Advayavada Study Plan - week 49

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 (duhkha, dukkha) as a result of our complete reconciliation with reality advancing over time.

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 subject was the Fourth Step on the Noble Eightfold Path: our very best (samyak, samma) disposition or frame of mind, i.e. the adoption of our very best attitude to carry out our intention.

This week's subject is therefore the Fifth Step on the Noble Eightfold Path: our very best (samyak, samma) implementation or realization of our intention.

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 (carry out plan!) in your pocket diary!

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

Chuang-tzu: To become a companion of Nature (Chan)

Chuang Tzu [Chuang-tzu, Zhuangzi, ca. 369-286 BCE] has always fascinated the Chinese mind. He takes his readers to undreamed of lands and stimulates them through conversations of the shadow, the skeleton, and the north wind. His freshness of insight and broadness of vision are in themselves inspiring. He seems to transcend the mundane world, yet he is always in the very depth of daily life. He is quietistic, yet for him life moves on like a galloping horse. He is mystical, but at the same time he follows reason as the leading light.

All this is a direct product of his concept of Nature. To him, Nature is not only spontaneity but nature in the state of constant flux and incessant transformation. This is the universal process that binds all things into one, equalizing all things and all opinions. The pure man makes this oneness his eternal abode, in which he becomes a "companion" of Nature and does not attempt to interfere with it by imposing the way of man on it. His goal is absolute spiritual emancipation and peace, to be achieved through knowing the capacity and limitations of one's own nature, nourishing it, and adapting it to the universal process of transformation. He abandons selfishness of all descriptions, be it fame, wealth, bias, or subjectivity. Having attained enlightenment through the light of Nature, he moves in the realm of "great knowledge" and "profound virtue". Thus he is free. (from The Mystical Way of Chuang Tzu, in A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy, by Wing-tsit Chan, 1969, Princeton 1973)

Advayavada Study Plan - week 48

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.

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 subject was the Third Step on the Noble Eightfold Path: our very best (samyak, samma) enunciation, definition or explanation of our intention - we put our action plan into words.

This week's subject is therefore the Fourth Step on the Noble Eightfold Path: our very best (samyak, samma) disposition, frame of mind or attitude to carry out our intention.

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 (adopt right attitude!) in your pocket diary!

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

It is tempting to retreat (Richard Hayes)

In times like the ones we are going through now, it is mighty tempting to become a quietist, to retreat into the comfort of isolation and solitary prayer and meditation. It is tempting to focus on another world, a better world to come along when one has been released from active duty in this one. It is tempting to visualize heavenly realms and pure lands and distant paradises while the world outside rots and stinks. It is even tempting to retreat to a peaceful valley somewhere and to wait until the times have changed, thinking "When the parade comes along, I will join it." [But] if no one marches now, then when and where will there be a parade to join? (Richard Hayes, on his blog)

The Rafter is the Whole Building, in Fa-tsang (Cook)

Fa-tsang [Fazang, 643-712] concludes his Treaties on the Five Doctrines (the translation of a shorter title of the above-mentioned Hua-yen i-ch'eng chiao i fen-ch'i chang) with a description of the relationship between a rafter and the whole building of which it is a part. It is an analogy for any whole and its parts. By means of it, Fa-tsang shows the relationship of identity and interdependence (or interpenetration) discussed earlier. He analyzes this relationship by means of six characteristics which are possessed by each part of the whole. The six are totality, particularity, identity, difference, integration, and non-integration. In terms of the rafter, this means that the rafter is the totality, a particular, identical with all other parts and consequently with the whole, different in form and function, integrated into, and thus part of, the whole, and non-integrated in the sense that the rafter remains an observable, removable part with its own nature. The rafter is all six simultaneously.

What do we mean first of all by 'totality'! Fa-tsang answers, "It is the building." But the building is just a number of conditions, such as a rafter. What is the building itself? Again Fa-tsang replies, "The rafter is the building. The reason is that this rafter itself completely creates the building. If you remove the rafter, there is no building. If you have a rafter, you have a building." But how can a rafter all by itself wholly create the building if there are no roof tiles, nails, and other things?

It can not, says Fa-tsang, because if there are no roof tiles, nails, and the like, there is no such thing as a rafter. A real rafter is only a rafter in the context of the whole building, and therefore, when it is a real rafter, it wholly creates the building. A non-rafter cannot do this.

Several points should be noted in this slight paraphrase of the original. First, Fa-tsang clearly says that it is a particular object - the rafter - which is the building. We might insist that the rafter is only part of the building, not the building. but we would be missing the point. It is a particular, with a definite shape, location, and function, but if we remove each particular comprising the whole in order to find the real building, we will never find it. For it is just these particulars in their conjunctive togetherness which we call 'building'. However, we must not overlook the other part of the relationship, which is that the rafter is only a rafter in the context of the building, and it is therefore itself the result of the causal building. In claiming that the rafter-part is the building whole, Fa-tsang is making the point that the two are completely interdependent, for there is no whole apart from parts and no part separate from the whole. Consequently, the parts which conjunctively make up the whole are not independently existing individuals at all; they are empty of independent being. The individual is simply a function of the whole environment and at the same time is the whole. (from Causation in the Chinese Hua-Yen Tradition, by Francis Cook, Journal of Chinese Philosophy, 1979)

Interdependent Origination in Chuang-tzu (Cook)

Specifically, well before the beginning of the Christian era, Chinese thinkers such as Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu articulated a view of existence as one of harmonious coexistence in interdependence of the many particulars which constitute the organic whole called existence. In Chuang-tzu's writing, particularly in the section named Seeing Things as Equal, we find a classical Chinese enunciation of a vision of a world in which things are naturally what they are by virtue of a pervasive, thoroughgoing interdependence. As in Whitehead's system, such a world of particular events is not to be seen as inhering in or growing out of anything beyond itself, nor may we look beyond it for any causal agency. It is itself self-sustaining and self-creating, and this is achieved through the interaction of a conditioning nature of all its parts. An example of this view is clearly expressed in the Kuo-hsiang [Guo Xiang] commentary on Chuang-tzu's writing:

"When a person is born, insignificant though he may be, he has all the requisites necessary for his life. However trivial his own life may be, he needs the whole universe as a condition for his existence. No thing in the universe, nothing that exists, can cease for a moment without some effect on him. If one factor is lacking, he might not exist any longer. If one principle is violated, he might not live."

From Causation in the Chinese Hua-Yen Tradition, by Francis Cook, Journal of Chinese Philosophy, vol. 6, 1979.

Karma in Advayavada Buddhism

Buddhism presupposes traditionally that the human being is composed of some five skandhas or clusters of which, at death, the physical rupa skandha disintegrates and dissolves and the non-physical arupa skandhas, including our consciousness, simply cease to occur completely. In Advayavada Buddhism, karma is seen as a continually changing knot of interdependent events in time, including personal choices and responsibility - karma is the incredibly precise here and now product of all events in all time. New life is the result of the parents' procreative deed and the karma in which the procreative moment is embedded as an integral part. The genetic and social factors present at the beginning of each new life are the direct result of that wondrously minute karmic occurrence in infinite interdependent overall existence.

Advayavada Study Plan - week 47

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.

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 ASP subject was the Second Step on the Noble Eightfold Path: our very best (samyak, samma) determination in view of our personal situation at this time.

This week's ASP subject is the Third Step on the Noble Eightfold Path: our very best (samyak, samma) enunciation or definition of our intention.

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 (Put it in words.) in your pocket diary!

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

Zen, Emotion and Social Engagement (Feleppa)

Some common conceptions of Buddhist meditative practice emphasize the elimination of emotion and desire in the interest of attaining tranquility and spiritual perfection. But to place too strong an emphasis on this is to miss an important social element emphasized by major figures in the Mahayana and Chan-Zen Buddhist traditions who are shaprply critical of these quietistic elements and who stress instead, as Peter Hershock puts it [in his Liberating Intimacy: Enlightenment and Social Virtuosity in Ch'an Buddhism, Albany 1996], "total immersion in the flux of daily life and never a private and necessarily transcendental retreat from it". This understanding of enlightenment emphasizes enriched sociality and a flexible readiness to engage, not avoid, life's fluctuations in fortune and essential impermanence. I shall argue that we can understand the insights of these criticisms of quietism by considering some relatively recent advances in the philosophy and psychology of the emotions. Just as this recent literature challenges the idea that emotions are largely impediments to clear thinking, it can support Chan's concern that the emotions not be understood as mere impediments to enlightenment. (Robert Feleppa, in Philosophy East and West, July 2009, first paragraph of this article)

The Other Power in Shin Buddhism (Bloom)

People misunderstand when they think tariki, or Other Power, is a power that somehow comes in from the outside. The Shin point of view is that the Other Power/self power dichotomy is a delusion. Actually, all of existence is Other Power. Whatever we do is possible through Other Power. If I run a race, I am only able to do it, to put my effort into it, because the world is constructed in such a way that it supports me and makes my running possible. If, for example, there were no gravity, I wouldn't be able to run. If there were no Other Power, in the sense of there being an interdependent reality within which I undertake my efforts, I wouldn't be able to do anything.
Other Power is really interdependence, and interdependence is really the totality of the relationships we have with everything we deal with. Other Power isn't an external power. It's not an isolated power located someplace that zaps us from the outside. It's power through others. We can't deal with our life unless we have other people involved with us. Other Power involves power with others, which leads us to act out of a sense of reciprocal relationship with them. I am benefited by Other Power and I benefit others, and so on. It is from the web of relationships that is our reality. (Rev.
Dr. Alfred Bloom, in Tricycle, Fall 2009)

Advayavada Study Plan - week 46

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.

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 ASP subject was the First Step on the Noble Eightfold Path: our very best (samyak, samma) comprehension of or insight into our own life at the present moment in time.

This week's ASP subject is the Second Step on the Noble Eightfold Path: our very best (samyak, samma) determination in view of our personal situation at this time.

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 (Take a decision.) in your pocket diary!

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

The purpose of the 8fold path...

The purpose of the 8fold path is most essentially to change our own way of life for the better.

The Core Tenets of the Madhyamaka (Cabezón)

Whatever differences may have existed between Indian Madhyamikas, there is nonetheless a certain core around which a Madhyamika identity as a whole can be structured. Madhyamikas generally agree, for example, on the following points.
1) Things are empty (shunya): they lack essences or inherent existence. Neither persons nor phenomena exist independently, from their own side, but exist in a web of interdependent relationships.
2) Ordinary beings constantly err. Instead of seeing things as empty of inherent existence, they see them (to use a term not found in the texts) as 'full', which is to say as being more real than they are. This misperception (or, more accurately, misconception) of the world - this tendency to reify phenomena - is the chief cause of suffering.
3) Since the basic problem is one of attributing an excess of reality to a world that lacks it, the corrective, according to the Madhyamaka, necessarily involves negating something. It involves mentally 'substracting out' or 'emptying out' the excess reality we involuntarily attribute to things so as to bring the mind to an understanding of the way things are.
4) Because negation is a conceptual operation, language and conceptual analysis play a substantial role in this process of correcting our misconceptions about the world.
While such views are held in common by most Indian and Tibetan Madhyamikas, there existed (and exists) a great deal of controversy among Middle-Way philosophers concerning the implications of these core tenets. (from Language and the Ultimate: Do Madhyamikas Make Philosophical Claims?, by José Ignacio Cabezón, in Buddhist Philosophy, Essential Readings, ed. by William Edelglass and Jay L. Garfield, Oxford 2009)

Advayavada Study Plan - week 45

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.

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.

These past five weeks we handled the preliminary subjects and this week's ASP subject is again the First Step on the Noble Eightfold Path: our very best (samyak, samma) comprehension of or insight into our own life at the present moment in time - in other words, what is, honestly, my personal situation right now?

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 (What is my situation now?) in your pocket diary!

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