[Editor’s Note:] Professor Frank J. Hoffman, now teaching in the Department of Philosophy, West Chester University of Pennsylvania, received his M.A. degree from University of Hawaii at Honolulu (1977) and his Ph..D. degree from University of London (1981). His area of specialty is Buddhism and Philosophy of Religion. He has taught at several universities both here in the United States and abroad, such as Honolulu Community College, Chaminade University of Honolulu, University of Maryland, University of Montevallo, Alabama, and International Christian University, Chuo University, Tokyo, Japan. A prolific contributor to professional journals, he has published a number of book reviews and articles in the last decade, in addition to his own book Rationality and Mind in Early Buddhism (Delhi: Motila Banarsidass, 1987). He has served as Manuscript Reviewer for State University of New York Press, Philosophy East & West, etc., and was elected President of the Alabama Philosophical Society for 1987-88.

The meaning of life in Buddhism is the very big topic I have been asked to address. It is my hope that our symposium in general and this paper in particular will provide a much-needed counterpoint to the predominately Western focus of the Klemke volume. In section I the phrase, "the meaning of life," is analyzed with special reference to Buddhism, and various answers specific to the distinguishable senses of the phrase are offered to the question, "What is the meaning of life in Buddhism?". In section II the conceptual points of this essay are enumerated and defended with reference to articles in the E. D. Klemke anthology, The Meaning of Life.[1]

When Westerners ask, "How can Buddhists find a meaning in life?", they are likely to get in a muddle right away, because of problematic presuppositions.

How can there be meaning in life without God (understood as a being with specific attributes)? Isn’t Buddhism fatalistic and pessimistic anyway, so that there could not (logically) be any meaning to life? Questions such as these may rear their ugly heads in cross-cultural discussions of whether and how Buddhists can find "the meaning of life." This paper is not designed to directly answer the former two questions, although their force and interest is diminished by understanding the various meanings of the phrase "the meaning of life" surveyed in the Buddhist context as follows.

1. Meaning of Life as Goal

If we construe the question, "What is the meaning of life in Buddhism?" (henceforth referred to herein simply as "the question"), as a request for information about the goal of Buddhism, then one can say that the answer is: nibbª na (Pª li term for Sanskrit nirvª na). That would not, however, put an end to the question (even thus specifically construed), since there are two sorts of nibbª na: saupª disesa (nirvª na while alive, lit. "with substrate") and anupª disesa (nirvª na in the case of the one thus gone, lit. "without substrate"). However, as some Buddhist schools (e.g., Zen) emphasize more than others, self-conscious striving after this goal will be counter-productive. So in order to achieve the goal it is somehow necessary to abandon all goals. Hence the importance of what Nolan Pliny Jacobson calls "non-calculative activity flowing with the nature of things" or jiyñ -jizai.[2] Nevertheless, nibbª na is the goal (albeit a "gateless gate," mumon-kan), and as Ninian Smart observes "religions and ideologies both guide men regarding the meaning of life."[3]

The question might be construed as "what do Buddhists attempt to do in life, what is their aim or intention?" Here the answer may be given in terms of "self-actualization," if one speaks etically or external to the system of technical terms and methods of categorization that are emic to Buddhism. Our interpretation of Buddhists intentions may well be that they are attempting self-actualization, but when one says so the external, generic nature of the description must be at once apparent.

The question might be construed as a request for a specification of what one does to find meaning in life as a Buddhist. In that case a major answer is meditation. One’s role is that of meditating Buddhist aspirant, and it is in this role that one finds a meaning of life in one sense. This does not exclude the possibility that one might also find meaning in life by filling the role of a bodhisattva, "entering the market place with bliss-bestowing hands" (as depicted in the tenth Zen ox-herding picture).[4]

In 1 above the meaning of life pertains to the goal or object, in 2 above it pertains to the intentional subject, but here it pertains to the relation between subject and object. Cosmically considered, what is one’s place in the world? The meaning of life might be found in the relation between the intentional subject who internalizes the role of meditator to the nirvª na which is the ultimate goal. The relation is one of "being in samsª ra". Consequently the meaning of life in one sense may be samsª ra. This is what it means to believe in Buddhism: to be a being struggling to attain liberation, hoping to rise like a lotus from the mire, against all odds, as a suffering being with likes and dislikes, enmeshed in rª ga, dosa, and moha (passion, hatred, confusion) but capable of achieving and transcending the human rebirth station in parinibbª na (final enlightenment). The meaning of life is thus seen as undergoing the process of samsª ra.

The question, modified with quotation marks over "life," might be construed as an entirely different question about how the term "life" (viewed as a flux, as punabbhava) functions in Buddhism. Instead of "What is the meaning of life in Buddhism?", the question becomes "What is the meaning of ‘life’ in Buddhism?" (Compare the sentences: "Socrates has eight letters".) Thus construed the question is a meta-question as to the function in Buddhism of terms which may be translated as "life." What do such terms do in Buddhism? Terms such as bhava, bhava-tanha, punabbhava etc. are clearly very important, for without them the unity of things could not be understood. Life is not simply a static, fragmented entity in Buddhism, but a continuous process, a somewhat tangled web, of sentient organisms.

It is an interesting aside to consider contemporary philosophers such as James Rachels arriving at vegetarianism on logical rather than religious grounds in ways compatible with Buddhism’s emphasis on the unity of life. In The Elements of Moral Philosophy Rachels emphasizes a passage in Mill in which morality is extended "so far as the nature of things admits, to the whole of sentient creation".[5] Why not mistreat animals? Following Peter Singer, the reason is the same as for humans: because they will suffer. According to Rachels:

Thus the Buddhist perspective on animal rights is in accord with contemporary developments in which Peter Singer, James Rachels and others argue as above. [7]

The question could be construed as "What is life like overall in a Buddhist-eye view?" The answer might be that it is a mixed bag of sukha and dukkha (pleasure and displeasure), it is a vibrant samsª ra wherein creative use of one’s "being in samsª ra" makes nibbª na a very real possibility. Life is a theatre of a possible triumph of the greatest magnitude, one in which there is no self to gloat in the triumph.

As a transition to the next section it is instructive to recall that some philosophers think that a question about the meaning of all things would be nonsensical. A sweeping statement like "Nothing matters" (and consequently its denial "Something matters") is not supposed to be on the same level as a descriptive statement like "My wife chatters." "Nothing matters" is not a statement about the world and hence cannot be true or false, or so R. M. Hare’s story goes. Viewed as a synoptic one the question of the meaning of life is among the most important that philosophers can ask, and will discuss this point in the next section.

In this section I would like to make some conceptual points about the logical constraints on the various meanings of the questions of life. It is interesting to notice that the theistic/non-theistic/meta-questions structure of the Klemke anthology, The Meaning of Life, omits essential reference to Buddhism or Eastern thought. Although I shall draw quite freely from Klemke’s work both in exposition and as a focus for philosophical criticism, my intention is to move the discussion of the question forward in application to Buddhism. Some philosophers would hope for a general philosophical account giving the "complete conceptual analysis" of the idea of "the meaning of life" (whatever exactly such a "complete" analysis would be like!), but I do not share their hope. Instead, I will rest content with indicating a few features of the concept in what follows.

The very phrase "the meaning of life" suggests an absurdity: that the meaning of life can be given once and for all in a definite way by a definite description. As John Wisdom points out:

In saying this Wisdom does not disparage meaning of life questions, but clarifies their logical status. There is no one meaning of life which can be given in a word, phrase, formula, or list, as Wisdom very clearly saw. And this is a logical or conceptual point, not an empirical one. In Buddhism, too, the meaning of life is not so simple as to be found in a credal formula or in a Buddhist philosopher’s putative "central" doctrine.

What one needs to see here to get matters right is the pluralism implicit in a thoughtful consideration of the questions of the meaning of life.

In a stimulating book which owes much to Zen Buddhism, Gene Blocker argues against what he calls the objectivist "non-projective theory of meaning", and raises the question Can we, by renouncing the non-projectivist ideal of meaning, find a positive, constructive side to the sheer meaninglessness of things in themselves?[9]

Blocker argues, in his work The Meaning of Meaninglessness, that this "non-projectivist" idea of meaning is a false, impossible ideal, which is itself a form of projection.[10] He links this objectivist view with naive realism, with religious second-order theories of reality, and the correspondence theory of truth.[11] Although brilliantly written, drawing together literary, philosophical, and Eastern religious material, Blocker’s work may be arguing against a straw man. For it is difficult to see: (a) who exactly has held the "non-projectivist theory of meaning"; (b) what Blocker is arguing against, since it follows from the claims he makes about "non-projection" that it is logically incoherent.[12] There are thus not two alternatives. There remains only the simple reminder that it is through language that meaning is projected.

When R.M. Hare thought he could disabuse the Swiss student of a conceptual confusion by pointing out to him that his claim "nothing matters" is not a descriptive claim, Hare himself was victim of a confusion. For he thought that "nothing matters" was necessarily intended as a descriptive claim about someone’s interests. The evidence for this is that if he did not think so, then he could have thought that his reminder would have the force that it in fact had on the Swiss student. (The student was ‘cured,’ at least for the time being.)

Hare argues that it follows from the fact that when we say something matters we express concern, that someone’s concern is always implicit in claims that something matters or does not. The Swiss student’s problem, according to Hare, was that he did not understand this. Instead, he thought that mattering was something that things do (an activity or process), as if "My wife matters to me" has the same logical function as "My wife chatters to me." From the fact that one cannot observe things mattering, it does not follow that they do not matter.

Although I do not think that Hare’s main contention, that you cannot annihilate values because, "as a matter of empirical fact, a man is a valuing creature, and is likely to remain so,"[13] is mistaken, he nevertheless goes too far treating "nothing matters" as a bogus empirical claim. In contrast to this picture, I would like to raise the question as to whether "nothing matters" is a meta-level statement about the unavailability of any satisfactory account of the meaning of life. (In that case one would have to clarify whether this "unavailability" is thought to be "in principle" because of the nature of things or only "in practice" because of one’s peculiar psychology at the time.) If so, we have discovered another point abut the logic or grammar of the phrase "meaning of life," viz. that it is a meta-level claim (not a simple erroneous descriptive claim as Hare has it). In that case, it cannot be eliminated by arguments of the sort Hare adduces.

My suggestion is that if it is possible in a particular case to rid someone of the obsessive grip of "nothing matters," the way is to show one (through the reality of human or divine care) that indeed "something matters". This is more a matter of shaping the facts than pointing them out; it is a matter of ridding other persons of the existential grip of "nothing matters" by getting them to see that the meta-level claim that there is no satisfactory available account of "something matters" is false according to their own experience. It is a very different proposal than Hare’s idea of explaining to them that "mattering" is not something that life can either do or fail to do.

They are not nonsensical, but neither are they straightforwardly factual. This is not of course to deny that facts about the world may play a role in answering such questions. John Wisdom brought out this point well in saying that, although questions of the meaning of life cannot be answered in a list, phrase, or formula, that does not imply that they are meaningless. Our bewilderment does not render the question senseless.

This need to look before or after in order to answer a question of the sort "What is the meaning of this?" is so common, so characteristic, a feature of such questions that it is natural to think that when it is impossible to answer such a question in this way then the question has no sense.[14]

Considering Wisdom’s example of someone coming in late to a play and leaving early, here one may indeed require information about what went on before and after in order to answer the person’s puzzlement as to the meaning of the play. But Wisdom rightly goes on to point out that even if one had seen the whole play, one might still sensibly ask "What does it mean?" without inquiring about anything outside the play (such as, I want to add, authorial intention).

In the case of "What is the meaning of all things?" one has not seen the whole drama of life, and yet one’s question is not about before and after according to Wisdom: "But with the words ‘What is the meaning of it all?’ we are trying to find the order in the drama of time."[15] One does not declare the question meaningless for the type of procedure it calls for is known and one may approach an answer. Specifically, one is able to find meaning in limited wholes whether of art or life.

Now someone might object that Wisdom’s argument here involves the fallacy of composition.[16] It might be argued that it does not follow from the fact that one can find meaning in "limited wholes" that one can find the meaning of life altogether. But it would be mistaken to think that this objection undercuts Wisdom’s position. For he does not need to claim that life as a whole has a meaning that will be discovered—only that if it does, then it is reasonable to think that if it does the meaning can be discovered by analogous procedures.

Wisdom contends, and I believe rightly so, that the meaning of a play, like the meaning of life itself, eludes encapsulization in a list. Historians, scientists, prophets, dramatists, poets (and I would add: religious thinkers) have said much which will help those trying to make sense of the "drama of time".

Leaving aside Paul Edwards’ "super-ultimate why," questions about the meaning of life are not necessarily nonsense. But, contra Edwards, it is not a necessary presupposition of the meaningfulness of theological questions that it be demonstrable "that there is a God" lest the questions be meaningless otherwise. [17] As the work of Don Cupitt shows, theism which construes "God" as the proper name for an objectively existing object is not on the "cutting edge" of theology today.[18]

Attempts to give a particular account of the meaning of life tell us what the world is like. As John Wisdom has observed, it is of the essence of religion that some belief about what the world is like should be expressed.

Answers to questions of the meanings of life may presuppose, but do not necessarily involve, metaphysical presuppositions. Someone might find meaning in just the process of life’s flow, in just being. In that case the answer is found within life itself, not outside it in a heavenly realm of metaphysical absolutes.

But it is also possible that an answer be found in a series of lives rather than just in the process of one lifetime’s flow. Here one introduces a Buddhist metaphysical idea, that of rebirth.[19]

It is a purely logical or conceptual point about the grammar of "meaning of life" that someone may sensibly claim that the meaning of life lies beyond this particular life, not in some heaven, but in the cycle of samsª ra itself. Good Buddhists will want to break out of this cycle of re-becoming (punabbhava), so that for them the meaning of life consists in the end of life in one sense (where the continuous cycle of one’s life-stream is meant by "life"; but this is not Cª rvª ka "annihilationism"). Buddhists not so high-minded may instead just seek for a better rebirth state, so for them the meaning of life consists in the end of this particular life and renewed life in a better situation, rather than the end of the stream of lives altogether. ("One must imagine Sisyphus happy" Camus comments in a similar but not identical vein).[20] It would be too tidy to be accurate, however, to go on to assert that this shows a bifurcation between lay and monastic goals.

Hepburn has pointed out that, although questions about the meaning of life have often been metaphysically rooted in views of the afterlife:

I want to suggest the importance of the concept of boundary as a condition for meaning. In Buddhism parinibbāna is, as I have elsewhere argued, the limit of life rather than an experience in life.[22] Without this theoretical limit to aspire to one would have only samsª ra, an endless round of rebirths. Contemporary Buddhists who have experienced a crisis of faith have sometimes wondered whether, if rebirth and enlightenment are correlative concepts and one does not accept the existence of a realm of rebirth, then one cannot make sense of enlightenment. Ninian Smart puts the point thus:

It might be argued that the Theravadin teaching about nirvana would only make sense if we believe in rebirth. Perhaps so. Yet most of my previous attempt to unravel the Buddhist experience of liberation and timelessness has not depended upon the presupposition of rebirth. I mention the matter only because the Westerner’s crisis about God is being echoed by the Eastern crisis concerning reincarnation. That is why arguments and evidences about reincarnation are usually frequent in these latter days. Myself, I would adopt rebirth as a heuristic device, perchance, as it helps to contextualise Buddhist nirvª na.[23]

One solution to this puzzle is to say that in one sense of "enlightenment" (i.e., nirvana while alive) there can be enlightenment as a psychological experience even if the metaphysical view of rebirth realms is false. In another sense of "enlightenment" (after death in the case of the fully liberated saint or tathª gata) rebirth realms are not needed as he the tathª gata is not said to go anywhere.

Would it be wrong-headed to argue that life has no meaning because enlightenment, if it occurs at all, would occur only in the remote future? It is an implication of Paul Edwards’ account that it would be wrong-headed. For he argues that since one does not live in the remote future but in the present and relatively near future, considerations about the remote future (or an endless cycle) are irrelevant to whether life has a meaning now.

Edwards’ account thus makes considerations about the "remoteness" of the parinibbª na limit irrelevant to whether samsāra can have meaning here and now. Accordingly, Klemke argues that the meaning of life must be found within the natural universe,[24] citing with agreement Popper’s claim that if life did not come to an end it could not be lost and hence would have no value. But I do not think this latter point follows. True, the possible "tedium of immortality" (to use Bernard Williams’ phrase) has often been overlooked. Yet one could of course be so engrossed in the eternal here and now that there being no end in sight would not be considered at all (or would not be considered a problem).

For the Christian, the problem of evil is a very great theological one. In his paper in the Klemke anthology, Hepburn says:

The Buddhist, however, is neither expected to accept Isvara (Creator God) nor to deny or explain away the evident fact of evil and suffering in the world. In his philosophically interesting work, The Problem of Evil and Indian Thought, A. L. Herman points out that because Buddhists are atheists they are not concerned with the problem of evil as such.[26] Indeed, it is arguable that the Buddhists are at an advantage here over both Christian and (theistic) Hindu beliefs.

Nielsen, quoting Ayer with evident approval, thinks that the meaning of life is an ethical issue, and that claims about it are not simple descriptive theses. While agreeing with the latter point, it is arguable that contra Nielsen, the question does not reduce to an ethical or political one without remainder. He thinks that it is all right to construe the demand for the sense of things as a whole as a socio-political questions, but not as a theological or metaphysical one.[27] But what is the basis for this distinction? Are they not both "word views" in Ninian Smart’s sense? If so, then is accepting the legitimacy of the ethical and political one not tantamount to implicitly accepting the legitimacy of the other? It appears that Nielsen is mired in a Marxist-style positivism which has devastating implications for his own view.

But there is this much in Nielsen’s favor: questions of the meaning of life cannot be radically sundered from questions of a factual sort about the world. Unless one is to build a conceptual system in a self-sustaining system of concepts analogous to pure mathematics, any theology and any metaphysics must take its point of departure from facts about the world. But as Thomas Kuhn for one has taught us, there is no sharp cleavage between observation statements and theories. Interpretation of ambiguities ("seeing as") thus becomes crucial. As Kuhn observes: "The switch of gestalt, particularly because it is today so familiar, is a useful elementary prototype for what occurs in full-scale paradigm shift."[28] As Blocker points out, words have meaning in the sense in which words can be used to illuminate, clarify, articulate, or call attention to certain projected aspects of the world (being-as). Language, then, is one of the ways in which we project meaning.[29]

This is not a profound point, but it is a basic one for understanding the articulation of meaning in human life.

From part I of this paper one sees that in Buddhism the meaning of life may be goal (nibb-ana), intention ("self-actualization"), role (meditator), relation ("being in samsª ra"); that there is a tangential meta-question (the meaning of the term "bhava" and kindred terms), and that meaning of life may be a synoptic question (overall life as a sukha-dukkha mixture).

(1) the meaning of life cannot be given once and for all in a definite description such as might be provided in a list, phrase, or formula (as John Wisdom clearly saw);

(2) that, contra R. M. Hare, "nothing matters" and its denial are not necessarily descriptive claims and, consequently, one cannot always be rid of the existential grip of "nothing matters" simply by understanding philosophical reminders (but instead, for instance, by being shown the reality or human or divine care);

(3) that the questions of the meaning of life are not necessarily nonsensical (nor merely illustrative of the "fallacy of composition"), but are among the most important ones a philosopher can ask;

(4) that meaning may be found not only in the process of living in this life, but in the "stream of rebirths" that is samsāra itself, so that metaphysical presuppositions (such as rebirth) may play a role;

(5) that the concept of boundary may facilitate discovery of a structure within which one’s life has meaning (but that endless life does not necessarily involve the "tedium of immortality");

(6) that there is nothing in the concepts of evil and suffering themselves which necessarily impedes life’s having meaning, for they provide a backdrop for the possibility of liberation in Buddhism (unlike in Hinduism or Christianity where the existence of evil is a problem); and

(7) that some meaning of life claims are ethical ones, and although claims about the meaning of life cannot be radically sundered from facts about the world, it is not clear (pace Nielsen) how religion and metaphysics can be rejected as irrelevant if political thought is accepted (since both political though as well as religious thought purport to provide facts about the meaning of life).

In this paper I have attempted to come to grips with a problem much larger than the paper itself. The meaning of life in Buddhism cannot be sufficiently elucidated without grappling with difficult conceptual issues which defy adequate solution in this brief compass. In addition, the meaning of life in Buddhism eludes simple encapsulization as long as there are Buddhists being born to advance new ideas about it. Meaning here is open-textured. Nevertheless, I hope that the conceptual reminders assembled in part II for the specific purpose of shedding light on the meaning of life in Buddhism sketched in part I prove to be useful reminders. If nothing else, perhaps they may stimulate further thought on questions of the meaning of life among philosophers. For I believe that philosophers ought not to ignore such fundamental questions, for so long in the twentieth century considered too vague to tackle.

____________________

[1] E. D. Klemke (ed.), The Meaning of Life (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1981). Most of the same material also appears in Steven Sanders and David R. Cheney, The Meaning of Life: Questions, Answers and Analysis (New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1980).

[2] Nolan Pliny Jacobson, Understanding Buddhism (Carbondale, Illinois: Southern Illinois University Press, 1986), p. 109. The source of Jacobson's idea that jiyñ -jizai is an attribute of the bodhisattva remains mysterious.

[3] Donald Wiebe (ed.), Concept and Empathy (New York: New York University Press, 1986), p. 74.

[4] Paul Reps, Zen Flesh, Zen Bones (New York: Doubleday Anchor Books, undated), pp. 154-155.

[5] James Rachels, The Elements of Moral Philosophy (New York: Random House, 1986), pp. 81 and 86.

[6] Ibid., p. 89.

[7] My point is simply a comparative one. I do not suppose that there is any necessary connection between being Buddhist and being utilitarian.

[8] John Wisdom, "The Meanings of the Questions of Life" in Klemke, op. cit., p. 208.

[9] Gene Blocker, The Meaning of Meaninglessness (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1974), pp. 114-115.

[10] Ibid., p. 115.

[11] Ibid, pp. 73, 82, and 89.

[12] Ibid., p. 115. Part of the problem with (a), getting clear on Blocker’s target, is perhaps due to a confusion between questions of meaning and questions of truth. Traditional Catholocism, for example, holds that it is factually or objectively true that God is a being with various attributes. But doing so does not commit them to holding the separate view that humankind does not create a world of meaning and value through language (as if they had to hold the obviously false or incoherent thesis that meaning is just a "given" and not projected through linguistic and cultural filters). Hence, if traditional Catholocism is not an example of what Blocker is attacking, it is not clear what would be an example of it.

[13] R.M. Hare, "Nothing Matters" in Klemke (ed.), op. cit., p. 247.

[14] John Wisdom, "The Meanings of the Questions of Life" in Klemke (ed.), op. cit., p. 206.

[15] Ibid., p. 207.

[16] Irving Copi, Introduction to Logic (New York: Macmillan, 1986) seventh edition, p. 117.

[17] Paul Edwards, "Why?" in Klemke (ed.), op. cit., p. 234.

[18] "And here God is precisely not objective, but internal to ‘the heart’." Don Cupitt, Taking Leave of God (New York: Crossroads, 1981), p. 68. In this work and elsewhere in Cupitt’s by now voluminous corpus, the tendency is away from construing "God" as a name for a being with various attributes.

[19] In styling rebirth a "metaphysical idea" I am being deliberately provocative here, and Professor Puligandla has quite rightly noticed this in our symposium. Since many contemporary scholars of South Asian thought believe that it is not metaphysical but "empirical" but are usually unclear about in just what sense "empirical", a fresh re-examination of this belief is in order. Here brevity rules and I can make only three points: (1) to say that it is a "metaphysical idea" is not to imply that Buddhism holds a transcendental absolute. Metaphysics, as P.F. Strawson observes in Individuals, may be either "revisionary" or "descriptive," the Buddhist idea of rebirth would have to be taken into account in describing "our conceptual scheme" if "we" are Buddhists; (2) rebirth is certainly not "empirical" in the strong sense in which in principle falsifiability is necessary for a belief to count as verifiable (see my "parable of the bhikkhu" in "The Buddhist Empiricism Thesis", Religious Studies vol. 18 no. 2, June 1982); (3) to deny that rebirth is an "empirical" doctrine is not to deny that it may be an "experiential" one. All religions (not just Buddhism) are based on human experience, but that does not mean that they are empirical in the sense in which science is empirical.

[20] Camus, "The Absurdity of Human Existence" in Klemke (ed.), op. cit., p. 80.

[21] R.W. Hepburn, "Questions about the Meaning of Life" in Klemke (ed.), op. cit., p. 211-212.

[22] Frank Hoffman, Rationality and Mind in Early Buddhism (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1987), p. 114.

[23] Ninian Smart, "Nirvana and Timelessness" in Wiebe (ed.), op. cit., p. 124.

[24] E. D. Klemke, "The Question of the Meaning of Life" in Klemke (ed.), op. cit., pp. 5-6.

[25] R.W. Hepburn, "Questions about the Meaning of Life" in Klemke (ed.), op. cit., p. 221.

[26] A. L. Herman, The Problem of Evil and Indian Thought (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1976), p. 225. This is one of a very few philosophically interesting books on Buddhism written in the last two decades. However, I am not certain that Herman has decisively laid to rest the hoary problem of evil. He claims "that the theological problem of evil, in all three of its formulations, can be solved by the Indian doctrine of transmigration" (1976, p. 5). In view of the infinity of past worlds presupposed in Hindu cosmology, however, it might be argued that "the rebirth solution" favored by Herman involves an infinite regress, and hence on his own admission elsewhere, An Introduction to Buddhist Thought (Lanham: University Press of America, 1983), p. 194, is consequently an inadmissable ("absurd") explanation.

[27] Kai Nielsen, "Linguistic Philosophy and ‘The Meaning of Life’" in Klemke (ed.), op. cit., p. 203.

[28] Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970), second edition, p. 85.

[29] Gene Blocker, op. cit., p. 127.