Re: phil215 Buddhism - Permanence issue
JOHN ROBINSON
manner i.e. to refer to something that we think is unchanging/
permanent. Here's an analogy that will hopefully help: the
Buddhists view persons as waterfalls. Waterfalls are constantly
changing because different water is constantly falling, however,
there is a type of continuity insofar as the waterfalll remains
located in the same place. We still call Niagra Falls by that name
even though we well know the water flowing by is not the same as
it was yesterday. Similarly while Conrad today is not composed of
the same processes as Conrad yesterday, Conrad today is causally
related to Conrad yesterday by continual processes.
I think it is fair to characterize Buddhism as embracing change as
permanent though they would probably do so with a caveat:
properly, it is the concept change has permanent application to the
world, however, the world itself just is change. Moreover what on
other does it mean to say that something is potentially permanent?
Something is either permanent or it is not. I suppose you could
say that there are arrangements that are such that if objects or
processes were to satisfy that arrangment that they would become
and stay permanent, however, Buddhism is commented to
everything being impermanent, everything being empty of
independent existence so I think that they would say that there is
nothing that is potentially permanent, there are merely short-lived
processes and longer lived processes.
So Buddhism stresses that there is no permanence. Our names are
falsities, in that they are simply words we try to use to refer to a
permanent idea of ourselves and others. I understand the
breakdown of processes, and I wonder if it is correct with this
analogy:
Nothing exists independently, so everything must depend on other
things. So how about with pain and pleasure. Under these
circumstances, it seems to work when considering what pleasure
would really be if there were no pain. Pleasure would be
pleasure...except without pain to distinguish it by, pleasure really
wouldn't be anything at all. It would just be some thing, or really
just this "absence" of any meaning at all. This kind of puts me on
the same page with what the mahayana buddhists mean when they
say that nothing has independent existance.
But as I was thinking about this, I considered this notion of
continuos fluctuations, and the absence of any permanence. It
struck me that there is permanence in the very definition of their
reality. Change - continuous change is permanent. And according
to them there has to be these continuous fluctuations in order to
dispute permanence. Would they say that change flucuates from
potential permanence back to more fluctuations? This is
contradictory because there isn't supposed to be any permanence
at all...what would the buddhists say to this?
-Charles Reichheld