conebeckham wrote: ↑Mon Oct 11, 2021 12:48 am
what is an "Evolving Process?'
It sounds like a conceptual, abstract overlay.
The very definition of "change" is contradictory to what is meant by "inhering," isn't it??
The reality of language is it is malleable and made to conform to whims. It is almost always a reply. There are no inherent meanings. We could conceive a world where inherent always refers to wind or time, because these are constants in this world. We fail to realize how deeply we have assumed. Our assumptions are almost interminable. Even 1+1=2 is subject to logical dislocation, read Wittgenstein. As Buddhists we are all probably fooling ourselves into thinking these medieval philosophers are doing anything to help us overcome conceptuality. Buddhism is not advanced in this area. Other European philosophers especially the Vienna school are just far deeper. We really do need to understand ideas advance, that there have been advancements and Buddhism is very antiquated.
Buddhist philosophy is almost always responding to some other antiquated Indian philosophy. Indian philosophy was never about reality. It was always about, How can I stop being reborn? Yoga of any kind has this as a goal. One way to stop being reborn is to become a messiah, read Walter Benjamin. He says we can literally will ourselves to puncture the fabric of time, win wars with a thought, conquer the world forever in a second. You've got get your head around kabalistic messianic philosophy. It's a mind blow.
It's not as if Buddhism doesn't put immortality on offer. It's just used logical strategy to defeat the competing religious claims and then promoted guys with eternal rainbow bodies. What it did was say, you guys don't even know what eternal means. We examined all your claims of what might be eternal and here are the flaws we found. Buddhism doesn't say nothing is eternal. What it does say is nothing they said counts as eternal. Kalachakra is very explicit about this. Nothing material is eternal. The Mahamudra is not material. The appearances which are felt and visual like smoke and fireflies are not material, are also not permanent but appear in that which is.
The trikaya is a unique expression of eternity. 8th Karmapa said there is no nonappearing emptiness. All appearances and possibilities are emptiness. The way we are breaking out of contrived ideation ultimately is to gear our minds to perceive the uselessness of common emotions, and to see the utility of compassion and Bodhicitta, because these are so uncommon they always make an impact.
In essence the tantra have modern value because of its unique ability to root out common emotions and goofy ideas. With regard to tantra, it's light years ahead of it's time. As an art form if advanced aliens came down the would definitely be blown away by tantra, not Van Gough or Vasubandhu. However Buddhist philosophy is still in the dark ages. Honestly it's not going to advance because hardly anyone cares. Try talking about it you either get laughed out of the classroom or some quote robot launches into cut and paste tirades.
No one in Buddhism today is refuting modern philosophy because the don't have anything resembling an education in math or logic. No modern logician will bother refuting Buddhism because if you're a rocket scientist you don't debate chariot builders.
Tantra is all that is left here as something high. Starting from guys like the 8th Karmapa and Mahamudra philosophy we could start to build a modern discourse. But we really need to up the game, understand why we do this (because it's the best high), be clear about our endgame, and toss the tired ass language games into the dustbin of history.