Dear Loy-alists,
I was going to make the assignment a but longer this week, but the previous discussion is still cooking, and there is A LOT packed into these few pages. So, we will focus on "The Problem of Transcendence" this week.
Nishijima spoke of "idealistic" religions this way. He said that Zen was not an idealistic religion although, as David Loy notes, there are certainly (maybe most?) idealistic forms of Buddhism.
I posted the following in the prior thread in response to the comment that Loy advocated an "immanent" approach:
I also don't think that the "transcendent" view is all bad, nor wrong and to be completely abandoned in Zen Practice. It is just that there are some problems with approaching it in certain ways. I believe Loy later addresses how to avoid the problems.
Anyway, please discuss whatever strikes your fancy here. I might toss out:
-It must always be rather simplistic for someone to try to sum up all world history in a few pages, but he may have some good points here. What do you think?
-Do you really believe that the transcendent world view is a major factor in environmental degradation and the second class status of women?
-Anticipating later chapters, what might be good and a "keeper" about transcendent views?
Gassho, Jundo
SatToday
I was going to make the assignment a but longer this week, but the previous discussion is still cooking, and there is A LOT packed into these few pages. So, we will focus on "The Problem of Transcendence" this week.
Nishijima spoke of "idealistic" religions this way. He said that Zen was not an idealistic religion although, as David Loy notes, there are certainly (maybe most?) idealistic forms of Buddhism.
For example, in most [idealistic] religions, the central focus of the teaching is the idea of a superhuman, ideal entity such as a god, and each such religion is formed having as its centerpiece a belief in that god. This type of religion is most like what we usually bring to consider as being a religion, and thus is the most conventional. If we ask the true nature of the entity represented by these idealized, yet anthropomorphic, human-like gods, we can say that it is actually a concept of the ideal which we human beings each carry within our hearts.
We human beings are the animal that has developed the highest ability to think. Accordingly, each moment of each day, we think that we wish circumstances to be like this, or to be like that, or that things should be like this or should be like that. We contrast this with the state of the world before us, the state of circumstances we see around us, that are just as they are with all their seeming imperfections. In such manner, the state of the way that things should be that we human beings have the capability to envision within our heads is typically called the ideal. Those religions that arose centered upon such higher ideals, focused on images of the ideal, and setting high value on the ideal, are the ones we most usually think of as being religions. Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Islam, and many others—even many flavors of Buddhism—most belief systems that we commonly call religions belong to this category. They each hold up some perfect, idealized state or other world, in the light of which this world we live in is just a shadow. They point to some other state of being, or some heaven, toward which we aim, but in contrast to which human beings and the unsightly human world fall far, far short.
From: A Heart-to-Heart Chat on Buddhism with Old Master Gudo
We human beings are the animal that has developed the highest ability to think. Accordingly, each moment of each day, we think that we wish circumstances to be like this, or to be like that, or that things should be like this or should be like that. We contrast this with the state of the world before us, the state of circumstances we see around us, that are just as they are with all their seeming imperfections. In such manner, the state of the way that things should be that we human beings have the capability to envision within our heads is typically called the ideal. Those religions that arose centered upon such higher ideals, focused on images of the ideal, and setting high value on the ideal, are the ones we most usually think of as being religions. Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Islam, and many others—even many flavors of Buddhism—most belief systems that we commonly call religions belong to this category. They each hold up some perfect, idealized state or other world, in the light of which this world we live in is just a shadow. They point to some other state of being, or some heaven, toward which we aim, but in contrast to which human beings and the unsightly human world fall far, far short.
From: A Heart-to-Heart Chat on Buddhism with Old Master Gudo
I believe that Loy later in the book actually encourages a path that transcends and embraces both the "immanent" and the "transcendent" without neglecting either, and I certainly feel that Dogen was a pretty "transcendent" and mystical fellow but with an "immanent" view of Practice in the here and now. Let's see what Loy says in later sections when we get there.
Anyway, please discuss whatever strikes your fancy here. I might toss out:
-It must always be rather simplistic for someone to try to sum up all world history in a few pages, but he may have some good points here. What do you think?
-Do you really believe that the transcendent world view is a major factor in environmental degradation and the second class status of women?
-Anticipating later chapters, what might be good and a "keeper" about transcendent views?
Gassho, Jundo
SatToday
God gave man dominion over the earth, according to the Bible. I tend to interpret dominion as stewardship but all too often it becomes exploitation, the idea that the earth is here to serve us however we want with little thought to longterm, or sometimes even short-term, consequences for us and the earth. Power differentials are a reality that need to be acknowledged and worked with, but getting stuck there weakens that process and thus causes problems.
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