A fundamental lack in Buddhism

Contesting ontotheologies? - Buddhism & systems theory vs. the 'Vedantic Method', Sri Aurobindo & the Mother and Integral Yoga by rjon on Thu 16 Nov 2006 01:04 PM PST Permanent Link

I've copied here part of the prior ongoing discussion re "Derrida, Death and Forgiveness" by Andrew J. McKenna. This part begins with Rich's posting about Herbert Guenther's book "From Reductionism to Creativity, rDrogs-chen and the New Science of Mind," and continues through a fascinating dialogue re systems theory, the Vedas & the Vedantic Method, Sri Aurobindo, the Mother and Integral Yoga.

Debashish comments that he finds a fundamental lack in Buddhism (or Guenther's version of it) related to the "Divine Maya of Supermind." But my personal impression is that the Buddhist ontotheology now has significantly more influence on Western intellectuals and opinion makers, especially Tibetan Buddhism perhaps because of the work of the Dali Lama, than does Vedanta and Sri Aurobindo's Integral Yoga, which most Westerners have little or no awareness of. My questions are:

1) Is Buddhism in fact fundamentally lacking in its ontology and/or its methods, compared to those of Integral Yoga?

2) If so, is there anything those of us who are partial to Sri Aurobindo's "Vedantic Method" can do to increase their influence in the West?

3) Is there a possible integration between the Buddhist and Vedantic/IY perspectives (which perhaps we can contribute to via SCIY?), or are they so fundamentally different that they must remain "contesting ontotheologies?" ~ ron

The impetus for my questions was the comment below by Debashish, in response to Rich's posting about Guenther's book:...

However, what I find lacking in this version is the centrality of freedom in the 'system' which leads away from the One into its fragmentation and its denial - the oblivion of Being and the fragmentation of Subject and also reversely, can lead to the willing of its total transfromation into integrality. This may be implied but not explicitly developed here (or in Tibetan or any Buddhism) as far as I can see it. Individual praxis finds itself in a position of building integrality not only as one faced with the many but as many faced with the many. Our multiple selves do not cohere except in and through separate practices of integrality. This is the implication of jointure. In this also is our throwness - inscribed as we are in multiple texts (discourses) of contested ontotheological histories of the objectified kind, each of which need both the adherence to the peace of the One and the dynamic violence of wresting the concealment of Being out of its genealogical forgetfullness through acts of deconstruction.

Moreover, this practice of a growing faithfullness to integrality through inner intuition can be translated in Aurobindonian terms as a bringing to the front of the psychic being; but Sri Aurobindo's "system" does not find fulfillment or closure thereby, because a sufficient possession of the root of universal integrality is not achieved thereby. The universal Avidya still awaits an act of individual free will powerful enough to to will its disappearance or utter transformation into the universal Integer. This can come about only through the possession of the root of integrality and its power - the Divine Maya of Supermind - the gnosis towards which the method of Heidegger or Schelling may be pointing but which involves entire realms of practice through transformed ontologies (the triple tranformation) to which we have no key at present and until the psychic transformation completes itself sufficiently. ...