Fri, 03 Feb 2012
God and Buddhism
Yes, it's been another long absence. This time my excuse is that I've been sick. I had a bad habit of clenching my jaw when under stress. It eventually caught up with me and set off a facial neuralgia. It felt like the whole right side of my face was on fire. It didn't go away simply by stopping the jaw clenching. But time and some homeopathic medicine have resolved the problem. I found the most helpful remedy was Coffea Cruda, though it took me a while to find it. The remedy that came out tops in the repertorization was Rhus Tox, which helped, but not as much.
What prompts tonight's post is a comment Brad Warner made on his blog,
"I'm writing a whole book about why I think Buddhists believe in God."
Which I don't agree with and will say here why. The central idea of Mahayana Buddhist philosophy is emptiness. And the most important thing to understand about emptiness is that it is a non-affirming negative, which means that it denies that one thing is so without affirming that its opposite is so. This can be seen in the Heart Sutra where both a property and its opposite are denied. "Here Shariputra, all dharmas are marked by emptiness: they are not produced or stopped, not defiled or immaculate, not deficient or complete." (Edward Conze's translation.) Applying this to the practice of meditation, insight cuts through the false idea of self, starting with its coarsest manifestation and then ever finer manifestations. Though what is perceived is an absence, because it is an awareness, it also is a positive phenomena. If not clearly understood, this awareness of an absence can be misunderstood as a perception of a positive but indescribable phenomenon. But this is a misunderstanding of insight. In asserting insight as a positive phenomenon and calling it the awareness of God, one loses the distinctive character of Mahayana Buddhism and strays into the view of Advaita. To anyone who thinks otherwise, here is another quote from the Perfection of Wisdom in 8000 Lines (also Edward Conze's translation.)
Even Nirvana, Holy Subhuti, you say is like an illusion, is like a dream?
Even if perchance there could be anything more distinguished, of that too I would say it is like an illusion, like a dream. For not two different things are illusion and Nirvana, are dreams and Nirvana.
What is indicated here is that for Mahayana Buddhism ultimate reality is not a positive phenomena or quality, it is just seeing the illusory nature of phenomena. This is not just an intellectual quibble, it goes to the heart of what Mahayana Buddhist practice is all about. If Nirvana were a positive phenomenon, it would have a cause, like any other phenomenon. And when that cause ceased, so would Nirvana. But Nirvana, not being a thing, is unproduced and unceasing. It is not eternal in the way God is asserted to be eternal, instead it is the absence of what could not possibly be so. I could go on, but hopefully this is enough to explain the difference between the view of emptiness and the view that asserts the existence of God, even a God that transcends all description.
