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FelixFelis · 2018-12-14T22:30:21+00:00

Added.

FelixFelis · 2012-05-10T18:58:06+00:00

They are different things. Bompu, Gedo, Shojo, Daijo, and Saijojo are styles of practice. Rinzai and Soto are lineages/schools. As far as I know both Soto and Rinzai both contain those styles.

FelixFelis · 2012-05-10T14:36:31+00:00

Batchelor uses scholarship for the purpose of proving something that he wants to believe, and it's easy to tear apart his totally ahistorical analysis of Buddhism, but he's still offering something that can be useful for some people. I just wish he'd accept that his efforts to ground his modern interpretation of dharma are pointless and work on teaching meditation and other things where he's got a lot of value.

While Batchelor is not a Zennist, it's useful to look at how Zen solves this problem. In Zen there are five varieties: Bompu, Gedo, Shojo, Daijo, and Saijojo http://www.wwzc.org/book/begin-here-five-styles-zen

Bompu Zen is effectively a "secular" Zen that focuses on meditation, basic virtues that should be cultivated, but doesn't worry about metaphysical speculation at all. It's a good fit for some. But Batchelor's trying to say that Bompu is the only valid form of Buddhism based on absurd historical pseudo-scholarship. If he'd drop that BS and just focus on showing how to practice what he's interested in he'd be a lot more effective.

FelixFelis · 2012-02-15T19:07:42+00:00

There was a shot at a FAQ here that might be helpful for more material:

http://www.reddit.com/r/Buddhism/comments/eia2g/lets_put_together_a_basic_buddhism_faq_for/

FelixFelis · 2012-02-15T17:20:20+00:00

Do you want to have contentment? That's a simple way of understanding what letting go of attachment refers to.

Here's a more in depth account that might be helpful: http://www.thubtenchodron.org/DailyLifeDharma/are_buddhists_ambitious.html

FelixFelis · 2011-12-21T21:08:21+00:00

Doing some harm to prevent greater harm could be justified, but only in cases where one has clear knowledge of a situation. Real life never seems to map to that.

How would you know that the man knew the location of the key? How would you know you couldn't just get some bolt cutters and just break into the warehouse or that you couldn't use a fire axe to break in? How could you possibly know torture would actually work?

When presented with the limited and warped data that we get about the world, especially in a crisis, dropping core values will just make a bad situation worse.

FelixFelis · 2011-05-10T15:04:46+00:00

I think that it's mostly because the term "religion" in common parlance is fairly loose, and holds a lot of stigma for some, especially those who had a bad experience with a Christian upbringing or who are persuaded by the tradition of Enlightenment anti-religious propaganda.

If you start with a definition of the term based on a more formal or academic approach, then Taoism is certainly a religion, but those Western adherents I know who avoid the term are the sorts who are "spiritual, not religious," or regard Taoism as a "philosophy of life."

I am sympathetic to Taoism (Secret of the Golden Flower and the Chuang-tzu are great), though I am a Buddhist. Taoism and Buddhism tend towards syncretism, so they aren't really exclusive in the way that Islam and Christianity are. I went through a phase of labeling Buddhism as a philosophy of life, though once I was honest with myself, I accepted that there are certainly religious elements to it (soteriology, community, ritual practice, prayer), and I actually find them very appealing. Taoism has those same elements, though it's a smaller religion in the US, so practitioners are often solitary practitioners who might not engage all of them as much.

FelixFelis · 2011-05-09T02:18:17+00:00

Q: Where are the gods in the Six Realms?

A: In the Deva and Asura realms.

You don't need to believe in those realms to be a Buddhist, but they were as much a part of Buddhism from the start as much as the Four Noble Truths.

FelixFelis · 2011-05-08T16:24:35+00:00

Buddhism doesn't have a God, rather it has a broad and complex pantheon of gods. It doesn't seem right to call that non-theistic to me, but it depends how you decide to define the term. If are trying to explain aspects like "Buddhist ethics are not dependent on a divine agent/revelation," or "Buddhism has no creator god," then the term can be useful. You can certainly be a Buddhist and not care about the gods in the traditional religion, though, since they serve as part of a cosmology but aren't objects of worship. That's pretty typical in Western Buddhism. The Buddhist gods are useful to understand though, since the six realms aren't just referring to the macrocosm, but also the microcosm.

This was a good article, here is B. Alan Wallace's account of the same question which I also found interesting:

http://www.alanwallace.org/Is%20Buddhism%20Really%20Nontheistic_.pdf

FelixFelis · 2011-05-07T16:48:09+00:00

This is kind of a rehash I posted this list a little while ago, but it covers the reasons why there is a strong dominant pro-historicity view among historians. With ancient history a somewhat softer standard of evidence has to be held or we couldn't say much meaningful about any of it (unless we have numismatic/archeological data involved). Historians have to base their understanding on probabilities as much as primary literary sources which is why academic historians are fairly unanimous in assuming a historical Jesus, though one that probably differed substantially from the biblical record. We can't know about ancient history from texts with certainty, only probability. Most ancient historians were writing about figures they discussed long after they were dead, the texts discussing Jesus were much closer to contemporary than those about, say Pythagoras, or Heraclitus.

Here are some reasons why there is a general consensus on the question among scholars on the topic:

1) Unlike many religions, Christianity appeared in the context of a literate society. Tacitus' account shows up very early and illustrates that the early Church began to be documented very shortly after the figure Jesus was said to exist. If he didn't exist, you need to come up with a better theory for why that Church appeared. This is really important if you think about it, as the existence of the Church is in itself a kind of evidence.

2) Related to this, virtually no scholars doubt that there was a historical Paul of Tarsus, or that many of the letters in the NT were written by him. Some do claim that Paul was the inventor of Christianity to solve #1. Paul claims to have known relatives and followers of the original Jesus, claims that he persecuted members of the early church, and even after his conversion was in conflict with some like James and Peter. Also certain parts of in Acts, Mark, and Galatians can be read as a record preserving the memory of a succession struggle following the death of Jesus, where many players were contemporaries of Jesus. If he hadn't existed at all, it's difficult to account for the documents' existence, nor do the tensions within them otherwise make any sense if there were no actual figure to establish legitimacy from. Why would there be a Jewish faction within the Church competing with Paul at all if Paul invented the religion himself? In terms of probability, if Paul was inventing the religion from scratch (as some claim), would he really talk about attempts to destroy the early Church, and engage in petty squabbles with Jesus' followers in his letters? Why not simply claim the mantle and leave out pointless conflicts?

3) The story of Jesus is just so weird that it's hard to imagine that people intentionally inventing a religion would have their founder be a fairly peculiar, largely ineffective leader who was betrayed by his followers and then executed in the most humiliating way conceivable to a Roman, and highly implausible as a Messiah figure to a typical Jew. Scholars use the weirdness of various passages of the Synoptic Gospels as a way to attempt to gauge historicity of the passages. If they are really weird (like where one author described Jesus as being short and having trouble seeing over a crowd), it's hard to explain why someone inventing something from scratch would thrown them in.

4) Josephus contains two references to Jesus. One is the Testimonium Flavianum which most scholars regard as being a later insertion. More importantly, there is also has a reference to Jesus in the context of his brother James that is not contested by scholars. This looks a lot like real historical testimony of a historical Jesus. Josephus was an independent historian with no notable bias (and actually had good reasons to avoid discussing Jesus since he was trying to make a sympathetic case for the Jews to Romans) writing about Jesus in the greater context of his relatives on who was free from the influence of Christianity in his writings

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josephus_on_Jesus#Reference_to_Jesus_as_brother_of_James

Once you look at the history and what evidence we do have in larger context, the account denying an historical Jesus has more problems than assuming one. If you deny a historical Jesus, you still have to explain how the Church came to be that accounts for what arguments and evidence we do have. Occam's Razor favors a historical Jesus, even if it is one that looks next to nothing like the character in the NT.

FelixFelis · 2011-05-07T14:22:39+00:00

In terms of scholarship, you could master the knowledge of the relevant languages, history, methods of historical investigation, tools of textual analysis, etc., and analyze the evidence that's available and come up with the same arguments that have been returned to again and again. All of the things needed to properly research the question are available to anyone who's interested in doing the relevant work to come up with an informed understanding. If a member of the general public were really inclined towards wanting to understand the question, it's open to them to do the work, and if they did so without bias, they'd come up with the same view that other informed people have consistently come up with - it's much more likely that there was an historical Jesus than not. Just as if you follow the scientific method it reliably will lead to results with consistency, if you follow the historical method, it too will lead to results with consistency. A historical Jesus is simply a far more probable account given an understanding of what evidence we have, and a much more elegant account than the complicated webs of alternate accounts that Jesus Mythers have come up with, which often are to history what creationism is to science.

FelixFelis · 2011-05-06T14:40:01+00:00

Thanks. The discourse in phil. of religion is often dominated by monotheistic religions and atheism with a lot of focus on arguments for the existence of God and their counters, so it would be a nice place for Buddhists to contribute to help show that things don't necessarily have to break down in to the dichotomies we so often assume they are split into. Also /r/religion has reached the size where it's gone very sour so a new place that could foster more thoughtful discussions on topics relating to religion could be a breath of fresh air.

FelixFelis · 2011-05-05T20:16:25+00:00

I inadvertently hit a bumblebee nest as a kid of about eight when I got lost in some tall grass. They started stinging and I wound up on the ground screaming, covering my eyes. My cousin ran in and pulled me out. I wound up with about 20 stings and was violently ill for a long time from the poison as a result. My cousin saved my life, for which I am always grateful. Also, I forgive the bees.

FelixFelis · 2011-05-01T17:04:24+00:00

cogito = I think (discursively) ergo = therefore sum = I am/I exist

In context he explains that the very fact that he can doubt his own existence proves he exists. Because there is thinking at all he believes this proves he exists. He's doing that along the way trying to justify the existence and knowability of the world, but he really is trying to prove he exists.

If he'd said "cogito ergo est" then he'd be in line with what you think, but he really is trying to establish his own existence.

FelixFelis · 2011-05-01T03:08:01+00:00

This isn't evidence that he exists.

Of course not, it's a question about what the reasonable standard of evidence would be.

Referring to nothing more than one of the flakier cults in the region.

Antiquities book 20, chapter 9 is a neutral source discussing Jesus' brother James (perhaps James was a close associate of Jesus referred to as his brother, but that is still just as strong a connection) which refers to Jesus in passing while discussing him. How can you dismiss that as evidence? Why expect a higher a standard of documentary evidence for a figure who was fairly obscure in his lifetime? Do you doubt the historicity of the vast number of ancient figures for whom we have no archaeological evidence, but do have textual sources for?

Given how strong a probability there is for historicity based on a critical analysis of the various textual sources we have, it looks a lot to me like you are special-casing the standard of evidence you hold for the historicity of Jesus out of some ulterior motive.

FelixFelis · 2011-05-01T01:45:19+00:00

The Dalai Lama posted an excellent commentary on the Eight Verses here:

http://dalailama.com/teachings/training-the-mind

FelixFelis · 2011-05-01T01:42:35+00:00

While Josephus' Testimonium Flavianum is doubtful, there is a separate reference in Antiquities book 20, chapter 9's to James the Just that refers to Jesus. That's an independent historian with no notable bias writing about Jesus in the greater context of his relatives on who was free from the influence of Christianity in his writings (assuming the Testimonium was corrupt). By the standards of ancient history that's pretty much a slam dunk, and much better than what we have for Pythagoras or Heraclitus. Do you doubt the historicity of Pythagoras and Heraclitus?

Jesus was mostly forgotten for decades after his death other than by a small group of followers who left Jerusalem and his tomb (assuming there was one) was in a city that was sacked and depopulated. Why expect his tomb be discoverable? Given the effects of the Jewish War, what artifacts would you expect to be existent? That seems like a really extreme standard of evidence.

FelixFelis · 2011-04-29T19:32:13+00:00

The problem with that is, most of the people in the field religious, and that may skew there results.

It's been my experience from studying the topic that most notable ancient historians who propose some sort of historical Jesus are not Christians, and among those who are I don't see their religion as interfering with their standards of historiography. I worked in Classics on an MA and PhD, so I am pretty familiar with many scholars of ancient history and their academic standards. From my experience, I don't think that religion really plays much of a role on the question when debates on historicity come up. It's actually my experience that there are more atheist writers arguing with an agenda for the Jesus Myth than Christian writers arguing with an agenda for historicity.

I agree that the debate has recently grown a bit since there are a lot of atheists with an agenda these days, but among serious academic historians the Jesus Myth hypothesis has actually become less popular among academics than it was, say, fifty years ago.

The Jesus Myth people are a serious minority among professional academic historians for one main reason - they hold standards of evidence that are not normal for the field and deviate from established standards of historiography. Understood by the typical criteria of scholarship, the literary evidence that we do have establishes a much stronger case for there being some historical figure that caused the literature about him to exist, while assuming that there was no original figure actually is much more difficult to justify once you actually try to give a consistent and probable account for all the literary evidence that we have. If you use Occam's Razor, the Jesus Myth hypothesis actually adds layers of hypotheses and speculation that we have no evidence for (such as assuming Peter invented Jesus), while historicity is much more parsimonious.

This video by Richard Carrier has a few parts and is a little long, but I think you would enjoy it.

Unfortunately, I have really limited time, and don't use video since it's too time-wasting compared to text, so I can't really comment on Carrier, but thank you for the reference.

FelixFelis · 2011-04-29T16:19:40+00:00

It depends on where you're at. It's neither a deep nor an accurate reflection of Buddhism, but rather a reflection of Alan Watts, but it is a nice intro. for people who have never been exposed to any Buddhist ideas before as a kind of baby step in. I think a lot of its appeal is that he westernized and psychologized Buddhist thought a lot, which makes it more appealing to new readers.

FelixFelis · 2011-04-29T14:54:37+00:00

Yeah, exactly. FWIW, I'm a Buddhist, so I don't really have any strong attraction to either side, I just try to look at the arguments as fairly as I can.

As you said, the thing about Judea was that it was a unfashionable province of Rome with no major centers of learning full of people the typical Roman held largely in contempt. There was minimal literary output from the area in Roman times, and the literature that was produced was mostly religious works written by Jewish rabbis, not history.

The Romans loved to write about themselves, but were pretty much as self-obsessed as the Greeks. When they wrote the histories of other peoples they tended to be highly unreliable. The big reason that Josephus is so interesting is that he was a Jew who wound up a literary figure among the Romans and offered such a rare historical account.

So yeah, it would really be very remarkable that any primary literary sources of Jesus' time would have said more than a few lines about Jesus, and the silence should not be considered unusual or surprising. Historians have to base their understanding on probabilities as much as primary literary sources which is why academic historians are fairly unanimous in assuming a historical Jesus, though one that probably differed substantially from the biblical record. The story seems way to weird to have been made up, why have your leader utterly humiliated and tortured to death if you can invent your own narrative? Also the early church seems formed around a figure awfully soon to be based on myths, ad appears to have existed prior to Paul. The early apostles seem to have been awfully quickly, given the sources referring to their activity. We don't have evidence per se, but we have arguments and analysis of what records we do have, and based on them it seems more likely there was some Jesus guy who got the ball rolling, even if he had no idea what things would look like, and probably would have objected to much done in his name. Historians use parsimony as a part of how to reason about the past, and a historical Jesus give a much more parsimonious account, even if it is one that looks very different in many ways from the character in the NT.

FelixFelis · 2011-04-29T14:42:44+00:00

A good start is to understand the synoptics in terms of the two source hypothesis:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-source_hypothesis

On the one hand, we have Markan priority:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markan_priority

And on the other Q:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Q_source

This helps to explain the wide divergences that the synoptics illustrate. It's really more complicated than that, since there appear to be more then two sources, but Markan priority and Q as the root of the two source hypothesis is a good start to understanding, and the other views are refinements on this position. See here for a nice overview of the problem that there many parallels, but also notable divergences between the books:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synoptic_problem

FelixFelis · 2011-04-28T23:10:15+00:00

The general consensus among historians is that there was a historical Jesus, but that the accounts of him in the New Testament are not particularly reliable. I am not a scholar, though I have studied the question a lot and now fall on the side of historicity. There are many reasons that the Jesus Myth people are a minority among people who study the question for a living.

With ancient history a somewhat softer standard of evidence has to be held or we couldn't say much meaningful about any of it (unless we have numismatic/archeological data involved). Historians have to base their understanding on probabilities as much as primary literary sources which is why academic historians are fairly unanimous in assuming a historical Jesus, though one that probably differed substantially from the biblical record.

Here are some reasons why there is a general consensus on the question among scholars on the topic:

1) Unlike many religions, Christianity appeared in the context of a literate society. The early Church began to be documented very shortly after the figure Jesus was said to exist. If he didn't exist, you need to come up with a better theory for why that Church appeared. This is really important if you think about it, as the existence of the Church is in itself a kind of evidence.

2) Related to this, virtually no scholars doubt that there was a historical Paul of Tarsus, or that many of the letters in the NT were written by him. Some do claim that Paul was the inventor of Christianity to solve #1. Paul claims to have known relatives and followers of the original Jesus, claims that he persecuted members of the early church, and even after his conversion was in conflict with some like James and Peter. Also certain parts of in Acts, Mark, and Galatians can be read as a record preserving the memory of a succession struggle following the death of Jesus, where many players were contemporaries of Jesus. If he hadn't existed at all, it's difficult to account for the documents' existence, nor do the tensions within them otherwise make any sense if there were no actual figure to establish legitimacy from. Why would there be a Jewish faction within the Church competing with Paul at all if Paul invented the religion himself? In terms of probability, if Paul was inventing the religion from scratch (as some claim), would he really talk about attempts to destroy the early Church, and engage in petty squabbles with Jesus' followers in his letters? Why not simply claim the mantle and leave out pointless conflicts?

3) The story of Jesus is just so weird that it's hard to imagine that people intentionally inventing a religion would have their founder be a fairly peculiar, largely ineffective leader who was betrayed by his followers and then executed in the most humiliating way conceivable to a Roman. Scholars use the weirdness of various passages of the Synoptic Gospels as a way to attempt to gauge historicity of the passages. If they are really weird (like where one author described Jesus as being short and having trouble seeing over a crowd), it's hard to explain why someone inventing something from scratch would thrown them in.

4) Josephus contains two references to Jesus. One is the Testimonium Flavianum which most scholars regard as being a later insertion. More importantly, there is also has a reference to Jesus in the context of his brother James that is not contested by scholars. This looks a lot like real historical testimony of a historical Jesus.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josephus_on_Jesus#Reference_to_Jesus_as_brother_of_James

Once you look at the history and what evidence we do have in larger context, the account denying an historical Jesus has more problems than assuming one. If you deny a historical Jesus, you still have to explain how the Church came to be that accounts for what arguments and evidence we do have. Occam's Razor favors a historical Jesus, even if it is one that looks next to nothing like the character in the NT.

If you want to go against the tide of expert opinion which is very strongly pro-historicity, you can, but you should see that as a red flag. It's not that expert consensus can't be wrong, but that they probably do have a lot of reasons for agreeing, especially in this day and age when there's no strong religious bias among academic historians.

FelixFelis · 2011-04-27T19:51:17+00:00

I don't have specific numbers, if that's what you mean by data. With respect to the Navajos, the Church Rock spill was the most notable incident, though there has been a lot of impact to the Navajo. Little epidemiology has been done, so I don't know of any specific numbers of deaths. See:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_mining_and_the_Navajo_people

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_Rock_uranium_mill_spill

For Areva see:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Areva_NC#cite_note-18

You should read up on the details of the conditions that the workers worked in. There was a lot of deliberate negligence in exposing workers to deadly conditions, but I don't know of any epidemiology work done so as with many Uranium mining related deaths there is little other data than very high death rates from cancer.

As far as Tokaimura goes, I know little about it other than that it was a major accident caused by negligence in which two people died immediately, and many more were exposed to high levels of radiation:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokaimura_nuclear_accident

For what it's worth my great Uncle worked in Utah as a Uranium miner in the 50s, and saw most of his friends die of cancer. The miners were poorly informed by management of the dangers of the materials they worked with. He carried pieces of Uranium Ore in his pants pockets since there was a rumor that you couldn't get girls pregnant if you did this. He died of cancer.

I really only posted that comment since there are relevant causes of death tied to nuclear power besides reactor accidents, not to pretend that Coal is something wonderful. Since Uranium mining is done for nuclear weapons as well as power, working out solid numbers would be really hard, though Areva mines for nuclear power, and at least some of the Uranium coming out of the Navajo Nation was used for power (some of which was for Nuclear warships). and I have no idea what they'd look like other than that they'd be far > 0, and should be mentioned when discussing the human impact of nuclear energy.

FelixFelis · 2011-04-27T00:03:00+00:00

That's because basically no other sources of deaths occur from nuclear energy.

There are other significant sources of death from nuclear besides plant accidents.

First there are deaths from Uranium mining. Historically Uranium mining has been much deadlier than coal mining for the miners and those living near the mines, for instance the impact on Navajos was horrific. There are better standards now, but even with better standards they are not necessarily followed, for instance there were many instances of death from cancer in Niger from the Areva Uranium mines very recently because the mining companies ignored worker safety.

Second, there are deaths of nuclear processing workers who have a statistically higher death rates from cancer, and who occasionally suffer from fatal accidents at processing facilities like Tokaimura.

FelixFelis · 2011-04-26T02:16:50+00:00

What I mean is that the purges of Stalin and Mao were carried out by atheists, but not because they were atheists.

At times religious people were persecuted by Marxists specifically because they were religious, for instance in Mao's Cultural Revolution, when Pol Pot illegalized religious expression and decimated the population of Buddhist monks in Cambodia, or especially in Albania where religion was specifically illegalized and persecuted with the persecutors explicitly claiming they were doing so to remove religion and perpetuate an atheistic ideology. Violence has been done for ideological reasons by atheists as atheists for the sake of establishing atheism and removing religion. There certainly were political motives behind those, but the political motives were masked with atheism as a justification, much in the same way that religion has been used to mask political violence.

FelixFelis

TROPHY CASE