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This is a rather gross oversimplification. What you state is true, and is in fact the essence of the first 2 noble truths, but that's hardly the meat of "the lo
by xmonkee 12y ago
This is a rather gross oversimplification. What you state is true, and is in fact the essence of the first 2 noble truths, but that's hardly the meat of "the logic of buddhism". The hardest attachment is that to the self, and the hardest realization is that the self itself is impermanent. To have the "right view" of the self, one has to understand the illusory nature of phenomena and the paradoxial nature of awareness itself. Awareness, is one of those things about which none of the following can be said: 1) that is exists, 2) that is doesn't exist, 3) that is both exists and doesn't exist, and 4) that is neither exists nor doesn't exist.
Buddhism is very simple, but at the same time it can take "many lifetimes" to achieve true understanding of it.
- logicchains 12y agoThe illusory nature of the self can also be explained relatively simply to anyone who's familiar with the justification problem[1]. What 'is' the self and what 'is not' the self? That requires a metric for deciding. But that metric in turn requires another metric to determine its validity, and so on ad infinitum. The concept of self is thus arbitrary, and hence logically meaningless. Wittgenstein expresses this idea far better than I do here, in his Tractatus[2]. This equally applies to all phenomena; any attempt to divide anything up into 'things' is ultimately arbitrary, as it relies on ultimately unsubstantiated metrics, and hence is without meaning. 1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regress_argument http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regress_argument 2. http://philosurfical.open.ac.uk/tractatus/tabs.html http://philosurfical.open.ac.uk/tractatus/tabs.html
- orasis 12y agoExplaining the illusory nature of the self isn't important. seeing, in real time, the illusory nature of the self is what brings liberation.