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"Anomaly - The Anti-Buddha"
With Buddhism attracting more and more attention today I feel compelled to share my thoughts about my experiences Buddhism. In an attempt to kill two birds with one essay I hope to explain 1) why I no longer find Buddhism satisfactory while 2) simultaneously providing a brief introduction to the philosophy of Friedrich Nietszche.
"New struggles.- After Buddha was dead, his shadow was still shown for centuries in a cave- a tremendous, gruesome shadow. God is dead: but given the way men are, there may still be caves for thousands of years in which his shadow will be shown.- And we-we still have to vanquish his shadow, too." -Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science (1882)
The Anti-Buddha As an undergraduate, I explored many literary avenues, one of which led to Buddhism. As usual, I started doing a little looking around and found a few books to satisfy my curiousity. I opened Rev. Dr. Walpola Rahula's book What The Buddha Taught and read the following paragraph,"Among the founders of religions the Buddha (if we are permitted to call him the founder of a religion in the popular sense of the term) was the only teacher who did not claim to be other than a human being, pure and simple. Other teachers were either God, or his incarnations in different forms, or inspired by him. The Buddha was not only a human being; he claimed no inspiration from any god or external power either. He attributed all his realization, attainments and achievements to human endeavor and human intelligence. A man and only a man can become a Buddha. Every man has within himself the potentiality of becoming a Buddha, if he so wills it and endeavors. We can call the Buddha a man par excellence. He was so perfect in his 'human-ness' that he came to be regarded later in popular religion almost as 'super-human'... Man's position, according to Buddhism, is supreme. Man is his own master, and there is no higher being or power that sits in judgment over his destiny" (What The Buddha Taught, Rahula, pp. 1)
Reading this with an ear towards Nietzschean rhetoric one might understand why Dr. Rahula's Buddhism had such a pull upon me."Buddhism is neither pessimistic nor optimistic. If anything at all, it is realistic, for it takes a realistic view of life and of the world. It looks at things objectively (yathabhutam). It does not falsely lull you into living in a fool's paradise, nor does it frighten and agonize you with all kinds of imaginary fears and sins. It tells you exactly and objectively what you are and what the world around you is, and shows you the way to perfect freedom, peace, tranquillity and happiness"(ibid.,pp.17). What could be better? Realism,objectivity,freedom,peace,tranquillity and happiness; it sounds like a perfect system. I was soon to discover, however, that these noble ends of Buddhism could not be achieved by Buddhist means.First a little history; Buddhism is a religion named after the Buddha, or Enlightened One. The Buddha was an actual man, a prince in fact, named Gautama (in Pali, Gotama) who lived in Northern India during the turn of the sixth century B.C. Sifting fact from fiction in the story of Gautama, historical scholars tell of a prince who abandoned his wife, child, and life of luxury in search of the spiritual cure for suffering. His search started with severe asceticism. Unfortunately, Gautama wasted nearly six years of his life at the feet of sado-masochistic teachers before realizing that such methods did notlead to the spiritual cure for suffering. During his search he became frustrated and more determined than ever to discover Nirvana, he decided to sit beneath a bodhi tree and not get up until he found the pathway to Nirvana.He lived a long life, dying at eighty, and spent by meditating and propounding his views to his follower-monks. I do not intend to write a blanket dismissal of Buddhist philosophy. There are some quite attractive aspects to the Buddhist philosophy, relatively speaking. In a short book called What I Believe Bertrand Russell wrote, "God and immortality, the central dogmas of the Christian religion, find no support in science. It cannot be said that either doctrine is essential to religion, since neither is found in Buddhism." Buddhism does not oppose science and reason in the same way and to the massive degree that Christianity historically has. Nietzsche validates this assertion in Human, All-Too-Human where he writes,"knowledge, science-insofar as science has existed-raising one self above other men through the logical discipline and training of thought, were just as much demanded among the Buddhists, as a sign of holiness, as the same qualities were repudiated and pronounced heretical in the Christian world where they were held to be signs of unholiness"(page 154, Basic Writings of Nietzsche). The Buddhist "holy" respect for science and objectivity is a function of the Buddhist view of psychology and epistemology. Buddha saw mind, not as a spirit opposed to matter,but as an integrated and conditionally free-willed [cetana] part of oneself. The mind-body dichotomy of Descartes' Meditations that has become so deeply planted in Western culture and religion does not exist for Buddha.Descartes has enriched Western culture with his coordinate geometry, but when viewed in light of Nietzsche's perspectivism, one can accept his mathematics without having to accept his dualistic metaphysics, or his whole system for that manner. In fact, a Buddhist a might probably prefer the converse formulation of Descartes' famous "I think, therefore I am", that is
Jake Shannon is the author and creator of http://www.scientificwrestling.com where you’ll find a wealth of information on scientific wrestling. Have a look now: => http://www.scientificwrestling.com
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Keywords: atheism, buddha, buddhism, nietzsche
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