Self and meditation in Indian Buddhism (original) (raw)
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A Critical Response to the Question “Did the Buddha Teach Rebirth?”
Jurnal Pencerahan
The theory of rebirth is widely accepted in Indian philosophy and it is mostly connected with the soul which keeps moving from one life to another life. Since the Buddha rejects the concept of the eternal soul by presenting Anatta theory, many questions are risen whether the Buddha teaches rebirth. Some people assume that the Buddha accepts the doctrine of rebirth because it is popular in pre-Buddhist traditions. This present research purpose is to give a critical explanation of the question of whether the Buddha teaches rebirth. This research is carried out with a library approach by collecting information from canonical texts as well as their commentaries. This research results from a comprehensive explanation of rebirth taught by the Buddha which is very unique and different from the theory of rebirth explained by other Indian traditions. The theory of rebirth (punabbhava) taught by the Buddha neither has an association with any external authority such as Brahma, Jagadātma, or Go...
A Brief Introduction to the Evolution of Indian Ethics and Foundation of Buddhist Ethics
Practical Buddhist Studies Reviewed Journal, Bhiksu University of Sri Lanka,Vol, 01,2018,pp 220-228, 2018
The moral teaching of Indian society at the time when Buddha was born, were developed under the both Brahmana and Sramana traditions. While Brahmanism explained the moral teaching in relation to the omniscience, omnipotent God, asceticism represented the necessity of practicing ascetic practices for the purpose of achieving moral life. It is true to say that the moral conducts of Brahmanism based on the self-indulgence (Kāmasukallikanuyoga) 1 and opposite, self-mortification 2 was the optimum path of moral conduct of asceticism. The germs of the moral teachings are included in the Vedic literature. The moral conducts of the Vedic period squarely connected with concept God, heaven and concepts Ṛta (constant and circular nature of the universe) and Iṭapūrta (sacrifice) were two prominent aspects of moral basis of the Vedic period. The process of the Ṛta equally effect for everyone and it was controlled by the god Varuna. Generally God Varuna represents the controller of the good and bad. Therefore, behaving according to the process of Ṛta considered as obedience for the wish of Varuna. The man who has conformity with wish of Varuna should complete sacrifices (Iṭapūrta). The sacrifices represent the concept of good and bad and disobedience for Varuna or does not complete the sacrifices represent the concept of bad. The heavenly rebirth was ultimate good but only few people would be born in the heaven and majority of the people would be born in patriarch world. 3 Two places that the human beings would be born after the death, generally known as Arvīr Mārga (illuminated world) and Dūma Mārga (gloomy world). 4 A.B. Keith emphasized that Vedic Aryans believed that the faith on the God is the path of heavenly rebirth than the actions of them. 5 But they believed practicing of austerity, giving alms to Brahmanic priests etc. cause to heavenly rebirth. 6 Later, in the Brahman period priority has given to the sacrifices than the God who accepts the sacrifices. Aśvamēnda, Puruśamēda, Vājapēya, Niraggala, etc. were such important sacrifices that should be offered by the man. The concept of the good and bad depended on the sacrifices; the man who does the sacrifices, consequently receives the good result while the man who does not do sacrifices receives the bad result. To represent the concept of good and bad, they used the terms like, sukṛuta, duskṛuta, sādhu, asādu, puñña, pāpa etc. During the Araṇyaka and Upanishad periods concepts of Ṛta and sacrifices were not completely disappeared but instead of those concepts they explained the teaching of Ātman and Brahman concepts. The person who understand respectively the reality of Atman and Brahman has
Review of Rebirth: A Guide to Mind, Karma, and Cosmos in the Buddhist World by Roger Jackson
Religion, 2022
In the preface to his new book, Rebirth: A Guide to Mind, Karma, and Cosmos in the Buddhist World, Roger Jackson notes that accepting that one's consciousness goes on to another life after this one is a 'stumbling block' for many modern practitioners of Buddhism (xiv). My own interest in reviewing Jackson's book comes from grappling with the claims of the Buddhist traditions around karma and rebirth, as the two are deeply intertwined. Considering Jackson's background as a scholar and practitioner, there may be no one around today better prepared to engage with these facets of the Buddhist traditions. However, Jackson is careful to warn that 'this small book will not resolve my, or anyone's, questions about the possibility of rebirthnor is it intended to' (xiv). Rather, the aim of the book is to survey more than two centuries of Buddhist thought on rebirth. Jackson achieves this aim over the fifteen chapters of his book. Each chapter is dense with information, and as such detailed summary of each one is outside the parameters of this review given the constraints. As a heuristic of sorts, I believe the chapters of Jackson's book can be divided into five parts, each containing varying numbers of chapters. Chapters one through three, the first part, provides an overview of rebirth from three different scales. In chapter one, 'Introduction: Rebirth in World Cultures,' Jackson surveys beliefs about rebirth found various cultures throughout time and space. Following the typology developed by Gananath Obeyesekere, Jackson contrasts 'rebirth eschatologies' from 'karmic eschatologies.' Whereas the former kind typically does not ethicize rebirth, the latter does ethicize rebirth negatively. Chapter two, 'Pre-Buddhist Indian Rebirth Theories,' zooms in from the broad, global view of the previous chapter toward the context of ancient India. We are introduced here to Vedic literature, particularly the Upanishads, as well as the views of the various sramanas mentioned in the Pali Samannaphala sutta. Upanishadic Vedism and the heterogenous assemblage of sramana across northern India set the stage for the appearance of the Buddha. Chapter three, 'The Buddha on Rebirth,' considers the Buddha's views on rebirth, drawing primarily from the Pali canon. Jackson emphasizes that for the Buddha rebirth was not just a doctrine he taught but was something he experienced first-hand; it laid the basis for his teachings and his narratives of past-lives serve to illustrate the workings of karma and realities of rebirth in the various realms of existence. Considering this, Jackson finds it hard to escape the conclusion that a rebirth cosmology undergirds the Buddha's teachings. He reviews arguments to the effect that the Buddha either did not emphasize rebirth or only believed in it as a sop to convention, yet ultimately dispatches with both. For Jackson, we have no 'principled reason' accept these arguments. (47) Chapters four through six, the second part, concern the where, how, and why of rebirth. Chapter four, 'Where Rebirth Happens,' Jackson plays the part of Virgil, and guides his reader through various realms of possible rebirth. He begins with the hells and ascends up through the animal, hungry ghost, asura, human, and heavenly realms, considering the complicated place of human female rebirth along the way. Chapter five, 'How Rebirth Happens,' considers the process of rebirth, from one life to another. Here, Jackson's focus is the concept RELIGION
Critical Questions Towards a Naturalized Concept of Karma in Buddhism
The Journal of Buddhist Ethics, 2004
In an effort to articulate a naturalized concept of karma for the purposes of contemporary ethical reflection, this paper raises four critical questions about the Buddhist doctrine of karma. The paper asks (1) about the advisability of linking the concept of karma to assurance of ultimate cosmic justice through the doctrine of rebirth; (2) about the effects of this link on the quest for human justice in the social, economic, and political spheres of culture; (3) about the kinds of rewards that the doctrine of karma attaches to virtuous action, whether they tend to be necessary or contingent consequences; and (4) about the extent to which karma is best conceived individually or collectively. The paper ends with suggestions for how a non-metaphysical concept of karma might function and what role it might play in contemporary ethics. The Buddha warned1 that karma is so mysterious a process that it is essentially unfathomable, declaring it one of the four topics not suited to healthy ph...
A Three Dimensional View of Karma in Early Buddhism
Sri Lanka International Journal of Buddhist Studies (SIJBS) Volume V, 2019
Detailing the connection between the various functions of Buddhist karma theory and rebecoming is a profoundly difficult aspect of Buddhist philosophy. While there is no definitive answer to these questions, suggestions can be found in early Buddhism that may help to reconcile the early Buddhist interpretations of karma with other philosophical and scientific theories. A great difficulty in analysing the functional aspects of Buddhist karma theory is the conflation of karma as causality with karma as ethics to create a strongly deterministic ethical theory of karmic retribution which de-emphasises notions of free will and personal responsibility that are fundamental to Buddhist practice. This research is intended as a new model to evaluate karma in light of early Buddhist karma theory. Following this model may allow karma theorists to shed our accumulated assumptions from the Abhidharma and western philosophy that bring substance metaphysics into the analysis of Buddhist karma doctrine. This essentialism is an unnecessary obstacle to understanding. When karma as causality is located within early Buddhist process metaphysics it can easily be analysed in a practical fashion and is found to accord with contemporary thought. Karma as ethics is more properly analysed as a satisfactory, but underdeveloped ethical theory. Only with these conceptions in place can the connection between karma and rebecoming can be detailed.
Published in Martyrdom, Self-Sacrifice, and Self-Immolation: Religious Perspectives on Suicide, ed. Margo Kitts (Oxford University Press, 2018), 241-263.
When considering Indian Buddhist attitudes toward elective death, it is essential to distinguish between several different forms. Ordinary suicide, or the act of voluntarily and intentionally taking one's own life, is largely condemned in Indian Buddhist literature as a manifestation of both desire (P. taṇhā) 1 and delusion (P. moha)-desire because the "desire for non-existence" (P. vibhava-taṇhā) is one of the three types of desire that characterize an unawakened person, and delusion because the person who commits suicide is profoundly mistaken if he or she believes that suicide will solve his or her problems: In fact, in a universe characterized by karma and rebirth, suicide will only result in the person being reborn into another existence in which he or she will have to suffer the negative karmic fruition of the act of suicide itself-an inherently immoral act, since it violates the most important Buddhist moral precept, which is to abstain from taking life. 2 We can see the negative judgment cast upon ordinary suicide in a famous story from the Pali Canon (of the Theravāda school) in which the Buddha teaches his monks the meditative practice known as "cultivation of the foul" (P. asubhabhāvanā), which involves contemplating rotting corpses in the charnel ground in order to foster detachment with regard to one's own body. The monks, however, soon become so disgusted with their bodies that they begin killing themselves and each other en masse-clearly not what the Buddha intended. He quickly puts a stop to the situation (replacing "cultivation of the foul" with a focus upon the breath) and makes abetment to suicide an offense entailing expulsion from the Sangha-the most serious category of monastic offense. 3 Although there are some examples in early Buddhist literature of monks who commit suicide and are not condemned for doing so,