From: Guru George (gurugeorge@sugarland.idiscover.co.uk)
Date: Tue Feb 11 1997 - 14:28:43 MST
On Mon, 10 Feb 1997 02:59:15 -0600
Gregory Houston <vertigo@triberian.com> wrote:
[snip]
>Buddhists are particularly apt at indifference. Their religion requires
>that they overcome the "illusion" of value and meaning [because "life is
>suffering"] so that they can cease to re-incarnate.
>
[snip]
Nice post, but I feel I have to correct you a little on this one point.
The illusion Buddhists overcome is the illusion of *intrinsic* meaning
and value, not meaning and value as such.
In other words, the cause of suffering, according to Buddhism, is our
habitual reification of meaning and value as inherent in the object
(self or other) in itself.
Buddhist philosophers have through the centuries striven to make this
distinction clear. To see meaning and value as illusory in *every* sense
would be nihilism, which is the opposite extreme to reification (which
they call eternalism), but Buddhism is notoriously the 'Middle Way'.
Guru George
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