Literal means and hidden meanings : a new analysis of skillful means

Skillful means is usually used by scholars and Buddhists to denote the following simple idea: the Buddha skillfully adapted his teaching to the level of his audience.1 This very broad and somewhat oversimplified definition tries to incorporate the whole range of Buddhist views on the subject. However, it does not help to explain why there is an extensive use of the term in central Mahayana su tras while pre-Mahayana texts are almost completely silent on this issue. I suggest that skillful means has not always been an all-Buddhist concept; rather, it was developed by Mahayanists as a radical hermeneutic device. As such, skillful means is a provocative and sophisticated idea that served the purpose of advancing a new religious ideology in the face of an already established canonical knowledge. The Mahayana use of the concept exhibits an awareness, not found in pre-Mahayana thought, of a gap between what texts literally say and their hidden meaning

What kind of free will did the Buddha teach?

The modern version of the problem of free will is usually described as a collision between two beliefs: the belief that we are free to choose our actions and the belief that our actions are determined by prior necessary causes. Determinism—the view that events are determined by specific causes—makes most aspects of reality intelligible. It works quite well, for example, when explaining aspects of the natural world (quantum physics aside). When heat, fuel, and oxygen come together there is fire. There must be fire. To borrow a famous Buddhist simile, when a mango seed is given the right conditions, it will grow to become a mango tree. It cannot grow to be anything else. However, we do not usually think of agents as being caused in the same way. We tend to think that agents somehow transcend natural causation by their ability to choose freely. If we also think that agents are part of the natural order, we face a paradox. This is, in short, the problem of free will

Laboratory astrophysics under the ultraviolet, visible, and gravitational astrophysics research program: Oscillator strengths for ultraviolet atomic transitions

The conditions within astrophysical environments can be derived from observational data on atomic and molecular lines. For instance, the density and temperature of the gas are obtained from relative populations among energy levels. Information on populations comes about only when the correspondence between line strength and abundance is well determined. The conversion from line strength to abundance involves knowledge of meanlives and oscillator strengths. For many ultraviolet atomic transitions, unfortunately, the necessary data are either relatively imprecise or not available. Because of the need for more and better atomic oscillator strengths, our program was initiated. Through beam-foil spectroscopy, meanlives of ultraviolet atomic transitions are studied. In this technique, a nearly isotopically pure ion beam of the desired element is accelerated. The beam passes through a thin carbon foil (2 mg/cu cm), where neutralization, ionization, and excitation take place. The dominant process depends on the energy of the beam. Upon exiting the foil, the decay of excited states is monitored via single-photon-counting techniques. The resulting decay curve yields a meanlife. The oscillator strength is easily obtained from the meanlife when no other decay channels are presented. When other channels are present, additional measurements or theoretical calculations are performed in order to extract an oscillator strength. During the past year, three atomic systems have been studied experimentally and/or theoretically; they are Ar, I, Cl I, and N II. The results for the first two are important for studies of interstellar space, while the work on N II bears on processes occurring in planetary atmospheres

Does Industrialization = "Development"? The Effects of Industrialization on School Enrollment and Youth Employment in Indonesia

This study examines the relationship between rising manufacturing employment and school enrollment in Indonesia from 1985 to 1995, a time of rapid industrialization. In comparison with cross- national studies, this study has a larger sample size of regions, defines data more consistently, and conducts better checks for causality and specification. Overall, enrollment is slightly higher and youth labor force participation slightly lower in regions with more manufacturing. The causal links between manufacturing and enrollments remain unclear. At the household level, employment of adult females in manufacturing is associated with lower enrollment, higher labor force participation, and more household responsibilities for female youth.

E-Learning in Postsecondary Education

Over the past decade postsecondary education has been moving increasingly from the class room to online. During the fall 2010 term 31 percent of U.S. college students took at least one online course. The primary reasons for the growth of e-learning in the nation\u27s colleges and universities include the desire of those institutions to generate new revenue streams, improve access, and offer students greater scheduling flexibility. Yet the growth of e-learning has been accompanied by a continuing debate about its effectiveness and by the recognition that a number of barriers impede its widespread adoption in higher education

What buddhism taught cognitive science about self, mind and brain

In the past twenty years, new optimism about the relevance of Buddhism to cognitive science has been expressed by a number of established researchers. In this article I ask what are the conceptual roots of this optimism, and which forms of development it inspired, with particular focus on selfhood, embodiment and meditation. The latter contains three distinct points of contact that are also reviewed: the introduction of first person methods, neuroscientific research of meditation, and using meditation in psychotherapy. I argue that the dialogue between Buddhism and cognitive science is part of a bigger concern that accompanies late modernity since the 19th century regarding the gap between first and third person accounts of reality. In particular it taps on a growing discontent with the Cartesian outlook on the self and its place in the world. However, while Buddhism and cognitive science both reject a similar notion of substantial selfhood, what they offer in return is different. It is often overlooked that in Buddhism fact is interwoven with value, while in science they are still further apart. This makes the claims about the compatibil­ity of the two systems somewhat naive, and explains why recently the «dialogue» takes the form of neuroscientific research of meditation: work that hardly changes or chal­lenges the foundations of science.En los últimos veinte años, un número de investigadores reconocidos han expresado un nuevo optimismo acerca de la relevancia del budismo en relación con la ciencia cognitiva. En este artículo, me pregunto cuáles son las raíces conceptuales de este optimismo, y en qué formas de desarrollo se inspira, con especial atención a la individualidad, la encarna­ción (embodiment) y la meditación. Este último contiene tres puntos distintos de contacto que sirven también de revisión: la introducción de los métodos de primera persona, la investigación neurocientífica de la meditación y la meditación en la psicoterapia. Sostengo que el diálogo entre el budismo y la ciencia cognitiva es parte de una preocupación mayor que acompaña a la modernidad tardía desde el siglo xix, con respecto a la diferencia entre las descripciones de la realidad en primera y tercera persona. En particular se fundamenta en un creciente descontento con la perspectiva cartesiana sobre el yo y su lugar en el mundo. Sin embargo, mientras que la ciencia cognitiva y el budismo coinciden en rechazar una noción de individualidad sustancial, lo que ofrecen a cambio es diferente. A menu­do se pasa por alto que, según el budismo, el hecho se entreteje con el valor, mientras que en la ciencia ambos se encuentran claramente diferenciados. Esto hace que las afirmaciones sobre la compatibilidad de los dos sistemas resulten un tanto ingenuas, y explica por qué actualmente el «diálogo» toma la forma de la investigación neurocientífica de la medita­ción: es el trabajo que menos cambios o desafíos plantea a las bases de la ciencia

E-Learning Works - Exactly How Well Depends on its Unique Features and Barriers

Key Findings: E-learning is comparable to traditional teacher-led classroom instruction in terms of effectiveness. E-learning has specific features that may influence learning: content, immersion, interactivity, and communication. Barriers to e-learning adoption include fraud and cheating, digital divides and their impact on low income and underprepared students, and cost issues

His excellency and the monk: a correspondence between Nyanaponika Thera and David Ben-Gurion

Between the years 1956 and 1962 the scholar-monk Nyanaponika Thera and the first Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion have exchanged eight long letters. These letters—published here for the first time—expose the extent of Ben-Gurion's interest in Buddhism and reveal the Buddhist rhetoric used by one of Sri Lanka's most influential scholars. This rhetoric, which was generally well received by Ben-Gurion, was an exemplar of 'Protestant Buddhism'. It is suggested that Ben-Gurion could relate to this image of Buddhism because it reflected his own vision of Judaism that had 'protestant' characteristics. The letters contain autobiographical notes, unpublished comments on the Buddhist concepts of Suffering and Rebirth, and a curious plan to invite Nyanaponika to Israel

Revisiting the Chlorine Abundance in Diffuse Interstellar Clouds from Measurements with the Copernicus Satellite

We reanalyzed interstellar Cl I and Cl II spectra acquired with the Copernicus satellite. The directions for this study come from those of Crenny & Federman and sample the transition from atomic to molecular rich clouds where the unique chemistry leading to molecules containing chlorine is initiated. Our profile syntheses relied on up-to-date laboratory oscillator strengths and component structures derived from published high-resolution measurements of K I absorption that were supplemented with Ca II and Na I D results. We obtain self-consistent results for the Cl I lines at 1088, 1097, and 1347 A from which precise column densities are derived. The improved set of results reveals clearer correspondences with H2 and total hydrogen column densities. These linear relationships arise from rapid conversion of Cl^+ to Cl^0 in regions where H2 is present.Comment: 17 pp, 2 tables, and 3 figures, to appear in The Astrophysical Journa