Barua World

Happy Birthday To my dearest Sister Pinki.

2010-11-04T19:09:00.000-07:00

Every second of the minutes,

Every minutes of the hours,

Every hours of the days,

every days of the weeks,

Every weeks of the months,

Every months of the years,

come and go with cheer and tear.

In life there are things that say,

we must bear and share.

My dearest sister pinki,

Today is your birthday,

and i am gone creazy.

Don't know what to do,

Dont know what to say,

but with my tender heart i wish,

May all your wishes come true.

Today is a timeless day,

and i have so many things to say,

but the only thing i can say to you now,

is happy prosperous birthday,

So i wish you a very prosperous happy birthday.

A speech For Dhammakosajarn

2010-05-15T20:03:00.000-07:00

First of all I pay respect to our most respected venerable Prof.Dr.Phra.Dhammakosajhan and other executive venerable.
Dear all the respected and honorable monks, novices, dhamma brothers, Sisters, Friends, Upasakas and Upasikas. I thank you all for giving me a chance to talk and share in this new year ceremony on behalf of international students.
Today we are all here to share the happy time of the new year. Old is the gold and that’s what we are all told but this is a theory that none of us can hold.
Our happy and sad days of 2009 has come to an end and it’s our proper time to accept the coming year 2010 with band.
So let us join our hands together and fulfill our best wishes forgetting the past sad days.
So on behalf of all the international students I wish you all the best wishes on your ways with honour and respect and hope all your wishes come true…
Thank you!

Titu barua

Happy Birthday wish for seori

2010-05-15T19:57:00.000-07:00

Every now and then,

I find a special friend,

Who never lets me down?

You’re the best I have found.

I’m glad that you’re my teacher and friend,

I hope my irreparable friendship will never end.

I know friendship is hard to keep,

But even if it gets harder I won’t let you go because,

Tomorrow has its own sun.

Love is a precious jewel,

We never realize what we have till it starts to shine.

Kim Seori my dearest with real heart a new life you prepare,

To God I pray to see your dreams and wishes come true and overcome the tear.

And saying it with prayer, may you be safe in every life spare,

Wish you a very Happy Birthday with a stiff paper.

1979.11.24th

From Titu barua

How Can I Make up My days Without You?

2010-03-03T05:36:00.000-08:00

I wrote this when i was coming back from wong noi...after class.....i missed the dhmn stupid student bus so i had to come with the stuff bus .....i missed the bus because i was waiting to see my girl in the office but she had already left and the bus also left when she left....then when i was coming back i remembered her very much and wrote this looking at the paper she gave in the class....i didnt yet deeply think about it ...but i am just satisfied with the title of the paper shirt that she gave..."INVITATION".......

How Can I Make up My days With You?

Now I see an invitation,

I just wonder what’s your intention,

Can you kindly mention?

Under your scene,

There is a big story,

This could be turned to history,

And I hope there would be no mystery.

I am still interested in your love,

And that’s why I am still alive.

I am trying to be realistic,

But I don’t know how to fix it.

You’re the perfect one,

For me to go along,

And only to me you belong.

I can see your beauty,

Even if you don’t look beautiful everyday.

Because I love you for what you’re,

Not for how you are.

I can grief in your sorrow,

I can cheer in you happiness,

Only if you’re with me to my horror.

I can be in the centre of fire,

I can be in the centre of the ocean,

Only if you’re with me,

Or else I shall spend my time taking bear.

In India you have studied,

And PhD in pali is your best credit,

Life is a mission,

From you this is what I have studied.

Heaven is a place bear by,

So if I don’t get you,

I won’t cry,

Because I believe you’ll never say good bye.

When everything falls away,

I will think of you to make up my day,

And pay the bill for the clay.

BCR.Titu Barua

Watsuthivararam,

Sathorn, Yannawa,

Bangkok, 10102.

Thailand.

Days are Getting Numbered

2010-02-24T23:29:00.000-08:00

Titu Barua

Time:10.00Am

Date:24/02/2010

It's time to finish,

Show me the way to vanish.

I want to go,

Giving you a respectable bow,

When i will be gone,

You will just be born.

there are torns,

in all your songs.

i decided to say bye,

because i am feeling shy,

but truely i have to cry.

i forgot what you said,

i forgot what you did,

but i can not forget how you make me feel.

For love i was in target,

which i can never forget.

Love is Life

2010-02-24T19:14:00.000-08:00

You fool me every where,

And now i think you should stop right there,

this is something that i can not bear,

but still i have to tear.

it's easy for you,

because you knew that i believed you,

i didn't expect anything from you,

what i wanted is only you.

you rejected my soul,

you rejected my goal,

And now i am completely cool,
For everything that you told.

if you can play with words,
you can play with soul ,
By that you will destroy other's true goal,

And atlast everyone shall become bold.
if i see the past,

i see only caste,

And that's why i am easily blust.

Now you took my heart away,

i know for sure it's for a revenge,
but yet it makes no changes.

Revenge is easy but useless,

if you make it the opposite,

then you have to follow kindness.

we are living in a sensual world,

as long as we're in, we have to fall.

that's what we know as craving call.

All things that shines are not always gold,

because all the people do not shine although they are gold.

Time: 09.20AM

B.C.R.Titu Barua

A Comparative Side Of CBI

Fragrance of Love

2010-02-24T19:03:00.000-08:00

you fragrant my world,

with your sweet voice,

you light my dream

with your beautiful face.

The more you try to be away,

the more i get the caurage to be near,

because i believe love is to believe and share.

i know i am wrong,

but yet i am strong,

which can never be wrong.

i am told that i am funny,

but yet no one gives me a penny,

oh god send some money,

so that i can give my girl a wonderful baunce of honey.

Oh god i love you,

but i love my girl the most,

she cheers up my days,

but you are there to create my days,

so in the name everyday i pray.

What am i to do?

2010-02-24T18:47:00.000-08:00

It did not matter, what you did,

It did not matter , what you said,

but now it truely matters, more than you can think.

Peace is not what you say,

peace is something that you make,

that's why i always pray,

so that i can make.

A person who is not happy,

he is a person who can nver have harmony,

Happiness and harmony should company with each of our penny.

we are the reason for our kamma, that is the true dhamma.

we may proclaim to be brahma,

but in reality our preformance shows the real dhamma,

Every one wants to be free from suffering,

but no one wants to lead the way to the liberated path of suffering.

I was indeed in deep trust on you,

but you dropped a boom and made a big blust,

Now tell me whom am i to trust?

And whom am i to crush?

According to me there is no being, who does the deed,

and there is no being who is truely to be blamed,

What we truely need is to understand all without a blame.

Things that we do without awareness,

are the things that take us to danger,

i am afraid that i can never avoid canker.

because i am trapped by a marvalous love snare.

Titu barua

FOR SEORI

2009-08-22T04:54:00.000-07:00

Where there was my maturity gap that I was having an uphill struggle to cross over to the other side there you stretched a bridge for me, where I was having an uphill struggle to peep through a window just a bit above my height there you lifted me up... and I could clearly see the portion beyond my confinement. My love is forever for you. My sweetheart teacher I love you Seori.

Customs

2009-08-02T02:14:00.001-07:00

Dr.BCR.Titu barua
Watsuthivararam,
Yannawa,Sathorn,
Bangkok,10120.
Thailand.

Customs is an authority or agency in a country responsible for collecting and safeguarding customs duties and for controlling the flow of goods including animals, personal effects and hazardous items in and out of a country. Depending on local legislation and regulations, the import or export of some goods may be restricted or forbidden, and the customs agency enforces these rules. The customs agency may be different from the immigration authority, which monitors persons who leave or enter the country, checking for appropriate documentation, apprehending people wanted by international arrest warrants, and impeding the entry of others deemed dangerous to the country.
A customs duty is a tariff or tax on the import of or export of goods. In the Kingdom of England, customs duties were typically part of the customary revenue of the king, and therefore did not need parliamentary consent to be levied, unlike excise duty, land tax, or other forms of taxes.
Commercial goods not yet cleared through customs are held in a customs area, often called a bonded store, until processed. All authorized ports are recognized customs area.

Tradition

2009-08-02T02:12:00.000-07:00

Dr.BCR.Titu barua
Watsuthivararam,
Yannawa,Sathorn,
Bangkok,10120
Thailand.

The word tradition comes from the Latin traditionem, acc. of traditio which means "handing over, passing on", and is used in a number of ways in the English language:
1. Beliefs or customs taught by one generation to the next, often orally. For example, we can speak of the tradition of sending birth announcements.
2. A set of customs or practices. For example, we can speak of Christmas traditions.
3. A broad religious movement made up of religious denominations or church bodies that have a common history, customs, culture, and, to some extent, body of teachings. For example, one can speak of Islam's Sufi tradition or Christianity's Lutheran tradition.
However, on a more basic theoretical level, tradition(s) can be seen as information or composed of information. For that which is brought into the present from the past, in a particular societal context, is information. This is even more fundamental than particular acts or practices even if repeated over a long sequence of time.

Culture

2009-08-02T02:08:00.000-07:00

Dr.BCR.Titu Barua
Watsuthivararam,
Yannawa,Sathorn,
Bangkok,10120
Thailand.

Culture is a term that has different meanings. In 1952, Alfred Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn compiled a list of 164 definitions of "culture" in Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions. However, the word "culture" is most commonly used in three basic senses:
• Excellence of taste in the fine arts and humanities, also known as high culture
• An integrated pattern of human knowledge, belief, and behavior that depends upon the capacity for symbolic thought and social learning
• The set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices that characterizes an institution, organization or group.

When the concept first emerged in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Europe, it connoted a process of cultivation or improvement, as in agriculture or horticulture.
In the nineteenth century, it came to refer first to the betterment or refinement of the individual, especially through education, and then to the fulfillment of national aspirations or ideals. In the mid-nineteenth century, some scientists used the term "culture" to refer to a universal human capacity.
In the twentieth century, "culture" emerged as a concept central to anthropology, encompassing all human phenomena that are not purely results of human genetics. Specifically, the term "culture" in American anthropology had two meanings:
(1) The evolved human capacity to classify and represent experiences with symbols, and to act imaginatively and creatively.
(2) The distinct ways that people living in different parts of the world classified and represented their experiences, and acted creatively. Following World War II, the term became important, albeit with different meanings, in other disciplines such as sociology, cultural studies, organizational psychology and management studies.

http://feeds.feedburner.com/TituBarua

Sexy...naughty...bitchy......

2009-06-20T03:26:00.000-07:00

The concept of personality.

2009-05-28T20:34:00.000-07:00

Titu Barua
Watsuthivararam.
Yannawa,sathorn.
Bangkok,10120.
Thailand.

Whereas the concept "human being" emphasises man's biosocial, body-mind origin, the concept "personality" is connected mainly with his social and psychological aspects, such as his sense of dignity, his self-appraisal, his value orientations, beliefs, the principles by which he lives, his moral, aesthetic, socio-political and other social positions, his convictions and ideals, and also the character, the special features of his intellect, the style and independence of his thinking, the specific nature of his emotional make-up, his willpower, cast of mind and feelings, his social status.
One cannot conceive of a personality as something separate from the human being, or even from his external and general physical appearance. The personality (Lat. persona= mask) is the face that confronts us. When in their later years, people have plastic operations and face-lifts, they change their external appearance, which, as psychological observations have shown, also changes something in their mentality. Everything in a person is "interconnected" and affects the personality as a whole. What a person looks like is the outward expression of his inner world.
A personality is a socially developed person, one who is part of a certain specific historical and natural context, one or another social group, a person possessing a relatively stable system of socially significant personal features and performing corresponding social roles. The personality's intellectual framework is formed by his requirements, interests, frame of reference, peculiarities of temperament, emotion, willpower, motivation, value orientations, independence of thought, consciousness and self-consciousness. The central feature of the personality is world outlook. A person cannot become a personality without evolving what is known as a world outlook or world-view, which includes his philosophical view of the world.
A knowledge of philosophy is an inseparable attribute of a person's higher education and culture. Because a world-view is the privilege of modern man and its core is philosophy, one must know a person's philosophy in order to understand him. Even those who deny and make fun of philosophy possess a philosophy. Only the animal has no world-view whatever. It does not meditate upon things in the world, the meaning of life and other problems. A world-view is the privilege of the personality, that is to say, a human being uplifted by culture. Both historically and ontogenetically, man becomes a personality to the extent that he assimilates culture and contributes to its creation. Our distant ancestor, in the conditions of the primitive horde and the initial stages of the formation of society, was not yet a personality, although he was already a person, a human being. A child, particularly in his earliest years, is, of course, a human being, but not yet a personality. He has yet to become one in the course of his development, education and upbringing. A human being may or may not become a personality. The child who is isolated from people and surrounded by animals does not. Personality may or may not take shape, and it may also disintegrate, be deformed, or broken up altogether either by pathological processes in the organism, mental disorders, alcoholism, and so on, or by certain extremely unfavourable, tragic circumstances.
So, the term "personality" implies an integrating principle that unites the biological and social in a single whole, and also all the psychological processes, qualities and states that regulate behaviour, giving it a certain consistency and stability in relation to the rest of the world, to other people and itself. The personality is a socially historical, naturally conditioned and individually expressed being. A human being is a personality inasmuch as he consciously distinguishes himself from everything that surrounds him, and his relation to the world exists in his consciousness as a certain standpoint in life. The personality is a human being who possesses self-consciousness and a world-view, and who has achieved an understanding of his social functions, his place in the world, who has comprehended himself as a subject of historical creativity, a maker of history. The essence of personality is not its physical nature but its socio-psychological properties and the mechanism of its mental life and behaviour. The personality is an individual concentration or expression of social relationships and functions, a subject of cognition and transformation of the world, of rights and duties, of ethical, aesthetic and all other social standards. When we speak of a personality, we have in mind its social, moral, psychological and aesthetic qualities crystallised in a human being's intellectual world.
In each of his essential relations a person appears in an especial quality, in his specific social function, as the subject of material or spiritual production, the vehicle of certain production relations, as a member of a certain social group, of class, the representative of a certain nation, as a husband or wife, father or mother, in short, as the creator of family relations.
The social functions which man has to perform in society are many and various, but personality cannot be reduced to these functions, even taken as an integral whole. The thing is that the personal is what belongs to a given person and distinguishes him from others. In a certain sense one can agree with the view of those who find it difficult to draw a line between what a person calls "himself" and what he calls "his own". Personality is the sum-total of everything that a person may call his own. How does a person describe himself as a personality when he is asked what he is? He does this by relating himself to what he does or has done, by telling us with whom he is associated. Hence the principle: "Tell me who your friends are and I will tell you what you are." In addition, he tells us what belongs to him, what he has mastered, what he has made his own, and in what way he has fulfilled himself, to what context of life he belongs—labour, social, age, family, education, and so on. What belongs to the personality is not only his physical and intellectual qualities, but his clothing, the roof over his head, husband and children, ancestors and friends, social status and reputation, first name and family name. The structure of the personality also includes what it has given its strength to and also the powers that have been embodied in it. It is a personal manifestation of embodied labour.
Take, for example, a person's name. It is not something purely extraneous in relation to the personality. A name grows together, as it were, with the personality, becomes affixed to the face and forms something inseparable from the given personality. And only if he is playing someone else on stage, or works as an intelligence agent, or has adopted a different faith does a person change his name, and everyone knows how difficult that is both for the person himself and for others. The whole physical existence of the personality is confined to the framework of a person's life, to the limits of his complex biography. But does this account for the existence of personality in general? Of course, not. Particular ly if we consider historical personalities, whose existence extends far beyond the framework of their bio-physical lives; they live on through the centuries and not only live but "work" actively through the hands and heads of subsequent generations.
Thus, the limits of the personality are far broader than those of the human body and its inner intellectual world. These limits may be compared to circles spreading over water; the nearest circles are the fruit of creative activity, then come the circles of one's family, one's personal property and friendships. The far-out circles merge with the seas and oceans of all social life, its history and prospects.
The fullness of the personality is expressed in its individual ity, in its uniqueness, its irrepeatability. Personality in general is an abstraction, which is concretised in real individuals, in separate, single rational beings with all the inimitable proper ties of their mentality and physique, the colour of their skin, hair, eyes, and so on. The personality is a unique representative of the human race, always particular and unlike any other personality in the fullness of his spiritual and material, physical life: every "ego" is unique.
Take, for example, a striking personality like Socrates. He attracted the attention of literally everyone he met both by his outward appearance and by his way of life, his beliefs, his activities, his teachings, and everything connected with his unique individuality. Socrates was rather stocky, with thick lips, a paunchy stomach, a short neck and a large bald head with a huge bulging brow. He had a habit of going about barefoot, both winter and summer, and looking around him with prominent eyes from under lowered brows. Marvelling at the individuality of Socrates, Alcibiades stressed the exceptional originality of his intellectual personality, in which something incomprehensible, mysterious, elusive seemed to be hidden. The most surprising thing was that he was quite unlike anyone else. In his manner and conversation Socrates was so original that we search in vain for anyone remotely resembling him either among the ancients or among the people of today.
One could similarly describe the appearance and personalities of other great men and eminent individuals, and each of them would be unique in some way.
A personality is an individual rational being. In the broader sense the individual is not only a person but a synonym for a separate specific being. This also applies to the concept of "individuality", which includes the personality's spiritual features as well as his physical peculiarities.
There is nothing more individualised in the world than the human being, the person, nothing in creation is more diverse than people. At the human level diversity achieves its highest peak, the world contains as many individuals as there are people. This is due entirely to the complexity of human organisation, whose dynamics would appear to have no limits. Human individuality is expressed in its having different opinions, in abilities, level of knowledge, experience, degree of competence, in temperament and character. Personality is individual to the extent that it has independence in its judgements, beliefs and views, that is to say, when the brain is not "stereotyped" and possesses unique "patterns". In every person, regardless of the general structure of his individuality, there are specific features of contemplation, observation, attention, various types of memory, of orientation, and so on. The level of individual thinking varies, for example, from the heights of genius to the worst cases of mental retardation.
The principle of individualisation has its limits, its proportion. Beyond this borderline we come to complete relativism, which maintains that if every person has his own soul, then every person must also have his own world, and hence there are as many worlds as there are people. But the actual dialectics of existence tells us that the uniqueness both of outward appearance and a person's spiritual world is relative. It is derived from the universal, to which it belongs and from which it has sprung. The personality has a general origin, position, culture, language, certain standards, a world-view, and so on, that it shares with others. The more fully it represents, individually, the universal human principle, the more significant the personality becomes. Every person is a unique individuality in the whole complex of his physical and spiritual peculiarities, but at the same time he embodies the essence of the race and also certain general features of his class and nation.
People may be divided into various types, depending on the predominance of certain elements in the structure of their personalities. A person may be inclined to practical or theoretical thinking, to rational or intuitive understanding of reality, to operating with sensuous images, or he may possess an analytical cast of mind. There are people who are largely governed by their emotions. For example, sensuous types have an exceptionally highly developed perception of reality. For them the sensation is the concrete expression of the fullness of their life. A person of the intellectual-intuitive type constantly strives for new opportunities. He cannot be satisfied with a commitment to generally recognised values but is always seeking new ideas. People of this type are the driving force of culture, the initiators and inspirers of new enterprises. The types of personality may also be classified according to behaviour orientation. A person may be classified as extrovert or introvert according to whether his orientation is on objective reality or his own inner world. Introverts are often reticent, and rarely, or with difficulty, open their hearts to those around them. As a rule, their temperament is melancholic and they rarely stand out or come to the fore. Outwardly calm, even indifferent, they never try to compel anyone else to do anything. Their true motives usually remain hidden.
In psychology and sociology a person is usually characterised by his individual peculiarities. Qualities connected with a certain manner of perception or judgement and also with the way a person is influenced by his environment are singled out. Attention is focussed on originality, on the features that make a person stand out in society, on the functions he performs, on the degree of influence he exercises or the impression that he makes on other people: "aggressive", "submissive", "hard", and so on.
Independence, decisive judgement, willpower, determination, passion, intellect and wisdom are regarded as highly important.

Intelligence and wisdom.

2009-05-28T20:33:00.000-07:00

Titu Barua
Watsuthivararam
Yannawa,sathorn.
Bangkok,10120
Thailand.

What do we mean when we say a person is clever? Usually someone who thinks well, with subtlety and profundity, who is able to speak convincingly and precisely, and who suits his actions to present and future circumstances. Intelligence is an adequate reaction to a situation. A clever person is capable in any circumstances of coming to grips flexibly with events, of finding his place and asserting himself. He says no more than the situation and the circumstances demand, but is not at a loss if something of importance to the matter in hand needs to be said. Intelligence should be clearly distinguished from various other gifts, for example, talent, when a person because of his resourcefulness, the vitality of his intellect or phenomenal memory, his gifts of spoken or written speech is able to brilliantly interpret or convey something that has already been achieved by humanity, that is available in the general experience and to perfect it in certain ways. However, a talented person may not be clever, astute. These are different forms of human ability and they do not always go together. A talented person may be careless, unorganised, and unmotivated. He may be carried away by some idea, forget about everything else and even appear absurd to those around him, forgetful of the world, impractical and in general "have his head in the clouds". A clever or astute person has a well-ordered mind, is diplomatic in his words and actions. He may be quite untalented or possess only a small talent. But his chief advantage is his ability to make maximum use of even small gifts for the sake of achieving his aims, particularly those of a practical or organisational nature. The clever person does not suffer from the carelessness of the talented.
The highest expression of the gifted personality is genius, an unusually powerful gift of nature, moulded and polished by education and upbringing. History places on men of genius the tremendous and extremely responsible mission of pioneering new paths and, by the power of their mighty reason, advancing science, art, technology, and social and political life. Destiny endows the genius with strong wings for his great flights of imagination. They are capable of carrying him high in the realms of thought and in the world of public affairs. But anything that flies very high is extremely vulnerable to the lightning! And an essential feature of genius is courage. Very often these luminaries of humanity are martyrs on whose shoulders human culture rises to new heights.
Both talent and genius are not only a gift of nature, not only the product of education and upbringing; they are also achieved by extraordinary diligence, which is a crucial component in the structure of talent. In analysing talent, genius and intelligence, I have no desire to contrast them. It would be absurd to speak of the genius being stupid. The stupidity for which humanity has as yet found no remedy is characterised by a primitive and muddled way of thinking. The judgements of the foolish person are poorly thought out, disordered and vague. He is always being diverted from the chosen direction of his thought and with the greatest difficulty struggles out of the jungles of his own vagueness and muddle. Foolishness comes from the inability to concentrate attention on anything definite and consists in a constant flitting from one object to another. Foolish people are a great burden to those around them. They are the embodiment of intellectual chaos and empty chatter.
The measure of human intelligence and its effectiveness is determined by the degree to which things, events and their• transformation conform to logic. To a certain extent intelligence depends on experience, on knowledge. But an intelligent person is not merely someone who knows something. Much knowledge, as most people realize, does not necessarily make a person clever. Goethe's Faust was a person of great erudition but he was a split personality. With horror he sees in a mask features that are not characteristic of his true self. But he can do nothing about it. The metaphor fully expresses the common destiny of his contemporaries and this serves as some consolation to the hero. Finally, however, comes the moment of enlightenment. This is my real face and that which I believed to be my real face is, in fact, only a mask. There the mask is the symbol of adaptation to circumstances, the symbol of alienated impersonal forces that impose their laws, their way of acting and style of thinking on the personality. All their lives people perform roles, and yet preserve the stamp of their individuality, which itself, in essence, is a variation of the socially typical. We move freely within the framework of the role we have chosen or that has been chosen for us, and this frame has both its centre and its periphery. Some people may take efficiency to the point of bureaucratism or convert liberalism into anarchy, while others do their work intelligently, reasonably and even wisely. Role-playing demands discipline. But if it fetters the creative principle in the personality, it loses its reasonable proportions and evokes a natural protest.
The choice of a role in life and its performance are, in effect, the whole of our life. And it is a bitter feeling when neither role nor performance are what we would have wished, what our true self desired and needed. In later life a person may ask himself bitterly, "Hasn't it worked out that the whole of my conscious life has been 'not what it should be'?" So intelligence is not merely knowledge in itself, but the ability to realise that knowledge, to apply it in practice. Intelligence is not simply a characteristic of thought but a special feature of the personality that is able to behave properly according to the circumstances.
When we wish to stress the highest expression of a person's intelligence we call him wise. Cleverness may be bound up with egoistic centres, with narrow personal expectations and everyday interests. Wisdom, on the other hand, has a rich moral content. Socrates associated wisdom with virtue, maintaining that one could not consider a person wise who possessed knowledge but lacked virtue. The clever person may turn out to be an adventurer, a criminal, and, as a criminal, the cleverer he is the more dangerous he may be. This cannot be the case with a wise man. The immoral and everything connected with the narrow egoistic centres of cold rationalism is incompatible with the very essence of wisdom. As a personal characteristic of perfect knowledge, wisdom presupposes the ability not only to apply one's knowledge, but to apply it skilfully and behave with dignity and consideration, in accordance with the objective logic of things and the interests of the matter in hand. The wise man has the ability to grasp the very essence of events, to solve problems that seem insoluble. The characteristic feature of wisdom is the achievement of maximum results with the least expenditure of means, the ability to grasp even the most confused situation and to find the best way out of what seems to be a hopeless situation and, while doing so, to maintain coolness and restraint.
A person who has true wisdom cannot live by the purely private interests of the philistine. This is the lot of stupidity, of self-satisfied and comfortable stagnation. A truly wise person is one who possesses knowledge of what really matters in life and behaves in accordance with the situation and the objective tendencies of its development, who would not spare even his life to have these tendencies realised. Wisdom is bound up not only with intellectual and emotional culture but also with moral culture, the ability and desire to use it in life, to bring good to others. The truly wise person lives by the principle: we are forever indebted to one another.
Wisdom is often reduced to the notion of carefulness, caution, the ability to trim one's sails to the wind. But this is a great mistake. If everyone in society were that kind of wise" person, progress would slow down sharply. There would be no revolutionaries, burning with the desire to transform life in the interests of humanity, of the people. As a rule, this can only be achieved at the cost of suffering or even life itself. Wisdom, of course, presupposes not only knowledge but also a reasonable way of life, which cannot however be identified with moderation, obedience and certainly not with mere adaptability. "Wisdom for a man's self is, in many branches thereof, a depraved thing. It is the wisdom of rats, that will be sure to leave a house somewhat before it fall. It is the wisdom of the fox, that thrusts out the badger, who digged and made room for him. It is the wisdom of crocodiles, that shed tears when they would devour".

Personal self-appraisal.

2009-05-28T20:31:00.000-07:00

Titu Barua
Watsuthivararam
Yannawa,sathorn.
Bangkok,10120.
Thailand.

The human being as a personality is a self-appraising being. Without this ability it would be very difficult or even impossible for anyone to assert his identity in life. A true self-appraisal presumes an adequate degree of self-consciousness and knowledge of one's intellectual, emotional and volitional powers, the features of one's character and in general everything that goes to make up one's mental and spiritual world, and also one's physical abilities. Life makes extremely varied demands upon us. We are constantly obliged to relate these demands to our capabilities so that our obligations do not exceed our powers. Otherwise there are bound to be internal conflicts and breakdowns, disorders of our neuro-psychological organization, which may lead to various kinds of illness. An adequate self-appraisal implies the ability to set oneself realizable goals, to rationally control the flow of one's thoughts, to guide their general direction and choose their final destination, to constantly check the suppositions one is making and to weigh up pros and cons, to reject unjustified variants and hypotheses, in other words, to be self-critical. In performing the very important function of organizing effective control of one's behaviour, self-appraisal is a necessary precondition for measuring the level of one's expectations, i.e., the tasks that a person sets himself and considers himself capable of accomplishing. A true self-appraisal enables us to abandon any undertaking we may have begun if we realize that it cannot yield good results, and particularly if we see that it is a wrong or harmful course.
Self-appraisal helps to establish a person's dignity and gives him moral satisfaction. A correct appraisal leads to inner harmony, ensuring a reasonable self-confidence, an incorrect one, to constant conflict. The ability to see oneself as one really is is the highest degree of self-appraisal and is to be found only in wisdom. As the experience of history has shown, even some very intelligent people, not to mention mediocrities, suffer from conceit, while others, on the contrary, fall into a state of self-depreciation and acquire an inferiority complex.
To make a true appraisal of oneself, a person needs to take into consideration all his personal experience, although sometimes even this is not enough. One must test and check on many levels: one's own experience in personal life, the overall experience of humanity, public opinion, particularly the opinion of those who are something, and also the power of one's own reason. The ability to assess one's own value springs initially not from the depths of the personality itself but from outside. A person begins to sum himself up more or less correctly after he has learned to adjust to other people and take in their assessments of himself. A child acquires a notion of himself on the basis of the assessment made by adults and by children of his own age. Subsequently a great deal depends on teachers, who check both the pupil's intellectual development and behaviour, pronouncing their judgement both in words and in marks. Here one has an intensive daily correlation of oneself with the behaviour, words and actions of others, particularly one's classmates. The growing child comes to know himself more and more fully and accurately and to judge himself by receiving encouragement or criticism that corrects his own self-appraisal. In short, the result is that we find ourselves in others and begin to penetrate more and more deeply into our own world. We thus look at ourselves primarily through the eyes of society, the eyes of its whole history, and then through the eyes of the future, which emerges as the supreme judge of our present, of our thoughts, actions and our own self-appraisal. At first the individual assesses himself through others, and later he himself becomes a yardstick for assessing others. In this complex interaction of personal relationships one observes a general principle: self-appraisal and self-testing of the personality is mediated, indirect social appraisal and testing.
Self-appraisal has a wide range of modalities, beginning from Narcissus-like self-adoration to pitiless self-condemnation, bordering on cruelty, or pangs of conscience so violent that they may sometimes drive a person to a tragic end. An abated and more relaxed form of self-condemnation is constant scepticism, remorse, a painful contempt for oneself, an inferiority complex and, in general, a convoluted personality, which has no confidence in anything and believes in nothing, a personality tangled up in itself. Such self-consciousness is permeated with a feeling of constant anxiety and tragedy. But this state of mind, no matter how regrettable, is often the fate of people with a very subtle and hence vulnerable spiritual make-up. Self-admiration, over whelming self-confidence approaching arrogance and acting on the principle that everything is permissible, is quite a different matter. Arrogance uses not the mind but the elbows and fists, bulldozing its way through. It can be put down by a sudden and vigorous rebuff or protest. Otherwise it runs riot until it is curbed by severe public censure or even by legal coercion. The mild appeal to the conscience of those who have no conscience is useless.
Personal self-appraisal and also self-appraisal by a social group, a party or nation is an exceptionally complex psychological phenomenon. People have somehow evaluated themselves from time immemorial. We find such self-portraits in diaries, autobiographies, letters, paintings, religious and other forms of confession. True self-portraits are rare. Most people are tempted to embellish themselves in the eyes of others and of history. It is rather different with one's own self. In his secret thoughts a person can be perfectly frank and trust himself with the whole truth. Yet much of what people think about themselves is pure illusion, which they nevertheless cherish because it helps them to endure the difficulties and disappointments of real life. Here not only moral but epistemological factors come into play. A person is not really so clearly visible to himself. Fear of public opinion and fear of losing prestige, lack of clarity in one's self consciousness, all these things lead people to misjudge themselves. Here we may observe a specific tendency to compensate one or another kind of one-sidedness in the personality, a quite understandable desire to maintain psychological equilibrium, which has a valid biological purpose. This is no apology for incorrect self-appraisal but a desire to understand what brings it about. Knowing all this, everyday wisdom advises us to judge a person by his deeds rather than by what he says about himself.

What is the human "Self"?

2009-05-28T20:21:00.000-07:00

Titu Barua
Watsuthivararam.
Yannawa,sathorn.
Bangkok,10120.
Thailand.

In ancient times the concept of the Self was the object of much attention among the philosophers of India. The Self was interpreted as individuality of spiritual existence, as the vehicle of the infinitely diverse relations of the personality both with itself and with everything around it. With great zeal and psychological detail this amazingly subtle and complex problem has been tackled, mostly at the practical intuitive level, in the various schools of yoga, which have refined their methods of self-training to an astonishing degree, making wide use of the techniques of long and systematic concentration on one thing, such as the state and functioning of the internal organs. In order to achieve complete isolation the yogis went out into the deserts, the mountains, the forests and plunged themselves into the contemplation of the world and themselves, and achieved amazing results in self-control, in changing their physical states and reaching the point of dissolving themselves in the natural whole and the total self-abnegation known as nirvana, a state of unequalled beatitude. By means of exercises evolved through the centuries the yogis achieve great self-control over both body and mind. Yoga has been practised for thousands of years and allowed its adherents to make a very subtle analysis of the gradations of the various states of the Self, the levels of its regulative functions, the specific features of its structure.
In ancient Greek culture, the problem of the Self attracted particular attention from Socrates. He thought of it as something independent, supra-personal, as a very powerful razor-sharp conscience—the daimonion by which he was guided at the most critical moments of his life. This dictating or advising Self told him how best to act.
In medieval philosophy the Self was identified with the soul, whose volitional, emotional and intellectual forces were striving for communion with God. The individual is torn between constant fear of punishment and hope of salvation, of the forgiveness of sins, of the goodness of the Lord. He feels himself a helpless toy before the absolute power of the Creator, while at the same time he carries on a constant dialogue with God, appealing for his help at moments of trouble and despair and imploring forgiveness for his sins. The individual is always and everywhere watched over by a god regarded as the regulating principle in the structure of the Self. This is observed with great psychological subtlety in the "Confessions" of Saint Augustine, who identifies the sense and knowledge of Self with the sense of God in oneself. Augustine maintained that he could not even have a Self if there were no God in him as the regulating principle of his personal will. Thomas Acquinas was, in effect, proceeding from the same principle when he maintained that everyone should test his actions in the light of the knowledge given to him by God. On the whole, the Christian orientation is on personal spirituality, as expressed in the maxim: "Linger not without, but enter into thyself!"
Beginning with the Renaissance, the orientation of the Self changes sharply. Leonardo da Vinci defined man as a model of the universe. The personality sets out to reveal itself. This is the time of the triumph of individuality, the great awakening of the sense of being a person. The individual enters the arena of modern history, asserting the principle of the self-sufficient value of the Self. According to Descartes, Self means the same thing as "my soul", thanks to which "I am what I am". A thinking Self knows only one incontrovertible truth—that it thinks, doubts, affirms, desires, loves and hates. Descartes stressed the rational principle in the structure of the personality. In his philosophy the Self acts, above all, as the subject of thought, its regulator and organizer. Rejecting the Cartesian interpretation of the Self as a special substance, English empiricism regards the Self as a totality of processes. ". . .For my part, when I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble on some particular perception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I never can catch myself at any time without perception, and never can observe anything but the perception." So the Self, it turns out, is nothing but a bundle of perceptions, which "succeed each other with an inconceivable rapidity, and are in a perpetual flux and movement". These profound reflections of a subtle thinker show that our subjective pursuit of the essence of the Self is constantly baffled by the actual flow of the concrete sensations of the given moment, either directed inwardly or outwardly. Nothing else is perceived. This is rather like a traveller in a wood, who literally cannot see the wood for the trees. He is in the wood and therefore cannot see it as a whole. It is just the same with ourselves. Wishing to reconcile rationalism with empiricism, Kant distinguished two types of Self, the empirical and the pure. The first was the flow of intellectual processes, of various sense impressions rushing hither and thither, while the pure Self was something that had a kind of supra-individual character. Its basic function was to unite the multiform by means of pure categories of Reason. This was known as transcendental apperception, which meant the unity of consciousness, which was the essence of the Self.
According to Hegel, the Self is the individual as a universal formula embracing all personalities in general. The individual "self s" become part of the formula as a means of giving it individual expression. Hegel loathed all preoccupation with the individual and had a great bent for raising the individual to the universal, to an all-embracing formula in which everything intimately personal dissolved. In Hegel the Self as a universal formula swallows up all the concrete egos of separate individuals.
In contemporary Soviet philosophy and psychological literature the concept of the Ego or Self is usually identified with that of the personality. In my view, this is not quite correct. The concept of the personality is much wider than that of the Ego. It cannot be identified either with consciousness or self-consciousness because it also embraces something from the depths of the subconscious, and this something acts as a kind of irrational "governor" in the structure of the personality when the unconscious takes into its sinister hands the will of the individual and drives the flows of energy towards irrational behaviour. This is seen particularly clearly, for example, in neuroses of obsession and paranoidal forms of schizophrenia. The person who suffers from such mental disorders becomes a prey to voices and images that command him and guide his thoughts and feelings into nightmares of illogicality and disordered conduct, void of all adaptive powers.
Man's mental world, generated by the brain and depending on its biophysical condition and the state of the organism as a whole, presents a kind of relatively independent structure, with its own logic, its own specific mental mechanisms, the elements of this structure are mental states, processes and formations. Moreover, these elements may have several values and are not all of the same value. And it is this intimately profound subject of all mental phenomena in their integral wholeness that forms the Ego. This Ego is the spiritual nucleus in the structure of the personality. It is the very deepest and most profound part of it. In its essence it is psycho-social. When people speak of "my Self", they have in mind something that is not simply personal but intimately personal in the highest degree, something extremely precious and valuable and therefore vulnerable. Hence the phenomenon of "hurt Ego", when the personality is wounded to the quick on its tenderest spot. It is damage to our Ego that causes our most painful and morbid reactions and moral suffering. The Ego is the throne of conscience itself.
The term "Ego" or "Self" also denotes the personality as seen in the light of its own self-consciousness, i.e., a personality as perceived by itself, as it is known and felt by the Self. The "Ego" is the regulative principle of mental life, the self-controlling force of the spirit; it is everything that we are essentially both for the world and for other people and, above all, for ourselves in our self-consciousness, self-appraisal and self-knowledge. The "Ego" presupposes know ledge of and a relationship to objective reality and a constant awareness of oneself in that reality.
Sensuous and conceptual images, states and goals are all part of the Ego, but they are not the Ego itself. The Ego rises above all the elements that compose the spirit and commands them, regulates their life.
Every personality has a large number of facets to its Ego—what it is in itself, how it is mirrored by its own self-consciousness (the "Ego image") in general and at a given moment in time, what kind of ideal Ego it conceives (what it would like to be), how it looks in the eyes of other people at a given moment, particularly the eyes of "those who are something" and also the "eyes" of the future and even, posthumously, of history, while among religious people it is important how the Ego looks in the "eyes" of God. All these constantly interflowing aspects of the Ego, glittering with their own specific colours, possess a certain stability, balance and harmony. The Ego is essentially reflexive. Its regulative and controlling power takes part in every act of the individual. It is not the separate mental processes, formations, properties and states, as was assumed by Hume and long before him by Plato, who urged his readers to think of themselves as wounderful living dolls manipulated by the gods. The internal states of the personality are controlled by very fine strings, which pull a person in various and sometimes opposite directions, some towards good and others towards the precipices of vice. But, one may ask, who pulls these strings? In Plato, it is a god who made these dolls, called human beings, either for his own divine pleasure or for some serious purpose unknown to us.
If we look at the problem through the categorial apparatus of modern culture, we find that our Ego is nothing but the integrity, the wholeness of our mental, intellectual world, notwithstanding its internal contradictions, which are nevertheless harmonized if, of course, the Ego is in order. The healthy vector of its energy flow is vitality-oriented, life-asserting and in general self-asserting. The means by which it asserts itself in the stream of existence depend on the level of its moral culture.
To recapitulate, the Ego is not just the sum-total of sense impressions; it is that to which all impressions are related. It is not only the vehicle of consciousness, self-consciousness, world-view and other intellectual phenomena, but also the core of a person's character, the expression of his principles and positions. It is a living bundle not simply of experience accumulated by the individual in action, but of the active and guiding force of experience, the power of selfhood, a certain psychic mechanism regulating this experience and expressed in the fact that the individual feels himself to be the master of his desires, emotions, thoughts, efforts of will and actions. Through the prism of our Ego we become aware of the difference between us and everything else, and feel the constant identity of ourselves with ourselves. The fact that the Ego performs the role of "master" in the spiritual world of our subjectivity is aptly illustrated by the phenomena of dreams. In dreams the "master" is absent or rather he is asleep; his controlling power is no longer active and hence the meaningless kaleidoscope of images, whose origin, direction and purpose we cannot understand any more than we can understand their connection with other equally strange guests of our soul.
In a normal waking state, however, the flow of our feelings and volitions has its own logic, a certain integrity and organizing principle, and also a surprising stability of the whole amid this constant change of its elements. The Ego is something united in its diversity and variability. The Ego of our childhood is something quite different from the Ego of puberty and adolescence. The Ego of maturity differs substantially from the Ego of rebellious youth with its abundant hopes, and also from the Ego of old age and senility, burdened with physical disabilities and an intense awareness of the approaching and inevitable end.
The differences spanned by the age ladder, particularly between its top and bottom rungs, are so great that it is hardly believable that this is one and the same person. Evidently we all experience something similar when we look at photographs taken in our childhood, from which gaze the naive, innocent, inexperienced eyes of our distant and almost dream-like past. Our Ego may also change almost instantaneously, depending on the state of our health. It is different in a state of sickness from when we are healthy. At times of joy and inspiration and high flights of the intellect the Ego differs greatly from what it is when we are tired. And how enormously, sometimes beyond recognition, does the Ego change under the influence of drink! As the poet says:
At every instant we are not the same.
All changes, changes not the name.
At the same time in all this interflow of the changing Ego, in all conditions, something invariable, stable, integral is preserved which, like the thread of Ariadne guides a person through life, saving the something that is his Ego, the something that distinguishes it from any other Ego. Through out his life a person carries in himself all his ages, recorded on the "tape of memory". Without this thread that leads us along all the roads of life, our Ego would fall apart into separate, disintegrated acts of existence and feeling.
The Ego is impossible without concrete sensations, thoughts, feelings and motivations, principles, positions and value orientations. But sensations, thoughts and feelings constantly change, moving from one qualitative state to another. They may also be controlled, programmed, for example, as in the change of personality achieved by an actor. If the Ego were nothing more than these separate acts of consciousness, it would change together with them and there would be no unity in this diversity of constantly changing states. There are "situational personalities" who drift with life and become so malleable that they adapt to any situation, become mere playthings of circumstance. And there are also natures that are quite the opposite, integrated, stable, confidently and firmly following their chosen path in life.
The fact that the Ego remains relatively stable and can resist external influence is based on the brain's ability to record, store and reproduce information. A person regards even his childish pranks as his own, although they were performed by a different body and a different (child's) mind. Between our Ego of today and our Ego of yesterday lies a night full of dreams—the triumph of the unconscious, in which the chain of conscious acts is broken. There would be no continuity between these Egos but for the bridge of memory that spans the gap.
The plasticity and variability of our Ego reveals itself also in its changes of role. At work as a manager a person is different, for example, from what he is in the role of father of the family. When he finds himself in an official atmosphere a person cannot permit himself all that he does in the family circle. Constantly moving with the flow of life, every person changes his Ego on entering an office, his home, a railway carriage, an airoplane, theatre, hospital, and so on. Every day of our lives we are in motion, crossing various thresholds, entering this or that place, which has its own specific psychological atmosphere, requiring a certain readiness, a certain tuning of thought and feeling, a certain attitude and state of mind. Any change of situation influences our state in some way.
This is particularly apparent when a person is in critical situations, taking an examination, consulting his doctor, meeting somebody he loves, and so on. In order to cope with such situations a person must reckon with what lies beyond each "threshold of existence". But despite the amazing plasticity of our Ego, it possesses, when healthy, an internal connectedness, integrity and relative stability.
That this is so can be seen in cases of mental illness. Highly relevant to our understanding of the human Ego is the well-known syndrome of depersonalization, which sometimes assumes the strangest forms of deformation of the personality, ranging from a diffused awareness of Self to the complete disappearance of self-awareness, when a person loses the sense of controlling his own feelings, thoughts and actions: I am no longer I. The initial stage of this mental disorder is derealization, when reality is removed, alienated from the person; objects, events and people, without losing their empirical existence, become psychologically insignificant, unreal in the sense that the patient is incapable of establishing any meaningful contact with them. A wall rises between him and the world in general. He is alienated from his surroundings. He sees and understands but feels everything in a different way from what he did before. He loses his intelligent, comprehending sense of existence. The perception of things becomes a sensationless, "dead" fixation of only their outward appearance. In more serious cases, when depersonalization in the full sense of the word takes place, the patient loses all sense of the reality of his own body. The body is alienated and seen as something extraneous, the patient ceases to be aware of any form of life activity. He suffers from complete apathy. His feelings are blunted, he no longer experiences any joy in life. All its emotional colours fade. Out of sheer necessity he tries to appear cheerful. But inwardly he is drained and empty and consumed by hopeless misery. At times of temporary depression, overfatigue, a bad mood, apathy evoked by certain unfavourable circumstances, such a state can, of course, overcome people who are mentally quite healthy. In such cases the zest for life is sometimes lost, everything seems grey, dull and uninteresting. But when the condition becomes permanent, it may cloud the reason, destroying the unity of the Ego, splitting or even causing pluralism.
Psychiatry has described cases of the so-called alternating Ego, when a person somehow has within himself two coexisting autonomous Egos, which take possession of him for periods of a few hours or even years. In such cases, when dominated by one Ego, a person is unaware of the existence of the other. Everything he does under the sway of his other Ego is ousted from his consciousness. The two Egos may be quite different from one another and even opposites. If the first Ego is shy, timid, indecisive and oversensitive, the second Ego may be very resolute, unceremonious, outgoing, free, and even impudent. The second Ego may know nothing at all about the life of the first. Sometimes one Ego is more grown up than the other.
Such is the tragedy of mental disorders. When a person is in a healthy state he carries through the whole of his life, through all its transformations, transmutations and states, the stable nucleus of his Ego, conditioned both by the unity of his bodily organization, particularly the nervous system, and by the sturdy framework of character, temperament, and manner of feeling, thinking and acting. When remembering any stage of the path travelled, some surrender of principle or taste, a person tends to identify his present Self with the past, his childhood and youth, with mature age. Not everything in us flows away irredeemably with the river of oblivion.
Thus, the human Ego, while substantially changing under the influence of social conditions and together with growing knowledge, cultivated emotions and training of the will, and also with changes in physical states, health, and so on, nonetheless preserves its intrinsic integrity and relative stability. Thanks to the existence of certain essential invariable characteristics of the structure of his mental world, a person "remains himself". We move from one stage in life to another, carrying with us all the baggage of our intellectual gains, and change as this wealth increases and our physical organization develops.
To sum up, at the point when the Ego comes into being there is a self-identification of the personality; it knows itself. The Ego is a unity, an entity of spiritual and physical existence. It is given as the vehicle of infinite relationships both with the surrounding world and with ourselves. These connections, while infinitely diverse, are possible only thanks to this unity and wholeness of mind as the system of the highest organization of everything we know.

The unity of man and society.

2009-05-28T20:19:00.000-07:00

Titu Barua
Watsuthivararam,
Yannawa,sathorn.
Bangkok,10120.
Thailand

A person's whole intellectual make-up bears the clear imprint of the life of society as a whole. All his practical activities are individual expressions of the historically formed social practice of humanity. The implements that he uses have in their form a function evolved by a society which predetermines the ways of using them. When tackling any job, we all have to take into account what has already been achieved before us.
The wealth and complexity of the individual's social content are conditioned by the diversity of his links with the social whole, the degree to which the various spheres of the life of society have been assimilated and refracted in his consciousness and activity. This is why the level of individual development is an indicator of the level of development of society, and vice versa. But the individual does not dissolve into society. He retains his unique and independent individuality and makes his contribution to the social whole: just as society itself shapes human beings, so human beings shape society.
The individual is a link in the chain of the generations. His affairs are regulated not only by himself, but also by the social standards, by the collective reason or mind. The true token of individuality is the degree to which a certain individual in certain specific historical conditions has absorbed the essence of the society in which he lives.
Consider, for instance, the following historical fact. Who or what would Napoleon Bonaparte have been if there had been no French Revolution? It is difficult or perhaps even impossible to reply to this question. But one thing is quite clear—he would never have become a great general and certainly not an emperor. He himself was well aware of his debt and in his declining years said, "My son cannot replace me. I could not replace myself. I am the creature of circumstances." It has long been acknowledged that great epochs give birth to great men. What tribunes of the people were lifted by the tide of events of the French Revolution— Mirabeau, Marat, Robespierre, Danton. What young, some times even youthful talents that had remained dormant among the people were raised to the heights of revolutionary, military, and organisational activity by the Great October Socialist Revolution.
It is sometimes said that society carries the individual as a river carries a boat. This is a pleasant simile, but not exact. An individual does not float with the river; he is the turbulently flowing river itself. The events of social life do not come about by themselves; they are made. The great and small paths of the laws of history are blazed by human effort and often at the expense of human blood. The laws of history are not charted in advance by superhuman forces; they are made by people, who then submit to their authority as something that is above the individual.
The key to the mysteries of human nature is to be found in society. Society is the human being in his social relations, and every human being is an individual embodiment of social relations, a product not only of the existing social system but of all world history. He absorbs what has been accumulated by the centuries and passed on through traditions. Modern man carries within himself all the ages of history and all his own individual ages as well. His personality is a concentration of various strata of culture. He is influenced not only by modern mass media, but also by the writings of all times and every nation. He is the living memory of history, the focus of all the wealth of knowledge, abilities, skills, and wisdom that have been amassed through the ages.
Man is a kind of super-dense living atom in the system of social reality. He is a concentration of the actively creative principle in this system. Through myriads of visible and invisible impulses the fruit of people's creative thought in the past continues to nourish him and, through him, contemporary culture.
Sometimes the relation between man and society is interpreted in such a way that the latter seems to be something that goes on around a person, something in which he is immersed. But this is a fundamentally wrong approach. Society does, of course, exist outside the individual as a kind of social environment in the form of a historically shaped system of relations with rich material and spiritual culture that is independent of his will and consciousness. The individual floats in this environment all his life. But society also exists in the individual himself and could not exist at all, apart from the real activity of its members. History in itself does nothing. Society possesses no wealth whatever. It fights no battles. It grows no grain. It produces no tools for making things or weapons for destroying them. It is not society as such but man who does all this, who possesses it, who creates everything and fights for everything. Society is not some impersonal being that uses the individual as a means of achieving its aims. All world history is nothing but the daily activity of individuals pursuing their aims. Here we are talking not about the actions of individuals who are isolated and concerned only with themselves, but about the actions of the masses, the deeds of historical personalities and peoples. An individual developing within the framework of a social system has both a certain dependence on the whole system of social standards and an autonomy that is an absolutely necessary precondition for the life and development of the system. The measure of this personal autonomy is historically conditioned and depends on the character of the social system itself. Exceptional rigidity in a social system (fascism, for example) makes it impossible or extremely difficult for individual innovations in the form of creative activity in various spheres of life to take place, and this inevitably leads to stagnation.

The relationships between the individual and society in history.

2009-05-28T20:15:00.000-07:00

Titu Barua
Watsuthivararam,
Yannawa,sathorn
Bangkok, 10120.
Thailand
To return once again to the simile of the river, the history of humankind is like a great river bearing its waters into the ocean of the past. What is past in life does not become something that has never been. No matter how far we go from the past, it still lives to some extent in us and with us. From the very beginning, the character of the man-society relationship changed substantially in accordance with the flow of historical time. The relationship between the individual and a primitive horde was one thing. Brute force was supreme and instincts were only slightly controlled, although even then there were glimpses of moral standards of cooperation without which any survival, let alone development, would have been impossible. In tribal conditions people were closely bound by ties of blood. At that time there were no state or legal relationships. Not the individual but the tribe, the genus, was the law-giver. The interests of the individual were syncretised with those of the commune. In the horde and in tribal society there were leaders who had come to the fore by their resourcefulness, brains, agility, strength of will, and so on. Labor functions were divided on the basis of age and sex, as were the forms of social and other activity. With the development of the socium an ever increasing differentiation of social functions takes place. People acquire private personal rights and duties, personal names, and a constantly growing measure of personal responsibility. The individual gradually becomes a personality, and his relations with society acquire an increasingly complex character. When the society based on law and the state first arose, people were sharply divided between masters and slaves, rulers and ruled. Slave society with its private property set people against one another. Some individuals began to oppress and exploit others.
Feudal society saw the emergence of the hierarchy of castes, making some people totally dependent on others. On the shoulders of the common toiler there grew up an enormous parasitic tree with kings or tsars at its summit. This pyramid of social existence determined the rights and duties of its citizens, and the rights were nearly all at the top of the social scale. This was a society of genuflection, where not only the toilers but also the rulers bowed the knee to the dogma of Holy Scripture and the image of the Almighty.
The age of the Renaissance was a hymn to the free individual and to the ideal of the strong fully developed human being blazing trails of discovery into foreign lands, broadening the horizons of science, and creating masterpieces of art and technical perfection. History became the scene of activity for the enterprising and determined individual. Not for him the impediments of the feudal social pyramid, where the idle wasted their lives and money, enjoying every privilege, and the toilers were kept in a state of subjugation and oppression. At first came the struggle for freedom of thought, of creativity. This grew into the demand for civil and political freedom, freedom of private initiative and social activity in general.
As a result of the bourgeois revolutions that followed, the owners of capital acquired every privilege, and also political power. The noble demand that had been inscribed on the banners of the bourgeois revolutions—liberty, equality and fraternity turned out to mean an abundance of privileges for some and oppression for others. Individualism blossomed forth, an individualism in which everybody considered himself the hub of the universe and his own existence and prosperity more important than anyone else's. People set themselves up in opposition to other people and to society as a whole. Such mutual alienation is a disease that corrupts the social whole. The life of another person, even one's nearest, becomes no more than a temporary show, a passing cloud. The growing bureaucracy, utilitarianism and technologism in culture considerably narrow the opportunities for human individuality to express and develop itself. The individual becomes an insignificant cog in the gigantic machine controlled by capital. Alienation makes itself felt with particular force.
What is alienation? It is the conversion of the results of physical and intellectual activity into forces that get out of human control and, having gained the whip hand, strike back at their own creators, the people. It is a kind of jinn that people summon to their aid and then find themselves unable to cope with. Thus, the state which arose in slave society, became a force that oppressed the mass of the people, an apparatus of coercion by one class over another. The science that people venerate, that brings social progress and is in itself the expression of this progress, becomes in its material embodiment a lethal force that threatens all mankind. How much has man created that exerts a terrible pressure on his health, his mind and his willpower! These supra-personal forces, which are the product of people's joint social activity and oppress them, are the phenomenon known as alienation.
The thinkers of the past, who were truly dedicated to the idea of benefiting the working folk, pointed out the dangers of a system governed by the forces of alienation, a system in which some people live at the expense of other people's labour, where human dignity is flouted and man's physical and intellectual powers drained by exploitation.
The individual is free where he not only serves as a means of achieving the goals of the ruling class and its party but is himself the chief goal of society, the object of all its plans and provisions. The main condition for the liberation of the individual is the abolition of exploitation of one individual by another, of hunger and poverty, and the reassertion of man's sense of dignity. This was the kind of society of which the utopian socialists and the founders of scientific socialism dreamed. In contrast to bourgeois individualism, socialist collectivism starts off from the interests of the individual, not just the chosen few but all genuine working people. Socialism everywhere requires striking, gifted personalities with plenty of initiative. A person with a sense of perspective is the highest ideal of the creative activity of the socialist society.

The human being and the group

2009-05-28T20:12:00.000-07:00

Titu Barua
Wat suthivararam,
yannawa, sathorn.
Bangkok,10120.
Thailand

The problem of man cannot be solved scientifically without a clear statement of the relationship between man and society, as seen in the primary collectivity—the family, the play or instruction group, the production team and other types of formal or informal collectivity. In the family the individual abandons some of his specific features to become a member of the whole. The life of the family is related to the division of labor according to sex and age, the carrying on of husbandry, mutual assistance in everyday life, the intimate life of man and wife, the perpetuation of the race, the upbringing of the children and also various moral, legal and psychological relationships. The family is a crucial instrument for the development of personality. It is here that the child first becomes involved in social life, absorbs its values and standards of behavior, its ways of thought, language and certain value orientations. It is this primary group that bears the major responsibility to society. Its first duty is to the social group, to society and humanity. Through the group the child, as he grows older, enters society, Hence the decisive role of the group. The influence of one person on another is as a rule extremely limited; the collectivity as a whole is the main educational force. Here the psychological factors are very important. It is essential that a person should feel himself part of a group at his own wish, and that the group should voluntarily accept him, take in his personality.
Everybody performs certain functions in a group. Take, for example, the production team. Here people are joined together by other interests as well as those of production; they exchange certain political, moral, aesthetic, scientific and other values. A group generates public opinion, it sharpens and polishes the mind and shapes the character and will. Through the group a person rises to the level of a personality, a conscious subject of historical creativity. The group is the first shaper of the personality, and the group itself is shaped by society.

Fundamental teaching of the Buddha.

2009-04-16T07:22:00.001-07:00

Dr.BCR.Titu Barua

Mangala priya

Watsuthivararam,

Yannawa,Sathorn.

Bangkok,10120.

Thailand.

Introduction

Buddhism began in northeastern India and is based on the teachings of Siddhartha Gautama. Buddhism is divided into two major branches: Theravada, the Way of the Elders, and Mahayana, the Great Vehicle. Buddhism is now prevalent in Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia, (where Theravada is popular) and in China, Japan, Taiwan, Tibet, Nepal, Mongolia, Korea, Burma, Vietnam, and India (where Mahayana is more common).. There are about 300 million Buddhists in the world.And Buddha was the Light of ASIA.There are seven chapters and conclusion in order to depend on Buddhism that there are so many Buddists in ASIA in the present.
Buddhism teaches its followers that in this life they are only temporary vessels of body, emotions, thoughts, tendencies, and knowledge. Buddhists believe that there is no sense of self or soul when in this world. A fundamental concept of Buddhism is the notion that the goal of one’s life is to break the cycles of death and birth. Reincarnation exists because of the individual’s craving and desires to live in this world. The ultimate goal of a Buddhists is to achieve freedom from the cycle of reincarnation and attain nirvana. The enlightened state in which the person is free from greed, hate, and ignorance. The way to nirvana involves the person showing love for others, being compassionate and sympathetic of other people, and showing patience in everything. A Buddhist must also follow five main principles which prohibit killing, stealing, ill language, sexual immorality, and the use of toxic substances. When one successfully follows these principles.

I-The Four Noble Truths
1.1 Life means suffering:
1.2 The origin of suffering is attachment.
1.3 The cessation of suffering is attainable.
1.4 The path to the cessation of suffering.
1- Life means suffering.
To live means to suffer, because the human nature is not perfect and neither is the world we live in. During our lifetime, we inevitably have to endure physical suffering such as pain, sickness, injury, tiredness, old age, and eventually death; and we have to endure psychological suffering like sadness, fear, frustration, disappointment, and depression. Although there are different degrees of suffering and there are also positive experiences in life that we perceive as the opposite of suffering, such as ease, comfort and happiness, life in its totality is imperfect and incomplete, because our world is subject to impermanence. This means we are never able to keep permanently what we strive for, and just as happy moments pass by, we ourselves and our loved ones will pass away one day, too.
2- The origin of suffering is attachment.
The origin of suffering is attachment to transient things and the ignorance thereof. Transient things do not only include the physical objects that surround us, but also ideas, and -in a greater sense- all objects of our perception. Ignorance is the lack of understanding of how our mind is attached to impermanent things. The reasons for suffering are desire, passion, ardour, pursuit of wealth and prestige, striving for fame and popularity, or in short: craving and clinging. Because the objects of our attachment are transient, their loss is inevitable, thus suffering will necessarily follow. Objects of attachment also include the idea of a "self" which is a delusion, because there is no abiding self. What we call "self" is just an imagined entity, and we are merely a part of the ceaseless becoming of the universe.
3- The cessation of suffering is attainable.
The cessation of suffering can be attained through nirodha. Nirodha means the unmaking of sensual craving and conceptual attachment. The third noble truth expresses the idea that suffering can be ended by attaining dispassion. Nirodha extinguishes all forms of clinging and attachment. This means that suffering can be overcome through human activity, simply by removing the cause of suffering. Attaining and perfecting dispassion is a process of many levels that ultimately results in the state of Nirvana. Nirvana means freedom from all worries, troubles, complexes, fabrications and ideas. Nirvana is not comprehensible for those who have not attained it.
4-The path to the cessation of suffering.
There is a path to the end of suffering - a gradual path of self-improvement, which is described more detailed in the Eightfold Path. It is the middle way between the two extremes of excessive self-indulgence (hedonism) and excessive self-mortification (asceticism); and it leads to the end of the cycle of rebirth. The Fourth Noble Truth: We have already tasted true happiness and freedom in the The Third Noble Truth that promises the end of dukkha, the disease of unsatisfactoriness. The Third Noble Truth presents a simple prognosis of the antidote to suffering, being essentially the extinction of tanha(thirst or craving). Not easy to realize this freedom, the Buddha Gotama put forward a systematic approach to be applied at every moment in our lives. The medicine which the Buddha prescribed is the Eightfold Noble Path :
a) Samma ditthi : Right Understanding
b) Samma sankappa : Right Thought
c) Samma vaca : Right Speech
d) Samma kammanta : Right Action
e) Samma ajiva : Right Livelihood
f) Samma vayama : Right Effort
g) Samma sati : Right Mindfulness
h) Samma samadhi : Right Concentration
The cultivation of these eight qualities requires both internal and external development. This systematic training of the mind may be grouped into three aspects of ethics, meditation and wisdom. In this context, here is a brief summary of (what I understand by) each of the components of the Eightfold Path: Ethics Right Speech This is a very subtle quality, which does not merely require speaking the truth at all times, but knowing also when to speak and to what extent. Right speech covers abstention from telling lies; from harmful and malicious speech whether directly at someone or indirectly about someone; and from gossip or frivolous chat. Right speech is always appropriate for the particular situation. Right Action is selfless conduct that respects all life, plus the property (material and intellectual) of others, has honourable respect for oneself and enters into honourable relationships with others. Right Livelihood means undertaking an ethical way of earning a living, hence choosing an occupation that facilitates the Eightfold Noble Path, especially one that does not involved killing or fraud. This quality can be applied at successively finer levels, so that one chooses perhaps methods of carrying out a job in a noble manner ... until right livelihood meets with right action. Meditation :Right Effort is energetic will that on the one hand seeks to cultivate worthy and wholesome states of mind until they are perfected; and, on the other, to reduce and eradicate each and every unwholesome state of mind. Right Mindfulness is awareness at all levels of mind, attentive to the activities of kaya (the body), vedana (sensations or feelings) , the activities of citta (the mind) and dhamma (thoughts, ideas, concepts and perceptions) Right Concentration is the development of mind that is successively more and more focused, until equanimity is reached. It is the quality that is synonymous with states that are reached in meditation. Wisdom :Right Understanding In any situation, with this quality one knows things as they really are: that such is such, that given these causes, then there may arise those effects; more generally it means understanding the Four Noble Truths at the deepest level, with the whole mind.. Right Thought/Aspiration is the quality of having the right initial intention as regards any undertaking, being one of selfless renunciation and service. Sometimes these aspects are summed up as the Three Fundamental Principles: Cease to do evil Cultivate what is good Purify the mind The Eightfold Noble Path is popularly termed the Middle Way (Majjhima Patipada) since it avoids the two extremes of searching for happiness through sense pleasure, which is "low, common, unprofitable and the way of ordinary people"; and the search for happiness through self-mortification, which is "painful, unworthy and unprofitable". Characteristic of the Middle Way is a balanced life, one that cultivates wisdom and compassion: Words of wisdom to become True Individuals: Don't go by mere tradition. Don't go by mere reasoning. Don't go merely because it is the master who says this. Don't go merely because it is said in the scriptures, etc... But when you know for yourselves - these things are not good, conducing to loss and sorrow - then reject them. When you know for yourselves - these things are good, conducing to welfare and happiness - then follow them And words of compassion to encourage on-line Community: It is the whole, not the half, of the best life - this good friendship, this good companionship, this association with the good. Whatever living beings there may be - feeble or strong, long, stout, or medium, short, small or large, seen or unseen, those dwelling far or near, those who are born and those who are yet to be born - may all beings, without exception, be happy. Just as a mother would protect her only child even at the risk of her own life, even so let one cultivate a boundless heart towards all beings. Links on the Fourth Noble Truth Eightfold Noble Path – Overview Dharma Talk by Lama Surya Das: The Fourth Noble Truth: the Eightfold Path to Enlightenment: Part One and Part Two. The series of talks are part of a book entitled The Facts of Life From a Buddhist Perspective. The Buddha`s Message to Mankind is a personal page by Michael Holmboe Meyer, containing an overview of the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Noble Path, set in a contemporary context. It is visually very delightful. Ethics Journal of Buddhist Ethics is the first academic journal dedicated entirely to Buddhist ethics and has earnt much respect in the Buddhist community and several net awards. A mirror(?) site is here (Goldsmiths College, UK). To establish a solid ethical foundation, many Buddhists try to observe Five precepts. These are discussed in an interesting Question and Answer Session. Meditation Meditation and Mental Culture provides a variety of inspiring teachings from some famous Theravada monks, including Ven. Ajahn Chah and Mahasi Sayadaw, plus Jack Kornfield, kindly made available by the NCF (Ottawa) Special Interest Group on Buddhism Wisdom The Heart of the Prajna Paramita Sutta - a famous sutra of the Mahayana school that fuses Wisdom and Compassion. The above is just a small selection: these three major themes constitute the heart of Buddhism, so we shall meet them many times in future! Note This article was originally one of a series of contributions I made as a 'Buddhist Guide' for the meaning company.The latter quality discerns it from other paths which are merely "wandering on the wheel of becoming", because these do not have a final object. The path to the end of suffering can extend over many lifetimes, throughout which every individual rebirth is subject to karmic conditioning. Craving, ignorance, delusions, and its effects will disappear gradually, as progress is made on the path.
II-The Noble Eightfold Path
Wisdom2.2. Right View
2.2. Right Intention
Ethical Conduct2.3. Right Speech
2.4. Right Action
2.5. Right Livelihood
Mental Development2.6. Right Effort
2.7. Right Mindfulness
2.8. Right Concentration
The Noble Eightfold Path describes the way to the end of suffering, as it was laid out by Siddhartha Gautama. It is a practical guideline to ethical and mental development with the goal of freeing the individual from attachments and delusions; and it finally leads to understanding the truth about all things. Together with the Four Noble Truths it constitutes the gist of Buddhism. Great emphasis is put on the practical aspect, because it is only through practice that one can attain a higher level of existence and finally reach Nirvana. The eight aspects of the path are not to be understood as a sequence of single steps, instead they are highly interdependent principles that have to be seen in relationship with each other.Right View Right view is the beginning and the end of the path, it simply means to see and to understand things as they really are and to realise the Four Noble Truth. As such, right view is the cognitive aspect of wisdom. It means to see things through, to grasp the impermanent and imperfect nature of worldly objects and ideas, and to understand the law of karma and karmic conditioning.
2.1. Right view is not necessarily an intellectual capacity, just as wisdom is not just a matter of intelligence. Instead, right view is attained, sustained, and enhanced through all capacities of mind. It begins with the intuitive insight that all beings are subject to suffering and it ends with complete understanding of the true nature of all things. Since our view of the world forms our thoughts and our actions, right view yields right thoughts and right actions.
2.2. Right Intention :While right view refers to the cognitive aspect of wisdom, right intention refers to the volitional aspect, i.e. the kind of mental energy that controls our actions. Right intention can be described best as commitment to ethical and mental self-improvement. Buddha distinguishes three types of right intentions: 1. the intention of renunciation, which means resistance to the pull of desire, 2. the intention of good will, meaning resistance to feelings of anger and aversion, and 3. the intention of harmlessness, meaning not to think or act cruelly, violently, or aggressively, and to develop compassion.
2.3. Right Speech :Right speech is the first principle of ethical conduct in the eightfold path. Ethical conduct is viewed as a guideline to moral discipline, which supports the other principles of the path. This aspect is not self-sufficient, however, essential, because mental purification can only be achieved through the cultivation of ethical conduct. The importance of speech in the context of Buddhist ethics is obvious: words can break or save lives, make enemies or friends, start war or create peace. Buddha explained right speech as follows: 1. to abstain from false speech, especially not to tell deliberate lies and not to speak deceitfully, 2. to abstain from slanderous speech and not to use words maliciously against others, 3. to abstain from harsh words that offend or hurt others, and 4. to abstain from idle chatter that lacks purpose or depth. Positively phrased, this means to tell the truth, to speak friendly, warm, and gently and to talk only when necessary.
2.4. Right Action :The second ethical principle, right action, involves the body as natural means of expression, as it refers to deeds that involve bodily actions. Unwholesome actions lead to unsound states of mind, while wholesome actions lead to sound states of mind. Again, the principle is explained in terms of abstinence: right action means 1. to abstain from harming sentient beings, especially to abstain from taking life (including suicide) and doing harm intentionally or delinquently, 2. to abstain from taking what is not given, which includes stealing, robbery, fraud, deceitfulness, and dishonesty, and 3. to abstain from sexual misconduct. Positively formulated, right action means to act kindly and compassionately, to be honest, to respect the belongings of others, and to keep sexual relationships harmless to others. Further details regarding the concrete meaning of right action can be found in the Precepts.
2.5. Right Livelihood Right livelihood means that one should earn one's living in a righteous way and that wealth should be gained legally and peacefully. The Buddha mentions four specific activities that harm other beings and that one should avoid for this reason: 1. dealing in weapons, 2. dealing in living beings (including raising animals for slaughter as well as slave trade and prostitution), 3. working in meat production and butchery, and 4. selling intoxicants and poisons, such as alcohol and drugs. Furthermore any other occupation that would violate the principles of right speech and right action should be avoided.
2.6. Right Effort :Right effort can be seen as a prerequisite for the other principles of the path. Without effort, which is in itself an act of will, nothing can be achieved, whereas misguided effort distracts the mind from its task, and confusion will be the consequence. Mental energy is the force behind right effort; it can occur in either wholesome or unwholesome states. The same type of energy that fuels desire, envy, aggression, and violence can on the other side fuel self-discipline, honesty, benevolence, and kindness. Right effort is detailed in four types of endeavours that rank in ascending order of perfection: 1. to prevent the arising of unarisen unwholesome states, 2. to abandon unwholesome states that have already arisen, 3. to arouse wholesome states that have not yet arisen, and 4. to maintain and perfect wholesome states already arisen.
2.7. Right Mindfulness :Right mindfulness is the controlled and perfected faculty of cognition. It is the mental ability to see things as they are, with clear consciousness. Usually, the cognitive process begins with an impression induced by perception, or by a thought, but then it does not stay with the mere impression. Instead, we almost always conceptualise sense impressions and thoughts immediately. We interpret them and set them in relation to other thoughts and experiences, which naturally go beyond the facticity of the original impression. The mind then posits concepts, joins concepts into constructs, and weaves those constructs into complex interpretative schemes. All this happens only half consciously, and as a result we often see things obscured. Right mindfulness is anchored in clear perception and it penetrates impressions without getting carried away. Right mindfulness enables us to be aware of the process of conceptualisation in a way that we actively observe and control the way our thoughts go. Buddha accounted for this as the four foundations of mindfulness: 1. contemplation of the body, 2. contemplation of feeling (repulsive, attractive, or neutral), 3. contemplation of the state of mind, and 4. contemplation of the phenomena.
2.8. Right Concentration:The eighth principle of the path, right concentration, refers to the development of a mental force that occurs in natural consciousness, although at a relatively low level of intensity, namely concentration. Concentration in this context is described as one-pointedness of mind, meaning a state where all mental faculties are unified and directed onto one particular object. Right concentration for the purpose of the eightfold path means wholesome concentration, i.e. concentration on wholesome thoughts and actions. The Buddhist method of choice to develop right concentration is through the practice of meditation. The meditating mind focuses on a selected object. It first directs itself onto it, then sustains concentration, and finally intensifies concentration step by step. Through this practice it becomes natural to apply elevated levels concentration also in everyday situations. The Four Noble Truths encapsulate the central essence of Buddhism. Considered as the most fundamental teaching of the Buddha, the Four Noble Truths was the direct culmination of the Buddha’s experiences of the Four Noble Sights. The first sermon, also known as "Setting in Motion the Wheel of Law", was delivered by the Buddha to five ascetics in a deer park near Benares, after his enlightenment. This was based on his realization of the Four Noble Truths: There is Suffering (Dukkha in Pali which means "not able to bear or withstand anything").There is a cause to Suffering (Samudaya) There should be cessation of Suffering (Nirodha) Suffering can be ended by following the Eightfold Path .The First Noble Truth has three aspects: There is suffering (Dukkha); Dukkha should be understood; and Dukkha has been understood. The first aspect underlines that birth, ageing, sickness, dissociation from the loved ones, and not getting what one wants are all characterized by “clinging”, and are thus forms of suffering. The second aspect explains that understanding suffering should be based on vision, insight, wisdom, and knowledge. Only then can one claim to have understood suffering through these insights. The second Noble Truth has three aspects: There is a cause to suffering and the cause is attachments to Desire; Desire should be done away with; and Desire has been done away with. Desire, which is the cause to suffering is of three kinds: Desire for pleasure (kama tanha), desire to become (bhava tanha), and desire to get rid of (vibhava tanha). The Third Noble Truth has three aspects: There is cessation of suffering; Cessation of suffering should be realized; and the cessation of suffering has been realized. The Fourth Noble Truth has three aspects: There is the Eightfold Path to end suffering; This path should be developed; and this path has been fully developed. The Eightfold Path which is also called the Ariya Magga (the Ariyan or Noble Path) reflects the Buddha’s final solution to end suffering. Grouped under three categories, the Buddha prescribes in the Eightfold path:Wisdom (panna).Right Understanding (samma ditthi)Right Aspiration (samma sankappa).These basic expressions of the Buddha should be best understood, not as beliefs, but as categories of experiences which does not depend on any metaphysical speculation or belief.
III-The three special Paths:
3.1. Morality is the quality of being in accord with standards of right or good conduct or a system of ideas that fall into those same categories. We often hear words about religious morality or the phrase Christian morality in society. Items that fall into the morally sound category are qualities like good, goodness, rightness, virtue, and righteousness. When talking about a moral quality involving a course of action, we think of ethics. To define morality, a person will use the rules or habits with regard to right and wrong that he or she follows. It is a complex system of general principles and particular judgments based on cultural, religious, and philosophical concepts and beliefs. Cultures and or groups regulate and generalize these concepts, thus regulating behavior. When someone conforms to the codification, you consider this person to be moral. And yet, the notion of how we ought to behave and the reality of how we do behave are varied and real morality behaves in accordance with one's perception of morality. Often, doctrines or moral duties that support the quality of an action which renders it good, is moral. And so a system of standards used to produce honest, decent, and ethical results are consideredHumanistic Buddhism emphasizes our treatment of other people above all else. No one can ever expect to come into full awareness of the Bodhi mind if they do not know how to treat other people with compassion, respect and unfailing kindness. These basic traits are nothing less than aspects of the Bodhi mind.Since the BLIA is an active, world-wide organization, I have spoken at length in this letter about the importance of human virtues, intelligent activity, and the outgoing practice of compassion. These are the central themes of humanistic Buddhism. In this chapter, I will speak briefly about how to practice Buddhism. Since the BLIA is an open organization, tolerant and accepting of all, we do not advocate only one kind of practice of Buddhism. There are many ways to discover the Bodhi mind. Different people follow different paths. In one life, many people undertake more than one form of practice. Whether we practice Zen, Pure Land, esoteric Buddhism, or some other form of Buddhism, there are several fundamental aspects of good practice that all of us should bear in mind. I will discuss them briefly in the following sections.
3.2. Concentration,In the sutras there is a story about a man who had been condemned to death. The king who had condemned the man gave him one last chance to live. The king told the man that if he could carry a jar of oil on his head around town without spilling a single drop, he would let him go free. The man agreed to the proposal. With utmost concentration he slowly carried the jar of oil around the town. As he walked along his route, the king had people ring bells and make noise to distract him. When this did not work, the king had beautiful dancing girls sway beside the man as he proceeded. Nothing made him lose his concentration. Since his life depended on it, the man's mind was perfectly fixed on the jar of oil on his head. Eventually he succeeded in completing his route without spilling a drop of oil, and the king let him go free. This story graphically illustrates the importance of concentration. Just as the man's life depended on the jar of oil on his head, our lives depend on the Dharma. If we can realize this truth with the same immediacy as the man in the story, we will make great strides in our practice. The Sutra of Bequeathed Teachings says, "If you can concentrate on one thing, there is nothing you can not do."Concentration is not a gift. It is something each one of us must work to achieve. Once it has been achieved, concentration becomes our single most important tool in the practice of Buddhism. Every aspect of Buddhism requires concentration. To be mindful, we must concentrate. To be compassionate, we must concentrate. To meditate, we must concentrate. To get along with others, we must concentrate. Concentration can, and should, be developed in working situations and whenever we interact with other people. The most basic way of developing concentration, however, is through meditation. There are many kinds of meditation, but all of them depend on concentration. In its most basic form, successful meditation requires that we sit still for fairly long periods of time. This sitting is a basic form of physical concentration that has profoundly beneficial effects on both the body and the mind. Buddhism Buddhist Buddhic Contemplation Meditative Concentration The founder of Buddhism and the primary enlightenment guiding light to the Buddhist was Siddhartha Gautama Buddha. Siddhartha became a wandering ascetic which was an esteemed and well traveled path in India during those days. After he studied Yogic meditation with two Brahmin hermits, Gautama Buddha succeeded in attaining high meditative states. Know after his enlightenment as the Sakyamuni Buddha and Gautama Buddha, Buddha eventually left all teachers and sat under a Bodhi Tree facing east. He remained there in meditation until he attained enlightenment on the night of the full moon, ascending the Dhyana, the four trance stages, to become Gautama Buddha or the "Enlightened One". Buddha’s teachings were recollected by his followers and transmitted orally as Buddhism and Buddhist teachings. It was not until many years after his death that the Buddhist principles of Buddhism were written down. The Pali dialogues or sutras are believed to be the closest approximation to what Gautama Buddha actually taught. Gautama Buddha taught a new spiritual path which he called "The Middle Way". If one followed the Buddhism Pathway it would bring a spiritual pilgrim clear vision, insight, wisdom, tranquility, awakening, Enlightenment, and Nirvana. Meditation or Concentration was the essential ingredient needed for one to reach the exalted state of Nirvana. By contemplating universal truths and one’s essential beingness, growing Buddhic consciousness nurtured detachment and abstract understanding. Wisdom came from cultivating "Right Views" and "Right Intentions". To promote a happy harmonious life for both the individual and society and to build a foundation for higher states of consciousness, the Buddhist must perform only enlightened moral actions. Enlightenment and peace result from training and study of this path of upward spiral movement. Aspirants begin with a small spark of wisdom which inspires them to moral action and meditation which expands the wisdom which bolsters the morality and leads to higher levels of meditative concentration and so on. There are many types of meditation and concentration. Vipassana meditation was self-possessed,mindful concentration on the mind, emotions, thoughts, and dharmic principles. Another recommended type of meditation was to charge the four corners of the earth with pure thoughts of compassion, empathy, friendliness, nonviolence, and generosity and then to see them in one's mind's eye, rippling out to the ends of the universe.
3.3. WISDOM,Today we are going to complete our survey of the Noble Eightfold Path. In the last two weeks, we have looked at good conduct and mental development. Today, we have the third group to look at, and that is the wisdom group. Here we have an interesting situation which we attended to sometime ago when we discussed the Four Noble Truths. When one sees the Noble Eightfold Path listed in sequence, one begins with Right Understanding and yet in the context of the three fold division of good conduct, mental development and wisdom, wisdom comes at the end. One tries to explain this by using the analogy of climbing a mountain. When one sets out to climb a mountain one has the summit in view and it is the sight of the summit that gives direction to one’s path. In that sense, even when one begins to climb the mountain, one has one’s eyes on the summit. As such, right understanding is necessary right at the beginning of the path. Yet in practical terms one has to climb the lower steps, scale the intermediate ridges before one reaches the summit, the attainment of wisdom. In practical terms, therefore, wisdom comes at the end of one’s practice of the path. Wisdom is described as the understanding of the Four Noble Truths, or the understanding of dependent origination and so forth. What is meant by this is that when we speak of the attainment of wisdom, we are concerned with transforming these items of the doctrine from simple intellectual facts to real personal facts. We are interested in changing this knowledge from mere book learning to real living experience. And the way this is done is through the cultivation of good conduct and specifically through the cultivation of mental development. Otherwise, anyone can read in a book the explanation of the Four Noble Truths and so forth and yet this is not the same as attaining wisdom. As the Buddha Himself said, it is through failing to understand the Four Noble Truths and dependent origination that we have all run on in this cycle of birth and death. Obviously when He said this, He meant something deeper than simply failure to be acquainted intellectually with these items of doctrine. Understanding here has to be taken in the sense of Right Understanding, direct understanding, in the sense of seeing. This is perhaps why so frequently the language of seeing is used to describe the attainment of wisdom. We speak in terms of seeing the Truth, of seeing things as they really are. Because the attainment of wisdom is not an intellectual or academic exercise. It is seeing, understanding these truths directly. When this kind of direct understanding of the truth is gained, this is equivalent to gaining enlightenment. This opens the door to freedom, freedom from suffering and to Nirvana. Wisdom is the key thing in Buddhism. In other religions, we find that faith is paramount. In still other religions, we find that meditation is supreme as for instance in Yoga. In Buddhism, faith is preliminary, meditation is instrumental. The real heart of Buddhism is wisdom. The two steps of the Noble Eightfold Path that are included in wisdom are Right Understanding and Right Thought. Right Understanding can be said to be seeing things as they really are. Understanding the truth about things rather than simply seeing them as they appear to be. What this means is insight, penetrative under-standing, seeing beyond the surface of things. If we want to explain this in doctrinal terms, we will have to speak about the Four Noble Truths, dependent origination, impermanence, not-self and so forth. But for the moment let us just speak about the means of gaining Right Understanding. Here we can again see the scientific attitude of the teachings of the Buddha. Because when we come to look at the means of acquiring Right Understanding, we see that we begin with objective observation of the situation and of ourselves. We join objective observation with enquiry, examination and consideration. In acquiring Right Understanding, we find that there are two types of understanding. One is the understanding that we acquire by ourselves. The other is the understanding that we acquire through others, that we are shown by others. Ultimately, these two types of understanding merge because in the final analysis real understanding of Right Understanding has to be our own. But in the meantime, one can distinguish between Right Understanding that we achieve through observation of the environment and the Right Understanding that we achieve through the study of the teachings. Just as with regard to our situation, we are asked to observe objectively what we see, what we experience and then examine and consider its significance, so when we approach the teachings of the Buddha we are asked to study them, to listen to them and then to consider them, to examine them. Whether we speak in terms of observation and enquiry, or whether we refer to study of the doctrine and we speak in terms of reading, or listening and consideration, the third step in this process of acquiring understanding is meditation. It is on this third stage of the process of acquiring Right Understanding that the two types of understanding merge.
To summarize, the means of acquiring Right Understanding is as follows - on the first stage, one has to observe, study and read. On the second stage, one has to examine intellectually what one has observed, studied and read. On the third stage, one has to meditate upon what one has examined, considered and determined. Let us use a practical example. Let us say we intend to travel to a certain destination. In order to do so, we acquire a road map which shows the route to reach the destination. We look first at the map for the directions. Then we must review what we have seen, review the map, examine the map to be certain that we understand the directions. Only then do we actually travel to our destination. This is analogous to meditation. Again supposing we have bought a new piece of equipment. It is not enough to read the instructions. We have to study the instructions, examine them to be certain that we understand them intellectually. When we are certain that we have clarified our intellectual understanding, we can then proceed to actually operate the new piece of equipment. This is analogous to meditation, to meditating upon what we have acquired through observation, learning, consideration and examination. On the third stage, through meditation these facts become part of our living experience. Perhaps we might spend a few moments discussing the attitude that one can do well to cultivate in approaching the teachings of the Buddha. It is said that one who approaches the teachings ought to seek to avoid three faults in his attitude and these faults are illustrated with the example of a vessel. In this context, we are the vessel, the teachings are what are to be filled into the vessel. Suppose the vessel is covered with a lid, we will not be very successful in filling the vessel, say with milk. This is similar to one who listens to the teachings with a closed mind, a mind that is already made up. The Dharma cannot enter, fill the vessel. Again supposing we have a vessel that has a hole in the bottom. If we fill the vessel with milk, the milk will run out of the hole. This is similar to those of us who find that what we hear does not stay with us. And finally there is the case of the vessel in which there are impurities. Suppose we fill the vessel with milk before having cleaned it. Suppose there is some spoiled milk left in the vessel. The fresh milk that we fill into the vessel will be spoilt. In the same way if we listen to the teachings with an impure mind, with impure attitudes, because for instance we want to achieve a certain amount of honour, or fame, with these kinds of selfish attitudes or desires, we are like a vessel tainted by impurities. We must seek to avoid these faults in our approach to the teachings of the Buddha, in the study of the Dharma.
Alternatively, it is said that one might listen to the Dharma in the way that a patient listens to the instructions of the physician. In this context, the Buddha is the physician, the Dharma is the medicine, we are the patients and the practice of the Dharma is the means by which we can be cured of the disease, the disease of the defilements - greed, anger and delusion - that produce suffering. We will surely achieve some degree of Right Understanding if we approach the study of the Dharma with this notion in mind. We often divide Right Understanding into two aspects. The first relates to the ordinary level while the second relates to a deeper level. Sometime ago, we spoke about the goals that Buddhism offers, in the sense of two levels of goals - happiness and good fortune in this life and the next, and ultimate liberation. Here too, in discussing Right Understanding, we see that there are two levels, two aspects of Right Understanding. The first aspect corresponds to the first type of goal, and the second corresponds to attaining liberation. The first aspect of Right Understanding is the understanding of the relation between cause and effect in the sphere of moral responsibility of our actions and our behavior. This briefly stated means that we will experience the effects of our actions. If we act well, if we observe the principles of respect for life, property, truth and so forth, if we act in these wholesome ways we will experience the good effects of our actions. We will enjoy happiness and fortunate circumstances in this life and the next. Conversely, if we act badly, we will experience unhappiness, miseries and unfortunate circumstances in this life and the next. On the level of understanding as it relates to the ultimate goal of the teachings of the Buddha, we are concerned with Right Understanding in terms of seeing things as they really are. When we say seeing things as they really are, what do we mean? Again one can get doctrinal answers to this question. It can mean seeing things as impermanent, as dependently originated, as not-self, as impersonal, as seeing the Four Noble Truths. All these answers are correct. All express something about seeing things as they really are, seeing the reality of things. In order to arrive at an understanding of this first and in a sense the last step of the Noble Eightfold Path, we have to look for something that all these expressions of Right Understanding have in common. When we describe Right Understanding in all these various ways, all these descriptions are opposed to ignorance, to bondage, to entanglement in the cycle of birth and death. When the Buddha attained enlightenment, His experience was essentially an experience of destruction of ignorance. This experience is described by the Buddha Himself most frequently in terms of understanding the Four Noble Truths and understanding dependent origination. Both the Four Noble Truths and dependent origination are concerned with the destruction of ignorance. In this sense, ignorance is the central problem, the central idea in both the formula of the Four Noble Truths and dependent origination. Let us look at the Four Noble Truths again for a moment. The key to transforming one’s experience from the experience of suffering to the experience of the end of suffering is understanding the Second Noble Truth, the truth of the cause of suffering. Once we understand the cause of suffering, we can then act to achieve the end of suffering. The Four Noble Truths as we have discussed are divided into two groups, two of them to be abandoned, and two of them to be gained - the truth of suffering and the truth of the cause of suffering are to be abandoned, and the truth of the end of suffering and the truth of the path to the end of suffering are to be gained. Understanding the cause of suffering enables one to do this. We can see this clearly in the Buddha’s description of His experience on the night of His enlightenment. When He saw the cause of suffering, when He understood that desire, ill-will and ignorance were the causes of suffering, this opened the door to His enlightenment. Ignorance, desire and ill-will are the causes of suffering. If we want to reduce our examination to the most essential concept, we must focus upon ignorance because it is due to ignorance that desire and ill-will arise.
Essentially, ignorance is the idea of a permanent, independent self. It is this conception of an "I" opposed and separate from the people and things around us. Once we have the notion of an "I", we have an inclination to favour those things that sustain this "I" and to be averse to those things that we think threaten this "I". It is this conception of the self that is the fundamental cause of suffering, the root of the various negative emotions - desire, anger, ill-will, envy, greed and jealousy. It is ignorant of the fact that the so-called "I", the self, is just a convenient name for a collection of ever-changing, dependent, contingent factors. Is there a forest apart from the trees? The self is just a convenient name for a collection of processes. The self is a cause of suffering and fear. In this context the self is likened to mistaking a rope for a snake in the semi-darkness. If we come upon a rope in the darkness, we may assume the rope is in fact a snake and this assumption is a cause of fear. Similarly, in ignorance we take the impersonal, impermanent processes of feelings, perceptions, and so forth to be a self, and as a result we respond to situations with hope and fear. We desire certain things, we are averse to others. We are fond of certain people, we dislike others. So ignorance in this sense is the mistaken notion of a permanent ego, of a real self. This teaching of not-self does not contradict the law of moral responsibility, the Law of Karma. In fact, you will recall that we described Right Understanding in terms of two aspects, understanding the Law of Karma, and here in terms of seeing things as they really are, understanding the nature of existence. Once this egoism is removed, once this erroneous notion of the self is dispelled by Right Understanding, greed, anger and the rest do not occur. When this is stopped the end of suffering is gained. I do not expect this to be completely clear to everyone immediately. We shall be spending several sessions in the next few weeks deepening and expanding the examination of the nature of ignorance.
Let us go on to the next part of the path that belongs to the wisdom group and that is Right Thought. Here we begin to see the reintegration, the reapplication of the wisdom group to the sphere of good conduct because thought has an immense influence on one’s behaviour. The Buddha has said if one acts and speaks with a pure mind, then happiness follows as one’s shadow that never leaves. And if one speaks and acts with an impure mind, then suffering follows as the wheel follows the hoof of the ox. Thought has a tremendous influence on one’s behaviour. Right Thought means avoiding desire and ill-will. So you can see how important wisdom is because the cause of suffering is described in terms of desire, ill-will and ignorance. Right Understanding removes ignorance. Right Thought removes desire and ill-will. So Right Understanding and Right Thought remove the causes of suffering.To remove desire and greed we need to cultivate renunciation or detachment. To remove ill-will, we need to cultivate loving-kindness and compassion. How does one cultivate the attitudes of renunciation, loving-kindness and compassion which will act as antidotes for desire and ill-will? Firstly, renunciation is cultivated by meditating upon the unsatisfactory nature of existence, particularly the unsatisfactoriness of pleasures of the senses. We liken pleasures of the senses to salt water. A thirsty man who drinks salt water only finds that his thirst increases. He achieves no satisfaction. The Buddha also likened pleasures of the senses to a certain fruit called the Kimbu fruit. It is a fruit that is very pleasant in appearance. It has an attractive skin. It is fragrant and tasty. But it causes disaster as it is poisonous when eaten. Similarly, pleasures of the senses are attractive, enjoyable and yet they cause disaster. So in order to cultivate detachment, one has to consider the undesirable consequences of pleasures of the senses. In addition, one has to contemplate, to understand that the nature of samsara is suffering. That no matter where one may be born within the confines of the cycle of birth and death, that situation is pervaded by suffering. The nature of samsara is suffering just as the nature of fire is heat. Through understanding the unsatisfactory nature of existence, and through recognizing the undesirable consequences of pleasures of the senses one can cultivate detachment.One can cultivate loving-kindness and compassion through recognizing the essential equality of all living beings. All fear death, all tremble at punishments. Recognizing this, one should not kill or cause others to be killed. All desire happiness, all fear pain. In this, we are all alike. All living beings are alike. Recognizing this, one should not place oneself above others, one should not regard oneself differently from the way in which one would regard others. This recognition of the fundamental equality of all living beings is basic to the cultivation of loving-kindness and compassion. All want happiness just as I want happiness. Understanding this, one ought to regard all living beings with loving-kindness and compassion. One ought to cultivate this wish that all living beings may be happy. Just as I fear suffering and pain, and wish to avoid it, so do all living beings fear suffering and pain, and wish to avoid it. Understanding this, one develops and cultivates an attitude that wishes to see all living beings free from suffering. In this way, we can develop and cultivate the attitudes of renunciation, loving-kindness and compassion which between them counteract and eventually eliminate greed and anger. Finally through wisdom, having eliminated ignorance, greed and anger, having purified ourselves of those three defilements, we can attain freedom, the final goal that is the purpose of the Noble Eightfold Path, the bliss of Nirvana.
IV-CONCLUSION
Life seems to fly by at an increasingly frenetic pace as we enter the twenty-first century. We careen through the obstacle course of our busy lives and grab whatever synopsis is available to help us ibottom linei difficult or dense material. But there is no short cut to listening to a Mozart Symphony and there are no quick and easy Buddhist Cliff Notesi that will open us to the essence of the Buddha-dharma. One can stand back and admire a beautiful flower, but there is only one way to experience its subtle fragrance: up close and personal. Either we dedicate our time and attention to the Buddha-dharma, with an open mind and tender heart, or we do not. This presents the writer with something of a dilemma. I wanted to present the bare bones of the Buddhais early sermons, in a way that would make them accessible to anyone with little or no knowledge of Eastern philosophy but with a mind still open to possibility, with ears and eyes still open to the music of the dharma. Unfortunately, my aspiration was na?ve and greatly out of sync with my ability. After I started to transcribe a series of dharma talks on the Eightfold Path, I discovered that my understanding was impossibly shallow. I donit mind admitting that this came as both a surprise and a blow to my ego. So I started grappling with the Eightfold Path once again. I rewrote as I studied and contemplated as I rewrote. Each chapter eventually evolved into a new series of dharma talks. As a consequence of this long process, each chapter tends to be a self-contained unit, rather than flowing seamlessly from the one before it. Some material in the Bare Bones is repeated simply because I had forgotten what I wrote ten chapters and three years ago. To most Americans, the word iBuddhai conjures up the image of a little fat guy sitting with a silly grin on his face or worse, an emaciated, grim looking man who looks like he never had a friend in his life. Buddhai triggers an automatic deflector shield that rises to protect us from worshiping a false idol. God forbid that our religions should be contaminated by some foreign demon. We are programmed to reject heathen, alien and impure gods.They shall have no other Gods before thee. That programming has been extraordinarily and terribly successful in each religion on earth, including, sad to say, Buddhism. I can never get my mind around this. Here we have a man who said that his aim was to point out the reality of suffering and to show us a way to end our suffering. He never once claimed to be divine, or a god (Mahayana and Tibetan Buddhism notwithstanding), yet this man ranks in the highest pantheon of teachers who ever walked the face of this earth. To most of us in the West, he remains a stranger. This is astonishing and it speaks of a spiritual poverty that I find terribly sad. The Buddhais message is not about belief. He did not demand that you believe in this or in that. I think he would have been okay if you worshiped a chicken. To the Buddha, the journey begins with practice, not belief. You can believe in the Big Chicken and light candles and incense to him/her. But in the meantime, how about learning to quiet your mind and work skillfully with the poisons of greed, hatred and delusion? How about looking at the core of your own ignorance? My astonishment at our spiritual poverty comes home to roost as I face the truth that ignorance begins with me, especially as I begin to look at my own impatience with the ignorance of others. What is it in me that despises ignorance, if not my
own ignorance? If I accept the Buddhais teaching that it is avijja (delusion) that got me here in the first place, rather than an accident of birth, and if I accept his teaching that ignorance or delusion is universal, why then should I be astonished that almost no one seems to have heard of the Eightfold Path, and if they have, they donit take it very seriously? Perhaps it is too painful for us to accept the proposition that we really have not changed that much since the Buddhais time. In the twenty-five centuries since the Buddhais passing, are we more conscious? Are we more compassionate? Do we have more wisdom? The Buddha was a revolutionary then, and he is a revolutionary now. He had no use for metaphysical questions about God, or a First Cause, or evil, or heaven or hell. He was not interested in questions such as.Do we have a soul? Where does it go after death? Do we reincarnate?i Neither was he interested in proclaiming one set of beliefs to be superior to another, for instance, the Mahayana and Vajrayana belief that the bodhisattva ideal is isuperiori to the iselfishi idea of individual enlightenment, as espoused by Theravada Buddhism. I cannot believe that the Buddha would have tolerated such hogwash for one moment. His focus was relentless. You’re stuck in that hole and asking me if one tradition is superior to another? Let me ask you a question: Now that you figured out that you fell into a hole, are you suffering? Yes? Well then, letis find a way to get you out of there!i After asking us if we are suffering in our individual hole, if he heard a sincere response from deep below, the Buddha would not have hollered back, iNow letis all turn to page 780 in our Sacred Book and start praying together.i Nor would he say, iIn order to get out of that hole, we must first believe in a higher power.i Instead, he would analyze the problem of this particular hole, its depth, the possible places to establish our footing, etc., and look around for what was immediately at hand in terms of tools to help us climb out. But if a person needed to believe that a higher power would give him the strength to escape from his hole, the Buddha would have worked with that belief too. This is called upaya, or skillful means. The Eightfold Path is his elegant Upaya Instruction Book for climbing out of the hole that ignorance has dug for us. The Eightfold Path is a dharma wheel of eight spokes. Right Understanding, the first spoke, colors every facet of the Buddha-dharma, especially the First Noble Truth.
I acknowledge that suffering is hard-wired into my brain. From the First Noble Truth comes the Second: When I am oblivious to desire, my desire sinks back into the unconscious and turns into craving. Craving then turns into clinging and suffering is guaranteed. From the Second Noble Truth comes the Third: If I can break the chain before my craving has turned to clinging, I will be free of suffering, at least momentarily. From the Third Noble Truth comes the Fourth: The Eightfold Path is a blueprint for constructing the spiritual laboratory that eventually can produce an end to all clinging, thus an end to all suffering forever. When I complimented a client on the depth and intensity of her psychological work, she replied with a simple, iItis because I am mdesperate.i I will not soon forget the expression on her face. It was a look of recognition of her situation. It terrified her; it bewildered her, but it also gave her the courage and strength to get off the dime. As I observed the sincerity on her face, I was reminded of the Zen saying that we must practice as if our hair is on fire. She knew that her hair is on fire, and what makes her work so powerful is that she recognizes that I cannot save her. If she is to find psychological healing, it will be through her own effort. This is the Buddhais teaching par excellence. The hard message of Right Understanding is that no one can, and no one may save us but ourselves. Most of us stay in the prison of our minds, waiting for someone to come and rescue us. We decorate our little cells as best we can and soon forget that we live in a prison. The unconscious fantasy of rescue is a core delusion, and it is the death of the healing process in psychotherapy as well as in our spiritual practice. Recently, I reminded a client of a dream that he had brought to a session years ago. In it, he saw himself as a teenager who had been beaten up by school thugs. In the dream, he realized that he literally took a certain pleasure in being
beaten to a bloody pulp because he hoped and prayed that someone would see his terrible condition and come and hold him, nurture and comfort him. In the recent session, he looked at me and said, iSo all my life I have waited for someone to come and help me?i I said, iYes. But perhaps you are now able to become your own hero.i If we discover that our hair is on fire, that we have no time to wait for a loving mama or divine savior to rescue us, we grab what is available and start climbing out of our particular hole. We rescue ourselves. The truth of suffering is a hurdle that either blocks our way or gives us a toehold to start the upward climb! If the first spoke of the dharma wheel is the meaning of the Buddha- dharma, the second spoke is the content of that meaning. Martin Luther King said that we should judge someone not by the color of his skin but by the content of his character. Right Thought is the content of our character, pure and simple. This is why I much prefer right thought to right intentioni for the second spoke of the wheel. Right intention is too fancy for me and I suspect it would have been too fancy for Martin Luther King. If my thoughts are filled with ill will and envy, or if I am relentlessly self- loathing, what is the point of my high-toned Buddhist understanding of anicca, anatta or the Twelve Nidanas? Who cares if I can quote the FourNoble Truths and the Eightfold Path in Pali, Sanskrit or Greek, if the content of my thought is a total mess? The third spoke is the immediate expression of the content of my thought, Right Speech. The fourth and fifth spokes, Right Action and Right Living, are the expression of my practice through my daily interactions with others. I love the way the Dharma Wheel curves in an outward direction here. Earlier, we saw a relentlessly linear path with Patanjaliis eight limbs of yoga, a steady movement of interiorization. The Eightfold Path however, is circular. It curves in and it curves out, a constant turning toward truth even as it appears to move away from it. The last three spokes of the wheel are the meditation (dhyana) ones. Right Effort, Right Sati and Right Samadhi are the core of our meditation practice. What chance do we have to observe the crazy movie in our heads, to create the wedge that gives us a precious moment of release from being lost in the content, without intense mind training? Who among us does not have a wild nature? Our minds are the Wild West without any semblance of John Wayne on the horizon. So how do we work with our own wild ,nature without the tools of meditation? And yet, what is the point of a meditation practice if we do not have its context ?What is the point ofsitting on a cushion and getting wonderfully still if, two hours later, we have completely forgotten that clinging causes us to suffer? This is the meaning that I gleaned from the story of Harry the Shanghai Jew. He first endured; then he learned the new language. Unlike ,Harry, most of us want to skip the boring details and get to the reward of a thing. But what if the meaning of a thing rests within its context? What then for those of us who are too impatient to learn the new language? In the Chian tradition, it is said that the wise enshrine the miraculous bones of the ancient teachers within themselves. This is what it means to learn the language: to give our heart and soul, blood and guts to the new thing. Incorporating the teaching of the ancient masters means that we are willing to learn it in our bones, not in our heads. Learning the language is grounded in faith and nurtured in humility. If we are to open our minds to the unknown, we must leave our comfort zone, where layers of memorized facts have created a false sense of security and certainty, and enter a world that is new and unfamiliar. Sad to say, the line to purchase that ticket is not very long. As we come to the last spoke of samadhi and the wheel turns, an amazing truth is revealed about the Eightfold Path. Like prospectors panning for gold, we find, through our practice, the essence of sati shinning at the bottom of the pan. At the same time, the set of mirrors (samadhi) becomes ever more clear and capable of magnifying sati even deeper down to the roots of greed, hatred and delusion. Now, Right Understanding opens into far more subtle levels of knowing. This level of knowing illumines and purifies as the wheel turns again and again into Right Thought and on to Right Speech. From this constant turning comes even greater depth of insight. Eventually, we discover that the dharma wheel of the Eightfold Path is not a circle at all. In fact, it is a spiral of development that guides us with the sure eye of the most seasoned sailor. It will take us across the ocean of unconscious existence, where, until now we have been caught between joy and misery, clarity and confusion, yes and no, before and after. This ascending spiral spreads in all directions and it goes deep down as well as soaring into unimagined heights. It takes us beyond the relentless subtext of life, death and suffering, to a distant shore of liberation. The Buddha teaches us that this spiral is our birthright. It is an urge within each of us, a deep unease knocking at our door, asking us all to come home.

Ø First academic of International Programme.
MCU.

Logic

2009-04-16T07:17:00.001-07:00

Dr.BCR.Titu Barua

Mangala priya

Watsuthivararam

yannawa,Sathorn,

Bangkok,10120.

Thailand.

Logic

- The science of reasoning
- The science that evaluates arguments
- The study of the methods and principles use to distinguish good (correct) from bad (incorrect) reasoning.

Reasoning is a special kind of thinking I which problems are solved, in which inference takes place, that is, in which conclusions are drawn from premises.

Inference
An inference is the process by which one proposition is arrived at and affirmed on the basis of one or more other propositions accepted as the starting point of the process.
An inference is the reasoning process expressed by an argument.
Inferences may be expressed through conditioned statements as well.

Argument
An argument is a group of proposition, one of which (the conclusion) is claimed to the supported by the others (the premises).

Premises

Argument

Conclusion

Proposition
Premises Evidence / Reason
Proposition

Conclusion Proposition what is claimed to follow
from the evidences.

Premise and Conclusion

Premises are the propositions which are the reasons given I support of an argument’s conclusion.
The Conclusion is the proposition that is affirmed or supported on the basis of the other propositions of the argument.

Proposition / Statement

A proposition is what a declarative sentence is typically used to assent.
A proposition is a sentence that is either true or false in other words, typically a declarative sentence.

Parts of Argument

Premise (s) + Conclusion : Argument

Whether a proposition is a premise a conclusion is determined by how it is used, not by where it happens to occur I the passage.
It is possible to express the very same argument in a number of ways :
1) Since Marie is a logic student, and since all logic students are bright, Marie must be bright.
2) Marie must be bright. After all, she is a logic student, and we know that all logic students are bright.
3) It follows logically that because Marie is a logic student she must be bright, since all logic students are bright.

Recognizing Arguments

The best way to recognize arguments is form context.
A passage is an argument if its purpose is to prove or show that something is true by offering evidence in its support.
Phrases or terms like it follows that, since, and so we must conclude that strongly suggest the presence of an argument
“If both Saturn and Uranus have sings, them Saturn has
sings”

This passage is a conditional proposition but not an argument because its antecedent is not claimed to be true.
Both Saturn and Uranus have sings.
Therefore, Saturn has sings.
This passage is an argument because its premise is claimed to be true and intended to prove that its conclusion is true (not why it is so).

Deductive and Inductive Arguments
Deduction is necessary or certain reasoning. A deductive argument is one whose conclusion is claimed to follow its premises with logical certainty.
“Because all humans are vertebrates and Smith is a human, therefore Smith is a vertebrate”.
The conclusion must follow; the premises logically entail, or guarantee it. The very meaning of the premises makes the conclusion logically necessary.
A deductive argument is valid if and only if it is not possible for all of its premises to be true and its conclusion false.
An inductive argument is one whose conclusion is claimed to be more or less probable but not certain.
Induction is probable reasoning.
In an inductive argument, the conduction is likely or probable but never logically certain.
“Employee Brown has arrived on time for work the last thousand days. Therefore, he’ll probably arrive on time today.”
There’s nothing certain about this conclusion. Brown may be ill a have had an accident or have overslept.

Signal ~ indicator words of the conclusion

So, thus, therefore, consequently, it follows that, as a result, hence, finally, in conclusion, and the like.

Signal words of the premise
Since, as, because, for, in as much as, for the reason that, and the like.

Signal words of deductive arguments
Necessary, certainly, absolutely, definitely, and the like.

Signal words of inductive arguments
Probable, improbable, plausible, implausible, likely, unlikely, reasonable to conclude, and the like.

Categorical Proposition

All subject are predicate
No term are not term

Some

Quantifier copula

Affirmative Negative
A: All S are P E : No S are P
All humans are No humans are
mortal mortal

I : Some S are P D : Some S are not P
Some human are Some humans are
mortal. not mortal.

Universal

Particular

S
P
S
P
All S are P
No S are P

Some S are P

X
S
S
P

Some S are not P
X
P
Conversion

S P S P

No S are P No P are S

S P S P
X X

Some S are P Some P are S

S P S P

All S are P All P are S

S P S P
X X

Some S are not Some P are not S

Obversion

S P S P

All S are P No S are non P
(There are no S outside P circle)

S P S P

No S are P All S are non P
(All S are outside P circle)

S P S P
X X

Some S are P Some S are not non P
(Some S are not outside P circle)

S P S P X X
Some S are not P Some S are non P
Contraposition

S P S P

All S are P All non P are non S

S P S P
X X

Some S are not P Some non P are not non S

Standard Form of a Syllogism

1. Quantifier + Subject + Copula + Predicate
Major Premise
(Contains major term & middle term)

2. Quantifier + Subject + Copula + Predicate
Minor Premise
(Contains minor term & middle term)

3. Quantifier + Subject + Copula + Predicate

minor term major term
conclusion

Rules for Categorical Syllogisms

Another method of proving the validity of syllogisms and syllogism forms is to use five rules stating properties that all valid syllogisms must possess. A syllogism that violates any one of these rules is invalid.
1) A middle term that is distributed at least once/.
2) No term distributed in the conclusion that is not distributed in a premise.
3) At least one affirmative premise.
4) A negative conclusion if one of its premises is negative, and a negative premise if the conclusion is negative.
5) One particular premise if the conclusion in particular.

Proposition
Subject Term
Predicate Term
A
E
I
O
Distributed
”
Undistributed
”
Undistributed
Distributed
Undistributed
Distributed

เริ่ม Logic 2

Rule 1

The middle term must be distributed at least once.
All cats are animals.
All dogs are animals.
So : All dogs are cats.
In this syllogism, the middle term “animals” in both premises occurs as the predicate of an A Proposition and therefore, is not distributed in either premise. The reason of this rule is that the major premise is not speaking about every animal, so we don’t know whether the particular ones spoken about in the minor premise are the same ones spoken about I the major premise.

Rule 2

If a term is distributed in the conclusion, then it must be distributed in a premise.
All horses are animals
Some dogs are not horses.
So : Some dogs are not animals.
In this syllogism, the major term, “animals”, is distributed in the conclusion but not in the major premise, so the syllogism violates the second rule of validity.
All tigers are mammals.
All mammals are animals.
So : All animals are tigers.
In this example, the minor term, “animals”, is distributed I the conclusion but not in the minor premise. The conclusion …… the premises, saying more than the evidence allows.

Rule 1

Animals

Cats

Dogs

Classes of cats and dogs can relate to different parts of the class of animals.

Rule 2

Animal
Mammal

Tiger

The circle of “tiger” is just a part of the circle of “animal”. The circle of “animal” has other parts which are not “tigers”. So we cannot conclude that “All animals are tigers.”Rule 3

In a valid syllogism, these must be at least one affirmative premise, that is, two negative premises are not allowed.

Some females are not mothers.
Some politicians are not females.
So : Some politicians are not mothers.

In this syllogism, both premises are negative, and, therefore, the syllogism violates this rule. The reason for this rule is that the subject and the predicate terms of the conclusion share no basic for a relationship. In the example, the subject, politicians, and the predicate, mothers, are excluding form their classes the middle term, females. As a result, the premises allow us no way to relate the classes mothers and politicians as the conclusion attempts to do.

Rule 3

Mother Female Politicians

Or

Mother Female

Politicians

Since both premises are negative, the three terms are not related. So we don’t know whether the terms in the conclusion are related or not because both the major term and the minor term are not related to the middle term.

Rule 4

A negative premise requires a negative conclusion, and negative conclusion requires a negative premise. In other words, if either premise of a syllogism is negative, its conclusion must be negative.
All crows birds.
Some wolves are not crows.
So : Some wolves are birds.
This syllogism draws an affirmative conclusion from a negative premise, so it is invalid.
All honest persons are good men.
Some students are honest persons.
So : Some students are not good persons.
This syllogism draws a negative conclusion from affirmative premises.
So if a conclusion is affirmative, both premises must be affirmative and if a conclusion is negative, one premise must be negative.

Rule 4

bird

Bird

Crow Wolf or Crow Wolf

Since the minor premise negates the relationship between “wolf” and “crow”, there is no basis for the relationship between “wolf” and “bird”. So we can’t conclude that some wolves are birds; we can conclude only that some wolves are not birds.

Good men
Good men

honest
Honest Student or person Student
Person

Since the premise state only the relationship between these term, we don’t know the other parts of “student” which are not related to “honest person”. (they may be either related to good men or not.)

Rule 5
No valid syllogism has two universal premises and a particular conclusion. In other words, if both premises are universal the conclusion cannot the particular.
No lawbreakers are good citizens.
All speeders are lawbreakers.
So : Some speeders are not good citizens.

This syllogism draws a particular proposition from universal propositions. It’s invalid because the conclusion makes an existential claim that its premises just do not allow; the conclusion states that there exists at least one speeder, but the premises don’t contain any such implication, i.e. universal propositions do not state that there exists at least one lawbreakers and that there exists at least one speeder.

Exercise

Identify the rule that the following syllogisms violate :
1) All mothers are females.
Some students are females.
So : Some students are mothers.

2) All doctors are college graduates.
Some doctors are not golfers.
So : Some golfers are not college graduates.

3) All mammals are animals.
All unicorns are mammals.
So : Some unicorns are animals.

4) No mothers are males.
Some males are politicians.
So : Some politicians are mothers.

5) No fish are mammals.
Some dogs are not fish.
So : Some dogs are not mammals.

A

1

2 4
3
B C
5 6 7

(1) Some M are P.
(2) All S are M.
(3) So : Some S are P.

M

4
3 X
S P

After diagramming the universal premise (2), it is still not clear where to place an X either in 3 or in 4. So we have to place the X on the line that separates the two parts (3 and 4). The conclusion states that there is an in the area where the S and P circles overlap. Inspection of the diagram reveals that the single is dangling outside of this overlap area. We do know if it is in or out. Thus the syllogism is invalid.

(1) All Greeks are mortals.
(2) No humans are Greeks.
(3) So : No humans are not mortals.

(1) + (2)
G

H M

But (3)

G

H M

So in diagramming the premises of this syllogism, we have not also diagrammed its conclusion.

(1) Some professors are easy graders.
(2) All professors are teachers.
(3) So : Some teachers are easy graders.

P

X

T E

In diagramming (1), it becomes clear that we have to place an X in area 3 not 4 after shading in for (2).
The conclusion (3) states that there is an X in the area where the T and the E circles overlap. Inspection of the diagram reveals that there is indeed an “X” in this area, so the syllogism is valid.

(1) All warriors are heroes.
(2) Some Greeks are not warriors.
(3) So : Some Greeks are not heroes.

W

G 5 X 6 H

If this syllogism were valid, then in diagramming its premises, we would have placed an X either in area 5 or in area 6. But no X has been placed either in 5 or in 6, for the X was placed on the live between 5 and 6. So we cannot guarantee the truth of the conclusion on the basis of the evidence afforded by its premises, and hence the syllogism in invalid.

No astronauts are Buddhist.
Some vegetarians are Buddhists.
Therefore, some vegetarians are not astronauts.
B

X

V A

Enthymemes

An enthymeme is an argument that is expressible as a categorical syllogism but in which a premise or conclusion is missing.
Examples : “Politicians are bad because they are selfish”.
This enthymeme omits as is missing the premise “All selfish people are bad”. Translating this entire argument into categorical form, we have,
All selfish people are bad people.
All politicians are selfish people.
So : All politicians are bad people.

“Animals that are loved by someone should not be sold to a medical laboratory, and lost pets are certainly loved by someone”.

This enthymeme is missing the conclusion “Lost pets should not be sold to a medical laboratory”.
How to form a syllogism from an enthymeme

1) Spit the enthymeme into 2 propositions
2) Determine what is missing, whether premise or conclusion.
3) Determine what are 2 terms that occur just once in the enthymeme.
4) Rebuild the missing proposition by using the remaining terms.
5) Translate the entire argument into categorical form.

In converting enthymemes into syllogisms, we must introduce the omitted proposition with the aim of converting the enthymemes into valid arguments.

An example of converting an enthymeme into a syllogism :

Venus completes its orbit in less time than the Earth, because Venus is closes to the sun.

Missing premise : Any planet closer to the sun completes its orbit in less time than the Earth.

Translating this argument into categorical form, we have,
All planets, closer to the sun are planets the complete their orbit in less time than the Earth.
All planets identical to Venus are planets closer to the sun.
So : All planets identical to Venus are planets that complete their orbit in less time than the Earth.

In some cases like ads, an enthymeme may be missing its premise and conclusion. For e.g.,

Star athletes drink milk.
The purpose of such a message is to persuade us to buy and drink milk. Its implied conclusion would have us do something : “Milk is a liquid you should drink”. And its missing premise is “A liquid that star athletes drink is a liquid that you should drink”. After completing the whole argument, we get (a liquid that star athletes drink is a liquid that you should drink.)
Milk is a liquid that star athletes drink.
(Milk is a liquid you should drink.)

However, this ad enthymeme is rather absurd, because it does not state the real reason why you and even star athletes should drink milk.

Exercise

Supply the missing proposition
1) Some books are thrillers; so some thrillers must be mysteries.
2) Diamond is expensive, because it is rare.
3) The Thais are charitable because they are Buddhists.
4) Born a man, you should live a blameless life.
5) Not all chardonnays are good wines. But all of them are expensive.

SORITES

A sorites is a chain of categorical syllogisms in which the intermediate conclusions have been left out. We can consider it to be an enthymematic version of a chain of the syllogisms. Example :
1) All animals are life forms.
2) All insects are animals.
3) All bees are insects.
4) So : All been are life forms.

This is a chain of two valid syllogisms. The first two premises validly imply the intermediate conclusion “All insects are life forms”. Here, the first syllogism is as follows:
All animals are life forms.
All insects are animals.
So : All insects are life forms.

And then we use the conclusion of his syllogism and the third premise of our original argument as premises of the second valid syllogism.
All insects are life forms.
All bees are insects.
So : All bees are life forms.

When these two syllogisms are valid, this sorites is also valid.
Sorites can have as many premises as you wish. Here is one with four premises :
All musicians are entertainers.
All bass players are musicians.
Some lead singers are bass players.
No rockets scientists are entertainers.
So : Some lead singers are no rocket scientists.
This sorites can be broken down into valid syllogisms.

Exercise

Supply the intermediate conclusions.
1) All bloodhounds are dogs.
All dogs are mammals.
No fish are mammals.
No fish are bloodhounds.

2) No one who studies logic is stupid.
Anyone who is dull makes a bad writer.
Stupid persons are dull.
No one who studies logic makes a bad writer.

Arguments Containing Compound Propositions

They are many arguments containing compound propositions of a special kind, and they depend for their validity upon the special properties of these propositions.

Conditional Propositions

There are two valid forms of arguments containing conditional propositions :

Modus ponens
If p then q
p
so : g

e.g. If it rains, then the road will be wet.
It rains.
Therefore, the road will be wet.

Modus Tollens

If p then q
Not g
So : not p

e.g. If it rains, the road will be wet.
The road is not wet.
So : It does not rain.

Chain Argument (or hypothetical syllogism)

It is another kind of the valid form consisting of three conditional propositions, the consequent of the first being the same as the antecedent of the second :
If p then g e.g. If it mains, the road will be wet.
If g then r If the road is wet, traffic will be heavy.
So : if p then r So : If it rains, traffic will be heavy.

Disjunctive Syllogism
(Either) A or q
Not p
So : q

e.g. This is a wasp, or this is a spider.
This is not a wasp.
So : this is a spider.

(Either) p or q
Not q
So : p

e.g. This is a wasp, or this is a spider.
This is not a spider.
So : This is a wasp.

Conjunctive Arguments

The following are two valid forms of conjunctive arguments :

Not (p and q) e.g. Sue and Kim don’t both smoke.
P Sue smokes.
So : not q So : Kim doesn’t smoke.

Not (p and q) e.g. Jon and Tim aren’t both poor.
q Tim is poor.
So : not p So : Jon isn’t poor.

Four factors in determining the reliability of a generalization :
1) Comprehensiveness : the sample is comprehensive of the group. If must not overlook the many subgroups within the group.

2) Size : the more instances observed, the more reliable the generalization. The size of any sample is tied directly so the size of the group and the member of subgroups within it.

3) Randomness : each member of the group has an equal chance of ending up as part of the sample. For e.g. we cannot sample only the tomatoes on the top because not every tomato had an equal chance of being picked.

4) Margin for Error : This deals with the breadth of the claim made by any generalizations. The greater the margin for error, the more reliable is the generalization.

Categorical inductive generalization
(induction by enumeration)

All examined copper things conducts electricity.
So : All copper things conduct electricity.

The beams in the observed sample are grade A.
Therefore, the beans in the barrel are grade A.

Several basketball players are taller than 6 feet.
Therefore, most basketball players are taller than 6 feet.

Statistical inductive generalization

Twenty percent of the birds I have seen today were robins.
So : twenty percent of the birds now in my mart of the country are robins.
80 percent of all the beans in the sample drawn are grade A.
So : 80 percent of all the beans in the barrel are grade A.
Half of the tosses of this coin observed so far have landed heads up.
So : half of the tosses of the loin will land heads up.

Inductive Analogy
An argument from analogy is an inductive argument in which a known similarity that two things share is used as evidence for concluding that the two things are similar in other respects.
It is an argument that depends on a comparison of instances. Simple arguments from analogy have the following structure :

Entity A has attributes a, b, c, and z
Entity B has attributes a, b, c.
Therefore, entity B probably has attribute z also.

Evaluating Analogical Arguments
The stronger the connection between the things compared, the more likely the conclusion is; the weaker the connection, the less likely the conclusion.
Four factors affects the strength of analogies :
(1) Number of Entities Involved
Ordinarily, the more instances lying at the base of the analogy, the greater the livelihood of it conclusion.
The more Volkswagens that performed well, the stronger the analogical argument that this new car probably would be dependable.
(2) Number of Relevant likenesses
The more relevant likenesses among the instances, the stronger the analogical argument and more likely its conclusion. For e.g., they have the same model.
(3) Number of Differences
The more strengthening differences between the things compared, the stronger the analogical argument itself. For eg., other different drivers found that car dependable.
The more weakening differences, the weaker the analogical argument. For eg., Peter drives mostly on the highway but John does mostly city driving.
(4) Strength of the Conclusion Relative to the Premises
This criterion is the same on the margin for error applied to inductive goveralizations. The stranger the conclusion, the weaker the analogical argument [and the less likely its conclusion]. In other words, the more specific the conclusion is, the easser the argument is to be falsify. For eg., Peter had average 27 miles per gallon with his VW Rabbits the argument is strong, if John conclude that he would average over 20 mrg.

Causal Arguments : Cause & Effect

Some inductive arguments aim to establish the causes of different kinds of things and events. These causal arguments attempt to support the causal propositions, for instance, “Penicillin can cure syphilis”.

A cause is the condition for bringing about a thing or event.

A necessary condition for occurrence of a specified event is a circumstance in whose absence the event cannot occur. For eg., the presence of oxygen is the inevitable cause of the lighting of a match.

A sufficient condition for occurrence of a specified event is a circumstance in whose presence the event must occur. For eg., being guillotined is a sufficient cause of death.

A necessary and sufficient condition is a circumstance that must be present for the effect to occur and that will bring about the effect alone and of itself. For eg., an increase in voltage cause an increase in electrical current. For an electrical current to increase through a resistive circuit, nothing more and nothing less is required than an increase in voltage.

Mill’s Methods
In formulating and evaluating causal arguments, we must judge whether the evidence establishes a relationship between a phenomenon and an alleged cause. Mill’s five methods are proposed for establishing causal relationships.

The Method of Agreement

If two or more instances of a phenomenon have only one circumstance in common, that circumstance is probably the cause (or the effect) of the phenomenon.

A B C D occur together with W x y z.
A E F G occur together with W t u v
Therefore, A is the cause (or the effect) of W.

Instance Antecedent Circumstance Phenomenon
1 A B C E F S
2 A B D E S
3 A C D F S

Therefore, A is the cause (or the effect) of S.

Example : Three students go on a picnic. In the evening all students have got a stomachache. We guess that the causes should be foods, so we collect the data of foods consumed during that day. We have foods marked by A, B, C, D, E and F.

Student 1 A B C E F Stomachache
Student 2 A B D E Stomachache
Student 3 B C D F Stomachache

We conclude the table that Ford – B causes the stomachache.

The Method of Difference

If a circumstance is present in an instance when the phenomenon is present and absent in an instance when the phenomenon is absent, and the two instances are alike in every other expect, then that circumstance is probably the cause (or the effect) of the phenomenon.

A B C D occur together with W X Y Z.
- B C D occur together with - X Y Z.

Therefore, A is the cause C or the effect, of W.
Instance Antecedent Circumstance Phenomenon

1 A B C D E F S
2. A B C D E - -

Therefore, F is the cause (or the effect) of S.

Joint Method of Agreement and Difference
The use of both methods affords a higher probability to the conclusion.

A B C --- x u z A B C ---- x y z.
A D E --- x t z B C ---- y z.

Therefore, A is the effect (or the cause) of x.
Take the example concerning the discovery of the identity of the leaked of confidential information.

John’s Cohen’s Smith’s Leaked to
Access Access Access press

Agree.1 absent present present present
2 absent present present present
Diff.3 present absent present present
4 present absent absent present
Smith is the cause of the leaks.

The Method of Residues

The method of residues consists of separating from a group of causally connected conditions and phenomena those strands of causal connection that are already known, learning the required causal connection as the “residue”.

A B C --- x y z
B is known to be the cause of y.
C is known to be the cause of z.

Therefore, A is the cause of x.

Example :
Student A is absent and is the cause of x which is not the robbery.
Student B is ill and is the cause of y which is not the robbery.
So : Student C is the cause of robbery.

The Method of Concomitant Variation
If a given phenomenon varies I amount or degree in some regular way with the amount or degree of some other phenomenon, then the two factors are causally related.

A B C X Y Z A X
A + B C X + Y Z A + X –
A – B C X – Y Z A – X +

Therefore, A and X are causally connected.
For eg., because those who smoke more cigarettes get lung cancer more often, we conclude that cigarette smoking is causally related to death by lung cancer. And as the blood pressure increases and decreases, so does the intensity of the brain waves; the doctors conclude that the two conditions are causally related.

Fallacies
A fallacy is an error in reasoning. It is a way that an argument can fail to establish the truth of its conclusion; i.e. its premises do not support its conclusion.
A fallacy is a certain kind of defect in an argument. One way that an argument can be defective is by having one or more false premises. Another way is by containing a fallacy. Both deductive and inductive arguments may be affected by fallacies.

1. Fallacies of Presumption
These fallacies arise because the premises presume what they
purport to prove.
Begging the Question (Petitio Principii)
Begging the question arises when an argument fails to prove
anything because it somehow talus for granted what it is supposed to prove.
Ex. Johnes is demented; therefore he is insane.
The premise of this argument is merely another proposition of the conclusion because “demented” and “insane” have the same meaning.

Complex Question
The fallacy of complex question occurs when an arguer uses a
question that presupposes the truth of some conclusion suried in that question in order to get a desired conclusion. This fallacy attempt to trick the respondent into making some statement that will establish the truth of the presumption hidden in the question.

Ex. “Have you stopped beating your wife yet?
If your answer is “Yes”, it follows that you have beated in the past.
If your answer is “No”, it follows that you continue to beat.

2. Fallacies of Ambiguity
These fallacies arise from the occurrence of some form of ambiguity
in either the premise or the conclusion or both.

2.1 Equivocation
The fallacy of equivocation occurs when the conclusion of an
argument depends on the fact that on or once words are used, cither explicitly or implicitly, in two different senses in the argument.

Ex. Any law can be repealed by the legislative authority. But the
law of gravity is a law. Therefore, the law of gravity can be repealed by the legislative authority.

2.2 Amphiboly
The fallacy of amphiboly occurs in arguing from premises whose formulations are ambiguous because of their grammatical construction.

Ex. John told Henry that he had made a mistake. It follows that John has at least the courage to admit his own mistakes.
In this argument the pronoun “he” has an ambiguous antecedent; it can refer either to John or to Henry.

2.3 Composition
The fallacy of composition occurs when it is argued that because the parts have a certain attribute, it follows that the whole has that attribute too and the situation is such that the attribute in question cannot be legitimately transferred from parts to whole.
Ex. Each player on this basketball team is an excellent athlete.
Therefore, the team as a whole is excellent.

Each atom in this piece of chalk is invisible.
Therefore, the chalk is invisible.
Not every such transference is illegitimate, however, consider the following arguments:
Every atom in this piece of chalk has mass. Therefore, the piece of chalk has mass.
Every picket in this picket fence is white. Therefore, the whole fence is white.

In each case an attribute (having mass, being white) is transferred from the parts onto the whole, but these transferences are quite legitimate. Indeed, the fact that the atoms have mass is the very season why the chalk has mass. The same reasoning extends to the fence.

2.4 Division
The fallacy of division is the exact reverse of composition. The fallacy occurs when the conclusion of an argument depends on the erroneous transference of an attribute from a whole (or a class) onto its parts (or members).
Ex. Since a certain corporation is very important and Mr. Doe is an official of that corporation, therefore Mr. Doe is very important.
Like composition, however, this kind of transference is not always illegitimate. The following argument contains no fallacy:
This piece of chalk has mass. Therefore, the atoms that compose this piece of chalk have mass.

3. Fallacies of Relevance

A fallacy of relevance occurs when an argument relies on premises that are not relevant to its conclusion.

Appeal to Ignorance
An argument commits an appeal to ignorance when it is argued that
a proposition is true simply on the basis that it has not been proved false, or that it is false because it has not been proved true.

Ex. People have been trying for centuries to provide conclusive
evidence for the claims of astrology, and no one has ever succeeded. Therefore, we must conclude that astrology is lot of nonsense.

Conversely, the following argument commits the same fallacy.
People have been trying for centuries to disprove the claims of astrology, and no one has ever succeeded. Therefore, we must conclude that the claims of astrology are true.

False Cause
The fallacy of false cause occurs when an argument relies on treating as
the cause of a thing what is not really its cause. A variety of false cause is widely called the fallacy of pos hoc ergo propter hoc (“after the thing, therefore because of the thing”). Ex :

During the past two months, every time that the cheerleaders have worn blue ribbons in their hair, the basketball team has been defeated. Therefore, to prevent defeats in the future, the cheerleaders should get rid of those blue ribbons.

Argument Against the Person
(Argumentum ad Hominem)

An argument is ad hominem if it is directed at an opponent in a controversy rather than being directly relevant to proving the conclusion under discussion.
This argument occurs in three forms :

3.3.1 ad hominem abusive In this form, it attacks the opponent instead of offering direct reasons why his views are incorrect. Ex :

“Karl Marx must have been mistaken in maintaining that capitalism is an evil form of economic and social organization. Why, he was a miserable failure of a man who couldn’t even earn enough money to support his family.”

3.3.2 ad hominem circumstantial
This form occurs if a speaker attempts to discredit the opponent’s argument by alluding to certain circumstances that affect the opponent. The speaker hopes to show that the opponent is predisposed to argue the way he or she does and should therefore not be taken seriously. Here is an example :
Lee Iacocca has argued that cars manufactured by Chrysler are of higher quality than equally priced Japanese cars. But given that Iacocca is chairman of the Chrysler Corporation, he would naturally be expected to argue this way. Therefore, Iacocca’s argument should be ignored.

3.3.3 The tu quoque
The tu quoque (“You too”) fallacy occurs when an arguer, trying to show that he is not fault, argues that his opponent has said or done things just as bad as those of which he, the arguer, is accused. Ex :

A child replies to his parent : Your argument that I should stop tealing candy from the corner store is no good. You told me yourself just a week ago that you, too, stole candy when you were a kid.

Not all ad hominem arguments are fallacious, however. They can be good arguments or they can be of some value, though never as a direct proof of the conclusion.

INTRODUCTION TO LOGIC

2009-04-16T07:08:00.002-07:00

Dr.Titu Barua

Mangala priya

Watsuthivararam,

yannawa,sathorn.

Bangkok,10120.

Thailand.

INTRODUCTION

Nature and scope of Logic
1. Definitions of Logic :-
There are definition of Logic as follow :-
(1) Logic is the study of the methods and principles used to distinguish good (correct) from bad (incorrect) reasoning.
This definition must be taken to imply that only the student of Logic can reason well or correctly. The study of Logic will give students techniques and methods for testing the correctness of many different kind of reasoning, including their own, and when errors are easily detected they are loss likely to be allowed to stand.
The aim of the study of Logic is to discover and made available those criteria that can be used to test arguments for correctness.
(2) Logic is the science of the Laws of thought.
This definition although it gives a clue to the nature of Logic is not accurate.
In the first place thinking is studied by psychologists , Logic cannot be the science of the Law
Of thought because psychology is also a science that deals with Laws of thought (among other things) and Logic is rot a branch of psychology it is a separate and distinct field of study.
In the second place, if “thought” refers to any process that occur in people’s rained not all thought is an object of study for the Logician. All reasoning is thinking, but not all thinking is reasoning.
(3) Logic is the science of reasoning.
This definition is much better but it also will not do. Reasoning is a special kind of thinking in which inference takes place, that is in which conclusions are drown from premises.
The distinction between correct and incorrect reasoning is the control problem with which Logic deals. The Logician’s method and techniques have been developed primarily for the purpose of making this distinction clear. All reasoning (regardless of its subject matter) is of interest to the logician. But this special concern for its correctness is the logical focus.
(4) Logic is the study of the general conditions of valid inference.

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2. Characteristics of Logic :-
(1) Propositions or statements or judgments any sentence either true or false Eg:- All Elephants are Animals
(2) The nature of Logic is of theory and practical
(3) The nature of Logic is fallacies or errors Eg:- All pages are made up of paper
Some men are pages
Some men are made up of paper ----------- ๏ ----------
3. Relationship between Logic and other branches of knowledge:-
(1) Logic is related with philosophy
(2) Logic is related with psychology
(3) Logic is related with Linguistics
(4) Logic is related with mathematics
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4. Uses of Logic :-
(1) It is used for distinguishing a correct reasoning from a incorrect reasoning
(2) It is used for Argumentation
(3) One can detect fallacies
(4) It is used for detecting Deduction and Induction ----------- ๏ ----------
Difference between Traditional Logic and Symbolic Logic :-
Traditional Logic
Symbolic Logic
1. It is also know as classical logic Aristotlean-Logic formal logic
Other names are mathematical Logic, modern Logic, Algebra Logic
2. Aristotle is the father of traditional Logic
Leibning, Book are primarily responsible
3. Relatively long history since sristotle
Relatively short history since Leibning
4. Limited in scope and application
Wider in scope and application
5. Variable in Traditional Logic has limited role
Variable in symbolic Logic has greafor role
6. As restricted of Roman nation
Eg:- I. II,III, IV, V
As flexible or Arabic notation
Eg:- 1,2,3,4,5

TRUTH AND VALIDITY
It is possible to establish the truth or falsehood of any given proposition but it is not possible with the arguments we can only have the attributes of validity and invalidity with regards to arguments. There is a connection between validity and invalidity of an argument and the truth or falsehood of its premises and conclusions are given below.
(1) Some valid arguments have true proposition.
E.g.:- All mammals have Lungs
All whales are mammals
All whales have Lungs
(2) A valid argument can have false proposition
E.g.:- All spiders have ten Legs
All Ten legged creatures have wings
All spiders have wings.
(3) An invalid argument can have false premises and true conclusion.
Eg:- All mammals have wings
All whales have wings
All whales are mammals
(4) A valid argument can have false premises and a true conclusion.
Eg:- All fishes are mammals
All whales are fishes
All whales are mammals
(5) An invalid argument can have false premises and false conclusion.
Eg:- All mammals have wings
All whales have wings
All whales are mammals
(6) An invalid argument can have false premises and false conclusion.
Eg:- If I own all the gold in south Africa
I would be wealthy
I do not own all the gold in south Africa
I am not wealthy

CONCLUSION

Truth and falsity characterize proposition, but never arguments. Validity and invalidity characterize deductive arguments, but never propositions.
A valid deductive argument is not in which the conclusion cannot possibly be false if all the premises are true.
If it is possible for the premises of a deductive. Argument to be true and its conclusion to be false, that argument is invalid.
If a deductive argument is invalid, it may be constituted by any combination of true and/or false premises and a true or false conclusion.
If a deductive argument is valid and its conclusion is true it may have any combination of true and/or false premises.
But if the conclusion of a valid deductive argument is false, at least one of its promises must also be false.
If a deductive argument is valid and at least one of its premises is false, the remainder of its premises and its conclusion may be true or false in any combination.
But if all the premises of a valid deductive argument are true, its conclusion must also be true.
A deductive argument is sound if and only if it is valid and all of its premises are true.
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DEDUCTION AND INDUCTION
Arguments are traditionally divided into two different types. Deductive and inductive, Every argument involves the claim that its promises provide some grounds for the truth of its conclusion.
DEDUCTION
Only a deductive argument involves the claim that its premises provide conclusive grounds for its conclusion. When the reasoning in a deductive argument is correct we call that argument valid when the reasoning of a deductive argument is incorrect we call that argument invalid.
We may therefore define validity as follows :-
(1) A deductive argument is valid when its promises, it true, do provide, conclusion grounds for the truth of its conclusion
(2) A deductive argument is one whose conclusion is claimed to follow from its promises with absolute necessity.
In a valid deductive argument (but not in an inductive argument) premises and conclusion are so related that it is absolutely impossible for the premises to do true unless the conclusion is true also.
In every deductive argument either the premises succeed in providing conclusive grounds for the truth of the conclusive or they do not succeed. Therefore every deductive argument is either valid or invalid.
This is a paint of some importance if a deductive argument is not valid. It must be invalid. If is not invalid. It must be valid.
In the realm of deduction Logic. The control task is to clarify the relation between promises and thus to allow us to discriminate valid from invalid arguments.
The theory of deduction including both traditional Logic and symbolic Logic.

INDUCTION
An inductive argument is one whose conclusion is claimed to follow from its premises only with probability.
An inductive argument makes a very different claim not that its premises give conclusive grounds for the truth of its conclusion, but only that its premises provide some support for that conclusion. Inductive arguments, therefore cannot be “valid” or “invalid” is sense in which these terms are applied to deductive argument.
Of course, inductive arguments may be a valuated as better or worse, according to the degree of support given to their conclusions by their premises, thus, the greater the likelihood or probability, that its premises confer on its conclusion the greater the merit of an inductive argument. But that likelihood even when the premises are all true, must fall short of certainty.
A popular way of distinguishing between the deductive and the inductive reasoning is this. The deductive arguments begins with universalization and ends in particularization, on the other hand the inductive reasoning begin with particularization and end in universalization.
This way of distinguishing between deduction and induction does not always work because of the following reasons.
(1) Sometimes a valid deductive argument can have universal premises as well as a universal conclusion.
Eg:- All animals are mortal
All humans are animal
All humans are mortal
(2) Sometimes a valid deductive argument can have particular prepositions for its premises as well as for its conclusion.
Eg:- If Socrates is human
Then Socrates is mortal
Socrates is human
Socrates is mortal
(3) Some similarly on inductive argument need not rely on particular premises but may fare universal prepositions for its premises as well as its conclusion.
Eg:- All crows are mammals and have lungs
All wholes are mammals and have lungs
All humans are mammals and have lungs
Probably all mammals and have lungs
(4) Sometimes an inductive argument can have only particular prepositions.
Eg:- Hitler was a dictator and was ruthless
Stalin was a dictator and was ruthless
Castro is a dictator
Castro is ruthless
CONCLUSIOIN
The care of the difference between deductive and inductive arguments lies in the strength of the claim that is made about the relation between the premises of the argument and its conclusion
In deductive arguments the conclusion is claimed to follow from its premises with absolute necessity, in inductive arguments. The conclusion is claimed to follow from its pelisses only with some degree of probability.
A deductive argument is valid if its premises do provide conclusive proof of its conclusion, otherwise it is invalid. But the terms “validity” and “Invalidity” do not apply to inductive arguments, which are appraised with other terms.
The addition of now premises may alter the strength of an inductive argument, but a deductive argument, if valid cannot be made more valid or invalid by the addition of any premises.
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DATEGOPICAL PREPOSITION
All prepositions are sentences. But not all sentences are prepositions, prepositions are either true or false, either accepted or denied questions, commands, euslaimations are not prepositions, preposition are also know as judgements or statements
The process of inference is most basic in the field of Logic inference is the process in which one preposition is arrived at and affirmed on the basis of one or more prepositions accepted as the starting paint of the process. The process of inference involves an argument where a conclusion follows from premises. Both premise and conclusion are relative terms. The same preposition can be a premises in one argument and a conclusion in the other. No preposition by itself is a premise or a conclusion. They become so in the course of on argument. Sometimes promises lead to a conclusion other conclusion lead to the promises still other times conclusion may occur between the premises.
The usual premises indicators are since, because, for as in as much as etc. They usual conclusion indicator are therefore Nonce, thus, so , consequently etc.
PROPOSITIONS

Categorical (assertive) Conditional
Eg: All what are mammals
Hypothetical Disjunctive
Eg: If it rains Eg: students are either
then it is a holiday lazy or industrious
CHARACTERISTICS : -
All categorical had a subject and predicate.
Eg: - All football players are athletes
All quantifier Copulas or verb Football player-Subject are, are not, is, is not Subject are – copula Quantifiers Athletes – predicate All, no, some
QUANTITY: -
Quantity refers to the number which is either universal or particular. Universal quantifiers are All and No particular quantifiers is some, some means at least one.
QUANTITY: -
Quality refers to affirmation or negation of the given class.
FOUR KIND OF CATEGORICAL PREPOSITIONS :-
(1) Universal affirmative
(2) Universal negative
(3) Particular affirmative
(4) Particular negative
Universal affirmative
A
All s are p
Sap
All politicians
are liars
Universal negative
E
No s are p
Sep
No politicians
are liars
Particular affirmative
I
Some s are p
Sip
Some politicians
are liars
Particular negative
O
Some s are not p
Sop
Some politicians
are not liars

DISTRIBUTION OF TERM
The technical term “distribution” is introduced to characterized the way in which terms occur in categorical preposition
A term is distributed in a preposition. If it refer to all the member of the class.
A term is undistributed in a preposition. If it refer to same or few member of the class.
(A) Statement
Eg:- All roses are flowers
Subject is distributed
Predicate is undistributed
(E) Statement Eg:- No athletes are vegetarians Subject is distributed Predicate is distributed
(I) Statement Eg:- Some soldiers are cowards Subject is undistributed Predicate is undistributed
(O) Statement Eg:- Some politicians are not punctual Subject is distributed Predicate is undistributed
Statement
Subject
Predicate
A
E
I
O
- Distributed
- Distributed
- Undistributed
- Undistributed
- Undistributed
- Distributed
- Undistributed
- Distributed

Subject Distributed

A:- All s are p

I:- Some s are p

E:- No s are p

O:- Some are not p

Subject Undistributed
Distribution of term-Euler circles
The technical term “distribution” is introduced to characterized the ways in which terms occur in categorical preposition. Both subject and predicate of a preposition are called “terms” A term is distributed in a preposition if it refers to all the member of the class. A term is undistributed in a preposition if it refers to some or few member of the class.
Preposition
Subject
Predicate
A
E
I
O
- Distributed
- Distributed
- Undistributed
- Undistributed
- Undistributed
- Distributed
- Undistributed
- Distributed

(A) Eg:- All roses are flowers
Subject is distribute, because it refer to All roses.
Predicate is undistributed, because it does not refer to all flowers.
S P
(roses) (flowers)

S = O
It has not member or it is imply
(E) Eg:- No athletes are vegetarians.
Predicate is distributed, because it is concluded from athletes.
S (athletes) P (regetorions)
SP = O

It has not member or it is imply
(I) Eg:- Some soldiers are towards
Subject is undistributed, because it is does not refer to all soldiers. Predicate is undistributed, because it does not refer to all towards (there are forward who are not soldiers).
S (soldiers) P (forwards)
X SP O

It is not empty, but it has at least one member.
(O)Eg:- Some politicians are not punctual Subject is undistributed, because it does not refer to all politicians Predicate is distributed because it is conclude from some politician.

S (politician) P (punctual)
X S O

It is not empty, but it has at least one member.
THE MOOD AND THE FIGURE
THE MOOD :-
The mood of a Syllogism is represented by there tatters, the first of the major premise and the second of the miner premise and the third of the conclusion.
Eg :- (A) All men are mortal (I) Socrates is a man (I) Socrates is a mortal Mood = A-I-I
THE FIGURE :-
The figure indicates the position of the middle term in the premises there are four possible figures.
I fig
II fig
III fig
IV fig
M – P
P – M
M – P
P – M
S – M
S – M
M – S
M – S
S - P
S - P
S - P
S - P

I fig Eg:-
(A) All men are mortal (I) Socrates is a man (I) Socrates is a mortal
Mood A-I-I - 1
II fig Eg:-
(A) All dogs are mammals (A) All cats are mammals (A) All cats are dogs Mood A-A-A - 2
III fig Eg:-
(A) All artists are egotists (I) Some artists are paupers (I) Some paupers are egotists Mood A-I-I - 3
IV fig Eg:-
(E) No heroes are cowards (I) Some coward are soldiers (O) Some soldiers are not heroes Mood E-I-O - 4
There are 256 possible combinations of various moods some of them are valid some of them are invalid. The valid moods under each figures are mentioned below.
figures

Mood

1
AAA
AII
EAE
EIO

B RB R
D R
C L R NT
F R
2
AEE
AOO
EAE
EIO
3
AII
IAI
EAO
EIO

D T S
D S M S
F S P
FR S S N
4
AEE
IAI
EAO
EIO

FROM AND MATTER
An argument is consisted of both form and matter. The content of an argument is matter. The content is arranged is form. So form is the manner in which all the constituents of the reasoning (premises as well as conclusion) are arranged. Not only an argument, but every object of the earth is made of matter and it has form.
Form means shape or type.
Matter means material of thing.
Eg:- Table
It is made from wood, iron and steel = matter
If may be square and round = form
Therefore there is no matter, without form or no form without matter. In thought, matter and form are correlated. Some ideas may be expressed in different forms. The true view is that Logic is both formal and material.
Eg:- All men are mortal Socrates is a man Socrates is mortal
Argument is syllogism in form while its matter consists the meaning of the three prepositions constituting it.
Distinction between form and matter of material objects lead to the distinction between form and matter in thought also.
The form may change while the matter remains the same.
Eg:- All men are mortals = U-A No man are immortals = U-N
The preposition is different inform, but the matter is same, because they have the same meaning
The matter may change while the form remain the same.
Eg:- All men are mortals = U-A All dogs are animals = U-A
The both have the same form, but different meaning, so their matter is different.
SQUARE OF OPPOSITION OF PREPOSITIONS
(All s are p) A contraries E (No S are P)

(Some s are P) I sub contraries O (Some s are not P)
RELATIIONSHIP BETWEEN CONTRADICTORIES
Two prepositions are called contradictories if one denies the other is they cannot both be true and cannot both be false. In other words, if one is true other must be false and vice versa.
Thus A and O preposition are contradictories.
Eg:- A : All judges are lawyers O : Some judges are lawyers similarly E and I preposition are contradictories.
Eg:- E : No poets are idles I : Some poets are idles
RELATIONSHIP OF CONTRARIES:-
Two preposition are said to be contraries if they cannot both be true although they might both be false.
Thus A and E preposition are contraries
Eg:- A : All politicians are liars E : No politicians are liars
RELATIONSHIP OF SUBCONTRARIES
Two preposition are sub contraries if they cannot both be false although they might both be true.
Thus I and O preposition are contraries
Eg:- I : Some mangoes are sweet O : Some mangoes are not sweet
RELATIONSHIP OF SUBALTERNATION
In all the earlier relationships there is disagreement sometimes there can be oppositions even when there is no disagreement they agree in quality, but differ in quantity. This relationship is known as sub alternation.
The truth of A preposition necessarily leads to the truth of the I prepositions
Eg:- A : All spiders are eight leggel animal I : Some spiders are eight leggel animal
Likewise the truth of the E prepositions leads to the truth of O prepositions.
Eg:- E : No spiders are insects O : Some spiders are not insects
Thus we learn that the truth lead to the truth of sub alter (I,O), but this cannot be demonstrated in the case of falsehood.
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*Of the subalterns (A,E) necessarily
MEDIATE INFERENCE
CATEGORICAL SY SYLLOGISM :-
A syllogism simply means putting two and two together. All the syllogism are arguments in which a conclusion is derived from two premises a categorical preposition which contain three terms, such occur in twice. All there terms are arranged in a standard form.
In a mediate inference conclusion is derived from more than one premise. Thus mediated inference is different from immediate inference where the conclusion is derived from only one premise.
The three forms in a categorical syllogisms are as follows.
(1) Major term :- The predicate term of the conclusion is called the major term
(2) Miner term :- The subject term of the conclusion is called the miner term.
(3) Middle term :- The term which occurs two times in the premises is called the middle term.
Eg:- All man are moral Socrates is a man Socrates is a mortal
Major term – mortal Miner term – Socrates Middle term – man
The premises containing the major term is called the major premise the premise, containing the minor term is called the miner premise. The major premise occurs first, the miner premise second and the conclusion lost.
Eg:-
All men are mortal Major premise
Socrates is a man Miner premise Socrates is a mortal
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INMEDIATE INFERENCE :-
Given the truth or falsehood of any one preposition, the truth or falsehood or in deter mina nay of the other statements can be interred immediately. The immediate inferred in traditional logic are as follows.
(1) If A is given true, E is false. I is true, C is false.
(2) If E is given true, A is tales, I is false, O is true.
(3) If I is given true, E is false, O is undetermined, A is undetermined.
(4) If o is given true, A is false, E is undetermined, I is undetermined.
(5) If A is given false, O is true, E is undetermined, I is undetermined.
(6) If E is given false, I is true, A is undetermined, O is undetermined.
(7) If I is given false, E is true, A is false, O is true.
(8) If O is given false, A true, E is false, I is true.
1) If the statement. “Some Diamonds are precious stones” is true then.
1. All Diamonds are precious stones is undetermined.
2. No Diamonds are precious stones is false.
3. Some Diamonds are not precious stones is undetermined.
2) If the statement.
No rich men are kind is false, then the statement.
1. All rich men are kind is undetermined.
2. Some rich men are kind is true.
3. Some rich men are not kind is undetermined
THREE KINDS OF IMMEDIATE INFERENCE : EDUCTION
Immediate inferences are divided into three kinds. (1) conversion, (2) obversion (3) contraposition
(1) CONVERSION :-
This preceeds by simply inter-interchanging the subject and the predicate forms of a preposition without altering its meaning.
Examples

prepositions
converse
Examples
All Dogs
are animals
No angels
are man
Some woman are writers
Some animals
Are not dogs
A

E

I

O
All S are P

No S are P

Some S are P

Some S are not P
Some P are S

No P are S

Some P are S

not possible
Some animals are dogs
No man are angels
Some writes are woman
-

(2) OBVERSION :-
In obversion the subject term remains unchanged the quantity is Qpverted and the quality is changed by replacing the predicate by its complement. The complementary class consists of the collection of things which do not belong to the original class.
Examples

prepositions
observe
Examples
All residents
are voters
No umpires
are partisans
Some metals are conductors
Some nations
are not hard working
A

E

I

O

All S are P

No S are P

Some S are P

Some S are not P

No S are non –P

All S are non –P

Some S are not non – P
Some s are non – P

No residents are non – voters
All umpires are non – partisans
Some metals are not non - conducter
Some nations are non-hard working

Examples

prepositions
observe
Examples
All rose
are flowers
No frogs
are mammals
Some students are intelligent
Some politician
are not honest
A

E

I

O

All S are P

No S are P

Some S are P

Some S are not P

No S are non –P

All S are non –P

Some S are not non – P
Some s are non – P
No roses
non flowers
All frogs
non mammals
Some students are not non intelligent
Some politician
are non honest

(3) CONTRAPOSITION :-
In this the subject term is replaced by the compliment of its predicate term and the predicate term is replaced by the compliment of its subject term.
Examples

prepositions
contrapose
Examples
All men
are mortal
No writer
are idles
Some odminis trator are partisans
Some dogs
are not aggressive
A

E

I

O
All S are P

No S are P

Some S are P

Some S are not P

No non –P are non - S
Some –P are non - S
No equatent

Some non P are not non s
All non – mortals are non – men
Some non – idlers are non – writers
-

Some non aggressive animals are not non - dogs

Eg:- (1) All apples are fruits. All non fruits are non apples.
(2) No parrots are reptiles. Some non reptiles are not non parrots
(3) Some pens are expensive _____ (4) Some pens are not expensive Some non – expensive things are not non – pens
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FIAGRAMMATIC REPRESENTATION OF CATEGCRICAL PROPOSITIONS
A: All S are P E: No S are P

S P S P

S = O SP = O
I: some S are P O: Some S are not P
S X P S X P

SP O S O

S S SP P P

S S S P P P

SPM
S M P M

M

M
These are know as Euler circles

STEPS
(1) Find out in miner term (s) the major term (p) and the middle term (m)
(2) Draw three circles one overlapping the other two those three circles represent the miner term the major term and the middle term.
(3) The major premise must be shaded according to Euler representation secondly the minor term the minor premise must be shaded.
(4) We have to find out whether the shading of conclusion is already taken care of in the shading of the premise.
- If yes then the argument must be valid.
- If No then the argument must be invalid.
Validity claimed on the basic that the shading of premises leads to the shading of conclusion.
(5) Sometimes there may a difficulty of shading the particular preposition. If there is a difficulty of placing on X mark because there is an interjecting line in such circumstances X mark must be placed on the interjecting line.
On verification if should be clear whether the X mark is placed completely inside or not
If yes then the argument must be valid.
If No it must be invalid
(6) If there is a universal premise and a particular premise, the universal premise must be shaded first.

VENN DIAGRAMS
Euler circle representation

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รวมคำศัพท์ท้ายเล่ม

definition [N] ; คำนิยาม
easily [ADV] ; อย่างแท้จริง
detect [VT] ; ค้นหา
allow to [PHRV] ; ยินยอมให้
psychologist [N] ; นักจิตวิทยา
deal [VT] ; จัดการ
distinction [N] ; ความแตกต่าง
premiss [N] ; หลักฐาน
true [ADV] ; เป็นจริง
false [ADJ] ; เท็จ
deductive [ADJ] ; ซึ่งหักลบไป
argument [N] ; เหตุผล, การโต้งแย้ง, ข้อพิสูจน์
remainder [N] ; ส่วนที่เหลืออยู่
premiss [N] ; หลักฐาน
validity [N] ; ความมีเหตุผล
control [N] ; การจำกัด
particularize [VT] ; ทำให้เฉพาะเจาะจง [VI] ; แยกรายละเอียด
universality [N] ; ความเป็นสากล

Fundamental principles of Dhamma communication

2009-04-15T19:10:00.000-07:00

Shila Rakkit
ID no: 5101201157
Subject: Dhamma communication
Class: B.A 1st year

Before we discuss principles of dhamma communication we should know or define the meaning of the “Dhammma” here first. As we know there are many principle points to discuss in Buddha’s teaching. The teachings of the Buddha are not second to each other. Everything in the Buddha’s teaching is important. How can we pickup as the principles of dhamma communication so it’s quiet difficult to discuiss. Anyhow we should know what is meaning of Dhamma here first.

What is Dhamma?

"Dhamma" usually refers inclusively not just to the sayings of the Buddha but to the later traditions of interpretation and addition that the various schools of Buddhism have developed to help explain and expand upon the Buddha's teachings. The 84,000 different teachings that the Buddha gave to various types of people based on their needs. The teachings are expedient means of raising doubt in the hearer's own cherished beliefs and view of life; when doubt has opened the door to the truth, the teaching can be put aside.
Alternately, "dharma" may be seen as an ultimate and transcendent truth which is utterly beyond worldly things, somewhat like the Christian logos seeing the dharma as referring to the "truth" or ultimate reality or "the way things are".

The Dharma is one of three jewels of Buddhism of which practitioners of Buddhism seek refuge in (what one relies on for his/her lasting happiness). The three jewels of Buddhism are the Buddha (mind's perfection of enlightenment), the Dharma (teachings and methods), and the Sangha (awakened beings who provide guidance and support).

And secondly we should discuss about the qualities of the Dhamma or the value of the Dhamma. To make devotes understand and make Saddha in their minds. How the Buddha explained the qualities of the dhamma. As we know Buddha himself introduced the dhamma as his teacher too.

The qualities of the Dhamma
The Teaching of the Buddha also has six supreme qualities
1. Svākkhāto ("well proclaimed"). The Dhamma is not a speculative philosophy, but is the Universal Law found through enlightenment and is preached precisely. Therefore it is excellent in the beginning (sila – moral principles), excellent in the middle (Samadhi concentration) and excellent in the end (paññā -Wisdom).
2. Sandiṭṭhiko ("able to be examined"). The Dhamma can be tested by practice and therefore he who follows it will see the result by himself through his own experience.
3. Akāliko ("immediate"). The Dhamma is able to bestow timeless and immediate results here and now, for which there is no need to wait until the future or next existence.
4. Ehipassiko (which you can come and see-- from the phrase ehi, paśya come, see!). The Dhamma welcomes all beings to put it to the test and come see for themselves.
5. Opanayiko (leading one close to). The Dhamma is capable of being entered upon and therefore it is worthy to be followed as a part of one's life. In the “Vishuddhimagga" this is also referred to as "upanayanam”.
Paccattaṃ veditabbo viññūhi ("To be personally known by the wise"). The Dhamma can be perfectly realized only by the noble disciples (Ariyas) who have matured and enlightened enough in supreme wisdom.

Knowing these attributes, Buddhists believe that they will attain the greatest peace and happiness through the practice of the Dhamma. Each person is therefore fully responsible for himself to put it in the real practice.
Here the Buddha is compared to an experienced and skilful doctor, and the Dhamma to proper medicine. However efficient the doctor or wonderful the medicine may be, the patients cannot be cured unless they take the medicine properly. So the practice of the Dhamma is the only way to attain the final deliverance of Nibbāna.
These teachings ranged from understanding (Pāli: kamma) (cause and effect) and developing good impressions in one's mind, to reach full enlightenment by recognizing the nature of mind.

Now we can discuss how the Buddha used the Dhamma or his own teaching as a medium or a communication to the world. And what kind of techniques he used for teaching the Dhamma to all beings. As we know various kind of people there are in the world. So Buddha had to use various types of ways to make understand his teaching.
But the common way to every people is the middle path. This is the way that suitable to everyone he used.

What is middle path?

As a youth, Prince Siddhartha enjoyed the indulgent life of pleasure in his father's palace. Later, when he renounced the worldly life and become an ascetic, he experienced the hardship of torturing his mind and body. Finally, not long before attaining Enlightenment, he realized the fruitlessness of these two extreme ways of life. He realized that the way to happiness and Enlightenment was to lead a life that avoids these extremes. He described this life as the Middle Path. These three ways of life may be compared to the strings of different tensions on a lute. The loose string, which is like a life of indulgence, produces a poor sound when struck. The overly tight string, which is like a life of extreme asceticism, similarly produces a poor sound when struck and is moreover, likely to break at any moment. Only the middle string which is neither too loose nor too tight, and is like the Middle Path, produces a pleasant and harmonious sound when stuck. So these who follow the Middle Path which avoid the extreme of indulging one's desires and opposite extreme of torturing one's mind and body unreasonably, will find happiness, peace of mind and Enlightenment. This is the Fourth Noble Truth of the path leading to the end of suffering.
Next we should see how the Buddha gave Dhamma talk to the people we can see many example stories in the Tipitaka. In every Dhamma talk there is a story and a sub story. Buddha separated His teaching very in a clear way. For the lay society there are very useful advices how to lead a lay life? How to live a household life? And how to do politics in a proper way? The sigalovada sutta in the digha nikaya ("Long Discourses of Buddha") is very clear the way to lead a lay life.

The sigalovada sutta in brief.

Sigala's honoring his father
The Sigalovada Sutta takes place when Lord Buddha encountered a youth called Sigala in his morning stroll. The young man, in drenched attire, prostrated and worshipped the four compass direction (East, South, West and North), plus the Earth (Down) and the Sky (Up). When asked by Lord Buddha why he did so, the youth Sigala replied that he had been told by his late father to do so and he thought that it was right to uphold his father's wishes. Lord Buddha then, based on Sigala's point of view, taught him on how a noble one (Pali: ariya) should worship the Six directions.

Avoid evil ways
The Buddha first describes fourteen evil ways that should be avoided by a householder. The Buddha enumerates these evil ways to be avoided as:
The four defilements of action:
1. taking life (panatipato)
2. stealing (adinnadanam)
3. sexual misconduct (kamesu micchacaro)
4. lying (musavado)
The four causes of evil action:
1. desire (chanda)
2. hate (dosa)
3. ignorance (moha)
4. fear (bhaya)
The six ways of squandering wealth:
1. indulging in intoxicants
2. wandering the streets at inappropriate times
3. frequenting public spectacle
4. compulsive gambling
5. malevolent companionship
6. Habitual idleness.

Choose true friends

The Buddha then elaborated on the importance of having and being a true friend, as he described what true friends are; and what true friends are not; and, how true friends will aid in attaining a blissful life.

Protect close relationships.

Finally, returning to the topic of the six directions, the Buddha described the Four Compass Direction as: parents (East), teachers (South), wife (West), and friends and colleagues (North), and the two vertical directions as: ascetics and Brahmins (Up) and the Servants (Down). He elaborated on how to respect and support them, and how in turn the Six will return the kindness and support.
The householder's commitments and the reciprocal acts of those he honors, as identified by the Buddha, are represented below in accordance with the four directions on the horizontal plane (east, south, west and north):

NorthFRIENDS
commitments
reciprocal acts
generositykind wordshelpfulnessimpartialityintegrity
supportivenessprotect your wealthprovide shelterloyaltyhonor your family
WestWIFE
EastPARENTS
commitments
reciprocal acts
commitments
reciprocal acts
honor herrespect herfidelityshare authorityprovide gifts
organize dutieshospitalityfidelitywise budgetingskillfulness
support themfulfill their dutieshonor traditionsdeserve inheritancehonor their passing
restrain from evilnurture goodnessteach skillsarrange marriageprovide inheritance
SouthTEACHERS
commitments
reciprocal acts
rise to greet themattend to themeager receptivityserve themmaster their teaching
thoroughly instructensure comprehensionprovide well-roundednessprovide referralsensure safety

NadirWORKERS
To the left are shown the householder's commitments to and the reciprocal acts of employees and servants (representing the nadir, below the practitioner's body).
To the right are shown the householder's commitments to and the reciprocal acts of religious guides (representing the zenith, above the practitioner's body).
ZenithASCETICS
commitments
reciprocal acts
commitments
reciprocal acts
apt workjust wageshealth careperksleave time
rise earlystay lateno stealingwork wellallegiance
loving actsloving speechloving thoughtshospitalitymaterial support
restrain from evilnurture goodnessloving-kindnessenlightenclarifyteach go
(These sources are from books)
By this we can understand that:
"This practice of 'worshipping the six directions,' as explained by the Buddha, presupposes that society is sustained by a network of interlocking relationships that bring coherence to the social order when its members fulfill their reciprocal duties and responsibilities in a spirit of kindness, sympathy, and good will.... Thus, for early Buddhism the social stability and security necessary for human happiness and fulfillment are achieved, not through aggressive and potentially disruptive demands for 'rights' posed by competing groups, but by the renunciation of self-interest and the development of a sincere, large-hearted concern for the welfare of others and the good of the greater whole."
Next we know that He how to lead a non household life too. (Monk’s life)
In the vinaya pitaka we can find the rules of the monks to lead a proper non household life.
An introduction to vinaya pitaka

The Vinaya Pitaka, the first division of the Tipitaka is the textual framework upon which the monastic community (Sangha) is built. It includes not only the rules governing the life of every Theravada bhikkhu (monk) and bhikkhuni (nun), but also a host of procedures and conventions of etiquette that support harmonious relations, both among the monastics themselves, and between the monastics and their lay supporters, upon whom they depend for all their material needs.
When the Buddha first established the Sangha, the community initially lived in harmony without any codified rules of conduct. As the Sangha gradually grew in number and evolved into a more complex society, occasions inevitably arose when a member would act in an unskillful way. Whenever one of these cases was brought to the Buddha's attention, he would lay down a rule establishing a suitable punishment for the offense, as a deterrent to future misconduct. The Buddha's standard reprimand was itself a powerful corrective:
It is not fit, foolish man, it is not becoming, it is not proper, it is unworthy of a recluse, it is not lawful, it ought not to be done. How could you, foolish man, having gone forth under this Dhamma and Discipline which are well-taught, [commit such and such offense]?... It is not, foolish man, for the benefit of un-believers, nor for the increase in the number of believers, but, foolish man, it is to the detriment of both unbelievers and believers, and it causes wavering in some.
The monastic tradition and the rules upon which it is built are sometimes naïvely criticized — particularly here in the West — as irrelevant to the "modern" practice of Buddhism. Some see the Vinaya as a throwback to an archaic patriarchy, based on a hodge-podge of ancient rules and customs — quaint cultural relics that only obscure the essence of "true" Buddhist practice. This misguided view overlooks one crucial fact: it is thanks to the unbroken lineage of monastics who have consistently upheld and protected the rules of the Vinaya for almost 2,600 years that we find ourselves today with the luxury of receiving the priceless teachings of Dhamma. Were it not for the Vinaya, and for those who continue to keep it alive to this day, there would be no Buddhism.
It helps to keep in mind that the name the Buddha gave to the spiritual path he taught was "Dhamma-vinaya" — the Doctrine (Dhamma) and Discipline (Vinaya) — suggesting an integrated body of wisdom and ethical training. The Vinaya is thus an indispensable facet and foundation of all the Buddha's teachings, inseparable from the Dhamma, and worthy of study by all followers — lay and ordained, alike. Lay practitioners will find in the Vinaya Pitaka many valuable lessons concerning human nature, guidance on how to establish and maintain a harmonious community or organization, and many profound teachings of the Dhamma itself. But its greatest value, perhaps, lies in its power to inspire the layperson to consider the extraordinary possibilities presented by a life of true renunciation, a life lived fully in tune with the Dhamma.
(This introduction is picked up from internet by me)
Next we should see the Buddha have given to each character. Then we should give an example story from Tipitaka. Buddha usually uses examples to make the man understand a thing or realize the nature this is a way of Buddha in his teaching. For example in Dhammapda (Kuddhaka nikaya) there are many examples. When He gives advice. He used examples from the natural things in the world. Flowers, animals etc.

The story of Angulimala
There was once the son of a Brahmin (the highest "priestly" caste in India) in the court of King Pasenadi of Kosala, whose name was Ahimsaka. He was sent to Taxila for his studies. Ahimsaka was intelligent and obedient to this teacher; therefore he was liked by both the teacher and his wife. This made the other pupils jealous of him. So they went to the teacher and falsely accused Ahimsaka of having an immoral relationship with the teacher’s wife. At first, he did not believe them, but after hearing it a number of times, he thought it was true and vowed to have revenge on Ahimsaka. He thought that to kill him would reflect badly on him. His rage prompted him to suggest the unthinkable to the young and innocent Ahimsaka. He told his pupil to kill a thousand human beings and to bring the right thumb of each as payment for teaching him. Of course the youngster would not even think of such a thing, so he was banished from the teacher’s house and returned to his parents.
When his father learned why Ahimsaka had been expelled, he became furious with his son, and would hear no reason. On that very day, with the rain pouring down, he ordered Ahimsaka to leave the house. Ahimsaka went to his mother and asked her advice, but she could not go against the will of her husband. Next Ahimsaka went to the house of his betrothed (in accord with the ancient custom in India calling for betrothal of children long before their actual marriage), but when the family learned why Ahimsaka had been turned out of school, they drove him off. The shame, anger, fear, and despair of Ahimsaka drove him out of his mind. His suffering mind could only recollect the teacher’s order: to collect 1,000 human thumbs. And so he started killing, and as he killed, the thumbs he collected were hung on a tree, but as they were destroyed by crows and vultures, he later wore a garland of the fingers to keep track of the number.
Because of this he came to be known as Angulimala (finger garland) and became the terror of the countryside. The king himself heard about the exploits of Angulimala, and he decided to capture him. When Mantani, Ahimsaka’s mother, heard about the king’s intention, she went to the forest in a desperate bid to save her son. By this time, the chain around the neck of Angulimala had 999 fingers in it, just one finger short of 1,000.
The Buddha; learned of the mother’s attempt to dissuade her son from, and reflected that if he did not intervene, Angulimala, who was on the lookout for the last person to make up the 1,000, would see his mother and might kill her. In that case, he would have to suffer an even longer period for his evil kamma. Out of compassion, the Buddha left for the forest.
Angulimala, after many sleepless days and nights, was very tired and near exhaustion. At the same time, he was very anxious to kill the last person to make up his full quota of 1,000 and so complete his task. He made up his mind to kill the first person he met. As he looked down from his mountain perch, he saw a woman on the road below. He wanted to fulfil his vow to complete the 1,000 thumbs, but as he approached, he saw it was his mother. At the same time, the Buddha was approaching, and Angulimala had just enough presence of mind to decide to kill the wandering monk instead of his mother. He set out after the Blessed One with his knife raised. But the Buddha kept moving ahead of him. Angulimala just could not catch up with him. Finally, he cried out, "O Bhikkhu, stop, stop!" And the Enlightened One replied, "I have stopped. It is you who have not stopped." Angulimala did not catch the significance of these words, so he asked, "O bhikkhu! Why do you say that you have stopped while I have not?"
The Buddha replied, "I say that I have stopped because I have given up killing all beings. I have given up ill-treating all beings, and have established myself in universal love, patience, and knowledge through reflection. But you have not given up killing or ill treating others and you are not yet established in universal love and patience. Hence, you are the one who has not stopped." On hearing these words Angulimala was recalled to reality, and thought, these are the words of a wise man. This monk is so very wise and so very brave that he must be the leader of the monks. Indeed, he must be the Enlightened One himself! He must have come here specially to make me see the light. So thinking, he threw away his weapons and asked the Blessed One to admit to the Order of the bhikkhus, which the Buddha did.
When the king and his men came to capture Angulimala, they found him at the monastery of the Buddha. Finding that Angulimala had given up his evil ways and become a bhikkhu, the king and his men agreed to leave him alone. During his stay at the monastery, Angulimala ardently practiced meditation.
Angulimala had no peace of mind because even in his solitary meditation he used to recall memories of his past and the pathetic cries of his unfortunate victims. As a result of his evil kamma, while seeking alms in the streets he would become a target of stray stones and sticks and he would return to the Jetavana monastery with broken head and blood flowing, cut and bruised, to be reminded by the Buddha: "My son Angulimala. You have done away with evil. Have patience. This is the effect of the evil deeds you have committed in the existence. Your evil kamma would have made you suffer through innumerable existences had I not met you."
One morning while going on an almsround in Savatthi, Angulimala heard someone crying out in pain. When he came to know that a pregnant lady was having labor pains and facing difficulty to deliver the child, he reflected, all worldly beings are subject to suffering. Moved by compassion, he reported the suffering of this poor woman to the Buddha who advised him to recite the following words of truth, which later came to be known as Angulimala Paritta. Going to the presence of the suffering woman, he sat on a seat separated from her by a screen, and uttered these words:
Sister, since the day I became an arahat I have not consciously destroyed The life of any living beings. By this truth, may you be well And may your unborn child be well.
Instantly the woman delivered her child with ease. Both the mother and chid were well and healthy. Even today many resort to this paritta.
Angulimala liked living in solitude and in seclusion. Later he passed away peacefully. As an arahant, he attained parinibbana.
Other bhikkhus asked the Buddha where Angulimala was reborn, and when the Blessed One replied, my son Angulimala has attained parinibbana, they could hardly believe it. So they asked whether it was possible that such a man who had in fact killed so many people could have attained parinibbana. To this question, the Buddha replied, "Bhikkhus, Angulimala had done much evil because he did not have good friends. But later, he hound good friends and with their help and good advice he became steadfast and mindful in practicing the dhamma and meditation. Thus, his evil deeds have been overwhelmed by good kamma and his mind has been completely rid of all defilements."

The Buddha said of Angulimala
"Whose evil deed is obscured by good, he illumines this world like the moon freed from a cloud."
The power of love and compassion are stronger than any evil, and are absolute conditions for awakening.
From this we can understand the stories in Buddhism also a communication to make people understand the doctrine of the Buddha. And also the deep teachings of The Buddha. Specially we can say that the conclusion of the Buddha’s teaching is the Buddhist handbook The Dhammapada (khuddakanikaya) .

The Dhammapada

The Dhammapada, a collection of 423 verses in 26 chapters, has been a source of daily inspiration to many people, Buddhists and non-Buddhists alike who are attracted to the grand and unequivocal moral teaching of the Buddha.

The trust of the book is on living a morally-pure life in a mental state of steadfast mindfulness.

The opposite and sorry condition is to be asleep, ignorant and unaware.

Despite its high calling, the Dhammapada (also spelt Dharmapada) is full of simple work-a-day illustrations and examples that the Buddha uses in driving home his lessons.

In Chapter 4, Flowers, for instance, the Buddha says, "As a bee gathers the nectar of a flower and flies away without destroying its beauty or fragance, so let the sage wander in this life. Think not of the faults of others, of what they have done or not done. Think rather of your own misdeeds and negligences." (v.49, 50)

Who is the sage but one "who for himself or for others, wishes not for sons or for power or wealth. And if he wishes not for success above righteousness, then he is good, wise and virtuous." (v.84)

The Dhammapada can be read and re-read throughout life. Each reading brings spiritual renewal, stirs the reader to pursue the path of light, and strengthens him to fight the temptations of worldly pleasures.

Time and again the reader is exhorted to avoid evil deeds "as a merchant who carries much wealth but with a small escort avoids a dangerous road, or as a man who values his life avoids poison." (v.123)

In Chapter 7, achieving sainthood (an Arhat), the Buddha says: "The gods envy him whose senses have been subdued like horses well-broken in by the driver; such a person who does his duty in life is enduring like the earth, firm as a pillar, clear as a lake without mud, and free forever from the wheel of birth and rebirth." (v.94, 95)

The Dhammapada goes into great length on the practical difficulties of moral living. It talks about anger, thoughtlessness, strong drinks, lying, mischief-making, corruption, sexual pleasure, meanness, and scores of other vices. Even the dull repetition of sacred verses is a taint on a man's character!

"But the greatest of all taints is ignorance. Cast of this taint," urges the Buddha, "and become pure." (v.242) Ultimately, the worse possible sin is deliberate ignorance of the truth.

But as the Buddha points out, "As rain does not break through a well-thatched house, so passion does not break through a well-guarded, reflecting mind." (v14)

Read then the Dhammapada and experience the joy of spiritual awakening, knowledge and self-discipline.

Even on his deathbed the Buddha gives this practical advice to Ananda, one of his most faithful disciples:

"You must be your own lamp and refuge. Take refuge in nothing outside yourself. Hold firm to the Truth as a lamp and a refuge, and do not look for anything as refuge besides yourself. A monk becomes his own lamp and refuge by continually looking on his body, feelings, perceptions, moods and ideas in such a manner that he conquers the cravings and depressions of ordinary men, and is always strenuous, self-possessed and collected in mind.

"Whoever among my disciples does this, either now or when I am dead, if he is anxious to learn, will reach the summit."
From these examples we can understand that the Dhammapada is the most important Dhamma communication of the people. It’s very clear and easy to understand to everyone not like as deep as Abhidhamma, paticca samuppada.

Finally in conclusion we can say that not only Dhammapada jataka stories we can take the holy Tipitaka as our Dhamma communication to everyone Buddhists and non Buddhists.

The end

Budhhism is the Opium of the people.

2009-04-15T19:02:00.001-07:00

Dr.BCR.Titu Barua

Mangala priya

Watsuthivararam

Yannawa,sathorn

Bangkok,10120.

Thailand.

Introduction

This is a short essay I’m going to write in the newspaper with the topic name ‘Buddhism is the opium of the people’ Buddhism is the opium of the people for many reasons. The word “Buddhism” came from the word called “Buddha” which means “The wakened one”. Anyone can follow this religion without the consideration of low as well as high caste people. It is unique then any other religions in the world. It neither talks about pessimist nor optimist what it mainly talks about is really. It neither deals with self mortification nor with self indulgence but deals with only middle path known as “P iccasamuppda”.

Points

According to European Buddhism is translated as the religion of causality found in south Asian countries. Which means everything in the world happens because of oneself. Suppose like when B is there A should be there automatically so like wise, our life is also interconnected to each other. This is a religion of human rights. Everything depends on oneself. As the pli stanza says “Atthi attno nto” ‘One is the master of one’s self’
Buddha emphasizes on self help. He said: "Self is the refuge of self." The Buddha said, "Buddha’s merely point out the way. Making the abort is something that each individual must do for himself." The Buddha taught that everything is caused and conditioned. Everything happens in consequence of causes and conditions, and in accordance with law. Each thing arises from a cause. We must know the cause of that thing and the ceasing of the cause of that thing." This principle of Dhamma is scientific in nature, and we can say that the principles of Buddhism agree with the principles of science. The Buddha did not use individuals or subjective things as criteria; that is to say, Buddhism is a religion of reason.

Let us directly go to the point of the topic.. Theistic religions strongly encourage to accept whatever the god says. But Buddhism being non-theistic allows people to choose, through their understanding. This is one of the things that Europeans like about Buddhism.

There is another good teaching in Buddhism is that it talks about the action in pli “kamma” in Sanskrit “Karma” which means one gets the result of one’s own action. As we sow so we reap, Buddhism always tells us to avoid evil and to do good. If we plant a mango seed, we get mango from the tree nothing else. Like wise, if we do good, we will surely get good result, but if we do bad, we will surely get bad result as well. This theory is quite peculiar then other religions. Upanisad believes that everything that we do has a result after it does not matter weather it is done intentionally or not. It still give a valid result to the action but Buddhism does not say like that, Buddha says “Cetanha× bhikkhave kamma× vadmi” ‘oh monks! I call the volitional acts as kamma or Karma whatever.’

Its wonderful teaching is the middle path which means that we should not carry out our life with extremes. We have to keep balance on our life carrier Buddha taught to tread the Middle Way, to be neither too strict nor too slack, to go to neither the one extreme nor the other. The Middle Way consists, on one hand, in not creating hardships for yourself and, on the other hand, not indulging to everyone’s heart's content in sensual pleasures. Walking the Middle Way brings about conditions which are in every way conducive to study and practice, and to success in putting an end to Dukkha (suffering).

Day by day people are civilizing more and more so as the way thinking. So this religion mainly talks about freeing oneself from suffering (Dukkha). Some people gets confuse with the simple translation of the word Dukkha as suffering actually it is much better to keep the word as it is, because of this translation people get wrong idea of Buddhism as a pessimistic religion which mean it talks about only suffering of the world nothing else. So therefore it is simply translated as ‘Unsatisfactory’ for philosophical expression by scholars. But Buddhism has happiness as well, known as ‘Sukha’ in pli, found in S´galovada sutta. So therefore we can not say that Buddhism is a pessimistic religion.

Buddhism mainly talks about being freed from mental unsatisfactoriness, which very few people have through their concentration known as ‘Bhvana’ in pli. Even the rich people can not have mental satisfactory though they do have lots of money in their hand until they settle their mind to one point which means to concentrate on one object. So Buddhist Bhvana or mental culture gives quite a satisfactory answer to such mentally sick people for their difficulties. Non of us in the world like the bad part of the things, instead everyone of us like the good side of the things. Therefore as this is a thing that cures the diseases of the people. They always come running to help themselves. And strictly Buddhism is especially for the intelligent people but not for ignorant people.