Ajahn Brain, the one who is always with me. Some questions can actually be solved by thinking about them.Virgo wrote:Which Ajahn have told you that?
Cheers, Thomas
Ajahn Brain, the one who is always with me. Some questions can actually be solved by thinking about them.Virgo wrote:Which Ajahn have told you that?
Nor me.retrofuturist wrote:Greetings Wind,
For a while I doubted whether nibbana was actually possible.
Even when I was unsure about this I still knew Buddhism was worthwhile for the benefits it brings here and now.
At Dharma Wheel, m0rl0ck recently posted this little animated Dharma comic... http://www.buddhanet.net/flash/toc/index.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; ... which concludes with the following words...
"Truth is subject to practice and testing. If it is proper Truth, we definitely should be able to acquire sweet fruits through practice right away. If it only abstractly promises a reward in the next life, this may be an irresponsible trick to delude the Ignorant."
I agree with the sentiment of this. If Buddhism did nothing for me here and now, on what basis would there be for regarding it any more highly than any other religion which promised fruits in the afterlife? If that's all Buddhism offered, I would never have bothered with it.
Metta,
Retro.
The problem with this question is that Nibbana is not a thing or a place, if it were a thing or a place then it would be appropriate to ask whether it existed or not.Wind wrote:I was just thinking if Nibbana doesn't exist but everything else is still true, would Buddhism still be worth practicing for you?
Paññāsikhara wrote:Nibbana exist? What sort of thing is a nibbana? The question seems loaded with that kind of nibbana as an unconditioned existent type of idea. I'll leave that for others.Wind wrote:I was just thinking if Nibbana doesn't exist but everything else is still true, would Buddhism still be worth practicing for you?
On the other hand, if you were to ask me, "... if nibbana = extinction were not possible, but ..." then that is a different matter.
In this case, the extinction of a given dukkha is its nibbana. The extinction of the totality of dukkha is full nibbana. If the extinction = nibbana of a given dukkha were not possible, what Buddha dhamma would there even be in the first place? When one truth is not possible, the other three are not possible. When the four truths are not, the Dhamma is not.
I can't even make sense out of the question.