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Article 4442 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: mean,meaner,MEANING-est/ intention-and-self the buddhist way
Message-ID: <1992Mar13.052208.23117@massey.ac.nz>
>From: A.Raman@massey.ac.nz (Anand)
Date: Fri, 13 Mar 92 05:22:08 GMT
References: <kr5b29INN4hu@exodus.Eng.Sun.COM> <1992Mar06.011801.8699@norton.com> <1992Mar12.031053.15904@norton.com>
Organization: Massey University Computer Centre
Lines: 131

In article <1992Mar12.031053.15904@norton.com> brian@norton.com (Brian Yoder) writes:

>What's so bad about wanting to knwo how hte mind works?  Buddhism seems to 
>be at least as interested in the subject (in it's own wany) as any 
>other approach (like science for example), but it just chooses some simple
>default positions and stops asking questions.  Do you defend the buddhist

There is nothing wrong  about wanting to   know  how the  mind  works.   But
according to the Buddha, that is something that a philosopher must be after,
not a pragmatist.   That is like   saying, "Here is  a  prescription to feel
happy; it is  extremely  portable regardless  of the    underlying Operating
System.  It  shows that whatever the  manner  in which  the mind works, this
prescription  will apply effectively to  produce  happiness."  Note that the
Buddha was not opposed to people  wanting to seek solutions to philosophical
problems,   he simply said that  it  was not  within   his domain  to answer
questions not relating to happiness.  Also,  his prescription for common man
and everyday life does not preclude people from striving for their goals, or
professional philosophers from seeking the nature of Reality.

>>does not have to know how the watch works in order to  be able to tell the
>>time.
>
>But one DOES need to know what a watch is, what time is, and have some reason 
>to care what time it is.  It is possible to talk about certain subjects
>without having a perfect understanding of them.  It makes no sense to have
>a discussion about any subject without any philosphical foundations.  It is
>literally impossible to do so.
>

Yes.  You are quite right.   That is precisely what the  Buddha  taught.  He
taught how to  tell the time, but not  how  to construct  a watch.  Buddhist
philosophy is concerned with what happiness  is and what  causes it, but not
with what the structure of the mind that feels happy is.

>As for myself, the ultimate reason I pursue the values I do is not the
>emotions that getting them generates in me.  Trust me on that!

I pursue  values solely  because they   cause happiness in  me.  I  live for
happiness and try my  best not  to do something  that  is bound to  cause me
sadness.  I like the feeling of happiness and feel that it is the motivating
factor behind  all actions.  Happiness is of  primary importance in my life.
Even when I help others,  or donate to  charitable institutions, I do so not
because of my values, but because it makes me happy to do so.

We now come to the consequential part:

>striving point of view...that to be happy was not to achieve one's goals,
>but rather to give up the idea that one ought to have any goals in the
>first place.  Do you deny that this is the essence of this doctrine?
>

No, I don't deny that this  is  the essence of  this doctrine.  I agree with
you totally on that.  In fact,  there are  many self-styled buddhists around
who may not agree with this.

>That is why buddhists so prize the zombie-like state of non-thinking 
>meditation.  I say such a state is not happiness, it is mindlessness.

You mean Zen?  Only Zen Buddhism  advocates non-thinking meditation although
all of Buddhism agrees that  a non-thinking state  is  the  happy state.  In
Mahayana, even though the  conclusion is the  same  as in Zen, i.e,  a blank
mind  = Nirvana = Happiness,  an attempt is not to  be made in daily life to
achieve this state.   The  conclusion  is  to  live  as pleasant a   life as
possible, in  whatever profession one  may be   engaged, without harboring a
fear of  death in any way, because  death  is not going  to rob one   of his
happiness.

>
>And how can one be "happy" by giving up on wanting anything?  It seems to me
>that this is just a retreat from taking any chances or having the potential
>for any loss.
>

Now we are talking business.  Happiness actually happens to  be the state of
non-thinking: This is  shocking indeed.  It  was  shocking the first time  I
heard it.  But  after  reading the justification the  Buddha offers for this
matter, it seems to me that there is an awful lot of sense in  what he said.
Of course, if someone said  to me straight  off that happiness was the state
of blankness, I would be inclined to disagree with him.  But please read the
Buddha's own reason's, (Yes, Reasons!) for why he said so.  I think it  is a
pretty convincing argument.   Sometimes the  most  obvious things are  those
that appear utterly incredible.

>
>A blank mind is NOT a happy mind.
>

Of course, you don't have to agree with this.  You can hold another point of
view, but before flinging invectives upon a proposition that took the Buddha
forty nine days to arrive upon, I would spend  atleast that much time trying
to see what it was the Buddha said; what it is that makes  it look as though
happiness is the opposite of sadness, when in reality, it  happens to be the
natural state of the human mind.

It is possible that  while a whole sequence  of statements  that follow from
each  other look perfectly  logical the  conclusion can  appear to  be madly
incoherent.  In that case,  the usual procedure is  to accept the conclusion
as true  because  the steps that led   to it  were sound.  In   sci.math for
example, I recently noticed the thread about our school-time propostion that
x.999999..... =  x+1.  However  much the  steps  used  in the  argument  are
justified, the conclusion still appears to  confound us - something that the
mind just  has to  "get used to"  as  John  Von Neumann  is supposed to have
advised Albert Einstein.

The Buddha was not unaware that his shocking conclusion appeared absurd.  It
is precisely for this reason that he is supposed to have had second thoughts
about making his conclusions public - they disagree with what `Common Sense'
says, and most men are inextricably hooked into the `Common-sense Dilemma.'

As Einstein says, when common  sense disagrees with   Reason, it is  usually
common sense that is wrong.  `Common sense  is the collection of inhibitions
that an person has by age 18.'  I am sorry  to  plagiarize your .sig, but it
is very nice and I can  see a  variation of it  being very appropriate here.
"When Common  Sense tells us that  a logical theory is  wrong,   then Common
sense must be disposed of."  Otherwise  we  would never have known  that the
speed of light is constant in any reference frame.

Some say that  Buddhism is  the religion  of  Pessimism that says that  life
itself  is one of  sadness  and suffering and our  existence here is plagued
with  misery, the only  release from these being  death.  But  it is evident
that the Buddha had  thought about  exactly this  fact  before  teaching his
path, for he taught that  death means  not just  release  from sadness,  but
release into happiness - thus it is not  Pessimism.  On the contrary,  it is
Optimism.  These are not  unfounded statements.  You will find  a reasonable
justification for them in the words of Gautama Buddha.   Only, don't put the
book down   after  reading  the   Proposition  alone,  without  reading  the
justification that follows it.

Cheers!

- & (anand)


