Viswanathan K's Thoughts

In his excellent book on meditation and enlightenment using Buddhism as the medium, Why Buddhism is True , Robert Wright says our experience of a thing (in the un-enlightened state) is never of that thing’s essence. Rather: “The stories we tell about things, and thus the beliefs we have about their history and their nature, shape our experience of them.” The beaten to death example of this is, yes, wine tasting. Tell someone the bottle of wine is a premium one (“That was a very good year”) v/s just a “table wine”, and most people will say they felt the former tasted far better. Even when both bottles contained the same wine. This suggests there is a superficiality to our pleasures. Conversely: “A deeper pleasure would come if we could somehow taste the wine itself, unencumbered by beliefs about it that may or may not be true.” That, as Wright puts it, is “closer to the Buddhist view of the matter”, since the point being made applies to pretty much everything, not just...

Nietzsche once said, through his character Zarathustra: “When (man) invented hell . . . lo, hell was his heaven on earth; he could put up with suffering now, by contemplating the eternal punishment of his oppressors in the other world.” If that definition is too Old Testament for you, would you agree with these two definitions? The first one is by the group, Talking Heads : “Heaven is a place where nothing ever happens.” Nick Carr took that definition to its logical conclusion and wondered: “If we further assume that hell is the opposite of heaven, then the distinguishing characteristic of hell is unrelenting eventfulness, the constant, unceasing arrival of the new. Hell is a place where something always happens.” I am guessing the Buddha would have added a very important point to Carr’s definition: “That’s hell only if you choose to react to every such occurrence.” What would you consider this description of one version of the afterlife by David Eagleman in Sum: Fo...

Want to convey a positive image to something that is bad? You don’t need to call a PR guy or advertising professional. Just add the Buddha name somewhere in the narrative. At the very least, that will dilute the badness. I found an amusing instance of that in a book titled “Johnny Gone Bad” . The protagonist of that story goes from being (among a host of other things) a Buddhist monk in Cambodia to a drug dealer in South America. Guess what they called him? Coke Buddha! Even nations have used that trick. Just look at the words used to announce India’s successful nuclear tests in 1974: “The Buddha is smiling”. What better way to declare your weapons were developed with a peaceful intent?! Of all the founders and prophets of religions, it’s only Buddha whose name can be taken in jest without fear of retaliation by some group or the other. In a world where fanatics will cite their religion as the justification for their violence, Buddhists stand out in magnificent contrast. I guess that’s...