Light Travelling
10-13-05, 08:09 AM
Upanshadic hinduism, proposes the existence of a self. This self is our true self and this true self is exactly the same as Brahman, which is the self. This self is the self in all it is the self that is at the centre of all things. Brahman is omnipresent, Brahman is manifested nature (prakriti) and unmanifested consciousness (parusha).
This self is not the body nor is it the mind nor is it the ego. With this self that is the same in all things, there can be no sense of 'I' or 'mine', as all is one and the same.
The Madhyamaka mayahana and tibetan buddhist schools propose the theory of emptiness. This is the lack of inherent existence of phenomona; of us; of nature; of everything. This emptiness of us is the same as the emptiness of all things.
The body and mind are all ulitmately empty of inherent existence. With this there can be no sense of 'I' or 'mine' as all is the same.
It occurs to me that these two views are differnt sides of the same coin. Or to put it another way they are like seeing things as an empty glass or a full one.
The glass is the universe. The water is the self. Hindu sees the universe full of self - we are a small part of that self no different than the rest. Buddhist sees the glass as empty - we are a small part of that emptiness no different from any other 'empty' phenomona in the universe.
In either case the important thing is that we are no different from anything (or anyone) else.
I understand that buddha was greatly influenced by the upanishads and In My Opinion the reason that buddha went from self to emptiness (although the buddha never directly taught emptiness - it was infered in his teachings. Emptiness itself wasn't fully formed as a theory until Nagarjuna), was that the tendency with the teaching of self was, after diassociating oneself from being a body and an ego, the adherent could mistakenly start attachments and clinging to a wrong idea of self. The same clinging they used to have to body. By removing self totally from the equation, Buddha removed this pitfall. This did not mean this was the ultimate expression of truth, just a means of learning.
Later schools of buddism such as Tathagatagarbha, based on the nirvana sutra. Hold Buddha to be immortal and ominpresent and that we contain a 'buddha matrix' which gives us all the potential to become buddha. Now this sounds very much like the 'self' of the upanishads, does it not.
So although there is a strong rejection of the term self in all forms of buddhism, I personally only see buddhism as a continuation of upanshadic thought. That is, if the concept of self is rightly understood as taught in the upanishads, it will give no more rise to concepts of 'I' and 'mine' than any buddhist philosophy would.
So I'll repeat. Whether the glass is full of water, oil or nothing, it is still all the same and everything in it is part of that same sameness.
Does anyone agree?
This self is not the body nor is it the mind nor is it the ego. With this self that is the same in all things, there can be no sense of 'I' or 'mine', as all is one and the same.
The Madhyamaka mayahana and tibetan buddhist schools propose the theory of emptiness. This is the lack of inherent existence of phenomona; of us; of nature; of everything. This emptiness of us is the same as the emptiness of all things.
The body and mind are all ulitmately empty of inherent existence. With this there can be no sense of 'I' or 'mine' as all is the same.
It occurs to me that these two views are differnt sides of the same coin. Or to put it another way they are like seeing things as an empty glass or a full one.
The glass is the universe. The water is the self. Hindu sees the universe full of self - we are a small part of that self no different than the rest. Buddhist sees the glass as empty - we are a small part of that emptiness no different from any other 'empty' phenomona in the universe.
In either case the important thing is that we are no different from anything (or anyone) else.
I understand that buddha was greatly influenced by the upanishads and In My Opinion the reason that buddha went from self to emptiness (although the buddha never directly taught emptiness - it was infered in his teachings. Emptiness itself wasn't fully formed as a theory until Nagarjuna), was that the tendency with the teaching of self was, after diassociating oneself from being a body and an ego, the adherent could mistakenly start attachments and clinging to a wrong idea of self. The same clinging they used to have to body. By removing self totally from the equation, Buddha removed this pitfall. This did not mean this was the ultimate expression of truth, just a means of learning.
Later schools of buddism such as Tathagatagarbha, based on the nirvana sutra. Hold Buddha to be immortal and ominpresent and that we contain a 'buddha matrix' which gives us all the potential to become buddha. Now this sounds very much like the 'self' of the upanishads, does it not.
So although there is a strong rejection of the term self in all forms of buddhism, I personally only see buddhism as a continuation of upanshadic thought. That is, if the concept of self is rightly understood as taught in the upanishads, it will give no more rise to concepts of 'I' and 'mine' than any buddhist philosophy would.
So I'll repeat. Whether the glass is full of water, oil or nothing, it is still all the same and everything in it is part of that same sameness.
Does anyone agree?