tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2323383105577553414.post739428798660976626..comments2024-02-24T00:25:39.415-08:00Comments on Examined Worlds: Conference on Buddhism and SkepticismEthanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13490888839784651097noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2323383105577553414.post-46508131553246928382017-11-10T18:51:42.810-08:002017-11-10T18:51:42.810-08:00I don't have time at the moment for an adequat...I don't have time at the moment for an adequate response and I fear we are talking past one another in any case, but in the meantime I will say that "Buddhism" and "skepticism" are many things to many people and some of those things have interesting connections (in my opinion, anyway). Also, Richard Hayes did say (in a 1994 article) that Nāgārjuna's arguments don't work (and I completely agree with him that Nāgārjuna's influence is way overblown in contemporary scholarship), but in his 1988 book on Dignāga he compared Nāgārjuna with ancient Greek Pyrrhonian skepticism, which is much more in the vein of what I'm talking about. Cheers.Ethanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13490888839784651097noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2323383105577553414.post-45998543582533585132017-11-10T05:57:56.349-08:002017-11-10T05:57:56.349-08:00The scepticism of Buddhists is vastly overstated i...The scepticism of Buddhists is vastly overstated in my view (I write articles on the history of Buddhist ideas). <br /><br />There is vast tangled confusion of ontology and epistemology, especially downstream from Nāgārjuna who seemed to be utterly confused about the difference between experience and reality. He's probably the worst philosopher who ever set pen to paper. So where is the scepticism about him? Richard Hayes wrote a couple of wry articles before he retired, but everyone else seems to assume that Nāgārjuna must be amazing and are still puzzling out why (because in fact he makes no sense at all). <br /><br />Nāgārjuna is not sceptical at all - he literally believes he understands *everything*. He believes he knows "ultimate reality" - he could not be less sceptical. He employs nonsense arguments to undermine his opponents, but that is not scepticism. <br /><br />And how did he come by this transcendent knowledge? By sitting down with his eyes closed ignoring the world. How does anyone take this seriously? Especially now. <br /><br />In practice there is little or no scepticism in Buddhism today. For expressing it, I have been called many things, including "reckless and dangerous" and "an enemy of the Dharma". Fundamentalism is almost the norm now. <br /><br />What scepticism there is tends not to question certain fundamental axioms of Buddhist thought. Such as, that one can find reality through meditation. What kind of "reality" is that? No one ever seems to ask. <br /><br />As well, there was a very strong tendency to realism *within* Buddhism. This is partly because one cannot have both karma and dependent-arising without some serious modification (and surprisingly it is almost always dependent arising that is modified). The only way to provide continuity between action and consequence over time is some form of realism - something has to exist in order to provide the necessary continuity, whether it is bhavaṅgacitta or ālayavijñāna, something supernatural but considered to exist always lurks in the unexamined small print. Because karma won't work without it. <br /><br />I just wish that academia would do something useful for those of us who *are* sceptical, rather than endlessly rehashing Buddhism on its own terms. <br />Jayaravahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13783922534271559030noreply@blogger.com