(nibbana) = (Nirguna Brahman) ?

[un824 at FREENET.VICTORIA.BC.CA]

Namaste,

Vidyasankar writes:

>Besides, in my experience, no two translators ever give the same
>translation/meaning for the original. Fortunately, there are an increasing
>number of books being written in English by those who know the Buddhist
>traditions from inside, e.g. the Dalai Lama, and I prefer to give greater
>weight to their views. I'll give a quotation from him in a later posting,
>which bears upon this issue.
>

I agree with the translation caveat. I understand English only, but have
read enough different translations of some things to see what your talking
about. As for the Dalai Lama, as fine a person as he is, it is not possible
(IMO) to point to any particular reading (or reader) and hold them up as
*the* received and final authority on *anything*!  Please don't
bother quoting him. I'm sure I could find a dozen Buddhist scholars to
say exactly what you want here, but if I can find even one credible
dissenting view, it's still an open question and that's my point. The
"word game" (most of philosophy according to Wittgenstein) does not seem to
and quite possibly cannot resolve itself in its own terms on its own level.


>Thus, the Buddhists have never equated nibbaNa to a Self, although nibbaNa
>is described as beyond the realm of empirical personality, as unborn,
>uncreated, etc.

The Buddha equated nibbana with the truth. Now ** if ** the truth is what
you mean by Self then it may be "the Buddhists have never equated nibbaNa
to a Self [ie. the truth]" ** but the Buddha did ** !!!
                           ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Surely our difficulty here is "nibbana" and "Self" are both referring to
what is essentially unthinkable, unrepresentable, non-dual, non-relative,
truth. The real question (which you didn't quite address) is whether there
are *two* (or more!) unthinkable, unrepresentable, non-dual, non-relative
truths or only one.  As soon as any unrepresentable truth *is* talked
about, aren't we uttering nonsense?  Aren't all philosophical arguments
(ultimately) about differing (and sometimes fanatically defended) versions
of nonsense!  If nothing can be said about truth, what is the arument about?

So it could very well be that Buddhists and Vedantists have different ideas
*about* the truth, but woe to this world if they actually have different
"truths". It is no longer enough (IMO) to hunker down in the relative
safety of one's little tradition and imagine only it is true. (IMO),if any
spirituality is to be taken seriously in the future, people will need to be
able to see *how* the significant majority of spiritual systems are grounded
in the same truth. If these very systems insist on displaying themselves as
being fundamentally different they will only succeed in cancelling each
other out. The whole issue therefore is not about who got it right and who
got it wrong (or who failed to emphasize what), it is actually (in my view)
about how (or if) we can co-ordinate the spiritual resources of our
common global heritage before too much more damage is done.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

-Allan Curry

P.S.

The Buddhists had a very wise reason for not emphasizing the "unborn" in
response to Vedantist's objections and others who accused them of being
nihilistic, but I am lacking the heart to swim much further up this
particular stream. My hat goes off to you Vidyasankar, you are a scholar
and a gentleman. You've argued your case *very* well and I'm sure you would
win "on points" if this were a real debate. For my part, even if I am now
surrendering the field to you, I hope I've been able to hint at why I found
the endeavor worth even attempting.  Namaste, truly, with all my heart...