I think you may be losing the thread here. The question was the virtues of that which you would independently adopt aside from a tradition or practice.FBM wrote:Not sure. From atman to anatta. You can't be Hindu if you deny atman and Brahma. The Buddha redefined kamma, too. For the brahmins, it was salvation through ritual. The Buddha redefined it as 'intention/volition,' which depended on the individual's virtue, not caste or diligence in performing the rituals. Hindus do like to claim Buddhism as heterodox, but they tend to gloss over the fundamental ways that the Buddha gutted their philosophy.
If you're suggesting the doctrines of Anatta and Kamma are worthwhile emigres from Buddhism proper that would find a home outside of it, I'd like to know why you feel this way.
Not sure what you're referring to with the reference to the heterodox philosophies that emerged in the shadow of the Vedic traditions you seem to be using for context.
It sounds suspiciously like you are thinking of something other than the heterodox movements and philosophies.
Wikipedia wrote:
Heterodoxy in a religious sense means "any opinions or doctrines at variance with an official or orthodox position".
Wikipedia: Astika and Nastika wrote:
Āstika
Several Indian intellectual traditions were codified during the medieval period into a standard list of six orthodox systems or ‘’ṣaḍdarśana’’s, all of which cite Vedic authority as their source.[9] Nyaya, Vaisheshika, Samkhya, Yoga, Mimāṃsā and Vedanta are classified as āstika schools:
These are often coupled into three groups for both historical and conceptual reasons: Nyāyá-Vaiśeṣika, Sāṃkhya-Yoga, and Mimāṃsā-Vedanta.
- Nyāyá, the school of justice
- Vaiśeṣika, the atomist school
- Sāṃkhya, the enumeration school
- Yoga, the school of Patañjali (which assumes the metaphysics of Sāṃkhya)
- Mimāṃsā, the tradition of Vedic exegesis
- Vedanta or Uttara Mimāṃsā, the Upaniṣadic tradition.
Nāstika (aka, the heterodox schools)
The three main schools of Indian philosophy that do not base their beliefs on the Vedas were regarded as heterodox by Brahmins:
The use of the term nāstika to describe Buddhism and Jainism in India is explained by Gavin Flood as follows:
- Buddhism
- Jainism
- Cārvāka
At an early period, during the formation of the Upaniṣads and the rise of Buddhism and Jainism, we must envisage a common heritage of meditation and mental discipline practiced by renouncers with varying affiliations to non-orthodox (Veda-rejecting) and orthodox (Veda-accepting) traditions.... These schools [such as Buddhism and Jainism] are understandably regarded as heterodox (nāstika) by orthodox (āstika) Brahmanism.
Tantric traditions in Hinduism have both āstika and nāstika lines; as Banerji writes in "Tantra in Bengal":
Buddhist UsageTantras are ... also divided as āstika or Vedic and nāstika or non-Vedic. In accordance with the predominance of the deity the āstika works are again divided as Śākta, Śaiva, Saura, Gāṇapatya and Vaiṣṇava.
Although Buddhists have been branded by orthodox or mainstream Hinduism as Nastika, the Buddhists themselves have branded only the Cārvākas as Nastika. For example Nagarjuna wrote in his Ratnavali, that nastikya (nihilism) leads to hell while astikya (affirmation) leads to heaven. Further, the Madhyamika philosopher Chandrakirti, who was accused of being a Nastik, wrote in his Prasannapada that emptiness is a method of affirming neither being nor non-being and that nihilists are actually naive realists because they assume that things of this world have self-existent natures, whereas Madhyamikas view all things as arising dependently within the context of casual conditions.
