Aryan Buddhism - webmaster KATHODOS.COM, the largest metaphysics site on earth

Your dream, my dream, THE dream of Wisdom-Seekers, All Free

2012-01-26T15:36:00.000-08:00

Formerly found on attan.com, NOW at www.kathodos.com, the worlds largest website for ALL FREE books, the best books, the most rare, the most important, are just a click away.

The entire website of KATHODOS.COM is available for download now as of Jan 25 2012

Whats better, within a months time, this titanic website will be ten times its current size of 6 Gigabytes of free books, and will be approximately 110 Gigabytes, of audio, but mostly (99%) texts and giant rare books in PDF Abobe format that cannot obtained ANYWHERE ELSE on the web, and cant be bought without spending a fortune for these important books on metaphysics/Monism/Platonism; most of which have been out of print 100+ years, if not much more...

Enjoy www.kathodos.com, nothing there is for sale, all is free, and only the best that exists.

Lux et Veritas

And the Ignorant Asshole Said What?

2012-01-23T22:58:00.000-08:00

Keven T. Briggs commenting upon this blog said... Coomaraswamy didn't understand that the question of self or atman doesn't need to be answered. It's the ethical, not the metaphysical, system that matters. Buddhism teaches ethics that lead to a person's happiness.

Webmaster of Aryan Buddhism replies: Folks, Ignorant dumbasses like this (Keven Briggs) completely rule “Buddhism” today, an aspiritual ethical system of soulless Humanism. It is due to people like this that one must and should run away from anything proclaiming itself as “Buddhism”.

The entire basis of Buddhism is utterly and only metaphysical in nature. Buddhism is a liberation ontology based completely around the Atman, the citta (nous);....[eg. Attasarana annasarana....cittavimutta = Sammasambuddha, citta is non-khandhic, ipso facto metaphysics]. As such, the premise and personal asinine conjecture that Buddhism isn't “about metaphysics” is as absurd as a Christian yelling out in Sunday school sermon “Whats with the Jesus shit? Christianity aint got nothin' to do about him!”.

Personal happiness, in NO Pali translation, is not a goal, an ends, or pinnacle or is taught in any of the five nikayas. Repeat, in NO translation does such a commandment exist. For the “forest dwelling recluse”, the mere notion of ethics is as absurd as it is completely laughable. Ethics for what and towards what? The rocks, the trees, the insects?

Happiness and its antimony sadness (remember adukkham asukkham as per suttana) are part and parcel to samsara,...Buddhism does not teach happiness rather liberation of the citta/soul/nous (cittavimutta!) from false identification (eso kaya na me so atta) with the temporal and psycho-physical self (as meant anatman/anatta). Buddhism was originally an amoral Monism, a methodology of making synthesis/union with the Absolute thru wisdom, objective negation (empirical and otherwise) and via negativa exercises which dirrect the nous/citta/spirit ultimately and permanently back upon itself.

There is no “discussing” Buddhism with ignorant assholes such as this; and why? Because they have not studied Buddhism's teachings.

They have no interest in researching what Buddhism's doctrine says.

They have heard, have conjectured about Buddhism as per their “guru/teachers” pontifications.

They speak much “about Buddhism” but they utterly have no interest in the genuine teachings of same, nor do they care to know.
These people make up what we call “Buddhism” today. This is why “Buddhism is not Buddhism”.

“These miserable little assholes.....” - C.A.F. Rhys Davids (founder of the Pali text Society)....regarding people like the above

“Buddhism is MOST famous today for everything is originally never taught” - Dr. A.K. Coomaraswamy,....regarding people like the above.

"If you study 'buddhism', you're not studying Buddhism, as such, you're not only wasting your time, but you're fucked" - Webmaster www.kathodos.com , webmaster aryan-buddhism.blogspot.com

This is the arena of metaphysics, of ontology, not the whoredom of ethics, morality, agnostic Humanism, and spiritual euthanasia.

Let the Ground Shake, or KATHODOS.COM

2012-01-06T16:14:00.000-08:00

Within a month I will have the very best books ever written on earth, most impossible to find anywhere at any price, available all FREE for download on KATHODOS.COM

The entire contents of formerly ATTAN.COM will be present on KATHODOS.COM

Some contents will be private and for invitation only, however all will be free and the very books you've been looking for or want but did'nt know existed.

Wait less than a month and the worlds LARGEST site for free books/texts on Metaphysics & Monism will be present on KATHODOS.COM

Kathodos is an extremely ancient Pythagorean term which loosely translates as 'descent' (of the soul), ...is a deeply steeped and 'mysterious' term for the embodiment of Being.

Interestingly enough, the term CATHODE was taken from this term, to refer to the (presumed) bipolarity of batteries (i.e. cathode) and that of electromagnetic phenomena.

However the term originally was meant to refer to the (pseudo) polarity of the Absolute, but is translated as "descent/embodiment".

Wait for KATHODOS.COM, it will be the best of the best, and largest on earth as a resource for its kind.

First Cause, or ‘Original Sin’. Seeking First Fault of/in the Absolute

2011-12-31T01:15:00.000-08:00

Monism (Platonism, Pythagoras, Neoplatonism, Advaita, original Buddhism) by definition, has irreducibly as truth NOTHING but the Absolute and its attribute, both of which are 1 (1 is to Phi as Phi is to 1, or that Phi and 1 are the same definition/number).

Those (fools, profane commonfolk) who seek out either in this world, or the other (real), or in/of the Absolute for a “first cause”, or “original sin” will come up empty, save for their fantasies, speculations, and ignorance-begotten lies.

Monism by definition DENIES aught but the One, simplex as it is divine. Causation requires, or necessitates X as locus outside or as other to the Absolute, i.e. an impossibility against the truth, against Monism. If one seeks cause within, or locus, of the One by the One upon itself, then the metaphysical fallacy of compounding THAT (the One) which is most simplex is incurred. In the ignorance of Creationism, the One is a Being (compounded by nature and definition, both metaphysical and symbolically concrete); is compounded and therefore cause is attributed (sic) to the One. This is both logically untenable and absurd in abductive examination.

The One, in attribute (also the One) is the aoristos dyas (indefinite dyad) as coined by the Pythagoreans/Platonists, however this is a linguistic convention for inferring to the extrinsic principle of the One as both itself (as One) and what It is (as One) extrapolated in necessity (ananke) to extension (proodos).

The abstruse metaphysical dialectic of the One is incomprehensible to most (as seen in Plato’s Parmenides, an impenetrable text to almost all), but with sufficient wisdom (which is of course the Self, the soul, the atman) all becomes increasingly clear, there is no first cause, no locus of X to point to as the reason/cause/impetus for the embodiment /ensoul(-ing) of the Self/soul as coordinate to this temporal mirage/memetic-puppet composed of corporeal humors.

Avijja/avidya is not literally ‘ignorance’, nor is there a metaphysical locus IN or OF the One, or the Soul for same, there is no ‘first cause’ for the descent of Being, those looking for same will come up empty; we few (who know) leave such fairytales to the Creationists who have sufficient fingers to point out sin or original sin to he/she or other.

There are four Greek terms, and four Pali/Sanskrit terms that have between them, nearly 100+ books in explaination and speculation, and why? Because it takes wisdom to grasp what they differ to. These terms being tolma, ananke, logos, aoristos dyas, avijja, maya, etc.

There is a level of abductive insight required thru a lens of wisdom to which no amount of reading the very best books ever written on earth (and I have them all, both best, great, good and bad) will give one insight into the nature of totality, of the One…, this is the closed loop of existential investigation, episteme, the temporal conscious hamster-wheel of circular (=corporeal) investigation to which metaphysics by definition is transcendent thereto and inviting thereof.

There is only one wholesome desire to have, that of wisdom, for it is the only one which can be “fulfilled”, that desire must be both enjoined, expanded, and made proximal. In the metaphysics of Monism, it is irreducible that wisdom and the soul/atman are ONE and the same thing, Self-proximity requires wisdom, wisdom IS by definition both Self-proximity AND the very Self one seeks, but not hither or thither but recollectively (anamnesis/ sati/ via negativa methodologies) by gnosis, which is inparticipate to human consciousness and its machinations…the wise have wisdom sufficient to know that conscious investigation in its fullest cannot ever lead to the vault of wisdom/soul/self, much less enter thereto.

Do NOT seek for a first cause, there is none, nor original sin, nor X outside of, or ‘other than’ the One, the Absolute, the Divine Principle the genuine philosophers seeks to make synthesis (epistrophe/samadhi) to.

There is No 'Ancient Wisdom', Nor 'Great Secret'

2011-12-24T00:50:00.000-08:00

For those who have proclaimed to you, or myself as has been said many a thousand times or more, to wit that “that is old (truth)”, or that “we/our science has surpassed that ('ancient wisdom'), that is outdated, back then, ignorant ancestors”, this position as heard by the very few wise must be ignored and refuted. In most honest and dear sincerity, those who state such rubbish must be smacked within an inch of their corporeal lives or at the very least until blood runs from an orifice.

There is no ancient wisdom, nor old wisdom, nor Platonic wisdom, nor Buddhist wisdom, nor ancient Vedic/Vedantic wisdom, there is but only wisdom in true and timeless. The metaphysical mechanics that rule the cosmos 'today' (as linear beings IN time so we say as mere conventional reference) are logically and unquestionably without distinction, without differentiation from that of 10,000 years ago, or a billion, or elsewise. The 'ancient' (translation: genuine) wisemen who unraveled in whole or in part the blueprints of nature of Being, the substrate to the Self/soul/nous etc. are not those who have 'followed tradition' but have spoke only in kind to the lingua franca of their birthright and the metaphysical literature of their epoch. As pithiness is next to great wisdom and divinity in mirage, so I tell you what is most true, that wisdom, genuine and real, has no “made on” date or expiration date like a jug of milk which has/may 'go bad' by such and such a time. Anything to which can be genuinely have said to “be expired/untrue/refuted” has NO part of wisdom, and could only have been labeled as such by fools and the 'wisemen (=fools) of X time'.

The genuine truth seeker has no convention within himself to refer or to seek after popular (=profane) positions, to fads (such as relativity, or string theory,...both of which are well refuted); but is a seeker of the timeless (akilito) eternal truths which rationally unravel the mechanics of cosmic metaphysical proodos (emanation/logos[~logistics]), to the werks of Being, which “have no place in time, but rather is measured not by stick or string or comparison, or movement of stars, but by the truth of its nature or lack thereto”.

In closing, I lastly state to you that the “great secret” behind existence, the substrate of genuine Being, as meant the soul, the Absolute, its mechanics, is no secret in true, but rather ignorance as foundation to the nature or empirical existence is the most quintessential attribute of humanity and a (necessitated) birthright, by which the typical ignorant seeker has proclaimed a million times and in a million ways the “great secret” which confounds, befuddles, eludes him. The (ancient) masters withheld nothing, and the truth (='secrets') of these masters of wisdom is as apparent as sunrise on a cloudless morn, but only to those with ample wisdom to comprehend same.

The common jackass, dolt, or moron has bitched and moaned at the labyrinthine symbolism used by these masters, all the while ignorant to the fact that dialectic explanations of metaphysical principles and mechanics has as its dire expediency for explanation, the usage of symbolism for metaphysical explanation/illumination. There are no secrets, but the secret of ignorance as shield and dear attribute to the common fool and his incapacity to decipher the linguistic explanations and metaphysical symbolisms as said and employed by the master wisemen to illustrate ontological mechanics.

The Monad, the One, the Absolute, of which the very soul is indifferentiate, is such a divine (sic) simplicity to Know and behold it makes the arithmetic of 1+1 seem like a quantum algorithm by comparison. That human ignorance is so fundamental and pervasive at every level, the “great secret” is only said to be so by equal measure to the bountiful and intrinsic ignorance of humankind.

It cannot be stated too much or too vociferously that there is utterly NO “ancient/old wisdom/truth”, nor is there a “great secret/truth” behind Monistic mechanics. Truth and wisdom cannot by definition have a date or popularity as could be pinpointed IN place or time, for it such were true, it would be outside the sphere of its very definition AS wisdom, AS truth.

Metaphysicians of the variety Plato and Pythagoras deemed (real) philosophers do not dabble in what is conventional, or cultural, popular,... such trash as that, which passes as 'philosophy' today (sic), but is not philosophy (phila sophia = love of wisdom/truth), but rather is merely the whore we know as Western existentialism/sophistry (translate: materialism, morality, politics, socialistic studies).

The "quack" Genius Who Genuinely Has the Answers to Cosmic Mechanics

2011-12-12T17:05:00.000-08:00

Bill Gaede, while personally reprehensible, and a traitor the the U.S.A., has the answers to gravity, spacetime, magnetism, and utterly debunks General Relativity, Quantum Mechanics, and the “cult of religious scientism”, i.e. the new religion of atheism, with mathematicians and scientists as its self-appointed priests.

I invite anyone who can see past the fact that he betrayed the U.S.A., and stole the top secrets of Intel, and AMD and sold those secrets to the Commie Chinese and Iranians, for which he should rightly have received a death sentence, rather than 33 months in jail, to examine his genius works which logically and rationally explain the mechanics of the cosmos. Which, while himself not a philosopher and unknowing to this fact, supports fully the genuine model of totality, that of Emanationism .

Here is a link to his youtube videos on magnetism, gravity, and the 'cult of atheism/scientism'.

http://www.youtube.com/user/bgaede

The FACT that he personally outwitted AMD, the FBI and CIA, and used low-tech means to get around the top security at INTEL, and receive the topmost jobs at said companies, is ample proof of his intellect, regardless of how reprehensible said actions are/were. In summation, here before you is no idiot that I present as having the answers to cosmic mechanics. CBS was so fascinated by him after the fact, that it did a half hour piece about him on primetime news,... oddly completely ignoring or mentioning the fact of his personal genius in the arena of astrophysics and electromagnetism/gravity (lets face it, the common dumbass watching the idiot-box [TV] has no interest in such 'complex stuff')

I find him, as any sane person should, a demonically reprehensible person for what he has done in selling top microprocessor secrets to the enemy, but as a truth seeking Philosopher, his works in modeling out the CORRECT mechanics of the cosmos, is of utmost praise.

Ghost Metaphysics, Logic, and the Genuine Scientist

2011-10-29T00:07:00.000-07:00

The article on this blog “the metaphysics and logic of ghosts” has received endless thousands of requests/reads and reader email responses. As an article written off the cuff yet long researched, it came as no surprise that said web blog posting received so much review.

Without question, the proliferation of high tech broad-spectrum recording equipment at a very low cost revealed the resulting and inevitable forthcoming of an explosion in ‘paranormal’ (ontological, or ‘real’ as any metaphysician would proclaim) revelation; I had predicted same nearly fifteen years ago as “right around the corner”. Of the limited visible light spectrum and abnormal temperature fluctuations as the feeble toolkit of the human persona, the ‘age of science’ (i.e. modern Atheism/nihilism and its bride Materialism) was soon and is yet still to be rocked back upon its heels as countless thousands of average individuals with mere pocket change expendable incomes have at their possession an arsenal of multi-spectra high resolution CCD and audio equipment, that a university with millions a mere twenty years ago, would just short of murder to have at their disposal.

These novice bumbling dolts (‘amateur paranormal investigators’) in their masses and equal enthusiasms are investigating the physical ‘impossibilities’ which are being conducted around them; a new world (the real world as matter in fact) is ripe for exploring, a metaphysical carnival or substrate everpresent around and with us existential beings is being explored more and more on mass, with greater vigor and rabid veracity than even I had predicted long ago. What is not known much less acknowledged by these many fools, is that ancient philosophers in the ilk of Plato, Pythagoras, etc. had given detailed logical breakdowns of the nature of the disembodied Persons who ‘walk amongst the living, sensed but unseen’.

To the casual atheist moron, our ancestral heritage and archeological discoveries of either “dead worship”, or “departed shrines” or any one of a countless thousand kind of ancient homage’s to the departed has long since and is currently being dismissed as the uneducated poppycock of our ancestors, rather than their acknowledgement of the unseen Persons, disembodied who dwelled amongst them, and among us presently. Metaphysics has no kin to religion, in its true it is utterly consistent to a fault, logical, traceable, abductively infallible; religion is in fact the profane secularization of higher metaphysics in which case ghosts are anything but hokum or ‘superstitious nonsense/rubbish’. If the avenue to inquest and curiosity is resurrected into the metaphysical universe is by impetus and means of ghost investigation, so be it, we must widen that avenue to its fullest extent.

The penultimate ends of genuine scientific investigation must and is necessitated to culminate in metaphysics, the forerunner to all existential, to all temporal phenomena. Science to the Pythagoreans and Platonists was merely meant and employed as not an end, but a means to abductively discern the ‘direction’ and nature of the Absolute and its metaphysical tendrils which extend thru every corner of the cosmos; this is the genuine science of the metaphysician.

This prequel entry is meant as a further primer on the nature of ghosts and the logic/metaphysics of same is forthcoming as has been much requested.

"Where is my soul" Or, disecting the BS often pondered by common fools

2011-09-22T19:22:00.000-07:00

“Where is my soul” is the most common question in reply by the ignorant and profane when discussing metaphysics, Buddhism, or other forms of Monism; being the abbreviated version of “I don’t know where my soul is”. Within this simple sentence can be found four grand errors of egregious presumption and one axis of truth upon which these four satellites of error go round.

Taking the first error “I”, or the empirical person so-and-so (Bob, Sue etc.) this compounded and material self of which there are “two selves” within us, the Person (spirit, Purishha) and persona (psychophysical, temporal); “two within us” (Plato Republic 604b, Phaedo 79, Timaeus 89d), or Philo’s “Soul of the soul”, or the Buddha’s “atta hi attano nathi” (Self is Lord of the self [persona]). This “I” of which cannot be, in metaphysics, the Knower of knowing, but rather the conscious (vinnana) living being whose conceptions and ideations are “dead when he dies”, that “I” is not the Person but the “self of which the Self is Lord”. This “I”, the objective and compounded self cannot ever come to know the Knower, which is the posterior and uncompounded Subject. The objective and temporal “I” cannot know the Subject which precedes it any moreso than a puppet can know That which pulls its strings. This “I” has ‘within’ (superficially so) it no means possible by which to have Knowledge (gnosis) of the soul, since its very principle, this compounded “I” lacks the Witness and Knower by which it can or could be known. There is no “I” whereby which it could be said of anyone that it, “I”, could Know (gnosis as opposed to the empirical knowledge of the mere material “I”, which is persona) the soul.

Taking now the second error “where”, or asking of how the soul is IN TIME, the magnitude and measure of which ‘where’ is but a delineation of things compounded and ‘taking up space’ (where is this soul? It is no-where). The quest for the uncompounded in spacio-temporal existence, and the objective cosmos of becoming, flux and reflux, could not be more illogical. Anything (quite literally ‘thing’ in the true sense of objectivity) which partakes of a topos (place), a locus in space and time which is syn. with magnitude and materiality cannot be the point of any metaphysical search, in this case the soul. Would we go hunting for fish in the desert? “Where” is syn. with space-time materiality of which something might be said to have “its place”, or a “where”, whereby which it (objectivity) might be found. The soul cannot have any such correlation whereby we might ask or inquire how it is “where”; for the soul is no-where, not in space, nor in time either.

Further along this line we come to “my soul”, of stated implication this uncompounded principle of ones noetic being as illogically meant a possession or slave (“my”) to either another subject, or worse still implication an objective possession. This inverse and topsy-turvy statement is the upside-down illogical attempt to gather insight pertaining the soul thru conception that same is property and possession by something else, of which the common fool implies himself, or as meant the existential and bodily self. This cryptic materialistic line of reasoning is indicative of the perversity of understanding relevant to the fool in his “fools quest”- Plato.

Lastly stands as final error “is”, to wit the fool in his questioning seeks knowledge of the Subject as an object of anatomies to which the Greeks, Buddhists, and Vedantists declared to be a quest among compounded and conceptive antinomies “is it, is it not, is it both, it is neither”, to which the Buddha was apposite to answer such fallacious lines of questioning which involved the “pairs” of dualities, the antinomies of existential reasoning as employed by materialists in linear and objective thought on or about the soul. The Soul is tat tvam asi, as = Brahman, the Absolute, is not “is, is not..etc.”, but That, the uncompounded Absolute as opposite to all antinomies. [SN 2.17] Gotama Buddha: “This world is carried on by a duality (dvayanissito). Etc.”

The tie which binds these four errors together, and which is true in the statement “I don’t know where my soul is”, is “don’t know”. [AN 5.113] “Followers, the beginning of ignorance can never be discerned (beginningless) such that it cannot be said “Here is the First where ignorance is not, here is the contingency which generated it. Such that it should be discerned, followers, ‘ignorance is a condition’. “This avijja (agnosis, avidya, nescience, ignorance) or ‘uncaused principle’ for the “descent of Being”, is the ‘black-hole’ (again: privation) around which these four satellites of errors spin round. Avijja being in Greek ‘tolma’; as meaning Emanationism, or the extrinsic side of the Absolute, or the attribute (avijja) to the Principle (atman/Brahman/Hen) between which no distinction can be drawn in that both attribute and Principle are one (point and line are in the mathematical theology of Platonism both together = 1) thing only (will-willing, light-illumination, between which what the Absolute ‘is’ [principle] and what it ‘does’ [attribute] can have no distinction lest the premise of Monism itself be obliterated). In the case of our ‘black-hole’ analogy this privation was the source and creator of these ‘satellites’ by which the fool objectively struggles with in objective conceptualization of the immaterial soul not only in space and time, but also as possession to another and as regards his (mere) self which the Upanishads are apposite in stating “for the mortal, there is no soul”.

I have finally discovered the G.U.T. (grand unified theory)

2011-06-26T09:43:00.000-07:00

I offer you a simplex (not simple) equation I have found after 17 years of intense research, the GUT unification of strong/weak nuclear forces, gravity, and electromagnetism.

All physicists are agreed the GUT would be "brilliantly and stunningly simplex" however I myself never would have imagined it as so until I discovered same.

The GUT is 1/Phi(-3). Or simply 1/.23606... (=Phi(negative cubed)

[ 1 being = nous/Absolute/"dark mater" (sic). ... Phi(-3), or ...(=Phi(negative cubed) = attribute/ananke/aoristos dyas/tolma]

The elaboration for this equation requires a book (to which I have nearly 500 pages towards refererence on same).

I would write more on same now but via an Iphone is difficult.

Lux et veritas

discovery copyright 3/2011

Destroying the Tired & Old “Eternalism (=Atman)” Fallacy as Falsely Projected into Buddhist Doctrine

2010-07-13T05:55:00.000-07:00

It has come to my attention via a message on this blog (as it has many thousands of times over the many years) the notion, as falsely projected by the Theravadin (and Mahayanists as well) demons, the notion of “Eternalism” (sasssatavada) which is unquestionably rejected in doctrine.

However there is no such entity as “eternalism” as pertains the term sassatavada in doctrine. The term sassatavada means literally (consubstantial) perpetualism (sassat +vada [doctrine of]), or literally Karmayana (merit making [good actions] as the highest obtainable). This position IS INDEED as a ‘heresy’ in doctrine, however it nowhere in sutta applies to the Atman specifically, rather to the antinomies of existence (bhava/ sassatavada and vibhava/uchedavada). Sassatavada as the genuine heresy it is in doctrine nowhere and in no passage refers to the atman, rather only, in doctrine, refers to one of two heresies. #1 “atta ca so loka ca” (that the atman and the world/cosmos/empirical realm are conjoined…..[and hence no escape ultimately from same]). This is of course the position of MOST Indians today who believe that good deeds (kamma/karma) is the highest good, which bears fruit in either better life in this life, or better next life; logically so this sassatavada position is indeed a heresy as per Buddhist Monism. Heresy #2 as pertains sassatavada (which in sutta is absolutely equal to bhava [becoming,….i.e. life after life..]) are that deeds, actions (kamma; i.e. Karmayana) is a salvatory path, of which it is firmly rejected thereof (SN 4.400 example). Additionally, as per SN 4.400, asti (is there?) nasti (is there not?) questions are NEVER answered by Gotama such that they entail answers which must be devoid of gnosis, and directed towards one of two antinomies which is unbeneficial as well as counterproductive. However the demonic trash which passes as “Buddhism” today has spun this subtle philosophical point to uphold their erroneous claims to which the atman is/was rejected within doctrine, to which of course, it never is.

Atta’sarana anan’n’asarana.--"Soul as a refuge with none other as refuge” DN 2.100
“Atta’ ca me so saranam gati ca” --“The Soul is the refuge that I have gone unto” Jatakapali 1441 Akkhakandam
"Soul the refuge (Saran.am.attano)"-- DN 2.120
Jataka-2 #1341 “tattha atta’ va sarathi” ----“the Soul is Charioteer”

#1.How is it Gotama, is “the all” entirety? This is the oldest cosmology Brahman to say ‘the all is entirety’. #2. Then Gotama, is ‘the all’ ultimately not? This is the second cosmology Brahman to say ‘the all is ultimately not’. #3. Then Gotama, is ‘the all’ one’s Soul? This is the third cosmology Brahman to say ‘the all is one’s Soul’. #4. Then Gotama, is ‘the all’ merely composites (materialism, atomism)? This is the fourth cosmology Brahman to say ‘the all is merely composite (atoms)’…” [SN 2.77]. The Atthakatha commentary to this sutta at [Nidanavagga-Att. 2.76], states that the first and third view to be that of the Sassatavadin (perpetualism), whereas the second and fourth view to be that of the Ucchedavadin (annihilationist, atomist). It is certainly of note to make mention that the Jains also rejected sassatavada as a heretical and dogmatic speculation; however all peoples know that the Jains themselves in no way shape or form deny the Soul in its doctrine.

The views possessed by the Sassatavadin (perpetualist) is that sabbamatthi, or ‘the all is entirety’, and sabbamekattan or ‘the all is one’s Soul’; both of which are heretical notions which are devoid of the middle-term (The Soul), since both lead to a stasis of inaction and desire for emancipation from Samsara in the mind of those with such views. This view is not “eternalism” but perpetualism in that those who possess this belief feel that samsara is without escape and that all one can hope for is the heaping of merit or attainment of a god (deva) realm and or better reincarnation, which is still mere samsara and a view which is devoid of a medium or means (Soul,vijja) for emancipation. Perpetualism is the most common belief in India today in one form or another, wherein its adherents belief that the one that acts is the one that experiences the result [SN 2.20] and there is not other than to watch ones karmic deeds and heap merit in hopes for either equal or a better position is this life and or the next. Both good and bad karma, as per Buddhism and Upanishadic thought, are merely part and parcel of samsara itself, since an absolute stasis (Tat, Brahma, Soul, Atman) is contingent upon Vijja, panna (illumination, wisdom) alone and nothing else. Buddhism itself in sutta proclaims pannavimutta (emancipation by wisdom) as ultimate.

The equally heretical views possessed by the Ucchedavadin (annihilationist) that sabbamnatthi ‘the all is ultimately not’ (atomism), and sabbam puthuttan or ‘the all is merely composite (atoms)’ are also both heretical notions which are devoid of the middle-term (The Soul), since both lead to inaction and desire for emancipation from Samsara; the difference in view from the Sassatavadin being only the mirror image of the basis and reason for inaction ultimately. This view which is atomistic is also very much closer to Epicureanism, since its basis is that all is for naught, so eat drink and be merry for death comes swiftly. This view is most common in Europe and America today (existentialism, empiricism, atheism) where the cult of scientism and genetic engineering have attempted, in vain, to convince its populace that all is mere chance like a fractal design, atomic assemblages, and that with the aid of those like Darwin, and pseudo-science physics, the Soul can be dismissed as mere hogwash and the fanciful speculations of our “ignorant ancestors” who were “technologically unsophisticated”. Ironically enough, modern “Buddhism” itself is atomistic and holds the very same belief of the Ucchedavadin which Gotama denounced as “heretical” [An 3.337]. Modern heretical “Buddhism” itself conceives of the world (via post-Buddhistic Abhidhammic catechism) as composed of “Selfless dharmic monads” which are without a “basis” (anti-foundationalism, nihilism).

Both of these views are mere impasses which never attack the heart (mind, citta, Soul) of the matter as addressed by the Vedas, Upanishads, and Nikayas of Buddhism, that being avijja (nescience, agnosis, ignorance) and its reversal through the Jhanas (sati, Samadhi) and gnosis (panna, vijja) which makes con-centric (majjha) ones mind (citta) as its “own support”. “The all is all”, and “all is naught” are equal and diametrically opposed speculations which never lead to investigation of the basis, or stasis or true being (svabhava). The only opposite to both heretical views is that which is concentric and prior to either becoming (bhava, sassatavada), or annihilation (vibhava, ucchedavada), namely the Self or the Soul which “partakes not of either being nor becoming”, but is “ones True-nature”, or Tathagatagarbha, bodhicitta (Self-same mind illumined), or Selfhood (attan) attained through the Jhanic methodology of inflexure of mind upon itself before it mentates and leads to Vinnana (Vi-nana, agnosis, reflective-mind).

Both views are in complete antinomy with one another, for to declare the annihilation of what “is” requires the basis for what has become to have been begotten by that which itself is not begotten; whereas for perpetualism to declare the perpetuosity of what “is” in perpetuity does not address that centermost axis mundi which “makes things arise in perpetuity” to begin with. The middle or means, that being the Soul, is the axis mundi, which is without polarity or antinomy whereby Gotama says he “instructs by the means (majjhe)” [SN 2.77]; such that he does not veer to either end of the spectrum of mutually exclusivity, or codependent heretical views of being and annihilation which are void of the basis for either’s arising to begin with, and are consubstantial upon a prerequisite set of conditions for both of their very existences. Views of either becoming or annihilation on the wheel of samsara are devoid of engagement on the topic of the basis for either arising or passing, that being the medium which itself is imbued with the causeless condition (avijja) as impetus for the initiatory causation of ones arising. The wise do not care or are involved in either the coming or going of beings in samsara when one discerns the means (majjha) by which they arise and pass in the first place. What need is there for debating being (sat) or nonbeing (asat) when one has discovered by wisdom what is prior to both and imbued with neither.

In direct antinomy to either Asadvada (nonbeing-ism) or Sadvada (being-ism) is advaita (non-duality) which is also identical to the Buddhistic Hetuvada (because-of-this-ism, or causation-ism): [SN 2.17] “This world is carried on, Kaccana, by a duality (dvayanissito); which are ‘being (sat, atthiti [views of either sabbamatthi ‘the all is entirety’, and sabbamekattan ‘the all is one’s Soul’ [SN 2.77])’ and ‘nonbeing (asat, natthiti [views of either sabbamnatthi ‘the all is ultimately not’ (atomism), and sabbam puthuttan ‘the all is merely composite (atoms)’ [SN 2.77])’. When the arising of the world is seen as it truly as or as it has become with Samma’ (coherent citta or mind) wisdom there is no notion of ‘being’ or ‘nonbeing’; the same holds true as to the subjugation of the world. This world is entirely bound to dogmas, cravings and beliefs Kaccana. When ones mind is not engaged in either dogmas, cravings or beliefs then there is no arising of speculative views such as ‘this is my Soul’; for he has gnosis and neither doubt or wavering (of mind) that it is merely suffering which has come to arise and merely the cessation of suffering which ceases. Herein Kaccana one possesses envisionment of Samma’. ‘The all (sabba) is’, and ‘the all is not’ are both dead ends (speculative views). Without involvement in either of these (heretical) views the Tathagata teaches the dhamma by the means (majjhena, or Tat, Brahma, Soul).” Because-of-this, namely anana (agnosis) or avijja (nescience) there is that, and when that is present, so is that and etc.” The Tathagata teaches that both dogmas of sat and asat are fruitless; so the Tathagata, the Sammasambuddha teaches Tat (Brahma, Soul) which is achieved by means of wisdom which destroys nescience (avijja); before “thou art being (sat)” and “thou art unbecoming (asat)”, there is That, “thou art That (Brahma)”.

Given the absence of avijja which occludes ones Self (attan) or Soul from direct discernment of things as they are or have become (yathabhuta) there is no need to speak of or become involved in either speculation or dogmas relative to being (sat) or non-being (asat) when only action is required to wipe away agnosis with wisdom and the jhanas, whereupon the refulgent glory and magnitude of ones Self-nature or Atman which is identical with Brahma [MN 1.341] becomes Tat (such, that, Brahma) without antinomy or duality (dvayanissito), or speculative dogmatic beliefs regarding ones Soul (attanuditthi). To sum up: [Pati-Att. 2.398] “…’being (sat)’ is perpetualism, whereas ‘nonbeing (asat)’ is nihilism”, or more succinctly: [SN 2.65] “When this exists, that comes to be, with the arising of this, that also arises; when that is not present, that does not come to be; with the subjugation of this, that too is subjugated. Namely this means when nescience (avijja, agnosis) as (original) condition there are volitional experiences (which come to be); with volitional experiences as condition, there is consciousness (vinnana), (which is then manifest).

The Hidden Secrets Behind all True Mysticism Desperately Sought After by Many

2010-07-07T12:00:00.000-07:00

1 1 / 2 3 / 5 (Phi, Fibonacci, golden sequence) i.e. 1 1 2 3 5 8 13 etc. (however the mystical triad is complete by meeting the pentad)

Point 1, line 1, circle 2, sphere 3, life 5(animus)

(#1) Monad-1/Mind-1(nous, citta, spirit), (#2) Magnitude-2(space)/Matter-3(hyle), (#3) 'Man'-5(being, life, on [greek])…(the pentadic trinity and unknown secret held by the Pythagoreans)

1 divided by Phi to negative3 cubed = Phi cubed = Pan

If you can understand the four points above, all four of which imply and explain the same thing (the One, Emanation, and totality), then you possess the greatest secret & hidden truth held so close by the Pythagoreans, Plato, and a very few others. To the common idiot (=skeptic, or atheist), this metaphysical symbolism is merely an existentialist mindfuck puzzle, without meaning, reason, or logic (objectively so); and to him, has no more import than the subjective and multi-spectrum views held by any one of a thousand peoples about the “meaning of said piece of artwork”. However nothing further from the truth could this be.

In both the supremely divine logic of Monism and that of Platonism (and Vedanta) that both come closest to illuminating the hidden nature of all reality, there is aught ‘original sin’, nor is there any first cause, there is no ‘initial’ impetus for the descent of spirit and henceforth embodiment of the spirit shackled to the slings and arrows of antinomies that necessitate (ananke) and define empirical existence (exio + stance). The One, the supremely divine Absolute is neither being, nor sentient, nor itself/himself (as wrongly envisioned by Creationists) cause to point blame upon or any cause for all that comes after the One.

I might remind you of the secret (so to say) obvious, that the Pythagoreans and Platonists were not greatly fond of study of the golden section, ratios, and mathematics as an ends so as to be further learned in the science of nature (as is the case greatly so as exampled by Aristotle), but as a means to grasp the mechanics and the metaphysics they knew to be most logical and true, that of Emanationism (proodos), and using said metaphysical arithmos as modeling out the wisdom gained in noetic contemplation, and using said proofs to compliment what they already understood. It is ONLY the case of the idiot, the atheist, the common dolt and ‘boob’ who is certain that “spirituality and metaphysics are neither logical, nor deductively reasonable”. This position is, in today’s world, a rampant and entirely prolific disease, mostly due the absence of metaphysics and supplanting of illogical religious systems in their place. The remaining cause for this common (=profane, or ‘peoples’) view is the advance of European empiricism and materialism in general.

I have, in the four points above, illustrated to you the absolutely most deep secrets that lie at the roots of all forms of genuine mysticism, but as much as you look at them, you will not grasp it, you will not ‘see’ (noesis) it, likely further you will reject it as twaddle, and nonsensical symbolic irrelevance. Revealed above is the divine trinity “which is also One”, also revealed above is the arithmos of Emanationism itself. The four proofs above are universal throughout the entire cosmos from one end to the other, in every corner seen and unseen in the universe; from macro to micro and even beyond to ontological subjects in the realm of the cosmos noetos. The rules of Emanation hold true be they among metaphysical Subjects or among material and atomic objects, the only difference being the medium and compositional complexity within which the logos takes root, or 'shape', as it were(as above, so below).

The most profound secrets revealed in prolonged noesis (Samadhi states, epistrophe, synthesis, or the fruit of apophasis) are secrets so deep merely such that they take wisdom to comprehend them. For those however who grasp same, these secrets are not secrets whatsoever, and are so stunningly obvious, so incredibly simple, so unquestionable as to be even more simplex than the unconscious impulse to inhale breath by the ensouled body.

The Absolute, the One is so simple in nature as to be utterly beyond the reckoning of all but the profoundly wise; the simplicity of same is awe inspiring to those who have even but glimpsed same, and is only APPARENTLY ‘profoundly secret and mystical’ to the common man who cannot reckon the nature of anything other than material and objective reality. There is no complexity to or attributed alongside the One, but that the commoner cannot fathom same, it is for all intents and purposes, a genuine, profound, hidden, and dark secret; and more often than not outright rejected by the proliferation of metaphysical atheists/materialists today.

The ‘great secrets’ which illuminate the werks of the Universe and the One, are in fact very simple, more simple in fact than would be a parts diagram of a post-it note. However even the most intellectual existentialist cannot unlock this secret without the key of wisdom, to which the door of revelation is utterly impervious to his conscious deductions.

Cross-examination of Typical Scumbag “buddhists”. Or, Claims, Conjectures, and Feelings, but no Logic

2010-06-22T18:35:00.000-07:00

Lets examine the pseudo logic and endless string of unsubstantiated claims from the (trash heap) www.

Nisha writes:
I can only assume the author of this blog is a white man. You will never fully understand Buddhism as true Buddhists can and do…your general attitude in your little opener shows you are not Buddhist, nor could you grasp it's meaning or put it into practice. Your little opener there is quite anti-Buddhist actually. Will you publish this? Or no, since it is (in your eyes) negative about your blog? I am simply speaking truth. White authors. I have no problem with white people, but when you were born and raised a Buddhist, and a very religious one at that, you know more than some white man or any other color human being for that matter who has read a lot of books, most of which carry few facts of true Buddhism. I only comment because I find your blog offensive to actual Buddhist lay people, like myself, who has practiced and studied my faith my entire life. ---Nisha (a typical pseudo-intellectual unintelligent bitch without a capacity for logic, reason, and deductive faculties)

A: It is an “either or” fallacy to presume that anyone well read/studied in the texts of earliest Buddhism is not one possessed of gnosis (nan’a/wisdom). This heretical fallacy is common amongst unintelligent rabble.

B: The statement “your general attitude in your little opener shows you are not Buddhist” is merely a baseless claim. In fact all Buddhologists have concluded that present-day Buddhism is wholly unlike the original. You are refuted forthwith.

C: The endless statements about “white people” is not only an obtuse and irrelevant ad hominem, but Gotama’s people were Arya Scythian white peoples. In referring to Gotama the “Scythian-sage” (Sakyamuni), he: [DN 3.144] “has blue eyes”. In further at [DN 3.81] the true Brahmins are “fair skinned, whereas the others (inferiors) are dark-skinned”. You are refuted forthwith.

D: Your comment “born & raised a Buddhist” is an enormous contradiction to Buddhist doctrine in any translation, for one is not sakyaputtabandhu (born a follower of Shakyamuni), i.e. a Rishi (isi). The notion of “born a Buddhist” exists nowhere in doctrine and is ultimately contradictory to the very premise of same in the original and earliest texts. You are refuted forthwith.

E: Your comment “I find your blog offensive” is in fact a compliment, for as Plato said “to insult a fool is the praise of wisdom”. I have always endeavored to insult the bestial minds of the low, the base, the unintelligent, the unilluminated ritualistic religion tripe of which you are obviously a lemming thereof.

Aryan-Buddhism blogspot is devoted to original Buddhism, Traditionalist metaphysics, and the gnosis advocated thereof, as such it is an anti-Guru, anti-Zen-Master, anti-Lama, anti-Rimpoche, and anti-bhikkhu site adverse to any and all forms of superficial spiritual-materialism, petty ritualisms, and the New-Age movement in general. Aryan-Buddhism blogspot is equally adversarial to those who find counterfeit peace and grace in spiritual trinkets, empirical pietism such as extreme bodily austerities such as chanting, bowing, self-mortification, or those who find love towards cultish Guru-personalities, other such pseudo-religious rubbish and meaningless corporeal endeavors which are irrelevant to the gnosis which culminates in the noetic liberation of spirit.

Aryan-Buddhism blogspot content is hostile to illogical systems such as: secular humanism, creationism, atheism, agnosticism, and the mass of pseudo-religionists such as those who claim to be ‘Buddhists’, and spiritual…yet deny the very spirit (atman, citta, nous) which is the only refuge and light proclaimed in and of Buddhism and metaphysics at large. All of the above applies to yourself, and therefore Aryan-Buddhism blogspot will not appeal to you whatsoever; ...as said, "In praising wisdom, one simultaneously insults fools, those who cleave to things unwise." You are refuted forthwith.

F: Your comment “…practiced my entire life”. I might point out to you that your base and pathetic cultish rituals, brass statues, bowing, paying homage to brainless bald monks, lifetime or not, has no merit, no weight, no status in the arena of illumination, of wisdom. You are a religionist, not a metaphysician. Utterly no different than a rotten brat dragged to church since he was in diapers. You are refuted forthwith.

Like most miserable and unintelligent lemming-trash on the internet, you make many many claims, but prove none. You puff and blow about matters to which you have neither studied nor pontificated. Many lives lay ahead of you contrary to your perverse delusions that your ritualistic and religious life might bring false hope to a noble end to which you shall not gain.

* As a woman yourself, I will iiluminate to you Gotama Shakyamuni's position regarding women:

“In crossing the river (from samsara to emancipation) …crocodiles are a designation for women” -MN3-Gotama

“If it were not for women being admitted into (our order), my teachings would have lasted 1000 years, …now they will not last 500”-DN3 Gotama

“Women, with their two-fingered wisdom (i.e. stupid), have a difficult time (understanding what I teach)”-SN4 -Gotama

"It CANNOT happen that a woman may become a Tathagata, a sammsambuddha" -AN 3.14 Gotama

This, readers, is the absolute norm personage you will find in “dhamma-centers” and in S.E. Asian temples. They are miserable and unintelligent ritualistic lemmings who have not seen the light of genuine Selfhood.

Or, might I quote the following:
“Buddhism (modern) is an extremely sick religion inhabited by atheists, agnostics, and at best pantheists. They congregate together at ‘dharma-centers’, which are little more than outpatient mental wards for depressed materialists, and engage in idle chatter about attainment of oblivion and the denial of all things spiritual.

The only difference between the typical ‘Buddhist’ and the Islamo-Fascist suicide bomber who straps explosives to himself and enters a crowd of infidels, is that the ‘Buddhist’ has set out to annihilate himself only, thru spiritual euthanasia practices. Both of these types are the worst lot of demons which roam samsara and plague others with their bestial ignorances.” -Dr. Rama T. Guptar

Sincerely, webmaster Aryan Buddhism blogspot.

The Metaphysics and Logic of Ghosts

2010-06-21T08:51:00.000-07:00

Completely disregarding the mythos and legends thru time immemorial regarding ghosts, the logical philosophical analysis thru the lens of abductive reasoning as used and employed by Platonists, especially that of Plotinus, lends a lucid insight into the nature of the disembodied will, or spirit (citta, nous, spiritus sanctum). The following is a concise philosophical analysis of spirits as examined thru the most intelligent methodology of metaphysical examination that exists, that of Platonism; to understand how and for what reason the noetic will, or spirit, in very limited instances, makes congress with the phenomenal world, this kosmos aisthetos of living beings.

Logically so hauntings are associated with places of mass casualties such as battlefields or mass-murder, far less so to the mere resting places of bodies, i.e. graveyards as is contrary to countless legends. [Socrates-Phaedo 81d] “these souls wander about until at last, through craving for the corporeal which has unceasingly pursued them, they are imprisoned once more in a body.” Supplementary to this, due to modern investigations, the majority of phenomenal-interjections by the disembodied (i.e. hauntings) are related to the ignorant single-person now deceased, who were extremely incapable of disobjectification, i.e. disassociation with empirical life while alive, cleaving to the phenomenal body and its desires, regrets and unfinished tasks, to illustrate that, other than hospitals, battlefields, and jails, single-residency homes wherein an extremely ignorant person has deceased have an extraordinary amount of phenomenal-interjections occur. [Socrates-Phaedo 81c] “(the impure and contaminated soul by associating itself with the corporeal body) is permeated by congregation and intercourse with the body will have for the longest time associated and practice (with the body).”

[Socrates-Phaedo 83d] “Because every pleasure or pain has with it a sort of rivet by which it fastens the soul to the body and pins it down and makes it corporeal.” In line with the reasoning of Socrates in [Phaedo 83d], those souls who are fully engrossed in self-identification (objective, empirical, false, temporal) with the unreal self (Pali anatta, i.e. not-soul, not-spirit), are therein chained by reason of the impotence and incapacity of their will to have Subjective (spiritual, or true) identification. Of the wise or moderately spiritual it is said: (anatmanas tu satrutve vartetatmaiva satruvat) “The Spirit is at war with whatever is not-Spirit (anatman)” [B.G. VI.VI], but for those who have traumatically died ‘before their time’ or with much occupying their minds (spirit, nous, citta), and especially for those grossly enthralled with and in identification with their empirical self, these are found to be the progenitors of the lingering and phenomenally experienced ‘ghosts’ of which are encountered. These “ignorant manyfolk” (the common profane man) are not “at war” with the empirical self (not-Spirit) but are so therein attached by measure of their ignorances they greatly desire the endless perpetuation of same or activity associated with that self after disembodiment has occurred at either a timely or an untimely demise. Whether that ‘undead’ (“he has died but not died to what is now dead that he was but is no longer”) was/is attached ignorantly either to their former self, or to another, or to trauma, or place, or object or otherwise is irrelevant, all these are objective unrealities to which these ‘restless spirits’ are impotent to remove themselves thereof. [Socrates-Phaedo 82e] “a (ignorant) soul is a helpless prisoner, chained by hand and foot to the body, compelled to view reality not directly but only through its prison bars.”

[Socrates-Phaedo 81c] “the corporeal is course, heavy, oppressive, earthly, visible. So the soul which is tainted by its presence is weighed down and dragged back into the visible world, through fear some say, and hovers about tombs and graveyards. These shadowy apparitions which have actually been seen are the ghosts of those souls which have not gotten clear away (from association/identity with the body), but still remain in some portion of what can be seen.” This noetic projection by the metaphysical will, or spirit, is the continuing methexis, or recombination of the disembodied spirit, by means and artifice of its ignorance, its self-intercession with and amongst the phenomenal world which it both cherishes and solely identifies, for to it, there is little or nothing else. The mimetic body, or ghost, is a mirage of former being either partially or fully (full-body apparition) into this world and is the artifice of spirit which is made seen to others by one or multiple datum. This eikonic being is the manifest delusion of the both deceased and ignorant incapable of transcendence beyond either place, desire, of former life itself.

That the kosmos noetos (noetic, or spiritual world) might intercede itself into the kosmos aisthetos (empirical or phenomenal world) without which the corporeal body is not used, i.e. in the consubstantial being of life, should come as no surprise or shock to any as pertains the investigation of ‘ghosts’. That this world alone is full with empirical life, from macrocosmic to microcosmic, which is nothing more than a harmonia of spirit and matter; it would therefore, abductively and logically be consistent that just as lifeless matter itself must and does exist in standalone, infinitely ever-the-more-so too must spirit exist in standalone without being in consubstantial congress with any physical body which we, the living deem a like; another living creature or being. Only the ignorant and atheistic have so deemed the greatest or complete measure of totality to mere matter, but metaphysicians and now too modern physicists demonstrate that matter is most likely no more than a bundling of wavefronts of something else antecedent to the matter itself, a mere attribute to a metaphysical Subject. Platonists, namely Plotinus have abducted that matter is nothing more than the byproduct of emanation by the Absolute; a temporal manifestation of the Good.

Moving ahead with the subject, spirits, or noetic beings; logically that the noetic might find and make congress with matter in the form of empirical, consubstantial, and temporal being, so too will be the case, albeit the rarer occurrence (or is it so?) that spirits make mimetic intercession into and with ‘our’ (one must say ‘our’, since the phenomenal world is no more ‘ours’ than the Sun is ours by illogical reasoning that by proxy, light from the Sun falls upon our very faces) world in many fashions, some of which are readily apparent thru the profane and extremely limited spectrum senses of human beings. Logically and rightly so, by implementation of an ‘extension’ of our limited senses, near-infrared, and out-of-human-range audio, electrostatic, magnetic-field, and video electronics have opened wide 100X fold, the interest and uncovering of these spirit-phenomena or intercessions, by resultant that thru usage of this instrumentation, a far greater spectrum or bandwidth of data as pertains spirit/ghost-activity has been made readily available for examination.

In the ancient Pali language of India from 2600 years past, of which I am a translator, the philosophical term used to describe the disembodied is a monomayakaya, or ‘mind-made-body’, also meaning ‘artifice-creation of-mind’, as speaking of the metaphysical citta (nous, spirit) which is, by manner of its potential for intercession into ‘our’ phenomenal world, capable of manifestation that he/she still either considers itself as physical being, or so strongly desires same, that the will/spirit is made manifest in one or several modalities such that living beings make notice of same by visual, auditory, or other sensory, or trans-sensory datum.[Socrates-Phaedo 79c] “because using the body implies using the senses…when it (the spirit) is drawn away by the body (at birth) into the realm of the variable, and loses its way and becomes confused and dizzy, as though it were befuddled.” Highlighting this problem as brought forward by Socrates, intercourse by the spirit with the temporal body further enthralls the will, or spirit, into objectification (a-vijja, ignorance, nescience, spiritual amnesia) that, as it were, the puppet-master, or spirit, has only identity with the mimesis or mirage of spirit, the puppet itself. Those many or few who are so enthralled with this “jointed and temporal puppet” as echoed by an ancient philosopher, are still, by metaphysical means, projecting the spirit into the phenomenal world long after the strings, or life, with that ‘puppet’, have been cut at the time of death. In league with this sentiment: [Dhm. 147] "Behold! That painted puppet this body, riddled with oozing sores, an erected façade. Diseased heap that fools fancy and swoon over; Spirit has no part of it.”

A further tangent of logical deduction as pertains animals (term meaning literally ‘has-a-soul’, or anim-al); it can be concluded that since animals have little to no self-identification, i.e. neither/little grieve over themselves or fellow kind, that slaughterhouses wherein countless hundreds of thousands have met brutal fates, has not been, to any record a place of noetic and spiritual intercession by the disembodied deceased of those former living creatures who, with meager rational consciousnesses, lack the premise whereby they grieve their own bodily fates. While true that beats fight with great ferocity for their lives with claw and fang, this impulsive reaction is merely an ingrained effect of the being itself, rather than a love of self which makes one fight for life and its accessories as such as is seen in the complex being of a human.

In a logical differentiation of the ‘types’ of hauntings as enumerated by investigation, one can and must abductively conclude that those phenomena which have a mere repetition of intercession, akin to a record skipping over a same track, over and over, is due to said noetic being which is either wholly or willfully ignorant of either living beings and also the flux in material surroundings (due to the passage of time, renovation, or general change in the topos [place]) of the deceased who cleaves to that specific location either due to traumatic death in that topos, ignorant attachment to said location, or otherwise. In contrasting this with the ‘social’ deceased to interact in X fashion with living beings, or also respond to same thru whichever capacity; we can make no greater distinction between these two varieties of hauntings than we make of the social and unsocial living who possess different ignorant attachments to and in life, being it of material place or desire, or of the living, specific or unspecific.

It can be logically deduced, as is hearsay of paranormal investigators, that in many instances, the activity surrounding the ‘restless’ deceased is witnessed to increase and or worsen as result of those, or many who, successfully and or purposefully interact with these spirits by means of either two-way communication thru instrumentation of question-answer devices such as video, audio-recorders, speaking-boards (ouija). It follows without question that the ignorant dead, in many instances, suffer to interact with the living, like a lonely and, in this case literally, invisible child is kept at length from interacting with others, suffering all the while. To extension that we know the extremely ignorant are synonymous with evil, and therefore bestial, these paranormal investigators are instigators who quite literally “feed the beast” in so extensively and repetitively desiring and making contact with these disembodied souls. By elimination the wise or noble of spirit who have passed at time of death are not counted amongst those who linger and intercede into the phenomenal world, those to whom we deem ghosts. As such, in most all cases, those investigators who make contact with or who are disturbed by spirits, unless they be the spirits of children who are innocently ignorant, are in most instances dealing with highly unsavory beings of profane and vile standing. One cannot and does not in any instance make contact with any of these dead and are simultaneously dealing with and corresponding with any being of nobility, wisdom, intelligence, or who deserves respect. In like conclusion it can be said without question that paranormal investigators are interacting with both the insane and criminally minded, to either a greater or lesser degree.

It cannot be otherwise concluded that those deceased who are known to interject themselves in whichever fashion in X location are temporalized to a great degree, though they be entirely noetic beings without actual/true congress with phenomenal matter as in the case of living beings; these beings are not free or self-actualized to roam to any great extent from the place of their desire and or demise. Abduction from this observation leads one to conclude that lacking any direct methexis, or participation in being, these noetic entities are either greatly or fully participate in an eikonic artifice or mirage of temporalized existence wherein they repeat their desires for a greater or lesser period, or actively participate with the living either to a detrimental/frightening extent, or to a mere belonging/participatory degree all of which is encompassed by nescience as impetus for their so doing. It has been incorrectly theorized by some parapsychologists that passive hauntings are the resultant of an event, rather than noetic being itself, akin to a resonant after-image of an event or passing of a person, either traumatic or otherwise, thereby implying that there could possibly be another medium of and for a haunting outside of the noetic itself, but this cannot be logically enjoined either thru what is logically consistent or thru observation. This inconsistency would be subscribing to the possibility that noetic intercession could be occurring by and or thru a means not immanently as resultant from a non-noetic principle.

Metaphysics and logic agrees that antecedent to any direct participation, the eikonic image or noetic conception exists within the spiritual, the will/mind/nous/citta/spiritus sanctum, this eidos, the old truism and Platonic adage “as above, so below”. Deferring therefore to what is logical and consistent with observation the deceased spirit most certainly can be temporalized sans a temporal co-habitation with an empirical body, upturning the ignorant concept that only the living “suffer the slings and arrows of time, desire, sorrow, etc.”. In this same line of reasoning is also consistent with observation that those places long long ago formerly known as ‘hot-spots’ for metaphysical activities by the deceased are no longer so in many if not most instances.

In closing, I differ to Socrates who concludes that noetic self-assimilation (complete empirical disobjectification) is the premise and antinomy to all becoming and certainly to disembodied self-existence (‘ghost’): [Socrates-Phaedo 80e] “if at release the soul is pure and carries with it no contamination of the body, because it has never willingly associated with the body in life”. All of which we can therefore say of these souls who intercede with and amongst phenomenal life, “these (ghosts) are in no way pure”. These ‘undead’ beings carry the crime and penalty of harboring ignorances which death cannot erase, for that very nescience is not part nor parcel to empirical being, but has its locus in the metaphysical spirit/nous/citta, as such the ‘wicked’ in life who did not transcend the desire or attachment to empirical existence and its numberless trappings, dig themselves a second grave for their spirit to rest (rather unrest), until its impetus is exhausted, either thru hard-gained insight, or exhausting the desire which established it.

The 'Big Bad Wolf'. Or, Why Modern 'buddhism' Fears the Soul so dearly

2010-05-27T20:43:00.000-07:00

The ‘renowned’ Theravada materialist Nyanatiloka has said: "Thus with this doctrine of Selflessness, or anatta, stands or falls the ENTIRE structure of Buddhism".

Rightly so, all of Theravada fears and protects the meaning and ‘interpretation’ of anatta like a pack of rabid dogs protect their fresh kill. They fear and protect the meaning of anatta more so than Christians protect their position that Mary was a virgin and that Jesus ‘arose from the dead’. More than Nyanatiloka have stated the obvious, ALL of Theravada would fall, upon the exposure of the genuine meaning become accepted and widely known as regards anatta, not however would “fall Buddhism”, but Theravada and others misconceptions of same, nothing more. Theravada, a great portion of Vajrayana, and much of Zen fear the soul like a pious monk fears the devil to sneak up upon him, in any event they have heaped upon the definition more sophistry and ages of sectarian fecal matter to make Buddhism appear to be nothing more than the most base form of materialism, that only a very rare few independent scholars who delve deep into the presectarian Nikayan Pali texts can see that Buddhism has not, nor ever denied the atman, and that anatta no more denies the atman, nor is a ‘doctrine’ (i.e. doctrine of anatta, as so often coined by the Theras), that the Upanishads themselves in so saying the “atman is not this, nor that (neti net)”.

The more superficially one studies Buddhism, the more it seems to differ from the Brahmanism in which it originated; the more profound our study, the more difficult it becomes to distinguish Buddhism from Brahmanism, or to say in what respects, if any, Buddhism is really unorthodox. The outstanding distinction lies in the fact that Buddhist doctrine is propounded by an apparently historical founder, understood to have lived and taught in the sixth century B.C. Beyond this there are only broad distinctions of emphasis. It is taken almost for granted that one must have abandoned the world if the Way is to be followed and the doctrine understood.

We can only suppose that Buddhism has been so much admired mainly for what it is not. A well known modern writer on the subject has remarked that "Buddhism in its purity ignored the existence of a God; it denied the existence of a soul; it was not so much a religion as a code of ethics"( Winifred Stephens, Legends of Indian Buddhism, 1911, p. 7.). Similarly M.V Bhattacharya maintains that the Buddha taught that "there is no Self, or Atman" (Cultural Heritage of India, p. 259). Even in 1925 a Buddhist scholar could write "The soul . . . is described in the Upanishads as a small creature in shape like a man . . . Buddhism repudiated all such theories" (PTS Dictionary, s.v. attan). It would be as reasonable to say that Christianity is materialistic because it speaks of an "inner man". Few scholars would write in this manner today, but ridiculous as such statements may appear, (and it is as much an ignorance of Christian doctrine as it is of Brahmanism that is involved), they still survive in all popular accounts of "Buddhism"; such as (. Th. Scherbatsky Buddhist Logic 1. 1932, p. 2) saying Buddhism "denied a God, it denied the Soul, it denied Eternity"! Scherbatsky's The Doctrine of the Buddha (BSOS, V1. 867L) provides a good critique of Keith's demand to "lay aside our natural desire to find reason prevailing in a barbarous age", in his ‘Buddhist philosophy, p. 29’.

It is of course, true that the Buddha denied the existence of a "soul" or "self "in the narrow sense of the word (one might say, in accordance with the command, deneget seipsum (deny himself ), (Mark, VIII.341) but this is not what our writers mean to say, or are understood by their readers to say; what three mean to say is that the Buddha denied the immortal, unborn and Supreme Self of the Upanishads. And that is palpably false. For he frequently speaks of this Self or Spirit, and nowhere more clearly than in the repeated formula ‘na me so atta’, "That is not my Self ", excluding body and the components of empirical consciousness, a statement to which the words of Sankaracharya are peculiarly apposite, "Whenever we deny something unreal, it is with reference to something real" (neti-neti Brahma Sutra III.2.22); as remarked by Mrs. Rhys Davids, "so, 'this one', is used in the Suttas for utmost emphasis in questions of personal identity" (Minor Anthologies, I, p. 7, note 2). ‘Na me so atta’ is no more a denial of the Self than Socrates' “the body is not the man” , is a denial of the Man"!

One of the ‘great’ books thumped by the ignorant manyfolk calling themselves Buddhists today and of which deny the atman, is "Selfless Persons" by Steven Collins, in which he himself in his book never makes the conclusion for the denial of the Atman in Buddhist doctrine, in so saying himself, albeit unintelligently, "Buddhist metaphysics could be reduced to a kind of pragmatic agnosticism in which the self is not so much denied as declared inconceivable. Anatta then simply advises against uselessly trying to conceive it (the Self)." [Page 10, Selfless Persons, Steven Collins]. More laughable than can be imagined, the entire book, large though it is, only contains three pages under the heading of “proof for anatta” (i.e. Souls denial), and yet these same three pages contain absolutely no doctrinal evidences whatsoever.

The Theras and others fear the inevitable slippery slope Buddhism (theirs) will fall into upon acceptance of the genuine meaning of anatta, whereupon “if anatta doesn’t deny the atman, than how is Buddhism any different than Vedanta, by and large?” The answer is of course none whatsoever. They protect anatta like their very own baby in the cradle, they will surrender its meaning and definition with their life, like no other word in pali they propagate a lie which is now running on 1700 years old. The only reason they have been unable to crush opposition, is that the Nikayas were recorded and propagated long long before Sarvastivada (Theravada) came into existence to exterminate it.

Anatta & Anatman Revisited. The Truth as Silver Bullet to Modern "buddhism"

2010-05-27T20:38:00.000-07:00

The Buddhist term Anatman (Sanskrit), or Anatta (Pali) is an adjective in sutra used to refer to the nature of phenomena as being devoid of the Soul, that being the ontological and uncompounded subjective Self (atman) which is the “light (dipam), and only refuge” [DN 2.100]. Of the 662 occurrences of the term Anatta in the Nikayas, its usage is restricted to referring to 22 nouns (forms, feelings, perception, experiences, consciousness, the eye, eye-consciousness, desires, mentation, mental formations, ear, nose, tongue, body, lusts, things unreal, etc.), all phenomenal, as being Selfless (anatta). Contrary to countless many popular (=profane, or = consensus, from which the truth can ‘never be gathered’) books (as Buddhologist C.A.F. Davids has deemed them ‘miserable little books’) written outside the scope of Buddhist doctrine, there is no “Doctrine of anatta/anatman” mentioned anywhere in the sutras, rather anatta is used only to refer to impermanent things/phenomena as other than the Soul, to be anatta, or Self-less (an-atta).

Specifically in sutra, anatta is used to describe the temporal and unreal (metaphysically so) nature of any and all composite, consubstantial, phenomenal, and temporal things, from macrocosmic to microcosmic, be it matter as pertains the physical body, the cosmos at large, including any and all mental machinations which are of the nature of arising and passing. Anatta in sutra is synonymous and interchangeable with the terms dukkha (suffering) and anicca (impermanent); all three terms are often used in triplet in making a blanket statement as regards any and all phenomena. Such as: “All these aggregates are anicca, dukkha, and anatta.” It should be further noted that, in doctrine, that the only noun which is branded permanent (nicca), is obviously and logically so, the noun attan [Skt. Atman], such as passage (SN 1.169).

Anatta refers specifically and only to the absence of the permanent soul as pertains any or all of the psycho-physical (namo-rupa) attributes, or khandhas (skandhas, aggregates). Anatta/Anatman in the earliest existing Buddhist texts, the Nikayas, is an adjective, (A is anatta, B is anatta, C is anatta). The commonly (=profane, consensus, herd-views) held belief to wit that: “Anatta means no-soul, therefore Buddhism taught that there was no soul” is an irrational absurdity which cannot be found or doctrinally substantiated by means of the Nikayas, the suttas (Skt. Sutras), of Buddhism.

The Pali compound term and noun for “no soul” is natthatta (literally “there is not/no[nattha]+atta’[Soul]), not the term anatta, and is mentioned at Samyutta Nikaya 4.400, where Gotama was asked if there “was no- soul (natthatta)”, to which Gotama equated this position to be a Nihilistic heresy (ucchedavada). Common throughout Buddhist sutra (and Vedanta as well) is the denial of psycho-physical attributes of the mere empirical self to be the Soul, or confused with same. The Buddhist paradigm (and the most common repeating passage in sutta) as regards phenomena is “Na me so atta” (this/these are not my soul), this most common utterance of Gotama the Buddha in the Nikayas, where “na me so atta” = Anatta/Anatman. In sutta, to hold the view that there was “no-Soul” (natthatta) is = natthika (nihilist). Buddhism differs from the “nothing-morist” (Skt. Nastika, Pali natthika) in affirming a spiritual nature that is not in any wise, but immeasurable, inconnumerable, infinite, and inaccessible to observation; and of which, therefore, empirical science can neither affirm nor deny the reality thereof of him who has ‘Gone to That[Brahman]” (tathatta). It is to the Spirit (Skt. Atman, Pali attan) as distinguished from oneself (namo-rupa/ or khandhas, mere self as = anatta) i.e., whatever is phenomenal and formal (Skt. and Pali nama-rupa, and savinnana-kaya) “name and appearance”, and the “body with its consciousness”. [SN 2.17] ‘Nonbeing (asat, natthiti [views of either sabbamnatthi ‘the all is ultimately not’ (atomism), and sabbam puthuttan ‘the all is merely composite’ [SN 2.77] both of this positions are existential antinomies, and heresies of annihilationism])’”. In contrast it has been incorrectly asserted that affirmation of the atman is = sassatavada (conventionally deemed ‘eternalism’). However the Pali term sasastavada is never associated with the atman, but that the atman was an agent (karmin) in and of samsara which is subject to the whims of becoming (bhava), or which is meant kammavada (karma-ism, or merit agencyship); such as sassatavada in sutta = “atta ca so loka ca” (the atman and the world [are one]), or: ‘Being (sat, atthiti [views of either sabbamatthi ‘the all is entirety’, and sabbamekattan ‘the all is one’s Soul’ [SN 2.77] both are heresies of perpetualism]). Sasastavada is the wrong conception that one is perpetually (sassata) bound within samsara and that merit is the highest attainment for either this life or for the next. The heretical antinomy to nihilism (vibhava, or = ucchedavada) is not, nor in sutta, the atman, but bhava (becoming, agencyship). Forever, or eternal becoming is nowhere in sutta identified with the atman, which is “never an agent (karmin)”, and “has never become anything” (=bhava). These antinomies of bhava (sassatavada) and vibhava (ucchedavada) both entail illogical positions untenable to the Vedantic or Buddhist atman; however the concept of “eternalism” as = atman has been the fallacious secondary crutch for supporting the no-atman commentarialists position on anatta implying = there is no atman.

Logically so, according to the philosophical premise of Gotama, the initiate to Buddhism who is to be “shown the way to Immortality (amata)” [MN 2.265, SN 5.9], wherein liberation of the spirit/mind [Greek = nous] (cittavimutta; Greek = epistrophe) is effectuated thru the expansion of wisdom and the meditative practices of sati and samadhi (assimilation, or synthesis, complete disobjectification with all objective [unreal] 'reality'), must first be educated away from his former ignorance-based (avijja) materialistic proclivities in that he (the common fool) “saw any of these forms, feelings, this body in whole or part, to be my Self/Atman, to be that which I am by nature”. Teaching the via negativa methodology of anatta in sutta pertains solely to things phenomenal, which were: “subject to perpetual change; therefore unfit to declare of such things ‘these are mine, these are what I am, that these are my Soul’” [MN 1.232]. The one scriptural passage where Gotama is asked by a layperson what the meaning of anatta is as follows: [Samyutta Nikaya 3.196] At one time in Savatthi, the venerable Radha seated himself and asked of the Blessed Lord Buddha: “Anatta, anatta I hear said venerable. What pray tell does Anatta mean?” “Just this Radha, form is not the Soul (anatta), sensations are not the Soul (anatta), perceptions are not the Soul (anatta), assemblages are not the Soul (anatta), consciousness is not the Soul (anatta). Seeing thusly, this is the end of birth, the Brahman life has been fulfilled, what must be done has been done.”

Anatta as taught in the Nikayas has merely relative value as it is directly conducive to Subjective awakening, or illumination; it is not an absolute one. It does not say or imply simply that the Soul (atta, Atman) has no reality, but that certain things (5 aggregates), with which the unlearned man (fool = puthujjana, as is always implied in spiritual texts, a materialist) identifies himself, are not the Soul (anatta) and that is why one should grow disgusted with them, become detached from them and be liberated. This principle of the extremely abused and misunderstood term anatta does not negate the Soul as such, but denies Selfhood to those things that constitute the non-self (anatta), showing them thereby to be empty of any ultimate value and to be repudiated; instead of nullifying the Atman (Soul) doctrine, it in fact compliments and affirms it in the most logical method by which Subjective gnosis is initially gained; that by and thru objective negation. It has been said that: ‘No Indian school of thought has ever regarded the human soul (another error, since the soul is not a possession of, nor is of the nature of the persona, or 'human') or the carrier of human personal (persona [Bob, Larry, Sue] is never confused by the Metaphysician, with the Person/Atman/Purisha) identity as a permanent substance (literally meaning, absurdly "permanent impermanence [substance]")’, which is certainly true when referring to the empirical persona (mere self [aggregates/namorupa], as opposed to the Person, spirit, atman), that ‘ensouled’ being, as was common in old English to say: “late at night, not a soul (mere person) was to be seen walking about”. That the atman is not to be understood as a cartesian thinking substance, phenomena, or eternal soul, is certainly the case, and logically cannot be otherwise.

It cannot be missed that in so discussing the commentarialist’s position of a ‘doctrine of anatta’ that anatta is merely a qualifier of something else and that anatta in and of itself in standalone is utterly meaningless and untenable to speak or make mention of an ‘anatta doctrine’ without qualification of what, and in what context, anatta is being qualified of X (the afore mentioned 22 things of which anatta is said to equal) i.e. that which is defacto equivalent to or with anatta. That anatta in doctrine is aught but ever equivalent to what is evil, foul, disgusting, phenomenal and repulsive, to therefore make declaration that, as many fool "buddhists" (in name only) have done, “anatta is a core tenant of Buddhism” cannot be enjoined, since the principle upon which Buddhism was founded is the quest for the immortal (amatagamimagga SN 5.9), and the unceasing bliss as gained by and thru liberation in wisdom’s culmination. Anatta is, obviously so, a key principle in the doctrine of Buddhism (and other via negativa systems, of which Advaita also makes extensive use of the term anatman) and the metaphysics thereof quantify anatta and being meant all physical and mental consubstantial and temporal objectivity; all compounded things either in simplex (matter, hyle) or complex (mental). As an-atta is meant not-Subject (= object [phenomena]), those things, as Buddhism declares “the unlearned fool bemuses himself as being (those things)”. "What do you suppose, followers, if people were carrying off into the Jeta grove bunches of sticks, grasses, branches, and leaves and did with them as they wished or burned them up, would it occur to you: These people are carrying us off, are doing as they please with us, and are burning us? No, indeed not Lord. And how so? Because Lord, none of that is our Soul, nor what our Soul subsists upon! Just so followers, what is not who you are, do away with it, when you have made done with that, it will lead to your bliss and welfare for as long as time lasts. What is that you are not? Form, followers, is not who you are, neither are sensations, perceptions, experiences, consciousness" [MN 1.141]. Just as ‘disgusting (anatta) doctrine’ cannot make logical sense, neither does ‘anatta doctrine’ bring light to studiers of Buddhism what anatta is contextually or its philosophical importance as being merely a qualifier of that which is evil, foul, disgusting, phenomenal and repulsive (= anatta). Anatta is of course a doctrinal tenant within Buddhism used to earmark phenomena, however as conventionally and irrationally conceived, there is absolutely no such creature in Buddhism as a "no-Soul doctrine".

What has Buddhism to say of the Self? "That's not my Self" (na me so atta); this, and the term "non Self-ishness" (anatta) predicated of the world and all "things" (sabbe dhamma anatta); Identical with the Brahmanical "of those who are mortal, there is no Self/Soul", (anatma hi martyah [SB., II. 2. 2. 3]). [KN J-1441] “The Soul is the refuge that I have gone unto”. For anatta is not said of the Self/Soul but what it is not. There is never and nowhere in sutra, a ‘doctrine of no-Soul’, but a doctrine of what the Soul is not (form is anatta, feelings are anatta, etc.). It is of course true that the Buddha denied the existence of the mere empirical “self” in the very meaning of “my-self” (this person so-and-so, namo-rupa, an-atta, i.e. Bob, Sue, Larry etc.), one might say in accordance with the command ‘denegat seipsum, [Mark VII.34]; but this is not what modern and highly unenlightened writers mean to say, or are understood by their readers to say; what they mean to say and do in fact say, is that the Buddha denied the immortal (amata), the unborn (ajata), Supreme-Self (mahatta’), uncaused (samskrta), undying (amara) and eternal (nicca) of the Upanishads. And that is palpably false, for he frequently speaks of this Self, or Spirit (mahapurisha), and nowhere more clearly than in the too often repeated formula 'na me so atta’, “This/these are not my Soul” (na me so atta’= anatta/anatman), excluding body (rupa) and the components of empirical consciousness (vinnana/ nama), a statement to which the words of Sankhara are peculiarly apposite, “Whenever we deny something unreal, is it in reference to something real” [Br. Sutra III.2.22]; since it was not for the Buddha, but for the nihilist (natthika), to deny the Soul. For, [SN 3.82] “yad anatta….na me so atta, “what is anatta…(means) that is not my Atman”; the extremely descriptive illumination of all thing which are Selfless (anattati) would be both meaningless and a waste of much time for Gotama were (as the foolish commentators espousing Buddhism’s denial of the atman) to clarify and simplify his sermons by outright declaring ‘followers, there is no atman!’, however no such passage exists. The Pali for said passage would be: ‘bhikkhave, natthattati!’; and most certainly such a passage would prove the holy grail and boon for the Theravadin nihilists (materialists) who have ‘protesteth too much’ that Buddhism is one in which the atman is rejected, but to no avail or help to their untenable views and position by the teachings themselves.

Outside of going into the doctrines of later schisms of Buddhism, such as Sarvastivada, Theravada, Vajrayana, Madhyamika, and lastly Zen, the oldest existing texts (Nikayas) of Buddhism which predate all these later schools of Buddhism [The Sanchi and Bharut inscriptions (aka the Pillar edicts) unquestionably dated to the middle of the second century B.C.E. push the composition of the 5 Nikayas back to a earlier date by mentioning the word “pañcanekayika” (Five Nikyas), thereby placing the Nikayas as put together (no later than) at a period about half way between the death of the Buddha and the accession of Asoka (before 265 B.C.), as such the 5 Nikayas, the earliest existing texts of Buddhism, must have been well known and well established far earlier than generally perceived. Finally proving the majority of the five Nikayas could not have been composed any later than the very earliest portion of the third century B.C.E.], anatta is never used pejoratively in any sense in the Nikayas by Gotama the Buddha, who himself has said: [MN 1.140] “Both formerly and now, I’ve never been a nihilist (vinayika), never been one who teaches the annihilation of a being, rather taught only the source of suffering (that being avijja, or nescience/agnosis), and its ending (avijja).” Further investigation into negative theology is the reference by which one should be directed as to a further understanding of this 'negative' methodology which the term anatta illuminates. It should be noted with great importance that the founder of Advaita Vedanta, Samkara used the term anatman lavishly in the exact same manner as does Buddhism, however in all of time since his passing, none have accused Samkara of espousing a denial of the Atman. Such as: “Atma-anatma vivekah kartavyo bandha nuktaye”-“The wiseman should discriminate between the Atman and the non-Atman (anatman) in order to be liberated.” [Vivekacudamani of Samkara v. 152], “Anatman cintanam tyaktva kasmalam duhkah karanam, vintayatmanam ananda rupam yan-mukti karanam.”-”Give up all that is non-Atman (anatman), which is the cause of all misery, think only of the Atman, which is blissful and the locus of all liberation.” [Vivekacudamani of Samkara v. 379], “Every qualifying characteristic is, as the non-Atman (anatman), comparable to the empty hand.” [Upadisa Sahasri of Samkara v. 6.2], “the intellect, its modifications, and objects are the non-Atman (anatman).” [Upadisa Sahasri of Samkara v. 14.9], “The gain of the non-Atman (anatman) is no gain at all. Therefore one should give up the notion that one is the non-Atman (anatman).” [Upadisa Sahasri of Samkara v. 14.44]. In none of the Buddhist suttas is there support for "there is no-atman" theories of anatta . The message is simply to cease regarding the very khandhas in those terms by which the notion of atman has, itself, been so easily misconstrued. As has been shown, detaching oneself from the phenomenal desire for the psycho-physical existence was also a central part of Samkara’s strategy. There is, hence, nothing in the suttas that Samkara, the chief proponent of Advaita Vedanta, would have disagreed with.

Due to sectarian (and secular) propagation of commentary over that of doctrine, and more still a nominalized, or neutered mistranslation of the original Pali texts, a general acceptance of the concept of “A Doctrine of Anatta” exists as a status quo, however there exists no substantiation for same in sutta for Buddhism’s denial of the atman, or in using the term anatta in anything but a positive sense in denying Self-Nature, the Soul, to any one of a conglomeration of corporeal and empirical phenomena which were by their very transitory nature, “impermanent (anicca), suffering (dukkha), and Selfless (anatta)”. The only noun in sutra which is referred to as “permanent (nicca)” is the Soul, such as Samyutta Nikaya 1.169. Buddhism’s ‘na me so atta’ is no more a denial of the Atman than is Socrates’ ‘to…soma….ouk estin ho anthropos’ (the body is not the Man [Aniochus 365]) is a denial of the Man. Young men asked Gotama as to the whereabouts of a woman they were seeking to which he replied “What young men do you think, were it not better for you to seek the Atman (atmanam gavis) than a woman?” [Vin 1.23]. In fact the term “Anatmavada” is a concept utterly foreign to Buddhist sutta, existing in only non-doctrinal Theravada, in some Mahayana, and Madhyamika commentaries. As the truism holds, a “lie repeated often enough over time becomes the truth”. Those interested parties incident to learning of Buddhism are most often incapable of pouring through endless gigantic piles of Buddhist doctrine, and have therefore defacto accepted the commentarial-based trash, the notion of a “doctrine of anatta (or often said "no soul doctrine")” as key to Buddhism itself, when in fact there exists not one citation of this untenable and irrational concept in either the Digha, Majjhima, Samyutta, Anguttara, or Khuddaka Nikayas. Unless evoking a fallacy, we who seek out Buddhism sans the commentarialists slants and opinion-based musings, must stick strictly to sutta as reference, wherein the usage of anatta never falls outside of the parameter of merely denying Self or Soul to the profane and transitory phenomena of temporal and samsaric life which is “subject to arising and passing”, and which is most certain not (an) our Soul (atta). Certainly the most simple philosophically based logic would lead anyone to conclude that no part of this frail body is “my Self, is That which I am”, is “not my Soul”, of which Gotama the Buddha was wholeheartedly in agreement that no part of it was the Soul i.e. was in fact anatta. The spiritual and metaphysical adept is one who must be the “dead man walking” who has followed the commandment: “die before ye die!”, and is one who has died to that (mere) self and lives in the Spirit, or the Self. This is the discernment between the Great Self (mahatta) and little self (alpatman); or the fair Self (kalyanatta) from the foul self (papatta).

The perfect contextual usage of anatta in sutta: “Whatever form, feelings, perceptions, experiences, or consciousness there are (the five aggregates), these he sees to be without permanence, as suffering, as ill, as a plague, a boil, a sting, a pain, an affliction, as foreign, as otherness, as empty (suññato), as Selfless (anattato). So he turns his mind (citta) away from these and gathers his mind/will within the realm of Immortality (amataya dhatuya). This is tranquility; this is that which is most excellent!” [MN 1.436]. The Buddha never considered the atman to be micchaditthi (wrong view). If the Buddha disbelieved in an atman (soul) why did he not deny the atman unambiguously? There is no such denial.

By denying outright the soul, by default, the Theravadins, western ‘scholars’ examining Buddhism, and modern "buddhists" imply that the five aggregates are ultimate. This of course is absurd. They have merely shifted Buddhism to an empiricism by ignoring pro-atman statements. According to them, what is real is what makes sensory knowledge possible, namely, the five aggregates which, ironically, according to the canon, are = Mara, or evil (papa); [SN 3.195] “Mara = five khandhas (empirical self)”. It begs the question to assume that the no-soul doctrine had been established at the beginning of the Buddha’s ministry and that the atman (soul) was, in every respect, an abhorrent term. Still, for such a supposedly abhorrent term, there are innumerable, are countless positive instances of atman used throughout the Nikayas, especially used in compounds which are easily glossed over by a prejudicial commentator and nominalist translators. In meeting these instances, not surprisingly, these same prejudicial translators have erected a theory that the atman is purely a reflexive pronoun. The lexical rule that atman (Pali: attan) is to be used strictly in a pronominal fashion, or simply should be used as a signifier for the finite body, is unwarranted. Scholars like C.A.F. Davids, Conze, Humphrey, Schrader, Horner, Pande, Coomarswamy, Radhakrishnan, Sogen, Suzuki, Julius Evola, and Nakamura, just to name some important scholars, disagree with the claim that Buddha categorically denied an eternal (nicca) soul, whose teachings then, would be classified as Annihilationist and Materialist. In fact there are utterly none living or dead who have examined the original texts in detail whilst refraining from sectarian and commentarial explanations and concluded Buddhism has in any way denied the atman thru and by means of the usage of the term anatta or otherwise. The fatally determined conglomeration which comprises the temporal body “headed for the grave” is not in dispute and is what is meant by anatta. To this there can be no opposition since all forms of metaphysics cry out for a “freedom from (that mere) self”, as Buddhism is in full agreement: [Dhm. 147] "Behold! That painted puppet this body, riddled with oozing sores, an erected façade. Diseased heap that fools fancy and swoon over; True Essence is not part of it! For the body befalls utter destruction, [Dhm. 148] "This body is soon worn out. It is that very same abode for disease and sicknesses that is broken apart. The body is soon cast away, that very putrid heap. It is always in death that life meets its end!”, [Dhm. 150] "Behold! This city of bones, plastered together with flesh and blood. Within its walls are old age and death. Pride, arrogance, and hypocrisy are its townsfolk!", [MN 1.185] "What of this short-lived body which is clung to by means of craving? There is nothing in it to say ‘I’ or ‘mine’ or ‘me’."

The term anatman is found not only in Buddhist sutras, but also in the Upanishads and lavishly so in the writings of Samkara as mentioned earlier. Anatman is a common via negativa (neti neti, not this, not that) teaching method common to Vedanta, Neoplatonism, Buddhism, early Christian mystics, and others, wherein nothing affirmative can be said of what is “beyond speculation, beyond words, and concepts” thereby eliminating all positive characteristics that might be thought to apply to the Soul, or be attributed to it; to wit that the Subjective ontological Self-Nature (svabhava / atman) can never be known objectively, but only thru “the denial of all things which it (the Soul) is not”- Meister Eckhart. This doctrine is also called by the Greeks Apophasis. Via negativa can only go so far, such that the Subject (Witness/Atman) cannot be negated (Subject precedes any object of negation, even and also false attempts at Subject/Witness negation [=nihilism]). Objective negation culminates in Subjective gnosis and liberation, not to mention is the most expedient means to Atman-realization (atmanbodhi, cittavimutta, pannavimutta, etc.). Just as a fool might, for hundreds of hours, pick thru a pile of straw (phenomena) in search of a needle (atman), the wisest of men, in mere seconds, lights a match to the phenomena (straw) which quickly burns and blows away, leaving before his feet the needle sought; and this is of course part of the expediency as core to the via negativa methodology.

Modern Buddhism (so-called, not that it is Buddhism in any way) labors under the heinous delusion that from the outset there is no immaterial and ontological soul, or atman in the system of Buddhism and therefore the only logical conclusion from this false premise is that Buddhism is merely a profane moral Humanism based in compassionate empirical idealism, ‘liberation but no Liberant’, and this is palpably false. Under the guise of a more polished form of physicalism or rather, Atheism, a mere qualifier of objective phenomena, anatta, has overrun a noetic metaphysics, Buddhism, based in extracting the nous (spirit, citta, Self) from the objective cosmos (=anatta) wherein it has been miserably immersed since time immemorial as due to the attribute of the Absolute (Brahman, Greek = Hen), that being avijja (agnosis, nescience, as is philosophically meant Emanationism). Avijja (a+vijja [atman]) and anatta (an+atman) in no way differ, such that both refer to the beginningless privation, or objectivity immanent to the Absolute. Overcoming this objective desire (tanha) and enthrallment which constitute what is meant by anatta, is vijja (illumination), or conventionally liberation (vimutta, vijjavimutta); namely the only connection between atman and anatta is that of avijja to which Buddhism’s endgoal is pannavimutta (liberation via wisdom) in which avijja has no longer any footing; where avijja is not present, so too is anatta absent, this is the very Tathagata (gone to Brahman, or That), the same ‘dead man walking’, he who has ‘died before he has (physically) died’. Like the ancient riddle about the fool "who rides upon horseback looking to and fro for a horse, and seeing none, denies that horses exist", so too is modern buddhism inept and impotent in 'seeing' that the focus is the Witness (atman), that very Subject which cannot be known (empirical knowledge) objectively, but which can be Known (gnosis, wisdom); thereby effectuating "liberation", "immortality" (amata), and the declaration that "this is my last life".

That myself or anyone need go into such extensive and repetitive detail about a simple term, anatta, which now corruptly forms the basis of modern Buddhism, only demonstrates the heights from which original Buddhism has fallen severely over the past 2400 years. Like an ancient city in the jungle overgrown with vines and weeds, shat upon by nesting birds, and inhabited by fanged monkeys who fling their feces at visitors, modern "buddhism" attracts only the mentally perverse, often spiritually suicidal, who wrongly see superficially something noble in a soulless nihilistic Humanistic idealism.

Buddhism as an Utterly Failed Religious Trainwreck

2010-05-16T11:21:00.000-07:00

It cannot be disputed that anything popular cannot be true, even if the original article, long lost to the winds of time a buried under unenlightened commentary, was in fact a true and Aryan teaching regarding either metaphysics or the liberation from existential selfhood. For, all things popular are by the very definition of same, profane and ignoble; that the common man is a senseless brute who does not, cannot cleave his mind to things deep, abstruse, mystical and endowed with Aryan virtues regarding things hidden and sublime. Nothing true or noble has ever been obtained by or thru consensus, least of which being metaphysics, or its secular bastard-child, religion. The so-called ‘secret’ teachings as conventionally called today; rooted in the Aryan metaphysics of Platonism (Pythagorean Emanationism), pre-sectarian Buddhism (deemed Brahmayana, path to the Absolute, by its founder), Advaita and the like are only so deemed secret or hidden such that the overwhelming majority of peoples are devoid of any mentality to grasp the immaterial and subjective nature of the ministries left by those greats who understood and related the nature of the Absolute, of souls, and the kosmos noetos; the only secret in the ‘secret’ teachings is that sufficient wisdom is required to understand them, not that their message has been purposefully obscured.

Advaita has remained nearly 100% intact in its message over these many centuries, whereas Buddhism is entirely dead. Books such as “The Rise and Decline of Buddhism in India” and likewise have attempted to answer this question, giving correct reasoning for its decline such as 1. the creation of countless schisms and myriad short-lived sects 2. the explosive expansion of ritualized fetishism in the form of Mahayanism 3. Brahmanical hostility and campaigns against Buddhism 4. Pessimistic nihilism on the part of later-day Buddhism which over emphasized suffering alone 5. Royal persecution 6. Muslim massive destruction of temples and killing off of Buddhist monastics 7. Decline in patronage 8. No genuine decline of true, or earliest Buddhist metaphysics but its gradual reassimilation back into Vedanta of which Buddhism was merely a reestablishment thereof. All of these however pale collectively, as the reasoning behind Buddhism’s utter demise in time as compared its missionary nature and its utter lack of metaphysics.

Before getting to the main reason for Buddhism’s complete death it should be noted that none have made note that, in the Nikayas Buddhism does in fact espouse and instruct a “spread the word” missionary position by its founder Gotama. Anytime an Aryan metaphysics has given into this position it is short order for its message’s utter corruption and dissolution. However Buddhism’s current popularity is such that this very same perverted missionary faith was spread far beyond the Ganges valley into Afghanistan, Iran, China, and the Ashokan pillar edicts mention Buddhist missionaries as far west at the lands of Ptolemy II Philadelphus, the ruler of Ptolemaic Egypt; fools instructing even more unintelligent fools in the ‘message of Gotama’. That Advaita specifically was always a relatively small and close-to-the-master (upa-ni-shad, to sit up close [to the master]) faith and therefore there was little room for misunderstanding and corruption of the teachings, is only a portion of the reason for Advaita’s intact nature after all these centuries. The Advaitins, rightly so, were called Mayavadins by their peers for the sensible reason that Advaita was highly keen on debating the nature of maya, of avidya (agnosis, or rightly meant Brahman’s attribute) in a highly detailed and specific manner, i.e. the philosophical and metaphysical werks of the Absolute, as to how things material and immaterial have come to be in the system of Advaita’s model of the cosmos, just as the Neoplatonists themselves became notorious for.

Buddhism’s coffin nail came directly from Gotama himself both in primarily refusing repeated requests to establish the metaphysics of his system and secondarily for being a poor teacher. Unfortunately Gotama suffered the same fate he makes mention of regarding others in the Anguttara Nikaya where he declared that though a man may be fully illuminated he is not therefore so endowed with the mental prowess to pass along the methodology to achieve same amongst others. Such notable positions as when Gotama is asked to elaborate upon the meaning of avijja (paticcasamuppada #1, i.e. the cause of the descent of Being into embodiment) Gotama merely declares “avijja to mean not knowing the four noble truths”. Pathetically the only approach to a pseudo-metaphysical explanation in the entirety of the Nikayas by Gotama regarding avijja is [AN 5.113] Followers, the beginning of ignorance can never be discerned (beginningless) such that it cannot be said “Here is the First where ignorance is not, here is the contingency which generated it.” Such that it should be discerned, followers, “ignorance is a condition”.

That in Monism, the most important metaphysical principle requiring explanation, the cause of descent of Being, receives one obscure sentence from Gotama and same receives endless volumes from, initially Samkara, and far more still from his immediate disciples, cannot be ignored as anything less than the primary factor for Buddhism’s death and Advaita’s survival. Metaphysical systems are not survived in numbers (of followers) but in the expanse and accuracy its metaphysics. As mentioned 1-9 earlier, as grounds for Buddhism’s decline, Buddhism has survived, but in name only, its message is completely and irrefutably deceased. Buddhism alas could have easily withstood 1 thru 9, but not its founders myopic ignorance in refusing to establish the metaphysics of his system. It is a truism of philosophical history that nothing true is popular and nothing popular is true. Gotama’s refusal to establish a metaphysics has left a pathetic religious façade of Mahayanists, oriental and farcical Zen, and far worse the survival since its inception in the early centuries C.E., Theravada materialism, or properly physicalism. Rightly so in Gotama’s time, life was both short and harsh, and his position to teach a crash course in, firstly, disobjectification by becoming disgusted with formerly desired after objective phenomena and lastly assimilation (samadhi), was worthwhile and noble, but only so long as he remained around to direct others towards same. Without an expansive and solid metaphysics, which precedes the methodology, sans the teacher there is right quick dissolution and intent of the methodology as well.

In Buddhism’s instance, the failure to establish elaborately the nature of the atman, of avidya specifically, as Advaita had so carefully constructed, it became quickly apparent that the extensive via negativa approach of Buddhism without an accompanying metaphysics for same, lead its heirs to acquisition anatman as implied reality rather than an objective qualifier (A,B,C,D are anatman, are not-atman, are na me so atta ‘not my Soul’). In so taking anatman, incorrectly, subjectively, Buddhism’s heirs have to wit negated the endgoal of the very methodology which Gotama spelled out in full “atman as light and refuge” [DN 2.100 etc.]. In teaching this quick and expedient means of liberation sans a detailed metaphysics, Buddhism had from the start doomed itself to failure. It might be asked by the unintelligent that since Buddhism is a popular (= profane, common, base, unaryan) religion (secular mirage of metaphysics) how could it be said that Buddhism is at all dead? This question loaded brim with ignorance however presumes that quantity outstretches even miniscule quality. Plato, and his heir Plotinus, the two most brilliant metaphysicians and true philosophers who have ever lived are, today, possessed of far less than a handful of those who would be rightly deemed and self-professed ‘Platonists’, however these few are genuine metaphysicians and philosophers endowed with nobility and worth.

Gotama, while an illumined sage and knower of the Absolute did not possess the mentality, the intellectual prowess to transfer his revelation across the ages. His unwilling attitude towards illuminating his metaphysics and instead focusing in upon his expeditious methodology ultimately doomed his methodology in the end. Philosophical and metaphysical systems in great detail are not required to ‘reach the far shore’, however time and logic have shown irrefutably that those same metaphysical systems are required to alay sectarian divisions, squabbles over the endgoal if any, and the premise of the methodology itself. Gotamas vehicle (yana) sped along with its followers, but after his passing, his lack of illuminating the metaphysical works of his vehicle to liberation left his heirs with a vehicle to which they were and are clueless as to the hows, whats, wheres, and whys of its operation, akin to a stranded driver along the road with a broken vehicle of which he himself is utterly ignorant to know how to repair.

Buddhism is today a successful failure, not much apart from Creationism or Atheism however its in profane standing as apart from nobility; is little more than a Humanistic affirmation of mundane ethical things irrelevant to the original article, or as Dr. A.K. Coomaraswamy had said “Buddhism is most famous today for everything it originally never taught”. Gotama was a miserable failure in the most important fashion, that in which he failed to see or to realize that without a metaphysics, his ministry was forever doomed from the outset. In this point there can be no contention; Gotama was not wise enough to ever realize the magnificent error he made which has evolved into a successful and dismal failure we call ‘Buddhism’ today, but which should be shown nothing but contempt by the wise few.

Buddhism is not Buddhism

2010-05-14T19:03:00.000-07:00

The deluded and preening religious rabble who upon bellies like worms wiggle in the religion known today as ‘buddhism’ are clueless as to the original texts, contexts, and meaning of the message of Gotama who was the (sic) historical founder of what is known as Buddhism today. The doctrine of earliest Buddhasassana (doctrine of the Buddha), that being the Pali Nikayas, makes no quibble that it is heretical in the extreme to declare that the “Buddha’s teachings are in any way original, new, novel” [It 96]. Oddly (or seemingly so to the few wisemen such as myself and others) nobody is interested in what Gotama taught, and how, if in any way, his teachings differed from that of Vedanta’s message. These pathetic and profane rabble comprise nearly 100% of the religious clergy of what is known as Buddhism today; these are of course religionists, not metaphysicians, not truth seekers, not wisemen, not investigators of earliest Buddhism, and if asked they will not hesitate to expose their disdain for “dusty old texts & dogma”, much less discover the revelations to be found within.

Do facts such as Gotama’s own self-referencing himself as a “sage of the Vedas” (vedasotthim), or a teacher of the “way to Brahman” (brahmayana Sn 5.5), or as found here [DN 3.84] "The Tathagata means 'the body of Brahman', 'become Brahman'." [DN 1.249] “ I teach the way to the union with Brahman, I know the way to the supreme union with Brahman, and the path and means leading to Brahman, whereby the world of Brahman may be gained.” [DN 1.248] ”all the peoples say that Gotama is the supreme teacher of the way leading to the Union with Brahman!”; do not many thousands of such facts from earliest doctrine pique the interest of these pseudo-spiritual buffoons that “Buddhism isn’t Buddhism”? The fact is that absolutely all intelligent (and there are several) examinations of Buddhism on its own grounds, and not through the filter of later-day sectarian commentarialism shows clearly to the learned Buddhologist that this “Buddhism” (so-called) in no way differed from the Vedanta as established in the principle Upanishads nor the core of the highly ritualistically ripe Vedas. Dr. A.K. Coomaraswamy was utmost in the right when he proclaimed “the more superficially one studies Buddhism (i.e. commentarial and guru based trash) one (sees same as a wholly new faith); however the more deeply one studies Buddhism, the more impossible it becomes to in any way differentiate Buddhism from its root Vedanta”.

There are none living or dead who have shown or could show, with evidences from doctrine itself that Buddhism in even the slightest, diverged from, disputed the core message of, or contraindicated the methodology & wisdom of emancipation of the spirit (nous, citta/atman) from perpetual self (khandhic/empirical/temporal) identification; or as meant the reversal of the uncaused premise of the soul’s descent into embodiment, that being agnosis/avijja/avidya. This fact of course gravely upsets the religionist demons who cleave fiercely to the false notion that Buddhism is ‘original’, ‘solely of divine creation from a spiritual and metaphysical void’. This fact would, in their deluded minds, cause Buddhism to lose its perceptive uniqueness in their eyes, and therefore besmirch Buddhism as a whole, and would cause Buddhism to be blended into the tree of Vedantic thought as a mere subgroup of Vedantic commentarialism specifically; which of course it in fact is.

I could write a near endless novel about this subject alone, suffice to say that the wheat, or wisemen are firmly planted in the realm of facts, logic, and doctrine, whereas the common incredulous religious rabble, or chaff, see Buddhism as a ritualistic trinket, unique and original in everyway, and something wholly other than (sic) “Hinduism”; and nothing is more palpably false and disingenuous to the evidences within doctrine itself. If one cannot see the low and base religionist and his ignoble position of pomp and conjecture as wholly separate from that of the metaphysician and logical investigator of doctrine, then one has utterly no hope of separating the facts from the commentarial trash and lies so very very long promulgated by the wicked “Buddhists” who are in no way better than demons in the extreme.

Buddhism has its own worth in grasping the Monism of Vedanta, just as Plotinus who was aught more than a rehasher of Platonism’s core message, is a supremely invaluable tool to be studied and understood as a finer and more concise synopsis of the metaphysics of Pythagoreanism and Platonism. Buddhism however, is not Buddhism, nor is there a Pali term for same, nor is there a term for ‘buddhist’. Gotama’s own command was that his teachings were Brahmayana (path to Brahman) and his message the reestablishment of the lost meaning of Vedanta’s core. None on earth living or dead can go against this fact, many however have tried to pry Buddhism from “Hinduism”, and absolutely all have failed miserably. There is no Buddhism to be studied; and this is coming from someone (myself) who has studied the original texts in the original Pali for many tens of thousands of hours. There is only Vedantic Monism, of which Buddhism is merely an aspect thereof.

"Buddhism is most famous today for everything it originally never taught" Dr. A.K.C.

Ockham’s razor, the Absolute, and the paradigm for all truth

2010-04-04T16:31:00.000-07:00

William of Ockham, famous for a take upon his statement that one should not multiply entities beyond necessity “Entia non sunt multiplicanda sine necessitate”; now known only as “Ockham’s razor” was a metaphysical conclusion taken upon himself from the Platonic texts to which he was oft to have studied. It is certainly true that Ockham’s position to wit that the only “true necessity was that of God; all else is a (compounded) contingency” is at least nearly correct, as taken from the position of his Creationist mentality which cannot be cleaved from Ockham’s error that the Absolute was a composite entity with self-sentience, i.e. God.

From this obviously untenable position it is of no surprise that “Ockham’s razor” is often wielded as an argument against a Creationist theos by the equally ignorant nihilists and metaphysical atheists who realize the incommensurate errors which lie at the heart of positing the Absolute as more than the essence of being, but rather a supreme being in and of itself, to which the Platonists are vociferously apposite. It is therefore ironic that Ockham himself was a Creationist merely well versed and agreed with the logical Monism as found in the Platonic texts to which he was well learned, save for subjective adaptation to fit into his God-model of cosmic mechanics.

Ockham was arguably important in physics for his view, apparently an application of his razor, that motion is essentially self-conserving in itself without need of any causal force to which it need be added that Monism’s very core denies a “first sin” or “original cause” for the descent of being into empirical entrapment. The great “secret”, for lack of better designation, of Emanationism (proodos) and Platonic Monism is that descent and embodiment are ananke (necessitated, unavoidable; choate principle and attribute of the Absolute itself) to which wisdom’s revelation invokes the divine insight in the seeker that what the Absolute “is” and what it “does” are without distinction, in whole or in part, and are one and the very same essence, that being nous, or spirit, will, or “mind” in the non-empirical sense. To which what spirit ‘is’ and its attribute (what it ‘does’) are without differentiation.

Rightly so, his skepticism to which his ontological divine-simplicity request leads, appears in his doctrine that human reason can prove neither the immortality of the soul nor the existence, unity, and infinity of God. These truths, he teaches, are known to us by noetic revelation alone; logically all empirical speculation and theories are objective consubstantial conscious machinations which can neither provide revelation or bring about assimilation, i.e. bring proximity of the spirit to itself.

“Ockham’s razor”, in summation, lays contrary to the Creationist-God of Ockham himself but equally and intensely so against that of the materialist-nihilist. Ignoring this nuance as defect in the engrained Abrahamic mentality of Ockham’s Euro-Christian mentality, his “razor” sits at the very cornerstone and foundation upon which Platonism, logic and truth are built. This divine edifice of Emanationist Monism to which Ockham himself is famous for, but which he merely rediscovered, is the “supreme simplicity” which is stunningly simplex, yet which composes the entire mechanics of Emanationism/Platonic Monism. All beauty and complexity in nature are based upon Phi or Phi composites and it is certainly no surprise this divine ratio (Phi is to 1, as 1 is to Phi; or that Phi and 1 are but both the same thing, one delineated, the other numerated principle) was center of much study by the Platonists and the Pythagoreans before them (and before them?…).

Given a great deal of sufficient wisdom (to which I am thankful to possess much) it must be stated that just beneath the ecstatic unspeakable and transcendent bliss of synthesis with the Absolute, this holy union of Self with Self/Absolute; second to this is the intense stupefaction one is blessed to ‘see’, as product of wisdom, the incredible simplicity, the necessity (“it cannot be another way”) of the mechanics of totality. The elimination internally of all of mankind’s most common and many metaphysical “whys” wiped for all eternity from ones soul, is a spiritual Kingship that cannot be described in any sense or relation to another. “Ockham’s razor” is merely a very late and rehashed statement attributed to William of Ockham as to his insights gleaned from his Platonic studies; just as all things known and unknown are, there is “nothing new under the sun, only things said and lost, and rediscovered and made new again”.

What is most important of this “razor” is that, unlike the nihilism of atheism and illogic of Creationism, Emanationism stands at the epicenter of abductive logic, of truth, of unspeakably divine simplicity, of incontrovertibility, as the undeniable model of totality and the cosmos both spiritual and material. Thereof the wise and fool alike are begged to take precious time to study and come to internally know (gnosis, not episteme) what is true and most beneficial. Just as the Aryan kneels with bent head before the holy alter of wisdom (the same alter upon which the gods themselves also ‘sacrifice’) and which can bear one upon spiritual holistics, and the noetic righting of all former errors.

He who has not, before the alter of truth, vowed to sacrifice all to know what forever remains unknown to the common and profane many, shall not come to ‘see’ what leads to salvation and wisdom which transcends the antinomies of life and death; and which woefully perpetuates oneself thru eons of suffering and ignorance. Those super-rare wise become the unmarked and holy who cannot be counted or seen by the woes of this world and the demons who prey upon the helpless. They bear no debts or burdens; the children of ignorance are for them utterly gone for all eternity. Any who looks for such ones will only come upon a named body but never shall they find the Person who has been “wiped clean forever from the slate of birth and death”.

What abnormal stupefaction the wise are blessed with to have wisdom into the incredible simplicity behind the mechanics of all things. Truly it takes much wisdom to rise above the trees to see the forest and at once know beginning and end and all things tween’ both and marvel and rejoice in wisdom’s fruit which bears witness to such a profound revelation few else can fathom. The “razor” is not Ockham’s, nor the Platonists, but it is supremely true, is timeless, and revelation nonetheless; a paradigm the wise will nod to as acknowledgement of what they know as unquestionably accurate about the Absolute.

Largest Buddhism & Metaphysics Website on Earth www.kathodos.com

2009-09-21T15:53:00.000-07:00

kathodos.com is ultimately dedicated to original traditionalist metaphysics of logical philosophies like Platonic Monism, including Advaita Vedanta, Plotinian Platonism, and original Buddhism specifically.

To quote the late metaphysician, Dr. A.K. Coomaraswamy: “Buddhism is most famous today for everything it originally never taught.” As such Attan.com does not advocate nor endorse Theravada/Hinayana, nor any form of Mahayana, Vajrayana, and certainly not Zen; none of these sectarian creations are original to earliest Buddhism.

“My teachings are (to be called) Brahmayana [Path to Brahman/Absolute/The-One]” –[Samyutta Nikaya, Mahavagga verse 4] ~ Gotama Buddha

Kathodos.com is devoted to original Buddhism, Traditionalist metaphysics, and the gnosis advocated thereof, as such it is an Anti-Guru, Anti-Zen-Master, Anti-Lama, Anti-Rimpoche, and Anti-bhikkhu site adverse to any and all forms of superficial spiritual-materialism, petty ritualisms, and the New-Age movement in general.

Kathodos.com is equally adversarial to those who find counterfeit peace and grace in spiritual trinkets, empirical pietism such as extreme bodily austerities such as chanting, bowing, self-mortification, or those who find love towards cultish Guru-personalities, other such pseudo-religious rubbish and meaningless corporeal endeavors which are irrelevant to the gnosis which culminates in the noetic liberation of spirit.

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The Lost meaning of Avijja / Avidya (agnosis)

2009-09-21T12:31:00.000-07:00

What is avijja (agnosis) specifically? To refer to said term as merely ‘ignorance’ is a misnomer. This very short exposition of the lost and metaphysical meaning of avijja is meant to expose the philosophical and secret ontological significance that the term avijja refers to in the cosmological model of original Buddhism, Platonism, and encompassing both (these Monistic systems), that of Emanationism, the only true model of totality.

Avijja is literally meant Emanationism, the extrinsic attribute of the Absolute which is the indefinite dyad (aoristos dyas) for all creation, if the Absolute were devoid of an attribute, creation would be impossible, for even the most simplex of things have at least one attribute, the illumination of light and fluidity of water, for example (both attributes of a simplex principle). From the perspective of the Absolute, the very ‘stuff’ of will (citta/Brahman), there is no attribute, it is will utterly and only; as such the nature of the Absolute and its ‘act’ must be wholly indistinguishable, otherwise the presupposition of two subjects, the Absolute and X, would be posited and the very premise of Monism (Monism in meaning = 1 only) and of Emanationism would be utterly negated.

Avijja is a compound term composed of the privative A (not, opposite to, other than, lack of) and VIJJA (Light, Soul, Atman, Brahman). The very nature of the Absolute (vijja), which is objectively directed (a) away from its very Subject (vijja/Brahman), which is also that very same nature of the Atman (“Atman is [of the nature of] Brahman”-Up, and Buddhism: ‘Brahmabhutena attano’).

The confusion over avijja lies in the fact that it is both subjectively and objectively directed simultaneously. Avijja itself being the “light from itself (directed)” is meant that avijja has the Subjective (Self and Absolute) as its object, namely the concealment or privation (a) of the Subject (Atman) from itself. Avijja is objectification by its very definition, i.e. Emanationism. The object of avijja is the Absolute (the light, or vijja, from itself, a), meaning that the Subject, the Absolute, is self-objectifying, i.e. the very nature of will (citta,chit,Brahman) itself, being ‘to will’, not to itself, but to other. Avijja is itself objectification (by the Subject to other), but the very lack of (a) wisdom (vijja) in the will of a being is as pertains its nature, the Subject to which avijja is the very object of.

Brahman is Atman, and Atman is of the nature of Brahman and in no doubt the very premise of both the Upanishads and of original Buddhism, the only differentiation between the two is Atman is devoid of the objectively directed attribute of Brahman, such that the Atman is self-reflexive and self-assimilative, i.e. completely dis-objectified =self-actualization,... the actualization (Atman) of what was before merely potential due to the objectively (avijja) directed nature of the Absolute. Atman is the actualization (by wisdom, self-assimilation) of Brahman which is sheer potential and unmediated (avijja).

Just as one cannot differentiate light from its attribute (to illumine), neither can the nature of the Absolute be thought different or a separate entity from its attributive or extrinsic principle, that of self-objectification, that will wills (citta cetasa). Agnosis is Emanationism itself, the objectively directed “light” from itself to other. Avijja is not a thing itself, but a privation, the uncaused cause for all becoming (bhava).

Unlike Creationism which posits a sentient all-aware Superbeing (God) as the principle (1st cause) behind the complexity we see in nature, Emanationism differs to the logic necessity of merely the extrinsic side of the nature of the Absolute as such that it is, by its very attribute, the “unmoved Mover” behind all things composite, phenomenal and noetic. Complexity in nature and the cosmos at large is in dispute by none, neither by Creationist, Nihilist, or Monist (Emanationist), only the nexus for said complexity is disputed. As pertains the Absolute, its nature and activity are inseparably one thing only, this is the long lost ‘secret’ behind avijja. There is no first cause behind the phenomenal cosmos nor for the spiritual, the noetic will(s) which encircle and underlies the visible world. With attribute as ‘cause’, all things are manifest as the artifice (maya) of the visible world we covet in ignorance (avijja). First cause necessitates an irreconcilable duality, which cannot be enjoined in Emanationism, that A: something other than the Absolute is cause for all things become, or that B: the Absolute is complex being (God) that chose and created the cosmos. The reconciliation of the ignorant proposition of a “first cause for all things become” is merely that of the attributive and extrinsic nature of the Absolute itself, avijja, or the will to other, the ‘lighting outwards of the nature of light itself’, or as is meant here, the Absolute, which is of the nature of will (citta).

“Bhavanirodha nibbanam” (subjugation of becoming is meant Nirvana) is absolutely identical in meaning to “Yoga chita vritti nirodha” (Yoga [samadhi/assimilation] is the subjugation of the will’s [citta] turnings/ manifestations/ perturbations); as such becoming (bhava) and vritti (perturbations) are meant the inchoate nature of the will to objectively direct itself in perpetuity is the beginningless and the primordial principle of the Absolute to other. Overcoming the attributive privation of the Subject to have itself as an object (an impossibility) must be surmounted for liberation to occur such that the Subject has itself as object indirectly thru the via negativa methodology wherein the will ‘knows’ itself as ‘none of this’ and becoming is halted and Self-objectification ceases (nirodha).

Avijja and anatta (Skt. Anatman) are interchangeable terms, the principle of the Absolute to objectification (a-vijja) is meant anatta, for what is other than the Atman, the Light/Vijja than all the 22 named phenomena which are not (a/an) the Soul (vijja/atman)? The finer distinction however between anatta and avijja is that anatta is the purely phenomenal manifestation of the ontological attribute of the Absolute, avijja.

How can what does not exist in anyway be the cause for all things and namely for suffering itself? Surely as a man lost in a barren dessert suffers thirst by the non-existence of waters in said barren lands; so too does the Samsarin (person lost in samsara) suffer at the ‘hands’ of his will which is objectively (avijja) directed to the world of phenomena and sense pleasures, all of which are anatman and which is meant by the very term avijja, for avijja is the privation of illumination/revelation/ditthi in the being as relates to his very nature and true Self, of which the Atman is vijja. That his will (the very Self) is objectively (anatta) directed, instead of Subjectively assimilated (vijja, Atman), “therein does he suffer” -Gotama. Liberation via wisdom (vijjavimutta, i.e. pannavimutta) is the actualization of the light of the will upon itself (vijja) instead of, as primordially and without beginning from the Absolute, objectively (avijja) directed.

Avidya (avijja Pali) has befuddled (and continues to do so) Vedantists now for thousands of years as witnessed to in lively debates we still have record of. Namely it was impossible for them to come to odds with the nature of avidya, such that “how can what is mere privation (lack of gnosis, avidya) be the cause for all things? Was Avidya real or unreal? Was it both or neither? What is the locus of avijja? Is it the Absolute, or the Atman, or the mere (phenomenal) self, or neither, or both?” None of these questions are tenable, for avijja is not a thing in itself, but the principle of the Absolute, the primordial principle antecedent to being, or the empirical principle of avijja as manifest in the composite being. What would the locus of a shadow, the privation of light, be? Certainly we can point to X shadow, but that cannot be the locus of avijja, for something precedes the shadow, so would it be that which casts the shadow? No, for that shape which casts the shadow is preceded by the light which is blocked by that shape. The shadow belongs neither to the form nor the light, but is the objective construct of both. Avijja is subjectively directed and objectively manifest.

Since avijja is merely the extrinsic and Subjective attribute of the will (willing to other [object] = avijja), there is no locus for avijja, for if one were to say: “avijja is the attributive principle of the Absolute, therefore avijja’s locus is the Absolute/Brahman”, this is a nonsensical statement since the locus for illumination (avijja) as pertains light, is also unanswerable since neither the object of illumination, nor the light itself is the locus of illumination. Avijja is act, nature and necessity of the Absolute, all three, for its as impossible to separate illumination from light as to separate willing from will, or avijja from vijja, for avijja implies vijja, just as anatta implies the attan! Would so the fool speak of avijja or anatta without attempting to (in negative dialectics) point to the vijja, the attan (Atman. Skt.)?

Avijja has no meaning outside the conjunct of will and matter, the empirical consciousness (vinnana). The very nature of the Light (vijja) is its outwardly principle to illumine (avijja), principle nor privation have a locus. The Absolute, or Brahman is most certainly vijja, simplex in every way, so to proclaim that the locus of avijja is “in the Absolute” would be both untrue but also illogical. Light (vijja) and illumination (avijja) are inseparably one thing only; this is the indefinite dyad (aoristos dyas) of the ancient Greek Platonists. Specifically ancient Pali is revealing, for the very word for consciousness, vinnana, is literally meant agnosis (avijja): vi (opposite to, contrary of, other than) + ñana (gnosis, vijja, Knowledge, Light, Atman, Brahman), i.e. Vi+nana (vinnana). For the “unknowing” (vinnana), the consciousness of being is the resultant manifestation directly attributive to the Absolute and its very extrinsic nature. As pertains Buddhism specifically, avijja is the first position in the chain of contingent manifestation (paticcasamuppada), however one need ask: “agnosis (avijja) OF what and BY what”? Ignorance itself is not a thing, but an attribution of something, be it in one of two modalities, primordial agnosis (avijja), or empirical agnosis. Samyutta 2.4 specifically (as well as countless other passages) equate avijja with agnosis (anana): [Katama ca, bhikkhave, avijja? yam kho, bhikkhave, dukkhe aññanam”].

Two entirely different levels of agnosis are at play in the model of being, one being the primordial agnosis which is beginningless, and the agnosis which is willed by a being from second to second, as pertains his will (citta), be it by wisdom or lack thereof ; ignorance is manifest which either perpetuates becoming (bhava) and actions (karma), or wisdom in its place which subjugates (nirodha) them; specifically [SN 5.127] speaks of the empirical side of agnosis in the being who so wills them at the discretion of his (level of) ignorance. “As above, so below” this is true of the Absolute that primordial agnosis is the higher principle behind empirical agnosis as manifest in being. The self-privative avijja of the nature of the Absolute that it is subjectively directed inwards, and the empirical ‘shadow’ of the being who marvels in the logos of Emanation as cast by the Absolute, but is unknowing (avijja) as to the Subjective “light” of which he is by nature which is also identical to the Absolute itself, being will (citta).

Entirely in line with Platonism, Buddhism proclaims: [AN 5.113] “Followers, the beginning of ignorance can never be discerned (beginningless) such that it cannot be said “Here is the First where ignorance is not, here is the contingency which generated it.” Such that it should be discerned, followers, “ignorance is a condition” (Purima, bhikkhave, koti na pañña’yati avijja’ya– ‘ito pubbe avijja’ na’hosi, atha paccha’ samabhavi’’ti. Evañcetam, bhikkhave, vuccati, atha ca pana pañña’yati– ‘idappaccaya’ avijja’’ti.).

In Buddhist sutta, avijja is forerunner, as it should be, being first in paticcasamuppada: [AN 2.12] “Above karma, becoming, and views, ‘agnosis encircles (all of them)’ as the (source for) samsara.” (“Ka’mayogena samyutta’, bhavayogena cu’bhayam; ditthiyogena samyutta’, avijja’ya purakkhata’”). Also: [SN-Att. 1.236] Nanajotim (the light of gnosis) = atman; meaning that the wisdom (vijja) made manifest in the disciple is the very premise for liberation as such that agnosis (avijja) has been cut off = end of Self-objectification (avijja, also = atta-an, i.e. anatta). In fact, in Buddhist doctrine the only noun “freed” of avijja is the citta, which logically presupposes the fact that as pertains our earlier question: “agnosis (avijja) OF what and BY what”? , must be meant avijja of the will’s nature (atman) by the will (citta): [AN 1.196] "With mind (citta) emancipated from ignorance (avijja)…this designates the Soul is having become-Brahman.", [AN 1.195] “Citta is freed of the sensuous taint, citta is freed of the taint of becoming (bhavaasavaapi), citta is freed of the taint of nescience/ignorance (avijja), Liberation! Gnosis is this, therein (utter) liberation.” [MN 1.279] “When his steadfast mind was perfectly purified, perfectly illumined, stainless, utterly perfect, pliable, sturdy, fixed, and everlastingly determinate then he directs his mind towards the gnosis of the destruction of defilements. Knowing thus and seeing thus his mind is emancipated from sensual desires, his mind is emancipated from becoming, his mind is emancipated from ignorance.” “This said: ‘the liberated mind/will (citta) which does not cling’ means Nibbana”[MN2-Att. 4.68]. "Steadfast-in-the-Soul (thitattoti) means one is supremely-fixed within the mind/will (citta)”[Silakkhandhavagga-Att. 1.168]. “'The purification of one’s own mind/will', this means the light (joti) within one’s mind/will (citta) is the very Soul (attano)” [DN2-Att. 2.479].

The Genuine Aryan Truth-Seeker

2009-09-21T12:29:00.000-07:00

Nearly 100% of all those who, later in life of their own independent and free will, came to a new religion, or to religion for the first time have gravitated to that very same faith via personal convictions and/or personal likes/dislikes; this error is grand and only borne of ignorances. A true Platonic truth seeker does not gravitate towards religious beliefs or dogmas because those same religious systems are personally attractive, but rather, thru logical and abductive examination, a certain position is reflective of what is true as a model for totality and the furthest position from absolute absurdity (such as Creationist views of a sentient being as the Absolute, or the other extreme, Nihilism/Atheism).

One undeniable fact of the cosmos is its incredibly complexity, both biological and inanimate; the only contention lies, amongst all religions and non-religious materialistic views, is the nexus for this limitless complexity. While the creationist illogically posits a divine and sentient hand at the helm of said creation, the nihilist/atheist in equal ignorance posits random happenstance for its appearance. With the countless plethora of ‘faiths’ (blind), and religions which lie at either end and in between of these extremes, humans window-shop for that faith which many admit ‘suits them best’, or ‘rings personally true’, or which ‘appeals to them’. Wisdom never plays any part in that which they call their own (view/faith/belief), nor examination. The self-reinforcing delusion of mankind’s religions is not one based in truth or wisdom, but in comfort, or respect that it is their inheritance of their parents, or some other likewise reason.

The genuine truth-seeking Platonist, be he an Indian Advaita-Vedanta Monist, or a Neoplatonist is equally pleased if he is proven wrong, either by the wits and wisdom of another in refutation, or by his own hand thru the expansion of wisdom, for both ends only serves to bring this Aryan truth-seeker closer the truth. Either self-refutation or an increase in wisdom brings one closer the truth and the true Aryan desires this above all else. Those ignorant demons, the common and profane manyfolk will cleave with their hearts and souls to untruths, which many times they themselves know to be untrue, but for no other reason that “they were born in this faith/belief”, or an equally ignorant sentimentalism. Close-minded religiosity is based in a comfort, a delusion which is hard to break and enforced by ignorances which are never countered or eliminated in the life of the profane manyfolk. Pythagoras, Plato, Plotinus, Gotama, authors of the Upanishads, and few others were genuine truth seekers the wise emulate with all their being. Wisdom cannot be handed to another via book or word, but the insight which only comes from an unquenchable desire for wisdom and uncovering the truth of genuine being which lies under and above the façade of empirical being, this consubstantial puppet fashioned in the winds of time and which is rented but for a while and is lost again in the winds of time.

The disobjectification which culminates in liberation self-granted by the sage who bears the Aryan sword of wisdom is something far far more rare than any could imagine in the land of lemmings who use and cleave to false religions which brings only placebo comforts to those same profane and common manyfolk who are the zombies of samsara, the walking dead in the land of the Subjective light which is never seen by those same whose will is always directed into the dark of the objective and temporal world of flux and reflux.

“I don’t know where my soul is”

2009-09-21T12:28:00.000-07:00

Taking the first error “I”, or the empirical person so-and-so (Bob, Sue etc.) this compounded and material self of which there are “two selves” within us, the Person (spirit, Purishha) and persona (psychophysical, temporal); “two within us” (Plato Republic 604b, Phaedo 79, Timaeus 89d), or Philo’s “Soul of the soul”, or the Buddha’s “atta hi attano nathi” (Self is Lord of the self [persona]). This “I” of which cannot be, in metaphysics, the Knower of knowing, but rather the conscious (vinnana) living being whose conceptions and ideations are “dead when he dies”, that “I” is not the Person but the “self of which the Self is Lord”. This “I”, the objective and compounded self cannot ever come to know the Knower, which is the posterior and uncompounded Subject. The objective and temporal “I” cannot know the Subject which precedes it any moreso than a puppet can know That which pulls its strings. This “I” has ‘within’ (superficially so) it no means possible by which to have Knowledge (gnosis) of the soul, since its very principle, this compounded “I” lacks the Witness and Knower by which it can or could be known. There is no “I” whereby which it could be said of anyone that it, “I”, could Know (gnosis as opposed to the empirical knowledge of the mere material “I”, which is persona) the soul.

Taking now the second error “where”, or asking of how the soul is IN TIME, the magnitude and measure of which ‘where’ is but a delineation of things compounded and ‘taking up space’ (where is this soul? It is no-where). The quest for the uncompounded in spacio-temporal existence, and the objective cosmos of becoming, flux and reflux, could not be more illogical. Anything (quite literally ‘thing’ in the true sense of objectivity) which partakes of a topos (place), a locus in space and time which is syn. with magnitude and materiality cannot be the point of any metaphysical search, in this case the soul. Would we go hunting for fish in the desert? “Where” is syn. with space-time materiality of which something might be said to have “its place”, or a “where”, whereby which it (objectivity) might be found. The soul cannot have any such correlation whereby we might ask or inquire how it is “where”; for the soul is no-where, not in space, nor in time either.

Further along this line we come to “my soul”, of stated implication this uncompounded principle of ones noetic being as illogically meant a possession or slave (“my”) to either another subject, or worse still implication an objective possession. This inverse and topsy-turvy statement is the upside-down illogical attempt to gather insight pertaining the soul thru conception that same is property and possession by something else, of which the common fool implies himself, or as meant the existential and bodily self. This cryptic materialistic line of reasoning is indicative of the perversity of understanding relevant to the fool in his “fools quest”- Plato.

Lastly stands as final error “is”, to wit the fool in his questioning seeks knowledge of the Subject as an object of anatomies to which the Greeks, Buddhists, and Vedantists declared to be a quest among compounded and conceptive antinomies “is it, is it not, is it both, it is neither”, to which the Buddha was apposite to answer such fallacious lines of questioning which involved the “pairs” of dualities, the antinomies of existential reasoning as employed by materialists in linear and objective thought on or about the soul. The Soul is tat tvam asi, as = Brahman, the Absolute, is not “is, is not..etc.”, but That, the uncompounded Absolute as opposite to all antinomies. [SN 2.17] Gotama Buddha: “This world is carried on by a duality (dvayanissito). Etc.”

The tie which binds these four errors together, and which is true in the statement “I don’t know where my soul is”, is “don’t know”. [AN 5.113] “Followers, the beginning of ignorance can never be discerned (beginningless) such that it cannot be said “Here is the First where ignorance is not, here is the contingency which generated it. Such that it should be discerned, followers, ‘ignorance is a condition’. “This avijja (agnosis, avidya, nescience, ignorance) or ‘uncaused principle’ for the “descent of Being”, is the ‘black-hole’ (again: privation) around which these four satellites of errors spin round. Avijja being in Greek ‘tolma’; as meaning Emanationism, or the extrinsic side of the Absolute, or the attribute (avijja) to the Principle (atman/Brahman/Hen) between which no distinction can be drawn in that both attribute and Principle are one (point and line are in the mathematical theology of Platonism both together = 1) thing only (will-willing, light-illumination, between which what the Absolute ‘is’ [principle] and what it ‘does’ [attribute] can have no distinction lest the premise of Monism itself be obliterated). In the case of our ‘black-hole’ analogy this privation was the source and creator of these ‘satellites’ by which the fool objectively struggles with in objective conceptualization of the immaterial soul not only in space and time, but also as possession to another and as regards his (mere) self which the Upanishads are apposite in stating “for the mortal, there is no soul”.

On the profanity that is Atheism

2009-09-21T12:27:00.001-07:00

The first mention of Atheism, is by the Greeks in the term atheos, which is in reference to Greek Platonism as refers to the Nous (will/mind/citta/spirit/soul) as found in passage: (Phil 26e-30d) and not to a supernatural persona, i.e. God. The immanent-only materialistic pantheism of metaphysical Atheism is an aphilosophical position holding that everything which exists is no more extensive than its physical compounded materiality; that is, that there are no kinds of things other than physical things. This anti-divinity of Atheism is the true and shadow-worshiping profanity that is the hallmark of Atheism, not its correct position that, as Plato and the Neoplatonists argued for as well, that there was no Supreme-Being as creator of the cosmos. Metaphysical Atheism is Atheism, in true and in whole. That some who deem themselves Atheists also admit to, as they would say ‘something’ is certainly not in question, however these people are not in fact Atheists but lazy Agnostics and in most cases crypto-materialists; calling themselves atheists in but they merely deny God, is only a measure of their ignorance in of which they do not know the full scope of the very term Atheism. The Greeks in coining the term as progenitor for Atheism had meant, as Plato, Socrates, and Pythagoras before both, the denial of spiritual and immaterial divinity a-theos, or anti-divinitism.

Plotinus, the founder of Neoplatonism (only an extension and condensing of Platonism itself), wrote extensively on the denial of the Absolute as not Being, but an active insentient dynamis, an unmediated divinity of which composite Being could not be said thereof; such that Being by definition must partake of more than an uncompounded simplex principle (such as nous). The goal of Vedanta, Advaita, Buddhism (all of which encompass Upanishadic Monism) have Brahman as the endgoal, of which this Absolute is most certainly denied as Being (i.e. God). Atheism in true is none other than materialism, the praise of the existential persona headed for the grave-pit, it cant be shown anything else but contempt for denial of any and all which is outside the scope of the narrow and fallible spectrum of the petty human senses. Gotama Buddha derided Ishvara (God) both in principle and those who aligned themselves in practice with same.

A voracious supporter of Atheism (not a mere God-denying agnostic as in the previous example) will in all instances adamantly deny the metaphysical, the divinity of which atheos, or Atheism is meant in its definition. A true agnostic (merely as meant agnosis, or ignorance! Or, deeming oneself as ignorant) is but an unlearned and unexplored supporter of metaphysics even if only indirectly; that some agnostics would foremostly deny God, does not make them an Atheist. That these ‘unknowers’ (agnostics) would firstly deem themselves as Atheists is but a further expression of their ignorance of the meaning of Atheism and not just of metaphysics.

Atheism is currently not a (sic) philosophical position that God is not, but that theology (again, the study of divinity, which Creationism is only a part thereof) is something to be despised and spit upon. To convince oneself of the insanity of Atheists, they need only watch a debate between Atheists and Creationists; one might gather that such rabid profanity-laced tirades could only be found amongst those made-become Atheists who had been raped over twenty years by Catholic priests. It is highly humorous that Atheists fight and spit so voraciously at the mention of a God whom they deny exists. In true definition further in modern connotation and example, Atheism is little more than anti-religiosity (theo-logy), and not simply the logical denial of God. Religion is merely the profane secular side of metaphysics; is but popularized metaphysics; as such it is true that religion is as was said “the opiate of the masses”. A modern Atheist is one who hisses like a snake at the sight of religious and or theological institutions of noetic, spiritual examination. He is, as Atheist, far more than one who denies the Creationists God(s); but were Atheism merely this alone, I and many others Platonists, Vedantists, would gladly proclaim themselves as Atheists! In connotation and definition both however to call oneself an Atheist is no different than gleefully calling oneself a demon materialist.

What the Atheists fail to realize is of the two ignorant positions as explanation for the extreme complexity in nature between the model of the Creationists, and that of the Atheists, the positions of the Atheists is far more so the implausible one. The extreme complexity in nature from macro to micro is not in question by even the lowliest of fools, however the Atheistic position that this complexity stems from time and random atomic convergence is highly ignoble and unintelligent. One might equally insanely postulate, from the same position of the Atheists, that random atoms, given a few billion years, will eventually coalesce to the point of creating Shakespearean literature. However Atheism in its extreme insanity is working on creating its own Gods, thru perfection of cryogenics and DNA manipulation wherein someday, they erroneously hope, will culminate in bodily immortality. Or even more insanely, as some demonic Atheists have postulated, that empirical consciousness is no more than complex and copyable network which could be transferred as software into a robot at the death of the body, thereby granting immortality in the form of a robot which could be repaired indefinitely. In the ranks of perversity, even Satanism hails as higher than Atheism, in that of its core Satanism admits to a full acknowledgement of immaterial and metaphysical subjectivity, or the divine, even if in praise of the dark side of divinity. Insanity takes countless forms, Atheism is but one highly miserable variety thereof.

Gotama is Mara, is evil, in sutra

2009-09-21T12:23:00.000-07:00

Gotama is Mara, is evil, in sutra Or, the Buddha is still subject to desires, and sensual depravities

Or, “The Self (atman) is at war with self (anatman, not-self)” [B.G. VI.VI]
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As in most religions, the objectification and validity of the embodiment of evil is maintained as a persona in Buddhism, as existent and embodied in other than the empirical self. As against sutta, Buddhism in no way differs from modern connotations of Satan, or in Buddhism’s case Mara, wherein it miserably diverges from the doctrinal denotation that in fact one’s self, Gotama or any other persona, is none other than Mara (or Satan). It is true that Mara, in doctrine, is a persona (empirical self), however not as differentiated from the persona that is either Gotama or any person “who can be called by name”, against which the Buddha is a “not-person” [SN, common proclaimation]; this is yet another point of fine metaphysics which has been bastardized by the common and profane religionists over time, just as Satan is not a being in the Bible; but Satan, who remains an angel even in hell, can be called a persona, or, indeed, persons, since his name is "Legion: for we are many", that being the ‘many’ (= “Mara’s army”) which comprise the composite and existential persona which is ones self (Bob, Sue, Gotama, etc.). Of the two in us, one the "spark" of intellectivity (nous, citta, noesis) or Spirit, and the other, feeling or mentality, subject to persuasion, it is obvious that the latter is the "tempter,". That the soul itself, our "I" or "self" itself, should be the Devil whom we call the "enemy," "adversary," "tempter," "dragon," -- never by a personal name (Even the Hebrew Satan, "opponent," is not a personal name). 'Be simply and wholly bereft of self.'" For "there is nothing else in hell, but self-will (attabhava, ahamsome); and if there were no self-will, there would be no devil and no hell." In the Shaker hymn we have: But now from my forehead I'll quickly erase the stamp of the Devil's great "I." Just so is the case in Buddhism that Mara is not a being, nor an autonomous objective reality in sutta, but malady, plague, death (=Mara, “king of death”).

Our whole metaphysical tradition, Christian, Vedantic, Buddhist, Advaitic, and other, all maintain that "there are two in us," [Plato, Republic 439DE, 604B; Philo, Deterius 82; St. Thomas Aquinas, Sum. Theol. II-II.26.4; St. Paul, II Cor. 4:16] this man and the Man in this man; and that this is so, is still a part and parcel of our spoken language in which, for example, the expression "self-control" implies that there is one that controls and another subject to control, or “at war with (rather implied ‘against’) myself”. Of these two "selves," outer and inner man, psychophysical "personality" and very Person (spirit, nous, citta, atman), the human composite of body (kaya, rupa), and soul (colloquially old English personage), and spirit (atman, nous, citta), the former is built up. Of these two, on the one hand body-and-soul (or consciousness, vinnana, jivatman, namorupa), and on the other, spirit, one is mutable and mortal, the other constant and immortal; one "becomes," (bhava) the other "is," (thita) and the existence of the one that is not, but becomes, is precisely a "personification" or "postulation," since we cannot say of anything that never remains the same from moment to moment that "it is” in any true sense. However necessary it may be to say "I" and "mine" for the practical purposes of everyday life, our ego in fact is nothing but a name for what is really only a sequence of observed behaviors. "How can that which is never in the same state 'be' anything?" [Plato, Cratylus, 439B; Theatetus, 152D; Symposium, 207D, etc.] "'Ego' has no real meaning, because it is perceived only for an instant.” This unfortunately is a point of supreme ignorance amongst modern ‘buddhists’ however who confuse and conceive of atman as = ego, of which no scripture, Buddhist or Vedanta ever makes the error thereof, for the composite and temporal persona (as = ego, or myself, literally person so-and-so) is “na me so atta” (not my Self, my Soul), which is arguably the most common refrain found in Buddhist sutta.

Buddhists, irrationally, like Christians, comfort themselves that their idols, Gotama and Jesus were “free of desires, imperfections, sensuous proclivities”, by rationalizing that Jesus was tempted in the desert by a genuine separate persona, Satan (i.e. evil personified), or that Gotama, in the many instances in sutta (such as the collection found in the Marasamyutta of SN book 1), was tempted by a similar persona, Mara, who commanded Gotama to “forego spiritual life and to seek after pleasures of the body, long life, and or enjoin himself in the endless streams of desires present to the living” (SN1). However by doctrine and logical necessity, the “great evil, king of death”, Mara was none other than the very personage Gotama himself [SN 3.195] “Mara’s-dharma, Mara’s-dharma venerable Lord, in what manner may you describe Mara’s-dharma? The five aggregates are what is meant by Mara’s-dharma.” Also: [SN 3.195] At one time in Savatthi, the venerable Radha seated himself and asked of the Blessed Lord "Mara, Mara I hear said venerable. What pray tell does Mara mean?” Just this, form, Radha is Mara, sensations are Mara, perceptions are Mara, assemblages are Mara, consciousness is Mara. Seeing thusly…this is the end of birth, the Brahma-life has been fulfilled, what must be done has been done." The Person who overcomes Mara, in the case of Buddhism, the Buddha, the Tathagata, is a spiritual sage of “two minds”, that being the self of flesh and blood, and the psycho-physical personage (namorupa) Gotama, and that nobler, better other, so deemed “conqueror, master, light (dipa), Seer!”. That Self which is “always at war with that other self which is foul, of the world, and subject to corruption and decay”, as parroted in: “The Self (atman) is at war with self (anatman, not-self)” [B.G. VI.VI]. The only difference between the liberated sage and the ignorant profane worldling is that the sage has overcome and subjugated the worldly self (bhavanirodha [self-subjugation, = overcoming becoming] nibbanam) by mite of the Self in wisdom. The spiritual and metaphysical adept is one who must be the “dead man walking” who has followed the commandment: “die before ye die!”, and is one who has died to that (mere) self and lives in the Spirit, or as is meant, the Self. This is the discernment between the Great Self (mahatta) and little self (alpatman); or the fair Self (kalyanatta) from the foul self (papatta) as mentioned in Buddhist sutta (Anguttara N.). The “dead man walking” as title of the sage, the wisdom-holder who, though liberated and residing in the unseen Self, yet still ‘walks around amongst the living who are as dead (of spirit)’ is a spiritual appellation of formerly great meaning now misunderstood. To the profane worldling this master-sage is a zombie such that he does not entertain worldly delights, but to that extremely rare sage, all others are the spiritually subjugated, the ‘walking dead (of spirit)’, and depraved who are the genuine zombies of samsara as seen by Him who has “left forever the burden of becoming” (bhava [becoming], as meant = samsarati, i.e. samsara).

It is extremely common fare in ancient religious doctrine to find the sage, the master speaking by means of his Self to his mere personage, or self as an objective entity and temptor, rather than what is truly happening, that being the physical self tempting (in vain, obviously) that nobler Person, Gotama or otherwise; an excellent book on this very topic in ancient thought, is: “The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind” by Julian Jaynes. The bicameral mind of Person and persona are “at war” yet recorded and read (by religious zealots and fools) as though the master sage is at odds with an autonomous entity who personifies (again, self!) evil. Logically so, fully illumined or not, the body is unquestionably the major point of stupefaction for the spirit; however this is a religious heresy as conceived either by Buddhist or Christian, that their idols and masters are subject to bodily desires and its subsequent depravities; but this is nonetheless indeed the case in doctrine. There is in fact no objective autonomous entity which is tempter, evil personified as separate from Gotama the persona. Several of Gotama’s disciples who gained full liberation (or wisdom which fully separated Self from mere self) were said to have “taken the knife blamelessly” in so committing suicide and eliminating final removal of the empirical self which leads to continued stupefaction and potential fall from the grace of liberation. [SN 3.189]

The Mara Sutta is extremely important in that it is outright stated by Gotama that “Mara is not only the five aggregates, the killer, but also the one who is killed”; meaning obviously that all empirical personas are therefore Mara, just as it is said over and over, that all psycho-physicality = Mara, so too therefore is the phenomenal and objective self, or persona also = Mara. Any and all persons, Bob, Sue, Larry, and Gotama himself are indeed Mara. Obviously, logically so, the Buddha was not tempted by the desires and proclivities of his yet still remaining self of flesh and its own will (=vinnana, or empirical consciousness; as MUST be differentiated from ontological mind, or citta). The body is a foul and pestilent plague which no amount of wisdom can rectify; that the Buddha’s body (i.e. Gotama) was riddled with aches, pains, and flatulence in sutta cannot be debated. Like a drunken man whose sensibilities are askew to the extreme, so too this body is a pestilent “burden” (SN4) which must be carried up to death’s gates itself; the mighty sage, be it the Tathagata or otherwise has no recourse for, as has been said, “polishing the turd” this body of which he in ignorance formerly saw his Self as, but which was “not my Self”. In the end, Gotama was thrown upon the funeral fire, wrapped in linen, soaked in oil, and set ablaze like the worthless pile of trash it so genuinely was; this is an immemorial thing of “all which is born and subject to decay”.

Though wisdom may be full and “ripe” as is stated in sutta (in the case of Gotama), so long as spirit is coincident with the foul body whose fruits are lusts, depravities, desires, etc., there will logically and unquestionably be stupefaction and literal war between the self which is Gotama, and the Self which is the “non person” the Buddha, the Tathagata. That wisdom (as meant cittavimutta, liberation of spirit) has been attained, Buddhahood stated, there is still yet no manner by which physical suffering and its brethren desires and afflictions can or may be removed except thru final separation at death of the body. There is neither mention of an end to physical suffering in sutta nor evidence for same in either Gotama’s countless pains in the course of his life, or his bodily suffering and “tremendous pains” (mahaparinibbana sutta) shortly before his physical death. [SN 4.38] “Mara, Mara venerable Lord, in what manner may you describe Mara? When there is the eye, when there are forms, there then is eye-consciousness and phenomena to be cognized, there exists Mara and the what (is deemed) Mara.”

It is no coincidence that earliest iconography of the Buddha would be either an empty seat as worshiped by those gathered round it, a pillar of flame, a swastika (= Brahman), or a hovering wheel; and not was the Buddha represented as Mara, nor was Gotama the personage who was “that evil, that not-Spirit (anatman)”. For the Buddha is spirit (citta, nous), and never (as done so by earliest Buddhism) confused with the empirical Mara, or Gotama who was composed of the corporeal “Mara-aggregates”; “The purification of one’s own mind/will (citta); this is the Doctrine of the Buddha” [DN 2.49], “How is it that one is called a ‘Buddha’?...gnosis that the mind/will (citta) is purified (visuddham)…such is how one is deemed a ‘Buddha’.” [MN 2.144]. Rather fittingly, all present day “statues of Buddha” are in fact statues of Mara (= of Gotama!), those ignorant and profane demons who would presume we find them as Buddhists are in fact those who bow down and pay homage to an eikon Gotama, to Mara, to the empirical persona and self which is “suffering, an ill, as a plague, a boil, a sting, a pain, an affliction, as foreign, as otherness, as empty (suññato), as Selfless (anattato)” [AN 4.422]. That all current “statues of the Buddha” are in fact gold-covered or brass homage’s to Mara, or Gotama, cannot be denied and is most certainly fitting for an perversely upside-down corrupt materialistic pseudo-religion far diverged from its original, which praises Mara-Gotama over that of the Buddha who is spirit and his wisdom-attainment which culminated in the subjugation of the spirit over that of persona (= anatta, Mara, Gotama), or, as depicted in earliest iconography, the Buddha is undepictable, just as in sutta he is deemed a “non-person”; [SN 1.132] In contradiction to Mara, it is declared by Uppalavanna that she is “cittasmim vasibhutamhi”, ‘Lord and master of the citta’, and thereof conquered Mara’s and all his attributes (which comprise person-hood, or ahamsome). The next time one sees demon-‘buddhists’ bowing down before a mere mimesis, an eikon of empirical personage, i.e. a brass statue of Gotama, that same person should with outstretched wisdom recognize that these people are giving praise and worship to all which Gotama in his own words deemed foul, detestable, and evil, which he gave ample illumination against.

The spirit which is = Buddha is not confused in sutta which the Mara-aggregates (in this case of course, meaning Gotama) which is so keenly differentiated in sutta: [MN 1.436, AN 4.422] “Whatever form, feelings, perceptions, experiences, or consciousness there is (the five aggregates), these he sees to be without permanence, as suffering, as ill, as a plague, a boil, a sting, a pain, an affliction, as foreign, as otherness, as empty (suññato), as Selfless (anattato). So he turns his mind (citta, Non-aggregate) away from these; therein he gathers his mind (citta, non-aggregate) within the realm of Immortality (amataya dhatuya). This is tranquility; this is that which is most excellent!” [SN 3.234] “Followers, the desire and lust for formations is a defilement of the citta, the desire and lust for feelings is a defilement of the citta, the desire and lust for cognition is a defilement of the citta, the desire and lust for experiences is a defilement of the citta, the desire and lust for vinnana is a defilement of the citta. But, followers, when one abandons the defilements of the citta regarding these five stations (aggregates), then ones citta inclines towards renunciation. Ones citta is made pliable and firm in renunciation by direct gnosis.” [MN 1.511] “For a long time I have been cheated, tricked and hoodwinked by my citta. For when grasping, I have been grasping onto form, for when grasping, I have been grasping onto feelings, , for when grasping, I have been grasping onto perceptions, for when grasping, I have been grasping onto experiences, for when grasping, I have been grasping onto consciousness.”

For the worldling “lost in the sea of desires”, his spirit is subsumed, sublimated like salt thrown into water, and subjugate (= avijja) in the self, for him there is no distinction between Person and persona, there is only this person ‘so and so’, he is not liberated of which it might be said of him [MN 1.160] “He has destroyed outflowings having intuited vision of wisdom. This followers, is called a follower who has blinded Mara the evil one. Having deprived Mara the evil one’s vision to behold him he has crossed over all desire for anything in this world.” The “temptations of Mara” as enjoined by the Buddha in sutta is the stupefaction of coincidence with Gotama the persona upon the Person, the Buddha, or as distinctly mentioned: [SN 1.103] cetoparivitakkamaññay “Mara…considering upon the reflection (of the Buddha’s mind)” wherein the empirical consciousness (vinnana) of Gotama wages battle with the spirit of the Buddha (citta); or the compounded consciousness at war with the uncompounded mind (citta, or spirit) of the Buddha. To which the Buddha is apposite and replies by means of his wisdom: [SN 1.105] nihato tvamasi antaka’ “Thou-ness maker of ends, (thou) art defeated”, often translated as “You are defeated endmaker”, but which however in the Pali refers not to another persona, but the personage itself (in this case Gotama) who is rebuffed by the Buddha; this again being meant the bicameral mental battle between Gotama-Mara and that of the Buddha who is “no longer subjugate to the whims of objective selfhood” which is ‘na me so atta’ (not my Soul, or Self). Just as the main and subtle differentiation between the criminal murderer and the freeman is the freeman has “self-control”, is “Charioteer” (JN); which in contrast the criminal is subjugate to act willy-nilly without second thought (= reflexive ‘self-control’) upon the whims and desires of his very self, and “does not hold the reigns (of his senses)” (SN1). But in so being coincident with Gotama, the psychophysical person who “is Mara”, the Buddha is therein tempted over and over, but rightly so, does not succumb. This is of course the “inner war”, the “inner struggle” between “a self divided against itself”. [MN 1.227] “Followers, I am an expert in this world and the next, am expert in Mara’s realms and what is outside of Mara’s realm, am expert in the realm of death and what is outside of the realm of death.”

What else would the Buddha make proclamation of in so stating ‘na me so atta’ (this/these are not my soul) than his empirical self, composed of the five khandhas (aggregates) which make up the personage we know as Gotama or any other person? It cannot, logically, doctrinally, sensibly, be another than this. To think, as modern ‘buddhists’ so ignorantly do, that Mara is a genuine personage as autonomous and external ‘boogey-man’ to the already external, objective, and empirical self (Gotama), is none other than ignorance heaped upon ignorance over time immemorial as fool taught fool who in turn taught the ever the more so foolish, the incorrect meaning or earliest and original Buddhism. [MN 1.141] "What do you suppose, followers, if people were carrying off into the Jeta grove bunches of sticks, grasses, branches, and leaves and did with them as they wished or burned them up, would it occur to you: These people are carrying us off, are doing as they please with us, and are burning us? No, indeed not Lord. And how so? Because Lord, none of that is our Soul, nor what our Soul subsists upon! Just so followers, what is not who you are, do away with it, when you have made done with that, it will lead to your bliss and welfare for as long as time lasts. What is that you are not? Form, followers, is not who you are, neither are sensations, perceptions, experiences, consciousness (the five aggregates)."

Mara is none other than the mimetic (mimesis) personage as opposite to, against, and coincident to the eidetic Buddha who is spirit. It is absolutely no coincidence that it is remarked of wise sages that they are indeed “tortured souls”, however the meaning or source of this comment is unknown to most, but which logically stems from the fact that the common fool is not one who is “of two minds” or is divided against himself in that he is both willing and complicit in the bestial and desire-based proclivities of objective personhood, or psycho-physical life [Dhm 7] “Whosoever dwells only in what is pleasureful and sweet, with one’s senses unleashed, fat, lazy, lacking moderation, slothful. Herein one is overcome by Mara the evil one, just as a small tree is swept away to destruction by the great storm”, or [Dhm 46] “Know this, the body is merely foam, a phantom. Verily by perfect knowledge, know that the body is merely a collection of phenomena and a mirage of what is genuine. Destroy the sensuous desires, those flower arrows of Mara the tempter and depart forever from the King of death, go unseen”, or as it is said of this fool, “the wicked have no quarrel with the Devil!”. Not is it the case of the Buddha who, so long as life lasts, must be perpetually tempted by his former identity, Gotama who is none other than Mara [SN 1.115] “the eye is Mara’s, so too are formations, eye-contact, consciousness, ear, sounds, nose, smells, tongue, tastes, the body, all objects, thoughts, mental phenomena; all these are Mara’s”, all of this of course belongs to Gotama. The commoner does not seek after liberation or wisdom, but for continued existence (bhava) as embodied in [SN 1.108] the Sassatavada (perpetuosity, or eternal becoming) heresy as endorsed by mara “the life of mortals rolls on and on, like the chariot wheels felly around the hub (atman). This is the same passage in the Br. Upanishad [2.5.15] “all spokes of the wheel are contained in the axle and in the felly of the wheel, all beings and selves (empirical self) are contained in that Self (atman)”. For such an evil one, [SN 1.111] “a net hovers in the heavens, which catches thoughts (desires, lusts); by means of this net I (Mara) will snare you” But for the sage, [SN 1.112] “the five khandhas cannot find him (the final liberation at death) …Mara (the empirical self) and his army”

The title and premise of this article should rightly prove heretical to the tastes and minds of your typical ‘buddhist’ but not so to those who know both the doctrine and metaphysics of Buddhism and Vedanta well, in so knowing the clear distinction made between self and Self, or persona and Person (spirit, atman, Buddha). However the ‘body of Mara’ which was Gotama and was “born in death….and returned to death” (‘ashes to ashes, dust to dust’) was not the Buddha, nor are the brass and gold images of Gotama recreated countless millions of times and found in temples across the globe, and even key chains, to be looked upon as representing the Buddha or his ministry, but rather a Mara-worshiping later-day persona-based cult which bemuses itself as Buddhism but which in fact is anything but. Gotama’s remains (part of them, as they were divided up and buried far and wide, and worshiped by the so-called ‘relic-cult’ sects) reside in a New Delhi museum inside the pottery jar that contained them inside the stupa these thousands of years and unearthed in the early 1900’s. That modern ‘buddhism’ would choose to make iconography of Gotama, that foul Mara-khandha “rancid heap” [Dhm] which died and was thrown upon the funeral fire is a fitting symbol for its Mara-materialism. Gotama ‘the tempter’, who was Mara, was not the Buddha who was spirit; that person Gotama was born, was sick, was composed of the elements, died, burned, and possessed no ability to cross the portal of death of which the Buddha did cross in knowing what was “beyond Mara’s realm”. Earliest depicters before all sects of Buddhism existed, with depth of wisdom knew this fact and appropriately represented Gotama in one way, and the Buddha in another, for one was Mara superceded by the Buddha who was a ‘non-person’ in the Nikayas, or the “lotus flower (spirit) which arose from the muck and mire (body), and waters (of becoming)”. For the fool however that I have rightly, with evidences from doctrine, logic, and intelligent deduction would deny Gotama as anything other than Mara, or evil, it need be said to those many foolish, that this is no more a denial of the Buddha and his gospel, than is Socrates’ “to…soma….ouk estin ho anthropos” (the body is not the Man [Aniochus 365]) is a denial of the Man, or spirit which is the heart (citta) of both the Buddha, liberation, and his taught endgoal and ministry to transcend, via wisdom, the mundane horrors of existence; and fling with that very wisdom gained, the spirit from this “near shore” of death, empirical identity (sakyanuditthi, as = anatta [DN1]), and becoming, to the “far shore”, that so deemed “unborne, unbecome, and immortal (amata)” (Ud 81), which is “paramo piya” (most exquisitely beloved).

Anatta / Anatman. The No-soul heresy as incorrectly fronted by pseudo-Buddhism

2009-01-14T15:05:00.000-08:00

The Buddhist term Anatman (Sanskrit), or Anatta (Pali) is an adjective in sutra used to refer to the nature of phenomena as being devoid of the Soul, that being the ontological and subjective Self (atman) which is the “light (dipam), and only refuge” [DN 2.100]. Of the 662 occurrences of the term Anatta in the Nikayas, its usage is restricted to referring to 22 nouns (forms, feelings, perception, experiences, consciousness, the eye, eye-consciousness, desires, mentation, mental formations, ear, nose, tongue, body, lusts, things unreal, etc.), all phenomenal, as being Selfless (anatta). Contrary to countless many popular (=profane, or = consensus, from which the truth can ‘never be gathered’) books (as Buddhologist C.A.F. Davids has deemed them ‘miserable little books’) written outside the scope of Buddhist doctrine, there is no “Doctrine of anatta/anatman” mentioned anywhere in the sutras, rather anatta is used only to refer to impermanent things/phenomena as other than the Soul, to be anatta, or Self-less (an-atta).

Specifically in sutra, anatta is used to describe the temporal and unreal (metaphysically so) nature of any and all composite, consubstantial, phenomenal, and temporal things, from the macrocosmic, to microcosmic, be it matter as pertains the physical body, the cosmos at large, including any and all mental machinations which are of the nature of arising and passing. Anatta in sutra is synonymous and interchangeable with the terms dukkha (suffering) and anicca (impermanent); all three terms are often used in triplet in making a blanket statement as regards any and all phenomena. Such as: “All these aggregates are anicca, dukkha, and anatta.”

Anatta refers only to the absence of the permanent soul as pertains any or all of the psycho-physical (namo-rupa) attributes, or khandhas (skandhas, aggregates). Anatta/Anatman in the earliest existing Buddhist texts, the Nikayas, is an adjective, (A is anatta, B is anatta, C is anatta). The commonly held belief to wit that: “Anatta means no-soul, therefore Buddhism taught that there was no soul” is a concept, which cannot be found or doctrinally substantiated by means of the Nikayas, the suttas (Skt. Sutras), of Buddhism.

The Pali compound term and noun for “no soul” is natthatta (literally “there is not/no[nattha]+atta’[Soul]), not the term anatta, and is mentioned at Samyutta Nikaya 4.400, where Gotama was asked if there “was no soul (natthatta)”, equated this question to be equivalent to Nihilism (ucchedavada). Common throughout Buddhist sutra is the denial of psycho-physical attributes of the mere empirical self to be the Soul, or confused with same. The Buddhist paradigm as regards phenomena is “Na me so atta” (this/these are not my soul), nearly so the most common utterance of Gotama the Buddha in the Nikayas, where “na me so atta” = Anatta/Anatman. In sutta, to hold the view that there was “no-Soul” (natthatta) is = to ucchedavada (SN 4.400) [Annihilationism] = natthika (nihilist). Buddhism differs from the “nothing-morist” (Skt. Nastika, Pali natthika) in affirming a spiritual nature that is not in any wise, but immeasurable, inconnumerable, infinite, and inaccessible to observation; and of which, therefore, empirical science can neither affirm nor deny the reality thereof of him who has ‘Gone to That[Brahman]” (tathatta). It is to the Spirit (Skt. Atman, Pali attan) as distinguished from oneself (namo-rupa/ or khandhas, mere self as = anatta)-i.e., whatever is phenomenal and formal (Skt. and Pali nama-rupa, and savinnana-kaya) “name and appearance”, and the “body with its consciousness”. [SN 2.17] ‘Nonbeing (asat, natthiti [views of either sabbamnatthi ‘the all is ultimately not’ (atomism), and sabbam puthuttan ‘the all is merely composite’ [SN 2.77] both are heresies of annihilationism])’”. In contrast it has been incorrectly asserted that affirmation of the atman is = sassatavada (conventionally deemed ‘eternalism’). However the Pali term sasastavada is never associated with the atman, but that the atman was an agent (karmin) in and of samsara which is subject to the whims of becoming (bhava), or which is meant kammavada (karma-ism, or merit agencyship); such as sassatavada in sutta = “atta ca so loka ca” (the atman and the world [are one]), or: ‘Being (sat, atthiti [views of either sabbamatthi ‘the all is entirety’, and sabbamekattan ‘the all is one’s Soul’ [SN 2.77] both are heresies of perpetualism]). Sasastavada is the wrong conception that one is perpetually (sassata) bound within samsara and that merit is the highest attainment for either this life or for the next. The heretical antinomy to nihilism (vibhava, or = ucchedavada) is not, nor in sutta, the atman, but bhava (becoming, agencyship). Forever, or eternal becoming is nowhere in sutta identified with the atman, which is “never an agent (karmin)”, and “has not become anything” (=bhava). These antinomies of bhava (sassatavada) and vibhava (ucchedavada) both entail illogical positions untenable to the Vedantic or Buddhist atman; however the concept of “eternalism” as = atman has been the fallacious secondary crutch for supporting the no-atman commentarialists position on anatta implying = there is no atman.

Logically so, according to the philosophical premise of Gotama, the initiate to Buddhism who is to be “shown the way to Immortality (amata)” [MN 2.265, SN 5.9], wherein liberation of the spirit/mind [Greek = nous] (cittavimutta) is effectuated thru the expansion of wisdom and the meditative practices of sati and samadhi (assimilation, or synthesis, complete disobjectification with all objective [unreal] reality), must first be educated away from his former ignorance-based (avijja) materialistic proclivities in that he “saw any of these forms, feelings, this body in whole or part, to be my Self, to be that which I am by nature”. Teaching the via negativa methodology of anatta in sutta pertains solely to things phenomenal, which were: “subject to perpetual change; therefore unfit to declare of such things ‘these are mine, these are what I am, that these are my Soul’” [MN 1.232]. The one scriptural passage where Gotama is asked by a layperson what the meaning of anatta is as follows: [Samyutta Nikaya 3.196] At one time in Savatthi, the venerable Radha seated himself and asked of the Blessed Lord Buddha: “Anatta, anatta I hear said venerable. What pray tell does Anatta mean?” “Just this Radha, form is not the Soul (anatta), sensations are not the Soul (anatta), perceptions are not the Soul (anatta), assemblages are not the Soul (anatta), consciousness is not the Soul (anatta). Seeing thusly, this is the end of birth, the Brahman life has been fulfilled, what must be done has been done.”

Anatta as taught in the Nikayas has merely relative value as is directly conducive to Subjective awakening, or illumination; it is not an absolute one. It does not say or imply simply that the Soul (atta, Atman) has no reality, but that certain things (5 aggregates), with which the unlearned man (fool = puthujjana, as is always implied in spiritual texts, a materialist) identifies himself, are not the Soul (anatta) and that is why one should grow disgusted with them, become detached from them and be liberated. This principle of anatta does not negate the Soul as such, but denies Selfhood to those things that constitute the non-self (anatta), showing them thereby to be empty of any ultimate value and to be repudiated; instead of nullifying the Atman (Soul) doctrine, it in fact compliments and affirms it in the most logical method by which Subjective gnosis is initially gained, that by and thru objective negation. It has been said that: ‘No Indian school of thought has ever regarded the human soul or the carrier of human personal identity as a permanent substance’, which is certainly true when referring to the empirical persona (mere self, as opposed to the Person, spirit, atman), that ‘ensouled’ being, as was common in old English “late at night, not a soul (mere person) was to be seen”. That the atman is not to be understood as a cartesian thinking substance, phenomena, or eternal soul, is certainly the case.

It cannot be missed that in so discussing the commentarialist’s position of a ‘doctrine of anatta’ that anatta is merely a qualifier of something else and that anatta in and of itself in standalone is utterly meaningless and untenable to speak or make mention of an ‘anatta doctrine’ without qualification of what, and in what context, anatta is being qualified of X (the afore mentioned 22 things of which anatta is said to equal) i.e. that which is defacto equivalent to or with anatta. That anatta in doctrine is aught but ever equivalent to what is evil, foul, disgusting, phenomenal and repulsive, to therefore make declaration that, as many have done, “anatta is a core tenant of Buddhism” cannot be enjoined, since the principle upon which Buddhism was founded is the quest for the immortal (amatagamimagga SN 5.9), and the unceasing bliss as gained by and thru liberation in wisdom’s culmination. Anatta is, obviously so, a key principle in the doctrine of Buddhism (and other via negativa systems) and the metaphysics thereof quantify anatta and being meant all physical and mental consubstantial and temporal objectivity; all compounded things either in simplex or complex (mental). As an-atta is meant not-Subject, or object (phenomena), those things, as Buddhism declares “the unlearned fool bemuses himself as being (those things)”; "What do you suppose, followers, if people were carrying off into the Jeta grove bunches of sticks, grasses, branches, and leaves and did with them as they wished or burned them up, would it occur to you: These people are carrying us off, are doing as they please with us, and are burning us? No, indeed not Lord. And how so? Because Lord, none of that is our Soul, nor what our Soul subsists upon! Just so followers, what is not who you are, do away with it, when you have made done with that, it will lead to your bliss and welfare for as long as time lasts. What is that you are not? Form, followers, is not who you are, neither are sensations, perceptions, experiences, consciousness" [MN 1.141]. Just as ‘disgusting (anatta) doctrine’ cannot make logical sense, neither does ‘anatta doctrine’ bring light to studiers of Buddhism what anatta is contextually or its philosophical importance as being merely a qualifier of that which is evil, foul, disgusting, phenomenal and repulsive (= anatta).

What has Buddhism to say of the Self? "That's not my Self" (na me so atta); this, and the term "non Self-ishness" (anatta) predicated of the world and all "things" (sabbe dhamma anatta; Identical with the Brahmanical "of those who are mortal, there is no Self/Soul", (anatma hi martyah, [SB., II. 2. 2. 3]). [KN J-1441] “The Soul is the refuge that I have gone unto”. For anatta is not said of the Self/Soul but what it is not. There is never a ‘doctrine of no-Soul’, but a doctrine of what the Soul is not (form is anatta, feelings are anatta, etc.). It is of course true that the Buddha denied the existence of the mere empirical “self” in the very meaning of “my-self” (this person so-and-so, namo-rupa, an-atta, i.e. Bob, Sue, Larry etc.), one might say in accordance with the command ‘denegat seipsum, [Mark VII.34]; but this is not what modern and highly unenlightened writers mean to say, or are understood by their readers to say; what they mean to say and do in fact say, is that the Buddha denied the immortal (amata), the unborn (ajata), Supreme-Self (mahatta’), uncaused (samskrta), undying (amara) and eternal (nicca) of the Upanishads. And that is palpably false, for he frequently speaks of this Self, or Spirit (mahapurisha), and nowhere more clearly than in the too often repeated formula 'na me so atta’, “This/these are not my Soul” (na me so atta’= anatta/anatman), excluding body (rupa) and the components of empirical consciousness (vinnana/ nama), a statement to which the words of Sankhara are peculiarly apposite, “Whenever we deny something unreal, is it in reference to something real” [Br. Sutra III.2.22]; since it was not for the Buddha, but for the nihilist (natthika), to deny the Soul. For, [SN 3.82] “yad anatta….na me so atta, “what is not-Atman…that is not my Atman”; the extremely descriptive illumination of all thing which are Selfless (anattati) would be both meaningless and a waste of much time for Gotama were (as the foolish commentators espousing Buddhism’s denial of the atman) to clarify and simplify his sermons by outright declaring ‘followers, there is no atman!’, however no such passage exists. The Pali for said passage would be: ‘bhikkhave, natthattati!’; and most certainly such a passage would prove the holy grail and boon for the Theravadin nihilists who have ‘protesteth too much’ that Buddhism is one in which the atman is rejected, but to no avail or help to their untenable views and position by the teachings themselves.

Outside of going into the doctrines of later schisms of Buddhism, such as Sarvastivada, Theravada, Vajrayana, Madhyamika, and lastly Zen, the oldest existing texts (Nikayas) of Buddhism which predate all these later schools of Buddhism [The Sanchi and Bharut inscriptions (aka the Pillar edicts) unquestionably dated to the middle of the second century B.C.E. push the composition of the 5 Nikayas back to a earlier date by mentioning the word “pañcanekayika” (Five Nikyas), thereby placing the Nikayas as put together (no later than) at a period about half way between the death of the Buddha and the accession of Asoka (before 265 B.C.), as such the 5 Nikayas, the earliest existing texts of Buddhism, must have been well known and well established far earlier than generally perceived. Finally proving the majority of the five Nikayas could not have been composed any later than the very earliest portion of the third century B.C.E.], anatta is never used pejoratively in any sense in the Nikayas by Gotama the Buddha, who himself has said: [MN 1.140] “Both formerly and now, I’ve never been a nihilist (vinayika), never been one who teaches the annihilation of a being, rather taught only the source of suffering (that being avijja, or nescience/agnosis), and its ending (avijja).” Further investigation into negative theology is the source by which one should be directed as to a further understanding of the methodology which the term anatta illuminates. It should be noted with great importance that the founder of Advaita Vedanta, Samkara used the term anatman lavishly in the exact same manner as does Buddhism, however in all of time since his passing, none have accused Samkara of espousing a denial of the Atman. Such as: “Atma-anatma vivekah kartavyo bandha nuktaye”-“The wiseman should discriminate between the Atman and the non-Atman (anatman) in order to be liberated.” [Vivekacudamani of Samkara v. 152], “Anatman cintanam tyaktva kasmalam duhkah karanam, vintayatmanam ananda rupam yan-mukti karanam.”-”Give up all that is non-Atman (anatman), which is the cause of all misery, think only of the Atman, which is blissful and the cause of all liberation.” [Vivekacudamani of Samkara v. 379], “Every qualifying characteristic is, as the non-Atman (anatman), comparable to the empty hand.” [Upadisa Sahasri of Samkara v. 6.2], “the intellect, its modifications, and objects are the non-Atman (anatman).” [Upadisa Sahasri of Samkara v. 14.9], “The gain of the non-Atman (anatman) is no gain at all. Therefore one should give up the notion that one is the non-Atman (anatman).” [Upadisa Sahasri of Samkara v. 14.44]. In none of the Buddhist suttas is there support for no-atman theories of anatta . The message is simply to cease regarding the very khandhas in those terms by which the notion of atman has, itself, been so easily misconstrued. As has been shown, detaching oneself from the phenomenal desire for the psycho-physical existence was also a central part of Samkara’s strategy. There is hence nothing in thee suttas that Samkara, the chief proponent of Advaita Vedanta, would have disagreed with.

Due to sectarian (and secular) propagation of commentary over doctrine, and more still a nominalized, or neutered mistranslation of the original Pali texts, a general acceptance of the concept of “A Doctrine of Anatta” exists as a status quo, however there exists no substantiation for same in sutta for Buddhism’s denial of the atman, or in using the term anatta in anything but a positive sense in denying Self-Nature, the Soul, to any one of a conglomeration of corporeal and empirical phenomena which were by their very transitory nature, “impermanent (anicca), suffering (dukkha), and Selfless (anatta)”. The only noun in sutra which is referred to as “permanent (nicca)” is the Soul, such as Samyutta Nikaya 1.169. Buddhism’s ‘na me so atta’ is no more a denial of the Atman than is Socrates’ ‘to…soma….ouk estin ho anthropos’ (the body is not the Man [Aniochus 365]) is a denial of the Man. Young men asked Gotama as to the whereabouts of a woman they were seeking to which he replied “What young men do you think, were it not better for you to seek the Atman (atmanam gavis) than a woman?” [Vin 1.23]. In fact the term “Anatmavada” is a concept utterly foreign to Buddhist sutta, existing in only non-doctrinal Theravada, some Mahayana, and Madhyamika commentaries. As the truism holds, a “lie repeated often enough over time becomes the truth”. Those interested parties incident to learning of Buddhism are most often incapable of pouring through endless piles of Buddhist doctrine, and have therefore defacto accepted the commentarial-based notion of a “doctrine of anatta” as key to Buddhism itself, when in fact there exists not one citation of this untenable and irrational concept in either the Digha, Majjhima, Samyutta, Anguttara, or Khuddaka Nikayas. Unless evoking a fallacy, we who seek out Buddhism sans the commentarialists slants and opinion-based musings, must stick strictly to sutta as reference, wherein the usage of anatta never falls outside of the parameter of merely denying Self or Soul to the profane and transitory phenomena of temporal and samsaric life which is “subject to arising and passing”, and which is most certain not (an) our Soul (atta). Certainly the most simple philosophical based logic would lead anyone to conclude that no part of this frail body is “my Self, is That which I am”, is “not my Soul”, of which Gotama the Buddha was wholeheartedly in agreement that no part of it was the Soul i.e. was in fact anatta. The spiritual and metaphysical adept is one who must be the “dead man walking” who has followed the commandment: “die before ye die!”, and is one who has died to that (mere) self and lives in the Spirit, or the Self. This is the discernment between the Great Self (mahatta) and little self (alpatman); or the fair Self (kalyanatta) from the foul self (papatta).

The perfect contextual usage of anatta in sutta: “Whatever form, feelings, perceptions, experiences, or consciousness there are (the five aggregates), these he sees to be without permanence, as suffering, as ill, as a plague, a boil, a sting, a pain, an affliction, as foreign, as otherness, as empty (suññato), as Selfless (anattato). So he turns his mind (citta) away from these and gathers his mind/will within the realm of Immortality (amataya dhatuya). This is tranquility; this is that which is most excellent!” [MN 1.436]. The Buddha never considered the atman to be micchaditthi (wrong view). If the Buddha disbelieved in an atman (soul) why did he not deny the atman unambiguously? There is no such denial.

By denying outright the soul, by default, the Theravadins, western ‘scholars’ examining Buddhism, and modern Buddhists imply that the five aggregates are ultimate. This of course is absurd. They have merely shifted Buddhism to empiricism by ignoring pro-atman statements. According to them, what is real is what makes sensory knowledge possible, namely, the five aggregates which, ironically, according to the canon, are = Mara, or evil (papa); [SN 3.195] “Mara = five khandhas (empirical self)”. It begs the question to assume that the no-soul doctrine had been established at the beginning of the Buddha’s ministry and that the atman (soul) was, in every respect, an abhorrent term. Still, for such a supposedly abhorrent term, there are countless positive instances of atman used throughout the Nikayas, especially used in compounds which are easily glossed over by a prejudicial commentator and nominalist translators. In meeting these instances, not surprisingly, these same prejudicial translators have erected a theory that the atman is purely a reflexive pronoun. The lexical rule that atman (Pali: attan) is to be used strictly in a pronominal fashion, or simply should be used as a signifier for the finite body, is unwarranted. Scholars like Davids, Conze, Humphrey, Schrader, Horner, Pande, Coomarswamy, Radhakrishnan, Sogen, Suzuki, Julius Evola, and Nakamura, just to name some important scholars, disagree with the claim that Buddha categorically denied an eternal (nicca) soul, whose teachings then, would be classified as Annihilationist and Materialist. In fact there are utterly none living or dead who have examined the original texts in detail whilst refraining from sectarian and commentarial explanations and concluded Buddhism has in any way denied the atman thru and by means of the usage of the term anatta or elsewise. The fatally determined conglomeration which comprise the temporal body “headed for the grave” is not in dispute and is what is meant by anatta. To this there can be no opposition since all forms of metaphysics cry out for a “freedom from (that mere) self”, as Buddhism is in full agreement: [Dhm. 147] "Behold! That painted puppet this body, riddled with oozing sores, an erected façade. Diseased heap that fools fancy and swoon over; True Essence is not part of it! For the body befalls utter destruction, [Dhm. 148] "This body is soon worn out. It is that very same abode for disease and sicknesses that is broken apart. The body is soon cast away, that very putrid heap. It is always in death that life meets its end!”, [Dhm. 150] "Behold! This city of bones, plastered together with flesh and blood. Within its walls are old age and death. Pride, arrogance, and hypocrisy are its townsfolk!", [MN 1.185] "What of this short-lived body which is clung to by means of craving? There is nothing in it to say ‘I’ or ‘mine’ or ‘me’."

The term anatman is found not only in Buddhist sutras, but also in the Upanishads and lavishly so in the writings of Samkara as mentioned earlier. Anatman is a common via negativa (neti neti, not this, not that) teaching method common to Vedanta, Neoplatonism, Buddhism, early Christian mystics, and others, wherein nothing affirmative can be said of what is “beyond speculation, beyond words, and concepts” thereby eliminating all positive characteristics that might be thought to apply to the Soul, or be attributed to it; to wit that the Subjective ontological Self-Nature (svabhava / atman) can never be known objectively, but only thru “the denial of all things which it (the Soul) is not”- Meister Eckhart. This doctrine is also called by the Greeks Apophasis.

Modern Buddhism (so-called, not that it is Buddhism in any way) labors under the heinous delusion that from the outset there is no immaterial and ontological soul, or atman in the system of Buddhism and therefore the only logical conclusion from this false premise is that Buddhism is merely a profane moral Humanism based in compassionate empirical idealism, ‘liberation but no Liberant’, and this is palpably false. Under the guise of a more polished form of physicalism or rather, Atheism, a mere qualifier of objective phenomena, anatta, has overrun a noetic metaphysics, Buddhism, based in extracting the nous (spirit, citta, Self) from the objective cosmos (=anatta) wherein it has been miserably immersed since time immemorial as due to the attribute of the Absolute (Brahman, Greek = Hen), that being avijja (agnosis, nescience, as is philosophically meant Emanationism). Avijja (a+vijja [atman]) and anatta (an+atman) in no way differ, such that both refer to the beginningless privation, or objectivity immanent to the Absolute. Overcoming this objective desire (tanha) and enthrallment which constitute what is meant by anatta, is vijja (illumination), or conventionally liberation (vimutta, vijjavimutta); namely the only connection between atman and anatta is that of avijja to which Buddhism’s endgoal is pannavimutta (liberation via wisdom) in which avijja has no longer any footing; where avijja is not present, so too is anatta absent, this is the very Tathagata (gone to Brahman, or That), the same ‘dead man walking’, he who has ‘died before he has (physically) died’.

That myself or anyone need go into such detail about a simple term, anatta, which now corruptly forms the basis of modern Buddhism only demonstrates the heights from which Buddhism has fallen severely over the past 2400 years. Like an ancient city in the jungle overgrown with vines and weeds, shat upon by nesting birds, and inhabited by fanged monkeys who fling their feces at visitors, Buddhism attracts only the mentally perverse who wrongly see superficially something noble in a soulless nihilistic Humanistic idealism.

Gotama is Mara, is evil, in sutra

2008-03-29T21:38:00.001-07:00

Or, the Buddha is still subject to desires, and sensual depravities
Or, “The Self (atman) is at war with self (anatman, not-self)” [B.G. VI.VI]
Copyright 3-2008

As in most religions, the objectification and validity of the embodiment of evil is maintained as a persona in Buddhism, as existent and embodied in other then the empirical self. As against sutta, Buddhism in no way differs from modern connotations of Satan, or Mara, wherein it miserably diverges from the doctrinal denotation that in fact one’s self, Gotama or otherwise, is none other than Mara (or Satan). It is true that Mara, in doctrine is a persona (empirical self), however not as differentiated from the persona that is either Gotama or any person “who can be called by name”, against which the Buddha is a “not-person” [SN]; this is yet another point of fine metaphysics which has been bastardized by the common and profane religionists over time, just as Satan is not a being in the Bible; but Satan, who remains an angel even in hell, can be called a persona, or, indeed, persons, since his name is "Legion: for we are many", that being the ‘many’ (= “Mara’s army”) which comprise the composite and existential persona which is ones self (Bob, Sue, Gotama, etc.). Of the two in us, one the "spark" of Intellect (nous, citta) or Spirit, and the other, feeling or mentality, subject to persuasion, it is obvious that the latter is the "tempter,". That the soul itself, our "I" or "self" itself, should be the Devil -- whom we call the "enemy," "adversary," "tempter," "dragon," -- never by a personal name (Even the Hebrew Satan, "opponent," is not a personal name). 'Be simply and wholly bereft of self.'" For "there is nothing else in hell, but self-will (attabhava, ahamsome); and if there were no self-will, there would be no devil and no hell." In the Shaker hymn we have: But now from my forehead I'll quickly erase the stamp of the Devil's great "I." Just so is the case in Buddhism that Mara is not a being, nor an autonomous objective reality in sutta, but malady, plague, death (=Mara, “king of death”).

Our whole metaphysical tradition, Christian, Vedantic, Buddhist, Advaitic, and other, maintains that "there are two in us," [Plato, Republic 439DE, 604B; Philo, Deterius 82; St. Thomas Aquinas, Sum. Theol. II-II.26.4; St. Paul, II Cor. 4:16] this man and the Man in this man; and that this is so is still a part and parcel of our spoken language in which, for example, the expression "self-control" implies that there is one that controls and another subject to control. Of these two "selves," outer and inner man, psychophysical "personality" and very Person (spirit, nous, citta, atman), the human composite of body (kaya, rupa), soul (colloquially old English personage), and spirit (atman, nous, citta) is built up. Of these two, on the one hand body-and-soul (or consciousness, vinnana, jivatman), and on the other, spirit, one is mutable and mortal, the other constant and immortal; one "becomes," (bhava) the other "is," (thita) and the existence of the one that is not, but becomes, is precisely a "personification" or "postulation," since we cannot say of anything that never remains the same from moment to moment that "it is” in any true sense. However necessary it may be to say "I" and "mine" for the practical purposes of everyday life, our ego in fact is nothing but a name for what is really only a sequence of observed behaviors. "How can that which is never in the same state 'be' anything?" [Plato, Cratylus, 439B; Theatetus, 152D; Symposium, 207D, etc.] "'Ego' has no real meaning, because it is perceived only for an instant.”

Buddhists, irrationally, like Christians, comfort themselves that their idols, Gotama and Jesus were “free of desires, imperfections, sensuous proclivities”, by rationalizing that Jesus was tempted in the desert by a genuine separate persona, Satan, or that Gotama, in the many instances in sutta, was tempted by a similar persona, Mara, who commanded Gotama to forego spiritual life and to seek after pleasures of the body, long life, and or enjoin himself in the endless streams of desires present to the living. However by doctrine and logical necessity, the “great evil, king of death”, Mara was none other than the personage Gotama himself [SN 3.195] “Mara’s-dharma, Mara’s-dharma venerable Lord, in what manner may you describe Mara’s-dharma? The five aggregates are what is meant by Mara’s-dharma.” Also: [SN 3.195] At one time in Savatthi, the venerable Radha seated himself and asked of the Blessed Lord "Mara, Mara I hear said venerable. What pray tell does Mara mean?” Just this, form, Radha is Mara, sensations are Mara, perceptions are Mara, assemblages are Mara, consciousness is Mara. Seeing thusly…this is the end of birth, the Brahma-life has been fulfilled, what must be done has been done." The Person who overcomes Mara, in the case of Buddhism, the Buddha, the Tathagata, is a spiritual sage of “two minds”, that being the self of flesh and blood, and the psycho-physical personage (namorupa) Gotama, and that nobler, better other, That Self which is “always at war with that other self which is foul, of the world, and subject to corruption and decay”, as parroted in: “The Self (atman) is at war with self (anatman, not-self)” [B.G. VI.VI]. The only difference between the liberated sage and the ignorant profane worldling is that the sage has overcome and subjugated the worldly self (bhavanirodha [self-subjugation, = overcoming becoming] nibbanam) by mite of the Self in wisdom. The spiritual and metaphysical adept is one who must be the “dead man walking” who has followed the commandment: “die before ye die!”, and is one who has died to that (mere) self and lives in the Spirit, or the Self. This is the discernment between the Great Self (mahatta) and little self (alpatman); or the fair Self (kalyanatta) from the foul self (papatta) as mentioned in Buddhist sutta. The “dead man walking” as title of the sage, the wisdom-holder who, though liberated and residing in the unseen Self, yet still ‘walks around amongst the living who are as dead (of spirit)’ is a spiritual appellation of formerly great meaning now misunderstood. To the profane worldling this master-sage is a zombie in that he does not entertain worldly delights, but to that sage, all others are the spiritually subjugated, the ‘walking dead (of spirit)’, and depraved who are the genuine zombies of samsara.

It is extremely common fare in ancient religious doctrine to find the sage, the master speaking by means of his Self to his mere persona, or self as an objective entity and temptor, rather than what is truly happening, that being the physical self tempting that nobler Person, Gotama or otherwise; an excellent book on this very topic alone is: “The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind” by Julian Jaynes; the bicameral mind of Person and persona are “at war” yet recorded and read (by religious zealots and fools) as though the master sage is at odds with an autonomous entity who personifies (again, self!) evil. Logically so, fully illumined or not, the body is unquestionably the major point of stupefaction for the spirit; however this is a religious heresy as conceived either by Buddhist or Christian, that their idols and masters are subject to bodily desires and its subsequent depravities; but this is nonetheless indeed the case in doctrine. There is in fact no objective autonomous entity which is tempter, evil personified as separate from Gotama the person. Several of Gotama’s disciples who gained full liberation (or wisdom which fully separated Self from mere self) were said to have “taken the knife blamelessly” in so committing suicide and eliminating final removal of the empirical self which leads to continued stupefaction and potential fall from the grace of liberation. [SN 3.189] The Mara Sutta is extremely important in that it is outright stated by Gotama that “Mara is not only the five aggregates, the killer, but also the one who is killed”; meaning obviously that all empirical personas are therefore Mara, just as it is said over and over, that all psycho-physicality = Mara, so too therefore is the phenomenal and objective self, or persona also = Mara. Any and all persons, Bob, Sue, Larry, and Gotama himself are indeed Mara.

Though wisdom may be full and “ripe” as is stated in sutta (in the case of Gotama), so long as spirit is coincident with the foul body whose fruits are lusts, depravities, desires, etc., there will logically and unquestionably be stupefaction and literal war between the self which is Gotama, and the Self which is the “non person” the Buddha, the Tathagata. That wisdom (as meant cittavimutta, liberation of spirit) has been attained, Buddhahood stated, there is still yet no manner by which physical suffering and its brethren desires and afflictions can or may be removed except thru final separation at death of the body. There is neither mention of an end to physical suffering in sutta nor evidence for same in either Gotama’s countless pains in the course of his life, or his bodily suffering and “tremendous pains” (mahaparinibbana sutta) shortly before his physical death. [SN 4.38] “Mara, Mara venerable Lord, in what manner may you describe Mara? When there is the eye, when there are forms, there then is eye-consciousness and phenomena to be cognized, there exists Mara and the what (is deemed) Mara.”

It is no coincidence that earliest iconography of the Buddha would be either an empty seat worshiped by those gathered round it, a pillar of flame, a swastika (= Brahman), or a hovering wheel, and not Mara, not Gotama the personage who was “that evil, that not-Spirit (anatman)”; for the Buddha is spirit (citta, nous), and never (as done so by earliest Buddhism) confused with the empirical Mara, or Gotama who was composed of the corporeal “Mara-aggregates”; “The purification of one’s own mind/will (citta); this is the Doctrine of the Buddha” [DN 2.49], “How is it that one is called a ‘Buddha’?...gnosis that the mind/will (citta) is purified (visuddham)…such is how one is deemed a ‘Buddha’.” [MN 2.144]. Rather fittingly, all present day “statues of Buddha” are in fact statues of Mara (= of Gotama!), those ignorant and profane demons who would presume we find them as Buddhists are in fact those who bow down and pay homage to Gotama, to Mara, to the empirical persona and self which is “suffering, as ill, as a plague, a boil, a sting, a pain, an affliction, as foreign, as otherness, as empty (suññato), as Selfless (anattato)” [AN 4.422]. That all current “statues of the Buddha” are in fact gold-covered or brass homage’s to Mara, or Gotama, cannot be denied and is most certainly fitting for an corrupt materialistic religion far diverged from its original, which praises Mara-Gotama over that of the Buddha who is spirit and his attainment which culminated in the subjugation of the spirit over that of persona (= anatta, Mara, Gotama), or, as depicted in earliest iconography the Buddha is undepictable, or in sutta is deemed a “non-person”; [SN 1.132] In contradiction to Mara, it is declared by Uppalavanna that she is “cittasmim vasibhutamhi”, ‘Lord and master of the citta’, and thereof conquered Mara’s and all his attributes (which comprise person-hood, or ahamsome).

The spirit which is = Buddha is not confused in sutta which the Mara-aggregates (in this case of course, meaning Gotama) which is so keenly differentiated in sutta: [MN 1.436, AN 4.422] “Whatever form, feelings, perceptions, experiences, or consciousness there is (the five aggregates), these he sees to be without permanence, as suffering, as ill, as a plague, a boil, a sting, a pain, an affliction, as foreign, as otherness, as empty (suññato), as Selfless (anattato). So he turns his mind (citta, Non-aggregate) away from these; therein he gathers his mind within the realm of Immortality (amataya dhatuya). This is tranquility; this is that which is most excellent!” [SN 3.234] “Followers, the desire and lust for formations is a defilement of the citta, the desire and lust for feelings is a defilement of the citta, the desire and lust for cognition is a defilement of the citta, the desire and lust for experiences is a defilement of the citta, the desire and lust for vinnana is a defilement of the citta. But, followers, when one abandons the defilements of the citta regarding these five stations (aggregates), then ones citta inclines towards renunciation. Ones citta is made pliable and firm in renunciation by direct gnosis.” [MN 1.511] “For a long time I have been cheated, tricked and hoodwinked by my citta. For when grasping, I have been grasping onto form, for when grasping, I have been grasping onto feelings, , for when grasping, I have been grasping onto perceptions, for when grasping, I have been grasping onto experiences, for when grasping, I have been grasping onto consciousness.”

For the worldling “lost in the sea of desires”, his spirit is subsumed and subjugate (= avijja) in the self, for him there is no distinction between Person and persona, there is only this person ‘so and so’, he is not liberated of which it might be said of him [MN 1.160] “He has destroyed outflowings having intuited vision of wisdom. This followers, is called a follower who has blinded Mara the evil one. Having deprived Mara the evil one’s vision to behold him he has crossed over all desire for anything in this world.” The “temptations of Mara” as enjoined by the Buddha in sutta is the stupefaction of coincidence with Gotama the persona upon the Person, the Buddha, or as distinctly mentioned: [SN 1.103] cetoparivitakkamaññay “Mara…considering upon the reflection (of the Buddha’s mind)” wherein the empirical consciousness (vinnana) of Gotama wages battle with the spirit of the Buddha (citta); or the compounded consciousness at war with the uncompounded mind (citta, or spirit) of the Buddha. To which the Buddha is apposite and replies by means of his wisdom: [SN 1.105] nihato tvamasi antaka’ “Thou-ness maker of ends, art defeated”, often translated as “You are defeated endmaker”, but which however in the Pali refers not to another persona, but the personage itself (in this case Gotama) who is rebuffed by the Buddha; this again being the bicameral mental battle between Gotama-Mara and that of the Buddha who is “no longer subjugate to the whims of objective selfhood” which is ‘na me so atta’ (not my Soul, or Self). But in so being coincident with Gotama, the psychophysical person who “is Mara”, the Buddha is therein tempted over and over, but rightly so, does not succumb. This is of course the “inner war”, the “inner struggle” between “a self divided against itself”. [MN 1.227] “Followers, I am an expert in this world and the next, am expert in Mara’s realms and what is outside of Mara’s realm, am expert in the realm of death and what is outside of the realm of death.”

What else would the Buddha make proclamation of in so stating ‘na me so atta’ (this/these are not my soul) than his empirical self, composed of the five khandhas (aggregates) which make up the personage we know as Gotama? It cannot be another than this. To think, as modern Buddhism so ignorantly does, that Mara is a genuine personage as autonomous and external to the already external, objective, and empirical self (Gotama), is none other than ignorance heaped upon ignorance over time immemorial as fool taught fool who in turn taught the ever the more so foolish, the incorrect meaning or earliest and original Buddhism. [MN 1.141] "What do you suppose, followers, if people were carrying off into the Jeta grove bunches of sticks, grasses, branches, and leaves and did with them as they wished or burned them up, would it occur to you: These people are carrying us off, are doing as they please with us, and are burning us? No, indeed not Lord. And how so? Because Lord, none of that is our Soul, nor what our Soul subsists upon! Just so followers, what is not who you are, do away with it, when you have made done with that, it will lead to your bliss and welfare for as long as time lasts. What is that you are not? Form, followers, is not who you are, neither are sensations, perceptions, experiences, consciousness (the five aggregates)."

Mara is none other than the mimetic (mimesis) personage as opposite to, against, and coincident to the eidetic Buddha who is spirit. It is absolutely no coincidence that it is remarked of wise sages that they are indeed “tortured souls”, however the meaning or source of this comment is unknown to most, but which logically stems from the fact that the common fool is not one who is “of two minds” or is divided against himself in that he is both willing and complicit in the bestial and desire-based proclivities of objective personhood, or psycho-physical life [Dhm 7] “Whosoever dwells only in what is pleasureful and sweet, with one’s senses unleashed, fat, lazy, lacking moderation, slothful. Herein one is overcome by Mara the evil one, just as a small tree is swept away to destruction by the great storm”, or [Dhm 46] “Know this, the body is merely foam, a phantom. Verily by perfect knowledge, know that the body is merely a collection of phenomena and a mirage of what is genuine. Destroy the sensuous desires, those flower arrows of Mara the tempter and depart forever from the King of death, go unseen”, or as it is said of this fool, “the wicked have no quarrel with the Devil!”. Not is it the case of the Buddha who, so long as life lasts, must be perpetually tempted by his former identity, Gotama who is none other than Mara [SN 1.115] “the eye is Mara’s, so too are formations, eye-contact, consciousness, ear, sounds, nose, smells, tongue, tastes, the body, all objects, thoughts, mental phenomena; all these are Mara’s”, all of this of course belongs to Gotama. The commoner does not seek after liberation or wisdom, but for continued existence (bhava) as embodied in [SN 1.108] the Sassatavada heresy as endorsed by mara “the life of mortals rolls on and on, like the chariot wheels felly around the hub (atman). This is the same passage in the Br. Upanishad [2.5.15] “all spokes of the wheel are contained in the axle and in the felly of the wheel, all beings and selves (empirical self) are contained in that Self (atman)”. For such an evil one, [SN 1.111] “a net hovers in the heavens, which catches thoughts (desires, lusts); by means of this net I (Mara) will snare you” But for the sage, [SN 1.112] “the five khandhas cannot find him (the final liberation at death) …Mara (the empirical self) and his army”

The title and premise of this article should rightly prove heretical to the minds of your typical ‘Buddhist’ but not so to those who know both the doctrine and metaphysics of Buddhism well, in so knowing the clear distinction made between self and Self, or persona and Person (spirit, atman, Buddha). However the ‘body of Mara’ which was Gotama and was “born in death….and returned to death” (‘ashes to ashes, dust to dust’) was not the Buddha, nor are the brass and gold images of Gotama recreated countless millions of times and found in temples across the globe to be looked upon as representing the Buddha, but rather a Mara-worshiping later-day persona-based cult which bemuses itself as Buddhism but which in fact is anything but. Gotama’s remains (part of them, as they were divided up and buried far and wide, and worshiped) reside in a New Delhi museum inside the pottery jar that contained them inside the stupa these thousands of years and unearthed in the early 1900’s. That modern ‘Buddhism’ would choose to make iconography of Gotama, that foul Mara-khandha “rancid heap” [Dhm] which died and was thrown upon the funeral pyre is a fitting symbol for its materialism. Gotama ‘the tempter’, who was Mara, was not the Buddha who was spirit. Earliest depicters with depth of wisdom knew this fact and appropriately represented Gotama in one way, and the Buddha as another, for one was Mara superceded by the Buddha who was a ‘non-person’ in the Nikayas. For the fool however that I have rightly, with evidences from doctrine, logic, and intelligent deduction would deny Gotama as anything other than Mara, or evil, it need be said to those many foolish, that this is no more a denial of the Buddha and his gospel, than is Socrates’ “to…soma….ouk estin ho anthropos” (the body is not the Man [Aniochus 365]) is a denial of the Man, or spirit which is the heart (citta) of both the Buddha, liberation, and his taught endgoal.

The Aryan position of blameless killing vs. murder

2008-02-21T17:01:00.001-08:00

Or, against the reductionistic fallacy of modernity that “killing is wrong”. Or further, proper killing is a noble virtue

As against the soccer-mom mentality so commonly found in the West and Europe (especially Britain), there are no evil actions, rather only an evil mind. The often repeated phrase “it is wrong to kill another” is a heinous non-Aryan fallacy which belies the ape mentality of the politically correct generation of “live and let live”, even in the face of necessary self defense. As is demonic the slaying of innocents by the hands of a psychopath is the lemming pacifist mentality that one should cower and hope for the best in the immanence of self-defense’s necessity, in the moment of oneself being attacked. It has frequently be the retort by pacifist goons that ‘those who live by the sword shall die by the sword’, therefore those who concern themselves with concealed carry deadly weapons as a means of self-defense in a brutal world are therefore those same who “live by the sword” and are therefore doomed. This misunderstanding however is highly pathetic and most certainly incorrect in that said passage refers to violent men who “live by the sword” from the position of violence, that in turn, “violence will certainly be returned to them”. The innocent man who “picks up and raises the sword (or gun)” when the time has arrived that violence has been leveled upon him is at no fault, for when danger has passed, the Aryan man “lays down the sword” and returns to his peaceful life. We however call them evil who “carry in front of them the sword whence and wherever they go”. Those evil men with evil minds who seek out violence and murder, in contrast to them, the Aryan who defense self, family and lands is the blameless and noble paragon of virtue, which none can assail, even if a thousand bodies of evil men lay slain at his feet.

Like the gun or the sword, both tools, so too is the body the tool of the mind of man, his spirit (in the case of the Aryan) takes charge and is control, of which the body and its deeds are blameless in all instances, but that the laws of man cannot punish the Aryan spirit, but rather imprison the body, and that “men see not the minds of others, rather the deeds and actions which are committed by their bodies”, such is the case that men are often judged not in spirit or intent, but in deeds. Whilst some actions could near never be rationally justified as having a noble premise in the mind, such as necrophilia, or pedophilia; killing is certainly nothing near either of such as these. The reductionistic pseudo logic of modern ‘peace-mongering at all costs’ pacifists is that “killing is killing, regardless”; however none of philosophies great-men have held such an ignoble position, this is something found only recently and most commonly in European minds, and that of far left-wing American pacifism. The false view that pacifism is the moral principle that the use of force is wrong for any reason is a metaphysical fallacy in that it sees all actions as reducibly equal, but this is not, cannot be the case, for body as a tool cannot ever be accused of equally reducible deeds in light of the mind, or spirits intent.

The pacifists growing consensus (= profane, non-Aryan, low, base) to wit “it is wrong to kill another” cannot be justified or enjoined by any with wisdom, for the mother in her home who has been attacked upon by a madman set upon her demise and that of her sleeping children has no fault to slay to death that very same man; that such a one as her is “equally to blame” as, say a Jeffrey Dahmer or any other crazed murderer, is a reductionistic and fallacious position as held by those with irrational and illogical minds who are driven along solely by their feelings and hormonal emotive bundles. Self defense, by gun or by fist, of oneself and those who are innocent is rationally noble, is Aryan; is indeed and undeniably an Aryan virtue and necessity. These same sort of non-Aryan minded peoples might insanely say that a time traveler who goes back to 1943 and puts a bullet in the head of Adolph Hitler out of the Aryan will towards millions of innocent Jews, and Europeans, is “equally to blame” as, say, Jack the ripper. The historical Gotama himself praised the Aryan deed of killing by his own hands of another: "I got good merit (in a past life) for killing the evil man"-Gotama Buddha [Jataka 4-197].

Certainly it would be true that many a demented and demonic tyrant or dictator has pathetically rationalized killing (but which is rather murder) of innocents; this ignoble rationalization in no way diminishes the Aryan and “blameless” (Digha Nikaya1 and elsewhere: Arhants who “took the knife blamelessly”) who have killed out of love, for either self-defense or love of others in saving the lives of innocents from the insanity and rage of a demented and evil Samsarin (profane worldly, a vile non-Aryan). Even the mass-murderer Anguilamala, in the Majjhima Nikaya of Buddhism’s earliest texts, became an Arhant in very short order in the Anguilamala Sutta. This is an important and defining characteristic between Buddhism and Jainist pacifism, which very few make any distinction thereof. Jains themselves ignorantly deny that wisdom can transcend karma (actions) ‘in an instant’, of which Buddhism and Advaita Vedanta do indeed claim. All actions (karma, Pali: kamma) are equivalences to avijja (agnosis, ignorance) in that the atman or soul is ignorantly seen as an agent (karmin) in and of samsara, which it is fact not. The false and common conception that Buddhism is pacifistic is utterly without a basis in its doctrine and rational postulation.

Modern histories famous pacifists (since pacifism is a foreign concept near entirely in the distant past) have themselves been ones to recognize the needs and Aryan nobility to kill another in defense of innocents, be that oneself or another. "If someone has a gun and is trying to kill you, it would be reasonable to shoot back with your own gun." [The Dalai Lama, in The Seattle Times, May 15, 2001]. "Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the Act depriving a whole nation of guns, as the blackest deed." [Mahatma Gandhi- An Autobiography : The story of my experiments with truth, by M.K. Gandhi, p.238]. Japanese, Italian and Nazi aggression that precipitated World War II often is cited as an argument against pacifism. If these forces had not been challenged and defeated militarily, logically many more people would have died under their oppressive rule. A frequently used quote is from Edmund Burke: "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing”. “Being a pacifist between wars is as easy as being a vegetarian between meals” - Ammon Hennacy. “Since pacifists have more freedom of action in countries where traces of democracy survive, pacifism can act more effectively against democracy than for it. Objectively the pacifist is pro-Nazi”- George Orwell.

It has been argued by pacifists and unintelligent idiots that no one need carry around with them a weapon as any Aryan is ought and in the right to do, given that a 911 call to the police dept. is recourse for such emergencies. Laughably shortsighted as this is, it must be stated that in a dangerous self defense situation the average elapsed time is two minutes from start to end, and the average American 911 response time is fourteen minutes; leaving a mere twelve minutes for one to either bleed to death, or mentally prepare for the passing from this life! In an equal regard pacifists and Leftists have deemed those who carry concealed weapons to be ‘cowards’, in fear of what ‘most likely will never happen’; while this is, regarding the later, partially accurate, the boy scout motto is a worldly truism “be prepared!”. Peoples (including pacifists) don’t own fire extinguishers, buy medical insurance, and elsewise out of being ‘fearful’ or ‘cowardly’, nor still does the Aryan who carries a gun with him everywhere fear the unknown, but rather knows the nature of existence and the varieties of evil men who lurk the world, looking to pray upon the weak (= pacifists). You cannot reason with a rabid dog, nor either a rabid and deranged human either hell-bent on rape, murder, etc. To think otherwise is extremely unintelligent; any policeman knows this very well. Dependency is sister to evil itself; the Aryan does not rely upon either the govt. or the police when danger is upon him.

The last irrational position by the looney Leftists in their defense (sic) of hatred for justified killing of another is to attack the tools of killing, namely guns. “Those evil guns” as they are wont to say, but it is rather instead true that ‘fools fear guns, whereas the wise fear only a fool with a gun’. These ‘anti-killing’ peoples are the same sort of demented fools who claim a lifeless hunk of steel, a gun, is inherently evil in and of itself, as if a gun has ever jumped up from a table and accosted someone, or killed another. They vociferously claim “there are many reasons to control the use of guns” however gun control is less about guns, than about control, for criminals do not follow the law, to them gun control pertains only to those who obey the law & its controls; to control guns is only to control the normal citizen, not the criminal who cares not for laws. It has been their refuge to blame the tool rather than the handler as a last defense, for they are often to say “guns kill people”, however the Aryan cannot capitulate to the insane notion that lifeless steel could jump up and kill a man; only a fool blames the tool rather than the wielder or same. Again, there are no evil actions, only an evil mind. The body is a tool, just as a gun is a tool, used either to murder, commit evil, or in the case of the Aryan, to save, protect, defend “those who are most certainly innocent”. There are no rational men who hold to a position of “evil tools”. All tools carry the responsibility that the owner know the manner in which to use it and have the intelligence enough to rationality and correctly use the tool they own or purchase. Just as is necessary here in life are not only guns needed, but also coffins, for all men die, so too medicine for the foul body which is bound to corruption, and all the other necessities of living.

It has been said by those against the killing of another for any reason: “If you want peace, be peace” this sort of pathetic reasoning would assume that a chaste, pure of spirit lovely woman might tread thru cities at night with no worry of the dark and deranged souls who would lurk and pounce upon her. The Aryan knows that the Absolute and its metaphysics are “beyond good and evil”, for in the Absolute there is not deed or misdeed by wisdom alone which has caused one to acquire that attainment. To “love peace” and “be a pacifist” are most certainly not the same thing. The Aryan who “loves peace” has not “gone against his nature” in either defending himself, his kin, or those innocents who cry out for “the righteous!”

The Cause of the Descent of the Soul

2008-02-20T22:19:00.000-08:00

Or, that there is no first cause of Soul’s descent. The alpha principle behind Emanationism

The most ancient and unsolved mystery of the cause, impetus, reasoning, logic behind the soul’s descent is something unsolved by all save Platonism and Buddhism/Advaita/Vedanta, and sadly though Buddhism was correct to deem avijja as, so to say, first cause in its descent metaphysics as embodied by Buddhism’s paticcasamuppada plan, its founder lacked the wisdom and foresight to see the necessity of a full metaphysics for his ministries survival and denied outright his followers any elaboration into the metaphysics of same, including the specifics for the soul’s descent. We might include half-truths in the models of heavily veiled metaphors and analogies as found in some ancient systems regarding partially true explanations for the soul’s descent, however these same symbolically drenched religious systems were and are highly counterproductive to a sharp insight into the logical system of the whys and hows of the metaphysical mechanics behind the embodiment of souls.

Ignorance is cause of the soul’s descent, as deemed TOLMA in Plotinus [5.1.1] for the reason behind the soul’s necessity of embodiment, also avijja/avidya in Buddhism’s paticcasamuppada plan. Without going into details of avijja specifically which I cover elsewhere, suffice to see avijja is meant the attribute of the Good, the One, the insentient superprinciple behind the Kosmos noetos (noetic, or spiritual cosmos, the immaterial and metaphysical universe under and behind the visible, material cosmos). Causes pertain as coordinate to the principle (of the One) wherein which the attribute is not differentiated from the principle of the Absolute. It cannot be said that the impetus for descent differs between the attribute of the One, or that of privation (tolma/avidya), such that said privation has no Cartesian position as cause for embodiment, and wisdom wherein it is acknowledged, or made self-known (initiatory realization of ones predicament), that a lack of wisdom (of the nature of ones immaterial Selfhood or divinity) is present as the perpetual and continuing impetus for embodiment. The One, the Absolute may be thought of conventionally as point (principle) and line (attribute), both of which together ‘spell’ as it were the One, for the One cannot, does not, may not ‘stay in itself’ (Plotinus, Plato) but radiates its Goodness outwards such that it is in nature, as it is in its activity; to deny same is to deny the One altogether, to negate the very definition of the One. The One carries with it no fault for embodiment, for the One is neither sentient nor being, but rather the principle behind being, suffice to mention that the One cannot be being is dealt with elsewhere by myself; as such ‘God is to blame’ cannot come to pass, for the One is not being, cannot be God. The error of inverse relation or composition as created by Creationists who have wrongly concluded from the truism “as above, so below” (true to Emanationism) therefore necessitates that beings here are a lesser manifestation of superbeing there (i.e. God), therefore the Absolute must be God. This same super-error is dealt with not only by Platonism, but by Vedanta as well.

It is impossible to contradict the very system of Emanationism by separating the One in its principle and the activity of the One; such would be establishing a contradiction to the system itself. As Plotinus himself would point out [4.8.6] the absolute and utter necessity besides unity (of the One) must be present, for if not, the One would not be the One, and the One would be halted in and to itself, an unbroken whole without attribute; but of course it cannot happen that even the Good, the One, may be devoid of an attribute, for what the One is in its physis (nature) is also that which it is in its activity, or attribute (nous, willing, illumination [to objectivity as yet unmanifest]). Discerning, as men have tried to do thru time immemorial, assign or find blame for the soul’s embodiment is a dog chasing its tail, an exercise in capital futility; for there is neither locus nor personal blame for the soul’s descent, no ‘original sin’ common to Creationism. Monism/Emanationism’s absolute simplicity is only bested by its absolutely choate, logical and intelligent philosophical mechanics, for Emanationism would be a truism to Occham’s razor; nothing more simple can or could be devised.

Necessity of Emanationism, or its equivalency, the soul’s descent as such must be seen in wisdom’s light of the nature and mechanics of the Monistic system common to Platonism, Vedanta, to wit what the One is in nature, or principle, cannot, shall not, may not, can never be differentiated from what it is in its activity, or as Plato has said that “to be the Good, means (it) does Good”. There exists nothing in either the material or immaterial cosmos which is lacking in at least one attribute, even That which is most utterly simplex, the One, or the Good (Brahman, the Absolute), just as light cannot be differentiated from what it is in its activity (illumination) nor will/mind from what it is in its activity (willing, mentation). This primordial uncaused ‘cause’ (no real cause) of the principle, will, or nous towards objectification (tolma, a-vijja, a-vidya) in its attribute, undistinguishable from its principle as the Good, has no Cartesian cause which can be pointed to as the source or, as Creationism is so fond of telling, blame for the soul’s descent.

As embodiment is manifest, quite literally unfolds as I have coined it, the five M’s, as it were: 1. Monad (the One, Brahman, Hen), 2. Mind (nous, citta, spirit, pneuma, soul), 3. Magnitude (topos), 4. Matter (hyle), 5. Man (On, embodied being, lesser soul), of which 1 & 2, and 3 & 4 are coeternal pairs with 5. Man/Being the union of these pairs, the Monistic Trinity or metaphysical system. The manner by which the nous has become coordinate to and with matter is due to the eidos as present within both formless matter (the byproduct of the emanation process) and the same noetic eidos as present within the nous, but those details are best saved for another discussion. Going into the details of lesser potencies of spirit is reserved for later, what is important to understand, is the means by which embodiment is itself uncaused and without directed blame either to the soul, to the One, or the empirical being, and certainly not to matter which itself does not partake of the One, but which itself is a necessity, a mirage of being as manifest thru the processes of the ones unfolding, or as meant Emanationism specifically and its byproduct, or wake, that being matter.

Were a man to wander in the parched desert, synonymous with samsara, or empirical becoming life after life, and so perish time and again from a privation of water, something innate and synonymous with the desert itself, what could or would such a man point to as the cause of his miserable perishing? In the analogy of causes, there is no locus to point to in the instance of a privation, that privation has no locus to say “it is there, that is the cause”. The true fool suffers the desert and perishes all the while, not knowing the remedy, the precious water (wisdom, vijja, gnosis) which would free him from his many deaths, surely such a one would shake his fist at his God and find blame therein, or plead forgiveness from same. One cannot, in the metaphysics of Monism, assign cause, blame, or locus to this privation, to this lack of wisdom (Subjectivity as = Self-gnosis) as needed to be freed from this objectification (attribute of the One = self-identity, or embodiment, culmination of the soul’s descent). The One is what it does, and does what it is, to seek or assign blame for the soul’s descent is the insane quest which cannot be fulfilled. The highly intelligent go-around for the Mobius loop of assigning blame for embodiment, was as espoused in earliest Buddhism: “when this is present, that is, when this is not present, that is not”. Who can assign blame, and how can one assign blame to a light, which falls upon and becomes coincident with matter? The manifestation of being, as a finality of the soul’s descent, as equivalent to matters illumination from a light afar shining has no locus which can be so deemed cause. The One must ‘do’ as it is (in principle); to blame either the Absolute or elsewise is a fools errand in futility. The only manner in which embodiment could be removed would be to remove the One itself, a heretical and absurdly untenable proposition.

To understand the meaning and nature of this or any privation is to understand the reasoning not only behind embodiment but also the mechanics of the One in its pure abject simplicity. The One cannot be another, or in another way; embodiment is as much a absolute necessity as the One, the Good is necessarily by its attribute and nature, Good. To understand this absolutely simplex truth is to fully grasp with the reigns of wisdom the process and manner by which embodiment cannot be otherwise, nor shame and blame be assigned either to the soul, much less so to the One. This noetic and blissful revelation into the simplicity of the werks of the One is a grand treasure granted to but a small few who have ever lived; I bow before the grace I myself have been given into seeing this unassailable truth into the Absolute, the One, which so few have ever glimpsed. It has been akin to noetically constructing a trillion-piece jigsaw puzzle in my spirit by means of insight, and beholding a unified picture whose magnificence is only glorified all the more so by its heart-stopping simplicity which is unmatched in the material universe.

The spiritual impotence as present in the embodied, or perpetually objectified spirit (nous, citta) is a blameless attribute of which sages and philosophers have tried to find the locus of since before time itself could or was being made count of; to which nothing can said to be an older spiritual question to be solved, for even those ignorant billions over all time’s past have desired to “know God” in so simultaneously trying to grasp, to know the reason for their pestilent enslavement and embodiment in this frail objective form of life. There is no one, nothing to blame either above or below for embodiment, but the lack of Subjective wisdom (the truth behind ones spiritual divinity) is to blame for the continuance of that very same embodiment. There is however ample cause for the non-Aryan that there is blame for his continued misery that he does not ask (philosophy) of himself for the reasoning behind his becoming, life after life and render this uncaused attribute impotent; but for all those beings, Aryan and non-Aryan alike, there exists neither cause, nor blame, nor a first cause, not a locus, for his very soul’s descent into the world, the cosmos of antinomies, becoming, the fires of time, of which there is an escape, final and everlasting; for if there were not, wisdom’s perfection would be a fruitless endeavor.

Where Buddhism Failed Miserably

2008-02-19T14:30:00.001-08:00

Or, the story of a successful failure

It cannot be disputed that anything popular cannot be true, even if the original article, long lost to the winds of time a buried under unenlightened commentary, was in fact a true and Aryan teaching regarding either metaphysics or the liberation from existential selfhood. For, all things popular are by the very definition of same, profane and ignoble; that the common man is a senseless brute who does not, cannot cleave his mind to things deep, abstruse, mystical and endowed with Aryan virtues regarding things hidden and sublime. Nothing true or noble has ever been obtained by or thru consensus, least of which being metaphysics, or its secular bastard-child, religion. The so-called ‘secret’ teachings as conventionally called today; rooted in the Aryan metaphysics of Platonism (Pythagorean Emanationism), pre-sectarian Buddhism (deemed Brahmayana, path to the Absolute, by its founder), Advaita and the like are only so deemed secret or hidden such that the overwhelming majority of peoples are devoid of any mentality to grasp the immaterial and subjective nature of the ministries left by those greats who understood and related the nature of the Absolute, of souls, and the kosmos noetos; the only secret in the ‘secret’ teachings is that sufficient wisdom is required to understand them, not that their message has been purposefully obscured.

Advaita has remained nearly 100% intact in its message over these many centuries, whereas Buddhism is entirely dead. Books such as “The Rise and Decline of Buddhism in India” and likewise have attempted to answer this question, giving correct reasoning for its decline such as 1. the creation of countless schisms and myriad short-lived sects 2. the explosive expansion of ritualized fetishism in the form of Mahayanism 3. Brahmanical hostility and campaigns against Buddhism 4. Pessimistic nihilism on the part of later-day Buddhism which over emphasized suffering alone 5. Royal persecution 6. Muslim massive destruction of temples and killing off of Buddhist monastics 7. Decline in patronage 8. No genuine decline of true, or earliest Buddhist metaphysics but its gradual reassimilation back into Vedanta of which Buddhism was merely a reestablishment thereof. All of these however pale collectively, as the reasoning behind Buddhism’s utter demise in time as compared its missionary nature and its utter lack of metaphysics.

Before getting to the main reason for Buddhism’s complete death it should be noted that none have made note that, in the Nikayas Buddhism does in fact espouse and instruct a “spread the word” missionary position by its founder Gotama. Anytime an Aryan metaphysics has given into this position it is short order for its message’s utter corruption and dissolution. However Buddhism’s current popularity is such that this very same perverted missionary faith was spread far beyond the Ganges valley into Afghanistan, Iran, China, and the Ashokan pillar edicts mention Buddhist missionaries as far west at the lands of Ptolemy II Philadelphus, the ruler of Ptolemaic Egypt; fools instructing even more unintelligent fools in the ‘message of Gotama’. That Advaita specifically was always a relatively small and close-to-the-master (upa-ni-shad, to sit up close [to the master]) faith and therefore there was little room for misunderstanding and corruption of the teachings, is only a portion of the reason for Advaita’s intact nature after all these centuries. The Advaitins, rightly so, were called Mayavadins by their peers for the sensible reason that Advaita was highly keen on debating the nature of maya, of avidya (agnosis, or rightly meant Brahman’s attribute) in a highly detailed and specific manner, i.e. the philosophical and metaphysical werks of the Absolute, as to how things material and immaterial have come to be in the system of Advaita’s model of the cosmos, just as the Neoplatonists themselves became notorious for.

Buddhism’s coffin nail came directly from Gotama himself both in primarily refusing repeated requests to establish the metaphysics of his system and secondarily for being a poor teacher. Unfortunately Gotama suffered the same fate he makes mention of regarding others in the Anguttara Nikaya where he declared that though a man may be fully illuminated he is not therefore so endowed with the mental prowess to pass along the methodology to achieve same amongst others. Such notable positions as when Gotama is asked to elaborate upon the meaning of avijja (paticcasamuppada #1, i.e. the cause of the descent of Being into embodiment) Gotama merely declares “avijja to mean not knowing the four noble truths”. Pathetically the only approach to a pseudo-metaphysical explanation in the entirety of the Nikayas by Gotama regarding avijja is [AN 5.113] Followers, the beginning of ignorance can never be discerned (beginningless) such that it cannot be said “Here is the First where ignorance is not, here is the contingency which generated it.” Such that it should be discerned, followers, “ignorance is a condition”.

That in Monism, the most important metaphysical principle requiring explanation, the cause of descent of Being, receives one obscure sentence from Gotama and same receives endless volumes from, initially Samkara, and far more still from his immediate disciples, cannot be ignored as anything less than the primary factor for Buddhism’s death and Advaita’s survival. Metaphysical systems are not survived in numbers (of followers) but in the expanse and accuracy its metaphysics. As mentioned 1-9 earlier, as grounds for Buddhism’s decline, Buddhism has survived, but in name only, its message is completely and irrefutably deceased. Buddhism alas could have easily withstood 1 thru 9, but not its founders myopic ignorance in refusing to establish the metaphysics of his system. It is a truism of philosophical history that nothing true is popular and nothing popular is true. Gotama’s refusal to establish a metaphysics has left a pathetic religious façade of Mahayanists, oriental and farcical Zen, and far worse the survival since its inception in the early centuries C.E., Theravada materialism, or properly physicalism. Rightly so in Gotama’s time, life was both short and harsh, and his position to teach a crash course in, firstly, disobjectification by becoming disgusted with formerly desired after objective phenomena and lastly assimilation (samadhi), was worthwhile and noble, but only so long as he remained around to direct others towards same. Without an expansive and solid metaphysics, which precedes the methodology, sans the teacher there is right quick dissolution and intent of the methodology as well.

In Buddhism’s instance, the failure to establish elaborately the nature of the atman, of avidya specifically, as Advaita had so carefully constructed, it became quickly apparent that the extensive via negativa approach of Buddhism without an accompanying metaphysics for same, lead its heirs to acquisition anatman as implied reality rather than an objective qualifier (A,B,C,D are anatman, are not-atman, are na me so atta ‘not my Soul’). In so taking anatman, incorrectly, subjectively, Buddhism’s heirs have to wit negated the endgoal of the very methodology which Gotama spelled out in full “atman as light and refuge” [DN 2.100 etc.]. In teaching this quick and expedient means of liberation sans a detailed metaphysics, Buddhism had from the start doomed itself to failure. It might be asked by the unintelligent that since Buddhism is a popular (= profane, common, base, unaryan) religion (secular mirage of metaphysics) how could it be said that Buddhism is at all dead? This question loaded brim with ignorance however presumes that quantity outstretches even miniscule quality. Plato, and his heir Plotinus, the two most brilliant metaphysicians and true philosophers who have ever lived are, today, possessed of far less than a handful of those who would be rightly deemed and self-professed ‘Platonists’, however these few are genuine metaphysicians and philosophers endowed with nobility and worth.

Gotama, while an illumined sage and knower of the Absolute did not possess the mentality, the intellectual prowess to transfer his revelation across the ages. His unwilling attitude towards illuminating his metaphysics and instead focusing in upon his expeditious methodology ultimately doomed his methodology in the end. Philosophical and metaphysical systems in great detail are not required to ‘reach the far shore’, however time and logic have shown irrefutably that those same metaphysical systems are required to alay sectarian divisions, squabbles over the endgoal if any, and the premise of the methodology itself. Gotamas vehicle (yana) sped along with its followers, but after his passing, his lack of illuminating the metaphysical works of his vehicle to liberation left his heirs with a vehicle to which they were and are clueless as to the hows, whats, wheres, and whys of its operation, akin to a stranded driver along the road with a broken vehicle of which he himself is utterly ignorant to know how to repair.

Buddhism is today a successful failure, not much apart from Creationism or Atheism however its in profane standing as apart from nobility; is little more than a Humanistic affirmation of mundane ethical things irrelevant to the original article, or as Dr. A.K. Coomaraswamy had said “Buddhism is most famous today for everything it originally never taught”. Gotama was a miserable failure in the most important fashion, that in which he failed to see or to realize that without a metaphysics, his ministry was forever doomed from the outset. In this point there can be no contention; Gotama was not wise enough to ever realize the magnificent error he made which has evolved into a successful and dismal failure we call ‘Buddhism’ today, but which should be shown nothing but contempt by the wise few.

On the profanity that is Atheism. Death to materialism

2008-01-13T22:10:00.000-08:00

The profane and pathetic nature of Atheism does not stem from its denial of a Creationist God, but as the Greek term itself defines same, atheos (anti-divinity) is a materialistic denial of all things metaphysical. This demonic Physicalism, or Atheism, derives its status amongst most as merely a vehement denial of God, however the case is that an Atheist is in true, a metaphysical Atheist who denies any immaterial and uncompounded Subjective principles as prior to, underneath or autonomous to matter (hyle).

The first mention of Atheism, is by the Greeks in the term atheos, which is in reference to Greek Platonism as refers to the Nous (will/mind/citta/spirit/soul) as found in passage: (Phil 26e-30d) and not to a supernatural persona, i.e. God. The immanent-only materialistic pantheism of metaphysical Atheism is an aphilosophical position holding that everything which exists is no more extensive than its physical compounded materiality; that is, that there are no kinds of things other than physical things. This anti-divinity of Atheism is the true and shadow-worshiping profanity that is the hallmark of Atheism, not its correct position that, as Plato and the Neoplatonists argued for as well, that there was no Supreme-Being as creator of the cosmos.
Metaphysical Atheism is Atheism, in true and in whole. That some who deem themselves Atheists also admit to, as they would say ‘something’ is certainly not in question, however these people are not in fact Atheists but lazy Agnostics and in most cases crypto-materialists; calling themselves atheists in but they merely deny God, is only a measure of their ignorance in of which they do not know the full scope of the very term Atheism. The Greeks in coining the term as progenitor for Atheism had meant, as Plato, Socrates, and Pythagoras before both, the denial of spiritual and immaterial divinity a-theos, or anti-divinitism.

Plotinus, the founder of Neoplatonism (only an extension and condensing of Platonism itself), wrote extensively on the denial of the Absolute as not Being, but an active insentient dynamis, an unmediated divinity of which composite Being could not be said thereof; such that Being by definition must partake of more than an uncompounded simplex principle (such as nous). The goal of Vedanta, Advaita, Buddhism (all of which encompass Upanishadic Monism) have Brahman as the endgoal, of which this Absolute is most certainly denied as Being (i.e. God). Atheism in true is none other than materialism, the praise of the existential persona headed for the grave-pit, it cant be shown anything else but contempt for denial of any and all which is outside the scope of the narrow and fallible spectrum of the petty human senses. Gotama Buddha derided Ishvara (God) both in principle and those who aligned themselves in practice with same.

A voracious supporter of Atheism (not a mere God-denying agnostic as in the previous example) will in all instances adamantly deny the metaphysical, the divinity of which atheos, or Atheism is meant in its definition. A true agnostic (merely as meant agnosis, or ignorance! Or, deeming oneself as ignorant) is but an unlearned and unexplored supporter of metaphysics even if only indirectly; that some agnostics would foremostly deny God, does not make them an Atheist. That these ‘unknowers’ (agnostics) would firstly deem themselves as Atheists is but a further expression of their ignorance of the meaning of Atheism and not just of metaphysics.

Atheism is currently not a (sic) philosophical position that God is not, but that theology (again, the study of divinity, which Creationism is only a part thereof) is something to be despised and spit upon. To convince oneself of the insanity of Atheists, they need only watch a debate between Atheists and Creationists; one might gather that such rabid profanity-laced tirades could only be found amongst those made-become Atheists who had been raped over twenty years by Catholic priests. It is highly humorous that Atheists fight and spit so voraciously at the mention of a God whom they deny exists. In true definition further in modern connotation and example, Atheism is little more than anti-religiosity (theo-logy), and not simply the logical denial of God.

Religion is merely the profane secular side of metaphysics; is but popularized metaphysics; as such it is true that religion is as was said “the opiate of the masses”. A modern Atheist is one who hisses like a snake at the sight of religious and or theological institutions of noetic, spiritual examination. He is, as Atheist, far more than one who denies the Creationists God(s); but were Atheism merely this alone, I and many others Platonists, Vedantists, would gladly proclaim themselves as Atheists! In connotation and definition both however to call oneself an Atheist is no different than gleefully calling oneself a demon materialist.

What the Atheists fail to realize is of the two ignorant positions as explanation for the extreme complexity in nature between the model of the Creationists, and that of the Atheists, the positions of the Atheists is far more so the implausible one. The extreme complexity in nature from macro to micro is not in question by even the lowliest of fools, however the Atheistic position that this complexity stems from time and random atomic convergence is highly ignoble and unintelligent. One might equally insanely postulate, from the same position of the Atheists, that random atoms, given a few billion years, will eventually coalesce to the point of creating Shakespearean literature. However Atheism in its extreme insanity is working on creating its own Gods, thru perfection of cryogenics and DNA manipulation wherein someday, they erroneously hope, will culminate in bodily immortality. Or even more insanely, as some demonic Atheists have postulated, that empirical consciousness is no more than complex and copyable network which could be transferred as software into a robot at the death of the body, thereby granting immortality in the form of a robot which could be repaired indefinitely. In the ranks of perversity, even Satanism hails as higher than Atheism, in that of its core Satanism admits to a full acknowledgement of immaterial and metaphysical subjectivity, or the divine, even if in praise of the dark side of divinity. Insanity takes countless forms, Atheism is but one highly miserable variety thereof.

The all too common and pathetic “Hindu” insult as employed by Buddhists

2008-01-06T13:10:00.001-08:00

I have encountered statements such as these literally hundreds of times, such as this reply I came across just yesterday: “Of course I'm an atheist! Buddhism does not depend on idiotic Hindu superstitions.” Confirming yet again among so many other reasons why it has been said “were you to leave dung upon your doorstep would you expect aught but flies to appear before you?” Buddhism today is in name only, it attracts extremely miserable and depressed Atheists, and, in the West and Europe, Christian & Jewish malcontents/rejects. As one Indian philosopher and metaphysician had said: “Buddhism (modern) is an extremely sick religion inhabited by atheists, agnostics, and at best pantheists. They congregate together at ‘dharma-centers’, which are little more than
outpatient mental wards for depressed materialists, and engage in idle chatter about attainment of oblivion and the denial of all things spiritual.”
It would be intelligent for some to read works such as: “The Rise and Decline of Buddhism in India” (Hazra), and other titles as to the manner in which Buddhism became a magnet for materialists and moralists/Humanists in medieval India. In Gotama’s time, the principle Upanishads were already nearly as old as present-day is to the New Testament. An extreme proliferation of Sramanic schools of thought upon the core meaning of the Vedas and Upanishads (of which were Vedanta, or the [anta] core/end/ultimate meaning of the Vedas themselves, i.e. the Upanishads) were sprouting all around as centered upon those who thought they held the truest grasp of the core principles behind and within Vedic metaphysics, of which Buddhism was but one ‘successful’ branch of Sramanism thereof.
It is rather ironic that Sramanic schools sprang up to establish a more condensed teaching upon the Upanishads, which themselves were wholly meant to be a core derivation of the ‘ultimate’ meaning of the Vedas! It is unfortunate that while the Indian Metaphysicians were keenly enabled in teaching the methodology of liberation, but were extremely verbose and symbolically obtuse in condensing the metaphysics of their system, unlike the Neoplatonists for example who were, at times, too pithy (namely that Plotinus, for example is far too hard for most to read without winning a headache). Even India’s great founder of Advaita Vedanta, Sri Sancaracharya (Samkara) often had wrote to complain and whine that the Vedas were an impenetrably dense vault that only one Wiseman in million might penetrate the meaning thereof.
What is never written about is that in modern so-called ‘buddhism’, there exists a solid and pungent fear of Buddhism being merely a school of thought upon the essential principles of Vedantic Monistic metaphysics. This fear is subliminal and latent in a palpable cowardice that Buddhism would lose its worth if it were partially or wholly linked to the “HINDU” Upanishads or the Vedas worse still. Such as, the ‘renowned’ Theravada materialist Nyanatiloka has said: "Thus with this doctrine of Selflessness, or anatta, stands or falls the ENTIRE structure of Buddhism".
This fear of loss of the “uniqueness” of Buddhism lead its followers to slaughter and condemn its founders teachings long ago, not to mention that any and all with any common sense migrated from this perverse pseudo form of Buddhism into that of either Advaita Vedanta which is commonly said was the “destroyer of (early centuries C.E. and onwards) Buddhism”, or towards any one of another forms of Sramanic Vedantic asceticism and/or beliefs.
It takes a very “special” (speshul ? lol) person to espouses a religion sans a soul. For there is no such ‘religion’, only a Moralism or an Atheistic Humanism. The denial of the soul, or the immaterial and uncompounded metaphysical Subject cannot be enjoined to most all mankind, for it goes against his subliminal knowledge and nature. It was thought centuries ago that the “new age of reason and (false) enlightenment” via scientific thought would crush religion and spiritual philosophy; however just the opposite is the case, for modern physicists are speculating and waxing metaphysical now more than ever. Ironically the most intelligent minds of history that served as the foundation for modern science, Plato, Aristotle, Newton, etc. were self-admittedly studiers of science only as a means to a better and reasonable grasp of the werks of all things spiritual and Divine. Or, “those who know more about the designed (phenomena, i.e. physical sciences) have better insight into that (not God, as in the case of Creationism) which designs”. The more I encounter ‘buddhists’ (and I have talked with, debated and lectured amongst thousands of them), the more I am certainly convinced that, as was intelligently said by an Indian fellow: “people in the West who call themselves Buddhists are religious rejects who are just intelligent enough not to call themselves outright nihilistic Atheists.” For a true Atheist is not one who merely denies the Creationist God (which is true and accurate), but is, as is technically called a “metaphysical Atheist”, being one who denies ontological and immaterial Subjects such as the Soul, the Absolute and all that which lies behind and underneath the “curtain of phenomena”.
Most experts in the study of earliest Buddhism (such as Dr. A.K. Coomarswamy, the founder of the Pali Text Society Mrs. Davids, Dr. Radhakrishnan, G. Grimm, G. Pande and many others) have complained harshly about the Nominalist reading of Buddhist doctrine. Such as, is commonly found in Theravada: amata, which is immortality becomes nominalized by the Theravadins and mistranslated as “deathless”. Or attan, which is Pali for Atman, becomes nominalized as “yourself”, Brahman, or the Absolute, becomes merely “best”. The castration of metaphysics from earliest Buddhist suttas has been the case since the 5th century C.E. when Theravada rose to power and was the surviving remnant of the materialistic and Atomistic sect of Sarvastivada, which literally translates as “This is all there is-ISM: Sarva, or sabba (all, as meaning only all phenomena [SN 4.15 sabba sutta]) asti (there is) vada (ISM)”; i.e. Atomism! Let me not digress too far into the illogical standard in which Theravada loves to translate anatta as “no-SOUL(atta)”, but positive appellations of atta in the Nikayas become merely “yourself”, such as “attadipa” (Atman as light), atta hi paramo piya (Atman is most beloved), or attasarana (Atman as refuge). Such an illogical and inconsistent double standard for the term attan is nothing if not laughable. For, anatta is no denial of the Atman, but a denial of Atman in or related to any of 22 nouns which are deemed as Selfless (Atman-less). For all those things which are anatta are also “na me so atta” (not my Atman), as = anicca,dukkha,anatta”. I no more deny the Atman by saying ABCDEF are not-X (an-ATTA), than I would or have denied Elephants by saying “Alaska, Russia, Sweden, etc. lack, or are devoid of roaming Elephants”; “whenever we deny something unreal, it is in reference to (finding) the Real”.
The “HINDU” fallacy must die in the mind of any who cherish what is both intelligent, wise, and logical, and importantly so, doctrinally provable. The concept of this “HINDU” error is rooted in a fear that Buddhism did not spring up in a vacuum, and was an entirely new methodology which was adversarial or against the principles of Vedantic liberation ontology and its metaphysics. Nothing is known except in the modality of the knower, that a more precise and accepted means of relating the ‘hidden’ meaning of the poetic and HIGHLY symbolic Vedas, does not imply a new religion or an “anti-Vedic” strain of thought in the teachings as found in earliest Buddhist texts. The Nikayas do not belong to any sect of modern-day Buddhism, nor any long dead sect as well; the importance of this shouldn’t be forgotten.
Lets gather how “original” Buddhism is or wasn’t from a small section of the pervasively consistent Nikayas: [DN 1.249] “ I teach the way to the union with Brahman, I know the way to the supreme union with Brahman, and the path and means leading to Brahman, whereby the world of Brahman may be gained.” [DN 1.248] ”all the peoples say that Gotama is the supreme teacher of the way leading to the Union with Brahman!” [It 57] “Become-Brahman is the meaning of Tathagata.” [SN 3.83] “Without taints, it meant ‘Become-Brahman’.” [SN 5.5] “The Aryan Path is the designation for Brahmayana (path to Brahman).” [MN 1.341] “The Soul is having become Brahman.” [SN 4.117] "Found the ancient path leading to Brahman." "I have seen" says Buddha, "the ancient path, the old road that was taken by the former all-awake Brahmins, that is the path i follow, lost long ago. Just like an overcovered path lost long ago is that which i have discovered" SN 2.106 "I have not made a new path monks, i have only rediscovered what was lost long ago" Itivuttaka "Gotama is a TEVIJJAN (Knower/expert in the VEDAS)"-MN, Udana “Gotama is a VEDASOTTHIM (Sage/expert in the Vedas)”- Digha1. Gotama was oft called himself a VEDAGU..........or "(someone) that has gone to the Vedas" "Gotama is a teacher of MONISM (advayavada)" The answer is, not original at all, in any respect.
The word "Hinduism" comes from the word sindhu, the Indo-Aryan word for "the sea," and came to apply to the peoples in the region east of the Indus River. The word “Hinduism” has no connection to any specific religion at all but a peoples and area. "From the point of view of religion, the Vedic literature divides itself into two parts, viz. the Rigveda on the one hand and the rest of the Vedic literature on the other; the two distinct phases of essentially the same religion may be called Vedic religion and Brahmanism. This division and the above two names hardly need any justification. It is now recognized beyond doubt that, although Brahmanism is nothing but an isolated development of the religion contained in the Rigveda, yet the two religions are entirely different in spirit.While one represents a comparatively exalted form of a purer faith based on nature-worship, the other tends to become artificial,mechanical and hieratic, and makes rites and ceremonies its chief concern." ---[P.S. Deshmukh,Religion in Vedic Literature, 198]"Hinduism has never prepared a body of canonical scriptures or a common prayer book; it has never held a general council or convocation; never defined the relation between laity and clergy; never regulated the canonization of saints or their worship; never established a single center of religious life; never prescribed a of training for its priests"--- [Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics 6:712].
The “HINDU” profanity as used, as I myself have heard countless hundreds of times over the years, needs to die. These so-called ‘buddhists’ use the term HINDU in the same manner the Nazi SS officers used the term JEW; not in referring to a peoples or (incorrectly in the case of the term HINDU) a religion, but something foul, unsavory, lowly, profane, miserable, disgusting.
These same ‘buddhists’ fear their precious faith would sink into the grounds of ancient Vedanta like water into the dirt, if they were to come close to even partially admitting Buddhism is absolutely no more anti-Vedic than Jesus was a Jew hater. One might equally and heretically proclaim that Martin Luther was against the Bible, or Christianity in that he but only spoke coarsely against the Catholic Church’s position, which he demonstrated via the Bible, was a commentarial religion too often adversarial to the principles in the Bible itself, such as confessions, relic-worshiping, fetishisms, and, in Luthers time, literally buying Heaven-insurance by donating coin to the Church.
It is a well established fact by experts in the religious history of India, that of Gotamas time, circa 500 B.C.E., the meaning of the already old-and-dusty principle Upanishads (much less the Vedas) was long lost and overcovered, as is the case in his admission: ." "I have seen" says Buddha, "the ancient path, the old road that was taken by the former all-awake Brahmins, that is the path i follow, lost long ago. Just like an overcovered path lost long ago is that which i have discovered" (SN 2.106). The only denial Gotama ever made in the suttas, was that one was never BRAHMABANDHU (born a Brahmin), but rather was one by wisdom, as Brahmin was not a birthright, but a spiritual marker of ones status for sake of wisdom.

The Relativism fallacy against Metaphysics

2008-01-03T20:04:00.000-08:00

Or, the “all truth is relative” fallacy as premise for dismissing metaphysical truths/absolutes by the unintelligent

As is commonly encountered by those forwarding metaphysical principles either as pertaining to the model of the Absolute or the methodology for ascent from embodiment to noetic assimilation, the profane counter to any logical claim thereof or otherwise, is that “truth is subjective (empirically so)”, or that “that’s your version of the truth, which is relative”. The superimposition and implication, as countered by the unintelligent who knows only of existential being and life, is that since all spacio-temporal references and perspectives are indeed relative and therefore empirically subjective (personalized), therefore too is any model of totality, of metaphysical principles as pertaining to noetic uncompounded Subjectivity (Soul, nous, the Absolute, citta etc.) as forwarded by any and all branches of metaphysics, i.e. Platonism, any form of Monism, Advaita, proto-Buddhism, Vedanta in general. In the analogy of a large east-facing building at daybreak, one observer taking perspective truth-sampling of and about the building from the eastern side, and yet another similar observer from the western unlit side, there will be diametrically opposed empirical truths about the attributes of the building. For instance the eastern facing observer taking note of the orange hues of the morning sun sparkling across the windows and stone frame would relate and provide the truth to the subjective personal beauty he finds of said building, whereas the western observer would have an entirely different subjective perspective and equally valid truth as to the aesthetic beauty of said building, or lack thereof in his situation/space, being that it is unlit, it is therefore dark, dismal, depressing in appearance, etc. The fallacy of the unintelligent manyfolk, the profane and myopic materialist who has neither idea nor acknowledgement of the noetic (pali: puthujjana) is association of the absolute truth that all empirical and spacio-temporal sensory-datums, perspectives, experiences, feelings, and even existential consciousnesses which are relative, which are personal, therefore equally so apply to metaphysics by his reckoning and faulty deduction; nothing is further from the truth in regards to same. No branch of metaphysics uses employs, or trusts any aspect of personal consubstantial sensory data as the grounds, basis, or axis mundi for its expression of the truth, and rightly so. Some peoples stricken with sensory maladies or temporary sicknesses may, for example, experience sweet things as sour, or as has been recorded, some brains misswired from birth are capable of smelling colors, or seeing sounds etc. There is utterly no escaping the unreckonable variety of experiences of any one thing, much less many phenomenal things by and large. This is the realm of unlimit and antinomy; however Metaphysics deals with the study of limit (the One) and ontological Subjectivity which is substrate and posterior to any and all antinomies. The unintelligent and profane common-man in the myopic logic which extends no further than his faulty senses is correct, from his perspective (rather lack thereof), to wit that metaphysics would not be outside of the scope of any other phenomenal and subjective truth, as in the case of the two observers; however he would be utterly wrong. This fallacious presumption is the very core reason why a genuine metaphysical/philosophical truth seeker is one of the most rare and endangered breeds of human-beings which exists. From the fallacious conjecture of the materialist, the only criterion there can be are the meager (and profane) senses, and since, from common knowledge, this is subjective and utterly relative, therefore the quest for unwavering Absolutes, of simplex ontological principles is a hopeless endeavor at best, even if said profane person where to admit to the possibility of sames existence, to wit acknowledging as is commonly found the man who believes in the “higher, the spiritual”, but utterly denies the truth of same could be unraveled or exposed since it would not be a universal truth in discovery, but a small and relative one of personal subjectivity. That “nothing is known except thru the modality (language, communication, expressions etc.) of the Knower” is indeed true, as such metaphysical expositions in 100% agreement with each other (such as Platonism and Advaita and proto-Buddhism being in full agreement with each other on the Absolute and ascent to same) use different terminology, and nuances specific to both place and time (greek and Europe vs. Sanskrit and India, for example) to empirically illuminate, express, and relate the nature of metaphysics, of ascension, of the Absolute in the lexicon of both the place, and the time of said metaphysician. This, unfortunately, adds an additional false-confirmation to the myopic materialist who wrongly demonstrates that three identical systems of metaphysics appear (superficially so) radically different in both description and teaching in relation to the instructed, the disciple of said system. Or worse still additionally that that nuance is magnified as it passes from an alien and ancient dead language into modern translation of a commoners tongue which may and often does lack to a great degree the nuance and lexicon needed to relate subtle principles to the mind of the reader. Returning to the analogy of the building and the two observers attempting to subjectively relate the aesthetics etc. truth of the building from their spacio and sensory perspectives (both of which, in conjunction, reinforce the incorrect notion that truth is unquestionably relative); we then take both men from their relative outside positions, to then inside the building, and eliminate the existential senses of both, since metaphysics takes no stock or basis in same concerning the logic, and noetic Truth-gnosis of metaphysical Subjects and uncompounded Being (Atman, spiritus sanctum, etc.). From said position both men, by means of the noetic mind (nous, citta, spirit) will have identical agreement as to the nature of the ‘building’, as the building is in this case analogous representation of some Subjective aspect of metaphysical investigation, be it the Soul, the Absolute, the nature of totality, etc. This is the grounds, the basis of metaphysics, of the Truth in absolute, dejecting and not withstanding feelings, perspectives, or even the consubstantial consciousness of any temporal man. Here, where space and time have no existence, such that existence in mere empirical selfhood is itself exio-stance (to be outside of ones-Self) where the temporal senses cannot pass to be witness, rather the Witness only; for space and time are merely the coeternal measures of magnitude, of mass (Plotinus, Plato), of being, wherein “all antinomies are manifest and truth is unquestionably relative and personal (person embodied, mere being as is meant by the ‘small self’)”. That, in further analogy, these men, so enlightened as to the substrate of mere being, would exit the inside, or metaphysical nexus, of this ‘building’ and attempt to verbally and perspectively relate the nature of what both were in full agreement with in Witnessing to others who would wish forthwith to know, there would be unquestionably nuance, and a differential in lexicon between the two, again “nothing is known except thru the modality (language, communication, expressions etc.) of the Knower”; however the Truth, in metaphysics is not, has never been, nor ever will be relative, empirically subjective. That the communication as dictated by language, time, and place by the Expositor of metaphysics (if he be wise in so relating it, and not a false-knower; as is commonly the case of those who flaunt themselves as wise and knowing of some aspect of metaphysics but in true are not but a fool who desires undeserved acknowledgements and praise from those all the more-so foolish than himself) differs between person to person is, on the contrary to view of the myopic many, not an affirmation of (as they’ve convinced themselves) the relativistic nature of the Truth in the subject-matter of Metaphysics, which regardless of source of same (Greek, Indian, etc.) takes no stock in empirical experiences, perspectives, the senses, in whole or in part. Metaphysics deals only with the realm posterior to antinomies, and relativistic temporal nuances wherein there can be no doubt, that when known with gnosis (Noetic Knowledge, not meant empirical and relative mere knowledge) that the Truth in and of Metaphysics is devoid of deviation inherent to faulty senses of empirical man where truth is indeed relative. The impassibility of nuance in illuminating metaphysics to others as is necessitated by language, voice, and text has utterly no bearing on the fact that, regarding metaphysics, relativity, perspective, etc. have been superceded and the Truth, be it as pertains the soul or the Absolute, in and of itself has neither perspective nor nuance as attributes of itself.

The Metaphysics and Logical Philosophy of Ghosts

2008-01-03T20:02:00.000-08:00

With Socrates view on ghosts in the Phaedo

Completely disregarding the mythos and legends thru time immemorial regarding ghosts, the logical philosophical analysis thru the lens of abductive reasoning as used and employed by Platonists, especially that of Plotinus, lends a lucid insight into the nature of the disembodied will, or spirit (citta, nous, spiritus sanctum). The following is a concise philosophical analysis of spirits as examined thru the most intelligent methodology of metaphysical examination that exists, that of Platonism; to understand how and for what reason the noetic will, or spirit, in very limited instances, makes congress with the phenomenal world, this kosmos aisthetos of living beings. Logically so hauntings are associated with places of mass casualties such as battlefields or mass-murder, far less so to the mere resting places of bodies, i.e. graveyards as is contrary to countless legends. [Socrates-Phaedo 81d] “these souls wander about until at last, through craving for the corporeal which has unceasingly pursued them, they are imprisoned once more in a body.” Supplementary to this, due to modern investigations, the majority of phenomenal-interjections by the disembodied (i.e. hauntings) are related to the ignorant single-person now deceased, who were extremely incapable of disobjectification, i.e. disassociation with empirical life while alive, cleaving to the phenomenal body and its desires, regrets and unfinished tasks, to illustrate that, other than hospitals, battlefields, and jails, single-residency homes wherein an extremely ignorant person has deceased have an extraordinary amount of phenomenal-interjections occur. [Socrates-Phaedo 81c] “(the impure and contaminated soul by associating itself with the corporeal body) is permeated by congregation and intercourse with the body will have for the longest time associated and practice (with the body).” [Socrates-Phaedo 83d] “Because every pleasure or pain has with it a sort of rivet by which it fastens the soul to the body and pins it down and makes it corporeal.” In line with the reasoning of Socrates in [Phaedo 83d], those souls who are fully engrossed in self-identification (objective, empirical, false, temporal) with the unreal self (Pali anatta, i.e. not-soul, not-spirit), are therein chained by reason of the impotence and incapacity of their will to have Subjective (spiritual, or true) identification. Of the wise or moderately spiritual it is said: (anatmanas tu satrutve vartetatmaiva satruvat) “The Spirit is at war with whatever is not-Spirit (anatman)” [B.G. VI.VI], but for those who have traumatically died ‘before their time’ or with much occupying their minds (spirit, nous, citta), and especially for those grossly enthralled with and in identification with their empirical self, these are found to be the progenitors of the lingering and phenomenally experienced ‘ghosts’ of which are encountered. These “ignorant manyfolk” (the common profane man) are not “at war” with the empirical self (not-Spirit) but are so therein attached by measure of their ignorances they greatly desire the endless perpetuation of same or activity associated with that self after disembodiment has occurred at either a timely or an untimely demise. Whether that ‘undead’ (“he has died but not died to what is now dead that he was but is no longer”) was/is attached ignorantly either to their former self, or to another, or to trauma, or place, or object or otherwise is irrelevant, all these are objective unrealities to which these ‘restless spirits’ are impotent to remove themselves thereof. [Socrates-Phaedo 82e] “a (ignorant) soul is a helpless prisoner, chained by hand and foot to the body, compelled to view reality not directly but only through its prison bars.” [Socrates-Phaedo 81c] “the corporeal is course, heavy, oppressive, earthly, visible. So the soul which is tainted by its presence is weighed down and dragged back into the visible world, through fear some say, and hovers about tombs and graveyards. These shadowy apparitions which have actually been seen are the ghosts of those souls which have not gotten clear away (from association/identity with the body), but still remain in some portion of what can be seen.” This noetic projection by the metaphysical will, or spirit, is the continuing methexis, or recombination of the disembodied spirit, by means and artifice of its ignorance, its self-intercession with and amongst the phenomenal world which it both cherishes and solely identifies, for to it, there is little or nothing else. The mimetic body, or ghost, is a mirage of former being either partially or fully (full-body apparition) into this world and is the artifice of spirit which is made seen to others by one or multiple datum. This eikonic being is the manifest delusion of the both deceased and ignorant incapable of transcendence beyond either place, desire, of former life itself. That the kosmos noetos (noetic, or spiritual world) might intercede itself into the kosmos aisthetos (empirical or phenomenal world) without which the corporeal body is not used, i.e. in the consubstantial being of life, should come as no surprise or shock to any as pertains the investigation of ‘ghosts’. That this world alone is full with empirical life, from macrocosmic to microcosmic, which is nothing more than a harmonia of spirit and matter; it would therefore, abductively and logically be consistent that just as lifeless matter itself must and does exist in standalone, infinitely ever-the-more-so too must spirit exist in standalone without being in consubstantial congress with any physical body which we, the living deem a like; another living creature or being. Only the ignorant and atheistic have so deemed the greatest or complete measure of totality to mere matter, but metaphysicians and now too modern physicists demonstrate that matter is most likely no more than a bundling of wavefronts of something else antecedent to the matter itself, a mere attribute to a metaphysical Subject. Platonists, namely Plotinus have abducted that matter is nothing more than the byproduct of emanation by the Absolute; a temporal manifestation of the Good. Moving ahead with the subject, spirits, or noetic beings; logically that the noetic might find and make congress with matter in the form of empirical, consubstantial, and temporal being, so too will be the case, albeit the rarer occurrence (or is it so?) that spirits make mimetic intercession into and with ‘our’ (one must say ‘our’, since the phenomenal world is no more ‘ours’ than the Sun is ours by illogical reasoning that by proxy, light from the Sun falls upon our very faces) world in many fashions, some of which are readily apparent thru the profane and extremely limited spectrum senses of human beings. Logically and rightly so, by implementation of an ‘extension’ of our limited senses, near-infrared, and out-of-human-range audio, electrostatic, magnetic-field, and video electronics have opened wide 100X fold, the interest and uncovering of these spirit-phenomena or intercessions, by resultant that thru usage of this instrumentation, a far greater spectrum or bandwidth of data as pertains spirit/ghost-activity has been made readily available for examination. In the ancient Pali language of India from 2600 years past, of which I am a translator, the philosophical term used to describe the disembodied is a monomayakaya, or ‘mind-made-body’, also meaning ‘artifice-creation of-mind’, as speaking of the metaphysical citta (nous, spirit) which is, by manner of its potential for intercession into ‘our’ phenomenal world, capable of manifestation that he/she still either considers itself as physical being, or so strongly desires same, that the will/spirit is made manifest in one or several modalities such that living beings make notice of same by visual, auditory, or other sensory, or trans-sensory datum. [Socrates-Phaedo 79c] “because using the body implies using the senses…when it (the spirit) is drawn away by the body (at birth) into the realm of the variable, and loses its way and becomes confused and dizzy, as though it were befuddled.” Highlighting this problem as brought forward by Socrates, intercourse by the spirit with the temporal body further enthralls the will, or spirit, into objectification (a-vijja, ignorance, nescience, spiritual amnesia) that, as it were, the puppet-master, or spirit, has only identity with the mimesis or mirage of spirit, the puppet itself. Those many or few who are so enthralled with this “jointed and temporal puppet” as echoed by an ancient philosopher, are still, by metaphysical means, projecting the spirit into the phenomenal world long after the strings, or life, with that ‘puppet’, have been cut at the time of death. In league with this sentiment: [Dhm. 147] "Behold! That painted puppet this body, riddled with oozing sores, an erected façade. Diseased heap that fools fancy and swoon over; Spirit has no part of it.” A further tangent of logical deduction as pertains animals (term meaning literally ‘has-a-soul’, or anim-al); it can be concluded that since animals have little to no self-identification, i.e. neither/little grieve over themselves or fellow kind, that slaughterhouses wherein countless hundreds of thousands have met brutal fates, has not been, to any record a place of noetic and spiritual intercession by the disembodied deceased of those former living creatures who, with meager rational consciousnesses, lack the premise whereby they grieve their own bodily fates. While true that beats fight with great ferocity for their lives with claw and fang, this impulsive reaction is merely an ingrained effect of the being itself, rather than a love of self which makes one fight for life and its accessories as such as is seen in the complex being of a human. In a logical differentiation of the ‘types’ of hauntings as enumerated by investigation, one can and must abductively conclude that those phenomena which have a mere repetition of intercession, akin to a record skipping over a same track, over and over, is due to said noetic being which is either wholly or willfully ignorant of either living beings and also the flux in material surroundings (due to the passage of time, renovation, or general change in the topos [place]) of the deceased who cleaves to that specific location either due to traumatic death in that topos, ignorant attachment to said location, or otherwise. In contrasting this with the ‘social’ deceased to interact in X fashion with living beings, or also respond to same thru whichever capacity; we can make no greater distinction between these two varieties of hauntings than we make of the social and unsocial living who possess different ignorant attachments to and in life, being it of material place or desire, or of the living, specific or unspecific. It can be logically deduced, as is hearsay of paranormal investigators, that in many instances, the activity surrounding the ‘restless’ deceased is witnessed to increase and or worsen as result of those, or many who, successfully and or purposefully interact with these spirits by means of either two-way communication thru instrumentation of question-answer devices such as video, audio-recorders, speaking-boards (ouija). It follows without question that the ignorant dead, in many instances, suffer to interact with the living, like a lonely and, in this case literally, invisible child is kept at length from interacting with others, suffering all the while. To extension that we know the extremely ignorant are synonymous with evil, and therefore bestial, these paranormal investigators are instigators who quite literally “feed the beast” in so extensively and repetitively desiring and making contact with these disembodied souls. By elimination the wise or noble of spirit who have passed at time of death are not counted amongst those who linger and intercede into the phenomenal world, those to whom we deem ghosts. As such, in most all cases, those investigators who make contact with or who are disturbed by spirits, unless they be the spirits of children who are innocently ignorant, are in most instances dealing with highly unsavory beings of profane and vile standing. One cannot and does not in any instance make contact with any of these dead and are simultaneously dealing with and corresponding with any being of nobility, wisdom, intelligence, or who deserves respect. In like conclusion it can be said without question that paranormal investigators are interacting with both the insane and criminally minded, to either a greater or lesser degree. It cannot be otherwise concluded that those deceased who are known to interject themselves in whichever fashion in X location are temporalized to a great degree, though they be entirely noetic beings without actual/true congress with phenomenal matter as in the case of living beings; these beings are not free or self-actualized to roam to any great extent from the place of their desire and or demise. Abduction from this observation leads one to conclude that lacking any direct methexis, or participation in being, these noetic entities are either greatly or fully participate in an eikonic artifice or mirage of temporalized existence wherein they repeat their desires for a greater or lesser period, or actively participate with the living either to a detrimental/frightening extent, or to a mere belonging/participatory degree all of which is encompassed by nescience as impetus for their so doing. It has been incorrectly theorized by some parapsychologists that passive hauntings are the resultant of an event, rather than noetic being itself, akin to a resonant after-image of an event or passing of a person, either traumatic or otherwise, thereby implying that there could possibly be another medium of and for a haunting outside of the noetic itself, but this cannot be logically enjoined either thru what is logically consistent or thru observation. This inconsistency would be subscribing to the possibility that noetic intercession could be occurring by and or thru a means not immanently as resultant from a non-noetic principle. Metaphysics and logic agrees that antecedent to any direct participation, the eikonic image or noetic conception exists within the spiritual, the will/mind/nous/citta/spiritus sanctum, this eidos, the old truism and Platonic adage “as above, so below”. Deferring therefore to what is logical and consistent with observation the deceased spirit most certainly can be temporalized sans a temporal co-habitation with an empirical body, upturning the ignorant concept that only the living “suffer the slings and arrows of time, desire, sorrow, etc.”. In this same line of reasoning is also consistent with observation that those places long long ago formerly known as ‘hot-spots’ for metaphysical activities by the deceased are no longer so in many if not most instances. In closing, I differ to Socrates who concludes that noetic self-assimilation (complete empirical disobjectification) is the premise and antinomy to all becoming and certainly to disembodied self-existence (‘ghost’): [Socrates-Phaedo 80e] “if at release the soul is pure and carries with it no contamination of the body, because it has never willingly associated with the body in life”. All of which we can therefore say of these souls who intercede with and amongst phenomenal life, “these (ghosts) are in no way pure”. These ‘undead’ beings carry the crime and penalty of harboring ignorances which death cannot erase, for that very nescience is not part nor parcel to empirical being, but has its locus in the metaphysical spirit/nous/citta, as such the ‘wicked’ in life who did not transcend the desire or attachment to empirical existence and its numberless trappings, dig themselves a second grave for their spirit to rest (rather unrest), until its impetus is exhausted, either thru hard-gained insight, or exhausting the desire which established it.

The Aryan Traditionalist Truth Seeker

2008-01-03T20:01:00.002-08:00

Or, the fallacy of choosing religious beliefs

copyright 2007 aryasatvan

Nearly 100% of all those who, later in life of their own independent and free will, came to a new religion, or to religion for the first time have gravitated to that very same faith via personal convictions and/or personal likes/dislikes; this error is grand and only borne of ignorances. A true Platonic truth seeker does not gravitate towards religious beliefs or dogmas because those same religious systems are personally attractive, but rather, thru logical and abductive examination, a certain position is reflective of what is true as a model for totality and the furthest position from absolute absurdity (such as Creationist views of a sentient being as the Absolute, or the other extreme, Nihilism/Atheism). One undeniable fact of the cosmos is its incredibly complexity, both biological and inanimate; the only contention lies, amongst all religions and non-religious materialistic views, is the nexus for this limitless complexity. While the creationist illogically posits a divine and sentient hand at the helm of said creation, the nihilist/atheist in equal ignorance posits random happenstance for its appearance. With the countless plethora of ‘faiths’ (blind), and religions which lie at either end and in between of these extremes, humans window-shop for that faith which many admit ‘suits them best’, or ‘rings personally true’, or which ‘appeals to them’. Wisdom never plays any part in that which they call their own (view/faith/belief), nor examination. The self-reinforcing delusion of mankind’s religions is not one based in truth or wisdom, but in comfort, or respect that it is their inheritance of their parents, or some other likewise reason. The genuine truth-seeking Platonist, be he an Indian Advaita-Vedanta Monist, or a Neoplatonist is equally pleased if he is proven wrong, either by the wits and wisdom of another in refutation, or by his own hand thru the expansion of wisdom, for both ends only serves to bring this Aryan truth-seeker closer the truth. Either self-refutation or an increase in wisdom brings one closer the truth and the true Aryan desires this above all else. Those ignorant demons, the common and profane manyfolk will cleave with their hearts and souls to untruths, which many times they themselves know to be untrue, but for no other reason that “they were born in this faith/belief”, or an equally ignorant sentimentalism. Close-minded religiosity is based in a comfort, a delusion which is hard to break and enforced by ignorances which are never countered or eliminated in the life of the profane manyfolk. Pythagoras, Plato, Plotinus, Gotama, authors of the Upanishads, and few others were genuine truth seekers the wise emulate with all their being. Wisdom cannot be handed to another via book or word, but the insight which only comes from an unquenchable desire for wisdom and uncovering the truth of genuine being which lies under and above the façade of empirical being, this consubstantial puppet fashioned in the winds of time and which is rented but for a while and is lost again in the winds of time. The disobjectification which culminates in liberation self-granted by the sage who bears the Aryan sword of wisdom is something far far more rare than any could imagine in the land of lemmings who use and cleave to false religions which brings only placebo comforts to those same profane and common manyfolk who are the zombies of samsara, the walking dead in the land of the Subjective light which is never seen by those same whose will is always directed into the dark of the objective and temporal world of flux and reflux.

“I don’t know where my soul is”

2008-01-03T20:01:00.001-08:00

There are four errors in this statement, and one axis of truth upon which all four rotate round

copyright 2007 Aryasatvan
“Where is my soul” is the most common question in reply by the ignorant and profane when discussing metaphysics, Buddhism, or other forms of Monism; being the abbreviated version of “I don’t know where my soul is”. Within this simple sentence can be found four grand errors of egregious presumption and one axis of truth upon which these four satellites of error go round. Taking the first error “I”, or the empirical person so-and-so (Bob, Sue etc.) this compounded and material self of which there are “two selves” within us, the Person (spirit, Purishha) and persona (psychophysical, temporal); “two within us” (Plato Republic 604b, Phaedo 79, Timaeus 89d), or Philo’s “Soul of the soul”, or the Buddha’s “atta hi attano nathi” (Self is Lord of the self [persona]). This “I” of which cannot be in metaphysics the Knower of knowing, but the conscious (vinnana) living being whose conceptions and ideations are “dead when he dies”, that “I” is not the Person but the “self of which the Self is Lord”. This “I”, the objective and compounded self cannot ever come to know the Knower, which is the posterior and uncompounded Subject. This objective and temporal “I” cannot know as object, the Subject which precedes it. This “I” has ‘within’ (superficially so) it no means possible by which to have Knowledge of the soul, since its very principle, this compounded “I” lacks the Witness and Knower by which it can or could be known. There is no “I” whereby which it could be said of anyone that it, “I”, could Know (gnosis as opposed to the empirical knowledge of the mere material “I”, which is persona) the soul. Taking now the second error “where”, or asking of how the soul is IN TIME, the magnitude and measure of which ‘where’ is but a delineation of things compounded and ‘taking up space’ (where is this soul? It is no-where). The quest for the uncompounded in spacio-temporal existence, and the objective cosmos of becoming, flux and reflux, could not be more illogical. Anything (quite literally ‘thing’ in the true sense of objectivity) which partakes of a topos (place), a locus in space and time which is syn. with magnitude and materiality cannot be the point of any metaphysical search, in this case the soul. Would we go hunting for fish in the desert? “Where” is syn. with space-time materiality of which something might be said to have “its place”, or a “where”, whereby which it (objectivity) might be found. The soul cannot have any such correlation whereby we might ask or inquire how it is “where”; for the soul is no-where, not space, not time. Further along the line we come to “my soul”, of stated implication this uncompounded principle of ones noetic being as a possession or slave (“my”) to either another subject, or worse still implication an objective possession. This inverse and topsy-turvy statement is the upside-down illogical attempt to gather insight pertaining the soul thru conception that same is property and possession by something else, of which the common fool implies himself, or the existential and bodily self. This cryptic materialistic line of reasoning is indicative of the perversity of understanding relevant to the fool in his “fools quest”- Plato. Lastly stands as final error “is”, to wit the fool in his questioning seeks knowledge of the Subject as an object of anatomies to which the Greeks, Buddhists, and Vedantists declared to be a quest among compounded and conceptive antinomies “is it, is it not, is it both, it is neither”, to which the Buddha was apposite to answer such fallacious lines of questioning which involved the “pairs” of dualities, the antinomies of existential reasoning as employed by materialists in linear and objective thought on or about the soul. The Soul is tat tvam asi, as = Brahman, the Absolute, is not “is, is not..etc.”, but That, the uncompounded Absolute as opposite to all antinomies. [SN 2.17] Gotama Buddha: “This world is carried on by a duality (dvayanissito). Etc.” The tie which binds these four errors together, and which is true in the statement “I don’t know where my soul is”, is “don’t know”. [AN 5.113] “Followers, the beginning of ignorance can never be discerned (beginningless) such that it cannot be said “Here is the First where ignorance is not, here is the contingency which generated it. Such that it should be discerned, followers, ‘ignorance is a condition’. “This avijja (agnosis, avidya, nescience, ignorance) or ‘uncaused principle’ for the “descent of Being”, is the ‘black-hole’ (again: privation) around which these four satellites of errors spin round. Avijja being in Greek ‘tolma’; as meaning Emanationism, or the extrinsic side of the Absolute, or the attribute (avijja) to the Principle (atman/Brahman/Hen) between which no distinction can be drawn in that both attribute and Principle are one (point and line are in the mathematical theology of Platonism both together = 1) thing only (will-willing, light-illumination, between which what the Absolute ‘is’ [principle] and what it ‘does’ [attribute] can have no distinction lest the premise of Monism itself be obliterated). In the case of our ‘black-hole’ analogy this privation was the source and creator of these ‘satellites’ by which the fool objectively struggles with objective conceptualization of the immaterial soul not only in space and time, but also as possession to another and as regards his (mere) self which the Upanishads are apposite in stating “for the mortal, there is no soul”.

SIX ROCK-HARD FACTS MODERN BUDDHISM WANTS TO REMAIN IGNORANT OF

2008-01-03T19:59:00.000-08:00

#1. There is no dispute by any researcher, any Buddhologist on earth that the Nikayas specifically are the oldest and earliest existing texts as pertains Buddhism and its doctrine which exists.

#2. There is no dispute by any researcher, any Buddhologist on earth that the Nikayas predate ANY and ALL sects of modern-day Buddhism.

#3. There is no dispute by any researcher, any Buddhologist on earth that Theravada (formerly known as branch of Sarvastivada), while old, unquestionably did not exist prior to the 2nd or 3rd centuries C.E. (being at LEAST 500 years post to the evidences in #4).

#4. The Sanchi and Bharut inscriptions (aka the Pillar edicts) unquestionably dated to the middle of the second century B.C.E. push the composition of the 5 Nikayas back to a earlier date by mentioning the word “pañcanekayika” (Five Nikyas), thereby placing the Nikayas as put together (NO LATER THAN) at a period about half way between the death of the Buddha and the accession of Asoka (before 265 B.C.), as such the 5 Nikayas, the earliest existing texts of Buddhism, must have been well known and well established far earlier than generally perceived. Finally proving the majority of the five Nikayas could not have been composed any later than the very earliest portion of the third century B.C.E., and most likely prior to this date as well.

#5. There is no dispute by any researcher, any Buddhologist, that the concept of the Tipitaka is utterly a sectarian concept as created by Theravada. These three collections are utterly heterogeneous works, specifically of the numberless versions of Abhidhamma, all are commentaries upon the Nikayas, the 1st book of which, the Kathavatthu is a fight about the existence of the atman by several much later-day sects of Buddhism. One might as equally unintelligently assume that the old testament, the new testament and “book of Mormon” is a “Christian Tipitaka”.

#6. Lacking a time-machine, those interested parties and researchers who are specifically interested in the teachings of EARLIEST Buddhism, and more specifically that aspect of Buddhism which predates ALL sects of modern-day Buddhism, there exists only the Nikayas. This fact is in dispute by none on earth, nor if there could be said dispute , not a single iota of evidence to support same exists.

2007-07-02T19:24:00.000-07:00

More on the Self / Atman in Earliest Buddhism

by Aryasatvan

There is nothing in the doctrine of causality (hetuvada) or in that of the causal effect of actions (kamma) that in any way necessarily implies a"reincarnation" of souls. The doctrine of causality is common to Buddhism and Christianity, and in both is effectively the statement of a belief in the orderlysequence of events. The "reincarnation" that the Buddhist would dispense with permanently is not a matter of any one eventful death and rebirth to beexpected hereafter, but the whole vertiginous process of repeatedly dying and being born again that is equally the definition or temporal existence here asa "man" and of aeviternal existence there as a "God" (one amongst others). The accomplished Arahant knows better than to ask, "What was I in the past?What am I now? What shall I be hereafter?" (S., 11. 26 27). He can say "I" for everyday practical purposes without in any way intending what the notion of Ior myself implies to an animist (D., I. 202; S., I. 14 15). Time implies motion, and motion change of place; in other words duration involves mutation, orbecoming. Hence it is not immortality in time or any where, but apart from time and place, that the Buddhist envisages. Stated, in the pragmatic terms ofeveryday discourse, of which the application is only to things that have a beginning, development and, end (D., II. 63), it can be said of the Ego, "Once itwas and then was not, once was not and then it was," but in terms of truth, "It was not, will not be, nor can it now be found; it neither is nor shall be "mine" (Ud., 66; Th., I. 180). The Buddhist vortex or wheel of becoming is nothing but St James'; the Ego is an unreality for the Buddhist, just. as it hadbeen for Plato and Plutarch, by the very fact of its mutability. The squirrel cage revolves, but "that's not me," and there is a way of escape from the round.The evil for which the Buddha sought a remedy is that of the wretchedness involved in the corruptibility of all things born, composite and inconstant.Misery, mutability, un Self ishness (In all traditional philosophies, in which it is axiomatic that "there are two in us;" it is unavoidable to distinguish "Self"from "self" or Ego, le moi from le soi, the savant from the connoisseur. In the present context Selflessness coincides with self ishness; to have said"unselfishness" would have been to say the opposite of what is meant, it is only of the Self that an ontological un selfishness, and therefore an ethical unselfishness can be predicated.

For the present we are discussing only the Ego, or self; the problem of the Self in Buddhism will be dealt with later (dukkha, anicca, anatta) are thecharacteristics of all composite things, all that is not my Self; and of all these things the Ego, I, self (aham, atta’) is the pertinent species, since it is withman's last end that we are concerned. It is axiomatic that all existences ("Existence," as distinguished from "being," esse from essentia.; S., II. 101, etc.)are maintained by food, solid and mental, as fire is fed by fuel ; and in this sense the world is on fire and we are on fire. The fires of the Egoconsciousness, or self ishness, are those of appetite (raga=kama, tanha, lobha), resentment or irascibility (doss=kadha), and delusion or ignorance (moha=avijja). These fires can only be quenched by their opposites (A., IV. 445; Dh., 5. 223), by the practice of corresponding virtues and the acquisition ofknowledge/gnosis (vijja), or, in other words, only cease to "draw," and so go out, or rather in, when their fuel is withheld. It is this "going out" that is called a"despiration/purification" (nibbana, Skr. nirvana), and is naturally linked with the notion of a "cooling off" (compare the vernacular, Why so hot, my littleman?). Nirvana to use the word in its more familiar form is a Buddhist key word, than which is, perhaps, no other has been so much misunderstood(Extinction" (as of a fire) is not illegitimate; but "annihilation" is misleading. In India, the "going out" of a fire is always thought of as a "going home.").Nirvana is a death of becoming (bhava nirodha nibbanam; “Nirvana is the subjugation of becoming [always other and other]”), a being finished (both is themeaning of "ended" and of "perfected"). Nirvana is neither a place nor an effect, nor in time, nor attainable by any means; it is a process alone, but it is andit can be "seen." The "means" that are actually resorted to are not in themselves means to Nirvana (purification), but means to the removal of all thatobscures the "vision" of Nirvana: as when a lamp is brought into a dark room one sees what is already there. Nirvana is spoken of as the path, not its endsbut rather its means; in the absolute sense Nirvana is crossing to the other shore of refuge (saranamattano; refuge in the Self), but is not confused with theother shore except in much later erroneous Chinese doctrine which hold Nirvana to be literally the other shore of salvation.

We can now understand why the Self (atta’) must be tamed, conquered, curbed, and given its quietus. The Arahant or Perfect Man is one whose Selfhas been tamed (atta’ danto), whose Self has been cast off (atta’jaho); his burden has been laid down (ohita bltkro), what there was to be done has beendone (katamkaraaiyam). All of the epithets that are applied to the Buddha himself, who has no longer a personal name (Even "Gotama" is not a personal,but only a family name; Ananda, too is a Gotamid) are applicable to him; he is "released" (vimutto), he is "despirated/purified" (nibbuto), there is no morebecoming for him, he has earned his rest from labor in yoking to security (yoga kkhemam), he is awake (buddho, an epithet applicable to any Arahant, notonly to the Buddha; synonymous With Suddha, or Pure), he is immovable (anejo), he is an "Ariyan," no longer a disciple (sekho) but a Master (asekho),and fixed in the Self/Soul as ultimate (Theragatha Att. 1.51 parinibbuto t.hitattoti “Parinirvana is to be fixed in the Soul”), Atta’sarana anan’n’asarana."Soulas a refuge with none other as refuge” DN 2.100.

Selfishness (mamattam, "possessiveness"; maccheram, "bad behavior," "law of the sharks") is a moral evil, and therefore the taming of the self requiresa unific-moral discipline. But selfishness is supported by "Self ishness" (asmi mana, anattani atta ditthi), and mere commandments will hardly sufficeunless and until the erroneous view that "this is me (corporeal)" has been shattered. For the self is always self assertive, and it is only when the truenature of the inconstant self has been realized that a man will set out in earnest to overcome his own worst enemy and make him a servant and ally. Thefirst step is to acknowledge the predicament, the second to unmask the self whose sole liability it is, the third to act accordingly; but this is not easy, and aman is not very willing to mortify himself until he has known these appetitive congeries for what they are, and until he has learnt to distinguish his Self andits true interest from the mirror-image deemed falsely as Self, his self and its interests. The primary source of evil is ignorance/agnosis, and it is, in fact,by the truth that the self must be tamed (S., I. 169). Only "The truth shall make you free!" The remedy for self love (atta ka’ma) is Self love (attakama) and itis precisely in this sense, in the words of St Thomas Aquinas, that "a man, out of charity, ought to love himself more than any other person, more than hisneighbor” (Sum. Theol., II. ii. 26.4). In Buddhist terms "let no man worsen welfare of himself for other's weal however great; if welt he knows the Self's trueinterest, let him pursue that end" (Dh., 166). In other words, man's first duty is to work out his own salvation, from himself.

The procedure, in often repeated expositions of the "un Self ishness" (anatta) of all phenomena, is analytical. The repudiation is of what wouldnowadays be described as "animism": the psycho physical, behaving mechanism is not a "Self," and is devoid (sun’n’a) of any Self like property. The“individuality” or self consciousness or self existence (atta sambhava) is a composite of five associated grounds (dhatu) or stems (khandha), viz., thevisible body (rupa, kaya), and invisible sensation (vedana, pleasant, unpleasant or neutral), recognition, or awareness (sanna), constructions or character(samkhara; here with reference to mental images, experiences, phantasms, notions, postulates, complexes, opinions, prejudices, convictions, ideologies,etc. In a more general sense samkhara defines all things that can be referred to by name or sensibly perceived, all nama rupa, all "things," ourselvesincluded) and discrimination, discretion, judgment, or valuation (vinnana; 'The five khandhas are nearly the same as the five "powers of the soul" asdefined by Aristotle (De an., 11, 111) and St Th. Aquinas (Sum. Theol., 1, 18. 1), viz. the vegetative (nutritive), sensitive, appetitive, motive, intellectual[diagnostic, critical]),' in short, a composite of body and discriminating consciousness/sentience (sa vinnana kaya), the psycho physical existent. Thecausal origination, variability, and mortality of all these factors is demonstrated; they are not "ours," because we cannot say "let them, or let me, be thus orthus" (S., 111. 66 67): on the contrary, "we" are what they "become," "a biological entity, impelled by inherited impulses (L. Paul, The Annihilation of Man,1945, p. 156.) The demonstration always concludes with the words: "That's not mine, I'm not that, that's not my Self/Soul." To have done with them for goodand all, to put away the notions "I am So and so," "I am the agent," "I am," will prove to be "for your advantage and your happiness" (S., III. 34). TheBuddha, or any Arahant is a "No-body"; one cannot properly ask his name, for is is that he is, suchness, thatness, the unnamed proclamation, i.e. Tathatta’.Otherwise stated, any thing or individuality is characterized by "name and shape" (nama rupa), Aristotle, Met., VIII. 1.6); "name" referring to all theinvisible, and "shape" or "body" (rupa being interchangeable with kaya) to all the visible and sensible constituents of individuality. This is as much as tosay that "time and space" are the primary forms of our understanding of things that become; for while the shape or body of anything is evanescent, itsname survives, and by its name we still hold on to it. It is by his "names," those of the "Law" and "Truth," that the Wake survives in the world, although, likethe rivers when they reach the Sea, his liberation is from name and shape, and whoever has "gone home" is no longer in any category, no longer this orthat, or here or there (Sn., 1074).

All this is nothing peculiarly Buddhist, but the burden of a worldwide philosophy, for which salvation is essentially from ones-Self. Denegat seipsum !Si quis . . . non odit animam suam, non potest meus dtscipulus esse! "The soul is the greatest of your enemies. "(AI Ghazali,Al Risalatal Laduniyya, ch. II.)"Were it not for the shackle, who would say `I am I’?"( Rumi, Mathnawi, I. 2449.) "Self is the root, the tree, and branches of all the evils of our fallen state"(W. Law, Hobhouse, p. 219.); "it is impossible to lay hold twice of the essence of anything moral . . . at one and the same moment it arrives and isdissolved" (Timaeus, 28 A, cf. Cratylus, 440: Plutarch, Moralia, 92 B. For the Buddhist doctrine of the "moment" (khana) in which things originate, mature,and cease, cf. Vis., I, 239, and the fuller development in the Mahayana.) such citations could be multiplied indefinitely. It is less often realized that manymodern naturalists and psychologists have reached the same conclusions. "The naturalist maintains that the states and events called mental exist onlywhen certain organizations of physical things also occur…[and] are not exhibited by those things unless they are so organized…The structured object issimply manifesting the behavior of its constituents…[it] is not an additional thing which . . .controls…the behavior of its organized parts." The naturalist'sand the Buddhist interpretation of the behavior of the "structured object" are so far identical= but whereas the former identifies himself with the behavingobject (Such an identification reverts to the animistic proposition, "I think, therefore I am," and involves the unintelligible concept of a single agent that canwill opposite things at one and the same time. The logical positivist ought to deny the possibility of any "self control," perhaps he does) the Buddhistinsists that there is no object that can properly be called "my Self", for it is not object nor objectified; unfortunately leading many to the erroneousconclusion that Buddhism negates Self/Soul. The psychologists, on the other hand, prescinding from the Ego, still, like the Buddhist, leave room forsomething other than the Ego and that can experience an "infinite happiness." "When we see that all is fluid . . . it will appear that individuality and falsityare one and the same," the direct implication being, as in the anatta doctrine, that "we" are other than our individuality. "In the traditionally usecustomarily” emphasized individuality of each one of us, `myself'…we have the very mother of illusions… [and] the tragedy of this delusion of individualityis that it leads to isolation, fear, paranoid suspicion, and wholly unnecessary hatreds;" "any person would be infinitely happier if he could accept the lossof his `individual self'," as the Buddha puts it, he does not worry about what is unreal. "In the epoch of scientific rationalism; what was the psyche? It hadbecome synonymous with consciousness…there was no psyche outside the ego…When the fate of Europe carried it into a four years' war of stupendoushorror…no one realized that European man was possessed by something that robbed him of his free choice;" but over and above this Ego there is Self"around which it revolves, very much as the earth rotates about the sun," although "in this relation there is nothing knowable in the intellectual sense,because we can say nothing of the contents of the Self." (The naturalists and psychologists cited are Dewey, Hook and Nagel, Charles Peirce, H.S.Sullivan, E.E. Hadley, and C.G. Jung. It will be seen that the latter, who speaks of the "absolute necessity of a step beyond science," is a metaphysician inspite of himself. The citations are not made by way of proving the truth of the Buddhist analysis, but to help the reader to understand it; the proof of thepudding will be in the eating. (The italics are mine).) What has Buddhism to say of the Self? "That's not my Self" (na me so atta); this, and the term "non Self ishness" (anatta) predicated of the world and all"things" (sabbe dhamma anatta; Identical with the Brahmanical "of those who are mortal, there is no Self", (anatma hi martyah, SB., II. 2. 2. 3). KNJatakapali 1441 Akkhakandam: “Atta’ ca me so saranam gati ca” “The Soul is the refuge that I have gone unto”. For anatta is not said of the Self/Soul butwhat it is not. There is never a ‘doctrine of no-Soul’, but a doctrine of what the Soul is not (form is anatta, feelings are anatta, etc.).

They have formed the basis of the mistaken view that Buddhism "denies [not merely the self but also] the Self." But a moment's consideration of thelogic of the words will show that they assume the reality of a Self that is not any one or all of the "things" that are denied of it. As St Thomas Aquinas says,"primary and simple things are defined by negations; as, for instance, a point is defined as that which has no parts;" and Dante remarks that there are"certain things which our intellect cannot behold…we cannot understand what they are except by denying things of them." This was the position of theolder Indian philosophy in which Buddhism originated: whatever can be said of the Self is "Not so." To acknowledge "nothing true can be said of God" iscertainly not to deny his essence! For it is that: “Atta hi attano natha, atta hi attano gati” KN 2.380:"Soul is the support of the Soul, the Soul returns to theSoul”; KN 2.160:"Atta hi attano natho, ko hi natho paro siya?", Soul is the support of the Soul. What else could it be?

When the question is pressed, Is there a Self, the Buddha refuses to answer "Yes" or "No”; to say "Yes" would involve the "consubstantialist" error, tosay "No" the "anti-foundationalist" error (S., IV. 400 401; “If, on the one hand Ananda, when I was asked by Vacchagotta the wanderer ‘how is Soul’, I hadresponded: ‘this is the Soul’, then so I would have been aligning fully with resurrectionist Brahmins and ascetics. And if, when I was asked by Vacchagottathe wanderer ‘how is there no Soul’, I had responded: ‘there is no Soul’, then so I would have been aligning fully with anti-foundationalist Brahmins andascetics.) And similarly, when the postmortem destiny of a Buddha, Arahant, or Very Man arises, he says that none of the terms "becomes" (hoti) or "doesnot become" or "neither becomes nor does not become" or "both becomes and does not become" apply. Any one of these propositions would involve anidentification of the Buddha with some or all of the five factors of personality; all becoming implies modality, but a Buddha is not in any mode. It should beemphasized that the question is always asked in terms of becoming, not in terms of being. The logic of language only applies to phenomenal things (D., II.63), and the Arahant is uncontaminated by any of these "things": there are no word ways for one whose self is no more; one "gone home" is no longer inany category (Sn., 1074, 1076). Nevertheless it is also said that the Buddha "is (atthi), though he cannot be seen "here or there," and denied that anArahant "is not" after death. If, indeed, absolutely nothing remains when the self is no more, we could not but ask, Of what is an immortality predicated?Any reduction of a reality to the nothingness of "the son of a barren woman" would be meaningless and unintelligible; and, in fact, the Buddha inrepudiating the "annihilationist" doctrines that were attributed to him by some contemporary heretics expressly denies that he ever taught the destruction ofanything real (sato sattassa) (M., I. 137, 140). There is, he says, "an unborn, un become, unmade (akatam; The "unmade world" (Brahmaloka) of theUpanishads), incomposite (asamkhatam; Incomposite;' i.e. without origination, growth or mutation, A., I. 152; Nirvana, Mil., 270 ; Dhamma, S , IV, 359. Onthe other hand, even the highest Contemplative "states" are composite, and it is even from these exalted conditions that there is a "final escape".), andwere there not, there would be no escape from the born, the become, the made and the composite (world)" (Ud., 80): "knower of what was never made(akatannu) art thou, O Brahman, having known the waning away of all composite things."

In the whole of the Buddhist canonical literature it is nowhere stated that "there is no Self," no reality distinguishable from the empirical self that isrepeatedly subjected to destructive analysis. On the contrary, the Self is both explicitly and implicitly asserted; notably in the recurrent phrase according towhich this, that or the other "is not my Self." We cannot ignore the axiom, Nil agil in seipsuin: Plato's "when there are two opposite impulses in a man atthe same time about the same thing, we say that there must be two in, him" (Rep., 604B). This will apply, for example, when the conditions, are describedin which Self is the friend or the foe of self (S., I. 57,71 72 as in (BG., VI. 5 7), and whenever a relation between two selves is asserted. The Buddhist isexpected to "honor what is more than self" (A., I. 126), and this "more" can only be the "Self that's Lord of self, and the goal of self" (Dh., 380). It is of theSelf and certainly not of himself that the Buddha is speaking when he says "I have taken refuge in the Self" (D., 2.120), and similarly when he asks othersto "seek for the Self" (Vin., 1. 23; Vis., 393), and to "make the Self your refuge and your lamp" (D., II. 100; S., V. 163; cf. S., III. 143). Distinction is alsomade of the "Great Self" (mah'atta’, "Mahatma," "the magnanimous") from the "little self" (app'atumo, "the pusillanimous"), and of the "Fair Self" from the"Foul self," the former blaming the latter when wrong is done (A., I. 57, 149, V. 88). In short, it is quite certain that the Buddha neither "denied a God,denied a Soul, [nor] denied Eternity."

In numerous contexts, the Buddha and other Arahants or Perfect Men are described as "having made the Self become" (bha’vit'atto); "made become,"i.e. "as a mother fosters her only son," for this causative form of the verb "become" (the want of which in English is a serious inconvenience) means to"foster," "care for," "cultivate," "serve" or "provide for". This "making become" of the Self is an indispensable part of the Buddhist pilgrim's progress, andcertainly no less so than is the corresponding negative task of putting a stop to all "becoming." To have completed either task is to have completed theother, and to have reached the goal: and "so," as Wordsworth says, "build we up the being that we are." But the modern scholar must be careful todistinguish the "becoming" that is a mere metabolism, an undirected process of automatic growth or "progress," from the "making become" that is aselective cultivation. It is only the empirical self, composite of body and consciousness (vinnana) that "becomes." Apart from the bodily constitution,consciousness cannot arise; our "former habitations," i.e. past lives, are composites of this sort, but "not mine," "not my Self" (S., III. 86); and of theMendicant in whom the conditions that lead to the renewed becoming of a consciousness have been suppressed it is said that he is one whose Self isliberated, existent, altogether content, and that he knows that for him there is no mare birth, no more becoming (S., III. 55). It is very implicit in Sutta thatthe disciple is to become the more of That, his Self, his Soul, not to make it wane or fall away. Thou art That, namely in having made become that which isfixation for Supreme Ones, Tathagatas.

Parallels such as these are sometimes even more conducive to an understanding of the content of Buddhism than are the direct citations from theBuddhist canon; for they enable the reader to proceed from a known to lesser known phraseology. It need hardly be said that for a European reader orscholar who proposes to study any Oriental religion seriously a considerable knowledge of Christian doctrine and thinking, and of its Greek background, isalmost indispensable. The two selves are in dramatic contrast whenever one reproaches the other. "Self upbraids the self (atta pi atta’nam upavadati)when what should not be done is done (A., I. 57 58): for example, when the Bodhisatta begs his food for the first time, he cannot stomach the unappetizingscraps he receives, but "he blames himself," and he does not allow himself to weaken (J., 1. 66). The Self knows what is truth and what is falsity, and theFoul self cannot hide its evil deed from the Fair (A., 1. 149). The Self is, then, our conscience, inwit and synteresis; the Socratic Daimon "who cares fornothing but the Truth" and "always holds me back from what I want to do." It is a matter of universal experience that, as Plato says, "there is a something inthe soul that bids men drink, and a something that forbids, that hungers and thirsts, and another one that keeps account," and it is for us to decide "whichshall rule, the better or the worse." Self is the Agathos Daimon, whom it is for "me" to obey. This leads us to consider the doctrine of the "Daimon's purity"(yakkhassa suddhi). Ignoring that there can be a multiplicity of Genii, just as in other traditions there can be a multiplicity of "spirits other than the Spirit," itmust be premised that the Daimon (yaksa) had been originally and was still for the Upanishads, Brahma that Brahma, who is at once transcendent and, asthe "Self of the self," immanent.

The untaught, average man, when the end is at hand, "mourns, pines, weeps and wails"; but not so the Ariyan disciple in whom the fires of selfhood(corporeal) have been quenched he knows that death is the inevitable end of all born beings, and taking this for granted, only considers, "How shall I bestapply my strength to what's at hand?" (A., III. 56) until he dies. Having already died to whatever can die, lie awaits the dissolution of the temporal vehiclewith perfect composure and can say: "I hanker not for life, and am not impatient for death. I await the hour, like a servant expecting his wages; I shall laydown this body of mine at last, foreknowing, recollected" (Th., I. 606, 1002). Or even if the Ariyan disciple, whether a Mendicant or still a householder, hasnot yet "done all that there was to be done," he is assured that having come into being elsewhere according to his deserts, it will still be possible for him towork out his perfection there. The words, "O grave, where is thy victory? O death, where is thy sting?" might well have been the Buddha's or those of anytrue Buddhist. For him, there will be no more becoming, no more sorrow; or if there is, it will not be for long, for lie has already gone far on that long roadthat leads to Nirvana, "and, indeed, he will soon have reached the goal.

2007-07-02T19:17:00.000-07:00

The Atman as Refuge and Light in Earliest Buddhism

By Aryasatvan

In the Buddha's question cited above, “Were it not better if ye sought the Self” the contrast of the plural verb with its singular object is precise. It is Onethat the many are to find. Let Its consider some of the many other Buddhist contexts in which our selves, respectively composite and mortal and single andimmortal, are contrasted. The question is asked, just as it had been in the Brahmanical books, "By which self (kena atmana)" does one attain the Brahmaworld?" The answer is given in another passage, where the usual formula descriptive of the Arhats attainment concludes "with the Self that is Brahmabecome" (brahma blciciena atmand); just as in the Upanishad "It is as Brahma that he returns to Brahma'', From that world there is no returning(punaravartana) by any necessity of rebirth. Other passages distinguish the Great Self (mahatman) from the little self (alpatman) or Fair Self(kalyanatman) from foul (papatman); the former is the laters judge.

Atman (pali: Attan): (root an, to breathe, cf. atmos, autme is primarily Spiritus, the luminous is and pneumatic principle, and as such often equated withthe Gale (Vayu, Vata, root va, to blow) of the Spirit which "bloweth as it listeth" (yalha vacara carati, RVX168.1 as in John IILS). Being the ultimate in allthings, atman acquires the secondary .sense of "Self ", regardless of our level of reference, which may be either somatic (soma; nectar of immortality),psychic or spiritual. So that over against our real Self, the Spirit in ourselves and all living things there is the "self", of which we speak when we say "I" or"you", meaning this or that man, so-and so. In other words there are two in us, Outer and Inner Man, psychophysical personality and very Person. It istherefore according to the context that we must translate. Because the word atman, used reflexively, can only be rendered by "self "we have adhered to thesense of "self "throughout, distinguishing Self from self by the capital, as is commonly clone. But it must be clearly understood that the distinction is reallyof "spirit" (pneuma) from "soul" (psyche) in the Pauline sense. It is true that the ultimate Self, "this self’s immortal Self" (MU.III.2, VI.2), is identical withPhilo's "soul of the soul" (psyche, psyches), and with Plato's "immortal soul" as distinguished from the "mortal soul" and that some translators renderatman by "soul"; but although there are contexts in which "soul" means "spirit" (cf William of Thierry, Epistle to the Brethren, of Mont Dim, Ch. XV, on thisvery problem of tile distinction of anima front animus; see also Philo, Heres 55) it becomes dangerously misleading, in view of our current notions of"psychology" to speak of the ultimate and universal Self as a "soul". It would be, for example, a very great mistake to suppose that when a "philosopher"such as Jung speaks of "man in search of a soul "this has anything whatever to do with the Indian search for the Self, or for that matter with the injunction,Gnothi seauton, know thy Self. The empiricist's "self" is for the metaphysician, just like all the rest of our environment, "not my Self ". Of the two "selves"referred to, the first is born of woman, the second of the divine womb, the sacrificial fire (SB.I.8.3.6; and whoever has not thus been "born again" iseffectively possessed of but the one and mortal self that is born of the flesh and must end with it (JB.I.17, cf. John III 6, GaI.VI 8, I Cor.15.50, etc.). Hencein the Upanishads and Buddhism the fundamental questions "Who art then?", and "By which self?" is immortality attainable, the answer being, only by thatSelf that is immortal; the Indian texts never fall into the error of supposing that a soul that has had a beginning in time can also be immortal; nor indeed,can we see that the Christian Gospels anywhere, never put forward such an impossible doctrine as this.

The Self is the Lord of the self, and its goal. "In the saying "For one who has attained, there is not dearer than Self""' we recognize the doctrine of theUpanishads that the "Self alone is truly dear" the Hermetic "Love the Self " and the Christian doctrine that "A man, out of charity, ought to love himselfmore than he loves any other person i.e. that Self for whose sake he must deny himself. In the Brahmanical doctrine, our immortal, impassible, beatificinner Self and Person, one and the same in all beings, is the immanent Brahma, God within you.'" He does not come from anywhere nor become anyone."'"That" is; but nothing else that is true can be said of it: "Thou canst not know the maker to know what is known, who is your Self in all things". Just as Godhimself does not know what he is, because he is not any what. The Buddhist doctrine proceeds in the same way, by elimination. Our own constitution andthat of the world is repeatedly analyzed, and as each one of the five physical and mental factors of the transient personality with which the "untaught manyfolk" identify "themselves" is listed, the pronouncement follows, "This is not my Self " (na me so atma) ."You will observe that amongst these childishmentalities who identify themselves with their accidents, the Buddha would have included Descartes, with his Cogito ergo sum.

There is, in fact, no more an individual than there is a world soul. What we call our "consciousness" is nothing but a process; its content changes fromday to day and is just as much causally determined as is the content of the body."' Our personality is constantly being destroyed and renewed; there isneither self nor anything of the nature of self in the world; and all this applies to all beings, or rather becomings, whether of men or Gods, now andhereafter. Just as it is expressed by Plutarch, "Nobody remains one person, nor is one person . . . Our senses, through ignorance of reality, falsely tell usthat what appears to be, actually is". The old Brahmanical (and Platonic) symbol of the chariot is made use of; the chariot, with all its appurtenances,corresponds to what we call our self; there was no chariot before its parts were put together, and will be none when they fall to pieces; there is no "chariot"apart from its parts; "chariot" is nothing but a name, given for convenience to a certain continuum of perceptions, but must not be taken to be an entity(sattva); and in the same way with ourselves who are, just like the chariot, "confections". The Comprehensor has seen things "as they have become" (yathabhutam), causally arising and disappearing, and has distinguished himself from all of them; it is not for him, but only for an ignoramus to ask suchquestions as "Am I?" What was I once?", "Whence did I come?", "Whither am I going?" "lf the Arhat is expressly permitted still to say "I", this is only forconvenience; he has long since outgrown all belief in a personality of his own. But none of all this means, nor is it anywhere said that "There is no Self"."On the contrary, there are passages in which when the five constituents of our evanescent and unreal "existence" have been listed, we find, not theusual formula of negation, "That is not my Self ", but the positive injunction, 'Take refuge in the Self "; just the Buddha also says that he himself has done.

The empirical personality of this man, So and so, being merely a process, it is not "my" consciousness or personality that can survive death and beborn again." It is improper to ask "Whose consciousness is this?"; we should ask only, "How did this consciousness arise". The old answer is given, "Thebody is not 'mine', but an effect of past works". There is no "essence" that passes over from one habitation to another; as one flame is lit from another, solife is transmitted, but not a life, not "my" life" Beings are the heirs of acts;'' but it cannot be said exactly that "I" now reap the rewards of what "I" did in aformer habitation. There is causal continuity, but no one consciousness (vinnana), no essence (sattva) that now experiences the fruits of good and evilactions, and that also recurs and reincarnates (sandhavati samsarati) without otherness (ananyam)", to experience in the future the consequences of whatis now taking place. Consciousness, indeed is never the same from one day to another.' How, then, could "it" survive and pass over from one life toanother? Thus the Vedanta and Buddhism are in complete agreement that while there is transmigration, there are no individual transmigrants. All that wesee is the operation of causes, and so much the worse for us if we see in this fatally determined nexus our "Self '. We can find the same thing inChristianity, where it is asked, "Who did sin, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?" to which the remarkable answer is made that "Neither haththis man sinned, nor his parents: but that the works of God might be made manifest in him". In other words, the blindness has "arisen" by the operation ofthose mediate causes of which God is the First Cause and without which the world would have been deprived of the perfection of causality."

The Buddha's purpose is to save its from our selves and their mortality. He would go on to say that our subjection to such fatal accidents as blindnessis a part and parcel of our identification of "consciousness" with "Self ". We altogether misunderstand the value and importance of "consciousness"; "that isnot my Self"; and the Parable of the Raft applies as much to consciousness as to ethical procedure; like the raft, consciousness is a valuable tool, ameans of operation, but like the raft not to be held onto when tire work has been done."' If this alarms its, as Aristha was frightened because he thoughtthat the peace of Nirvana implied a destruction of something real in himself," we must not overlook that what we are asked to substitute for ourconsciousness of things pleasant and unpleasant or rather, subjection to feelings of pleasure and pain is riot a simple unconsciousness but asuper-consciousness, none the less real and beatific because it cannot be analyzed in the terms of conscious thought. At the same time we ought,perhaps, to point out that this superconsciousness, or what in Christian theology is called the "divine manner of knowing, not by means of any objectsexternal to the knower ", is by no means to be equated with the sub-consciousness of modern psychology, with respect to which it has been very truly saidthat while "nineteenth century materialism closed the mind of man to what is above him, twentieth century, psychology open it to what is below him".

Our conscious "life" is a process, subject to corruption and death. It is this life that must be "arrested" (nirodha) if we are to live immortally. It will beuseless to deal with symptoms; it is the cause or occasion (hetu, nidana) that must be sought if we are to find the "medicine" that the Buddha sought andfound. It is the understanding of things "as become" (Yatha bhutam), and the realization that "personality" (attabhava) is one of these things, that liberatesman from himself. The gist of the Buddhist gospel is resumed in the often and triumphant repeated words, Of all things that spring from a cause, Thecause has been told by him "Thus come" And their suppression, too, The Great Pilgrim has declared.

In this chain of causes, to understand which is to have come Awake, it is emphasized that nothing whatever happens by chance but only in a regularsequence "That being present, this becomes; that not being present, this does not become". To have verified this is to have found the Way. For in "allthings that spring from a cause" are included "old age, sickness, and death"; and when we know the cause, we can apply the cure. The applicated is statedin the cycle of "causal origination" mastered on the night of the Great Awakening. All the ills that flesh is heir to are inseparable from and essential to theprocess of existence and unavoidable by any individual; individuality is "consciousness"; consciousness is riot a being, but a passion, riot an activity butonly a sequence of reactions in which "we'", who have no power to be either as or when we will, are fatally involved; individuality is motivated by andperpetuated by wanting; and the cause of all wanting is "ignorance" (avidya), for we "ignore" that the objects of our desire can never be possessed in anyreal sense of the word, ignore that even when we have got what we want, we still "want' to keep it and are still "in want". The ignorance meant is of thingsas they really are (yatha bhutam), and tire consequent attribution of substantiality to what is merely phenomenal; the seeing of Self in what is not Self."

In making ignorance the root of all evil, Buddhism concurs with all traditional doctrine. But we must guard ourselves from supposing that an ignoranceof any particular thing is meant, and especially against a confusion of the traditional "ignorance" with what we mean by "illiteracy"; so far from this, ourempirical knowledge of facts is an essential part of the yet), ignorance that makes desire possible. And no less must another misunderstanding beavoided; we must not suppose that the traditional wisdom is opposed to the knowledge of useful facts; what it demands is that we should recognize in whatare called "facts" and "laws of science", not absolute truths but statements of statistical probability. The pursuit of scientific knowledge does notnecessarily imply an "ignorance"; it is only when the motive is a curiosity, only when we pursue knowledge for its own sake, or art for arts sake, that we arebehaving "ignorantly". In Brahmanical terms, "ignorance" is of who we are; in Buddhist language, of what we are not; and these are only two ways ofsaying the same thing, what we really are being definable only in terms of what we are not.

It is only by making stepping stones of our dead selves, until we realize at last that there is literally nothing with which we can identify our Self, that wecan become what we are. And hence the Buddhist emphasis on what in Christian terms is called "self naughting", an expression based on Christ's denegatseipsum, "Behold the Arhat's beatitude! No wanting can be found in them; excised the thought `lam ; unmoving, un-originated, uncontaminated, veryPersons, God become (brahma bhuta), great heroes, natural sons of the Wake; unshaken in whatever plight, released from further becoming (punarbhava), on ground of dompted self they stand, they in the world have won their battle; they roar the `Lion's roar'; incomparable are the Wake" (buddah) ".There is no question here of a post mortem deliverance, but of "Persons" triumphant here and now; nor will it be overlooked that the epithet "Buddha" isused in the plural, and applied to all who have reached their goal.

Of such it is often said that they are "despirated" (nimata). The word Nirvana, "despiration", which plays so large a part in our conception of Buddhism,where it is one of the most important of the many terms that are the referents to "man's last end", demands some further explanation. The verb nirva is,literally, to "blow out", not transitively, but as a fire ceases to draw, i.e. "draw breath” The older texts employ the nearly synonymous verb udva, to "blowout" or "go out";"' "when the Fire blows out (udvayati) it is into the Gale that it expires";" deprived of fuel, the fire of life is "pacified", i.e. quenched, when themind has been curbed, one attains to the "peace of Nirvana", despiration in God” In the same way Buddhism stresses the going out of the fire or light of lifefor want of fuel it is by ceasing to feed our fires that the peace is reached, of which it is well said in another tradition that "it passeth understanding"; ourpresent life is a continuity of coming to be and passing away and immediate rebirth, like aflame that goes on burning and is not the same nor yet anotherflame; and in the same way with rebirth after death, it is like the lighting of one flame from another; nothing concrete passes over, there is continuity, butnot sameness." But "the contemplatives go out like this lamp" which, once out, `cannot pass on its flame"." Nirvana is a kind of death, but like every deatha rebirth to something other than what had been. Pari in parinirvana merely adds the value "complete" to the notion of a despiration.

We say "a kind of death" because the word nirvana can be used of still living things. The Bodhisattva is "despirated" when he becomes the Buddha.Even more significant, we find that each of the stages completed in the training of a royal steed is called a Parinirvana. The Buddha uses the word chieflyin connection with the "quenching" of the fires of passion, fault and delusion (raga, do sa and moha). But there is a distinction involved here; thedespiration is a present (samdrstikam) experience in two ways, ethical in as much as it implies the eradication of passion and fault, and eternal, i.e.metaphysical, in that it is a liberation from delusion, or ignorance (avijja); from both points of view it involves an unselfishness, but on the one hand inpractice, on the other in theory... Thus while the denotation is that of the Greek aposbennumi (be still, go out, be quenched, of wind, fire or passion), theconnotation is that of Greek teleo and teleutao (to be perfected, to die). All these meanings can be resumed in the one English word "finish"; the finishedproduct is no longer in the making, no longer becoming what it ought to be; in the same way the finished being, the perfected man has done with allbecoming; the final dissolution of the body cannot affect him, however affecting it may be to others, themselves imperfect, unfinished. Nirvana is a finalend, and like Brahma, a matter about which no further questions can be asked by those who are still on fire. In other words, the Way involves on the one hand a practical and on the other a contemplative discipline. The contemplative corresponds to the athlete,who does not contest for the prize unless he is already "in training". When the Indians speak of the Comprehensor (evamvit) of a given doctrine, they donot mean by this merely one who grasps the logical significance of a given proposition; they mean one who has "verified" it in his own person, and is whathe knows; for so long as we know only of our immortal Self, we are still in the realm of ignorance; we only really know it when we become it; we cannotreally know it without being it. There are ways of life dispositive to such a realization, and other ways that must prevent it. Let its, therefore, pause toconsider the nature of the "mere morality", or as it is now called, "Ethics", apart from which the contemplative life would be impossible. What we shouldcall a "practical holiness" is called alike in the old Indian books and in Buddhism a present and timeless "Walking with God" (brahmacarya)."' But there isalso a clear distinction of tire Doctrine (dharma) from its practical Meaning (artha), and it is with the latter that we are for the moment concerned.

Before we ask ourselves what all this means, let us remark that supernatural no more implies unnatural than super essential implies unessential; andthat it would be unscientific to say that such attainments are impossible, unless one has made experiment in accordance with the prescribed and perfectly intelligible disciplines. To call these things "miraculous" is not to say "impossible", but only "wonderful"; and as we said before, following Plato,"Philosophy begins in wonder". Furthermore, it must be clearly understood that the Buddha, like other orthodox teachers, attaches no great importance tothese powers and very strongly deprecates a cultivation of powers for their own sake and in any case forbids their public exhibition by monks who possessthem. "I do, indeed", he says, "possess these three powers (rddhi) of motion at will, mind reading, and teaching; but there can be no comparison of the firsttwo of these marvels (pratiharya) with the much farther reaching and far more productive marvel of my, teaching". It will profit us more to ask what suchmarvels, or those of Christ imply, than to ask whether they "really" took place on some given occasion; just as in the exegesis of other hero tales it will bemuch more useful to ask what "seven league boots" and "tat n caps" mean, than to point out that they cannot be bought in department stores.

In the first place, we observe that in the Brahmanical contexts, omniscience, particularly of births, is predicated of Agni (Jatavedas), the "Eye in theWorld", and of the "all seeing" Sun, the "Eye of the Gods", and for the very good reason that these consubstantial principles are the catalytic powers apartfrom which no birth could be; and further, that the power of motion at will, or what is the same thing, motion without locomotion, is predicated in theBrahmanical books of the Spirit or Universal Self (atman) on the one hand; and of liberated beings, knowers of the Self and assimilated to the Self, on theother. Once we have understood that the Spirit, universal solar Self and Person, is a timeless omnipresence, it will be recognized that the Spirit, byhypothesis, is naturally possessed of all the powers that have been described; the Spirit is the "knower of all births" in saecula saeculorum preciselybecause it is "where everywhere and every when are focused" and is present undivided as well in all past as in all future becomings; and by the sametoken, we find it spoken of also as "Providence (prajia) or as "Compendious Providence" (Prajnana ghana) for the very good reason that its knowledge of"events" is not derived from the events themselves, but the events derived from its knowledge of itself. In all the Brahmanical books the powers that havebeen described are the Lord's: if the Comprehensor can change his form and move at will, it is "even as Brahma can change his forth and move at will; it isthe Spirit, ultimately solar Self (atman) that itself not moving yet out runs others. All these things are powers of the Spirit and of those who are "in thespirit"; and if by far the greatest of all these miracles is that of the teaching, that is simply to say with St. Ambrose that "All that is trite, by whomsoever ithas been said, is from the Holy Ghost". If the "signs and wonders" are lightly dismissed, it is not because they are unreal, but because it is an evil andadulterous generation that asketh for a sign.

The Buddha describes himself as unknowable (ananuvedya) even here and now; neither Gods nor men can see him; those who see him in any form orthink of him in words do not see him at all. "I am neither priest nor prince nor husbandman nor anyone at all; I wander in the world a learned Nobody,uncontaminated by human qualities (alipyamana manavebhyah); useless to ask my family name (gotra)”. He leaves no trace by which he can be tracked.Even here and now the Buddha cannot be taken hold of, and it cannot be said of this Supernal Person (parama purusa) after the dissolution of the bodyand psychic complex that he becomes or does not become, nor can both these things be affirmed or denied of him; all that can be said is that "he is"; toask what or where he is would be futile. 141 "He who sees the Law (dharma) sees me" and that is why in the early iconography he is represented, not inhumors form, but by such symbols as that of the “Wheel of the Law", of which he is the immanent mover. And that is all just as it was in the Brahmanicalbooks, where it is Brahma that has no personal or family name" and cannot be tracked, the Spirit (atman) that never became anyone, Who knows where heis?" the interior Self that is uncontaminated, "the supreme Self of which nothing true can be said (neti-neti) and that cannot be grasped except by thethought "It is". It is assuredly with reference to that ineffable principle that the Buddha says that `There is an unborn, un-become, unmade, incomposite,and were it not for that unborn, un-become, unmade, incomposite, no way could be shown of escape from birth, becoming, making, composition";"' and wedo not see what that "unborn" can be but "That" inanimate (anatmya) Spirit (atman) were it not for whose invisible being (sat) there could be no lifeanywhere. "The Buddha flatly denies that he ever taught the cessation or annihilation of an essence; all that he teaches is the putting of a stop to sorrow. In a famous passage of the Milinda Questions the old symbol of the chariot is used by Nagasena to break down the King's belief in the reality of hisown "personality". We need hardly say that throughout the Brahmanical and Buddhist literature (as also in Plato and Philo)"'the "chariot" stands for thepsycho physical vehicle, as which or in which according to our knowledge of "who we are" we live and move."='The steeds are the senses, the reins theircontrols, the mind the coachman, and the Spirit or real Self (atman) the charioteer (rathi; The charioteer is either Agni (RVX51.6; AVJII.21.3), or the Breath(pram= Brahma, Attract, Sun), the Breath to which "no name can be given" (AA.II.3.8), or the Spiritual Self (Atman, KU.III.3; J_V.252) or Dhamma (S.I.33).The skilled charioteer (susarathi) guides his horses where he will (RV.VL75.6), just as we might now speak of the skilled driver of a motorcar or airplaneas roaming where he likes.), i.e. passenger and owner, who alone knows the vehicle's destination; if the horses are allowed to run away with the mind, thevehicle will go astray; but if they are curbed and guided by the mind in accordance with its knowledge of the Self, the latter will reach home. In ourBuddhist text it is strongly emphasized that all that composes the chariot and team, or body-and soul, is devoid of any essential substance; "chariot" and"self " are only the conventional names of constructed (constituted) aggregates, and do not import existences independent of or distinguishable from thefactors of which they are composed; and just as one confection is called a "chariot" for convenience, so ought the human personality to be called a "self "only for convenience. And just as the repeated expression "That is not my Self " has so often been misinterpreted to mean “There is no Self " so thedestructive analysis of the vehicular personality has been held to mean that there is no Person' It is complained that "the charioteer is left out". Actually, however, nothing is said for or against the imperceptible presence in the composite vehicle of an eternal substance distinct from it and one andthe same in all such vehicles. Nagasena, who refuses to be regarded as a "somebody" and maintains that "Nagasena" is nothing but a name for theinconstant aggregate of the psycho physical phenomenon, could surely have said, "I live, yet not `I', but the Law in me". And if we take into considerationother Pali texts we shall find that a charioteer is taken for granted, and who and what he is, namely one that "has never become anyone". The Eternal Law(dharma) is, in fact, the charioteer; 155 and while "the king's chariots age, and just so the body ages, the Eternal Law of existences does not age 11.156The Buddha identifies himself that Self that he calls his refuge's' with this Law's" and calls himself the best of charioteers", one who tames men, as thoughthey were horses. And finally we find a detailed analysis of the "chariot" concluding with the statement that the rider is the Self (atman), in almost the verywords of the Upanishads."" The statement of a Buddhist commentator, that the Buddha is the Spiritual Self (atman) is assuredly correct."'' That "GreatPerson" (mahapurusa) is the charioteer in all beings (M.II.206 7: What Buddha teaches is brahmanam "the way to fellowship with Brahman" [sahavyatayamaggo (sahaya=saha+aya); A.5.90 kalyana sahayo, Manusrurti VI.49 atnucnaiva sahayena], and can teach because he can say brahmanam caham…,brahma lokam prajanami, as being one who was "born there and had always lived there". Cf. BGXVIII.54 brahma bhuta prasannatma.).

We believe that enough has now been said to show beyond any possible doubt that the "Buddha" and "Great Person", "Arhat", "Brahma become" and"God of Gods" of the Pali texts is himself the Spirit (atman) and Inner Man of all beings, and that he is "That One" who makes himself manifold in whom allbeings again "become one"; that the Buddha is Brahma, Prajapati, the Light of Lights, Fire or Sun, or by whatever other name the older books refer to theFirst Principle; and to show that in so far as the Buddha's "life" and deeds are described, it is the doings of Brahma as Agni and Indra that are retold. Agniand Indra are the Priest and King in divinir, and it is with these two possibilities that the Buddha is born, and these two possibilities that are realized, foralthough his kingdom is in one sense not of this world, it is equally certain that he as Cakravartin is both priest and king in the same sense that Christ is"both priest and king". We are forced by the logic of the scriptures"' themselves to say that Agnendrau, Buddha, Krishna, Moses and Christ are names ofone and the same "descent" whose birth is eternal; to recognize that all scripture without exception requires of us in positive terms to know our Self and bythe same token to know what is not our Self but mistakenly called a "self "; and that the Way to become what we are demands an excision front ourconsciousness of being, every false identification of our being with what we are not, but think we are when we say "I think" or "I do". To have "come clean"(suddha, katharos) is to have distinguished our Self from all its psycho physical, bodily and mental accidents; to have identified our Self with any of theseis the worst possible sort of pathetic fallacy and the whole cause of "our" sufferings and mortality, from which no one who still is anyone can be liberated. Itis related that a Confucian scholar be sought the twenty-eighth Buddhist patriarch, Bodhidharma, "to pacify his soul". The Patriarch retorted, "Produce it,and I will pacify it". The Confucian replied "That is my trouble, that I cannot find it". Bodhidharma replied, "Your wish is granted". The Confucianunderstood, and departed in peace.

It is altogether contrary to Buddhist, as it is to Vedantic doctrine to think of "ourselves" as wanderers in the fatally determined storm of the world's flow(samsara). "Our immortal Self' is anything but a "surviving personality".'"'" It is not this man so and so that goes home and is lost to view, but the prodigalSelf that recollects itself; and that having been many is now again one, and inscrutable, Dens absconditus. "No man hath ascended up to heaven, but hethat came down from heaven", and therefore "If any man would follow me, let him deny himself ". "The kingdom of God is for none but the thoroughlydead". "' The realization of Nirvana is the "Flight of the Alone to the Alone". "Tis the Void that passeth to the Void".

2007-07-02T19:06:00.000-07:00

That Buddhism is in no way Novel

The more superficially one studies Buddhism, the more it seems to differ from the Brahmanism in which it originated; the more profound our study, themore difficult it becomes to distinguish Buddhism from Brahmanism, or to say in what respects, if any, Buddhism is really unorthodox. The outstandingdistinction lies in the fact that Buddhist doctrine is propounded by an apparently historical founder, understood to have lived and taught in the sixth centuryB.C. Beyond this there are only broad distinctions of emphasis. It is taken almost for granted that one must have abandoned the world if the Way is to befollowed and the doctrine understood. The teaching is addressed either to Brahmans who are forthwith converted, or to the congregation of monasticWanderers (prravrajaka) who have already entered on the Path; others of whom are already perfected Arhats, and become in their turn the teachers ofother disciples. There is an ethical teaching for laymen also, with injunctions and prohibitions as to what one should or should not do.

The Buddha teaches that there is anought to be done (kiraya) and an ought not to be done (akiriya); these two words never refer to "the doctrine of Karma (retribution) and its opposite". That the Goal (as in Brahmanical doctrine) is one of liberation front good and evil both is quiteanother matter; the doing of good and avoidance of evil are indispensable to Wayfaring. The view that there is no ought to be done (akiriya), howeverargued. is heretical: responsibility cannot be evaded either (1) by the argument of a fatal determination by the causal efficacy of past acts or (2) by makingGod (issaro) responsible or (3) by a denial of causality and postulation of chance; ignorance is the rooted all evil, and it is upon what we do now that our welfare depends (A.I.173f.). Man is helpless only to the extent that he sees Self in what is not Self, to the extent that he frees himself from the notion "his actions will be good and not evil; while for so long as he identifies himself with soul and body (savinnana kaya) his actions will be "self " ish.) butnothing that can be described as a "social reform" or as a protest against the caste system. The repeated distinction of the "true Brahman" from the mereBrahman by birth is one that had already been drawn again and again in the Brahmanical books.

If we can speak of the Buddha as a reformer at all it is only in the strictly etymological sense of the word: it is not to establish anew order but to restorean older form that the Buddha descended from heaven. In this sense tathagato can be applied to Buddha, Dhamma and Sangha, cannot say hoti, no hoti, hoti ca no hoti, neva hoti na no hoti.)", this is because he has fully penetrated the Eternal Law (akalika dhamma); The Dhamma taught by the Buddha, beautiful from first to last, is both of present application (sarnditthiko)and timeless (akaliko), passim. It follows that the same applies to the Buddha himself, who identifies himself with the Dhamma and personally verified all things in heaven or earth he describes as a vile heresy the view that he is teaching a "philosophy of his own", thought out by himself (Epistle to DiognetusV.3. (Apostolic Fathers, 359) M.I.68f., the Buddha "roars the Lion's roar" and haring recounted his supernatural powers, continues: "Now if anyone says of me, Gotama the Pilgrim, knower and seer as aforesaid, that my eminent Aryan gnosis and insight have no superhuman quality, and that I teach a Law that has been beaten out by reasoning (takka pariyahatam) experimentally thought out and self expressed (sayam patibha nave), if he will not recant, notrepent (catam pajahati= metanonn) and abandon this view, he falls into hell". [D.I.16,22 Buddha's Knowledge is a priori (pajanati), not inductive. D.I.45,79 to come to know truly]. "These profound truths (ye dhamma gramblurd) which the Buddha teaches are inaccessible to reasoning (atakkavacara), lie hasverified them by his own super knowledge" (D.I.22) ; cf. KU.1I.9 "it is not by reasoning that that idea can be reached" explains that it is an "ancient Way that had been lost that the Buddha opens up again". The reference is to the brahmacariya, "walking with God"(= then sunopa ein, Phazdms 248C; Philo Wigr. 131,126) of RVX109.5, AV., Brahmanas, Upanishads and Pali texts, passim. The "Lion's roar" is originallyBrhaspati's, RVX67.9, i.e. Agni's. Also RV.I.65.5 "awakened at the dawn, he restores by his operations consciousness to men". And M.1.421asamayavimokham~ Eternal Deliverance. Saint Thomas 1.26.1. The will is free in so far as it obeys Reason, i.e. what one thinks is a blind and fetteredwill. Also Arichonnedian Ethics IX.8.7. RV.X.130.7 purvesam pantham anudrsya.S.H.106 purinnam vnaggam purannnjasann . . . anagacchim. Stobaei Hermetica IIB . . . the road to truth which our ancestors traveled". See also Parinenides "Road of the Daimon"; Philo "the roads of heaven are happy";Phaedrus 247. Plato Rep. Bk.VII.) No true philosopher ever came to destroy, but only to fulfill the Law. "I have seen", the Buddha says, "the ancient Way,the Old Road that was taken by the formerly All Awakened, and that is the path I follow"; and since he elsewhere praises the Brahmans of old whoremembered the Ancient Way that leads to Brahma (S.IV.117; In Ittivuttaka 28,29 those who follow this (ancient) Way taught by the Buddhas are calledMahatmas. But, Sn. 284 315 says "now, that the Brahmans have long neglected their ancient Law, the Buddha preaches it again".); there can be no doubtthat the Buddha is alluding to "the ancient narrow path that stretches far away, whereby the contemplatives, knowers of Brahma, ascend, set free"(vimuktah), mentioned in verses that were already old when Yajnavalkya cites them in the earliest Upanishad (BU.IV. f.8, RVIV.18.1. As Mrs. Rhys Davidshas also pointed out, the Buddha is a critic of Brahmanism only in external in matters; the "internal system of spiritual values" he "takes for granted"("Relations between Early Buddhism and Brahmanism", IHQ„ X,1934, p. 282). In view of the current impression that the Buddha came to destroy, not tofulfill an older Law, we have emphasized throughout the uninterrupted continuity of Brahmanical and Buddhist doctrine (e.g. in note 159 (Buddhism));Buddhist doctrine is original (yoniso manasikaro) indeed, but certainly not novel.).

The scriptures in which the traditions of the Buddha's life and teachings are preserved fall into two classes, those of the Narrow Way (Hinayana) andthose of the Broad Way (Mahayana). It is with the former, and on the whole older texts that we shall be chiefly concerned. The books pertaining to the"Narrow Way" are composed in Pali, a literary dialect closely related to Sanskrit. The Pali literature ranges in date from about the third century B.C. to thesixth century A.D. The Canon consists of what are called the "Three Baskets", respectively of monastic regimen (Vinaya), Discourse (Sutra) and AbstractDoctrine (Abhidhamma). We shall be chiefly concerned with the five classes of the "Discourse" literature in which are preserved what are taken to be theBuddha's actual words. Of the extra canonical literature the most important of the early books are the Milindapanha and the Visuddhimagga. The greatjataka books, largely composed of ancient mythological materials recast in a popular form and retold as stories of the former births, is relatively late,bravery instructive both for the Buddhist point of view and as a detailed picture of life in ancient India. All these books are provided with elaborate commentaries in what now would be called the "scholastic" manner. We shall take this literature as it stands; for we have no faith in the emendation oftexts by modern scholars whose critical methods are mainly based on their dislike of monastic institutions and their own view of what the Buddha ought tohave said. It is in fact surprising that such a body of doctrine as the Buddhist, with its profoundly other worldly and even anti social emphasis, and in theBuddha's own words "hard to be understood by you who are of different views, another tolerance, other tastes, other allegiance and other training"( D.III.40,cf. S.1.136, D.1.12, M.I.167.), can have become even as "popular" as it is in the modern Western environment We should have supposed that modernminds would have found in Brahmanism, with its acceptance of life as a whole, a more congenial philosophy. We can only suppose that Buddhism hasbeen so much admired mainly for what it is not. A well known modern writer on the subject has remarked that "Buddhism in its purity ignored the existenceof a God; it denied the existence of a soul; it was not so much a religion as a code of ethics"( Winifred Stephens, Legends of Indian Buddhism, 1911, p. 7.Similarly M.V Bhattacharya maintains that the Buddha taught that "there is no Self, or Atman" (Cultural Heritage of India, p. 259). Even in 1925 a Buddhistscholar could write "The soul . . . is described in the Upanishads as a small creature in shape like a man . . . Buddhism repudiated all such theories" (PTSDictionary, s.v. attan). It would be as reasonable to say that Christianity is materialistic because it speaks of an "inner man". Few scholars would write inthis manner today, but ridiculous as such statements may appear, (and it is as much an ignorance of Christian doctrine as it is of Brahmanism that isinvolved), they still survive in all popular accounts of "Buddhism". Th. Scherbatsky Buddhist Logic 1. 1932, p. 2. Buddhism "denied a God, it denied theSoul, it denied Eternity"! Scherbatsky's The Doctrine of the Buddha (BSOS, V1. 867L) provides a good critique of Keith's demand to "lay aside our naturaldesire to find reason prevailing in a barbarous age", in his Buddhist philosophy, p. 29. It is of course, true that the Buddha denied the existence of a "soul"or "self "in the narrow sense of the word (one might say, in accordance with the command, deneget seipsum (deny himself ), Mark, VIII.341) but this is notwhat our writers mean to say, or are understood by their readers to say; what three mean to say is that the Buddha denied the immortal, unborn andSupreme Self of the Upanishads. And that is palpably false. For he frequently speaks of this Self or Spirit, and nowhere more clearly than in the repeatedformula na me so atta, "That is not my Self ", excluding body and the components of empirical consciousness, a statement to which the words of Sankaracarol are peculiarly apposite, "Whenever we deny something unreal, it is with reference to something real" (neti-neti Brahma Sutra III.2.22); as remarkedby Mrs. Rhys Davids, "so, 'this one', is used in the Suttas for utmost emphasis in questions of personal identity" (Minor Anthologies, I, p. 7, note 2). Na meso alto is no more a denial of the Self than Socrates' to . . . soma . . . ouk estin ho anthrofos=the body is not the man (A noochus 365), is a denial of theMan"! But Dh A IV. f72 "me sammalamito atta"! is positive. It was not for the Buddha, but for the natthika, to deny this Self! And so to "ignoring God" (it isoften pretended that Buddhism is "atheistic"), one might as well argue that Meister Eckhart "ignored God" in saying "niht, daz ist gobe gelich, wande beideniht sind" (God is not like God, for it is impossible for the two to be the same). We can understand the appeal of this on the one hand to the rationalist andon the other to the sentimentalist. Unfortunately for these, all three statements are untrue, at least in the sense in which they are meant. It is with anotherBuddhism than this that we are in sympathy and are able to agree; and that is the Buddhism of the texts as they stand.

Of the texts of the Broad Way, composed in Sanskrit, few if any antedate the beginning of the Christian era. Amongst the most important of them are theMahavastu, the Lalita Vistara, the Divyavadana and the Saddharma Pundarika. The two main forms of Buddhism to which we have referred are oftenspoken of, rather loosely, as respectively Southern and Northern. It is the Southern school that now survives in Ceylon, Burma and Siam. The two schoolsoriginally flourished together in Burma, Siam, Cambodia, Java and Bali, side by side with a Hinduism with which they often combined. Buddhism of theNorthern school passed over into Tibet, China and Japan, through the work of Indian teachers and native disciples who made translations from Sanskrit. Inthose days it was not considered that the mere knowledge of languages sufficed to make a man a "translator" in any serious sense of the word; no onewould have undertaken to translate a text who had not studied it for long years at the feet of a traditional and authoritative exponent of its teachings, andmuch less would any one have thought himself qualified to translate a book in the teachings of which he did not believe. Few indeed are the translationsof Indian books into European languages that can yet come up to the standards set for themselves by the Tibetan and Chinese Buddhists (See MarcoPallis, Peaks and Lamas, 1939, pp. 79 81; ed. 1974, pp. 72 4.). It may be observed that while Brahmanism was at one time widely diffused in the "Greater India" of South East Asia, it never crossed the northern frontiersof India proper; Brahmanism was not, like Buddhism, what might be called a missionary faith. Indian culture reached and profoundly influenced the FarEast through Buddhism, which sometimes fused with and sometimes existed side by side with Taoism, Confucianism and Shinto. The greatest influencewas exerted by the contemplative forms of Buddhism; what had been Dhyana in India became Cha'n in China and Zen in Japan (See the various books ofD.T. Suzuki.) 'We cannot, unfortunately, describe these forms of Buddhism here, but must affirm that although they often differ greatly in emphasis anddetail from the Narrow Way they represent anything but a degeneration of Buddhism; the Buddhisms of Tibet and the Far East are calculated to evoke ourdeepest sympathies, equally by their profundity of their doctrines and the poignant beauty of the literature and art in which these teachings arecommunicated. We have only to add that Buddhism had died out in India proper by the end of the twelfth century.

Sankaracarya, the leading exponent of the Vedanta as a system, has often been called a Pracchannabauddha, "concealed Buddhist". The term Vedanta ("End of the Vedas" in the sense that the New Testament might be called the "conclusion and fulfillment" of the Old) occurs, however, already in theUpanishads; and the fact is that Vedanta and Buddhism have so much in common from the beginning that any exposition of either must sound like anexposition of the other. That is why a fusion of Hinduism and Buddhism takes place in the Indian Middle Ages and why Buddhism ceased to exist as aseparate doctrine in India proper. If Buddhism rather than Hinduism could migrate to and survive elsewhere, this is mainly because while Hinduism fulfilsitself in both the active and contemplative lives, Buddhism is chiefly concerned with the life of contemplation and can for that reason be the more easilytaught as a Way of escape from the formal bonds of any social order.

2007-07-02T18:59:00.000-07:00

The Absurdity of modern "Buddhism"

by Aryasatvan

If, as modern pseudo-buddhism claimed, the absolute attainment were merely oblivion (as they preach, a "blowing-out") both in whole and in part,...then the wisest sages of the world would preach the profane making of merits and/or evil deeds, thereby gaining the security of ones fate in perpetuity in samsara, life after life, for ever and ever; for it were better one suffer the slings and arrows of sorrows along with the pleasures of samsara than gain oblivion, non-existence (which is impossible and a profane teaching).

If you're never Self then your always other. What is other is always other and never Self, for otherness is a compound of unlike elements making another whichcannot be Self-sustaining for it has no inherent nature of itself which could be deemed “Self”. And if you’re always other and never Self, then what is concurrent withthe present is the Absolute and the notion of following a path is unrequired. Hence modern “Buddhism” is manifold stupidity in following a false path which they claim does not culminate in a Self or an incorporeal freedom except as “non-being” (vibhava), which is a heresy according to Buddhism.

2007-07-02T18:49:00.001-07:00

The Citta in the context of Vedantic doctrine

Buddhist doctrine in no way diverges from these key doctrines as pertains the Nous, the Citta, the Will

THE UPANISHADS ON THE CITTA
“(Cittam adhyatmam) the Citta is the sphere of the atman. What is willed (cetayitavyam adhibhutam) is the sphere of the objective. The Kshytriya (know of the field, i.e. Tathagata, Buddha) is the divine principle.” [Subala Up. 5.9]
“The subtle Atman is to be known as citta in which the fives senses are centered. The whole of man’s citta is pervaded by the senses (in the common ignorant person). When the citta is purified (visuddha citta = cittavumutta of Pali, or visuddha citta), the Atman shines forth!” [Mundaka Up. 3.1.9]
“Verily all these (speech, thought, volition) have their center in the citta” [Chand. Up. 7.5.2]
“(cittam atman) Citta is the Atman” [Chand. Up. 7.5.2]
“there is a city of eleven gates belonging to the upright citta. By ruling it one doesn’t grieve, is free” [Kath. Up. 2.2.1]
“whose citta is tranquil and attained to peace (samanvitaya, Pali=samma’), let the sage teach in its very truth that gnosis about Brahman by which one knows the Imperishable-person (tattvato brahma-vidyam = Pali: Tathagata) of light.” [Mundaka Up. 1.2.13]
“taking up that weapon the bow of the Upanishads, place in it the arrow of samadhi. Draw the bow with the citta engaged in samadhi of Brahman. Beloved, know that thy target (is gnosis of) Brahman.” [Mudaka Up. 2.2.3]
“He (Brahman spoken of as metaphorically and poetically as a god) is the beginning, the (pre)source of all causes which unites (body and soul). He is to be seen as beyond the three periods of time, and without parts. After having worshiped that resplendent god (Brahman, i.e. the Absolute) who is (source for) all forms, the origin of being, (he) who abides in the citta.” [Svet. Up. 6.5]
“tranquility for the citta….One’s own citta is the (source for) samsara…..what a man wills (yac cittas tan-mayo bhavati) there he becomes…..If a mans citta is so fixed upon Brahman, as it as for any others to be fixed on the things of this world, who then will NOT gain liberation?….the citta of him whose stains have been washed away by samadhi and therein entered into the atman cannot be described thru words.” [Maitri Up. 6.34]

THE BHAGAVAD GITA ON THE CITTA
“Having no desires with citta-atman (yatacittama, Pali: cittatta) controlled..” [B.G. 4.21]
“Let the yogi perpetually keep the citta fixed in/upon the atman (self-assimilation), alone, self-controlled free from all desires.” [B.G. 6.9]
“Serene and fearless, subdued in citta (samyamya maccitto = Pali sammacitta) upon me (Brahman).” [B.G. 6.14]
“When the citta is established in the atman, liberated from desire, therein he is in at peace.” [B.G. 6.18]
“Like a flame in a windless place doesn’t flicker to and fro, such is a yogi subdued in citta is in union with the atman” [B.G. 6.19]
“Him in whom the citta is at rest, restrained by yoga (samadhi), therein he beholds the atman, thru the self (citta) and rejoices in the atman.” [B.G. 6.20]
“If thou fixeth the citta upon me (Brahman), they reach me by yoga.” [B.G. 12.9]

SAMKARA ON THE CITTA
“My citta, my true nature..” [Upadesa Sahasri 8.1]
“”Just as one (fool) looks upon the body in the light of the sun as having (in it) light, so too one looks (in error) at the reflection (of the citta) mentation as having citta (light/Self) in it. [Upadesa Sahasri 12.1]
“Just as bronzed poured into a mould assumes the shape of that mould, so too the citta assumes and pervades (in ignorance) those sense perceptions.” [Upadesa Sahasri 14.3]
“The locus of memory is the citta” [Upadesa Sahasri 15.2]
“Gnosis is manifest in a pure citta, as if reflected in a clean mirror” [Upadesa Sahasri 17.22]
“Just as the citta acquires a reflection of willing (cetana) and appears to have willing in it, so too an image of a face in a mirror appears to be a face, though it be mere illusion. [Upadesa Sahasri 18.87]
“to say that the will is (equal to) willing (cittam cetanam) would contradict the Vedas and reason. Moreover it would (falsely) imply that the body is also the citta, as well as the other senses (it has).” [Upadesa Sahasri 18.88] (i.e. that the attribute of will [citta] which is willing, is not will itself but its extrinsic product)
“With the citta complete assimilated in the Supreme atman, Brahman, the Absolute – then the world of appearances vanishes” [Vivekacudamani 398]
“The root of all feelings is in the citta. Merge the citta in the Atman, the Supreme.” [Vivekacudamani 407]

2007-07-02T18:49:00.000-07:00

The Citta in the context of Vedantic doctrine

Buddhist doctrine in no way diverges from these key doctrines as pertains the Nous, the Citta, the Will

THE UPANISHADS ON THE CITTA

“(Cittam adhyatmam) the Citta is the sphere of the atman. What is willed (cetayitavyam adhibhutam) is the sphere of the objective. The Kshytriya (know of the field, i.e. Tathagata, Buddha) is the divine principle.” [Subala Up. 5.9]

“The subtle Atman is to be known as citta in which the fives senses are centered. The whole of man’s citta is pervaded by the senses (in the common ignorant person). When the citta is purified (visuddha citta = cittavumutta of Pali, or visuddha citta), the Atman shines forth!” [Mundaka Up. 3.1.9]

“Verily all these (speech, thought, volition) have their center in the citta” [Chand. Up. 7.5.2]

“(cittam atman) Citta is the Atman” [Chand. Up. 7.5.2]

“there is a city of eleven gates belonging to the upright citta. By ruling it one doesn’t grieve, is free” [Kath. Up. 2.2.1]

“whose citta is tranquil and attained to peace (samanvitaya, Pali=samma’), let the sage teach in its very truth that gnosis about Brahman by which one knows the Imperishable-person (tattvato brahma-vidyam = Pali: Tathagata) of light.” [Mundaka Up. 1.2.13]

“taking up that weapon the bow of the Upanishads, place in it the arrow of samadhi. Draw the bow with the citta engaged in samadhi of Brahman. Beloved, know that thy target (is gnosis of) Brahman.” [Mudaka Up. 2.2.3]

“He (Brahman spoken of as metaphorically and poetically as a god) is the beginning, the (pre)source of all causes which unites (body and soul). He is to be seen as beyond the three periods of time, and without parts. After having worshiped that resplendent god (Brahman, i.e. the Absolute) who is (source for) all forms, the origin of being, (he) who abides in the citta.” [Svet. Up. 6.5]

“tranquility for the citta….One’s own citta is the (source for) samsara…..what a man wills (yac cittas tan-mayo bhavati) there he becomes…..If a mans citta is so fixed upon Brahman, as it as for any others to be fixed on the things of this world, who then will NOT gain liberation?….the citta of him whose stains have been washed away by samadhi and therein entered into the atman cannot be described thru words.” [Maitri Up. 6.34]

THE BHAGAVAD GITA ON THE CITTA

“Having no desires with citta-atman (yatacittama, Pali: cittatta) controlled..” [B.G. 4.21]

“Let the yogi perpetually keep the citta fixed in/upon the atman (self-assimilation), alone, self-controlled free from all desires.” [B.G. 6.9]

“Serene and fearless, subdued in citta (samyamya maccitto = Pali sammacitta) upon me (Brahman).” [B.G. 6.14]

“When the citta is established in the atman, liberated from desire, therein he is in at peace.” [B.G. 6.18]

“Like a flame in a windless place doesn’t flicker to and fro, such is a yogi subdued in citta is in union with the atman” [B.G. 6.19]

“Him in whom the citta is at rest, restrained by yoga (samadhi), therein he beholds the atman, thru the self (citta) and rejoices in the atman.” [B.G. 6.20]

“If thou fixeth the citta upon me (Brahman), they reach me by yoga.” [B.G. 12.9]

SAMKARA ON THE CITTA

“My citta, my true nature..” [Upadesa Sahasri 8.1]

“”Just as one (fool) looks upon the body in the light of the sun as having (in it) light, so too one looks (in error) at the reflection (of the citta) mentation as having citta (light/Self) in it. [Upadesa Sahasri 12.1]

“Just as bronzed poured into a mould assumes the shape of that mould, so too the citta assumes and pervades (in ignorance) those sense perceptions.” [Upadesa Sahasri 14.3]

“The locus of memory is the citta” [Upadesa Sahasri 15.2]

“Gnosis is manifest in a pure citta, as if reflected in a clean mirror” [Upadesa Sahasri 17.22]

“Just as the citta acquires a reflection of willing (cetana) and appears to have willing in it, so too an image of a face in a mirror appears to be a face, though it be mere illusion. [Upadesa Sahasri 18.87]

“to say that the will is (equal to) willing (cittam cetanam) would contradict the Vedas and reason. Moreover it would (falsely) imply that the body is also the citta, as well as the other senses (it has).” [Upadesa Sahasri 18.88] (i.e. that the attribute of will [citta] which is willing, is not will itself but its extrinsic product)

“With the citta complete assimilated in the Supreme atman, Brahman, the Absolute – then the world of appearances vanishes” [Vivekacudamani 398]

“The root of all feelings is in the citta. Merge the citta in the Atman, the Supreme.” [Vivekacudamani 407]

2007-07-02T18:37:00.000-07:00

In Reflecting on the Source-material as reference for earliest Buddhism

“The Sanchi and Bharut inscriptions dated to the middle of the second century B.C.E. push the composition of the 5 Nikayas back to a earlier date by mentioning the word “pañcanekayika” (Five Nikyas), thereby placing the Nikayas as put together at a period about half way between the death of the Buddha and the accession of Asoka (before 265 B.C.), as such the 5 Nikayas, the earliest existing texts of Buddhism, must have been well known and well established far earlier than generally perceived. Finally proving the majority of the five Nikayas could not have been composed any later than the very earliest portion of the third century B.C.E., and most likely existing prior to this date as well.”

-Studies in the Origins of Buddhist Scriptures

2007-07-02T18:34:00.000-07:00

The Miserable Status of Atheists

by Aryasatvan

Atheists are more miserable and profane than even a blood-drinking Satanist. How so? Even the Satanist concedes to the metaphysical world, to the ontological soul. That atheists deny the Creationist’s Supreme-Creator, God, is not the measure of their ignorance, but that Atheism denies a substrate which underlies mere phenomena and the flux of materiality.

Creationists believe the complexity and beauty of the cosmos is the result of the will of a sentient being, supreme and before which nothing is,…this position is wrong. Worse still on a level immeasurable, is the position of the Atheist who thinks the complexity and entirety of the universe is the happenstance of cosmic flatulence, akin to apes on typewriters, given enough time, eventually producing Shakespearean plays.

Atheists are the most miserable lot that exists, they look for Subjectivity in the objective world of magnitude and measure and, not finding same therein, deny the Subjective spirit which is the basis for all metaphysics. Like the man who, walking outside his own house, and looking back in upon his window and declaring ‘nobody lives here’, or the child who looks for a signal inside the radio receiver, or for little-peoples ‘inside the television set’, the Atheist is possessed fully by agnosis, which in its fullness, is the praise of death, of mortality most miserable. Their alter is the body doomed to the grave, their prayer is for sensual pleasures as highest, their God is death. Their salvation from suffering is the desire for non-existence (vibhava) which could never come.”

2007-07-02T18:32:00.000-07:00

Post-Noetic musings on the ontological Light

by Aryasatvan

The exhaustion of all potential modalities of being (becoming) that the will (nous/citta) objectifies itself as, leads the ontological Self to seek after itself. This initiatory insight, if cultivated to fruition, leads to the disobjectification and Self-assimilation which is the only medium for liberation.

The primordial attribute of the Absolute, its extrinsic productivity, is inherent as the causeless cause for all becoming. This Subjective agnosis has lead the will, life thru life and time uncountable into objective embodiment and unfathomable suffering such that the will sees Self (Subject) in what is not-itself (Object, anatta, mere self, psycho-physical); the inversion of this downfall (paticcasamupada) is the actualization of Subjective gnosis, the Self-assimilation (samadhi) gained in wisdom which is the inversion of becoming as perpetuated by the extrinsic side of the will and the Absolute, being willing, objectification, or known profanely as avijja, the light or Self (-vijja) which is turned from itself (a-).

2007-07-02T18:28:00.000-07:00

The Aryan Insight
by Aryasatvan

"Here said: 'I am not that, this is not me, that is not my Soul (na me so atta)'. No thing (phenomena, namo-rupa, corporeality, khandhas) is my Soul. My True-nature is my Soul (svabhava), which is no thing, gone unseen until now due to the fog of nescience.

No thing can be said to be my Soul; this is the deep trap in which the weak minds of fools become ensnared to conclude 'nothing is' and deny, ultimately, true liberation (vimutta) [SN 3.46] from bondage and That which is liberated, That which obtains immortality (amata), That which no longer tastes of death. That of which nothing can be said of him who has obtained the immortal state, for what is like unto That which one can say: 'It is like this, or it is like that'. Nothing is like unto It, for It is like unto itself alone, not like unto another, neither concept nor metaphor touch It or impart it to the seeker save wisdom alone.

The snake cannot eat itself so as to ever make claim 'nothing is'; such is the dogma of fools unable to see the foundation of phenomena, the unseen Seer, the unmoved Mover in which both movement and change are superimposed on the mind by the fog of nescience which creates the unreal duality of actor and acted, deed and doer, feeler and felt; causing simple minds to make merit, do deeds, heap virtue for a better life or afterlife, and praise compassion, never seeing that the stainless Soul obtained by wisdom is unsoiled and without want, either of deed or merit, for both are brother and sister to samsara itself. Merit making is the karmic shit heap of samsara upon which the cock crows and bemuses himself king; the Soul partakes of itself alone [KN 2.380] , and by wisdom alone is won; him alone do the wise call 'victor of the battle against death's touch', not the former who is bound to samsara as sure as his merits make him so, be they good or bad. Between being (sat, atthiti, abbamatthi, sabbamekattan) and nonbeing (asat, natthiti, sabbamnatthi, sabbam puthuttan) is That which declares, in ignorance, both views, is That from which both heretical views come. That is That, Brahman-become, the means, the middlemost Soul [majjhatta], the body of Brahman [DN 3.84] free, pure, unbecome[Ud. 81], Tathagata. Nothing true can be said of the Absolute for all speech, affirmation and negation are mutually exclusive binary antinomy concepts which are circum-experiential to the phenomenal man so-and-so. The true said of the True are directive negations to immediacy with the One without another."

2007-07-02T18:25:00.000-07:00

A Few Buddhologists Who Deny Modern "Buddhism"

A.K. Coomaraswamy
C.A.F. Rhys Davids
George Grimm

These are but a few of histories experts on orthodox Buddhism. Consummate scholars all, and contrary to the anti-intellectualism of modernity who commonly suffer under the false presumption that scholars are not 'practitioners', all three of these individuals speak of the great light, wisdom, and refulgent glory of revelation that their jhanic endeavors gave them as practitioners of the methodology of Buddhism, that being sati and samadhi. All three spoke often of being regular practitioners of the jhanic methodology.

What was the one thing these three held in common, even though none had ever met each other? They didn’t fall for the lies and dogma of modernity and its schismatic schools of what is commonly called “Buddhism”, namely and most especially the highly dogmatic and nihilistic group known as the Theravada who are materialists. They saw the texts for themselves, and they all read the Pali texts as they stood with the critical mind of a true philosopher, of a seeker of wisdom. They cared less than a jot for modern Theravada, for modern Mahayana, and for Zen. They came to Buddhism to examine the teachings as they were, the oldest record of Buddhism existing, and most importantly they easily discriminated the Nikayas from infinitely later and secular materials such as Vinaya, and Abhidhamma which have nothing to do with Buddhism but with monastic catechism, with the corruption, perversion, and inversion of the teachings.

These three, even though worlds apart and never having met each other, came to the very same conclusion after many hundreds of thousands of hours of examination of the scriptures of presectarian Buddhism in Pali. That conclusion? Modern “Buddhism” in almost no way represents the Buddhism of old as mentioned in Sutta, nor does scriptural Buddhism in any way, contrary to popular heretical dogma, negate the Soul. In addition to this, Buddhism never denied the Vedas, or the true adherents of its tenants, but only with the stagnant state of affairs that Vedanta had degenerated into during that era, being ripe with petty ritualism, with rites, privileges, and externality which the Vedas themselves never endorsed. These three didn’t buy into the lies fortified and constructed over the past 2300 years after Gotama’s passing which came as a result of many schisms, divisions and disputes of doctrine and philosophy by the corrupt monastic community which formed long after the historical Buddha’s passing. These are but three, but there were and are many others; and, as long as there are discriminating minds out there which can see past what IS but originally WAS NOT, there will inevitably be many more who shall see into original Buddhism, far removed from monasticism, far from rites, dogmas, nihilism, lineages, and guruism. They will see That (Brahman), they will see: “the ancient path lost long ago traveled by Brahmins who were awake, the lost path to immortality.”

2007-07-02T18:17:00.000-07:00

What does anatta mean? Refuting modern "buddhism"

copyright 2004 Aryasatvan

What has Buddhism to say of the Self?
"That's not my Self" (na me so atta); this, and the term "non Self-ishness" (anatta) predicated of the world and all "things" (sabbe dhamma anatta; Identical with the Brahmanical "of those who are mortal, there is no Self/Soul", (anatma hi martyah, [SB., II. 2. 2. 3]). [KN J-1441]: “Atta’ ca me so saranam gati ca” “The Soul is the refuge that I have gone unto”. For anatta is not said of the Self/Soul but what it is not. There is never a ‘doctrine of no-Soul’, but a doctrine of what the Soul is not (form is anatta, feelings are anatta, etc.).

Due to 105 years of inept Western scholarship and the anti-foundational dogma of S.E. Asian ‘Buddhism’, Theravada, anatta as a term has come to be promulgated as a soul denying doctrine “in contradiction to ‘Hinduism’”. For example Winifred Stephens in “Legends of Indian Buddhism”, 1911, p.7, said “Buddhism in its purity ignored the existence of God; and it denied the existence of the Soul; it was not so much a religion as a code of ethics.” Similarly M.V. Bhattacharya maintains that in the Buddha taught that: “There is no Self, no Atman.” [Cultural Heritage of India, p.259]. Even in 1925 a presumed Buddhist scholar could get away with writing in the PTS Pali-English Dictionary by Mr. Rhys-Davids (later rebuked in very death by his much wiser half, his very wife, Mr. C.A.F. Rhys-Davids) that: “The soul…is described in the Upanishads as a small creature in shape like a man…Buddhism repudiated all such theories.”[PTS Dictionary., s.v. attan]. It would be as reasonably illogical to say that Christianity is materialistic because it speaks of an “inner man”. Few scholars would write in this manner today, one would presume, but however ridiculous as such statements may appear, (as it as much an ignorance of any ontological doctrine as it of Vedanta amd Buddhism that is involved), these nonsensical and utterly profane statements make their way into so-called respected accounts and texts upon Buddhism.

It is of course true that the Buddha denied the existence of the mere empirical “self” in the very meaning of “my-self” (this person so-and-so, namo-rupa, an-atta), one might say in accordance with the command ‘denegat seipsum, [Mark VII.34]; but this is not what our writers (above) mean to say, or are understood by their readers to say; what they mean to say is that the Buddha denied the immortal (amata), the unborn (ajata) and Supreme-Self (mahatta’) of the Upanishads. And that is palpably false, for he frequently speaks of this Self, or Spirit (mahapurisha), and nowhere more clearly than in the too often repeated formula 'na me so atta’, “This/these are not my Soul” (na me so atta’= anatta/anatman), excluding body (rupa) and the components of empirical consciousness (vinnana/ nama), a statement to which the words of Sankhara are perculiary apposite, “Whenever we deny something unreal, is it in reference to something real”[Br. Sutra III.2.22]. It was not for the Buddha but for the nihilist (natthika) to deny the Soul! "Nihilists (natthiko) [those who deny the Soul] go to terrible hell"[SN 1.96]. Anatta as a nihilistic dogma is a relatively modern Abhidhamma-borne conception only, of what was in earliest Buddhism, the methodology of negating (neti neti) all objective attributes falsely seen as Self/Soul, but which were in fact not the Soul (anatta). “None of these (aggregates) are my Soul indeed”, arguably the most common passage in Buddhism. No place in Sutta does the context of anatta forward or imply the negation, the denial of the Soul "most dear, the light, the only refuge" [DN 2.100, AN 4.97], but rather instructs and illuminates to the unlearned what the Soul was not. Due to massive ignorance and ineptitude of the ancestors of modern-day Theravada, a teaching upon the denial of all phenomena as being utterly devoid of Selfhood (attan), has been subverted without basis in doctrine, as a nonsensical dogma advocating the non-existence of the Soul (natthika).

[SN 3.196] At one time in Savatthi, the venerable Radha seated himself and asked of the Blessed Lord Buddha: “Anatta, anatta I hear said venerable. What pray tell does Anatta mean?” “Just this Radha, form is not the Soul, sensations are not the Soul, perceptions are not the Soul, assemblages are not the Soul, consciousness is not the Soul. Seeing thusly, this is the end of birth, the Brahman life has been fulfilled, what must be done has been done, he discerns there is nothing further than this very Soul.”

[AN 4.422] In the first Jhana he dwells. Whatever form there be, feelings, perceptions, impulses, or consciousness, these he sees to be without permanence, as suffering, as ill, as a plague, a boil, a sting, a pain, an affliction, as foreign, as otherness, as empty (suññato), as Soulless (anattato). So he turns his mind (citta) away from these; he gathers his very mind in the realm of Immortality.

2007-07-02T18:15:00.000-07:00

WHAT THE SOUL-HATING "BUDDHISTS" DONT WANT YOU TO KNOW

copyright 2007 Aryasatvan

1. Scholars like Davids, Conze, Humphrey, Schrader, Horner, Pande, Coomarswamy, Radhakrishnan, Sogen, Suzuki, Julius Evola, and Nakamura, just to name some important scholars, disagree with the claim that Buddha categorically denied an eternal (nicca) soul, whose teachings then, would be classified as Annihilationist and Materialist.

2. Nowhere is there such a tradition as ‘Hinduism’ or ‘Brahmanism’ which are terms coined by Occidental scholars. The claim than the Buddha was ‘anti-Hindu’ or ‘anti-Brahman’ is unproven.

3. Buddha’s unconditioned Attâ (soul) had nothing to do with the five khandhas schema which are conditioned and mere attributes. Nowhere in any five khandha scheme is Attâ refuted. What is refuted is that the five khandhas are the Attâ (soul).

4. The lexical rule that Attâ (Skt. Atman) is to be used strictly in a pronominal fashion, or simply should be used as a signifier for the finite body, is unwarranted.

5. The Buddha never considered Attâ to be (wrong view).

6. If the Buddha disbelieved in an Attâ (soul) why did he not deny the Attâ unambiguously?

7. Why didn’t the Buddha identify the Attâ (soul, Atman) with the physical body?

8. Why is the Attâ (soul), in the Atthakatha (commentaries) squarely equated with the Tathagata which is considered to be transcendent?

9. Why is there no strict philosophical treatment of the Attâ in Occidental literature? It seems odd that an historic study and not a philosophic study is the preferred treatment of the Attâ/anattâ dispute by Western scholars.

10. Modern Buddhist commentators are certainly wrong when they assert that a work bears a certain meaning which it does not seem to possess in a particular context. This is to say, being more precise, modern Buddhist commentators are off the mark when their interpretation does not close down certain textual ambiguities and contradictions.

11. By denying outright the soul, by default, the Theravadins and modern Buddhists imply that the five aggregates are ultimate. This of course is absurd. They have merely shifted Buddhism to empiricism by ignoring pro-soul statements. According to them, what is real is what makes sensory knowledge possible, namely, the five aggregates which, ironically, according to the canon, are suffering being synonymous with Mara the Evil One (the Buddhist devil)!

12. It begs the question to assume that the no-soul doctrine had been established at the beginning of the Buddha’s ministry and that Attâ (soul) was, in every respect, an abhorrent term. Still, for such a supposedly abhorrent term, there are countless positive instances of Attâ used throughout the Nikayas, especially used in compounds which are easily glossed over by a prejudicial translator. In meeting these instances, not surprisingly, these same prejudicial translators have erected a theory that Attâ is a reflexive pronoun. This is rather hard to prove since sa and sayam are the reflexive pronouns of the Pali language, not Attâ.

13. Much later, the Theravadins were compelled to invent a two truth theory. With the numerous instances of Attâ (soul) being found in the canon, hardly any with pejorative implications, they fabricated the Abhidhamma taxonomy which they claim was first delivered in heavens by the Buddha to the gods who could better understand a no-soul theory than mere humans!

14. In the Nikayas, hetrodox uses of soul are noted, which are called ‘attânudittha’. One main hetrodox use of soul is in the idea of Eternalism in which the soul is regarded in a physical sense which lives in perpetuity like the cosmos.

15. What is sometimes elaborated upon in the Nikayas is the heterodox uses of Attâ (soul)‹not its outright, categorical rejection.

16. That the Buddha denied the theories of Eternalism and Annihilationism is true. But Mahavira, the Jain, denied both positions as well. But did Mahavira deny, altogether, the principle of a soul? No he did not. Neither did Gotama the Buddha.

17. The Buddha says many times that we are not to regard our Attâ (soul) as being connected with the five aggregates.