledge of God is not a profitable venture of thought, since “God” (taken to mean the kind of God we hear about in the West) is of little or no concern. The question might end up as a semantic one – must “God” be involved in religion or, if something is called a religion, must “God” be invoked? The Taoist and the Buddhist both paid scant attention to the numerous “Gods” that abounded – perhaps in a manner similar to Plato's waving the gods aside in serious matters of life and thought. Buddhism and Taoism are concerned with how one lives their life; morality is born out of action, responsibility, caring, equity, etc – not out of dogma that attempts to transcend and ignore the daily problems of living. Suggesting that “By the intellectual definitions of the elite theology of any religion God is wholly unknowable, wholly other.” means that “God” is something that has the potential for being knowable – i. e. he/she/it exists – somewhere and somehow. This is not to be found in Buddhism or Taoism.

Gary. C. Moore:

But, the point I had hoped to make, is that 'doing without God' is necessarily atheism.

Richard Sansom:

Monotheism, which is the founding concept of Western religion, does not exist in the Eastern faiths, and I believe this makes all the difference in what the faith really means – i. e. that there is a single cosmic reality or force that manages all the elements of life and thought.

Gary. C. Moore:

There were and are monotheistic tendencies in Eastern religion. In Hinduism that I know most about, there is allowed the desire to hold one god up above all the others to the point of excluding them. This is what happens with Krishna and Kali and Shiva. Individual Hindus almost always concentrate on one god. Shankara's Brahman is wholly exclusive right from the start that I can see no real difference between him and Buddhism. They had bitter debates, each calling the other "nihilist". It was the pot calling the kettle black. They were all nihilists. They all want to annihilate the material world. Persecution of Hindus existed under Buddhist kings when Buddhism dominated India, but never pushed to the lengths Christianity went. And in practice their factual nihilism went the gamut from minding one's own business and living a moral life to the horrendous savagery of the Japanese samurai justified by Zen Buddhism since what you do in this world does not matter. Shankara had the same problem with Jivanmukta -- enlightened while alive -- you are above morality but -- probably -- operate by old moral habits that are really meaningless in the direct light of Brahman. And the Buddhist shoguns in Japan slaughtered Christians wholesale as a degenerate Western influence. I do not know about other Buddhist countries, but where you can find religion, I would place the odds in finding some kind of persecution.

Richard Sansom:

If there was anything that denied personal freedom, to entrap the human spirit in a system of dogmatic and guilt ridden beliefs and fears, it was monotheism. I know that monotheism is applauded for its appeal to a system of Aristotelian hierarchy, but it also did a grave disservice to us by clamping down on the parameters of free and non-guilt ridden thought. If there is a single God, to which we can never have any real connection or knowledge, where the hell does that leave us? Ultimately stupid and helpless in the face of all that life throws at us. I will take Buddhism any time.

Gary. C. Moore:

Sorry, there is plenty of guilt in popular Buddhism in real Buddhist countries. And both Buddhism and Taoism promulgate concepts of hell to intimidate their ignorant followers, a belief the "elite" doesn't even believe in. So there is plenty of hypocrisy to go around. Hell is a money maker.

Richard Sansom:

But there is something else involved in this gravitation towards monotheism: the desire or necessity to find a singular or unitary force or truth that wraps up everything in some neat package that makes ultimate sense. And makes sense scientifically as well – witness the lust after the TOE – the “theory of everything.” Some wish to find a single, and quite parsimonious equation, as simple as E=MC^2, that contains all scientific truths in one fell swoop. All this is borne out of the monotheistic urge. Whence comes this urge? Does the urge come out of Moses, or out of some deeper and more ancient construct that in fact resulted in the Mosaic laws? Why is one God “better” than many? Why is one unitary scientific truth better than ten?

This question leads me even further into a warm connection with Lao Tzu and Basho and Buddha, since they embrace something entirely foreign to its basic tenet: Life, or human life, with our big brain, our cleverness in building better huts and weapons, in growing our lexicon to over 675,000 words, somehow leads us to a living peace, one in which we smile and hug more than we frown and throw things – and upon the slightest reflection we can see that this is not at all the case. That single force, God or one small equation is as Quixotic as any venture our species has pursued. We seldom give way to the valuable noise of the mind, and suppose that there is a place that we can find that quiets that noise, and we should know that that quietude might just be the death of things important -- valuable and interesting things.

Gary. C. Moore:

I must give in and say I agree to your general purpose. As far as ELITIST Buddhism says real life is total nonsense, to be honest, I must agree. Quietude is far preferable to noise, and what I have said amounts to one hand clapping.

Richard:

Gary, I did not suggest a unity in Buddhism, and you may be partially right about many or even most (eilites) seeing Buddhism from a very skewed, Western perspective. However, my main point I believe is valid: Mosaic law, or something like it, would have been quite foreign to Buddhists, or to Confucians, or Mencians. For those three, at least, the concerns were, respectively: dealing with human suffering, dealing with order and duty among humans and finding and preserving goodness. In short, they are concerned with morality and practicality – not with far out mysticism and “god.” The fact that there were, from time to time, thousands of gods in the various pantheons indicates an aversion to a single and all powerful deity. Of course you are right about the “real Buddhists” or those for whom that religion takes on a far more rigid and dogmatic tenor than it does for those who call themselves scholars of the faith.

RICHARD: (previously)

Monotheism, which is the founding concept of Western religion, does not exist in the Eastern faiths, and I believe this makes all the difference in what the faith really means – i. e. that there is a single cosmic reality or force that manages all the elements of life and thought.

GCM: There were and are monotheistic tendancies in Eastern religion. In Hinduism that I know most about, there is allowed the desire to hold one god up above all the others to the point of excluding them. This is what happens with Krishna and Kali and Shiva. Individual Hindus almost always concentrate on one god. Shankara's Brahman is wholly exclusive right from the start that I can see no real difference between him and Buddhism. They had bitter debates, each calling the other "nihilist". It was the pot calling the kettle black. They were all nihilists. They all want to annihilate the material world. Persecution of Hindus existed under Buddhist kings when Buddhism dominated India, but never pushed to the lengths Christianity went. And in practise their factual nihilism went the gamut from minding one's own business and living a moral life to the horrendous savagery of the Japanese samurai justified by Zen Buddhism since what you do in this world does not matter. Shankara had the same problem with Jivanmukta -- enlightened while alive -- you are above morality but -- probably -- operate by old moral habits that are really meaningless in the direct light of Brahman. And the Buddhist shoguns in Japan slaughtered Christians wholesale as a degenerate Western influence. I do not know about other Buddhist countries, but where you can find religion, I would place the odds in finding some kind of persecution.

Richard:

Buddhists, taken as a whole, cannot always be seen as wonderful exemplars of peace and love. Not only did the Tokugawa shoguns slaughter Christians (but those shoguns were hardly “good” Buddhists) there were “warrior” Buddhist monks who slaughtered other Japanese for various reasons. But this is not to the point of my comments about monotheism.

RICHARD: (previously)

If there was anything that denied personal freedom, to entrap the human spirit in a system of dogmatic and guilt ridden beliefs and fears, it was monotheism. I know that monotheism is applauded for its appeal to a system of Aristotelian hierarchy, but it also did a grave disservice to us by clamping down on the parameters of free and non-guilt ridden thought. If there is a single God, to which we can never have any real connection or knowledge, where the hell does that leave us? Ultimately stupid and helpless in the face of all that life throws at us. I will take Buddhism any time.

GCM: Sorry, there is plenty of guilt in popular Buddhism in real Buddhist countries. And both Buddhism and Taoism promulgate concepts of hell to intimidate their ignorrent followers, a belief the "elite" doesn't even believe in. So there is plenty of hypocriscy to go around. Hell is a money maker.

Richard:

Yes, you are right about plenty of guilt to go around, but in Buddhism, Taoism or even Confucianism, and certainly not in Legalism (sometimes called Realism) guilt comes about also through not sufficiently honoring one’s ancestors, not what may be called Christian guilt, about which Nietzsche speaks wonderfully.

RICHARD: (previously)

But there is something else involved in this gravitation towards monotheism: the desire or necessity to find a singular or unitary force or truth that wraps up everything in some neat package that makes ultimate sense. And makes sense scientifically as well – witness the lust after the TOE – the “theory of everything.” Some wish to find a single, and quite parsimonious equation, as simple as E=MC^2, that contains all scientific truths in one fell swoop. All this is borne out of the monotheistic urge. Whence comes this urge? Does the urge come out of Moses, or out of some deeper and more ancient construct that in fact resulted in the Mosaic laws? Why is one God “better” than many? Why is one unitary scientific truth better than ten?

This question leads me even further into a warm connection with Lao Tzu and Basho and Buddha, since they embrace something entirely foreign to its basic tenet: Life, or human life, with our big brain, our cleverness in building better huts and weapons, in growing our lexicon to over 675,000 words, somehow leads us to a living peace, one in which we smile and hug more than we frown and throw things – and upon the slightest reflection we can see that this is not at all the case. That single force, God or one small equation is as Quixotic as any venture our species has pursued. We seldom give way to the valuable noise of the mind, and suppose that there is a place that we can find that quiets that noise, and we should know that that quietitude might just be the death of things important -- valuable and interesting things.

GCM: I must give in and say I agree to your general purpose. As far as ELITEST Buddhism says real life is total nonsense, to be honest, I must agree. Quietitude is far preferable to noise, and what I have said amounts to one hand clapping.

Richard:

I am not sure I agree with your remark: “As far as ELITEST Buddhism says real life is total nonsense…” It all depends on what “total nonsense” really means. For me, “real life” is concerned with sustenance, shelter, procreation, defense and expressiveness. One can always retreat into that vacuum that finds all those endeavors as either futile or devoid of some kind of cosmic value – but for me, that position can also be called nonsense. At the risk of sounding too Buddhistic, I will say that the wonderful taste of a plump, tree-ripened peach is certainly not only not nonsensical but makes that brief moment as valuable and meaningful as any. Much of the haiku of Basho offers the same kind of non-philosophical philosophy.


GCM: As presented to the West, these religions are not presented with the legal codes made by leaders of these religions which do exist but are only of interest to cultural specialists in the West. They are extremely boring. Why? Because they are elucidating in the same way, though with some different principles, as the Hebrew TORAH. THE LAW OF MANU has intersting parts to it, but on the whole it proposes repulsive laws very similar to Mosaic law including diety and racial purity. Asoka was notorious in his own time for putting up so many monuments to the enlightened peace of Buddhism while stuffing his prisons full of people and using physical torture extravagantly. You can find these things in every civilized culture, it just bores the hell out of almost everyone. "Dealing with human suffering, dealing with order and duty among humans and finding and preserving goodness" find be found in all religions, esp[ecially Judaism. But the bright side must always necessarily have a dark side. As encorporated into a living society, each religion must deal with the same social and political problems. There are difference, but when the whole, really living culture is taken into account, the differences are trivial. They must deal PRIMARILY in being materially effective with exactly the same problems -- food, property, and political power -- and the successful answers to these problems -- successful from the effective point of view are nearly always the same.

Richard:

Buddhists, taken as a whole, cannot always be seen as wonderful exemplars of peace and love. Not only did the Tokugawa shoguns slaughter Christians (but those shoguns were hardly â€Sgood” Buddhists) there were â€Swarrior” Buddhist monks who slaughtered other Japanese for various reasons. But this is not to the point of my comments about monotheism.

GCM: I am not concerned with WHO (individually) is a "good" Buddhist or "good" any other religion. And simply determining the authoritative person who has the right to determine who is a "good" Buddhist is impossible. Free Land Buddhist hate Ch'an or Zen Buddhists and are dominate in China, or were. In Japan, it is Zen Buddhism that has social approval because it fits the designs of the war lords (many still alive and going strong). You would never find any group of the different sects of Buddhism to agree either with your concept of what a "good" Buddhist is or with each other. The Tibetan Buddhist consider the Thervada Buddhist of Sri Lanka to be athiests, and they are right. The Thervada Buddhist consider the Tantric Tibetan Buddhists, of which the Dalai Lama is one, to be cannibals and sexual perverts. When the Dalai Lama's Tantric sect started demonstrating in San Francisco for the freedom to exercise their religious tenants, suppressed by American law, the Dalai Lama had it quickly made into a non-event like the CPSU made people like Trotsky dissappear from photographs with Lenin.

Richard:

Yes, you are right about plenty of guilt to go around, but in Buddhism, Taoism or even Confucianism, and certainly not in Legalism (sometimes called Realism) guilt comes about also through not sufficiently honoring one's ancestors, not what may be called Christian guilt, about which Nietzsche speaks wonderfully.

GCM: Yes, there is a real difference between Protestant Christian guilt and even orthodox Jewish guilt, and I feel American Jews may well have taken over Protestant Christianity's overwhelming sense of unerasible guilt. But orthodox Judaism and Catholicism and Hinduism and Buddhism have ritual and clear cut legalistic means of getting rid of guilt Protestantism threw out with the bathwater and left to a person's personal interpretation and therefore a person's personalo feeling thereby denying them a formulaic path of relief from guilt whereby, if conducted correctly, fully erased all guilt.

GCM: I must give in and say I agree to your general purpose. As far as ELITEST Buddhism says real life is total nonsense, to be honest, I must agree. Quietitude is far preferable to noise, and what I have said amounts to one hand clapping.

Richard:

I am not sure I agree with your remark: "As far as ELITEST Buddhism says real life is total nonsense" It all depends on what â€Stotal nonsense” really means.

GCM: It means any effective action in real life is doomed to ultimate failure or even immediate failure because one starts to see even right away the defects of any accomplishment.

RICHARD: For me, "real life" is concerned with sustenance, shelter, procreation, defense and expressiveness. One can always retreat into that vacuum that finds all those endeavors as either futile or devoid of some kind of cosmic value – but for me, that position can also be called nonsense. At the risk of sounding too Buddhistic, I will say that the wonderful taste of a plump, tree-ripened peach is certainly not only not nonsensical but makes that brief moment as valuable and meaningful as any. Much of the haiku of Basho offers the same kind of non-philosophical philosophy.

GCM: But the most ancient scriptures taught cosmic values, the futility of any material acts including the taste of a plumb, and total retirement from the world that even made problematic missionary activity. Buddhists had to re-invent the idea of merit which is worldly action therefore contradictory to Buddhisms basic concepts. Ch'an Buddhism in this respect gave up missionary activity altogether, whereas Japanese Zen, being a money maker and influence enhancer, has missionary endeavor abundant in the US. But the Basic Texts in Japanese Zen are translations of Chinese Ch'an texts which, if approached literally and logically, deny everything Zen does in the world. And Ch'an was never turned into a Chinese military auxilary that I know of. The Chinese didn't need to do so as the Jap-anese politically needed to because extremely detailed and very pragmatic Chinese texts (and very damn effective) existed before the coming of Buddhism. But every Japanese military theory text involves Zen Buddhism, giving up all will to the 'master', and compleat disassociation from responsibility for one's acts ordered by the 'master'. The Chinese military texts were formed in the high time of Chinese Legalism of which Confucisnism is the most successful sect, a sect that is essentially atheistic (utterly trivialization -- on the elite level -- all supernatural phenomena), and nothing supernatural about ancestor worship to the point that the Jesuits in China during the Ming and Ching were extremely successful in their missionary work because they completely incorporated Confucianism. They argued it was just a moral way of life with no conflict whatsoever with Christianity. They would have converted the great Manchu Emperor K'ang Hsi if the Pope had allowed this. But he wouldn't and that was the end of Christianity in China. The Emperor had seen there were tremendous advantages to Christianity for stabilizing government, for instance, making everyone limit oneself to one wife, something that caused tremendous problems with royal succession in China. Also, it imposed one way of doing all things, something the Catholic Church always preached and Henry VIII understood when he set up his personal church. K'ang Hsi would then need not have worried what the Buddhists thought of things, and all the different sects, and the Taoists and the Confusians and the polytheism amongst the every day people. He would have legal principle founded upon one religion that accepted the most respect 'religious' aspect in China, Legalistic Confucianism, and everything else illegal, punishable by death and confiscation of property like Henry VIII. He should have thought of making a Church of China, but I doubt if he knew anything about Henry VIII.

Richard:

Yes, I agree – mostly. The problems of societies are generally the same the world over and the actions of the leaders, religious and secular, often contain similar kinds of cruelty and enforcement methods. However it seems to me that the differences are not always trivial, and for every “Asoka” there was no doubt benign rulers and priests who took the tenets of their faith more seriously. Society can be divided into the three groups: a) those requiring order (peasants), b) those imposing order (the state) and c) those who think about all of it (philosophers/theologians). There is usually a great gulf between a) and c), but not always between b) and c). A case in point is that of Hsun Tzu, a great thinker of the 3 rd century BC. He believed, as opposed to Mencius, that men were born bad, and his brand of authoritarian Confucianism greatly influenced the behavior of the state. Men must be taught, from the sages and the ancient texts – individualism was no virtue. Such authoritarian systems can and did lead to social strictures that could be tough on the peasant and those who might believe they could think for themselves. I said that the differences in the management of societies were not always trivial and an example is how the Legalists or Realists dealt with behavior and how the Taoists and Confucians did. The Taoists believed in the sanctity and value of the inner self; the Confucians believed in the existence and objective of goodness and duty; the Realists believed that law (and the state/rulers) must replace morality/religion. These are not trivial differences, and we see remnants of the Realist school in today’s communist China

it was no great leap to go from the Realist school to the Chinese Communist school. I must admit that the Realist school, in all its modern guises, has, to a large degree, won out. But Democracy and Republicanism, which would have been anathema to the Realists, has also won out to some extent – but all that is another story.

Incidentally, for those who might believe that there were no great philosophers in ancient China, Hsun Tzu was very interested in language, names, what are similarities and differences, and he was much closer to Aristotle than to Plato. An excellent discussion of Hsun Tzu can be found in Herrlee Creel’s “Chinese Thought.” (U. of Chicago Press)

I have pretty much exhausted my knowledge on this subject, and am no match for Gary’s erudition in this area.

Regards,

Richard