Yes.
Here are four instances of many.
Spinoza
The highest activity a human being can attain is learning for understanding.
The more you struggle to live, the less you live. Give up the notion that you must be sure of what you are doing. Instead, surrender to what is real within you, for that alone is sure.
“Nothing exists from whose nature some effect does not follow”
“We feel and experience ourselves to be eternal.”
Here is the view from the version of Buddhism taught by SGI.
Nam Myoho Renge Kyo is the primary teaching.
Nam(u) 南 無
Is the transliteration of the Indian words Nam of namaste. It has many meanings. Two of them are respect,and declaration of equality.
Myoho-妙 法
Myo is the word for real, and not material. It is the un-manifested, the potential, the unknown, the limitless. Ho is the word for manifested, specific, known, physical-therefore limited.
Renge-蓮 華
Renge is lotus flower. Flower, and seed occur at the same time-i.e. cause and effect are created at the same time. The lotus blooms in muddy water, and is pure when it is openes. So a person’s wisdom can be opened at any time, and not be sullied by the past.
Kyo- 經
This is the Chinese translation of the word sutra. Sutras were originally only spoken. The delivered meaning of sutra therefore includes speech, vibration. The Chinese word means the warp in cloth, and indicates that there is a continuation within change, a persistence, while events remain variable.
Yep, I think there is.
Spinoza’s meta-physics, which he outlines in the first part of “The Ethics” is very similar to the meta physics suggested in Vedantic philosophies. He begins by explaining the necessity of God’s own existence and it being God’s essence to exist a priori. By “God”, I kind of mean “Nature” (but not like trees and stuff, you are “Nature” too, everything is), Spinoza is totally against the personified Jewish God, so don’t read too much into my use or his of the word over “Nature.” He’s trying to say something like Tthe Everything, The All-encompassing, The Ultimate.” In Hindu, “The Brahman.” (I’ll return to this later.)
He states, or rather, defines:
“P14: Except God, no substance can be or be conceived.”
and
“P15: Whatever is, is in God, and nothing can be or be concieved without God.”
There are others Propositions, but these two I found quickly…
In this way, all things are an extension of God (Nature). As he has defined God, all these statements are true a priori (by virtue of their definition).
Now compare this to the Hindu concept of Brahman which, from Wikipedia “connotes the highest Universal Principle, the Ultimate Reality in the universe.In major schools of Hindu philosophy it is the material, efficient, formal and final cause of all that exists. It is the pervasive, genderless, infinite, eternal truth and bliss which does not change, yet is the cause of all changes. Brahman as a metaphysical concept is the single binding unity behind the diversity in all that exists in the universe.”
Buddha, as the story I was told goes, was a Hindu prince. So I imagine, if he existed, he would have been taught these metaphysical principles.
Now, what actually brought me here…
I can find no reference to the quote by William Ranger. It actually seems a bit against much of what he tried to teach us in the latter parts of the Ethics. The quote is: “The more you struggle to live, the less you live. Give up the notion that you must be sure of what you are doing. Instead, surrender to what is real within you, for that alone is sure.”
If he really did say this, I would really appreciate if someone could point it out to me. Again, I find almost the entirety of that quote contradictory to what Spinoza taught.
Source: Wikipedia and The Ethics
Interesting you should ask, as I wrote an undergraduate thesis on just this question. Both would say that nondualism is a manifest truth about the universe, not a theory, or ‘subjective.’ The question thus remains not just of what the theoretical and applied implications of this are, but what of a conceptual framework to use to reveal the manifest truth of the necessary falseness of any possible conceptual framework.
And so we see two almost exaggeratedly polar opposites in approach. Spinoza wrote for an intellectual audience, and so he is very concerned with forensic demonstration. The Buddha taught a popular and ecclesiastical audience, and he was more concerned with blazing as many trails of breadcrumbs as possible, without so much concern about those trails’ resistance to mangling by the elements, let alone their time-place independent ability to satisfy the queries of Western skeptics.
Cognition itself is an ‘experience’; even ‘2+2=4’ cannot be understood through some one-sized-fits-all didactic conjuring. A teacher must use some imagination and analogy to make a youngster comprehend it. Only after it's understood does its truth appear ‘objective’, because the root to seeing it as such necessarily wasn't.
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What are the similarities between Spinoza and Buddhist philosophy?
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Safwan Zabalawi, former Library Information Officer/ currently retired
Answered 1 year ago
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Some of Spinoza’s view are close to Buddhism:
Spinoza’s view on God is very similar to what Buddhism calls the Mystic Law, being the Life of the Universe, eternal and unborn but having no individual nature (the property of person):
“Spinoza believed that God is “the sum of the natural and physical laws of the universe and certainly not an individual entity or creator” (Wikipedia)
For Spinoza, God is just the substance of the universe - and in Buddhism, the Dharma (The Mystic Law of Cause and Effect) is the Life of the Universe.
Regrading Good and Evil:
“By good I shall understand what we certainly know to be useful to us.(E4D1)
By evil, however, I shall understand what we certainly know prevents us from being masters of some good”. (Wikipedia)
Although Spinoza’s definition of Evil as that which prevents us from being good) - is trivial, nonetheless his definition of Good as something “beneficial” - may be interpreted in the Buddhist perspective that the most beneficial and useful action is to remove suffering:
“… the word for compassion comprises two Chinese characters. The first character corresponds to the Sanskrit word maitri, meaning “to give happiness.” The second corresponds to the Sanskrit karuna, meaning “to remove suffering. Taken together they describe the function of relieving living beings of suffering and giving them happiness.”
Soka Gakkai International- USA, Nichiren Buddhism for daily life https://www.sgi-usa.org/study-resources/core-concepts/buddhist-compassion
The bond of Cause and Effect
Spinoza was quite deterministic in relating causes to their results: “From a given determinate cause the effect follows necessarily; and conversely, if there is no determinate cause, it is impossible for an effect to follow”.
In Buddhism, the Law of Cause and Effect is absolute, and it is the essence of people’s karmic actions. However, Buddhism is not deterministic - as it introduces also the concept of Potentiality.
During the flow of action taking place between Cause(A) leading to whatever expected effect, it is possible to introduce another Cause (B), which interrupts the previous flow or earlier process of cause-effect. In this way it is possible to change the effect of a previous cause and make a shift in the contents of karmic motivations.
“Present effects are due to karmic causes from the past. However, future effects arise from the causes we make in the present. It is always the present that counts. It is what we do in the present moment that decides our future; our past causes do not govern our future as well. Nichiren Buddhism emphasizes that no matter what kind of karmic causes we have made in the past, through the causes we make in the present we can achieve a brilliant future”. Daisaku Ikeda, Cause & Effect
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