Without Discoverable Beginning (The limitations of science)

by xeno6696 , Sonoran Desert, Saturday, January 21, 2012, 22:21 (4469 days ago) @ dhw

MATT: It seems to me, that the greatest challenge to accepting Buddhism is coming from Buddhists themselves!&#13;&#10;> &#13;&#10;> If we take Buddhism to be a religion, you could say that they all challenge themselves, since none of them can ever reach a consensus on how to interpret texts and/or teachings. Christianity probably has the worst record of internecine violence, but Islam is rapidly catching up. At least the Buddhists aren&apos;t literally at each other&apos;s throats. &#13;&#10;> -Well... the interesting thing I&apos;ve noticed about Buddhism, is that without doubt, all branches accept all other branches. The only real &quot;schism&quot; of sorts centers around Theravedan Buddhism and Mahayana Buddhism. The original split between these groups centered around--money--not philosophy. The Theravedans flatly said that monks should never touch money, that they should only ever own or live off of what was offered. The maha--the majority--obviously took a more urban look at things. (This was all based off of the beginning of the money-economy in ancient India, and flatly--money is the human invention that if nothing else, has provided the foundation for cities as we know it.) -To this day, Mahayana literature contains some couched language that takes jabs at &quot;the conservative elders&quot; as being members of the &quot;small vehicle.&quot; All forms of Buddhism today outside of what&apos;s practiced in a small cluster of countries between Sri Lanka and Vietnam are ultimately Mahayana. Of interesting note, Islamic missionaries blame the economic poorness of these countries on Buddhism, and the general idea that the Monastics refuse to handle money. This custom is in Chinese Mahayana to a certain extent--in Buddhist funerals in China, it is customary to burn money. -So, your discussion about internecine conflict is poignant, and it must be said that it doesn&apos;t look like Buddhists have ever tried to kill each other over their differences in opinion--they just wrote texts subtly disparaging the other. The issue of money aside, the different forms simply choose to place certain texts ahead of others in terms of their practice, but they seem to do it so politely as compared to say, Lutherans vs. Catholics. -> ... Now I&apos;ll tell you what would really interest me. When you drew our attention to this interview, you mentioned &quot;the profound idea&quot; and that &quot;we can even go BEYOND these things&quot; (e.g. NDEs). If you have a bit of spare time, I&apos;d love to know what you meant!-It was purely his statement that said that we can go beyond NDEs... he seems to implicitly claim that Zen can give you an OOB. <--Not buying it. But it would be interesting to know that I could forcefully step outside of my body whenever I meditated enough. This harkens back to the writings of some of the ancient chan master&apos;s that claimed to do some of these things. -But if you want me to dig deeper... I&apos;ve caught glimpses of what he termed &quot;source consciousness.&quot; There&apos;s a level of internal calmness that I&apos;ve reached a couple times recently--that seemed to have a profound physiological effect. Is this God? Another Zen master pointed me to the writings of St. John of the Cross... he describes something very similar. -So... you must remain disappointed, as I was disappointed that he didn&apos;t really discuss it. (I posted the link before I had finished the podcast.)

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\"Why is it, Master, that ascetics fight with ascetics?\"

\"It is, brahmin, because of attachment to views, adherence to views, fixation on views, addiction to views, obsession with views, holding firmly to views that ascetics fight with ascetics.\"