1.2 Three Marks & Five Khandas - scholars Flashcards
how Huntington Jr explains anicca
there are no stable, well-defined ‘things’ or ‘people’, only a ceaseless, ungraspable stream of events’
Huntington Jr: how to ‘see things as they are’
focus on the structure rather than content of experience, and realise how our assumptions about reality contradict the reality of experience
Huntington Jr: why things appear stable
most change happens slowly, below the level of normal perception
Huntington Jr’s example of death to illustrate anicca
death is always around us, but we do not, or choose not to, notice it is a slow process or because we assume it unpleasant
in reality, relief is found in encountering and accepting death as a universal truth
Huntington Jr’s description of anatta
there is no difference between the impermanence of things outside of us and inside us. ‘I too am nothing but a mental construct, a phantom’s mask covering the reality of change’
Huntington Jr: evidence our assumption we are the agents of our own thoughts and action is false
- no conscious control over internal functions
- if in control of our bodies why make them susceptible to disease and death
- if in control of our thoughts why dwell on worries and regrets
Huntington Jr’s description of Dukkha
no english word captures the full range of meaning of dukkha. dukkha is a subtle, all-pervasive dis-ease accompanying all forms of suffering, but is in itself none of them
Huntington Jr: how denial things that make us happy will end causes dukkha (referencing Freud)
takes a psychological toll - comes at the price of an ‘all pervasive anxiety… making it impossible for us to experience any genuine happiness’
Huntington Jr: ‘dukkha is not a suffering experienced by…
… the personality, dukkha just is the personality … to be somebody- anybody- is to continually suffer’
Huntington Jr: ‘underneath all my pleasures…
…the dark current of dukkha flows … polluting everything with the stench of an insatiable hunger and fear I cannot afford to acknowledge’
Huntington Jr’s translation of karuna
love - ‘more complex and intimate than a simple feeling of compassion’ ‘commitment to ones dharma’
Huntington Jr: through voicing the dharma, the Buddha gave ‘a new idiom for…
…an ageless, universal law of self sacrifice’
Huntington Jr: the Bodhisattva vow as an example of self-sacrifice
starts with: Sentient beings are numberless; I vow to save them all.
ends with: The Buddha’s way is unattainable; I vow to attain it
full commitment, sacrifice of all else, to something seemingly impossible
Barbara O’Brien’s interpretation of the chariot simile
judgements we make as to when something composed of parts starts or stops being that thing are subjective - there is no essence of the named object that somehow dwells within the parts, it is just a concept we project onto constituent parts
Side: effects of meditating on the aggregates and anatta
balancing and harmonising personality factors leads to the realisation we are not a unitary ‘person’, but changeable. this transforms understanding of anatta from a philosophical idea to a practical truth
Side’s description of ‘conventional truth’
what is true of empirical experience; what those with deluded understanding of the way things are take to be true
Side’s description of ‘ultimate truth’
the truth of how things always really are, not just under certain circumstances - transcends the empirical and appears to those with enlightened understanding
Side: what is meant by the Mahayanan statement ‘there is no sufferingl’
it is a conventional not ultimate truth - it is only real under circumstances of delusion, and can be ended
Side: sandcastle example to demonstrate that dukkha is not real
child upset when sandcastle washes away as under delusion it was permanent. parents not upset because they understood it was not impermanent. dukkha is not real to the parents
Mahayana Heart Sutra ‘the mantra that calms all suffering…
…should be known as the truth, since there is no deception’
Nagarjuna: how things ‘come together’
in a synchronic process, through mysterious interplay of dynamic energies and forces
Nagarjuna’s description of shunyata
all things are always subject to change, so have no intrinsic essence
Nagarjuna: why nothing that exists can be called a cause or an effect
no unitary entities exist at all, we can never find a definite starting point to our analysis
Goldstein: overview of the first two links in the Law of Dependent Origination
have to do with causes in the last life which condition this one. ignorance conditions volitional activity which holds karmic force