{"id":78390,"date":"2018-06-14T13:23:59","date_gmt":"2018-06-14T20:23:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=78390"},"modified":"2018-06-14T13:23:59","modified_gmt":"2018-06-14T20:23:59","slug":"a-problem-in-buddhist-metaphysics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2018\/06\/14\/a-problem-in-buddhist-metaphysics\/","title":{"rendered":"A problem in Buddhist Metaphysics"},"content":{"rendered":"

R Chandrasoma<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n

While the plight of Man in an unfriendly Universe and the struggle to achieve an emancipation that radically terminates his existential woes are the chief concerns of the Buddhist Pilgrim, there are issues – both historical and cosmological – that cannot be ignored. Let us start with planetary history – as currently revealed by the latest scientific knowledge of this history – the story of life on Earth, The latter separated from the solar nebula about 4 to 5 billion years ago and for the major part of its history was ‘abiotic’ – ie devoid of all life and sentience, The earliest manifestation of life was stunningly simple – the microscopic Prokaryotes represented today by the likes of bacteria and related unicellular forms. For more than a billion years life failed to make the grade to multi-cellular organization – let alone brains and consciousness, The latter kicked off a ‘mere’ half a billion years ago when – following the so-called Cambrian Explosion –\u00a0 brains, nervous systems and sense-organs became part of the ‘equipage’ of complex life. The first large-brained conscious ‘Primates’ –\u00a0 the likes of the Neanderthal Man and the powerfully built and beautiful Cro-Magnon Man – flourished a mere fifty thousand years ago.<\/p>\n

Here is the the puzzle that challenges the Buddhist Metaphysican or Philosopher – was Karmic Transmission absent during these long years of Pre-Human evolution? Did the Dinosaurs have a karmic future based on the moods and deeds of these leviathans in their contemporary world? Is a Trilobite ‘karmically’\u00a0 connected? Suppose we give the standard answer that those devoid of conscious states – paradigmatically\u00a0 represented in humans – are not caught up in the great scheme of retributive causation, we are forced to accept the position that Heavens and Hells came into existence only after the advent of Man. That a Pre-Human ‘Monkey’ has ‘karmic entailments’ based on his ‘moral performance’ is surely absurd.\u00a0 Since fallible being subject to moral scrutiny did not exist for most of planetary history, we must suppose that such ‘punishment and reward centres’ are a recent ‘production’ – since moral culpability and reward only follows thinking brains and advanced social life – feature found in a tiny elite of living species.<\/p>\n

There is a feature of heavens and hells that is rarely reflected on by religious scholars – there is no reproduction in Hell – nor do the ‘Devas’ in Heaven ‘mate’ and have ‘baby Devas’. The ‘Prethyas’ are supposed to be ‘sexed’ but there is no understanding\u00a0 of copulation or birth in their wretched world. The upshot of this ‘absence’ is that both Heavens and Hells are ‘supported ‘ by the reproductive bounty of the human world. Without deeds and misdeeds in our (Human) world the karmic energy that sustains Heavens and Hells fails and they have no place tin the great system of the world, Until the advent of Man, moral dilemmas had no ‘force’ as an agent of cosmological significance. Man’s advent not only changed our planetary world – it also created a need for Heavens and Hells.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

R Chandrasoma While the plight of Man in an unfriendly Universe and the struggle to achieve an emancipation that radically terminates his existential woes are the chief concerns of the Buddhist Pilgrim, there are issues – both historical and cosmological – that cannot be ignored. Let us start with planetary history – as currently revealed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-78390","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-r-chandrasoma"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78390","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=78390"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78390\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78390"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78390"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78390"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}