Marxist Critique of the Four Noble Truths - Conclusion
Conclusion
The Buddha, through the auspices of the Four Noble Truths, believes that he has, through a method that might be described as introspective empiricism, discovered the ultimate explanation of mind-body existence. A circular argument is developed whereby delusion is defined as not knowing, understanding, or realising the structure and inherent factuality of the Four Noble Truths, and the state of enlightenment explained as the complete, total, and full penetration and comprehension of the Four Noble Truths. Reality is the Four Noble Truths fully understand, so that in the process of unfolding insight, suffering ceases. Delusion is the state of the non-realisation of the factuality of the Four Noble Truths. The Buddha was a revolutionary because he thoroughly critiqued and dismissed the Brahmanic status quo of his time, in such a way that is applicable between different cultures. As long as delusion rules the roost, the Buddha’s method is relevant. A Buddhism that supports the deluded status quo and the inherent class interests of those who hold power, is a distorted Buddhism stripped of its greatest weapon of wise deconstruction. Although the Buddha abhorred physical violence, and appears to view its use as being the product of the grossest upper class related ignorance, (i.e. kings, ministers, and priests causing wars for petty, egotistical reasons), nevertheless, his method of deconstruction exercises the greatest and most effective philosophical and psychological unleashing of violent, deconstructive intent upon the state. The Buddha, through careful and precise analysis, reveals through carefully chosen words, the corrupt nature of society, and explains how this outer corruption (associated with caste and commerce), is represented in the mind as greed, hatred, and delusion. The status quo, through the Buddha’s analysis, is thoroughly smashed and has no leg to stand on. This is revolutionary violence of a very subtle and revolutionary type. It is not physical violence premised upon greed, hatred, and delusion, (which the Buddha clearly forbids), but it is a laser-beam type violence of concentrated energy, committed by a fully functioning human mind that rejects all the gross aspects of incoherent violence on the physical plane. The Four Noble Truths do violence to greed, hatred, and delusion, reducing this ‘suffering’ to peace and tranquillity. The Four Noble Truths represent a battle-plan whereby ‘suffering’ (dukkha) is hunted-down, cornered, and destroyed. It is not physical force that achieves this revolutionary change, but rather the force of a mind fully united in its function and objective. The mind has the power to change its own functioning, and the structures and patterns of behaviour and social interaction it produces in the physical world. When advanced social structures are developed, the mind is conditioned from without toward that which is of the highest calibre within. On the other hand, the Buddha’s method is not without the iron hand associated with severe physical discipline. For the mind to be freed, the body must be carefully and stringently controlled within the world it inhabits. Without this reigning in of the body and its appetites, the Buddha’s teachings simply become empty words, and Buddhists of this sort become followers of a self-indulgent fetish. As the Buddha dismisses without debate, the validity of the prevailing status quo, Buddhism and its methods must be viewed as revolutionary philosophy akin to that espoused by Marx and Engels, and a distinction must be drawn between it and the delusion of religiosity, which is, of course, the source of true human suffering.
Is the Buddhist theory of karma logical and rational from a Marxist perspective? To answer this question it is important to ascertain exactly what this theory is designed to achieve. The Buddha, (like Marx in relation to the Judeo-Christian tradition), thoroughly rejected the philosophy and theology of the Brahmanic religion, and the social system of caste premised upon its teachings. Karma, as a notion of reward and punishment related to action, pre-existed Buddhist thought, and is still used within the Brahmanic system to justify and maintain the inherently racist caste system. Whereas Marx perceives modern European life as being dominated by a ruthless and unjust class system of economic interests, Brahmanism, by way of contrast, presents its caste system as ‘just’ and ‘perfect’, as it is viewed as a divine emanation from an unseen god. Brahmanic gods exercise their divine power over humans through the agency of karma. The unseen hand of god is believed to enter the physical world and literally move people and objects around. Ordinary people are taught that their lives are more or less pre-destined by their previous karma (accumulated in past lives), which is mingled with the will of god. Good behaviour, (and bad behaviour), according to the Brahmanic teaching, can not change the caste system, or alter the social hierarchy in any way, during the present moment. The same teachings advise that if a person quietly acquiesces to the god-willed inequality they experience on a daily basis, and piously go about their day worshipping the very god that oppresses them, then through this ‘good’ action (i.e. karma), god might allow them to be born in a higher caste during their next life. On the other hand, although it is pointless to resist the divinely-inspired caste system, any action that actively seek to oppose its structures, are by definition interpreted as ‘bad’ and are punished accordingly by the divine powers that be. This punishment could include maiming and murder (achieved through the practice of human sacrifice) on this plane – brutal actions carried-out by the highest caste of Brahmin priests – or involve a rebirth in a low caste, or perhaps reborn in the body of an insect or animal, etc.
Obviously, this Brahmanic teaching is closely akin to the Judeo-Christian notion of original sin, and achieves exactly the same objective – the entrapment and oppression of its practitioners. Theistic religion, as an inversion of the mind, is set to prevent the emergence and development of rationality and logic. Religious theology fills in the gap of knowledge about the true nature of the physical world, with all kinds of fantastic imaginations. As an inversion, its strictures are both highly dangerous and misleading. Religious thought, when taken seriously, causes mental and physical illness that often involves death and destruction. This deluded thought, whilst masquerading as a path of deliverance, actually produces the very oppression and violence it claims to combat. Religion, whilst dragging the ignorant and the vulnerable into its searing pit of destructive self-indulgence, contains within its inherent contradictions, the seed of its own demise. All it takes is the emergence of rationality through the religious inversion correcting itself and turning the mind (and its perception), the right way around. This requires wholesome education and genuine experience on the physical plane. Brahmanic rebirth is of course, a nonsensical teaching. It is a lie created to justify a racist social structure designed to keep people in order through discrimination. The Brahmanic caste system rates and ranks people through the colour of their skin. The Brahmins have light skin, the Kshatriya have slightly darker complexions, the Vaisya darker still, and the Sudra the darkest, etc. Under the official castes are the collections of various tribal peoples derogatorily termed ‘Untouchables’ (Dalit). The Buddha, being a member of the Kshatriya (warrior and king) caste, rejected Brahmanic theology as being the product of delusion, along with the social system it supported. The Buddha’s notion of karma eradicates theology from philosophy, and therefore must be considered rational in its premise. Buddhist karma is not deterministic, but recognises that each individual has the ability to think, speak, and act as they see fit from moment to moment, and in so doing, they possess the ability to produce either relatively good, neutral, or bad behaviour, which elicits in their mind, body, or environment, good, neutral, or bad reaction. Buddhist karma acknowledges the relative situation in regards to the differences in human culture, and understand that what might be a ‘good’ action in one social grouping, can be considered ‘neutral’, or even ‘bad’ in another. Buddhist karma does not acknowledge a divine-hand behind the behaviour of humanity. Humanity creates its own karma through the agency of volition, or will-power. As many conditioned circumstances feed into a single moment of awareness in life, Buddhist karma can not be seen as a system of reward and punishment, but merely a logical statement of fact that all actions have causes, and that all causes are the product of previous actions, and so on in a self-sustaining continuum. Through wisdom, this mind-body-environment continuum can be influenced in directions that are conducive to human development, but conversely, the same continuum can be influenced toward its detriment if ignorance is not checked. The Buddha agrees with Marx, when he states that religiosity creates social conditions (and cultural constructs) that oppress the people. In this regard, the Buddhist notion of karma is closely related, (if not exactly identical to), the Marxist theory of historical materialism and must be interpreted as both highly rational and logical. The only sticking point is the apparent presence of rebirth within Buddhist rhetoric, despite the fact that the Buddha states time and again that rebirth is an illusion that exists only in the deluded state. In the objective assessment of Buddhist philosophy, therefore, the notion of rebirth can be dispensed with as being merely the fading memory of Brahmanic superstition. Rebirth has a certain currency in Asia due to historical Brahmanic influence and in the West where many Christian converts to Buddhism gain a certain sentimental comfort from its presence, viewing it very much as an exotic promise of a more practical Judeo-Christian heaven - experienceable after-death.
It can be reasonably argued that any presence of religiosity within Buddhism constitutes a false Buddhism, and is indicative of an importation of theology from other sources. The earliest strata of Buddhist texts demonstrate clearly that the Buddha was operating from a cognitive base of reason and logic, and that this approach was a reaction to Brahmanic theology. It appears that over-time, certain Brahmanic ideas and notions started to seep into Buddhist thinking from those Buddhist monks who were more Hindu than Buddhist, and who obviously either did not understand the Buddha’s anti-religious message, or understood it perfectly and sought to bring it down from within. Whatever the case, the Buddhist suttas/sutras in their earliest forms, display obvious tampering through editing; an editing process that was intended to subtly divert attention away from the original logic of the Buddha, and toward a modified version of his teaching. This editing process occurred over a number of generations following the death of the Buddha, and was carried-out by scholar-monks. The process of misrepresentation was assisted by the fact that the Buddhist teachings were originally passed on by word of mouth, and act of memory, before being rendered into print hundreds of years later. This process and necessity reflects a time when most ordinary people could not read and write, but many Buddhist monastics specialised in literacy and therefore became dominant in interpretation. Being able to read and write simply confirmed this dominance which existed even when the suttas were handed down by word of mouth only. The Brahmanification of Buddhism represents a process through which an attempt is made to colonise the non-theistic ideas of Buddhism, and replace them with the theistic ideas of Brahmanism. Notions such as rebirth, caste, nationalism, misogyny, sacrifice, the Buddha as a god, eternalism, nihilism, and deterministic karma are all symptomatic of Brahmanic interference within logical Buddhism. Wherever religiosity appears to raise its head within Buddhism, it maybe readily disposed of and thoroughly rejected. A religious Buddhism is nothing other than an inverted consciousness, but a logical Buddhism represents the true consciousness of a mind fully functioning at an optimum frequency. Religiosity has been identified as the enemy of humanity by both Karl Marx, and Siddharta Gautama, and when comparing Marxism with Buddhism, it is important to take into account the polluting influence of Brahmanism, and remove such notions from consideration. In this way it is like with like that is being compared, and not religiosity with rationality. In the West, there is a similar pollution entering Buddhism from a Judeo-Christian perspective. As an ‘inverted mind’ is an ‘inverted mind’, it is true that Judeo-Christian and Brahmanic theology, represent exactly the same inverted dysfunction of the mind, and negatively effect the rationality of Buddhism in the same destructive manner. This misrepresentation is similar to Marxism being misrepresented as the ‘word of god’, and Karl Marx as the ‘son of god’. In this bizarre model, historical materialism is morphed into non-historical spiritualism, and the world is turned upon its head. The inner core of rational and logical philosophy is the essence of original Buddhism and its content must be clearly identified and preserved. When this is achieved, it is clear that Buddhism and Marxism are of a very similar expression, an expression that frees the world from the tyranny of conditioned history. This is why the Four Noble Truths represent a non-religious path of self-cultivation which is similar in structure to modern European theories of psychology, and the academic tradition of philosophy of the mind.
©opyright: Adrian Chan-Wyles (ShiDaDao) 2014.
The Buddha, through the auspices of the Four Noble Truths, believes that he has, through a method that might be described as introspective empiricism, discovered the ultimate explanation of mind-body existence. A circular argument is developed whereby delusion is defined as not knowing, understanding, or realising the structure and inherent factuality of the Four Noble Truths, and the state of enlightenment explained as the complete, total, and full penetration and comprehension of the Four Noble Truths. Reality is the Four Noble Truths fully understand, so that in the process of unfolding insight, suffering ceases. Delusion is the state of the non-realisation of the factuality of the Four Noble Truths. The Buddha was a revolutionary because he thoroughly critiqued and dismissed the Brahmanic status quo of his time, in such a way that is applicable between different cultures. As long as delusion rules the roost, the Buddha’s method is relevant. A Buddhism that supports the deluded status quo and the inherent class interests of those who hold power, is a distorted Buddhism stripped of its greatest weapon of wise deconstruction. Although the Buddha abhorred physical violence, and appears to view its use as being the product of the grossest upper class related ignorance, (i.e. kings, ministers, and priests causing wars for petty, egotistical reasons), nevertheless, his method of deconstruction exercises the greatest and most effective philosophical and psychological unleashing of violent, deconstructive intent upon the state. The Buddha, through careful and precise analysis, reveals through carefully chosen words, the corrupt nature of society, and explains how this outer corruption (associated with caste and commerce), is represented in the mind as greed, hatred, and delusion. The status quo, through the Buddha’s analysis, is thoroughly smashed and has no leg to stand on. This is revolutionary violence of a very subtle and revolutionary type. It is not physical violence premised upon greed, hatred, and delusion, (which the Buddha clearly forbids), but it is a laser-beam type violence of concentrated energy, committed by a fully functioning human mind that rejects all the gross aspects of incoherent violence on the physical plane. The Four Noble Truths do violence to greed, hatred, and delusion, reducing this ‘suffering’ to peace and tranquillity. The Four Noble Truths represent a battle-plan whereby ‘suffering’ (dukkha) is hunted-down, cornered, and destroyed. It is not physical force that achieves this revolutionary change, but rather the force of a mind fully united in its function and objective. The mind has the power to change its own functioning, and the structures and patterns of behaviour and social interaction it produces in the physical world. When advanced social structures are developed, the mind is conditioned from without toward that which is of the highest calibre within. On the other hand, the Buddha’s method is not without the iron hand associated with severe physical discipline. For the mind to be freed, the body must be carefully and stringently controlled within the world it inhabits. Without this reigning in of the body and its appetites, the Buddha’s teachings simply become empty words, and Buddhists of this sort become followers of a self-indulgent fetish. As the Buddha dismisses without debate, the validity of the prevailing status quo, Buddhism and its methods must be viewed as revolutionary philosophy akin to that espoused by Marx and Engels, and a distinction must be drawn between it and the delusion of religiosity, which is, of course, the source of true human suffering.
Is the Buddhist theory of karma logical and rational from a Marxist perspective? To answer this question it is important to ascertain exactly what this theory is designed to achieve. The Buddha, (like Marx in relation to the Judeo-Christian tradition), thoroughly rejected the philosophy and theology of the Brahmanic religion, and the social system of caste premised upon its teachings. Karma, as a notion of reward and punishment related to action, pre-existed Buddhist thought, and is still used within the Brahmanic system to justify and maintain the inherently racist caste system. Whereas Marx perceives modern European life as being dominated by a ruthless and unjust class system of economic interests, Brahmanism, by way of contrast, presents its caste system as ‘just’ and ‘perfect’, as it is viewed as a divine emanation from an unseen god. Brahmanic gods exercise their divine power over humans through the agency of karma. The unseen hand of god is believed to enter the physical world and literally move people and objects around. Ordinary people are taught that their lives are more or less pre-destined by their previous karma (accumulated in past lives), which is mingled with the will of god. Good behaviour, (and bad behaviour), according to the Brahmanic teaching, can not change the caste system, or alter the social hierarchy in any way, during the present moment. The same teachings advise that if a person quietly acquiesces to the god-willed inequality they experience on a daily basis, and piously go about their day worshipping the very god that oppresses them, then through this ‘good’ action (i.e. karma), god might allow them to be born in a higher caste during their next life. On the other hand, although it is pointless to resist the divinely-inspired caste system, any action that actively seek to oppose its structures, are by definition interpreted as ‘bad’ and are punished accordingly by the divine powers that be. This punishment could include maiming and murder (achieved through the practice of human sacrifice) on this plane – brutal actions carried-out by the highest caste of Brahmin priests – or involve a rebirth in a low caste, or perhaps reborn in the body of an insect or animal, etc.
Obviously, this Brahmanic teaching is closely akin to the Judeo-Christian notion of original sin, and achieves exactly the same objective – the entrapment and oppression of its practitioners. Theistic religion, as an inversion of the mind, is set to prevent the emergence and development of rationality and logic. Religious theology fills in the gap of knowledge about the true nature of the physical world, with all kinds of fantastic imaginations. As an inversion, its strictures are both highly dangerous and misleading. Religious thought, when taken seriously, causes mental and physical illness that often involves death and destruction. This deluded thought, whilst masquerading as a path of deliverance, actually produces the very oppression and violence it claims to combat. Religion, whilst dragging the ignorant and the vulnerable into its searing pit of destructive self-indulgence, contains within its inherent contradictions, the seed of its own demise. All it takes is the emergence of rationality through the religious inversion correcting itself and turning the mind (and its perception), the right way around. This requires wholesome education and genuine experience on the physical plane. Brahmanic rebirth is of course, a nonsensical teaching. It is a lie created to justify a racist social structure designed to keep people in order through discrimination. The Brahmanic caste system rates and ranks people through the colour of their skin. The Brahmins have light skin, the Kshatriya have slightly darker complexions, the Vaisya darker still, and the Sudra the darkest, etc. Under the official castes are the collections of various tribal peoples derogatorily termed ‘Untouchables’ (Dalit). The Buddha, being a member of the Kshatriya (warrior and king) caste, rejected Brahmanic theology as being the product of delusion, along with the social system it supported. The Buddha’s notion of karma eradicates theology from philosophy, and therefore must be considered rational in its premise. Buddhist karma is not deterministic, but recognises that each individual has the ability to think, speak, and act as they see fit from moment to moment, and in so doing, they possess the ability to produce either relatively good, neutral, or bad behaviour, which elicits in their mind, body, or environment, good, neutral, or bad reaction. Buddhist karma acknowledges the relative situation in regards to the differences in human culture, and understand that what might be a ‘good’ action in one social grouping, can be considered ‘neutral’, or even ‘bad’ in another. Buddhist karma does not acknowledge a divine-hand behind the behaviour of humanity. Humanity creates its own karma through the agency of volition, or will-power. As many conditioned circumstances feed into a single moment of awareness in life, Buddhist karma can not be seen as a system of reward and punishment, but merely a logical statement of fact that all actions have causes, and that all causes are the product of previous actions, and so on in a self-sustaining continuum. Through wisdom, this mind-body-environment continuum can be influenced in directions that are conducive to human development, but conversely, the same continuum can be influenced toward its detriment if ignorance is not checked. The Buddha agrees with Marx, when he states that religiosity creates social conditions (and cultural constructs) that oppress the people. In this regard, the Buddhist notion of karma is closely related, (if not exactly identical to), the Marxist theory of historical materialism and must be interpreted as both highly rational and logical. The only sticking point is the apparent presence of rebirth within Buddhist rhetoric, despite the fact that the Buddha states time and again that rebirth is an illusion that exists only in the deluded state. In the objective assessment of Buddhist philosophy, therefore, the notion of rebirth can be dispensed with as being merely the fading memory of Brahmanic superstition. Rebirth has a certain currency in Asia due to historical Brahmanic influence and in the West where many Christian converts to Buddhism gain a certain sentimental comfort from its presence, viewing it very much as an exotic promise of a more practical Judeo-Christian heaven - experienceable after-death.
It can be reasonably argued that any presence of religiosity within Buddhism constitutes a false Buddhism, and is indicative of an importation of theology from other sources. The earliest strata of Buddhist texts demonstrate clearly that the Buddha was operating from a cognitive base of reason and logic, and that this approach was a reaction to Brahmanic theology. It appears that over-time, certain Brahmanic ideas and notions started to seep into Buddhist thinking from those Buddhist monks who were more Hindu than Buddhist, and who obviously either did not understand the Buddha’s anti-religious message, or understood it perfectly and sought to bring it down from within. Whatever the case, the Buddhist suttas/sutras in their earliest forms, display obvious tampering through editing; an editing process that was intended to subtly divert attention away from the original logic of the Buddha, and toward a modified version of his teaching. This editing process occurred over a number of generations following the death of the Buddha, and was carried-out by scholar-monks. The process of misrepresentation was assisted by the fact that the Buddhist teachings were originally passed on by word of mouth, and act of memory, before being rendered into print hundreds of years later. This process and necessity reflects a time when most ordinary people could not read and write, but many Buddhist monastics specialised in literacy and therefore became dominant in interpretation. Being able to read and write simply confirmed this dominance which existed even when the suttas were handed down by word of mouth only. The Brahmanification of Buddhism represents a process through which an attempt is made to colonise the non-theistic ideas of Buddhism, and replace them with the theistic ideas of Brahmanism. Notions such as rebirth, caste, nationalism, misogyny, sacrifice, the Buddha as a god, eternalism, nihilism, and deterministic karma are all symptomatic of Brahmanic interference within logical Buddhism. Wherever religiosity appears to raise its head within Buddhism, it maybe readily disposed of and thoroughly rejected. A religious Buddhism is nothing other than an inverted consciousness, but a logical Buddhism represents the true consciousness of a mind fully functioning at an optimum frequency. Religiosity has been identified as the enemy of humanity by both Karl Marx, and Siddharta Gautama, and when comparing Marxism with Buddhism, it is important to take into account the polluting influence of Brahmanism, and remove such notions from consideration. In this way it is like with like that is being compared, and not religiosity with rationality. In the West, there is a similar pollution entering Buddhism from a Judeo-Christian perspective. As an ‘inverted mind’ is an ‘inverted mind’, it is true that Judeo-Christian and Brahmanic theology, represent exactly the same inverted dysfunction of the mind, and negatively effect the rationality of Buddhism in the same destructive manner. This misrepresentation is similar to Marxism being misrepresented as the ‘word of god’, and Karl Marx as the ‘son of god’. In this bizarre model, historical materialism is morphed into non-historical spiritualism, and the world is turned upon its head. The inner core of rational and logical philosophy is the essence of original Buddhism and its content must be clearly identified and preserved. When this is achieved, it is clear that Buddhism and Marxism are of a very similar expression, an expression that frees the world from the tyranny of conditioned history. This is why the Four Noble Truths represent a non-religious path of self-cultivation which is similar in structure to modern European theories of psychology, and the academic tradition of philosophy of the mind.
©opyright: Adrian Chan-Wyles (ShiDaDao) 2014.