For the secular materialist, including the secular Buddhist, the mystic’s quest is not to be found. There is no escape from the fluctuations of time (samsara) and by achieving this escape, find rest in the transcendent, i.e., nirvana.
The secular materialist believes it far more credible to take the cosmological approach (which more or less I am borrowing from Paul Tillich). This approach doesn’t see anything beyond the fluctuations of time in which all beings are involved; all of whom are subject to extinction with not even the possibility of rebirth (punarbhava). If there is a transcendent or unconditioned reality beyond the fluctuations of time it must be proven by sensory consciousness, being at least pragmatically useful.
What seems to be provable from the side of cosmology is our natural humanity and absolute finitude which is death. For the secular Buddhist this can be worked up into another Buddhism: learning to live in the temporal now, accepting death with nothing beyond it.
But the cosmological approach is really no approach at all. It is unlike the mystic’s quest which presupposes an eternal, undying nature in all sentient beings, this being the Buddha-nature. One has only to discover it to be free from the fluctuations of time.
Presently, the modern face of Buddhism is showing signs of a paradigm war between Buddhists who favor the cosmological approach and those who favor the mystical approach. Over time this war will eventually develop into an irreconcilable schism.
What's 'modern' about it? Is this not just the same old eternalism vs. nihilism debate dressed up in new terminology?
Posted by: The Naked Monk | September 17, 2011 at 11:16 PM
you talk as if the cosmos aesthetos and the cosmos noetos are different branches of metaphysica
Are you heaping heretical fallacies round you for a noble ends? It cant be
Youre confusing a holos to spurn schism
Posted by: Java Junkie | September 15, 2011 at 01:44 AM