Category: Buddhism
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Divine Light, Sex, Alcohol, and Kerouac
If there is divine light, sexual indulgence prevents it from streaming in. Herein lies the best argument for continence. The sex monkey may not be as destructive of the body as the booze monkey, but he may be even more destructive of the spirit. You may dismiss what I am saying here either by denying…
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Kerouac October Quotation #17: Kerouac on Buber
Some of the Dharma (Viking 1997), p. 382: Martin Boober — with all his fancy veins sticking out of his forehead he still wont face the final truth — of Nil Substantum — the Jews are proud of being a "person" — as tho it was some great achievement — The old Hasidic saying "For…
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Buber on Buddhism and Other Forms of Mysticism
Robert Gray e-mails: Dear Bill, I am appreciating Kerouac month. Here is something on Buddhism in Buber's I and Thou that may be of use. Nor does he [Buddha] lead the unified being further to that supreme You-saying that is open to it. His inmost decision seems to aim at the annulment of the ability…
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Nirvana as Asphyxiation
E. M. Cioran, Drawn and Quartered, tr. R. Howard (New York: Seaver Books, 1983), p. 118: In the Benares sermon, Buddha cites, among the causes of pain, the thirst to become and the thirst not to become. The first thirst we understand, but why the second? To long for nonbecoming — is that not to…
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Kerouac October Quotation #13: Buddhist Life Denial
From Some of the Dharma, Viking 1997, p. 175, emphasis added: No hangup on nature is going to solve anything — nature is bestial — desire for Eternal Life of the individual is bestial, is the final creature-longing — I say, Let us cease bestiality & go into the bright room of the mind realizing…
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Kerouac October Quotation #12: Our Boy Gives the Hinayana the Nod
From Some of the Dharma, pp. 174-175: Hit the makeless null. Whether or not individuality is destroyed now, it will be complelely destroyed in death. For all things that are made fade back to the unmade. What's all the return-vow hassle, but a final metaphysical clinging to eternal ego-life by Mahayana Thinkers. An intellectualized ego-attachment…
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Literary Kicks
Levi Asher of Literary Kicks e-mailed me to say that he has a response to a recent Buddhism post of mine. Please do check it out, and if you are a Beat Generation aficionado, you will find plenty of material on the Beats at Asher's place. In his response to me, Asher points out something…
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Kerouac to Whalen on Buddhism
It's October again, Kerouac month at MavPhil. Perhaps I will post a quotation a day throughout this wonderful month that always passes too quickly — as if bent on proving the vain and visionary nature of phenomenal existence. Jack Kerouac finished Some of the Dharma on 15 March 1956. The Dharma Bums was published in 1958. …
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Buddhism on Suffering and One Reason I am Not a Buddhist
(This entry touches upon some themes discussed with greater rigor, thoroughness, and scholarliness in my "No Self? A Look at a Buddhist Argument," International Philosophical Quarterly, vol. 42, no. 4 (December 2002), pp. 453-466.) For Buddhism, all is dukkha, suffering. All is unsatisfactory. This, the First Noble Truth, runs contrary to ordinary modes of thinking: doesn't life…
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Is Everything Always Continuously Changing in Every Respect?
Over lunch today the Buddhist claim that all is impermanent came up for discussion. Let’s see how plausible this claim of impermanence is when interpreted to mean that everything is always continuously changing in every respect. We need to ask four questions. Does everything change? Do the things that change always change? Do the things…
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Idolatry, Desire, Buddha, Causation, and Malebranche
What is idolatry? I suggest that the essence of idolatry lies in the illicit absolutizing of the relative. A finite good becomes an idol when it is treated as if it were an infinite good, i.e., one capable of satisfying our infinite desire. But is our desire infinite? That our desire is infinite is shown…
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Master Desire and Aversion
It is a curious fact that a man who has no time for his own wife easily finds time for the wife of another. Not valuing what he has, he desires what he does not have, even though at some level he understands that, were he to take possession of what he now merely desires,…
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Retortion Applied to the Anatta Doctrine
This post is a continuation of the line of thought in Emptiness, Self-Reference, and Assertibility, a post from the old blog which in due course will be revised and deposited here. There you will find a brief explanation of anatta. Retortion was explained in recent posts. See the contents of the Retortion category. What happens when we…
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The Anatta Doctrine and its Soteriological Relevance
The anatta (Sanskrit: anatman) doctrine lies at the center of Buddhist thought and practice. The Pali and Sanskrit words translate literally as 'no self'; but the doctrine applies not only to persons but to non-persons as well. On the 'no self' theory, nothing possesses selfhood or self-nature or 'own-being,' perhaps not even nibbana 'itself.' If…
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Marx and Kierkegaard and Buddha: Comparative Notes
Karl Marx in his Theses on Feuerbach protested that the philosophers have merely interpreted the world in various ways, when the point is to change it. (Die Philosophen haben die Welt verschieden interpretiert; aber es kommt darauf an, sie zu veraendern.) His century-mate, Soren Kierkegaard, at the opposite end of the political spectrum, but sharing…