Guest guest Posted November 10, 2003 Report Share Posted November 10, 2003 Namaste, Concordance said: "If the Sunyavadi (nihilist) regards the void as something existent and the Vijnanavadi (idealist) regards Vijnana (knowledge or consciousness) as fixed and unchanging by nature, there is no difference between them and Vedanta'. The Buddhists were so pleased with the Acharya's rational reply that they all said in unison, 'Acharya, you are the fittest person to enter the temple'." Consciousness is simply undeniable. We may argue over whether matter (prakriti) exists or does not, but any attempt to deny consciousness immediately refutes itself. Therefore, the Buddhist emptiness is nonsensical if it attempts to deny consciousness. We all agree that Buddha was at least intelligent, so let us not attribute nonsense to him. The notion of 'emptiness' was simply the means by which later Mahayana Buddhism expressed the 'Neti, neti' of the Upanishads. It is the misperceived objects of ordinary dualism which are empty. If consciousness itself were truly 'non-existent', then why strive for Nirvana? By the way, nobody took me up when I suggested that an extreme nihilistic view of deep sleep may suffer some of the same deficiencies as the extreme version of emptiness. Just a suggestion... Finally, instead of taking up space with another message, I will say something to Dennis here regarding his devil's advocate's musings on the brain. There is a more basic reason than what you stated for denying the current Western attempt to reduce consciousness to brain chemicals and processes. If matter truly exists, as these materialists suggest, then this matter is *by definition* unconscious. Therefore it simply cannot be the support or essence of consciousness, anymore than black can be white. This is not to deny a close correlation between our internal mental appearances and those perceptions we are pleased to call the 'brain' (all of which are manifestations in consciousness). Hari Om! Benjamin Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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