I don't claim to be an expert on Buddhism. Now and again, I just turn a philosophical eye on that subject. Maybe I'm confused about it, or maybe it's Buddhists who are confused. That's the question at issue.
The two-truths doctrines seems to imply Leo Strauss's distinction between esoteric and exoteric knowledge. But if the proto-Kantian, mysterian point is that we can never understand ultimate reality, so all we have to go on is daily experience, that kind of pragmatic, Daoist affirmation of what's given, and thus what's overall natural still wouldn't entail a preference for compassion rather than selfishness on the part of Buddhas. An enlightened being would have to take what comes, but how would Buddhist practice have eliminated the misconceptions that support selfishness and evil without simultaneously eliminating those that support selflessness and morality? Why would only compassionate impulses arise for Buddhas when compassion is just as simple-minded and unrealistic as selfishness? What has either morality or immorality to do with the bulk of natural facts?
If the pragmatist accepts what's given, he or she must accept selfishness and evil, too, since they're naturally as well-supported as cooperation and compassion. All things are caused in nature, as Buddhists affirm. So if we must accept that givenness of things, whence the preference for compassion over selfishness? That strikes me as a political preference, as I argue here:
