28 PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGIONprovide a solution. An everlasting series of reincarnations would be the
analogue to hell. Life is viewed as inherently unsatisfactory or unsatisfying
- one scholar uses “unsatisfactoriness” rather than “suffering” in dealing
with the sort of Buddhist text just quoted. Hinduism, Jainism, and
Theravada Buddhism, then, each offers an escape from the Wheel of
reincarnations.
The point of the story of the traveller in the forest now becomes clear.
Most people are like the traveller. We focus our attention on “the things of
this world” as the traveller focuses simply on the sweet taste of the honey.
But the honey gives no solution to his deep, real problem. So most of us
pay no attention to our deep religious problem. “The things of this world”
provide no solution to that problem, whether we live grandly or barely
survive. This is the point of the story. On that point, at least, religious
traditions typically agree.
Advaita Vedanta
Advaita Vedanta is one of three main schools of Vedantic Hinduism; the
other two are monotheistic. Popular Advaita Vedanta tends to polytheistic
or monotheistic practices. Nonetheless, Advaita Vedanta takes monotheism
to belong to the realm of appearance rather than to the realm of reality.
There are two major ways of trying to explain what this distinction
amounts to. One way treats the appearance/reality distinction
epistemologically or relative to human knowledge, and speaks of levels of
truth. Another way treats the appearance versus reality distinction
metaphysically or in terms of what exists independent of human thought,
and speaks of levels of being. The levels of being view goes something like
this.
Suppose that something A depends for its existence on B, and B does not
depend for its existence on anything else. Then one might (somewhat
misleadingly) say that B has more reality than A, although strictly what is
true is that B’s existence is more secure than A’s. Suppose, further, that B
has more power, and knowledge, and goodness than A, or is more complex
than A, or the like – suppose that B’s properties are in some way more
glorious than A’s. Then one might say that B is “more real” than A in the
sense of being more valuable than A, more worth imitating than A, or the
like. It seems less open to misunderstanding to say all of this in terms of
the greater existential security and the higher value that attaches to B, but
insofar as what was intended was consistent, these sorts of things seem to
be what philosophers who have talked about “degrees of existence” have
had in mind. But this – the levels of being line – cannot be the way to