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Questions:
1. To what extent can Buddhist thought be considered “philosophical”? How did Buddhist thinkers approach the role and place of reasoning in the Buddhist Path? In your response consider specific issues in Buddhist thought and the issue of the distinction between religion and philosophy and whether it is applicable outside of the West.
2. Discuss the conception of the two truths (conventional and ultimate) in Buddhist thought. How are they conceived by different philosophical positions?
3. Discuss the status of language and conceptuality (vikalpa) in Buddhist thought.
4. What are the limits of reason and language according to different schools of Buddhist thought? What factors need to be taken into account in attempting to „demarcate‟ these limits?
5. In his Buddhist History of the West (2002, p19), David Loy has written that
“For Buddhism, the ego is not a self-existing consciousness but a mental construction, a fragile sense-of-self dreading its own no-thing-ness. Our problem arises because “my” conditioned consciousness wants to ground itself – i.e., to make itself real. Its perpetual failure to do so means that the sense-of-self has, as its inescapable shadow, a sense of lack, which it always tries to escape.”Using Loy‟s analysis here as a starting point, consider the extent to which the Buddhist doctrine of „no-self‟ (anātman/ anattā) provides a recurring motif for understanding specific developments in Buddhist philosophical thought, especially in its attitudes to substantialist metaphysics.
6. In what ways might developments in Buddhist thought be said to be discussions of the relation between quality and substance?
7. In what ways can the Buddha‟s exhortation to “see things as they are” (yathābhūtadarśana) be regarded as giving rise to both (i) a critical prescriptive component in „cutting through‟ conceptual distortions and (ii) a descriptive component providing an account of our experience of how conceptuality works? To what extent is there a tension between these two approaches?
8. To what extent can Buddhist thought be characterized as anti-ontological?
9. What contextual factors need to be considered when applying concepts found in Buddhist thought to issues in Western philosophy?
10. Discuss the significance of causality and dependent arising within Buddhist philosophical speculation.
11. „Unsatisfactoriness arises because, in our craving, clinging and aversion, we constantly attempt to evade the threat of non-being (i.e., of our ego), but, in doing so, we only ever end up self-destructively avoiding being itself‟. In what ways might this sort of description of our existential situation be reflected in specific philosophical developments within Buddhist thought?
12. In what ways are ethical conceptions underpinned by philosophical speculation in Buddhist thought? How convincing are the accounts given for this?
13. Consider specific philosophical developments in any ONE of the following traditions:
• Tibetan Buddhism • Chinese Buddhism • Korean Buddhism • Japanese Buddhism Critically examine both: (i) the extent to which these philosophical developments within the tradition you choose can be traced back to issues raised in Buddhist thought in India, thus making them elaborations upon Indian Buddhist thought; and (ii) the extent to which these developments can be considered philosophical innovations in their own right. What factors might need to be considered in making this distinction between elaboration and innovation?
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