Buddhist Illogic. The 2nd Century CE Indian philosopher Nagarjuna founded the Madhyamika (Middle Way) school of Mahayana Buddhism, which strongly influenced Chinese, Korean and Japanese (Ch’an or Zen) Buddhism, as well as Tibetan Buddhism. Nagarjuna is regarded by many Buddhist writers to this day as a very important philosopher, who they claim definitively proved the futility of ordinary human cognitive means. His writings include a series of arguments purporting to show the illogic of logic, the absurdity of reason. He considers (...) this the way to verbalize and justify the Buddhist doctrine of “emptiness” (Shunyata). These arguments attack some of the basic tenets and techniques of reasoning, such as the laws of thought (identity, non-contradiction and the excluded middle), conceptualization and predication, our common assumptions of self, entities and essences, as well as our beliefs in motion and causation. The present essay demonstrates the many sophistries involved in Nagarjuna’s arguments. He uses double standards, applying or ignoring the laws of thought and other norms as convenient to his goals; he manipulates his readers, by giving seemingly logical form (like the dilemma) to his discourse, while in fact engaged in non-sequiturs or appealing to doubtful premises; he plays with words, relying on unclear terminology, misleading equivocations and unfair fixations of meaning; and he ‘steals concepts’, using them to deny the very percepts on which they are based. Although a critique of the Madhyamika philosophical interpretation and defense of “emptiness”, Buddhist Illogic is not intended to dissuade readers from Buddhism. On the contrary, its aim to enhance personal awareness of actual cognitive processes, and so improve meditation. It is also an excellent primer on phenomenological epistemology. (shrink)

A new English translation of the founding text of the Madhyamaka (Middle Way) school of Buddhism, with the Tibetan version of the text included. The Root Stanzas holds an honored place in all branches of Tibetan Buddhism, as well as in the Buddhist traditions found in China, Japan, and Korea, because of the way it develops the seminal view of emptiness (shunyata), which is crucial to understanding Mahayana Buddhism and central to its practice. It is prized for its pithy (...) and pointed arguments that show that things lack intrinsic being and thus are “empty” (shunya). They abide in the Middle Way, free from the extremes of permanence and annihilation. (shrink)

The book investigates distinctions between independent individuality and interactive relationality in physical phenomena. This is a common topic for investigation in modern physics and philosophy of science, and the topic is explored using contemporary research in those disciplines. Additionally, it is common for Buddhism to focus on relationships, and it proposes that independent individual things do not exist. In the context of physical reality, I take this Buddhist view as a hypothesis and examine it critically. We evaluate its arguments and (...) find them generally to be problematic when evaluated against modern standards for logic and physics. However, its fundamental principle—emptiness, or shunyata—is still worthy of being tested. -/- Contrary to many books on Buddhism and science, this one takes a very positive view of science. Yet, this depends on how we define ‘science’. Hence, the book begins with an examination of that topic, informed by philosophy of science and the author’s experience and training as physicist and philosopher. While we discuss, explain and justify many standard views of science, and present the standard elements of science, physics and physics theories, the book argues extensively for one perspective: pluralism in a synthesis of the author’s design. -/- I will show shunyata to be quite consistent with the knowledge framework of Physics Pluralism. When we test Buddhist emptiness against the results of physics—interpreting both within that knowledge framework—we discover the relevance, importance, and some truth in the relationality ideas of shunyata. -/- Robert Alan Paul has studied physics, had a career as a physicist, and both studied and practiced Tibetan Buddhism. He holds a bachelor’s degree in physics, and separate master’s degrees in philosophy; philosophy of science & mathematics; and physics (abd). He holds an interdisciplinary Ph.D. in four disciplines: philosophy of science, Western analytic metaphysics, Buddhist philosophy, and physics. His Ph.D. dissertation was the foundation of this book. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Gospel of Mark: A Mahayana ReadingDonald G. LuckThe Gospel of Mark: A Mahayana Reading. By John P. Keenan. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1995.This is the latest effort of society member John Keenan to “pass over” (as John Dunne puts it) from one tradition to another in order to return to one’s point of departure with fresh perspective and heightened awareness. This book reflects impressive scholarship and builds on (...) the theological indebtedness to Madhyamika [End Page 210] and Yogacara thought that shaped Keenan’s earlier work, The Meaning of Christ: A Mahayana Theology, also published by Orbis. The noses of academic purists may be put out of joint by what some might construe as a blurring of boundaries between Buddhism and Christianity, but Keenan places himself right in the thick of current hermeneutical discussions to establish the fruitfulness of Mahayana perspective in interpreting the “charter document of the Christian Gospel” (p. 4). He finds methodological legitimization both in the arguments of narrative criticism and in the lines of connection he discerns between deconstruction and the Mahayana recognition of emptiness. And in so arguing, he finds himself able to account for forms of New Testament criticism such as those advanced by John Dominic Crossan and Werner Kelber that not only undermine forms of essentialism but also resort to conventional modes of thinking and discourse without justifying the latter.What is unwittingly going on, argues Keenan, is parallel to the Mahayana identification of emptiness (shunyata) with dependent co-arising (pratitya samutpada). Like deconstructionist hermenuetics, emptiness destablizes all fixed views by recognizing that ultimate truth is ineffable and silent. However, unlike deconstruction, emptiness avoids the vertigo of a text lost in the interplay of interpretations doubling back on themselves. “That is emptiness ineptly apprehended as itself an essentialist viewpoint that there are no viewpoints” (p. 7). Instead, Mahayana analysis connects recognition of the total otherness of ultimate meaning with the affirmation of worldly convention in its limitation. The result is a hermeneutic of nonabsolutizing suggestiveness shaped by upaya, which leads the reader to the possibility of enlightenment —or, in the case of Mark, disclosure.According to Keenan, this Mahayana recognition of the identity of emptiness and dependent co-arising not only has hermeneutical legitimation but also is the key for unlocking a fresh appreciation of Mark’s contents. Accounting for this is the fact that “the Marcan rhetoric of indirection and irony is the narrative analogue to the Madhyamika dialectical rhetoric employed in Nagarjuna’s Stanzas on the Middle” and the fact that “Mahayana eschews precisely those clarifying elements that Matthew and Luke have added to domesticate Mark’s story and discourse, preferring the opacity of ultimate meaning to the full explication of stated truths, opting for the emptying of all themes and ideas in order to reclaim them with an awakened mind” (p. 4).Keenan’s approach is coherent with Crossan’s observation that while mythos creates a universe of meaning, parable undermines established cosmoi. In this respect, Jesus not only speaks parable, he is parable. Utilizing the Mahayana identification of emptiness with dependent co-arising as a heuristic device and paying close attention to the Greek text, Keenan traces the simultaneously destablizing and restorative effect that Jesus has on his hearers—and that the evangelist potentially can have on his readers. Jesus’ “desert spirituality,” that is, his radically unconventional vision, undermines the expectations and securities of both hearer and reader. But it also reconnects those effected by the liberation he works “not to the ultimate glory of a false kingdom imagined by the disciples and the readers, but to the conventional realm of human living in which alone the kingdom may be established” (p. 73; italics added). Indeed, Jesus’ crucifixion makes clear that the transformation wrought [End Page 211] by the Gospel is an existential reappropriation of ordinary life in the face of ultimate mystery, not some supernatural deliverance within or from it. Appropriately, Mark ends with the women being confronted by both the jarring and ineffable mystery of Jesus’ empty tomb and the promise that he will see the disciples again in the familiar—and open-ended—context of life in Galilee.Keenan has done more... (shrink)

In this article, Martin Heidegger’s phenomenology of boredom is compared with some aspects of Zen practice. Heidegger is primarily interested in boredom as a “fundamental mood,” which takes us beyond the opposition of the subject and object. Thus, boredom reveals the existence more initially than those forms of cognition that are the basis of classical philosophy and special sciences. As an essential feature of the experience of boredom, Heidegger singles out that being in this state we feel that our attention (...) is held by something in which we find nothing but emptiness. In the article, this emptiness is compared with the Buddhist concept of shunyata, and various forms of experiencing boredom are paralleled with the different types of concentration achieved in Zen practice. Besides, the question is discussed how the Buddhist perception of emptiness corresponds to Heidegger’s “openness.”. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Studies 23 (2003) 178-181 [Access article in PDF] Buddhist Perceptions of Jesus. Edited by Perry Schmidt-Leukel with Gerhard Koberlin and Thomas Josef Gotz, OSB. St. Ottilien: EOS-Verlag, 2001. 179 pp. The papers collected here represent a significant step forward in European scholarship on Buddhist-Christian relations. As Perry Schmidt-Leukel remarks in his helpful introduction, they are an experiment in correlating auto-interpretation and hetero-interpretation, introspection and extrospection.Each of the first (...) three sections—on China/Japan, Southeast Asia, and Europe—begins with a historical study. Iso Kern clears up some misconceptions about the Jesuits' approach to mission work in China, stating that they did in fact preach Jesus crucified (37) and the doctrine of Atonement (41) in the face of a grave danger that Christianity would simply be absorbed into Buddhism (33). Whereas Buddhism had no specifically religious clash with the state, Christianity did, and this was eventually sealed by martyrdom in both China and Japan. Introducing part 2, Heinz Murmel gives a sober reassessment of the vehement controversies between a certain segment of Buddhism and a certain type of Christianity in Ceylon. Only the high-caste highland nikayas were protected by the British (63); the more popular, rural Buddhists of the lowlands felt excluded and threatened and gave rise to what became known as "Protestant Buddhism." The "great debates" between bitterly anti-Christian monks and Protestant clergymen were not as important as the records may suggest, and even the fiery Anagarika Dharmapala later disclosed that he felt great devotion to Jesus. Finally, Frank Usarski reviews the heated debates between ill-informed Christians and overaggressive Buddhist converts such as Karl B. Seidenstucker as Buddhism established itself in Germany in the early decades of the twentieth century. The History of Religions school seemed to suggest that Christianity was culturally inferior to Buddhism, which was allegedly proved by Christian attitudes to [End Page 178] vegetarianism and the general anti-intellectualism of Christianity. Christianity was inauthentic, derivative, "Buddhism in Jewish garments" (120).Yet even Seidenstucker, the renegade Protestant, converted to Catholicism toward the end of his life.Each historical contribution is followed by an essay on the contemporary situation in the three regions, and these vary greatly in substance. Shizuteru Ueda offers a profound meditation on the significance of Keiji Nishitani for Buddhist approaches to Christianity. If Nietzsche posed the fundamental question of "life without why " (44-45), the thought of Meister Eckhart contains the answer (curiously, Ueda insists that this answer must be European, because Europe "determines the world" [47]). The "ground" on which we stand, interpreted as Nishida's "place (basho) of nothingness," is "ground-less." This is not nihilism but the overcoming of nihilism by nihilism, the shûnyatâ of shûnyatâ (46). Jesus as the Christ is the God/man and therefore the mediator, the absolute in history (53). He occupies the "place" (basho) of infinite openness, unconditioned ultimacy (55). He is thus unique, but not universal: the ultimate "for me" is not necessary "for the whole of mankind" (56). The actual encounter between Buddhist and Christian absolutes takes place in silence.Santikaro Bhikkhu, the friend and translator of Buddhadâsa Bhikkhu in the last eight years of his life, tells how his mentor gradually overcame his initial suspicion ofChristianity, perhaps because he was not confronted with colonial oppression as Dharmapala was in Ceylon. Distinguishing between "people language" and " dhamma language," he eventually arrived at a certain equivalence between the Christian God and Buddhist dhamma understood as a nonpersonal, nondual transcendent that is nevertheless not outside nature (85, 90). What Jesus the Teacher of Wisdom offers in the Sermon on the Mount, if practiced, is sufficient for salvation (93). In the perspective of dhamma language, however, the God of Christian convention is conditioned, and Jesus as Son of God cannot be unique. Though inconclusive and sometimes obscure because of Buddhadâsa's indifferent grasp of English, this is surely an astonishing journey for one who tried to understand each tradition, including his own, from the sources. It brought him fierce criticism from fellow Buddhists, however, who branded him a... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Studies 21.1 (2001) 139-140 [Access article in PDF] Book Review Dimensionen Der Leere: Gottals Nichts Und Nichts Als Gott Im Christlich-Buddistischen Dialog Dimensionen Der Leere: Gottals Nichts Und Nichts Als Gott Im Christlich-Buddistischen Dialog. By Armin Münch. Münster, Hamburg, London: LIT-Verlag, 1998. 337 pp. This is a most unusual study, pieced together out of hidden facets and neglected aspects of Buddhist and Christian studies and containing an unrivaled (...) overview of the literature. If modernWestern theology, taking its cue from Heidegger, has emphasized the temporality of existence, Münch draws our attention to its "spatiality" in what he calls "dimensional thinking." He is able to point to an astonishing number of thinkers from a variety of disciplines who have taken as their starting point our need to orient ourselves in space. In this light, the kenôsis.assage Philippians 2:5-11 is seen to be patterned on a U-shaped movement linking the dimensions "above" and "below" as distinct from S- and O-shaped movements found elsewhere in the mystical tradition.Münch goesonto establish left/right, behind/before, inside/outside, coming to be/passing away as what he calls "immanentals" (12-13) analogous to the "transcendentals" of scholastic theology. In particular, he seeks out thinkers who have tried to formulate the "fourth dimension," which would take us beyond conventional space-time. Plotinus, Eckhart, and the Kabbala are all examined for their attempts to conceptualize the transcendent in this way.What is the purpose of this exercise? Münch's leading question, to which he eventually returns, is clear: "What is lacking in our idea of God if we are ignorant of Buddhist experience?" (5). His purpose is to evaluate the relative significance of kenôsis ("he emptied himself") and tapeinosis."he humbled himself") in Philippians 2. This becomes apparent when he comes to the leading thinkers of the Kyoto School--Nishida, Nishitani, and Abe--and the debate between Takizawa and Yagi. Here Münch finds evidence of a "backwards-directed," or "dorsal," theology that corresponds to a rearwards movement in Buddhist thinking (264). This interesting hypothesis would need further verification by consulting the textual and extratextual traditions that shaped Japanese Buddhism in the context of their Indian and Chinese origins. In criticizing the work of Perry Schmidt-Leukel, Münch suggests that for Buddhists the balance between the experiences of relationship and transitoriness is not so much a matter of different directions or perspectives of transcendence as a leaving behind of all perspectivity (130-133). The search for salvation is orientated rearward in the Buddhist case, forward in the Christian, but these can be seen as complementary directions on the one road.Münch is able to agree with Ueda that Buddhist "nothingness" is best understood as a "desubstantializing dynamic" (283-284). Shûnyatâ.s the "fullness of nothingness" corresponds to the Christian concept of God. Christ is said to have "gone outside himself" rather than to have "emptied himself out" ["Christus entäusserte sich, aber er entleerte sich nicht!"(287)], to have undergone a metamorphosis. In Münch's view, only trinitarian language can encompass all the dimensions, from zero to the [End Page 139] elusive fourth, which are necessary to express what we mean by God in Buddhist terms (305-306).One of the most original things Münch does is to draw a parallel between the Zen ox-herding pictures and the Christian story. This serves to draw together pictorially, if not conceptually, the sometimes arcane researches that go to make up Münch's mosaic. It is perhaps because spatially dimensional thinking has been so rare in Western science, philosophy, and theology that he must search in such dark corners for evidence of it. The result is an at times bewildering patchwork of apparently unrelated contributions that do not blend smoothly into a unity. This sometimes puzzling heterogeneity is justified, in my view, in that it presents us with a highly diversified tool kit for getting to work on the potential offered... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:European Network of Buddhist-Christian StudiesJohn D'Arcy MayThe European Network of Buddhist-Christian Studies met at Samye Ling, Scotland, 16-19 May 2003. The theme of the meeting was "Buddhists, Christians, and the Doctrine of Creation."Samye Ling, founded in 1967 by Dr. Akong Tulku Rinpoche and now under the guidance of his brother, the Venerable Lama Yeshe Losal, is one of the oldest and largest Buddhist monasteries in Europe. Ven. Yeshe, in (...) welcoming conference participants, told how the monastery has both materially and spiritually reinvigorated what had become a depressed area around the town of Lockerbie in southwest Scotland. Despite the inclement weather, it was thus an appropriate venue for the fifth conference of the European Network of Buddhist-Christian Studies on the topic of creation. As Perry Schmidt-Leukel (Glasgow), who organized the conference, pointed out in his opening remarks, creation in view of ultimate redemption is the quintessentially Christian doctrine. Yet Buddhism certainly did not see samsara as the ultimate reality, and even if the origin of the world was ultimately an unanswerable question, Buddhism too was confronted by the problem of evil.Ernst Steinkellner (Vienna) opened the conference proper with an account of Buddhist critiques of Hindu doctrines of creation. The absolute Brahman was not a creator, but in the course of doctrinal evolution (the masculine Brahman becoming the post-Vedic Brahma) the world came to be seen as the work of a kind of demi-urge, leaving open the question of why. Buddhism, restricting itself to the realm of the finite, mocked Brahmin ideas of the cause of the world, but still had to account for the existence and nature of the world. By the time the Madhyamaka had developed theories of momentary creation, these had become part of the common logic of Buddhists and Hindus.This was followed by a presentation on contemporary Buddhist critiques of creation and creator doctrines by José Cabezón (Santa Barbara), who pointed out certain affinities between modern theories of many universes without beginning or end and traditional Buddhist ideas. Buddhism, he maintained, has an aversion to cosmological uniqueness, whether spatial, temporal, causal, or personal, but it does [End Page 237] regard the causal law of karman as ineluctable. Despite the critiques of Buddhist thinkers such as Gunapala Dharmasiri of Sri Lanka, who are under the misapprehension that Buddhism is on a par with science whereas Christianity is merely religion, this lays the basis for a metaphysics. The site of both suffering and liberation is the cocreativity of all beings. Buddhism is concerned not with being, but with consciousness.Eva Neumaier (Calgary) suggested that in fact Buddhism does have conceptions of creation, but in narrative form, represented in the cosmological structure of the world as the product of the Buddha's meditation rather than as a cosmogony. Creation is not ex nihilo, because nature predates any act of creation, yet the "emptiness" of shūnyatā is also the "swollenness" of fulfilled potential. The Buddha has been represented as the all-creating sovereign, and pure mind has been interpreted as the gender-neutral mother-father of all Buddhas, the "primordial basis." The "original enlightenment" objected to by Critical Buddhism enabled Buddhists to adapt pre-Buddhist ideas such as the Tao, even to the extent of tolerating animistic polytheism.If this presentation surprised some participants, it provided the perfect counterpart to the paper on Christian ideas of creation by John Keenan (Middlebury College). The Jewish and Christian conceptions of creation arise out of events in history, the exodus from Egypt being the originating metaphor. For Christians, liberation from the bondage of sin was the legacy of Israel's tribal warrior God. The Genesis accounts of creation are essentially liturgical, not cosmogonic. Creation is simply assumed as the evidence of divine transcendence; God is not a benevolent parent. The pagan critics who mocked the Jewish and Christian creation stories were just as misguided as the Buddhists who ridiculed the Vedic myths. God was eventually conceived as ipsum esse, the "to be" of things, a nonsubstantialist account that does not purport to answer the question "why." According to the logic of Buddhism, the complete enlightenment of all would mean the... (shrink)

Logical Criticism of Buddhist Doctrines is a ‘thematic compilation’ by Avi Sion. It collects in one volume the essays that he has written on this subject over a period of some 15 years after the publication of his first book on Buddhism, Buddhist Illogic. It comprises expositions and empirical and logical critiques of many (though not all) Buddhist doctrines, such as impermanence, interdependence, emptiness, the denial of self or soul. It includes his most recent essay, regarding the five skandhas doctrine.