How is maintaining Brahman to be *ultimately real*, and saying he is inconceivable not a contradiction in terms? Surely to be defined in a definite manner such as to name it "real" is to lend a dualistic notion to what is supposed to be outside conception..right?rachmiel wrote:I understand that brahman is beyond human conceiving, and that any attempt to do so is doomed to frustration/failure.
Advaita agrees with this. But it maintains that brahman is *real* -- the only real, in fact -- and that it is all there is.
So did Buddha say: It makes no sense to even talk about this ultimate stuff, since I can never know. In effect: I'm a-brahman-gnostic.
Or did he *know* and choose not to reveal his knowledge because he deemed it counterproductive to his goal of ending human suffering?
In other words, does Buddhism say there is no ultimate, no brahman ... or that it is of no use to wonder about this. There's a huge difference there, in my opinion.
I don't remember which Pali Bit this is from (i'm sure someone here knows it from memory), but there is a line where Buddha says something like "I teach everything, what is everything - the aggregates. If someone teaches another everything, can he describe this everything?" This pretty much sums it up, any teaching of things that are not this everything, like assertions of the character of what lies beyond it etc. are just word games - games involving assertion and negation of things that don't lead anywhere. Again, just my take.
Here's some related reading:
http://www.buddhanet.net/pdf_file/nagarjuna.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;