Essay #8:
Demythologizing The Buddha

by Gerard P. Downey

I enclose a copy of the short sermon I gave at the recent Won Buddhist meeting. I am not really satisfied with the piece but it does set out our differences in a succinct way.

Our conversation of the other evening got me thinking about devotion and contemplation. Ultimately I think that the highest high is contemplation of the Divine rather than worship. However when I approach those states verbs do get stretched almost to their breaking point so worshiping contemplation might be a good description. Thomas Aquinas says that the reward for the virtuous will be an eternity cognizing the essence of God. I think that I agree with Thomas or at least I can use his system as a bridge for me in my meditation.

Now I am glad that the Dalai Lama meditates 8 hours a day and I am glad that I do not. I think that each person can take himself completely into Divine Bliss. Everywhere is an entrance. I subscribe to the Sudden School because it seems most consistent with an Egalitarian Deity. Anybody, anytime - I imagine is God's maxim. As the Sixth Patriarch said, "Where could the dust alight?"

Overall I have great admiration for gradualists. I think that they do transform their lives just as you say. Their entire life becomes a prayer and an act of worship and this is a most high sort of conduct. I just doubt if it is enough. I think that it is a form of man-God bargaining akin to what patients determined to be dying engage in. As Jim Morrison said, "You can not petition The Lord with prayer. " I think what is meant is that one can write their life story as a gradual coming to God but God's story might be different. Different days present different challenges,defeats or victories. I think the Sudden School gives a better description of the meditative process. Sometimes one sees clearly, other times one is in the dark night. If we have insight only as a result of God's grace (you really should look at T.A. on grace) then unless God is compelled (how could He be?) enlightenment is sudden. Aristotle is interesting because he asserts that every once in awhile one attains to that state that God is always in but we come back. We dwell on this shore. I like Aristotle because his description seems to jive better with reality than those of the spiritual adept who claim to have mastered the game.

I think that Aristotle and Thomas are profound attainers of truth. They differ from the mystics in that they try to make their attainment rational. They are philosophers and not religionists; our fundamental difference is that I still consider myself a member of the philosopher not religionist or even mystic clan.

Gerry.

DEMYTHOLOGIZING THE BUDDHA

Buddha can be seen as either a spiritual ideal or a philosophic ideal. The difference between the two views concerns the role of the supernatural and Buddha. A philosopher adopting the law of parsimony desires to make as few assumptions as possible. The philosopher desires to demythologize the Buddha in the same manner some modern Christian theologians have endeavored to demythologize Christ. By demythologizing the story of the Buddha all supernatural references would be deleted. The announcement by Buddha of his Enlightenment at the moment of his birth, the temptations by Mara and the approval of Brahma at Buddha's adoption of a teaching way are supernatural and thus they would be held in parenthesis.

To the religionist-Buddhists, who I am assuming greatly outnumber the philosopher-Buddhists, the enterprise of demythologizing might seem absurd. If the Buddha is seen as the spiritual ideal and the spiritual imports the supernatural then the more assumptions and beliefs one takes into one's metaphysics of faith the better or fuller faith is. The law of least assumptions need not trouble the religionist but assumptions and violations of natural laws do trouble a great number of philosophers.

But what is the core of Buddhism bereft of the supernatural? The answer seems to be The Way and its relation to II Won Song.

I would imagine the relation might be something like the following. The realization of II Won Song can be understood as being equivalent to the understanding of the truth of anatta. Anatta means "not self" or selflessness. In the metaphysical sense the true understanding of the Reality yields the counter-Cartesian insight that in some real sense I think but I do not exist. Virtue is selflessness in favor of another. At this stage the ontological insight - anatta - merges and is equivalent with the ethical - selflessness. In this transcendent realization the Buddha, Sotesan or any other enlightened being achieves something more marvelous, at least to the philosopher, than fighting a thousand devils or realizing a hundred thousand prior incarnations. This attainment or enlightenment implies and necessitates correct conduct the imperceptible characteristic of the truly enlightened and the goal state of all philosophers.

The End.