Dharmodynamics

[Xangsamhua]

Have just finished reading an intriguing little book called Dharmodynamics by Woody Prieb, the pen name of Dr Vuthiphong Priebjrivat, a Thai businessman and scholar.

The author posits Vivergy as the underpinning life-force that gives rise to all action-based phenomena in the universe and forms of life wherever they may be. This is a not a neutral, a-moral force, however, unlike Schopenhauer’s “Will”, but is the vehicle via which karma enables us to ascend to better lives in the future, or descend to lower forms if we ignore the spiritual dimensions and moral imperatives of our present lives.

The thing that interested me was that the author, who also lectures at the Mahachulalongkorn Buddhist University, identifies vivergy with anatta (no essence/void/emptiness), but in what, to me, is an unusual way for a Theravada Buddhist. He says: “The ultimate source of all physical objects is therefore not fundamental particles of matter but energy – and ultimately vivergy.” (p. 19)

He then proposes a “Principle of Unity”, which basically means that underpinning the multiplicity of phenomena and their modes of being (cause-effect, becoming, etc.) is vivergy. But he says, because vivergy is anatta, therefore vivergy, as void and emptiness, is “nothing”, and “all things do come from nothing” (p. 21), which put like this is logically impossible (though Nagarjuna and others had much more to say about it). However, he goes further and states on the same page that “Hinduism’s ultimate force of creation, Brahman, is also described in a similar fashion” (i.e. void and emptiness). But, though I might be a bit thick, I had understood that Brahman is in fact everything. Sarvam khalvidam brahma - All this IS Brahman. Every leaf, every drop of water, every cloud in the sky, every object, animate and inanimate, is all Brahman. Whatever you perceive at any time at any place is only Brahman and nothing but Brahman. http://www.advaita.o...ahman_shyam.htm

The next point of interest for me is the author’s rejection of natural selection by random mutation as the mechanism for evolution of species. I last studied Darwin in a History and Philosophy of Science unit in 1963, so I may be well out of date; however, I understand that, despite its difficulties, this mechanism still stands as the orthodox position. But Dr Woody rejects it and posits karma in place of random mutation. As karma is action, it will be the action of the species that brings about advantageous features and hence natural (karmic) selection. The neck-stretching actions of one generation of giraffes will be passed on to the next – what I understand to be the theory of “inheritance of acquired characteristics”, proposed by Lamarck (1744 – 1829); then by Lysenko (1898 -1976), but rejected by mainstream scholars. I wonder, though, if Darwin’s model is widely rejected by Buddhist scholars, especially in the East. Dr Woody is certainly one, for a start. Karma also determines DNA, in his view. (p. 71)

The rest of the book, though perhaps quirky, is unobjectionable I think – fit for the donnish monks of Mahachulalongkorn Buddhist University, though I’m not sure what Theravada scholars think of Alaya Vijnana (“store-consciousness”), which he puts forward (though not named as such) as a recording mechanism for karma. He also presents Nirvana as something we can’t talk about (“beyond description of human vocabularies” p. 131) before proceeding to do so at some length, and manages to make it a singularly unattractive destination for the spiritual life: “This state of bliss, unfettered by anicca, is permanent [i.e. infinite] and unchanging.” (p. 131)

I’m not sure how “orthodox” Dr Vuthiphong’s main thesis is. Vivergy as the ultimate underpinning principle of existence sounds more to me like Brahman than anatta and anicca. It seems closer to what I know of Advaita Vedanta, though I have an impression that Buddhist schools like Dzogchen and maybe Yogacara and Zen have something in common with the Vedanta.

[lungmi]

To give another aspect of the topic (in a general way).

The I-ging, the oldest "oracle" coherent book mankind knows fits in his mathematical structure with the DNA and Solidification.

[huli]

matter and energy have been known to be forms of the same thing for almost 100 years, and it's been proven

also, I believe that on the subatomic level of basic particles, they come into and out of existence in a split second from nothing, seemingly violating Newton's law that everything has a cause, but exactly what this gentleman says