Elías Manuel Capriles

degenerative-history cosmology yuga

In rather unclear academic language, Capriles tries to make the case that delusion (as understood in Buddhism) is the cause of the ecological crisis, which is something I obviously sympathise with but unfortunately I would say he doesn’t support the cause because his argument is difficult to understand, and he doesn’t seem to be speaking from experience but from intellectual conviction, which leaves an unpalatable tone of opinion.

He talks about the Buddhist view that all ‘knowledge and perception’ is ‘inherently delusive’, and about a ‘degenerative philosophy of history’ that characterises some ‘“higher” forms of Buddhism’. This degenerative view (the yuga system) seems to have been Hindu, pre-Buddhist, and as far as I know was not held by the Buddha. It was picked up again later by ‘Buddhists’, who merged Buddhism with belief systems already extant in their culture.

That said, there are suttas about the devolution and evolution of beings (DN 26 DN 27, and DN 1). However the Buddhists or Hindus viewed this, it seems like one of those metaphysical claims we can never be sure of, anymore than we can be sure of the Big Bag. And I suppose the question is how does one’s faith in this impact their practice?

Capriles says ‘the rise and gradual development of [such delusory] knowledge’ caused the fall of humanity from a Golden Age to our current Age of Darkness (the Kali Yuga). His language is unclear but he says we can ‘eradicate [Marcuse’s?] empirical reductio ad absurdum and thereby heal our minds and world, which I obviously sympathise with.

He seeks to ‘prove the sciences to be incapable of finding truths’, so the paper may be a valuable resources for loosening my grip on half-consciously held ‘scientific’ views as dogma, but also it may support the argument that direct experience of meaningful universal truths¹ through Buddhist practice is a legitimate way of helping to resolve social issues - by healing ourselves (cf. ). We cannot lead others out of ignorance while we are still blind.

The term ‘world’ here means something different from the understanding of a materialist, who might take it to mean this Earth in this universe, and our linear experience of the environment while we are alive in this one life; a Buddhist (or other) might take the term to mean all of samsara, with its beginningless eons of world-systems expanding and contracting endlessly, and our cyclical experience of many realms and types of existence while we are reborn continuously until we escape through realising nibbana.

Th latter is working within a much larger context, so that cultivating the causes and conditions for enlightenment over many lifetimes may constitute a legitimate form of (or means to) heal ourselves and our world. The best I can do at this stage is refer to this as the panoramic perspective.

Continuing with regard to science being incapable of finding truth, and to help with leavening attachment to scientific worldviews we hadn’t previously questioned, Capriles refers to Paul K. Feyerabend saying ‘the belief science discovers truths has been demystified to such a degree’ that ‘Western reason and science on the same plane as magic and sorcery’.

I value this paper if only because it makes clear the goal of modernity was to eradicate the unpleasant, which has resulted in a nightmarishly kitsch existence, completely at odds with improving our relationship to suffering.

13, post-Enlightenment rationalism

What he has Ramanan saying about the tendency to neglect aspects of reality that don’t serve our interests may explain part of why the Western worldview today is so limited: [9.39] we have become blind to the sacred/numinous/transcendent because we came to think the literal/rational/material was all we needed; thankfully, many of us now know this is untrue ~ that our needs include the spiritual, etc. ~ and I am confident our culture is moving away from post-Enlightenment reductivist delusion toward a more-holistic view again. ✅

Footnotes

1. such as that deluded perception causes suffering, but we can clear ourselves of delusion to see reality correctly ↩