Ask A Buddhist II

[patrick457]

Originally Posted by minichibi

That's very much alike the gnostic theology! With the Demiurge claiming to be omnipotent and such but being delusional. That sounds like a fine solution to the "why there are so many creator gods" problem.

Well, there is a theory that Buddhism (or Eastern philosophies known to Greeks and Romans in general) was one source for some gnosticisms (there was no singular 'Gnosticism').

[IgnatianPhilo]

Originally Posted by Bakmoon

It isn't that unhappiness is bad as much as it is that happiness is better than unhappiness. More specifically, that the eternal and perfect happiness of Nibbana is better than unhappiness.

To but our subjective minds it seems to be that way. And human thought can be mistaken, why should we place our suffering at the centre of the universe? Why do we have inherent worth and dignity? How does Buddhism answer this?

[Vouthon]

Originally Posted by minichibi

That's very much alike the gnostic theology! With the Demiurge claiming to be omnipotent and such but being delusional. That sounds like a fine solution to the "why there are so many creator gods" problem.

My dear brother and sister Buddhists

May the memory of the Lord Buddha (Siddartha Gautama) be blessed!

I was reading with keen interest a portion from the Brahmajala Sutta on the last thread (which was given as a link by Rossum) when she/he was asked by another poster whether Buddhists had any teachings on the God whom Christians, Muslims, Jews, Sikhs, Zoroastrians, Hindus and other believers in a Supreme Divinity worship.

There is this depiction of the deluded Brahma who - because he was the first being to arise in the universe in its expansion from a prior contracted blissful state - in a kind of heavenly abode, considered Himself to be the Supreme Reality, the Creator God and when other beings "fell" from that blissful state he believed that he had created them in thought because he had felt lonely and desired other beings before their appearence. In other words the Lord Buddha is suggesting that the God of Theistic religions is actually not the Creator of the Universe but a deluded demiurge-like figure who could not remember his previous birth in that contracted state of being. The other beings who "fell" afterwards with him into reality, into this present expanded universe, saw him as being older by far and more beautiful than they and so came to regard him truly as their Creator, the One true God. They too had forgotten about their previous births and none of them were aware that, in the Buddha's eyes, the Universe goes through a permanent and unending cycle of contraction and expansion, meaning that in each cycle there is probably some deluded divine being who is the first to "fall" into the new expanded universe and who erroneously considers Himself to be the "Creator" and "Father of all".

I was struck by the almost verbatim similarity between this fascinating Brahma figure and the "Authority" of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials children's fantasy trilogy, based (as he says), upon his knowledge of the Gnostic Christian Demiurge - whom as you will probably know some of the ancient, heretical Gnostics identified as Yahweh the God of the Old Testament (Tanakh) whom Jesus had come to liberate mankind from so that they could be freed from matter and return to the Undifferentiated, Impersonal Absolute from which the Demiurge, who was not actually the Creator but thought himself to be so, originally came from.

The Supreme Being of certain of these diverse Christian Gnostics was known as the Monad, the One, the Bythos (Depth or Profundity), the Proarche (Before the Beginning), the He Arche (The Beginning) and The Ineffable Parent. The One was considered to be the high source of the pleroma, the region of light. The various emanations of The One are called aeons and they dwelt in the region of Light. The Demiurge was the first emanation that "fell" down from the Monad into the Pleroma (Region of Light) where he was alone until other aeons emanated and fell down with him.

The discussion of Gnosticism seems to confirm my initial thoughts.


Read this description of Pullman's Gnostic-influenced fantasy "Creator":

"...His Dark Materials is steeped and forged in the philosophy of Gnosticism, to the point where it would be impossible to separate almost any of the story's primary strands and themes from some underlying Gnostic source.

The most obvious manner in which His Dark Materials mirror a Gnostic portrayal of the world is its god/creator character, The Authority. The Authority—and, by extension, his regent Metatron—is the surrogate for the being known in Gnosticism as The Demiurge: a deeply flawed, extremely jealous, bitter and vindictive being who has entrapped all of humanity in a prison—our shared reality—and presented himself as God the Creator rather than a lesser being. These characters all represent the god of western religions. Here is how Pullman describes The Authority in a passage from The Amber Spyglass:


"The Authority, God, the Creator, the Lord, Yahweh, El, Adonai, the King, the Father, the Almighty—those were all names he gave himself. He was never the creator. He was an angel like ourselves—the first angel, true, the most powerful, but he was formed of Dust as we are, and Dust is only a name for what happens when matter begins to understand itself... The first angels condensed out of Dust, and the Authority was the first of all. He told those who came after him that he had created them, but it was a lie..."

One myst see the striking parity between this Gnostic-influenced-Pullman "Authority"-Demiurge-God and the Brahma described by the Buddha in that aforementioned sutta?

I have often read and heard it said that early Christian Gnosticism and Buddhism shared some kind of common affinity in places but I have generally overlooked it until now (Ie I generally thought of it only in terms of liberation from matter, extinction/illusion of the individual self etc.).

Nevertheless there are important differences between the Gnostic and Buddhist models and I actually think that Pullman, accidentally, has presented in the book not a Gnostic conception of God but a Buddhist one - although he doesn't credit Buddhism for his literary masterpiece.

Gnosticism presents a distinction between the highest, unknowable God and the demiurgic “creator” of the material universe, which the Demiurge Creator to "smite" the Unknowable, Impersonal Supreme Being.

However in His Dark Materials the Authority did not actually create the material reality - he simply thought that he had and so did the other angels. This was delusion not malice - although sister Notself recalls a Sutra where he seems to "realize" that he isn't the Creator but still wishes to be worshipped by other being regardless, which could indicate malicious intent.

This is thus closer to the Buddhist description of Brahma rather than the Gnostic Demiurge, although there is an overarching similarity and connection I think between all three presentations and a common thread of tacit criticism of traditional theism.


Now here is what my thoughts are:


Naturally I do not and cannot accept the Gnostic understanding of the Creator God as a deluded angelic being who emanated from the Monad and neither do I accept its disturbing abhorrence for the material world and the flesh.

Nevertheless all of this has made me think that the Buddha's conception of "Brahma" is not the God that we Christians call "The Holy Trinity" (who is the same God as the Tanakh) but rather is closer in general to our understanding of Satan. In other words, I think that his description of "Brahma" more easily fits our figure of Satan or the Adversary (devil) than the One, Infinite, Ineffable, Inexpressible, Impassable, Omnipresent First Cause who expresses himself as Father, who eternally speaks himself forth as the Son and who are both united as One by their common outpouring bond of love which is the Holy Spirit - a perfect divine family that eternally expands out into the Three Persons and contracts into the Abyss of the Godhead, the Essence, the Ground in one simultaenous expansion-contraction like a great cosmic heartbeat (to use the language of Meister Eckhart and Dom Cyprian Smith).

This God became incarnated as a human being, in the Person of the Son, in the womb of the Blessed Virgin and I do not consider him to be the "Brahma" whom the Buddha gained knowledge of through his experience of enlightenment under the Bodhi Tree.

I think that it is possible (from a Christian perspective) that the expanding-contracting reality which he perceived to be the basis of reality or the Universe was actually the Holy Trinity, or is akin to the Holy Trinity. Perhaps this has interesting implications for the Mahayana doctrine of the Trikaya which has some superficial similarities to the Christian Trinity, much in the same way as the Hindu Trimurti does.

One of the reasons why I posit that Brahma shares more commonalities with the Christian Satan is that God in Catholicism is impassible whereas Brahma is clearly passible shifting (much like a conditioned human being) from one fleeting emotional state to another, experiencing loneliness in one second but not the other and actin as if from within "time" whereas God for Christians is beyond time and place.

I reckon that he seems more like Satan, whom Christ interestingly saw "fall from heaven" in a similar way to how the Buddha saw "Brahma" fall down into heaven from that previous contracted state of the Universe:

Luke 10: 18 And he said to them, “I saw Satan fall from heaven like a star

[Vouthon]

Based upon this passage, which is clearly using the language of Isaiah 14 that Christians took therefore as referring - metaphorically - to Satan. Read it and ponder: Does he not more closely resemble 'Brahma' in his delusions of grandeur?


12 “How you are fallen from heaven,
O Day Star, son of Dawn!
How you are cut down to the ground,
you who laid the nations low!
13 You said in your heart,
‘I will ascend to heaven;
above the stars of God
I will set my throne on high;
I will sit on the mount of assembly
in the far reaches of the north;
14 I will ascend above the heights of the clouds;
I will make myself like the Most High.’
15 But you are brought down to Sheol,
to the far reaches of the pit.
16 Those who see you will stare at you
and ponder over you:
‘Is this the one who made the earth tremble,
who shook kingdoms,
17 who made the world like a desert
and overthrew its cities,
who did not let his prisoners go home?’
18 All the kings of the nations lie in glory,
each in his own tomb;
19 but you are cast out, away from your grave,
like a loathed branch,
clothed with the slain, those pierced by the sword,
who go down to the stones of the pit,
like a dead body trampled underfoot.


And the parrallel passage in Ezekiel 28 about the Prince of Tyre (also metaphorically interpreted to refer to Satan):


The word of the Lord came to me: 2 Mortal, say to the prince of Tyre, Thus says the Lord God: Because your heart is proud and you have said, "I am a god; I sit in the seat of the gods, in the heart of the seas," yet you are but a mortal, and no god, though you compare your mind with the mind of a god. 3 You are indeed wiser than Daniel; no secret is hidden from you; 4 by your wisdom and your understanding you have amassed wealth for yourself, and have gathered gold and silver into your treasuries. 5 By your great wisdom in trade you have increased your wealth, and your heart has become proud in your wealth. 6 Therefore thus says the Lord God: Because you compare your mind with the mind of a god, 7 therefore, I will bring strangers against you, the most terrible of the nations; they shall draw their swords against the beauty of your wisdom and defile your splendor. 8 They shall thrust you down to the Pit, and you shall die a violent death in the heart of the seas. 9 Will you still say, "I am a god," in the presence of those who kill you, though you are but a mortal, and no god, in the hands of those who wound you? 10 You shall die the death of the uncircumcised by the hand of foreigners; for I have spoken, says the Lord God. 11 Moreover the word of the Lord came to me: 12 Mortal, raise a lamentation over the king of Tyre, and say to him, Thus says the Lord God: You were the signet of perfection, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty. 13 You were in Eden, the garden of God; every precious stone was your covering, carnelian, chrysolite, and moonstone, beryl, onyx, and jasper, sapphire, turquoise, and emerald; and worked in gold were your settings and your engravings. On the day that you were created they were prepared. 14 With an anointed cherub as guardian I placed you; you were on the holy mountain of God; you walked among the stones of fire. 15 You were blameless in your ways from the day that you were created, until iniquity was found in you. 16 In the abundance of your trade you were filled with violence, and you sinned; so I cast you as a profane thing from the mountain of God, and the guardian cherub drove you out from among the stones of fire. 17 Your heart was proud because of your beauty; you corrupted your wisdom for the sake of your splendor. I cast you to the ground; I exposed you before kings, to feast their eyes on you. 18 By the multitude of your iniquities, in the unrighteousness of your trade, you profaned your sanctuaries. So I brought out fire from within you; it consumed you, and I turned you to ashes on the earth in the sight of all who saw you. 19 All who know you among the peoples are appalled at you; you have come to a dreadful end and shall be no more forever

In Thessalonians it is said that the Antichrist (which can refer either to an individual or the "many antichrists" who exist in every age of the earth) will declare:


"...He opposes and exalts himself above every so-called god and object of worship. As a result, he seats himself in the sanctuary of God and himself declares that he is God..."

- 2 Thessalonians 2:4


The Bible often upbraids mortals for believing themselves to be "gods" ie


Isaiah 31:3 But the Egyptians are men and not God; their horses are flesh and not spirit. When the LORD stretches out his hand, he who helps will stumble, he who is helped will fall; both will perish together.

Daniel 11:36 "The king will do as he pleases. He will exalt and magnify himself above every god and will say unheard-of things against the God of gods. He will be successful until the time of wrath is completed, for what has been determined must take place.

[patrick457]

Originally Posted by Vouthon

Based upon this passage, which is clearly using the language of Isaiah 14 that Christians took therefore as referring - metaphorically - to Satan. Read it and ponder: Does he not more closely resemble 'Brahma' in his delusions of grandeur?


12 “How you are fallen from heaven,
O Day Star, son of Dawn!
How you are cut down to the ground,
you who laid the nations low!
13 You said in your heart,
‘I will ascend to heaven;
above the stars of God
I will set my throne on high;
I will sit on the mount of assembly
in the far reaches of the north;
14 I will ascend above the heights of the clouds;
I will make myself like the Most High.’
15 But you are brought down to Sheol,
to the far reaches of the pit.
16 Those who see you will stare at you
and ponder over you:
‘Is this the one who made the earth tremble,
who shook kingdoms,
17 who made the world like a desert
and overthrew its cities,
who did not let his prisoners go home?’
18 All the kings of the nations lie in glory,
each in his own tomb;
19 but you are cast out, away from your grave,
like a loathed branch,
clothed with the slain, those pierced by the sword,
who go down to the stones of the pit,
like a dead body trampled underfoot.


And the parrallel passage in Ezekiel 28 about the Prince of Tyre (also metaphorically interpreted to refer to Satan):


The word of the Lord came to me: 2 Mortal, say to the prince of Tyre, Thus says the Lord God: Because your heart is proud and you have said, "I am a god; I sit in the seat of the gods, in the heart of the seas," yet you are but a mortal, and no god, though you compare your mind with the mind of a god. 3 You are indeed wiser than Daniel; no secret is hidden from you; 4 by your wisdom and your understanding you have amassed wealth for yourself, and have gathered gold and silver into your treasuries. 5 By your great wisdom in trade you have increased your wealth, and your heart has become proud in your wealth. 6 Therefore thus says the Lord God: Because you compare your mind with the mind of a god, 7 therefore, I will bring strangers against you, the most terrible of the nations; they shall draw their swords against the beauty of your wisdom and defile your splendor. 8 They shall thrust you down to the Pit, and you shall die a violent death in the heart of the seas. 9 Will you still say, "I am a god," in the presence of those who kill you, though you are but a mortal, and no god, in the hands of those who wound you? 10 You shall die the death of the uncircumcised by the hand of foreigners; for I have spoken, says the Lord God. 11 Moreover the word of the Lord came to me: 12 Mortal, raise a lamentation over the king of Tyre, and say to him, Thus says the Lord God: You were the signet of perfection, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty. 13 You were in Eden, the garden of God; every precious stone was your covering, carnelian, chrysolite, and moonstone, beryl, onyx, and jasper, sapphire, turquoise, and emerald; and worked in gold were your settings and your engravings. On the day that you were created they were prepared. 14 With an anointed cherub as guardian I placed you; you were on the holy mountain of God; you walked among the stones of fire. 15 You were blameless in your ways from the day that you were created, until iniquity was found in you. 16 In the abundance of your trade you were filled with violence, and you sinned; so I cast you as a profane thing from the mountain of God, and the guardian cherub drove you out from among the stones of fire. 17 Your heart was proud because of your beauty; you corrupted your wisdom for the sake of your splendor. I cast you to the ground; I exposed you before kings, to feast their eyes on you. 18 By the multitude of your iniquities, in the unrighteousness of your trade, you profaned your sanctuaries. So I brought out fire from within you; it consumed you, and I turned you to ashes on the earth in the sight of all who saw you. 19 All who know you among the peoples are appalled at you; you have come to a dreadful end and shall be no more forever

In Thessalonians it is said that the Antichrist (which can refer either to an individual or the "many antichrists" who exist in every age of the earth) will declare:


"...He opposes and exalts himself above every so-called god and object of worship. As a result, he seats himself in the sanctuary of God and himself declares that he is God..."

- 2 Thessalonians 2:4


The Bible often upbraids mortals for believing themselves to be "gods" ie


Isaiah 31:3 But the Egyptians are men and not God; their horses are flesh and not spirit. When the LORD stretches out his hand, he who helps will stumble, he who is helped will fall; both will perish together.

Daniel 11:36 "The king will do as he pleases. He will exalt and magnify himself above every god and will say unheard-of things against the God of gods. He will be successful until the time of wrath is completed, for what has been determined must take place.

Minor trivia: whereas the Masoretic text for Ezekiel 28 has the king of Tyre likened to the cherub, the Septuagint understands the Hebrew not as 'att-keruv ("you were a cherub"), but 'et-keruv ("with a cherub") at this point. Thus, the reference here becomes in the Greek text to that of the story of the expulsion of man from Eden.

With the cherub I put you on the holy mountain of God [...] And you were wounded from the mountain of God, and the cherub led you out of the midst of the stones of fire.

[Bakmoon]

Originally Posted by Imcatholic7

Is there any worship involved in Buddhism? Also, when a Buddhist prays, is it more of a mental exercise but not to or for someone or a particular reason? Thanks.

There is devotion directed at key figures in Buddhism, but it is more like how Catholics venerate saints than how God is worshiped.

It is a little bit misleading to use the term prayer in a Buddhist context. It can play a role in folk religion where uneducated Buddhists mistakenly think that they can petition the Buddha for favors, and some sects involve the chanting of Mantras which are related to specific figures, but it's not really praying in the usual sense of the term. Mantras are believed to have the power in and of themselves to affect a person's development in the sects that practice them.

[indiancatholic]

Is there evil in Buddhism?

[farpinho]

Is there a fixed number of souls or new souls are born every day? At what time of a person's birth you can say they have a soul?

[Michael19682]

Originally Posted by IgnatianPhilo

I think we can, I don't think its a self evident truth that suffering or unhappiness is inherently bad. At least from a Non Christian view point it seems.

IgnatianPhilo,

I like your [implied] point! I once raised an issue with these folks about the relation of beginningless time and endless time to that of a creator. It's buried in the just over 1000 posts of the Ask A Buddhist thread that became this one.....

Problem is, that as far as I've heard Buddhists still believe in reincarnation in conjunction with a law of karma that says the effects of ill deeds increases in greater proportion to the effects of good deeds, i.e., to that which improves karma. It's a moral directive, and a very stern warning against misdemeanor, as one consequence of it is that there is no end to hell or, if you prefer, to liberation from samasara if you don't get up and start doing something soon....Thus, [as far as I can tell] it remains undefined as to how a lazy Buddhist ever get(s) out of the ocean of samasara -- kind of like the flight of Icarus, once he lost his wings feathers' from the sun's heat, he was essentially doomed and not even his father could save him from the fall. Also, one small foul up that isn't put in check creates tendencies and these persist in the next life, affecting action or karma there; the result being that you who are born with no knowledge of a past life's stolen loaf of bread, end up cheating on your French exams and wondering why you are so miserable, or why you keep dropping your favorite sandwiches everytime you are hungry. Then along comes someone who can see your karma clearly, tells you to donate some time or money to a charity that feeds bread to the hungry; and soon you become happier.

Catholic Chirstians believe in a hell with no end to its depravity; but we are different in 3 main ways on suffering: 1) Suffering has a purpose in teaching us to abhor our sins and to begin to admire the virtue and grace that results from repentance. Since we gather all of our blame into our sins, we learn without the unconscious being involved: e.g. most people have pretty good memories for the halloween pranks that turned serious. 2) Since the time of the second coming, or judgment day is known only to God the Father, time is crucial and not necessarily to our disadvantage -- for all any of us knows, God could be witholding his Son on account of me or you in specific. Romans chapter 8 adresses this point....for all of creation anxiously awaits the revelation of the children of God....Since God's principle revelation is Love, I am motivated to stop my suffering for that love. Or, possibly because I might be holding up the entire universe in my refusal to accept God. That's Guilt Catholic style and it works brilliantly. Mahayana Buddhists center on compassion, which involves the suffering of others, which bear a difficult to comprehend relation to my own vices or sins. For me, this in Buddhism is a kind of paralysis of the spirit. 3) The Buddhist view on suffering seems to me to position them for making the statement "I am going to stop all this [suffering] by becoming an enlightened Buddha." So if suffering is so "bad", then why or how does it motivate a person to become enlightened? It seems that Christians thought this aspect thru more thoroughly, and propounded on it to the conscious advantage of their followers. Also, Christians can be assured that God is Just, and that what happens to others and me in the way of suffering must necessarily be that way -- if only because it will all be made clear on judgment day.

[Bakmoon]

Originally Posted by IgnatianPhilo

To but our subjective minds it seems to be that way. And human thought can be mistaken, why should we place our suffering at the centre of the universe? Why do we have inherent worth and dignity? How does Buddhism answer this?

Not all suffering is bad. Suffering to gain a greater good is sensible for example. But suffering needlessly and pointlessly seems to me to obviously be a bad thing, and true happiness to be a good thing. It is part of the definition of the terms themselves, you could say.

And the Buddhist doesn't place suffering at the center of our universe; we put happiness and the way to happiness at the center.

[Bakmoon]

Originally Posted by Michael19682

Problem is, that as far as I've heard Buddhists still believe in reincarnation in conjunction with a law of karma that says the effects of ill deeds increases in greater proportion to the effects of good deeds, i.e., to that which improves karma. It's a moral directive, and a very stern warning against misdemeanor, as one consequence of it is that there is no end to hell or, if you prefer, to liberation from samasara if you don't get up and start doing something soon....Thus, [as far as I can tell] it remains undefined as to how a lazy Buddhist ever get(s) out of the ocean of samasara -- kind of like the flight of Icarus, once he lost his wings feathers' from the sun's heat, he was essentially doomed and not even his father could save him from the fall. Also, one small foul up that isn't put in check creates tendencies and these persist in the next life, affecting action or karma there; the result being that you who are born with no knowledge of a past life's stolen loaf of bread, end up cheating on your French exams and wondering why you are so miserable, or why you keep dropping your favorite sandwiches everytime you are hungry. Then along comes someone who can see your karma clearly, tells you to donate some time or money to a charity that feeds bread to the hungry; and soon you become happier.

If a Buddhist is lazy and they don't work at all towards Nibbana, then they will probably be swept up back into samsara for a very long time until by chance they come back into contact with the Dhamma. Because they have the Kamma of previously having faith in the teachings, even if they were lazy, this will incline the person more towards accepting the teaching than if they never believed, and they would get another chance that way to practice.

It is also important to note that the Buddha rejected the idea that Kamma is a purely deterministic process. In order for one's Kamma to bear fruit as a result, the situation needs to be ripe to support it, and some things are just up to chance, as well.

[Bakmoon]

Originally Posted by indiancatholic

Is there evil in Buddhism?

It depends what you mean by that. If you mean "Is it possible to objectively label certain actions as being wrong" then yes. If you mean "Does Evil exist as a literal force in the universe" then no. I believe that Catholicism also denies that evil has an ontological existence by itself, but is a lack of good, just as cold doesn't exist except as a lack of heat.

[Bakmoon]

Originally Posted by farpinho

Is there a fixed number of souls or new souls are born every day? At what time of a person's birth you can say they have a soul?

The word "soul" is a little problematic because it is based off of Aristotelian ontology in which the soul is defined as the "form" of the body. If you just mean is there a fixed number of new persons or personalities born each day, then no, because every day different numbers of people are conceived and born.

The issue of when a person becomes a person is an interesting one. I follow the interpretation of the Ven. Ajahn Brahm, who holds to the position that it occurs when the embryo differentiates its tissues and gains neurological tissue for the first time, which occurs sometime around the end of the first month of gestation, but it isn't a cut and dry issue. It is clear from the Buddhist Scriptures however, that it occurs sometime in the womb.

[Vouthon]

Originally Posted by Bakmoon

It depends what you mean by that. If you mean "Is it possible to objectively label certain actions as being wrong" then yes. If you mean "Does Evil exist as a literal force in the universe" then no. I believe that Catholicism also denies that evil has an ontological existence by itself, but is a lack of good, just as cold doesn't exist except as a lack of heat.

Spot on (as usual )

Evil does not exist in any objective sense but only in a relative sense ie in relation to good, of which it is the deprivation. Evil is thus the absence of good. Evil is not a thing in Itself.

Light is a real property of the universe. There are light particles - or more properly called photons - and we can measure them in units. There are no particles or units of darkness. One cannot measure darkness because it doesn't actually exist, it is actually just the lack of light in a specific place.

In the same way: Heat and Cold.

There is no such thing as coldness. We can measure and calculate heat, according to degrees or celsius because it is real. Heat is given off from the sun. Coldness is not a thing in itself, rather it is a human being's perception of the lack of heat, just as darkness is a human being's perception of the lack of light.


"...And in the universe, even that which is called evil, when it is regulated and put in its own place, only enhances our admiration of the good; for we enjoy and value the good more when we compare it with the evil. For the Almighty God, who, as even the heathen acknowledge, has supreme power over all things, being Himself supremely good, would never permit the existence of anything evil among His works, if He were not so omnipotent and good that He can bring good even out of evil. For what is that which we call evil but the absence of good? In the bodies of animals, disease and wounds mean nothing but the absence of health; for when a cure is effected, that does not mean that the evils which were present—namely, the diseases and wounds—go away from the body and dwell elsewhere: they altogether cease to exist; for the wound or disease is not a substance, but a defect in the fleshly substance,—the flesh itself being a substance, and therefore something good, of which those evils—that is, privations of the good which we call health—are accidents. Just in the same way, what are called vices in the soul are nothing but privations of natural good. And when they are cured, they are not transferred elsewhere: when they cease to exist in the healthy soul, they cannot exist anywhere else..."

—St. Augustine of Hippo (354 – 430), Enchiridion of Augustine, Chapter 11: What is called Evil in the Universe is But the Absence of Good


This teaching was subsequently confirmed by Saint Thomas Aquinas in the Summa, as you will naturally be already aware. It has its basis both in the Bible, Church tradition and Neoplatonism (Plotinus preached a very similar idea which had a defining influence on Augustine, given that he had been a Platonist for a period of time prior to his conversion to Christianity).


Evil is the absence of good, and God did not cause nor create evil; it is rather a lack or deficiency of his created natural order - however he is also just as much present in evil acts and the people committing them as he is anywhere:


"...God presents himself in the inmost depths of my soul. I understand not only that he is present, but also how he is present. I have seen the One who is, and how He is the Being of all creatures. God is present in everything that exists, in a devil and a good angel, in heaven and hell, in good deeds and in adultery and murder, in the beautiful and the ugly. Therfore, while I am in this Truth, I take as much delight in seeing and understanding his presence in a devil and the act of adultery as I do in an angel and a good deed. The world is pregnant with God...He who loves with not only a part of himself, but the whole, transforms himself into the thing beloved..."

- Blessed Angela of Foligna (c. 1248 – 1309), Catholic mystic

[farpinho]

Originally Posted by Bakmoon

The word "soul" is a little problematic because it is based off of Aristotelian ontology in which the soul is defined as the "form" of the body. If you just mean is there a fixed number of new persons or personalities born each day, then no, because every day different numbers of people are conceived and born.

The issue of when a person becomes a person is an interesting one. I follow the interpretation of the Ven. Ajahn Brahm, who holds to the position that it occurs when the embryo differentiates its tissues and gains neurological tissue for the first time, which occurs sometime around the end of the first month of gestation, but it isn't a cut and dry issue. It is clear from the Buddhist Scriptures however, that it occurs sometime in the womb.

In that sense, what is the essence of one's self? What makes me the "me" and not someone else? Is it the neurological tissue? But in that sense, when I die I can't be reborn ever again, unless the molecules that today compose my neurons are rearranged exactly the same way once again. Or there's an essence of the "me" inside myself that interacts with my neurons?