Hindu Values and Buddhism

Abstract

Anthropology and comparative religion are rich with attempts to describe and explain the initiatory rituals among primitives and in world religions. Broadly speaking, all this variety can be easily reduced to only two basic approaches. The first one concerns the content-matter of ritual, and in its most specific form, deals with the transmission and regeneration of a certain kind of knowledge. The definition of ‘knowledge’ in this context appears to be irrelevant. It seems sufficient to point out that knowing neither shared emotions nor shared material substance, such as Christ’s Body and Blood, is important for comprehending the specifics of ritual in terms of its content-matter. To know means to comprehend this content-matter without a trace of doubt in its factuality. Hence the structure of knowledge involves an absolutely immutable state of consciousness underlying any concrete piece of experience. ‘To know’ in this sense necessitates the absolute unreality of doubt, not only in the present moment of cognition, but in the whole series of past and future moments related to the present one. Objectively speaking, this does not mean that a particular piece of knowledge cannot be falsified at all. Simply, by the very nature of the act of cognition, the idea of falsification is incomprehensible, because it is just impossible to know and doubt at the same time.