Autor: Ormerod, Neil

Buch: Creation, Grace, and Redemption

Titel: Creation, Grace, and Redemption

Stichwort: Schöpfung, Geist - Buddhismus; dukkha, trishna, tanha; Ordnung der Welt als Illusion

Kurzinhalt: For the Buddhist, both the world and the self are contingent, perishable, and ever changing. The order our mind imposes on the world is part of the illusion of self, something that must be eliminated on the path to enlightenment.

Textausschnitt: A BRIEF LOOK AT BUDDHIST ANTHROPOLOGY

42c In our account of the ontological constitution of the human person in terms of bodiliness and spirit, we have defined spirit in terms of the human search for meaning, truth, and value. While human consciousness experiences a multiplicity of desires, it is the desire for meaning, truth, and value that constitutes the core of our personal human identity. This desire constitutes us as "spiritual beings," and any argument for the immortality of the soul takes as its starting point the transcendent quality of the goals of this desire. In our day-to-day experience this desire may, however, be swamped by other, lesser desires-what we will later call concupiscence. The moral life is, then, a matter of allowing our desire for meaning, truth, and value to be the core that directs all our desiring. Sadly, this is a difficult task, one that is full of failure and disappointments. (Fs)

43a Buddhism takes a different stance in relation to these matters. In the previous chapter we noted that Buddhism does not really have a concept of creation, particularly creation by God. The world is in some sense an illusion, and so too there is an illusory element to our sense of personal identity. A major issue here is the role of desire. Our desires attach us to the world, and so attach us to an illusion. Desire thus creates "unsatisfactoriness" (dukkha) or suffering. The clinging of desire creates only a larger illusion of permanence and security. (Fs)

What creates this dis-ease [i.e., dukkha] is desire (trishna, tanha), the thirst for being (bhava tanha), which grasps for an abiding some-thing to attach itself to in order to find satisfaction and establish lasting security against vulnerability and change. The irony, however, is that clinging to things which are in the final analysis only contingent and perishable-whether in the form of pleasures, possession, position, or belief-actually serves to exacerbate the suffering it intends to quell, creating further and more intense attachments that only perpetuate the wheel of samsara (rebirth) by acquiring more and more karma.1

43b For the Buddhist, both the world and the self are contingent, perishable, and ever changing. The order our mind imposes on the world is part of the illusion of self, something that must be eliminated on the path to enlightenment.

43c In this we can find both similarities and differences from Christian belief. A Christian may accept that many of our desires are in fact disordered attachments, that leave us less than fulfilled while burying us in an illusion of security. Many of our desires are disordered; they manifest what Christian tradition has called concupiscence, leading us to sin and suffering. But the Christian tradition has also recognized a deeper desire, a search for meaning, truth, and value, whose ultimate goal is union with the source of all meaning, truth, and value, that is, God. Although Christians may recognize that there are many false meanings and disordered goods that we project onto the world, they would claim that there is an objective measure of meaning and goodness inherent in the world, against which we often fail to measure up. This meaning and goodness are not illusion, but reality. This conviction is grounded in the belief in God as creator of all that is, and hence in the intrinsic meaning-fulness and goodness of creation. (Fs)