The Synaptic Tap Dance
Nov. 29th, 2005 11:44 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jakebe
Whoo, sorry about touching a nerve with the last entry. Thanks for all the encouragement and kind words and offers. I'll be particularly trying to follow up on chess and ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
rancourt's carte blanche after the post-vacation official holiday stuff settles down. The problem is narrowing down one topic to ask him about. ;) Mythology as a tool of self-discovery, or Eastern vs. Western philosophy, or existentialism, or Russian literature, or.... :)
animist also posted his interpretation of the Four Noble Truths, which is good. The best take on it I've seen is included in an index of Robert Aitken's Encouraging Words, and I'll have to spaz about that sometime.
The biggest problem I have with the Four Noble Truths is, for one, the very way they're set up. The most common interpretation you tend to see in "So You Want to Be a Buddhist" books is this: 1) Life is suffering. 2) Desire leads to suffering. 3) Eliminating desire will eliminate suffering. 4) Follow the Eightfold Path to eliminate desire. This, to me, is all wrong: it sets up Buddhism as a 'goal-oriented' religion, which misses the 'point' of Buddhism entirely. That goal, eliminating suffering, is just as damaging as any other carrot any other religion dangles in front of your nose to get you to park your butt in a pew. Any organization that says "We know the universal problem to life, and better yet, we have the universal solution." is one you should do well to steer well clear of.
This might be the bitter old crank in me speaking, but it seems that mostly this interpretation of the Four Noble Truths, which is so widely accepted in American Buddhism, is more indicative of how far the Zoroasterian(?) influence has wormed its way into our culture. Things are set up in a dichotomy in such an automatic fashion that it's become subconscious. Problems must have solutions. Good must be fought by evil. Black/white, night/day, so forth and so on. While these dichotomies are quite useful in helping us make sense of the world around us, I think we tend to confuse these hooks we use to organize reality as reality itself.
And this is where I typically get into trouble: what does reality itself entail? I'll be honest, I don't know. :) But to say that life (or at least the human condition) has an inherent flaw that needs to be addressed isn't...a healthy function of religion. It subconsciously sets up this flawed life vs. perfected life paradigm that is impossible to come to terms with. We'll never be perfect, and by extension our lives and the world at large will never be perfect either. But being perfect is not the point of Buddhism (or, well, Zen, which I follow the most closely). The 'point' of Buddhism is to be imperfect perfectly, which sounds like typical wishy-washy pseudo-Eastern-New-Age claptrap...but it's precisely true. And the Four Noble Truths need to be worded in such a way as to reflect this.
I suppose the best question to ask would be "What did the Buddha *mean* when he gave the Four Noble Truths, anyway?" To answer that accurately, though, you need to be familiar with the exact words he used to explain his concepts as well as the most likely context surrounding them. So, dhukka needs to be grasped completely, in order for his exact meaning to be clear.
And...well, since I'm at work I probably shouldn't go any further. ;)
In other news, I leave for CA bright and early Thursday morning. I am strongly considering just going home after work and getting mercilessly hammered by Jim Beam, going for a greasy Denny's breakfast at 3 a.m., and heading to the airport for my flight well full and liquored up. If they won't let me take a flask of Crown Royal with me on the plane, then I may just have to.
Dunno if I've mentioned this or not, but I *really* hate flying. It makes me a very very tense bundle of nerves for four to six hours. It's all tied in to a deep-seated fear (I'm reluctant to say phobia at this point) of not having my feet on solid ground. But, anything's worth enduring if it means I get to see otter at the end of it. :)
Work calls.
rancourt's carte blanche after the post-vacation official holiday stuff settles down. The problem is narrowing down one topic to ask him about. ;) Mythology as a tool of self-discovery, or Eastern vs. Western philosophy, or existentialism, or Russian literature, or.... :)animist also posted his interpretation of the Four Noble Truths, which is good. The best take on it I've seen is included in an index of Robert Aitken's Encouraging Words, and I'll have to spaz about that sometime.The biggest problem I have with the Four Noble Truths is, for one, the very way they're set up. The most common interpretation you tend to see in "So You Want to Be a Buddhist" books is this: 1) Life is suffering. 2) Desire leads to suffering. 3) Eliminating desire will eliminate suffering. 4) Follow the Eightfold Path to eliminate desire. This, to me, is all wrong: it sets up Buddhism as a 'goal-oriented' religion, which misses the 'point' of Buddhism entirely. That goal, eliminating suffering, is just as damaging as any other carrot any other religion dangles in front of your nose to get you to park your butt in a pew. Any organization that says "We know the universal problem to life, and better yet, we have the universal solution." is one you should do well to steer well clear of.
This might be the bitter old crank in me speaking, but it seems that mostly this interpretation of the Four Noble Truths, which is so widely accepted in American Buddhism, is more indicative of how far the Zoroasterian(?) influence has wormed its way into our culture. Things are set up in a dichotomy in such an automatic fashion that it's become subconscious. Problems must have solutions. Good must be fought by evil. Black/white, night/day, so forth and so on. While these dichotomies are quite useful in helping us make sense of the world around us, I think we tend to confuse these hooks we use to organize reality as reality itself.
And this is where I typically get into trouble: what does reality itself entail? I'll be honest, I don't know. :) But to say that life (or at least the human condition) has an inherent flaw that needs to be addressed isn't...a healthy function of religion. It subconsciously sets up this flawed life vs. perfected life paradigm that is impossible to come to terms with. We'll never be perfect, and by extension our lives and the world at large will never be perfect either. But being perfect is not the point of Buddhism (or, well, Zen, which I follow the most closely). The 'point' of Buddhism is to be imperfect perfectly, which sounds like typical wishy-washy pseudo-Eastern-New-Age claptrap...but it's precisely true. And the Four Noble Truths need to be worded in such a way as to reflect this.
I suppose the best question to ask would be "What did the Buddha *mean* when he gave the Four Noble Truths, anyway?" To answer that accurately, though, you need to be familiar with the exact words he used to explain his concepts as well as the most likely context surrounding them. So, dhukka needs to be grasped completely, in order for his exact meaning to be clear.
And...well, since I'm at work I probably shouldn't go any further. ;)
In other news, I leave for CA bright and early Thursday morning. I am strongly considering just going home after work and getting mercilessly hammered by Jim Beam, going for a greasy Denny's breakfast at 3 a.m., and heading to the airport for my flight well full and liquored up. If they won't let me take a flask of Crown Royal with me on the plane, then I may just have to.
Dunno if I've mentioned this or not, but I *really* hate flying. It makes me a very very tense bundle of nerves for four to six hours. It's all tied in to a deep-seated fear (I'm reluctant to say phobia at this point) of not having my feet on solid ground. But, anything's worth enduring if it means I get to see otter at the end of it. :)
Work calls.
