Buddhist doctrines and practices are a "raft." Even the idea of Nirvana as "elsewhere" or "elsewhen" is just a raft. These doctrines are true not as descriptions about what is so, but only as useful tools to attain something we have decided to try to do.
Buddhist doctrines and ethics are not descriptions of truths, they are not categorical obligations. They are available methods. The question of "truth" enters only in the sense of this sort of question: does the raft work? Will it hold? Will it get us to the other side? And is the other side really any better than over here.
---Adapted from
Emptiness and Omnipresence,
by Brook A. Ziporyn---
No comments:
Post a Comment