> Before get into the goal of buddhism, a more general question is
> religion. What is the commonality among all relgions? What is
> underlying all suffering?
>
> In the wewt, power is the root of all evil. Money is economic power.
> The common phrase in the west is Lord Aton's "Power tends to corrupt;
> absolute power corrupt absolutely." And of course, the westtern
> conception is wrong. The Chinese or eastern approach is
> "relationship." Combing east and west, the underlying cause of all
> surffering is "power relationship."
>
> First, "power relationship" is ubiquitous. It is everywhere. Every
> relationship we have is a power relationship in which we coerce or we
> are coerced. Interpersonally, intrapersonally and with nature.
>
> Sceond, "power relationship" is what we learnt from the beginning. It
> does not take long for a baby to discover that everytime she cries,
> her mom will pick her up or feed her or otherwise attending to her
> needs.
>
> Thrid, "power relationship" brings suffering because we are often
> coerced to do something that we don't want to do. Of course, we learn
> to turn the table around. For example, fire is to be feared until we
> learnt to control fire. The ability to use fire then because a
> hallmark of humanness. However, there are always more things/desires
> that can coerce us.
>
> Buddhism is an attempt to escape from this ubiquitous "power
> relatioship," especially the intra-personal relationship because the
> self and his desires. Detachment means not to be coerced by one's
> desires or one's vision of a certain tuture and its associated
> suffering. Awakening in this sense means one is with eternity without
> suffering.
It is often said that traditional society consists of "we"
whereas modern, especially modern Western society,
consists of individuals. In the USA individualism runs
rampant, so much so that people are trapped in their
own bubbles, so that people so to speak carry their
own prison around. Chinese society is composed of
liaisons, connexions or relationships (guan-xi, lian-xi),
regardless of political system. In that sense Chinese
society is still pre-modern. (By the way, Communism
has destroyed religions in China almost entirely, but
the family system inherited from Confucianism is
still intact).
That said, in Buddhism, there is a funny contradiction.
On one hand, Buddhist theory emphasises relations,
mutual relations that go on indefinitely, especially in
causality, and yet in practice the sage is independent
and self-sufficient. Relations are to loosen up one's
sense of individuality, and awakening is to free oneself
of all identifications, especially to one's self, as one no
longer creates a self for one to carry around. Freedom
is freedom from norms and standards, especially the
biggest and baddest of them, the norms and standards
of one's self, the norms and standards that constitute
one's self. In freedom one has dropped norms and
standards, and is free to roam untrammelled, though of
course one is still bound by physical and social laws.
Tang Huyen
