Time for me to get in on this subject. I consider myself a practicing Buddhist (Tibetan Vajrasattva and Dzogchen practices), but I am a lot more then that. I find that the Buddhist philosophies are INCREDIBLY useful to me. In fact, I base most of my own philosophy on Buddhism and Hinduism.
I think the reason why westerners in general have trouble with Buddhism is because it was translated from Asian languages which are quite different then our own. There are not so many words in Asian languages, so the way things are described seems overly simplistic to the average western mind. That is why I am taking Buddhism, westernizing it, and making a whole new philosophy based upon it. When a Buddhist talks of the illusory nature of reality, they don’t mean that the world is fake. They mean that reality is not what it appears to be. This really is not any new concept. The idea of what reality is keeps changing as we as humans learn more. The more we learn, the more accurate our idea of reality becomes. But what Buddhism teaches you to do is skip all of the collecting and analyzing empirical data, and look beyond to find the true nature of existence. It is not, however, something we do using only our rational mind. That is why we meditate, do yoga, and most other practices as well. The point is to find our true nature. Our true nature is that of oneness with the universe, but that cannot be perceived or learned. It MUST be experienced to be realized fully. During meditation we observe silence. Silence is where intuition comes from. Intuition just pops into our minds, and is then only interpreted and translated into words by our brains. But these words do not exist before we translate them as such. Truth does not come in word format. So in order to observe truth, we need to clear our mind of words. After we achieve total mental silence, we can observe the true nature of reality. It is kind of like a muddy river. You cannot see what is in the river when the mud is stirred up. From this we may conclude there is only muddy water in the river. But once we let the water settle then we can see the fish, the plants, the rocks, and all of the other things that are in the water.
It is also interesting to note that Tibetan Buddhists DO believe in the existence of other worlds which we cannot perceive. However, this is not what they mean by true nature of reality. This is more or less a metaphysical breakdown of the universe. It also helps us understand why the self is so de-emphasized. I always find the Tibetan Wheel of Life to be a useful tool in explaining existence. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhavacakra
The wheel is divided into six sections which represent the Six realms (or Worlds) of Existence. These Six Worlds are:
- The World of Devas or Gods
- The World of Asuras (Tibetan: lha ma yin; Sanskrit: asura) (Demigods, Titans, Fighting Demons)
- The World of Humans
- The World of Animals
- The World of Pretas (hungry ghosts)
- The World of Hell
I call these the six levels of existence. For those of us that follow physics, especially particle physics, it is necessary for there to be 11 different dimensions to explain the vibrational movements of certain subatomic particles. We subsist on the human realm of this spectrum which is height, width, depth, and time. Animals exist on these same dimensions except they have awareness of a 5th dimension which is why they can sense things which we cannot. Some humans also have an awareness of the 5th dimension as well. The other beings mentioned on the wheel of life all live in their own different set of dimensions. However, only Devas can exist on the 11th dimension, which is the God dimension.
Next thing it is important to understand is the concept of impermanence. Impermanence is the nature of the universe. Our egos are illusory because they are impermanent. They are the part of us that dies. The rest of us does not. At death, the body turns back into organic matter and becomes part of the earth, eventually making new organisms from the same material. Our spiritual selves, or our life force, then moves on and is reborn into one of the six worlds listed above depending on whether or not we ascend, descend, stay on the same level, or transcend. Only the part of us that we are so proud of, our ego dies. Then we are reborn anew, and grow new egos all over again. Ego death and rebirth are an integral part of some Tibetan rituals. The ego is actually very fragile. It cannot survive for very long. It seems like we exist as one continuous ego until we die. But this too is an illusion. When we sleep, after reaching delta wave sleep, the deepest of the sleep cycles, the ego dies. We cannot live for long without this ego death and remain sane. That is why sleep is an integral part of our lives. We must experience death and rebirth on a daily basis in order to maintain our egos and our selves as they are. So you are probably wondering, how could anyone know this? Again, it is experience. In Dzogchen there is a practice called “natural light” where the practitioner learns to make his or her self lucid during dreaming phases. After lucid dreaming is totally mastered, however, then the practitioner can take it even a step further and become lucid during the non-dreaming delta wave sleep. Everyone that has done this has explained the experience to be the same as dying, and the descriptions of dying from near death experiences. It is really quite fascinating. I am a dream yoga/natural light practitioner (hence the name) but I am not nearly so good as to be able to experience lucid delta wave yet. I look forward to the day…
So to answer the questions on the usefulness of the philosophy behind Buddhism, without the practice I would say none. With the practice, I would say it is incredibly useful. I would not be able to grok all the things which I add to the Buddhist philosophy and make my own if it were not for the practice. That is why Buddhism is ultimately useful to me as a philosopher. I also have noted that Tibetan Buddhism seems to be the most successful religion in the world. Most other religions advocate peace and compassion but never follow through. Buddhists don’t wage war, and lest they stray from the practice, always have compassion for their fellow man. There are not any other religions I know of which you could say this about. I like Hinduism a lot too though, as Buddhism was founded upon it and it still has some very useful points and practices.
-Metaphysician