Three Buddhisms & The Isolation Of The Philosopher
By Shyamon Jayasinghe –September 18, 2016
Shyamon Jayasinghe
There are three Buddhisms operating in the world today. I am not referring to Theravada, Mahayana and Vajrayana. The latter are basically perceived as unopposed to each other and their followers are observed to worship together in many an instance. The reference here is to three different kinds of Buddhism often running in contradiction to each other and extending their coverage across the Theravada, Mahayana and Vajrayana streams themselves. My three Buddhisms represent a fundamental differentiation. What are they? They are Buddhism as philosophy, Buddhism as religion and Buddhism as a tribal badge of identity.
There is much evidence to believe that the Buddha was, to begin with, a philosopher of ancient times like Socrates, Plato or Aristotle. An extraordinarily intelligent man, he was given to deep thinking and reflection about the existential condition of the human being;found it unsatisfactory and searched for a way out of the crisis. The Buddha’s focus, though, was different to that of Aristotle and particularly Plato who were theory builders. If comparisons be appropriate, the Buddha was more akin to Socrates. The latter was also interested in focussing on the human being and he went round seeking to get people to clarify their assumptions about issues like life,happiness and justice. The Buddha also adopted a questioning approach similar to Socrates and he loved to talk to people. In a very real sense their feet were on the ground and not in the air of an allegedly’ transcendent reality.’
The basic teaching of the Buddha related to ethical philosophy. In his principal doctrines-the Four Noble Truths and the Noble Eightfold Path he tried to diagnose the personal existential crisis of mind and delineated a moral path that could lift him out of that crisis. While the Abrahamic religions of Christianity and Jewish directed followers to rally round God and worship him and part to him for deliverance the Buddha gave the task of ‘deliverance’ to man himself. The Buddhist philosophy was sharply human-centric. “Be a light unto yourselves,” Buddha advised Ananda in the Mahaparinibbana Sutta on the eve of his passing away. Man is not helpless and he need not seek the help of any divine being for his liberation. By own effort he can do it himself. This was Buddha’s basic philosophical approach. It was dominantly empirical and not dependent on a transcendent entity like God.
In explaining the nature of things (res natura) the Buddha eschewed the divine and resorted to the causal theory of Paticca Samuppada (Dependent Origination). “With this arising that will arise. “ Every phenomena is conditional upon other phenomena. Hence, there is no phenomena that could be deemed to stand on its own- no ‘uncaused cause.’ The Paticca Samuppada impliedly dismisses the belief of a God creator. Professor KN Jayatilleka (Facets of Buddhist Philosophy) points out how Makkhali Gosala had come out with a creation theory and how the Buddha repudiated the latter. Thus, once creation goes off and the creator is also off, so would be the heavens.
