Advayavada Study Plan - week 44

Friends,

In Advayavada Buddhism, the Noble Eightfold Path is interpreted dynamically as an ongoing and autonomous, non-prescriptive, investigative and creative process of progressive insight reflecting in human terms overall existence advancing over time.

Adherence to the familiar Five Precepts and a well-considered understanding of the Four Signs of Being and the Four Noble Truths suffice to start off on the Path at any time. Nirvana is, in Advayavada Buddhism, the total extinction of existential suffering as a result of our complete reconciliation with reality advancing over time.

Last week's preliminary ASP subject were the Second and the Third Noble Truths of Buddhism, i.e. the immediate cause of suffering, which is craving, grasping, clinging and attachment (trishna, tanha) rooted in ignorance (avidya, avijja), and the need and possibility of the elimination (nirodha) of the cause of suffering.

This week's preliminary ASP subject are the Fourth Noble Truth, i.e. the Noble Eightfold Path to eliminate ignorance and craving, and the Fourth Sign of Being (fact of life), i.e. Progress.

The Noble Eightfold Path in Advayavada Buddhism is fully personalized: it is firmly based on what we increasingly know about ourselves and our world, and trusting our own feelings and conscience. It is composed of the following eight sequential steps, which will be treated individually in the coming weeks:
(1) our very best (samyak, samma) comprehension or insight, followed by
(2) our very best resolution or determination,
(3) our very best enunciation or definition of our purpose or intention,
(4) our very best disposition, frame of mind or attitude,
(5) our very best implementation or realization of our purpose,
(6) our very best effort or commitment,
(7) our very best observation, reflection or evaluation and self-correction, and
(8) our very best meditation or concentration towards an increasingly real experience of samadhi, which brings us to
(1) a yet better comprehension or insight, and so forth.

By following the Noble Eightfold Path thus you get in tune with wondrous overall existence advancing over time; old mistakes are left behind; sorrow, doubt and remorse immediately start disappearing; and your life soon gathers new impetus.

The purpose of the ASP is that we study (and debate in the group, family circle and/or with good friends) the meaning and implications of the weekly subject particularly in the context of whatever we ourselves are presently doing or are concerned with, or about, such as our health, relationships, work, study, and our place and responsibilities in the family, group, sangha, society at large, etc.

Tip: Write down this week's subject (Path and Progress) in your pocket diary!

John Willemsens,
Advayavada Foundation.
<http://www.euronet.nl/~advaya/index.htm#plan>

Buddhism in the West

Dear colleagues,

Some time ago I posted a question on H-Buddhism asking for info regarding statistical figures of Buddhists in the West. I have received several references and I want to share them with all who might find interest in it. Here is the full list:

http://religions.pewforum.org/

http://www.americanreligionsurvey-aris.org/reports/highlights.html

Buster G. Smith, "American Buddhism: A Sociological Perspective." PhD dissertation, Baylor University, Department of Sociology (2009).

Robert Bluck, "Buddhism and Ethnicity in Britain: The 2001 Census Data," _Journal of Global Buddhism_ 5, (2004).

Jørn Borup, "Buddhism in Denmark," _Journal of Global Buddhism_ 9 (2008).

Martin Baumann, "The Dharma has Come West: A Survey of Recent Studies and Sources," _Journal of Buddhist Ethics_ 4 (1997).

Martin Baumann, "Global Buddhism: Developmental Periods, Regional Histories, and a New Analytical Perspective," _Journal of Global Buddhism_ 2 (2001).

Robert Wuthnow and Wendy Cadge, "Buddhists and Buddhism in the United States: The Scope of Influence," _Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 43, no. 3 (2004).

Michelle Barker, "Investments in Religious Capital: An explorative case study of Australian Buddhists," _Journal of Global Buddhism_ 8 (2007).

Karénina Kollmar-Paulenz, "Buddhism in Mongolia After 1990," _Journal of Global Buddhism_ 4 (2003).

Jitka Cirklová, "Development of Interest in Buddhism in the Czech Republic," _Journal of Global Buddhism_ 10 (2009).

Best

Joseph Loss, Ph.D.
Department of Sociology and Anthropology
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Jerusalem 91905 ISRAEL

Fwd by
John Willemsens
Advayavada Foundation

What undermines humanity most...

What undermines humanity most is the mistaken conviction that human beings are sinful by nature.

Advayavada Study Plan - week 43

Friends,

In Advayavada Buddhism, the Noble Eightfold Path is interpreted dynamically as an ongoing and autonomous, non-prescriptive, investigative and creative process of progressive insight reflecting in human terms overall existence advancing over time.

Adherence to the familiar Five Precepts and a well-considered understanding of the Four Signs of Being and the Four Noble Truths suffice to start off on the Path at any time. Nirvana is, in Advayavada Buddhism, the total extinction of existential suffering as a result of our complete reconciliation with reality as it truly is.

The Noble Eightfold Path in Advayavada Buddhism is fully personalized: it is firmly based on what we increasingly know about ourselves and our world, and trusting our own feelings and conscience.

By following the Noble Eightfold Path thus you get in tune with wondrous overall existence advancing over time; old mistakes are left behind; sorrow, doubt and remorse immediately start disappearing; and your life soon gathers new impetus.

Last week's preliminary ASP subject was the ubiquity of suffering (duhkha, dukkha) in the world, which is simultaneously the Third Sign of Being (fact of life) and the First Noble Truth of Buddhism.

This week's preliminary ASP subject are again the Second and the Third Noble Truths of Buddhism, which are the cause of suffering, which is craving, grasping, clinging and attachment (= trishna, tanha), and the need and indeed possibility of its elimination (= nirodha).

The root cause of all ill in Buddhism is, in fact, ignorance (avidya, avijja), i.e. ignorance of the true nature of reality, when the impermanence and the selflessness and finitude of all existents are not fully recognized and understood - it is this fundamental ignorance which in turn gives rise to craving (trishna, tanha), the immediate cause of existential distress. Man is prone to suffering (duhkha, dukkha) quite simply because he wrongly strives after and tries to hold on to things, situations and concepts which he believes are or ought to be permanent, but are not.

The purpose of the ASP is that we study (and debate in the group, family circle and/or with good friends) the meaning and implications of the weekly subject particularly in the context of whatever we ourselves are presently doing or are concerned with, or about, such as our health, relationships, work, study, and our place and responsibilities in the family, group, sangha, society at large, etc.

Tip: Write down this week's subject (craving and its elimination) in your pocket diary!

John Willemsens,
Advayavada Foundation.
<http://www.euronet.nl/~advaya/index.htm#plan>

The So-Called Narrative View of the Self (Westerhoff)

The So-Called Narrative View of the Self (from Nagarjuna's Madhyamaka, A Philosophical Introduction, by Jan Westerhoff, Oxford 2009)

Nagarjuna's rejection of entities existing by svabhava is not restricted to the study of the external world around us. At least as important as refuting the existence of fundamental substances which provide the basis for a world independent of human interests and concerns is the refutation of a substantial self, which constitutes the fixed point around which our internal world revolves. Such a substantial self is an essentially unchanging entity, distinct from our physical body and psychological states, which unifies our sensory input and mental life and acts as a foundation of our agenthood in the world. Nagarjuna wants to replace this prima facie plausible and compelling view of a self, which, however, he claims to be mistaken, by a conception of the self as a set of causally interconnected physical and psychological events. He sets out to account for the fact that we normally do not see ourselves in this way by arguing that this set of events is usually under the misapprehension of its own properties: it sees itself as a substantial self, even though it is not.

It is interesting to note that this alternative view of the self presented here (which, to be sure, is not a Madhyamaka specialty but widely shared between different Buddhist traditions), despite its intuitive implausibility, finds a surprising amount of support in recent research on cognitive science. Of particular interest in this context is the so-called narrative view of the self, a theory that has been explored in detail by Daniel Dennett [most famously in his Consciousness Explained, London 1991], who also presents supporting evidence from our current knowledge of how the brain works. One of Dennett's central observations is that the processing of neurophysiologically encoded information is spread across the entire brain. There is no place in the brain where "it all comes together", no "Cartesian theatre" where the stream of sensory information is unified into mental content and presented to consciousness. He argues that not only is there no neurophysiological analog to the self anywhere in the spatial organization of the brain, also the temporal sequence of events in the brain cannot be used as a foundation of a continuous self. Dennett shows that in certain cases the order of events as the appear in our consciousness does not line up with the temporal order of their underlying neurophysiological bases. The view of our selves as continuous, temporally extended entities therefore cannot be seen as a mere reflection of a series of events in the brain, but requires a significant deal of conceptual construction. Our subjective feeling of spatial and temporal location cannot be grounded on the spatially and temporally spread out, discontinuous series of events in the brain in a straightforward manner. Our view of the self as an essentuially unchanging unifier and agent cannot be based on the structure of the piece of matter that occupies the space where we locate the center of gravity.

Dennett argues instead that the self is a product of our linguistic capacities. The capacity to use language is hard-wired into our brain, and once we start using language, we tell stories, including stories about ourselves which continuously create that very self. The self emerging on this theory is not the author, but the authored. Dennett notes that "our tales are spun, but for the most part we don't spin them; they spin us. The human consciousness, and our narrative selfhood, is the product, not their source". For this reason there is no fundamental difference between the self created by our own narrative and the selves created in works of fiction. It is not the case that the former are intrinsically more real than the latter; in fact they belong fundamentally to the same class of things (even though the fictional selves, unlike our own narrative selves, are usually not open ended). Both are conceptual constructs produced by our brain regarding a narrative, our own or that in some text, as revolving around a single fixed point.

http://www.euronet.nl/~advaya/excerpts6.htm#westerhoff

Advayavada Study Plan - week 42

Friends,

In Advayavada Buddhism, the Noble Eightfold Path is interpreted dynamically as an ongoing and autonomous, non-prescriptive, investigative and creative process of progressive insight reflecting in human terms overall existence advancing over time.

Adherence to the familiar Five Precepts and a well-considered understanding of the Four Signs of Being and the Four Noble Truths suffice to start off on the Path at any time. Nirvana is, in Advayavada Buddhism, the total extinction of existential suffering as a result of our complete reconciliation with reality as it truly is.

The Noble Eightfold Path in Advayavada Buddhism is fully personalized: it is firmly based on what we increasingly know about ourselves and our world, and trusting our own feelings and conscience.

By following the Noble Eightfold Path thus you get in tune with wondrous overall existence advancing over time; old mistakes are left behind; sorrow, doubt and remorse immediately start disappearing; and your life soon gathers new impetus.

Last week's second preliminary subject was the Second Sign of Being, the second fact of life: anatman, the selflessness of everything, and therefore the finitude or transitoriness of all individual existents, including ourselves.

This week's preliminary ASP subject is again the ubiquity of suffering (duhkha, dukkha) in the world, which is simultaneously the Third Sign of Being (fact of life) and the First Noble Truth of Buddhism.

According to Advayavada Buddhism, it is indisputable that the Buddha did not believe in Brahman (God, a transcendent and immutable Absolute) or in the atman or atta (soul, immortal self) and taught that human beings suffer because they do not understand and accept that all things in life are instead utterly changeable and transitory. They are prone to suffering (duhkha, dukkha) quite simply because they wrongly strive after and try to hold on to things, concepts and situations which they believe to be permanent, but are not.

In Advayavada Buddhism, the concept of duhkha does not include emotional grief nor physical pain. It refers solely to the existential suffering, angst and regret non-enlightened human beings are prone to - the enlightened person accepts with understanding and compassion the grief and pain which are part and parcel of human existence; equanimity does not mean insensitivity to our own feelings and those of others.

The purpose of the ASP is that we study (and debate in the group, family circle and/or with good friends) the meaning and implications of the weekly subject particularly in the context of whatever we ourselves are presently doing or are concerned with, or about, such as our health, relationships, work, study, and our place and responsibilities in the family, group, sangha, society at large, etc.

Tip: Write down this week's subject (duhkha, existential suffering) in your pocket diary!

John Willemsens,
Advayavada Foundation.
<http://www.euronet.nl/~advaya/index.htm#plan>

Advayavada Buddhism Information Center - Amsterdam

Advayavada Buddhism Information Center - Amsterdam

Advayavada Study Plan - week 41

Friends,

In Advayavada Buddhism, the Noble Eightfold Path is interpreted dynamically as an ongoing and autonomous, non-prescriptive, investigative and creative process of progressive insight reflecting in human terms overall existence advancing over time.

Adherence to the familiar Five Precepts and a well-considered understanding of the Four Signs of Being and the Four Noble Truths suffice to start off on the Path at any time. Nirvana is, in Advayavada Buddhism, the total extinction of existential suffering as a result of our complete reconciliation with reality as it truly is.

The Noble Eightfold Path in Advayavada Buddhism is fully personalized: it is firmly based on what we increasingly know about ourselves and our world, and trusting our own feelings and conscience.

By following the Noble Eightfold Path thus you get in tune with wondrous overall existence advancing over time; old mistakes are left behind; sorrow, doubt and remorse immediately start disappearing; and your life soon gathers new impetus.

Last week's preliminary ASP subject was the First Sign of Being, the first fact of life: anitya, omnia mutantur, everything changes, the impermanence and changeability of everything, of all existents, including ourselves.

This week's second preliminary subject is the Second Sign of Being, the second fact of life: anatman, the selflessness of everything, and therefore the finitude or transitoriness of all individual existents, including ourselves.

The doctrine of anatman is one of the central teachings of Buddhism. According to this doctrine, there is no self or soul in the sense of a permanent, integral, autonomous being within an individual existent. What we think of as our self or soul, personality and ego, are our own mental creations. Individual human beings live for about 4,000 weeks and then disappear altogether.

It is very difficult for people to grasp how everything originates in causes and conditions and to see that everything, including ourselves, depends on everything else and has no permanent and abiding self-existence.

The purpose of the ASP is that we study (and debate in the group, family circle and/or with good friends) the meaning and implications of the weekly subject particularly in the context of whatever we ourselves are presently doing or are concerned with, or about, such as our health, relationships, work, study, and our place and responsibilities in the family, group, sangha, society at large, etc.

Tip: Write down this week's subject (no soul, no self) in your pocket diary!

John Willemsens,
Advayavada Foundation.
<http://www.euronet.nl/~advaya/index.htm#plan>

Het licht van Azië (in Dutch)

For my Dutch-speaking friends,

I was interviewed by the Dutch BOS radio about Edwin Arnold's The Light of Asia.
You can listen to the interview at:

http://cgi.omroep.nl/cgi-bin/streams?/radio5/bos/dezevendehemel/20091003-15.wma

Cheers,
John.

The Path in Advayavada Buddhism

In most other forms of Buddhism, the Noble Eightfold Path is made up of eight largely unrelated and prescriptive factors. For Advayavada Buddhism, however, it is clear that the objective of the Middle Way devoid of extremes, the madhyama-pratipad, being the correct existential attitude expounded by the Buddha, is the abandonment of all fixed views and to reconnect and reconcile us with wondrous overall existence as it truly is beyond our commonly limited and biased personal experience of it - the Eightfold Path is therefore understood dynamically as an ongoing reflexion at the level of our personal lives of existence as a whole becoming over time, as an ongoing reflexion in human terms of pratityasamutpada. It is for this reason, that the eight steps of the Noble Eightfold Path, as advocated by Advayavada Buddhism, do depend sequentially on each other, are to be followed repeatedly step by step one step at the time, are free of any conventional criteria set beforehand by others or ourselves that one is supposed to conform to, and are fully 'actual' in the sense that they are not done for a further purpose or motive which is not in the step itself - the only thing one has to consider is whether our realisation of this next step is to our knowledge at this very moment (acquired through texts, teachers and thought) the best possible one under the everchanging circumstances. (from the Advayavada Buddhism website)

The rupa and arupa skandhas

We find it very difficult to come to terms with this frequently heard contention that the arupa skandhas or kandhas are in some way or another capable of carrying out things by themselves, such as initiating and maintaining an "incessant interaction" or making something "enter or realize Nirvana". Because the arupa skandhas in fact do nothing - they are the doing. The cluster of physical existence is the rupa skandha. Also this cluster does nothing - it merely is physical existence in all its aspects. The traditional four non-physical skandhas [sensations or feelings (vedana), perception (samjña, sañña), mental forces or formations (samskara, sankhara), and consciousness (vijñana, viññana)] are clusters or aggregates of functions, which are events - they denote how the rupa skandha is or becomes. Also the rupa skandha does not cause these events, it simply is them. Like when we say that a tree grows. The tree does not do the growing; it is the growing. This is how the tree is, how it exists in space and time. The growing of the tree is quite obviously an event, and not a thing, let alone a separate thing capable of in turn doing other things by itself. (from the Advayavada Buddhism website)