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Living Skillfully: Buddhist Philosophy of Life from the Vimalakirti Sutra

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Dale S. Wright

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“Each religion makes scores of purportedly factual assertions about everything from the creation of the universe to the afterlife. But on what grounds can believers presume to know that these assertions are true? The reasons they give are various, but the ultimate justification for most religious people’s beliefs is a simple one: we believe what we believe because our holy scriptures say so. But how, then, do we know that our holy scriptures are factually accurate? Because the scriptures themselves say so. Theologians specialize in weaving elaborate webs of verbiage to avoid saying anything quite so bluntly, but this gem of circular reasoning really is the epistemological bottom line on which all 'faith' is grounded. In the words of Pope John Paul II: 'By the authority of his absolute transcendence, God who makes himself known is also the source of the credibility of what he reveals.' It goes without saying that this begs the question of whether the texts at issue really were authored or inspired by God, and on what grounds one knows this. 'Faith' is not in fact a rejection of reason, but simply a lazy acceptance of bad reasons. 'Faith' is the pseudo-justification that some people trot out when they want to make claims without the necessary evidence. But of course we never apply these lax standards of evidence to the claims made in the other fellow’s holy scriptures: when it comes to religions other than one’s own, religious people are as rational as everyone else. Only our own religion, whatever it may be, seems to merit some special dispensation from the general standards of evidence. And here, it seems to me, is the crux of the conflict between religion and science. Not the religious rejection of specific scientific theories (be it heliocentrism in the 17th century or evolutionary biology today); over time most religions do find some way to make peace with well-established science. Rather, the scientific worldview and the religious worldview come into conflict over a far more fundamental question: namely, what constitutes evidence. Science relies on publicly reproducible sense experience (that is, experiments and observations) combined with rational reflection on those empirical observations. Religious people acknowledge the validity of that method, but then claim to be in the possession of additional methods for obtaining reliable knowledge of factual matters — methods that go beyond the mere assessment of empirical evidence — such as intuition, revelation, or the reliance on sacred texts. But the trouble is this: What good reason do we have to believe that such methods work, in the sense of steering us systematically (even if not invariably) towards true beliefs rather than towards false ones? At least in the domains where we have been able to test these methods — astronomy, geology and history, for instance — they have not proven terribly reliable. Why should we expect them to work any better when we apply them to problems that are even more difficult, such as the fundamental nature of the universe? Last but not least, these non-empirical methods suffer from an insuperable logical problem: What should we do when different people’s intuitions or revelations conflict? How can we know which of the many purportedly sacred texts — whose assertions frequently contradict one another — are in fact sacred?”

ReasonPhilosophyScienceEvidenceLogicSacredPhysicsObservationPopeBeliefsScripturesRevelationHoly ScripturesScience Vs ReligionHoly BooksJohn Paul IiContradictionsReligious BooksCircular ReasoningEmpiricalBegging The Question
Author:Alan Sokal
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“Desires are the source of drive and aspiration in human life. They provide the energy for a whole range of human accomplishments, including the spiritual quest for awakening. Bodhicitta, the thought of enlightenment for all living beings, evolves in the minds of bodhisattvas to become the primal desire, the deepest source of energy.”

DesireEnergyBodhicitta
Book:Living Skillfully: Buddhist Philosophy of Life from the Vimalakirti Sutra
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“When you let go of all that is causing you pain and distress, you let go of your unhappiness too. Sometimes, it may be people who make you unhappy. So move away from such people. At other times, it may be the choices that you have made that make you unhappy. So let go of the past – it is over, you can’t undo it. There may also be situations where you cannot fix the core issue that is causing all your pain and agony. When you can’t fix a problem yourself, let go of your desire to fix it. When you let go, when you uncling from whatever it is that is holding you hostage, you set yourself free. When you let go, you actually let Happiness in!”

DesireLife LessonsAcceptanceAvis ViswanathanFall Like A Rose PetalAvis On HappynessThe HappynesswalaLet GoMove OnThe Happynesswalas
Author:AVIS Viswanathan
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“Plato warned that pursuing pleasure leads to unhappiness. The Buddha taught that desires can never be satisfied. Every religion provides advice about how to get off the hedonic treadmill, leaving its emotional baggage behind. However, such advice is like advice about diets: correct, well-meaning, plentiful, and, for good evolutionary reasons, well-nigh impossible to actually follow.”

LifeHappinessDesireMiseryEvolutionary Psychology
Book:Good Reasons for Bad Feelings: Insights from the Frontier of Evolutionary Psychiatry
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“The suffering that accompanies nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, cough, fever, fatigue, pain, anxiety, and low mood motivates escape from a current bad situation and avoidance of future similar situations. Individuals who do not experience physical pain accumulate injuries and usually die by early adulthood. People who don’t feel bad when pursuing unreachable goals spend their lives in contented useless efforts. More low mood might help their genes, but a clinic to boost low mood would be about as popular as a clinic to help people feel more anxious.”

LifePainHappinessDesireMiserySicknessEvolutionary PsychologyAvoid
Book:Good Reasons for Bad Feelings: Insights from the Frontier of Evolutionary Psychiatry
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