Buddhist beliefs

General discussion, particularly exploring the Dharma in the modern world.
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Rick
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Buddhist beliefs

Post by Rick »

Many Buddhist teachings are verifiable in one's laboratory of subjective experience:

How craving/ignorance causes suffering
How the skandhas give rise to a sense of illusory self
Dependent origination
Emptiness
Etc.

Some are not:

Karma (of the subtle, nonlinear variety)
Rebirth
Nirvana
Enlightenment
Etc.

Being untestable seems to place these in a different category, one of belief in the assertions of "experts."

Do you think this is a valid distinction to make, between Buddhist teachings that are verifiable and that are non-verifiable? If so, do the non-verifiables = Buddhist beliefs (= Buddhist dogma) ?
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Re: Buddhist beliefs

Post by Challenge23 »

rachmiel wrote:Many Buddhist teachings are verifiable in one's laboratory of subjective experience:


Do you think this is a valid distinction to make, between Buddhist teachings that are verifiable and that are non-verifiable? If so, do the non-verifiables = Buddhist beliefs (= Buddhist dogma) ?
I, for one, would say yes. The reason for this is that I think it is important to be able to label certain things as "Articles of Faith" so that you can either say you accept them or not and take appropriate actions instead of spending an inordinate amount of time trying to objectively prove something that, by its nature, is not objectively proveable.
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Re: Buddhist beliefs

Post by Kunzang »

rachmiel wrote:
Do you think this is a valid distinction to make, between Buddhist teachings that are verifiable and that are non-verifiable? (= Buddhist dogma) ?
No, because it is my understanding that according to the teachings they're all equally verifiable.
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Re: Buddhist beliefs

Post by Rick »

Kunzang wrote:
rachmiel wrote:
Do you think this is a valid distinction to make, between Buddhist teachings that are verifiable and that are non-verifiable? (= Buddhist dogma) ?
No, because it is my understanding that according to the teachings they're all equally verifiable.
I guess you could say that when you "become" enlightened, enlightenment and nirvana are both verifiable in subjective experience.

But how does one go about verifying karma (again, the nonlinear kind that takes years/lifetimes to play out) and rebirth?
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Re: Buddhist beliefs

Post by Grigoris »

rachmiel wrote:But how does one go about verifying karma (again, the nonlinear kind that takes years/lifetimes to play out) and rebirth?
By looking at where you are at right now. Obviously you can point to some (directly observable in this lifetime) causes and conditions for your current situation, but all the other factors? What are they due to? Luck? Fate? Divine providence?

Anyway, just because something is not currently personally verifiable by you, does not mean that you have to reject it. Is the presence of sub-atomic particles something that you can personally verify?
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Re: Buddhist beliefs

Post by Kunzang »

rachmiel wrote:
Kunzang wrote:
rachmiel wrote:
Do you think this is a valid distinction to make, between Buddhist teachings that are verifiable and that are non-verifiable? (= Buddhist dogma) ?
No, because it is my understanding that according to the teachings they're all equally verifiable.
I guess you could say that when you "become" enlightened, enlightenment and nirvana are both verifiable in subjective experience.

But how does one go about verifying karma (again, the nonlinear kind that takes years/lifetimes to play out) and rebirth?
The same way you verify the first items - through following the path. Those first items are actually only really verified at advanced stages of the path at which point the second list will be verified as well, at least according to the teachings.
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Re: Buddhist beliefs

Post by Schrödinger’s Yidam »

But how does one go about verifying karma (again, the nonlinear kind that takes years/lifetimes to play out) and rebirth?
When Columbus came back, he said, "Hey, there's land if you sail far enough west!" How did others verify that? They had to do the journey to completion themselves.
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Re: Buddhist beliefs

Post by Johnny Dangerous »

rachmiel wrote:
Kunzang wrote:
rachmiel wrote:
Do you think this is a valid distinction to make, between Buddhist teachings that are verifiable and that are non-verifiable? (= Buddhist dogma) ?
No, because it is my understanding that according to the teachings they're all equally verifiable.
I guess you could say that when you "become" enlightened, enlightenment and nirvana are both verifiable in subjective experience.

But how does one go about verifying karma (again, the nonlinear kind that takes years/lifetimes to play out) and rebirth?

You can start with some very simple experiments to see it's effects in this life.

First, find someone who is perpetually angry at life, generally unhappy, and commits bad actions, and see (as much as is possible) how the world is for them. Then find someone who is a little better off, does a few good actions, and see if you can suss out how the world is for them. Then take a habit..let's say moderate to heavy drinking, and think about all the possibilities that go along with a habit like drinking, or choosing not to, to limit it etc.

Sounds trivial but deeply examining stuff like this can easily show you the karmic concatenation in this life, from there it's just a question of inference), i.e. is there any compelling reason to think that things "stop" within the narrow bandwidth that you can see. Until you have direct experience, inference based on your own limited experiences is the only "proof" for those things that I know.
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Re: Buddhist beliefs

Post by daverupa »

smcj wrote:
But how does one go about verifying karma (again, the nonlinear kind that takes years/lifetimes to play out) and rebirth?
When Columbus came back, he said, "Hey, there's land if you sail far enough west!" How did others verify that? They had to do the journey to completion themselves.
...and, at first, they thought they were in a completely different place because Columbus had miscalculated the Earth's circumference. West 'Indies', indeed.

So even going on such journeys oneself, it's possible to have too limited of vision to properly understand what's going on, which is a problem discussed in DN 1 with respect to the incomplete & wrong views of other virtuoso meditators with access to aspects of such realms & such data.
rachmiel wrote:Many Buddhist teachings are verifiable in one's laboratory of subjective experience:

How craving/ignorance causes suffering
How the skandhas give rise to a sense of illusory self
Dependent origination
Emptiness
So, in terms of DN 1, the rest also fall under similar cases of evidence via personal exposure:
Karma (of the subtle, nonlinear variety)
Rebirth
Nirvana
Enlightenment
Now, Enlightenment and Awakening and Nirvana are basically the same, just different conjugations of the idea, and this in fact is to be seen for oneself here and now; it's the goal of the practice, ultimately.

Seeing kamma is basically either seeing dependent origination (= idapaccayata) or else seeing rebirth, but since seeing rebirth isn't even a necessary aspect of the Path I wouldn't worry about that angle at all.

In that sense, I would suggest that the bifurcation is most useful when it's framed in terms of "necessary on the Path" and "tangential to the Path". Psychic powers, seeing rebirth, these are tangential. Knowing the aggregates, seeing clinging, nibbana - these things are necessary.
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Re: Buddhist beliefs

Post by Mkoll »

daverupa wrote:In that sense, I would suggest that the bifurcation is most useful when it's framed in terms of "necessary on the Path" and "tangential to the Path". Psychic powers, seeing rebirth, these are tangential. Knowing the aggregates, seeing clinging, nibbana - these things are necessary.
:twothumbsup:

One of those necessities is development of the five spiritual faculties/powers, the first of which is faith.
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Re: Buddhist beliefs

Post by Rick »

Thanks for the responses. :-)

It makes sense that subtleties like nirvana and the full extent of karma would be available only to those who have done the work, whose minds have been opened.

But as a dyed-in-the-wool skeptic, I have little to none of that faith other posters mentioned. What I do have, through experience and observation, is great confidence in the capacity of the mind to fool itself, mistake metaphor for actuality, adopt the conclusions of authority figures and group mind and then mold personal experience to validate these conclusions. It's the story of all major religions, without exception, isn't it?

I'm not claiming Buddhism/Buddhists do this. I'm not claiming they don't. I'm mainly exploring, via negativa, the extent of what can be negated as: not ultimately true.
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Re: Buddhist beliefs

Post by LastLegend »

I think it does not require verification. It requires understanding.

Regarding your signature, if we don't know anything, then why cherish or hold on to any concept at all?
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Re: Buddhist beliefs

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rachmiel wrote:Thanks for the responses. :-)

It makes sense that subtleties like nirvana and the full extent of karma would be available only to those who have done the work, whose minds have been opened.

But as a dyed-in-the-wool skeptic, I have little to none of that faith other posters mentioned. What I do have, through experience and observation, is great confidence in the capacity of the mind to fool itself, mistake metaphor for actuality,
adopt the conclusions of authority figures and group mind and then mold personal experience to validate these conclusions. It's the story of all major religions, without exception, isn't it?
This is a fashionable viewpoint nowadays, but I am really starting to think it's pretty provincial, even sophomoric, it can also be a kind of security blanket, in the same way religious dogmatism can be.
I'm not claiming Buddhism/Buddhists do this. I'm not claiming they don't. I'm mainly exploring, via negativa, the extent of what can be negated as: not ultimately true.
Oh some undoubtedly do, but what Buddhists do or not do really doesn't do much to answer your skepticism, just dwelling on someone else's dirt can't help that.

In a Buddhist context, what do you think "actuality" is? If you accept any of the basic framework, then virtually no one, not you, not me, not anyone but Buddha and those with some realization are seeing anything like "actuality", and the rationalists who claim that their "actual" is beyond the actual painted by the eternalists, from a Buddhist perspective are just as mistaken.

Again most of the less empirical stuff seems to be dealt with by a combination of direct experience, and prior to that, inference.
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Re: Buddhist beliefs

Post by Mkoll »

rachmiel wrote:But as a dyed-in-the-wool skeptic, I have little to none of that faith other posters mentioned.
Faith can be cultivated. I had very little faith in the beginning but I have increased it through practice. It was very awkward to begin with but now it's completely natural.

However, this took putting myself in the place of a disciple of the Buddha, accepting him as my highest teacher. If one is unwilling to take this step, then I don't see how Buddhist faith can be developed. It's an act of humility and requires letting go of some of this "self" we imagine ourselves to be.
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Re: Buddhist beliefs

Post by Rick »

Johnny Dangerous wrote:
rachMiel wrote:What I do have, through experience and observation, is great confidence in the capacity of the mind to fool itself, mistake metaphor for actuality, adopt the conclusions of authority figures and group mind and then mold personal experience to validate these conclusions. It's the story of all major religions, without exception, isn't it?
This is a fashionable viewpoint nowadays, but I am really starting to think it's pretty provincial, even sophomoric, it can also be a kind of security blanket, in the same way religious dogmatism can be.
Yes. But can is the pivotal term, right? Both healthy "confidence" (as you wrote earlier) and healthy skepticism *can* give way to fundamentalism. Proper discernment/intelligence prevent this from happening imo.
In a Buddhist context, what do you think "actuality" is? If you accept any of the basic framework, then virtually no one, not you, not me, not anyone but Buddha and those with some realization are seeing anything like "actuality", and the rationalists who claim that their "actual" is beyond the actual painted by the eternalists, from a Buddhist perspective are just as mistaken.
I think actuality is that which remains when all metaphors/stories/concepts are seen for what they are: compelling fiction. Do I experience actuality? Yes, every day. Pretty much everyone does. Fleetingly. A "realized" person experiences it more purely and more abidingly imo. But that's conjecture.
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Re: Buddhist beliefs

Post by Rick »

LastLegend wrote:I think it does not require verification. It requires understanding.
I have come to feel that understanding without experience is like theory without practice: hollow.
Regarding your signature, if we don't know anything, then why cherish or hold on to any concept at all?
Yes! It's a great question. One of the essentials imo. If you know with certainty that the stories your mind conjures up are not real, why continue (make-)believing in them?

Habit, conditioning, fear, dullness, ignorance, misunderstanding. On the "positive" side: Stories are wondrous things, joyous, cathartic, expressive, emotionally powerful, arguably necessary for human psychological survival.

For me the journey towards awakening is largely a journey of becoming free of, no longer held hostage by ... my personal stories, all of them.
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Re: Buddhist beliefs

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I think they are all verifiable depending on an individuals attainment of wisdom. The Buddha said he verified all these things personally. I find it impossible to believe he would just lie about such things.
I'm mainly exploring, via negativa, the extent of what can be negated as: not ultimately true.
None of it can be negated really. The Buddha's claims of rebirth, enlightenment and karma, etc. are all "non-falsifiable" claims. The Buddha claimed that he saw for himself his past lives with supra-normal psychic powers. There is really no way to prove all that is not ultimately true. Although, there is no way to prove it is true either, unless you attain the wisdom and power necessary to see it for yourself. Then you can prove it to yourself to be true, but not to anyone else really. But given even that, there is still no way to prove it false.

For me personally, what it comes down to is this: The Buddha was a fully and completely enlightened being and he wasn't a liar. All the rest of my beliefs about the Buddha's claims follows from that. It's definitely a matter of faith. Faith that The Buddha was a fully and completely enlightened being and faith that he wasn't a liar. That's for me personally. :)

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Re: Buddhist beliefs

Post by Mkoll »

rachmiel wrote:Yes! It's a great question. One of the essentials imo. If you know with certainty that the stories your mind conjures up are not real, why continue (make-)believing in them?

Habit, conditioning, fear, dullness, ignorance, misunderstanding. On the "positive" side: Stories are wondrous things, joyous, cathartic, expressive, emotionally powerful, arguably necessary for human psychological survival.

For me the journey towards awakening is largely a journey of becoming free of, no longer held hostage by ... my personal stories, all of them.
I don't understand. You have faith in "a journey towards awakening" but at the same time you think that the "stories your mind conjures up are not real". Isn't your "journey towards awakening" just another one of your "stories your mind conjures up are not real"? One can continue that train of thought ad infinitum.

It seems clear to me that you have more than just a "little to none of that faith other posters mentioned". Which is a good thing. :thumbsup:
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Re: Buddhist beliefs

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rachmiel wrote:Many Buddhist teachings are verifiable in one's laboratory of subjective experience:

How craving/ignorance causes suffering
How the skandhas give rise to a sense of illusory self
Dependent origination
Emptiness
Etc.

Some are not:

Karma (of the subtle, nonlinear variety)
Rebirth
Nirvana
Enlightenment
Etc.

Being untestable seems to place these in a different category, one of belief in the assertions of "experts."

Do you think this is a valid distinction to make, between Buddhist teachings that are verifiable and that are non-verifiable? If so, do the non-verifiables = Buddhist beliefs (= Buddhist dogma) ?
How do you differentiate those two categories? The first term in the chain of Dependent Origination is avidya, meaning 'ignorance'. It can't mean 'ignorance of the periodic table' or 'world history' or anything like that, because everyone was ignorant of such things at the time 'dependent origination' was articulated. I think of avidya as being like a condition or a state but I don't think it is at all easy to define or that the meaning of the term is obvious or even empirical, in the modern sense. Same with 'emptiness' - it's a very elusive idea. So why are these singled out as 'verifiable' whilst the other principles are not?

As for dogma, many of the codified truths of Buddhism are indeed dogmas. What 'dogma' means is simply a 'formularized expression of a religious or political truth'. So that does exist in Buddhism. There are also very able Buddhist dogmatists such as the Buddhist scholastics (and more than one of our able contributors!). Of course 'dogma' is one of those things that's universally hated in the modern world (dogmatically hated, one might say.) But what's different about Buddhism and Christian dogma, is that Christians will try and save you in spite of yourself, out of a sense that they know what is good for you and they have an obligation to do so. Whereas Buddhists generally wait for you to approach them and ask them (three times, according to tradition.) So the attitude is very different.

Furthermore, in Christian circles 'believing' is practically an end in itself ('believe and be saved'). That leads to the attitude of not really understanding the doctrine but clinging to it regardless. That is what is generally disparaged when people criticize 'dogmatism'. I think that kind of 'dogmatic belief' is less prevalent in Buddhism, although it does exist. But if you read the actual dialogues of the Buddha, you can see that throughout it, there is an awareness of different perspectives on questions, different kinds of questioner, and different levels of understanding. That is something that is not so characteristic of Christianity (although it is there if you know how to look).

But you will find passages like this:
Those who have not known, seen, penetrated, realized, or attained it by means of discernment would have to take it on conviction in others that the faculty of conviction... persistence... mindfulness... concentration... discernment, when developed & pursued, gains a footing in the Deathless... 1
(Emphasis added.)

Here a distinction is made between one who has actually 'seen and discerned' and those who have to 'take it on conviction'. So here a distinction is being made between 'conviction' (or belief) and 'discernment', or actually seeing for yourself. (This resembles the distinction between 'belief' (doxa) and 'knowledge' (episteme) in Plato.)

Furthermore from the beginning of Buddhism, it was understood that the Buddha knows and sees things that others don't. It is said in many places in the early texts that 'the dharma which I see is profound, subtle, difficult to discern, perceivable only by the wise'. So 'being able to discern truth' is the meaning of jñāna (and in later Buddhism also prajñā). But up until you actually discern and see those things for yourself, you simply have to take it on trust, because you're not a jñāni (much less a Buddha).

So there is your 'belief in the assertion of experts'. But is there anything the matter with that? If you developed a growth on your body, you would hasten to an expert to tell you whether it was cancerous or not. You yourself wouldn't necessarily know that, unless you were also a doctor. But I think the idea that there is an hierarchy of understanding, or types of understanding which are not available without a particular kind of insight, doesn't sit well with liberal individualism.
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Re: Buddhist beliefs

Post by Rick »

Mkoll wrote:It seems clear to me that you have more than just a "little to none of that faith other posters mentioned". Which is a good thing. :thumbsup:
;-)
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