Reply To: Nibbāna === saṃsāra?

#28492
cubibobi
Participant

This kind of discussion is common among mahayanists (more often from the East from what I see) who delight in using clever words to create an impression of “profundity”. There is no end to how clever they can get with words.

In my native country, Mahāyāna is dominant, and I see this kind of dicussion more often than not. Not only that, a topic like “emptiness”, along with others from Zen and Taoism, make it to popular classic novels. Readers then spend endless time discussing the “philosophy” of these novels, how “deep” they are, and how the author really “got Buddhism and Taoism”.

Also, I suspect that at the core of these discussions is the implication that this is superior to Theravada teaching, that Theravada is just the foundation, where one sees a distinction between nibbana and samsara. At a “higher level”, one sees no distinction between nibbana and samsara (this is especially popular in Zen).

That’s my two cents. Also, this kind of discussion is quite addicting if one is not careful. It’s a form of samphappalāpā.