Taoism that originates from China hold a simple concept of No Doer[Wu Wei]What is meant by No Doer? It is a concept based on observations on things that happens around us and within us.
Looking at nature,we find that many events happens because certain conditions favour it. Lets take rain for instance. When water vapour in the air becomes more concentrated depending on prevailing temperature and pressure,there will be a change of phase as the vapour transform into liquid water resulting in rain. We said that IT rain because of certain condition of humidity,temperature and atmospheric pressure. We can also stipulate a concept that The God of rain call for rain. In the earlier concept,there is No doer and things happen. In the latter suggestion,the doer is the God of rain.
To make the concept of doer ship holds,we must then have God of wind,God of Thunder and lightning.The God of mountains and rivers and a whole host of Gods to manage the affair of the world and the universe.
Modern science have explained the causes of most natural phenomenon and things happens because of gathering of certain conditions. When the conditions are in place, the event happens.
The concept run into problem when we regard deeds done by sentient being. The human appear to be the doers of so many things, constructing the highways, dams, high rise, rockets and space station, etc. So how do we reconcile doership and non doership. Here we apply the transcendental wisdom of Anatta to establish that human beings are illusions and are mere false appearance. As credit of human's effort is due to personal selves and we know they do not exist, then what doer are we talking about. The sutra states, all things are done, but there are NO Doer thereof. We can also say No Doer is just a corollary of NO self [Egolessness of a personal identity]
Human can be looked at as flesh robots responding to thoughts [instructions down loaded onto their CPU] As we cannot establish a creator of thoughts which are responses to stimuli and arises out of conditions and similar to that for rain and lightning.
Thursday, March 3, 2011
Is there Free Will?
In our world[samsara],the subject of freewill fascinates many and opinions differ. The hallmark of opinions is it will always differ as one man's meat is another person's poison.
As our mortal mind surrender, we go deep and ask the question to Truth with its Noble wisdom?
When we are trying to establish the validity of Freewill, we should take a step back and ask first of all, this freewill is for whom.?
?
Is there going to be a will for non-sentient beings like stone and wood or is freewill limited to only sentient being. Do we know the attributes of a particular sentient being? After the refresher on the five skandhas that make up a living being, we establish there is no such personal identity as all beings ARE ILLUSIONS. Now we rephrase the question and ask if Bugs Bunny can have a will?
Will is dependent on the individual making it and if there can be no individual, is having a will then possible? If not why argue on will being free or not.
As our mortal mind surrender, we go deep and ask the question to Truth with its Noble wisdom?
When we are trying to establish the validity of Freewill, we should take a step back and ask first of all, this freewill is for whom.?
?
Is there going to be a will for non-sentient beings like stone and wood or is freewill limited to only sentient being. Do we know the attributes of a particular sentient being? After the refresher on the five skandhas that make up a living being, we establish there is no such personal identity as all beings ARE ILLUSIONS. Now we rephrase the question and ask if Bugs Bunny can have a will?
Will is dependent on the individual making it and if there can be no individual, is having a will then possible? If not why argue on will being free or not.
Wednesday, March 2, 2011
Human Being
In the Buddhist tradition a human being is made up of Body-Mind
The Mind is further subdivided into
1]Feelings
2]Thoughts[names that form the basis of language]
3]Violations with knowledge string from thought
4]Consciousness
The five bundles is termed the five Skandas.
Anatta is the foundation of Buddhism and is the teaching of the Egolessness of a personal self. The teaching consist of discourses to show that each of the five skandas are illusionary and therefore empty. All living beings are nothing but mirages that appear within Awareness.
Samsara is a 'dream' world that apparently exist as a result of delusion in believing the illusions[mirages] to be real.
We are no different from other imaginary beings like Santa Clause, Spider Man, Batman, Super man, Micky Mouse, Donald duck and others. In the stories involving these personalities, there are occasion of sufferings and joy.
Now we ask the question who suffer and who gets to enjoy, when All beings are false and illusionary. Here I part with a quote from the sutra. There are suffering, but NO ONE who suffer.
The Mind is further subdivided into
1]Feelings
2]Thoughts[names that form the basis of language]
3]Violations with knowledge string from thought
4]Consciousness
The five bundles is termed the five Skandas.
Anatta is the foundation of Buddhism and is the teaching of the Egolessness of a personal self. The teaching consist of discourses to show that each of the five skandas are illusionary and therefore empty. All living beings are nothing but mirages that appear within Awareness.
Samsara is a 'dream' world that apparently exist as a result of delusion in believing the illusions[mirages] to be real.
We are no different from other imaginary beings like Santa Clause, Spider Man, Batman, Super man, Micky Mouse, Donald duck and others. In the stories involving these personalities, there are occasion of sufferings and joy.
Now we ask the question who suffer and who gets to enjoy, when All beings are false and illusionary. Here I part with a quote from the sutra. There are suffering, but NO ONE who suffer.
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