Dr Greg Bahnsen - Introduction to Apologetics: Methods XI Buddhism (Part 21)

All right, we'll get it underway and we'll start this evening with a word of prayer. Heavenly Father, we are grateful tonight that we can come into your presence with the assurance that you love us as a Father and will forgive our sins for the sake of your son and our Savior, Jesus Christ. We thank you for the confidence that we have in him and the boldness with which we can approach your throne. We do pray that you would indeed forgive us of the many ways in which we fall short of your glory, the ways in which we do not love you with all of our heart, soul, strength and mind. We do pray that you would forgive us for transgressing your holy law. We do pray that with that forgiveness you would give us as well new life in your spirit and direction and motivation to obey you. We pray that our study tonight would help us to obey you more perfectly and consistently in being prepared to give an answer for everyone who asks us a reason for the hope that is in us. We pray, Father, that as we study other religions, that we might more appreciate the truthfulness that you have displayed and the faithfulness you have displayed in your own word. We pray that you would give us confidence in the face of opposition from those who do not believe. We pray that you would loosen our tongues and make us willing to speak a good word to them, that they would not only be silenced, but Father, by your mercy and grace and the power of your spirit, their hearts would be changed and we would see people come to know you by your grace, even as we know you. Thank you again for that grace. As we begin this lesson tonight, we ask that you would strengthen us by the Holy Spirit, for it's in Jesus name we pray. Amen. We've been working on apologetics for some time now. It must be about six months, one three month session on Thursday evenings and one three month session on Sunday mornings. And it probably would be a good idea to give an overview of what we've done in the course and then specifically an overview of where we are in this unit. And then tonight, when we finally get through with our review, what I want to talk about will be religions of eminent moralism and in particular Buddhism. We have talked about the foundations of apologetics, reading the first few chapters in the apologetic syllabus that I have published. And we have found that a presuppositional approach to apologetics over against an evidential approach to apologetics is what the Scripture would commend to us. And by a presuppositional approach, we mean we're going to compare worldviews. A worldview is a network of assumptions, basic assumptions, presuppositions. We're called a network of elementary assumptions in terms of which every aspect of man's experience is interpreted. And everyone has a worldview. Everyone has some basic understanding of what is real. We call that metaphysics. Everyone has some basic understanding of how we know what we know. Call that epistemology. And everyone has an idea of how we should live our lives, what we call ethics. So everyone has a basic worldview. And I took a long time early on in the course, and you'll have to go back and review the tapes if you didn't hear them at that point. But I took a long time explaining that the fact that everyone has a worldview doesn't mean everyone is self conscious about their worldview. That doesn't mean you can go up and just start talking philosophical lingo to somebody and they'll say, oh yeah, well, I got a worldview too. And here's my metaphysic. Oftentimes people think, well, I've never thought about these things, I have no idea. But you can't live without having an idea of what is real. I mean, when you decide what you're going to eat for breakfast, you've got some idea of what is real or not, right? And whether you know that the car is going to turn on when you go to work in the morning and so forth, you have some epistemology and of course how you're supposed to treat your fellow workers. You have some ethic by which you live. And it may not be a good philosophical viewpoint, it may not be a consistent one. In fact, I would argue that all unbelievers are inconsistent. So it may not be well thought out, it may not be well done, but it is there. The difference between the philosopher and your garden variety ordinary guy is not that one does philosophy and the other doesn't, it's that the one does itself consciously and well and the other doesn't think much about it, but he does it. Okay, so everyone has a worldview. And what I'm saying is when we get ready to argue with unbelievers, the difference between us is in most cases not going to be a matter that they simply don't know the facts, that they don't know about history or they don't know about science. There are arguments in history and science and there are ways in which we should learn to deal with them. However, that is not what separates believers and unbelievers. Ultimately what separates them. The worldview so the presuppositional approach says we compare worldviews and what we're comparing are not just hypotheses. We're not saying, well now you've got one explanation for things and I've got an explanation for things. Now let's go to the facts and see whose explanation fits. That's not presuppositional apologetics. That's to treat the Christian faith as a hypothesis subject to testing. What we're saying is the worldview determines how you test things. And so you can't compare worldviews just by going to the facts, because the worldview will determine what you take to be a fact. The worldview will determine how you evaluate facts. And so you can't get facts as somehow more primitive than worldviews and let those facts judge the worldviews. The worldviews are always messing with the facts or what you take to be the facts or how you deal with the facts. Well then what are we going to do if we can't go to the facts? The common experiences of all men. To decide upon worldviews, we're going to have to do something a little more radical. And what I have taught you is that we must argue from the impossibility of the contrary. That is, I want to look at the unbelievers worldview and do an internal critique of it, Demonstrating that on his approach to life, his view of the world, his understanding of reality and knowledge and living, we couldn't know anything at all. That his worldview makes impossible the very debate we're having ultimately, that what he wants to guard most jealously, human dignity, rationality, the absoluteness of logic, the reliability of science, in some cases the absolutes and ethics, the things that he wants to guard most jealously, he cannot at all defend. In terms of his worldview, he would destroy rationality, he would destroy science, he would destroy human dignity if his approach to the world were correct. And then we want of course, to show that the Christian worldview doesn't have that problem. In a very childlike way, if I take what God has told me in this book, and I believe it, then some very amazing things can happen. In terms of human creativity, in the arts, in terms of industrial advance, in terms of political stability, in terms of science and human dignity and all those things that were important, they in fact are supported by the Christian worldview. In the course of illustrating how we do an internal critique, then I started looking at various options that we need to know about. What sorts of things are we going to run against as we start talking to just anybody we come in contact with. And one set of options I called atheistic and materialistic. To take the worst illustration or the most extreme illustration, we deal with people sometimes who don't believe in any kind of God or religion. They believe that all that exists is matter in motion. They usually will be evolutionistic in their understanding of history or of humanity. They are naturalist rather than supernaturalist. And we saw in any number of ways how they could not account for things like the absoluteness and universality of the laws of logic. In fact, they can't even account for classes, can they? That there are such things as categories that we speak about. They can't account for making intellectual decisions as though there's freedom and human intellect more than just the biochemical responses of the brain tissue and micranium. They can't account for moral absolutes, so forth and so on. Now, the toughest set of options, however, will not be the atheistic, materialistic. That's the most common thing you're going to run into today. Educated people, okay? And they don't know the philosophical problems they have because since this is so common, it's like the atmosphere that's breathed at the university. So you can get educated. You have a master's degree from the university and not ever have the kinds of problems that you. You might even be a high school dropout that you are going to throw up and they're going to say, well, no one has to worry about that. And then you have to learn how to press it and press it and press it, and don't let them go with it. But someone might think, okay, these guys are sitting ducks for not being able to defend logic or science, the uniformity of nature, whatever. But there are other religions, okay? Or, if you will, they'll be more spiritual options out there. And the first one that I looked at was the philosopher Plato. And I think Plato is generic for any number of schools of philosophy that are Platonistic in their approach. We found out that Plato was not able to explain reality or knowledge either. In fact, we see Plato struggling after the idea of a God when he imports the myth of the demiurge to account for how forms, concepts and ideals get imposed upon the material world. Plato cannot account for motion, cannot account for multiplicity of the human soul. He can't even account for how we know one thing at all, because the idea of forms and their relationship to the physical world is unclear. So this more spiritualistic option was not available to us. And then I started Looking at the religions of the world. And I suggested that the religions of the world could be divided into three general classes. First, religions of transcendent moralism. Excuse me, transcendent mysticism. The key illustration would be Hinduism and Hindu, like cults, whether it be Hare Krishna or Jainism, Sikhism, what have you. Religions of transcendent mysticism say reality is ultimately ineffable. We can't talk about it. We have to have a mystical approach to the world and the world. Our reality is not the way our experience would suggest to us. Reality is really one without distinctions, and our experience is full of distinctions. We think that way and that's what gets us into problems. So we need to get away from that. And finally we'll reach nirvana if we start thinking correctly and we get enlightened and we do the proper yoga, things of that nature. And we found out that religions of transcendent mysticism destroy rationality. There's no reason to argue at all. In fact, a Hindu cannot argue with you if the Hindu argues with you. The Hindu is assuming that you're different from him. But his religion says I can't be, that he and me are the same. We're all together. The Hindu has to say that my problem is that I'm not. I haven't reached nirvana. I need to do the yoga. I need to be enlightened. But that assumes there's a difference between where I am and where I'll be if I reach enlightenment. But his religion says there are no distinctions, that all is one anyway. So you see, he. He undermines his own gospel, as it were. He takes away with one hand what he offers with the other. So religions like Hinduism are not going to be helpful in putting together a worldview where rationality can be saved. Now I'm going to say one more thing about that and we'll move on. Many people at this point will say, so what? So they don't honor rationality. They're Eastern, they're mystical. And remember what I said when we were studying this? I said, well, when people say that, I want them to speak up right into the microphone. Make that real clear. That's fine. And from an evangelistic standpoint, we may have to talk to them about things beyond just rationality. But when they give up rationality, I've won the debate. That's the point. When they say we don't have to be logical, I say, fine. But you see, that's why I was arguing with you, because I thought you had the truth and I felt that I had the truth and we were going to try to resolve this. Since you don't believe we have to worry about logic, then of course the argument's over and you lose the argument because you don't want to be rational. The whole point of apologetics, remember, is to show that Christianity is the only rational option. If someone says, well, I don't care about rationality, well, so much for apologetics. The point is you don't need. I mean, you don't have to defend yourself against somebody who doesn't care to be rational, do you? So don't mistake the needs of persuasion and evangelism with the goal of apologetics per se. If a person gives up on rationality, basically you've got him to cry uncle, and that's what you want. You've shut his mouth. You, you are not able to open his heart. Only the Holy Spirit does that. But if you shut his mouth, you've done your job. And so when someone says we don't have to be rational, as they speak up into the microphone, because what you've just conceded is that you lost. Now let's move on the other. Well, there are two other sets of world religions or classifications of world religions. The one I'm going to look at, or start looking at tonight is religions of eminent moralism. And then finally, we're going to look at counterfeits of Christianity, Including Islam, which is a counterfeit of a religion of revelation and a superior prophet which comes right out of Christianity, doesn't come out of Hinduism or Buddhism. Muhammad admitted that he respected Moses and Jesus and so forth. But tonight, religions of eminent moralism, by eminent, I mean those which are stressing what is close at hand. Part of my experience, transcendent means, goes beyond my experience, exceeds my experience, or cannot be contained in my experience, does not originate in my experience, transcends it. Eminent moralism. Religions of eminent moralism are religions that deal with the near at hand, what is part and parcel of human experience, ordinary life. The second word stresses not so much mysticism, although Buddhism is quite mystical. The point is that in Buddhism, over against Hinduism, the stress is upon a lifestyle, upon being a certain kind of person, rather than having a certain kind of enlightenment. Now, Buddhists talk about enlightenment. Enlightenment comes from being the right kind of person. However, the stress, if you will, the saving thrust in Buddhism is moralistic, not mystical. Whereas in Hinduism it's definitely mystical. So let me take Buddhism as an example of eminent moralism, and if I have time, I'll generalize to a few others, like confucianism and Daoism and so forth. Of course, the founder of Buddhism is the one who is called the Buddha. Remember his name, Siddhartha Gautama. Siddhartha. Siddhartha grew up in a Hindu environment and became the Buddha. Buddha means the enlightened one. After he went through a number of life's experiences, he led a life of luxury, being the son of a feudal lord. But then he renounced his life of luxury and renounced the world when he saw the vision of the four passing sites, as it's called in Buddhism. He saw an old man, a sick man, a dead man and a shaven monk. And that changed his life, probably would change yours too. One day, seeing these four passing sites, he started his great going forth, which is the Buddhist expression for his plunge into the forest of refuge, searching for the reason for suffering in this world. Remember what he saw. The old man, the sick man, the dead man. All right. He joined a Hindu ascetic cult and practiced self beating and almost died. He was so intense in trying to find out the source of suffering. And he claims that it was at that point in his life that he realized then he was enlightened to the truth of the Middle Way, that what we need to do in life is to still in the middle of the two extremes of asceticism, which almost killed him, and pleasure, which of course he was sickened with. And that's why he went into the forest in the first place. He claims that under a fig tree Mara, who is the evil one in Hinduism, Mara tempted him and he overcame the temptation of Mara and was enlightened to become the Buddha. Having found enlightenment, he went into rapture for 49 days. Seven days, seven weeks, seven times seven. The symbolism was perfect rapture. And then he set out to tell everyone of his experience. Okay, now I realize this doesn't suit Western taste very much. And that's why it's easy to sit here and kind of take pot shots at it and be funny, but notice similarities here. There's something wrong with the human race. There's a lot of suffering and we need to find out why. And here's this person who finds the answer. He's saved from the suffering and now he's going out to evangelize others. He wants to show them the truth of the Middle Way. When Buddha would teach, he taught in a way that was devoid of authority. He said the Hindu priests teach with authority. I teach on the basis of experience. And you will only believe what I say if you experience what I've experienced. You see, we like that. That sounds good. You know, question authority, that's kind of a big thing. United States, right. His religion would be devoid of ritual. In fact, one of the reasons he broke from Hinduism was the meaninglessness. He thought of the rituals and the practical nonsense that you had to go through. He was a sensible man. He was a man of daily experience and he didn't want to just go through mumbo jumbo. And it would be a religion devoid of speculation. He didn't want the distractions of mystical discussions of the oneness of all things and so forth. And it would be a religion devoid of traditions. Everything would be based on present experience. Everything would be new. That sounds great. No tradition, no speculation, no ritual, no authority. This is the experience. Religion as you go. Religion. Okay, so what kind of religion than does Buddha give rise to? Buddhism is a religion of intense self effort. In fact, few of us can understand how intense the notion of self effort is in Buddhism. One must completely work out his own salvation and break away from Samsara. Samsara of course is the wheel of life, the meaningless wheel of life where we're reincarnated over and over and over again. Buddhism gets rid of the caste system and says that you can now go to Nirvana directly. You don't have to pass go, you don't have to forgive it, you don't have to go through certain levels and so forth. Everyone from the peasant to the noble can go directly to Nirvana. It's egalitarian, very popular. And here's an interesting thing. Buddhism denies the supernatural. Buddha said the supernatural is just a shortcut. It's only a form of speculation that should be avoided. And so his religion is an atheistic religion. Please remember that so you don't embarrass yourself when you talk to Buddhists. They don't believe in God. Buddhists are here and now people, eminent people. Their emphasis is upon present experience. No authority, no tradition, no God. Does that mean no creation? No creation. And so a religion of personal experience. Basically Buddhism tries to teach people the cause and effect relationship that brings about suffering. The main problem to be dealt with in Buddhism is what is suffering and how do you solve the problem of suffering? Suffering according to the Buddhist stems from man's desires. Man's desires bring about suffering. So you notice that it has an empirical direct experience approach. It has a pragmatic approach. It wants to solve problems, it wants cash value in its religion. It's man centered, it's democratic and it's individualistic. All the things that would fit right into the American mentality. It's why Buddhism has been so popular since the 1960s. Buddhism tries to teach the Four Noble Truths. Here are the Four Noble Truths. Life is suffering, both physical and mental. The first truth is bad things happen. There's suffering. Secondly, the cause of this suffering is the desire for pleasure or being individualistic. The reason we suffer is because we want things. We have an acquisitive nature. We want to acquire things and we want to be on our own. And so we don't respect others and so forth, and we're selfish, basically. Now, at this point, I hope some of you are saying, whoa, wait, there's a tension here, Dr. Bonson, and Buddhism already, on the one hand, we've been told we're supposed to find salvation on our own. Individualistic, your own experience. But on the other hand, suffering is caused by being individualistic. I mean, that's amazing, isn't it? At the most fundamental level, the way of salvation turns out to be the source of what you need to be saved from. Now, I realize I was probably going so quick here, and you're not accustomed to do this or anything, but when you want. When you do presuppositional apologetics, that's the kind of thing you want to latch on to because you see that you just reach in and tear the guts out of a worldview when it does that to itself. Anyway. The second Noble Truth is that the reason why we're suffering is because we're individualistic and we have too many desires. Thirdly, suffering will cease when desire cease. We should think of ourselves as the universal all. Get rid of our individualism. Get rid of our desire. Get rid of desire, you'll get rid of suffering. And the Fourth Noble Truth, the cessation of desire comes with perfect detachment. Perfect detachment. How do you achieve perfect detachment? Through the Eightfold Path. Now, I don't mind you chuckling at that, but you see, this is a regimented religion. Four Truths, Eightfold Path. You have to get all these things in place and then finally your life's going to be all right. It's moralistic. It may not be ritualistic, but it's moralistic. Go through certain steps and things are going to be all right. Okay, the Eightfold Path. You need right views. Accept the Four Noble Truths. You need right desires. Be free from lust, ill will and cruelty. You need right speech. Be truthful and don't talk in a vain way. You need right conduct. Be charitable. Don't kill living things. Be pure. You need a right livelihood. You Must promote life in what you do. Buddhists do not believe in being butchers. You need right effort, stressing the will to overcome evil. You need right awareness. Think of your body as loathsome. Sin is not your problem, ignorance is. And you need right meditation. You need to do the Raja Yoga with the mantra. Now, the Eightfold Path, of course has 10 fetters that get in the way of following the Eightfold Path. Let me give these to you. Then we'll start criticizing this belief of real self confidence in rituals, unkindness, spiritual pride, ignorance, doubt of anything. Buddha said. Yes, sensuality, desire for a separate life, and self righteousness. These will be fetters along the Eightfold Path. Okay, now what's the first criticism that's going to be made of this? When you get a religion that is this structured Four Noble Truths, Eightfold path, ten fetters and so forth. I mean, aren't you going to at some point, whether you're proud or not, or maybe you just get worn in and you say, who says so? You know, Guata had some interesting experience out in the forest and he comes back and tells me all these things. I mean, I get indigestion when I eat certain kinds of food. Now maybe that's the source of the true religious insight into the world. I know that's absurd. No one commonly believes that's religious to have indigestion and to hallucinate when you get sick or something. But I want to know what's the difference between what Gautama is saying and what someone in that state might say? What is it going to come down to? You don't have to be most on a log here. What's it going to come down to? Why do I accept all this? Four Noble Truths, Eightfold path, ten fetters, and so forth and so on. On what authority? Well, someone's authority. The Buddha. And who made him the authority? The Buddha did. That's right. Now you remember I said a long, long time ago, no worldview escapes self authority. The ultimate authority must authorize itself or else it's not the ultimate authority. Well, this self authorized teacher who was enlightened and wanted to show us the way out of suffering, although he contradicted himself in teaching it held to the doctrine of Karma. Remember, Karma is this impersonal cosmic law of retribution. In a sense, you know, the way you live your life will come back to be visited upon you in the next life. The law of deeds still holds good. According to Buddha, the way you live your life is going to determine the outcome of Your life, your karma, is what makes you who you are and holds you together. But then Buddha had another doctrine too, the doctrine of Anatta, which in Buddhism means no soul. Man does not have a soul. According to Buddhists, there is no spirit or soul in man. Yes, I've taught you well. What is it that gets reincarnated then, if it's not man's soul? Because if I come back as an aardvark, obviously we don't have the same body. Hope I come back as an aardvark. What is it that makes the aardvark me if he doesn't have my soul or spirit? And according to Buddha, who saw this problem, I'm not sure he worked it out, but he saw the problem and he said, it is like two candles sharing one flame. The flame is passed to the next candle, and what the flame is, is karma. Your karma is passed to the next candle, and so you're going to pass your karma on to the aardvark or to the nobleman, whatever it is that you see. The problem is there's no personal continuity then, is there? And just between you and me, if this is a moralistic religion, and it tells me you're going to get bad karma if you do all the bad things you know we're warning you against, and then you turn around and tell me, and that bad karma is going to be passed to the next candle, I'm going to say, so much for the worse for the next candle. Isn't that right? I mean, and this is not just a matter of, hey, we can eat, drink and be merry. And you know, what a funny religion. What I'm saying is this religion tears the motivation out of doing what it wants you to do. It's moralistic, but it doesn't really tell you why you should be moral because your karma is growing somewhere else. There's no soul that's being passed to the next body. Should we then be teaching Buddhism to the aardvarks? Aardvarks, you see, don't have the advantage of rationality and communication and so forth. If you come back as an aardvark, you're going to have to wait a long time before you can get around to discussing Buddhism again. It's another reason you've got to get good karma. How does an aardvark get good karma so that he doesn't come back as an ant? Well, he has to be a good aardvark. He has to do what aardvarks are supposed to do. And then maybe he can advance beyond that. But remember, if you were an aardvark, you'd say, hey, I'm passing this candle to somebody else. I don't care whether I'm a good aardvark or not. The doctrine of Nirvana in Buddhism amounts to the ethical state where future rebirth is not something to worry about. You've reached Nirvana in Buddhism, and if you've extinguished all your cravings and you've been released from suffering and from karma, you don't have to worry about the candle being passed on. What is Nirvana? I love this. When you talk to Buddhists, say, describe Nirvana. Buddha said, it is indescribable. Explain it. It's unexplainable. What conception do you have of it? It's inconceivable. How can you speak of it? It is unutterable. Sure. How are we having this conversation exactly? How can you have a conversation about something you can't conceive, you can't speak, you can't explain, you can't describe? Paul said, and people who are in the snare of the devil oppose themselves. Buddhism is a noble religion in terms of. You need to look at the just from a civic standpoint, the kind of people that are Buddhist, so forth. It is a respectable religion, but it's intellectually barren. It makes no sense whatsoever. Let me see. Tell you about a few divisions within Buddhism because this creates another problem. There are two basic divisions within Buddhism. But then we have some variants of Buddhism like Zen Buddhism and Pure Land Buddhism to deal with as well. But the two basic denominations, if you will, of the Buddhist are the Theravada Buddhist and the Hinayana Buddhist. The Theravada Buddhist stressed tradition in the way of the elders. This is. Theravada means large raft. This is the big way. It carries a lot of people. Hinayana means the little raft. And it is a more elitist approach. I've got this confused. Excuse me. Thera Veda is the little raft. Mahayana, I just don't say this enough. Is the big raft the more popular and liberal approach? For the sake of time, I'll just be brief in showing some differences between them. Mahayana Buddhism says we should be involved with other people. Theravada says you need to be involved with yourself. More individualistic. Salvation. According to Theravada Buddhism, Man finds salvation by himself. In Mahayana Buddhism, you find salvation through the grace of others. Thera Veda emphasizes wisdom. Then Mahayana emphasizes compassion. Thera Veda produces saints, holy men. Mahayana produces Bodhisattvas saviors, people who will go back and show others the way, way of enlightenment. Theravada Buddhism says, don't talk to philosophers. Avoid them, avoid philosophy. A Mahayana Buddhist will discuss things philosophically and then they usually get frustrated and stop. Theravada. Well, I mean, that was a description. It wasn't meant to be as cutting as I came out. Theravada Buddha exclude all ritual where Mahayana Buddhist will include some rituals. Thera Veda Buddhism says there is no such thing as prayer. There's only meditation. Mahayana Buddhism says that there is such a thing as petitionary prayer, but not to God, because there is no God. Petitionary prayer to others to be compassionate and to show people the way out of sight. Suffering to others, other people. So I pray to you to be compassionate and to be a savior to people. You hear me? Zen Buddhism, which is the form of Buddhism popularized in this country in particular, is a variant of Buddhism. Zen Buddhism is especially based on contemplation and meditation. You probably know Zen Buddhism because of the popularity of koans. K O a N a koan is like a riddle, and it's something that you're supposed to meditate on, like the sound of one hand clapping. And you're supposed to, if you have long enough fingers, maybe you can do that. You're supposed to meditate. I'm sorry, it's hard to take this seriously, and I'm just not in a serious mood tonight. Anyway, you meditate on these riddles, these cones, these enigmas, I guess would be a better way of putting it. And that will help you have enlightenment. Zen Buddhism is known as the word less sect. Zen Buddhism, you don't talk much about the art of Zen, motorcycle maintenance and so forth. You don't talk, you intuit. The Zen Buddhist has bob, you need to take this more seriously. Making it hard for the teacher to keep his composure. The Zen Buddha says after you reflect on these cones and you're silent, that you'll have a sudden comprehension and intuition and your mind will then be still. You will finally get peace of mind. What's wrong with all this? I need to bring this to an end. I'm going to give you five real quick criticisms of Buddhism in all of its forms. The Buddha said, seek what's good for yourself by denying yourself. I think that's contradictory. Seek what is good for yourself by denying yourself. We're to get rid of suffering by ourselves, and this is for our own good. And we're to do this to get to nirvana, which Means complete detachment from ourselves. We just can't have it both ways. What is going to be the motivating thrust in this religion? Secondly, and we've already touched on this, enlightenment cannot be described. If the flash of insight by meditation is incommunicable, then how and why should we follow someone that only says that he's been there? I mean, when people come to your door selling things, you know, con men, hucksters and so forth, you ask questions, you want to get some, you want some explanations, you want some descriptions and so forth. Why is it that when Buddha comes doing the same thing, saying, hey, I can't answer all these questions, don't know what it's like, can't put it in words, couldn't account for it, but trust me, it's there by the Brooklyn Bridge. I mean, this is not what a rational person does. Now, again, the Buddhist might say, and that's your problem. You're trying to be rational. You're pursuing your own desires. You're unwilling to let go and have enlightenment come to you. I'm saying, that's right, I'm unwilling to do that. I'm unwilling to give up my rationality just so I can find out if putting my head in the cement mixture is going to hurt or not. Does it get close to existentialism there, kind of emphasizing experience? Well, yeah, there's analogies of that sort, emphasis upon individualism and experience. But the existentialist would not be happy with. Well, the existentialist would say, if you want to make the irrational Buddhist leap, that's just as valid as any other choice. So it's compatible with existentialism. But I wouldn't say that it's so much the same as existentialism. Thirdly, I pointed out that we have a doctrine of reincarnation which is crucial to this understanding of life. But it's reincarnation without a soul. As I like to put it, you lose the me in the re of reincarnation. If you, if you're a Buddhist, there's no me, there's no soul, so what is it that's reincarnated? After all, Buddhists teach that the body is bad. We should hate it. As Christians, I think that gives us something to talk about and say, well, where does the evil of the body come from? Since there's no personal creator, why should anything be evil in your view of the universe? And of course, we believe the body is good, created by God. Finally, if everything is an illusion, everything is Maya, then we can say that my discussion with The Buddhist is illusory too. But then of course, it's an illusion to hold that there's an illusion going on that we're having this illusory discussion. Once you say that reality and my experience is ultimately illusory, there's no place to put yourself down rationally. There's no place to believe anything. It undermines the whole idea of truth and science and as I've said, rationality. So once again we've compared worldview, we've tried to do an internal critique. I'm saying, even on your best presentation, Mr. Buddhist, on your best presentation, you have destroyed your own philosophy. You have any questions about Buddhism, what do they do? What does the Buddhist say about the Buddha statue? Well, there are different approaches. Isn't something to be worshiped? No. Some uneducated people do believe that having a statue of the Buddha will help you to get closer to enlightenment. Though Buddhism eschews ritual, the uneducated and the poor have tended to make rituals out of the statue of the Buddha and so forth as well. And of course, if you're a Mahayana Buddha Buddhist, you look upon the Buddha as a savior. This begins to look like a counterfeit of Christianity in a sense. But he's a savior in the Gnostic sense. He has brought us the right information, he's brought us insight. And therefore we can be free from suffering finally if we just detach ourselves from the world and the body. Yes. Was Mara corporeal? Well, you see, I can't quite figure out why Buddha tells his story in terms of Hindu thought forms. You see, because he went on to renounce Hinduism, but he tells the story in terms of the Hindu framework. And I need, to be honest, I have to think more about that. There's got to be some reason why that didn't bother the Buddha to do that. But in Hindu thought, Mara, because remember Mara in Hindu thought mean you're dealing with lower class Hinduism. Upper class Hinduism believes there are no gods, all is one. So when you start dealing with polytheistic Hinduism, you're not dealing with orthodox Hinduism anyway. But anyway, on polytheistic Hinduism, yes, Mara is a spirit, an evil spirit. Satan. Don't the Hindus also share Nirvana? Yes, but remember, Nirvana means an end of suffering, enlightenment as to your own detachment from all things and that there is no soul. Whereas in Hinduism, Nirvana is enlightenment. In the sense that I'm part of the universal one. I'm melted back into everything. I associate Buddhists with ancestor worship. That doesn't seem to fit. Well, it does in the Sense that there's orthodox Buddhism and then there's what is often called, and I don't mean this in a bad way, lower class Buddhism, The Buddhism of the masses almost always tends toward idolatry. In the Hinduism of the masses does so as well. But if you want to talk to the educated Buddhist, the monk and so forth, or the educated Hindu, then you get a different story altogether. That too would be an interesting end to a discussion. Why in Christianity do you get basically the same theology, salvation by grace, triune God and so forth? You know, anywhere you go where Christianity is, apart from, you know, apostasy, people who have given up the faith. But in Buddhism there are so many different versions of it, and educated Buddhism and uneducated Buddhism hardly have anything in common. Same with Hinduism. So anyway, idolatry, yes, Buddhists can be idolatrous, but if you're an educated Buddhist, you're not supposed to be. Mike, what's the definition for suffering? I don't know that there's any analysis of suffering in the sense of what you're looking for. I would think they're just saying suffering are those things which are unpleasant in this world. Sick people. You know, we see a dead rotting corpse and so forth. We see that there's suffering around us. If we get rid of our desires, then we wouldn't suffer. Now this has kind of affinities with Greek stoicism. The idea is that you can eliminate the conflicts in your life by not desiring things. Okay, let's say, well, this is not a good example this time of night, but let's say at 4:30 in the afternoon I leave and I want to go to Irvine from Corona del Mar, and I want to go at a certain, in a rate of speed, I want to get home in 15 minutes. Well, I've learned that if you leave here at 4:30, you're not going to get home in 15 minutes. Because there's a lot of other people who want to get home in whatever amount of time and they're in the way. So I can either have my blood pressure go up because here's all this opposition to my desires, or I can do what? I can give up the desire of getting home in 15 minutes and I can say if I get home in two weeks, that's fine. And now all of a sudden the traffic doesn't bother me. And Buddhism has analogies there with saying if we give up our desire, then we won't suffer for what? The failure to have our desires fulfilled and we won't create suffering. Because people get in the way of our desires being fulfilled. Okay, Lord willing, next Thursday evening, I'll talk about imminent moralism in general, Taoist, Confucianist type religions. And then we'll move on to some interesting ones. In terms of counterfeits of Christianity, we'll deal with the Muslims, and then we'll deal with some of the Christian sects, you know, like our cults, like Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses and so forth, and we'll talk about how to deal with them and their worldviews as well.