To Question or Not To Question, That is the Question

Exploring Theravāda's connections to other paths - what can we learn from other traditions, religions and philosophies?
Sanghamitta
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Re: To Question or Not To Question, That is the Question

Post by Sanghamitta »

Dan74 wrote:My understanding is that Theravada has often throughout its history identified itself as the tradition that preserves the Dhamma. So with that in mind it is easy to see how attitudes that you describe could develop. They are a bit of an overkill, a misplaced emphasis. But this is only human and of course only a fraction of Theravada practitioners would share these attitudes I imagine.

If you go to other traditions which are less text-dependent, like Zen, for instance, you sometimes find the other extreme - an embarrassing lack of awareness of basic Buddhist teachings or views that run counter to the scriptures.

:shrug:

_/|\_
I think even not particularly ecumenically minded ( but friendly I hope ) Theravadin Buddhists like me would be hard pushed to assert with any confidence that the Theravada is somehow a repository of all Buddhist truth.I met some of the more conservative western proponents of the Dhamma when I was young, ( Like M C O ' Walshe ) at a time when when the polarity between western Mahayanists and Theravadins was greater than now, and even they would concede that some Mahayana Buddhists were true examplars of the Buddha's teaching, even if they then added that this was despite their espousal of the Mahayana :smile: . Youre second point is interesting, for reasons I wont bore you with I dropped into a Zen Forum recently and was astonished by it, new age ideas were liberally strewn through its threads unremarked on, and as you have said Dan74 the most basic of Buddhist ideas were either grossly misunderstood or dismissed by a series of well rehearsed one-liners. I do know a number of Zen students personally and I suspect that this website is an unfortunate misrepresentation of the majority of Zen Practitioners.
Last edited by Sanghamitta on Wed Nov 25, 2009 3:03 pm, edited 1 time in total.
The going for refuge is the door of entrance to the teachings of the Buddha.

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Cittasanto
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Re: To Question or Not To Question, That is the Question

Post by Cittasanto »

both the suttas about what is uthentic teaching I have posted in the last couple of days I will get link to the suttas andthreads and pase them here
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He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them.
But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side, if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion …
...
He must be able to hear them from persons who actually believe them … he must know them in their most plausible and persuasive form.
John Stuart Mill
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Re: To Question or Not To Question, That is the Question

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http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka ... .than.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
AN 8.53 Gotami Sutta: To Gotami wrote:I have heard that at one time the Blessed One was staying at Vesali, in the Peaked Roof Hall in the Great Forest.

Then Mahapajapati Gotami went to the Blessed One and, on arrival, having bowed down to him, stood to one side. As she was standing there she said to him: "It would be good, lord, if the Blessed One would teach me the Dhamma in brief such that, having heard the Dhamma from the Blessed One, I might dwell alone, secluded, heedful, ardent, & resolute."

"Gotami, the qualities of which you may know, 'These qualities lead to passion, not to dispassion; to being fettered, not to being unfettered; to accumulating, not to shedding; to self-aggrandizement, not to modesty; to discontent, not to contentment; to entanglement, not to seclusion; to laziness, not to aroused persistence; to being burdensome, not to being unburdensome': You may categorically hold, 'This is not the Dhamma, this is not the Vinaya, this is not the Teacher's instruction.'

"As for the qualities of which you may know, 'These qualities lead to dispassion, not to passion; to being unfettered, not to being fettered; to shedding, not to accumulating; to modesty, not to self-aggrandizement; to contentment, not to discontent; to seclusion, not to entanglement; to aroused persistence, not to laziness; to being unburdensome, not to being burdensome': You may categorically hold, 'This is the Dhamma, this is the Vinaya, this is the Teacher's instruction.'"

That is what the Blessed One said. Gratified, Mahapajapati Gotami delighted at his words.
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka ... .than.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Mv 6.40.1 Vinaya-samukkamsa: The Innate Principles of the Vinaya wrote:Now at that time uncertainty arose in the monks with regard to this and that item: "Now what is allowed by the Blessed One? What is not allowed?" They told this matter to the Blessed One, (who said):

"Bhikkhus, whatever I have not objected to, saying, 'This is not allowable,' if it fits in with what is not allowable, if it goes against what is allowable, this is not allowable for you.

"Whatever I have not objected to, saying, 'This is not allowable,' if it fits in with what is allowable, if it goes against what is not allowable, this is allowable for you.

"And whatever I have not permitted, saying, 'This is allowable,' if it fits in with what is not allowable, if it goes against what is allowable, this is not allowable for you.

"And whatever I have not permitted, saying, 'This is allowable,' if it fits in with what is allowable, if it goes against what is not allowable, this is allowable for you."
Blog, Suttas, Aj Chah, Facebook.

He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them.
But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side, if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion …
...
He must be able to hear them from persons who actually believe them … he must know them in their most plausible and persuasive form.
John Stuart Mill
chownah
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Re: To Question or Not To Question, That is the Question

Post by chownah »

Nowheat,
It seems that your main concern is whether we should question the Canon because it might not be perfectly transmitted. I think that putting aside the transmission issue one should still question the Canon since the Buddha taught that one should not accept what the Buddha teaches just because the Buddha teaches it.....he taught that one should find out for oneself if his teachings work or not....and for some this process of finding out involves alot of questioning.

Also, it doesn't matter if the Canon is perfectly transmitted or not if it works....and in my experience it does work....even if you don't accept some of it but merely withold judgement on the parts which seem unlikely in your view.

chownah
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Re: To Question or Not To Question, That is the Question

Post by enkidu »

Pardon my Gelug perspective, but am I correct to assume that the concept of teacher-to-student transmission lineage is de-emphasized or non-existent in the Theravada? Perhaps this accounts for individual boldness in seeking creative/non-canonical reinterpretations, without regard for the prior work of or advice from authority (those gone before who have attained realizations)?

I find it remarkable that any may possess such confidence as to reject the advice of realized masters. My reasoning is as follows: if the Buddha's teachings function as is claimed, then many realized masters have been produced during the time of the Buddha's discourses. These masters taught their students from their experience and so on, preserving the lineages. The lineages have preserved the teachings of the Buddha, along with commentaries for their students, bridging the gaps across generations of cultural changes. The lineages continue to produce masters, who teach and write commentaries, and so on.

So, to reject the collected commentaries of the lineages is to deny that the authors are realized masters, which is to deny that the Buddha's teachings produce realized masters, which is to reject the Buddhadhamma as a true path of realization, which is to make one's own practice meaningless.

It is a special kind of confidence that one must possess to trust oneself over the lineages to glean truer meaning in 2500-year old retranslated words intended for those living 2500 years ago.

In my opinion.
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Re: To Question or Not To Question, That is the Question

Post by nowheat »

chownah wrote:Nowheat,
It seems that your main concern is whether we should question the Canon because it might not be perfectly transmitted. I think that putting aside the transmission issue one should still question the Canon since the Buddha taught that one should not accept what the Buddha teaches just because the Buddha teaches it.....he taught that one should find out for oneself if his teachings work or not....and for some this process of finding out involves alot of questioning.

Also, it doesn't matter if the Canon is perfectly transmitted or not if it works....and in my experience it does work....even if you don't accept some of it but merely withold judgement on the parts which seem unlikely in your view.

chownah
Thank you, chownah, in essence I agree but I have a couple of caveats. One is that you have only this life in which to test (if you have another life following, it will be a "clean reboot" and you won't have the information garnered in this life). You cannot, therefore, say if this understanding of the dhamma gets you to insight more quickly than that understanding of the dhamma. You can see progress, but can't know until you reach liberation (or don't) whether it's progress that will get you liberated or not. So while I agree with you -- and with Ben who says that practice is the ultimate test -- in a sense it can only be a really good test of what is not the dhamma, that is, we can most easily discard what does not work.

My other caveat is that I believe that what the Buddha taught has more internal consistency and coherency than any other system I have ever seen. This being the case, it is helpful to put together a good understanding of what he taught, just because he taught it. On the other hand, of course, he did not have our more advanced science and technology to (for example) see exactly how the mind works and the senses work, being two different systems, one "over" the other, so there you are quite right that just because the Buddha taught it doesn't make it so.

:namaste:
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Re: To Question or Not To Question, That is the Question

Post by nowheat »

enkidu wrote:Pardon my Gelug perspective, but am I correct to assume that the concept of teacher-to-student transmission lineage is de-emphasized or non-existent in the Theravada? Perhaps this accounts for individual boldness in seeking creative/non-canonical reinterpretations, without regard for the prior work of or advice from authority (those gone before who have attained realizations)?

I find it remarkable that any may possess such confidence as to reject the advice of realized masters. My reasoning is as follows: if the Buddha's teachings function as is claimed, then many realized masters have been produced during the time of the Buddha's discourses. These masters taught their students from their experience and so on, preserving the lineages. The lineages have preserved the teachings of the Buddha, along with commentaries for their students, bridging the gaps across generations of cultural changes. The lineages continue to produce masters, who teach and write commentaries, and so on.

So, to reject the collected commentaries of the lineages is to deny that the authors are realized masters, which is to deny that the Buddha's teachings produce realized masters, which is to reject the Buddhadhamma as a true path of realization, which is to make one's own practice meaningless.

It is a special kind of confidence that one must possess to trust oneself over the lineages to glean truer meaning in 2500-year old retranslated words intended for those living 2500 years ago.

In my opinion.
I am not sure it is all coming out of Theravadin tradition; those who question have sometimes studied with one tradition, a variety of traditions, or have never identified with one tradition and simply bring the scholarly approach of reading widely.

The confidence I have here was instilled in me by the Buddha, on his deathbed, when he told his followers to be their own refuge. And all his teachings about going on direct evidence. I have no direct evidence that any teacher that ever came along ever "fully realized" the Buddha's teachings. All I have is hearsay. I'm not saying that there never were, only that I can't know it nor exactly what the final bit of understanding was that got them there if they did achieve full realization. If I follow the Buddha's instructions, I am obliged to question.

That does, of course, leave you free to question as well, and come to the conclusion that following the Traditions without further questioning is the correct path; and I would say you are doing what is right within your understanding.

:namaste:
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Re: To Question or Not To Question, That is the Question

Post by nowheat »

Manapa wrote:http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka ... .than.html
AN 8.53 Gotami Sutta: To Gotami wrote: "Gotami, the qualities of which you may know, 'These qualities lead to passion, not to dispassion; to being fettered, not to being unfettered; to accumulating, not to shedding; to self-aggrandizement, not to modesty; to discontent, not to contentment; to entanglement, not to seclusion; to laziness, not to aroused persistence; to being burdensome, not to being unburdensome': You may categorically hold, 'This is not the Dhamma, this is not the Vinaya, this is not the Teacher's instruction.'
Thanks so much for that, Manapa.

I wonder what is meant by "to accumulating, not to shedding" here?

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Re: To Question or Not To Question, That is the Question

Post by nowheat »

Sanghamitta wrote:...new age ideas were liberally strewn through its threads unremarked on, and as you have said Dan74 the most basic of Buddhist ideas were either grossly misunderstood or dismissed by a series of well rehearsed one-liners. I do know a number of Zen students personally and I suspect that this website is an unfortunate misrepresentation of the majority of Zen Practitioners.
I think this is why forums like this one are so valuable. As I mentioned a few posts above, in judging our own understanding of the dhamma just by our lives, we use a very unscientific basis (no control to measure against). It's really valuable to go outside oneself for a "reality check" against others' experiences, and this would include, preferably, going outside one's own insular little group. Of course, one does have to make wise choices in the people one measures one's thoughts against even when they are outside one's comfort zone.

It's a problematic feature of modern life that we have so many "channels" of information and so little time that there's a strong tendency to become insular and converse only with those who support one's view. It can be a painful practice to expose one's theories to outsiders -- but it is a beneficial practice.

This brings us back, of course, to the dhamma and the Traditions.

:namaste:
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Re: To Question or Not To Question, That is the Question

Post by nowheat »

Paññāsikhara wrote:...we can compare these various traditions. On comparison, we can often identify errors in one or other tradition, and thus identify something which is probably what was being transmitted at the point of the split. Moreover, there are still some cultures which largely follow these traditions, and have not really been influenced by various western religions or scientific ideas to the degree that those of us sitting here typing on PCs have most likely been.

So, with the willingness to investigate these various traditions, I don't think that it is quite as obscure or "corrupted" as you seem to imply.
You can check one written tradition against another, but the texts you're comparing are from (if I recall) about 400 A.D., most of a millennium after the Buddha lived. Even if there were no disagreements between all extant versions, that doesn't mean that there were no errors introduced before they were written down. I agree with the scholars accustomed to studing transmitted written texts, that the process of writing it down reduces the number of errors. My understanding is that the first writing-down occurred about 100 A.D. (on fragile palm leaves) which gives about half a millennium for verbal transmission to have been corrupted before the teachings and rules were codified. That's a long time for misunderstanding to creep in.

And we have evidence that the Buddha's teaching was misunderstood in his own lifetime: there are frequent stories in the suttas about him correcting such misconceptions among his own monks and others. His closest personal assistant, his cousin Ananda, wasn't even able to understand what was being said well enough to become an arahant himself during the Buddha's lifetime -- and this is the man whose prodigious memory brings us the suttas. Even keeping the same exact words is no guarantee that the underlying meaning will be preserved, since words are the shiftiest of impermanent things out there.

If misunderstanding was introduced early -- which I would guess it was -- no matter how good written transmission was afterwards, no matter how faithful the Traditions' handing it on, the corruption of meaning would also be faithfully handed on, even with the best of intentions by every hand applied to the canon.

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Re: To Question or Not To Question, That is the Question

Post by Cittasanto »

nowheat wrote:
Manapa wrote:http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka ... .than.html
AN 8.53 Gotami Sutta: To Gotami wrote: "Gotami, the qualities of which you may know, 'These qualities lead to passion, not to dispassion; to being fettered, not to being unfettered; to accumulating, not to shedding; to self-aggrandizement, not to modesty; to discontent, not to contentment; to entanglement, not to seclusion; to laziness, not to aroused persistence; to being burdensome, not to being unburdensome': You may categorically hold, 'This is not the Dhamma, this is not the Vinaya, this is not the Teacher's instruction.'
Thanks so much for that, Manapa.

I wonder what is meant by "to accumulating, not to shedding" here?

:namaste:
If we look at the context t ould possily be the Accumulation of attachments, or tachings and ways of prctice hich are non-dhamma, not the shreading of attachments, the teachings and way of practicewhich is non-dhamma?
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He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them.
But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side, if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion …
...
He must be able to hear them from persons who actually believe them … he must know them in their most plausible and persuasive form.
John Stuart Mill
Sanghamitta
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Re: To Question or Not To Question, That is the Question

Post by Sanghamitta »

nowheat wrote:
Sanghamitta wrote:...new age ideas were liberally strewn through its threads unremarked on, and as you have said Dan74 the most basic of Buddhist ideas were either grossly misunderstood or dismissed by a series of well rehearsed one-liners. I do know a number of Zen students personally and I suspect that this website is an unfortunate misrepresentation of the majority of Zen Practitioners.
I think this is why forums like this one are so valuable. As I mentioned a few posts above, in judging our own understanding of the dhamma just by our lives, we use a very unscientific basis (no control to measure against). It's really valuable to go outside oneself for a "reality check" against others' experiences, and this would include, preferably, going outside one's own insular little group. Of course, one does have to make wise choices in the people one measures one's thoughts against even when they are outside one's comfort zone.

It's a problematic feature of modern life that we have so many "channels" of information and so little time that there's a strong tendency to become insular and converse only with those who support one's view. It can be a painful practice to expose one's theories to outsiders -- but it is a beneficial practice.
quote from Nowheat.

In fact the website that I am referring to is quite extraordinarily insular. It promotes one very limited type of western zen, pours scorn on ( or allows a pouring on ) any expression of Buddhism which does not share its own position, and is dominated by one or two voices. One of which seems to post only to dismiss all views of Buddhism but his own, which he does by heavy handed and self referencing " humour". Great care is taken not to engage with any other views. A virtue is made of ignorance of even the most basic Buddhist concepts.
The point that I am trying to make is that an insular view is not confined to more traditional expressions of Dhamma.
This brings us back, of course, to the dhamma and the Traditions.

:namaste:
The going for refuge is the door of entrance to the teachings of the Buddha.

Bhikku Bodhi.
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Re: To Question or Not To Question, That is the Question

Post by Sanghamitta »

Apologies, I made a complete mess of quoting in my post above.
The point that I was trying ( badly) to make is that insularity can come in many forms. Including an apparent iconoclasm which is in fact a defence against showing a dirth of basic knowledge.
:anjali:
The going for refuge is the door of entrance to the teachings of the Buddha.

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Re: To Question or Not To Question, That is the Question

Post by nowheat »

Sanghamitta wrote:Apologies, I made a complete mess of quoting in my post above.
The point that I was trying ( badly) to make is that insularity can come in many forms. Including an apparent iconoclasm which is in fact a defence against showing a dirth of basic knowledge.
:anjali:
Yes, I got that, from your original post, too. And I was agreeing with you. That it's easy to stay in one's insular little channel, develop in-jokes and quick one-liners as you point out, crowd out outside thought, and not let "your way" (whatever it is) be challenged. I could just stay in Facebook's Skeptical Buddhist Group and be one happy clam having my notions constantly reinforced. I come here to have my notions challenged and to learn something new -- and I am deeply grateful for a traditional forum that allows the cross-understanding discussions.

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Re: To Question or Not To Question, That is the Question

Post by Sanghamitta »

:anjali:
The going for refuge is the door of entrance to the teachings of the Buddha.

Bhikku Bodhi.
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