Abstract
There is no evidence that Spinoza knew anything about Buddhism, but his philosophy bears certain similarities with Buddhist philosophy, or at least as shall be argued later. This paper compares and contrasts Spinoza’s thoughts on death and immortality with Buddhist philosophy. According to Spinoza, the death of a human being is a process whereby the body, as a mode of Substance, is modified according to natural law. However, Spinoza’s view on the mind or the soul is interesting. In Book V of the Ethics, he says, “The human mind cannot be absolutely destroyed with the body, but something of it remains which is eternal” (VP23). This proposition has generated a considerable number of commentaries. This paper notes some similarities and differences between Spinoza’s thoughts and the corresponding view in Buddhist philosophy. Spinoza’s idea bears an interesting similarity with Buddhist philosophy. The mind that survives, both in Spinoza and in Buddhist philosophy, is not personal but is mind in general, in the same way as bodies are essentially extension in general.
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Notes
- 1.
All references to the text of the Ethics come from the Curley edition (Curley, 1985).
- 2.
The text of the Mogharāja-Panhā here is translated from Thai by myself. The English translation can be found at https://accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/kn/snp/snp.5.15.than.html.
- 3.
During the workshop, a question was raised about whether Buddhists actually believe in this teaching. People in Buddhist countries typically believe that they do survive their death, and they either go to heaven or hell depending on their karmas, which is contrary to the Buddha’s teaching here. Furthermore, Buddhists perform funeral rites, which consist of making merits and dedicate the merits to the deceased. These rites would make no sense if Buddhists followed the Buddha’s advice to Mogharāja. It is indeed true that Buddhist lay persons do believe in some form of existence after death, and that they do dedicate merits to the deceased during funeral rites. However, the Buddha’s teaching in this context is intended for those who aim at achieving Realization fast, as it is the only way to defeat Death as Mogharāja has asked. Those who are still wandering in samsara and do not aim at achieving Realization in this lifetime still retain their causes and conditions that propel them forward as individual beings in saṃsāra. In this latter sense, then, believing in the existence in some form of personal duration after death (as conditioned by the relevant causes and conditions) does make sense.
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Hongladarom, S. (2023). Spinoza and Buddhism on Death and Immortality. In: Hongladarom, S., Joaquin, J.J., Hoffman, F.J. (eds) Philosophies of Appropriated Religions. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-5191-8_2
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