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Quote by Sangharakshita

“We believe in ourselves in this narrow, limited, egoistic sense, as identified with the body and the lower mind. We are blind to any higher vision, any more ultimate selfhood, any more universal mind or consciousness. This belief in self in this sense is a fetter that has to be broken before we can enter the Stream and break through into a higher, wider dimension of being and consciousness.”

Quote by Sangharakshita

Book:The Bodhisattva Ideal : Wisdom and Compassion in Buddhism
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The Bodhisattva Ideal : Wisdom and Compassion in Buddhism

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Sangharakshita
Sangharakshita

Sangharakshita, born John William Robert Mawson, is a British writer and Buddhist leader, considered one of the pioneers of the Buddhist revival in the West. Born in 1925, he has been a significant figure in the Western Buddhist community. more

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“It is therefore important to discover whether there is any answer to Hume within the framework of a philosophy that is wholly or mainly empirical. If not, there is no intellectual difference between sanity and insanity. The lunatic who believes that he is a poached egg is to be condemned solely on the ground that he is in a minority, or rather — since we must not assume democracy — on the ground that the government does not agree with him. This is a desperate point of view, and it must be hoped that there is some way of escaping from it.”

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“COSMOLOGICAL ARGUMENT The First Cause Argument The real problem with the first cause argument is not if God or anything else needed a cause but if the first cause is necessary for anything. If the Ultimate Being, or Absolute, always existed, nothing else exists or can exist outside of it except a transformation, “creation,” or recreation within the Absolute. Absolute Being is not the first cause of the world. We must agree with Russel that the world is without a cause. The view that the Absolute (in someone’s eyes, God) is without a cause does not mean that the world had a different, specific cause. The world is the Absolute itself or emanation of it. The world is the life of the Absolute (or God, but not a God from religious books), not something “different” from the Absolute. Therefore, neither the Absolute, God, Nothingness, nor the Universe need a cause because they are all the Absolute itself. Absolute is the causeless cause operating within itself. The world is a manifestation of the Absolute and its celebration, lovemaking between the Being and Nonbeing in the form of the cosmic fireworks for the hidden eyes of the Absolute. The World is a causeless cause's transformation, creation, or Recreation. The Nothingness and the Being or Something are eternal and, therefore, are without a cause. The real question for atheists is how something can appear out of nothing at some point. Believing that something can come out from nothing is way less believable than the idea that there is an eternal Being that does not need a cause. We may call it whatever name we choose, but it is not necessarily incompatible with science. The limitations of science and its limited outreach cannot serve as proof against the eternal source of everything. Limitations are only proof of the level of science at some point. There is no absolute knowledge, and we can say, with almost absolute certainty, that humans cannot acquire absolute knowledge. Even if this were possible, humans would no longer be humans but be something else.”

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“The Argument from Design Based on Russell's treatment of this argument, we assume that Russel expected that the world's creation, by design, had to be perfect. But, as with all other arguments, we must establish what design and perfection mean. If we do not clearly define what design is and what perfection is, we are applying our judgments to something either undefined or loosely defined. Evolutionary theory, be it Darwin’s theory, cannot be proof of a bad design of the world. Anomalies or shortages in the world are not proof of a bad design. Imperfections are needed in the world and serve a higher purpose. Let’s say that God if he existed, wanted to create the perfect world. This perfect world would be sterile. In the perfect world, there would be no cosmic hierarchies, lows, and highs, enough friction to sustain life as something whose purpose is not to be made perfect from the beginning but to seek perfection, to make “progress” in myriad ways toward the main purpose which is life itself. Life, by definition, is not perfect. Perfect life is not a real life. The purpose of design is not to predict a Ku Klux Klan or the fascists and eliminate them from the design before any creation but to put the “engine” of the vast Universe in motion, to enable the world to seek its paths freely, without a God playing dice. That is where determinism and free will come together to create a sensible world. Design does not mean playing dice, nor necessarily creating something new, but the creator offers himself an exit to exist in an ever-new world, a new form with meaning. We also may say that in the Universe or Omniverse, beyond our knowledge, there can be not only thirty-six (to make a comparison with dice) but a googolplex of universes (dice), and the possibility for combinations is infinite. “Impossibility to prove God” is not proof that God does not exist. Russel would argue that the burden of proof is on the person making a claim, but the world itself is proof of God’s existence. The solution to this enigma is to recognize that the world is God. The problem is not belief or disbelief, first cause, natural law or good or bad design, or any other argument for the existence or against the existence of God; the problem is in our understanding and consensus about the idea of what God is. Argumentation or proof can never be shifted to only one side. Something so obvious as the world does not need proof but understanding that the world is also, in its deepest nature, God itself. We can fight as long as we want, but if we fight from different positions for the sake of different positions, we are not going anywhere. God is not the same for the theist or the deist. Christian God is so far from Spinoza’s idea about God. The majority of people who are atheists today are atheists more in revolt against nominal, official religions and not necessarily in revolt against God if this God was better defined or approached from an angle unaffected by religions.”

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“En otras palabras, estamos hechos de Universo, nuestra sustancia fue cocinada en miles de millones de años en los núcleos de las estrellas, somos materia del Universo que evolucionó en un planeta para ser consciente de su existencia y de la existencia del cosmos; somos los ojos, los oídos, el cerebro del Universo, es decir, somos la parte del Universo que pretende conocerse a sí mismo.”

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