Turn out the lights I like to stumble in the dark
To treat Buddhism as some kind of philosophy can, and often does, lead to a great deal of unresolved confusion and stumbling. What seems to be forgotten is that when the Buddha taught his doctrine he taught it from his gnosis (jna = intuitive knowledge) of the absolute (dharma). This put Buddhism into the category of mysticism.
Minus such a gnosis there is a lot of stumbling in the dark going on in Buddhism these days. But with gnosis on our part, what the Buddha taught is profound, yet clear.
It is easy to spot the Buddhists who stumble in the dark. They are the ones who call Buddhism a non-substance ontology or non-substantialist, these particular terms referring to the fact that the Buddha supposedly denied the atman or self, or for that matter, ultimate reality.
When Buddhists not only stumble in the dark but fall is when they attempt to lay out the Buddhas teaching minus an absolute or transcendent self, realized through gnosis. What they present, instead, soon begins to smell of nihilism which is the denial of transcendent reality. This opens the door to the belief that life has no meaning. Nihilism, I hasten to add, makes gnosis or jna also meaningless and not worth achieving.
Judging from the Buddhist canon, itself, the evidence is just not there that the Buddhas awakening did not behold the absolute if by absolute we mean ultimate reality as opposed to finite, transient existence. What he consistently taught from his gnosis, as the awakened one, is that the impermanent and suffering psychophysical body (the pacaskandha) is not our true self. By comparison, Buddhist who stumble in the dark; who pose a strict non-substance/absolute doctrine would teach that all is a grand illusion or myand leave it at that. But no such teaching exists in the canon. Those who stumble teaching such nonsense, we may conclude, prefer darkness to the light.
