BG 175: The Buddhist Atheist | Buddhist Geeks

• BG 175: The Buddhist Atheist | Buddhist Geeks

  • karma is another matter all together. I find it quite unproblematic to state that when I die, the effects of my actions will continue in the world.
  • I simply see that after our death we have an enormous responsibility to ensure that the world we leave for others, be they our own children, be they our students, or so on, anybody, whoever, man, woman, animal. So I have no difficulty with the idea that after death my actions will continue to bear fruit. The only difference is that unlike some Buddhists, I don’t feel any need to be around when they mature.
  • Now, on a number of occasions, that he says as long as you are preoccupied with these big metaphysical questions, you won’t be attending sufficiently to the real task at hand, which is the question of suffering. Not just your own suffering, the suffering of others, the suffering of the world. And the Buddha’s teaching is, some would think that, has to be tested in terms of its therapeutic effectiveness. Not to be tested in terms as to whether it is an accurate description of reality or not.
  • I honestly don’t think the Buddha was interested in the nature of reality. The Buddha was interested in understanding suffering. In opening one’s heart and one’s mind to the suffering of the world.
  • we have a sense of the Buddha as someone who is very much concerned with how we optimize the quality of our life here and now.
  • In other words, the heart of the practice lies with how we are living from moment to moment in the actual world, with what we see, hear, smell, taste, touch, are the people, language, our own inner psychology, and the great challenges that face the human race as a whole.
  • dualism, I think, is quite at odds with what the Buddha had in mind. And I think it is also very difficult to square with how we actually understand the nature of the world in which we live. I don’t think there are two separate things, one material and one spiritual, that in some weird way, sort of co-exist. I feel that whatever the stuff of the universe is, it is of one nature.
  • I think an agnostic position is a very very healthy one to hold, and I think for myself agnosticism was like finding an enormous breathing space out of the constrictions of doctrine and dogma basically, that I was free now to admit what I didn’t know and to say, “I just don’t know,” without having to lock onto any particular view.
  • all belief is agnostic. In other words, we adopt these ideas, and yet we need to have the humility to recognize that although we believe in them, we don’t actually know. Now that, unfortunately, is one of the weaknesses of agnosticism because it is really, when it comes down to it, just a rather honest way of acknowledging the limitations of human knowledge.
  • I think it’s extremely unlikely that rebirth is going to happen. So unlikely, in fact, that it’s probably quite a good idea just to put that idea just out of circulation all together. In other words to say, “Frankly, I don’t believe there is rebirth.” Notice I’ve used the word believe. I don’t believe—I am not saying I don’t know, but I don’t believe there is rebirth. So when I say I don’t believe there is rebirth that is not actually denying the more basic point of agnosticism, which is I don’t really know whether there is really rebirth or not, but I don’t believe there is.
  • I call it ironic atheism. I think the Buddha was not a devout atheist. The Buddha simply did not have any time for the very concept or the language of God, and he dismissed it, really, as just yet another example of how human beings can dream up of all sorts of things, and he put it to one side.

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.