Hier werden die Unterschiede zwischen zwei Versionen angezeigt.
Beide Seiten der vorigen RevisionVorhergehende ÜberarbeitungNächste Überarbeitung | Vorhergehende Überarbeitung | ||
de:lib:authors:bodhi:response [2019/09/03 09:41] – div at end removed Johann | de:lib:authors:bodhi:response [2021/04/18 11:02] (aktuell) – logo de Johann | ||
---|---|---|---|
Zeile 1: | Zeile 1: | ||
+ | <WRAP box fill >< | ||
+ | <div center round todo 60%> | ||
+ | |||
+ | ====== Eine buddhistische Antwort auf gegenwärtige Dilema der menschlichen Existenz ====== | ||
+ | <span hide> | ||
+ | |||
+ | Summary: | ||
+ | |||
+ | |||
+ | <div #h_meta> | ||
+ | |||
+ | |||
+ | |||
+ | <div # | ||
+ | |||
+ | <div # | ||
+ | |||
+ | <div # | ||
+ | |||
+ | <div # | ||
+ | |||
+ | <div # | ||
+ | |||
+ | <div # | ||
+ | |||
+ | <div # | ||
+ | |||
+ | <div # | ||
+ | |||
+ | </ | ||
+ | |||
+ | <div # | ||
+ | |||
+ | <div # | ||
+ | |||
+ | <div navigation></ | ||
+ | |||
+ | </ | ||
+ | |||
+ | <span # | ||
+ | |||
+ | Since my presentation is entitled "Eine buddhistische Antwort auf gegenwärtige Dilema der menschlichen Existenz," | ||
+ | |||
+ | Our root problem, it seems to me, is at its core a problem of consciousness. I would characterize this problem briefly as a fundamental existential dislocation, | ||
+ | |||
+ | Before I discuss some of the responses that religion might make to the outstanding dilemmas of our age, I propose to offer a critique of the existential dislocation that has spread among such significant portion of humankind today. Through most of this century, the religious point of view has been defensive. It may now be the time to take the offensive, by scrutinizing closely the dominant modes of thought that lie at the base of our spiritual malaise. | ||
+ | |||
+ | I see the problem of existential dislocation to be integrally tied to the ascendancy, world wide, of a type of mentality that originates in the West, but which today has become typical of human civilization as a whole. It would be too simple to describe this frame of mind as materialism: | ||
+ | |||
+ | ==== The Historical Background ==== | ||
+ | |||
+ | The underlying historical cause of this phenomenon seems to lie in an unbalanced development of the human mind in the West, beginning around the time of the European Renaissance. This development gave increasing importance to the rational, manipulative and dominative capacities of the mind at the expense of its intuitive, comprehensive, | ||
+ | |||
+ | The early founders of the Scientific Revolution in the seventeenth century — such as Galileo, Boyle, Descartes and Newton — were deeply religious men, for whom the belief in the wise and benign Creator was the premise behind their investigations into lawfulness of nature. However, while they remained loyal to the theistic premises of Christian faith, the drift of their thought severely attenuated the organic connection between the divine and the natural order, a connection so central to the premodern world view. They retained God only as the remote Creator and law-giver of Nature and sanctioned moral values as the expression of the Divine Will, the laws decreed for man by his Maker. In their thought a sharp dualism emerged between the transcendent sphere and the empirical world. The realm of "hard facts" ultimately consisted of units of senseless matter governed by mechanical laws, while ethics, values and ideals were removed from the realm of facts and assigned to the sphere of an interior subjectivity. | ||
+ | |||
+ | It was only a matter of time until, in the trail of the so-called Enlightenment, | ||
+ | |||
+ | The triumph of materialism in the sphere of cosmology and metaphysics had the profoundest impact on human self-understanding. The message it conveyed was that the inward dimensions of our existence, with its vast profusion of spiritual and ethical concerns, is mere adventitious superstructure. The inward is reducible to the external, the invisible to the visible, the personal to the impersonal. Mind becomes a higher order function of the brain, the individual a node in a social order governed by statistical laws. All humankind' | ||
+ | |||
+ | ==== The Secularization of Life ==== | ||
+ | |||
+ | I have sketched the intellectual background to our existential dislocation in a fair degree of detail because I think that any attempt to comprehend the contemporary dilemmas of human existence in isolation from this powerful cognitive underpinning would be incomplete and unsatisfactory. The cognitive should not be equated with the merely theoretical, | ||
+ | |||
+ | In certain respects this was without doubt a major step in the direction of human liberation, for it freed individuals to follow the dictates of personal conscience and reduced considerably the pressures placed upon them to conform to the prevailing system of religious beliefs. But while this advantage cannot be underestimated, | ||
+ | |||
+ | While a dualistic division of the social order characterized the early phase of the modern period, as in the case of philosophy dualism does not have the last word. For the process of secularization does not respect even the boundaries of the private and personal. Once a secular agenda engulfs the social order, the entire focus of human life shifts from the inward to the outward, and from the Eternal to the Here and Now. Secularization invades the most sensitively private arenas of our lives, spurred on by a social order driven by the urge for power, profits and uniformity. Our lives become devoured by temporal, mundane preoccupations even to the extent that such notions as redemption, enlightenment and deliverance — the watchwords of spirituality — at best serve as evokers of a sentimental piety. The dominant ends of secular society create a situation in which any boundary line of inward privacy comes to be treated as a barrier that must be surmounted. Hence we find that commercial interests and political organizations are prepared to explore and exploit the most personal frontiers of desire and fantasy in order to secure their advantage and enhance their wealth and power. | ||
+ | |||
+ | The ascendancy of secularization in human life in no way means that most people in secular society openly reject religion and acknowledge the finality of this-worldly aims. Far from it. The human mind displays an astounding ability to operate simultaneously on different levels, even when those levels are sustained by opposing principles. Thus in a given culture the vast majority will still pay homage to God or to the Dhamma; they will attend church or the temple; they will express admiration of religious ideals; they will conform to the routine observances expected of them by their ancestral faith. Appeals to religious sentiment will be a powerful means of stirring up waves of emotion and declarations of loyalty, even of mobilizing whole sections of the population in support of sectarian stands on volatile issues. This affirmation of allegiance to religious ideals is not done out of sheer hypocrisy, but from a capacity for inward ambivalence that allows us to live in a state of self-contradiction. People in secular society will genuinely profess reverence for religion, will vigorously affirm religious beliefs. But their real interests lie elsewhere, riveted tightly to the temporal. The ruling motives of human life are no longer purification but production, no longer the cultivation of character but the consumption of commodities and the enjoyment of sense pleasures. Religion may be permitted to linger at the margins of the mind, indeed may even be invited into the inward chamber, so long as it does not rudely demand of us that we take up any crosses. | ||
+ | |||
+ | This existential dislocation has major repercussions on a variety of fronts. Most alarming, in its immediate impact on our lives, is the decline in the efficacy of time-honored moral principles as guides to conduct. I do not propose painting our picture of the past in rosy colors. Human nature has never been especially sweet, and the books of history speak too loudly of man's greed, blindness and brutality. Often, I must sadly add, organized religion has been among the worst offenders. However, while aware of this, I would also say that at least during certain past epochs our ancestors esteemed ethical ideals as worthy of emulation and sanctioned moral codes as the proper guidelines of life. For all its historical shortcomings, | ||
+ | |||
+ | ==== The Religious Dimension ==== | ||
+ | |||
+ | As humanity moves ever closer to the 21st century, the existential rift at the heart of our inner life remains. Its pain is exacerbated by our repeated failures to solve so many of the social, political and economic problems that seem on the surface as though they should be easily manageable by our sophisticated technological capabilities. The stubborn persistence of these problems — and the constant emergence of new problems as soon as the old ones recede — seems to make a mockery of all our well-intentioned attempts to establish a utopian paradise on utterly secular premises. | ||
+ | |||
+ | I certainly do not think that the rediscovery of the religious consciousness is in itself a sufficient remedy for these problems which spring from a wide multiplicity of causes far too complex to be reduced to any simplistic explanation. But I do believe that the religious crisis of modern humanity is intimately connected to these diverse social and political tragedies at many levels. Some of these levels, I would add, lie far beyond the range of rational comprehension and defy analysis in terms of linear causality. I would see the connection as that of co-arisen manifestations of a corrosive sickness in the human soul — the sickness of selfishness and craving — or as karmic backlashes of the three root defilements pinpointed by Buddhism — greed, hatred and delusion — which have become so rampant today. I therefore think that any hopes we may cherish towards healing our community, our planet and our world must involve us in a deep level process of healing ourselves. And since this healing, in my view, can only be successfully accomplished by re-orienting our lives towards the Ultimate Reality and Supreme Good, the process of healing necessarily takes on a religious dimension. | ||
+ | |||
+ | It is hardly within my capacity as a very limited individual to delineate, in this paper, all the elements that would be required to restore the religious dimension to its proper role in human life. But I will first briefly mention two religious approaches that have sprung up in response to our existential dislocation, | ||
+ | |||
+ | The two religious phenomena that in my view are false detours which must finally be rejected are fundamentalism and spiritual eclecticism. Both have arisen as reactions to the pervasive secularism of our time; both speak to the widespread hunger for more authentic spiritual values than our commercial, sensualist culture can offer. Yet neither, I would argue, provides a satisfactory solution to our needs. | ||
+ | |||
+ | Fundamentalism no doubt bears the character of a religious revival. However, in my opinion it fails to qualify as a genuinely spiritual type of religiosity because it does not meet the criterion of true spirituality. This criterion I would describe, in broad terms, as the quest to transcend the limitations of the ego-consciousness. As I understand fundamentalism, | ||
+ | |||
+ | Spiritual eclecticism — omnipresent in the West today — is governed by the opposite logic. It aims to amalgamate, to draw into a whole a sundry variety of quasi-religious disciplines: | ||
+ | |||
+ | I believe that a viable solution to humanity' | ||
+ | |||
+ | Despite the vast differences between the belief systems of the major religions, I think there are vitally important areas of common concern which unite them in this Age of Confusion. With the world torn between senseless violence and vulgar frivolity, it is critically necessary that representatives of the great religions meet to exchange insights and to seek to understand each other more deeply. Cooperation between the great religions is certainly necessary if they are to contribute a meaningful voice towards the solution of the momentous spiritual dilemmas that confront us. | ||
+ | |||
+ | ==== The Tasks of Religion Today ==== | ||
+ | |||
+ | Here I will mention several challenges that confront the major religious traditions today, and I will also sketch, very briefly, the ways such challenges may be met from within the horizons of the religion which I follow, Theravada Buddhism. I leave it to the Christian scholars involved in this dialogue to decide for themselves whether these points are of sufficient gravity to merit their own attention and to work out solutions from the perspective of their own faith. | ||
+ | |||
+ | === (1) The Philosophical Bridge === | ||
+ | |||
+ | The first challenge I will discuss is primarily philosophical in scope, though with profound and far-reaching practical implications. This is the task of overcoming the fundamental dichotomy which scientific materialism has posited between the realm of "real fact," i.e., impersonal physical processes, and the realm of value. By assigning value and spiritual ideals to private subjectivity, | ||
+ | |||
+ | In the Buddha' | ||
+ | |||
+ | In the Buddha' | ||
+ | |||
+ | === (2) Guidelines to Conduct === | ||
+ | |||
+ | A second challenge, closely related to the first, is to propose concrete guidelines to right conduct capable of lifting us from our morass of moral confusion. While the first project I mentioned operates on the theoretical front, this one is more immediately practical in scope. Here we are not so much concerned with establishing a valid foundation for morality as with determining exactly what guidelines to conduct are capable of promoting harmonious and peaceful relations between people. On this front I think that the unsurpassed guide to the ethical good is still the Five Precepts // | ||
+ | |||
+ | These precepts are: | ||
+ | |||
+ | < | ||
+ | **1.** The rule to abstain from taking life, which implies the virtue of treating all beings with kindness and compassion | ||
+ | |||
+ | **2.** The rule to abstain from stealing, which implies honesty, respect for the possessions of others, and concern for the natural environment. | ||
+ | |||
+ | **3.** The rule to abstain from sexual misconduct, which implies responsibility and commitment in one's marital and other interpersonal relationships. | ||
+ | |||
+ | **4.** The rule to abstain from lying, which implies a commitment to truth in dealing with others. | ||
+ | |||
+ | **5.** The rule to abstain from alcoholic drinks, drugs and intoxicants, | ||
+ | </ | ||
+ | |||
+ | In presenting the case for these precepts, it should be shown that quite apart from their long-term karmic effect, which is a matter of faith, they conduce to peace and happiness for oneself right here and now, as well as towards the welfare of those whom one's actions affect. | ||
+ | |||
+ | === (3) Diagnosis of the Human Condition === | ||
+ | |||
+ | A third project for religion is to formulate, on the basis of its fundamental doctrinal traditions, an incisive diagnosis of the contemporary human condition. From the Buddhist perspective I think the analysis that the Buddha offered in his Four Noble Truths still remains perfectly valid. Not only does it need not the least revision or reinterpretation, | ||
+ | |||
+ | The core problem of human existence, the First Truth announces, is suffering. The canonical texts enumerate different types of suffering — physical, psychological and spiritual; in the present age, we should also highlight the enormous volume of social suffering that plagues vulnerable humanity. The cause of suffering, according to the Second Truth, lies nowhere else than in our own minds — in our craving and ignorance, in the defilements of greed, hatred and delusion. The solution to the problem is the subject of the Third Noble Truth, which states that liberation from suffering must also be effected by the mind, through the eradication of the defilements responsible for suffering. And the Fourth Truth gives us the method to eradicate the defilements, | ||
+ | |||
+ | === (4) A Practical Method of Training === | ||
+ | |||
+ | The next point is a practical extension of the third. Once a religion has offered us a diagnosis of the human condition which reveals the source of suffering in the mind, it must offer us concrete guidance in the task of training and mastering the mind. Thus I think that a major focus of present-day religion must be the understanding and transformation of the mind. This requires experiential disciplines by which we can arrive at deeper insight into ourselves and gradually effect very fundamental inward changes. Buddhism provides a vast arsenal of time-tested teachings and methods for meeting this challenge. It contains comprehensive systems of psychological analysis and potent techniques of meditation that can generate experiential confirmation of its principles. | ||
+ | |||
+ | In the present age access to these teachings and practices will cease to remain the exclusive preserve of the monastic order, but will spread to the lay community as well, as has already been occurring throughout the Buddhist world both in the East and in the West. The spirit of democracy and the triumph of the experimental method demand that the means of mind-development be available to anyone who is willing to make the effort. The experiential dimension of religion is an area where Christianity can learn a great deal from Buddhism, and I believe that Christianity must rediscover its own contemplative heritage and make available deeper transformative disciplines to both its clergy and its lay followers if it is to retain its relevance to humanity in the future. | ||
+ | |||
+ | === (5) The Preservation of the Human Community === | ||
+ | |||
+ | The last challenge I will discuss is the need for religions to re-affirm and to actively demonstrate those values that are particularly critical for the human race to attain the status of an integrative, | ||
+ | |||
+ | This is an area where Christianity, | ||
+ | |||
+ | I wish to conclude this talk by drawing attention to the fact that religion today has two crucial tasks to accomplish in responding to the vital problems of our time. One is to help the individual fathom the ultimate truth about his or her own personal existence, to move in the direction of the Ultimate Good, the Unconditioned Reality, wherein true liberation is to be found. The other task is to address the problem of the Manifest Good: the problem of the human community, of promoting peace, harmony and fellowship. The urgency of combining these two tasks was beautifully summed up by the Buddha in a short discourse in the Satipatthana Samyutta. There the Blessed One said: | ||
+ | |||
+ | <div excerpt_verse> | ||
+ | Protecting others, one protects oneself" | ||
+ | </ | ||
+ | |||
+ | He then explains that the expression " | ||
+ | |||
+ | <span # | ||
+ | |||
+ | <div # | ||
+ | |||
+ | <div showmore> | ||
+ | <div # | ||
+ | <div # | ||
+ | <div # | ||
+ | <div # | ||
+ | |||
+ | <div # | ||
+ | |||
+ | <div # | ||
+ | |||
+ | <div # | ||
+ | |||
+ | <div # | ||
+ | |||
+ | <div f_zzecopy> | ||
+ | |||
+ | </ | ||
+ | |||
+ | <div # | ||
+ | |||
+ | <div # | ||
+ | < | ||
+ | " | ||
+ | |||
+ | <div # | ||
+ | |||
+ | </ | ||
+ | </ | ||
+ | </ | ||
+ | |||
+ | ---- | ||
+ | |||
+ | <div # |