Perhaps this story is a parable.It is naive, lacking faith, asked in bad faith, dependent on the definition of "faith" in question.
Some say this story is a symbol of Buddha going against the accepted practices on those days.
Perhaps this story is a parable.It is naive, lacking faith, asked in bad faith, dependent on the definition of "faith" in question.
Some would say that calling the story "a parable" is the same thing as saying that is it "false".
If you will forgive me to propose a question to serve most-likely as a starting point for the defences of others: all of these things above that you specify, "prophetic dreams, earthquakes occurring at pivotally auspicious moments, marvels wrought [...]" are regular features, very very regular, of Mahāyānasūtrāṇi. Does that make them "true"? I suspect not. What makes these instances true and "properly Buddhist", vs Mahāyānasūtrāṇi?Dhammanando wrote: ↑Sun Dec 31, 2017 11:20 am The power of augury operating via dhammaniyāma, prophetic dreams, earthquakes occurring at pivotally auspicious moments, marvels wrought by saccakiriyās, etc. are all impeccably Buddhist, even if they happen not to find favour with protestant Buddhists of the drearily modernist sort.
My boyfriend saw a ghost once. She was performed weird unknown rites involving muttering over my body. He tried to help me, but was suffering from sleep paralysis. Eventually, he managed to utter the phrase "help me" and the demon retreated from me, went around the room, and disappeared before the icon of Saint Sarah that hangs in our room. How does that relate? The demon was obviously a "ghost" in the sense that is was a "dead person". Did the demon "exist"? Or was it a fabrication of his dreams?binocular wrote: ↑Mon Jan 01, 2018 3:36 pmFor example: I have heard that the standard advice for when one is being visited by a ghost is to send it to an accomplished practitioner. I apply it. My father sometimes has nightmares in which he speaks in his sleep. Usually, he's being tormented by someone and he is crying out "Let me go!" I go to his room and I ask the ghost to go to Ajahn Lee, for example. It works. Without waking, my father calms down and goes back to sleep. Otherwise, the nightmares continue and I can't stop them unless I forcibly wake my father up; upon which he is very distressed.
You calling it wild doesn't make it so ...
But why would one want to explain it in the first place?No "the river was interfered with by a mountain" that can explain it.
Indeed.
But that's just holding up common sense realism as the highest and unassailable epistemic standard. If one is going to do that, then why bother with Buddhism?Some say that only by discarding falsehoods do we progress. Perhaps the Buddha, or more accurately "the Buddhisms", gives us a few extra falsehoods, like "the path" itself, to help us.
1. That is a question asked while taking common sense realism for granted.
Perhaps some hold, instead of common sense realism, Buddhavacana as the "highest and unassailable epistemic standard". The path is not asaṃskṛta, neither in Chinese nor Pāli. It is in Sanskrit, though, if anyone still entertains Sarvāstivāda sympathies.binocular wrote: ↑Fri Jan 12, 2018 8:58 pmBut that's just holding up common sense realism as the highest and unassailable epistemic standard. If one is going to do that, then why bother with Buddhism?
At the same time, that is a very modernist reading of that story. Traditionally, Moses parted the Red Sea, not the Reed Sea. The Red Sea is much larger and deeper than the Reed Sea.
This is something you should ask sarathw. Sarathw asked for an explanation....not me. This thread was started as a request for an explanation....all I (and others) did was to try to give the explanation which was requested.
No its not. There are many many reasons why people might say that. For example this is what alot of scientists say and their saying this does not come form common sense realism.binocular wrote: ↑Fri Jan 12, 2018 8:58 pmBut that's just holding up common sense realism as the highest and unassailable epistemic standard. If one is going to do that, then why bother with Buddhism?Some say that only by discarding falsehoods do we progress. Perhaps the Buddha, or more accurately "the Buddhisms", gives us a few extra falsehoods, like "the path" itself, to help us.
That misses the point then, the point being that Moses had God-given powers to defy the natural elements.
Or that the Buddha could do this, "defy" the "natural" elements, on account of his own cultivation of ṛddhi, not because the Buddha happened to notice the river flowing differently and decided to take advantage of that.
That is how I interpreted it.What if the Buddha's bowl flowed against the stream as a literary echo of how the Buddha defies the "stream" of transmigrations.