Dynamics of Divinity in the West
Sometimes I feel like (for the purposes of conversation, which is the only purpose of such things), “buddhism” and “daoism” are best understood in the West in contrast to “theism,” and the differences describe relations to the dynamics of the emergence of divinity.
None of these things is incompatible, with one or both of the others, it’s just that the first two present new constructions that are newer to Western cultures and clearly still taking time to integrate.
All the hair-splitting about which kinds of gods and how many there are and where they are and how powerful they are take place within the “theism” container, “theism” being a relationship to divinity in which it manifests as Beings.
I’m more interested in conversations BETWEEN CONSTRUCTIONS, because internal arguments about particulars don’t produce anything.
The difference between a god and a buddha is worth looking at a little bit carefully, as buddhas are also “beings,” but I would say they are contingent manifestations as opposed to transcendent beings. I think Christianity is a little confused about what it woke up to here, to be honest.
The tricky thing — and it’s the thing with which i’ve struggled my entire life, too — is that Jewish culture is quite parsimonious in its allowance for buddhas. so much so that, after a few dozen centuries, it became largely a-buddhist. Then Jesus showed up.
Daoism might seem like a nice way to reconcile an apparently exclusive division between contingent manifestations [buddhas] and transcendent entities [gods], but I don’t feel it works like that. Daoism is more radical than either; no entity or manifestation can be “more special.”
Again, none of these orientations are incompatible PER SE. But there’s a big moral difference between a daoist, “wave”-based emergence and an a-daoist “particle”-based one. At least I THINK that’s how it works?
Particle and wave are of course not opposed, which is frustrating in the usual talking-about-the-Dao way, but remember, we’re just talking about orientations, and that’s exactly how particle and wave work.
(By the way, it’s okay if there are more than these three things. I’m just talking about these three things.)
Buddhism is in a way the most radical of these orientations, since it allows divine status for flesh-and-blood human beings, and we know what kinds of fanaticism that can enable. I think the traditional -yana structure holds up well here and helps a lot.
The “right-wing” yana elevates special attained individuals and provides a virtuous practice path for becoming one, and the “left-wing” yana elevates the intrinsic buddhanature in everyone/everything, with the ethical charge to help everyone realize it.
A Venn diagram begins to form as left-yana tends toward daoist universality and right-yana tends toward what should probably be called “prophecy,” i.e. the mortal divine being’s authentic reception and transmission of transcendent divine information.
Dealing as we are with the West, the factor of “belief” may be unavoidable in terms of how one finds oneself on this map, but we’ve already made great strides if these three spectra allow for subtle shading between commitments, rather than binary ones.
