More on experience and ontology
In my last post, I asked a roughly formed question about connecting experience and ontological claims. I recognize that many of these posts need to be more carefully exposited in light of actual Buddhist texts and specific traditions–but while I’m in a bit of a summer holding pattern and reading mostly Western analytic philosophy, I thought I’d try to make some connections.
This being, that becomes;
From the arising of this, that arises;
This not becoming, that does not become;
From the ceasing of this, that ceases.
(Warning: This post is very sketchy and shouldn’t be taken as more than thinking out loud. Skip to the end for a rephrasing of the question if you want…)
The basic idea of pratitya-samutpada is that underlying our experience which seems like we’re relating to substantial objects, there is a significant interrelation between each momentary state and our own mental conceptions and sensory activities (skandhas). The apparently present moment is actually made up of the past, conditioned by our mind and senses. Grasping attachment to our experience causes suffering–viewing it as something more substantial than the momentary “flow” of existence which is intimately related to our perception.
But empirical experience isn’t innately bad, since it is, according to Nagarjuna, empty/sunya and emptiness is nirvana. One way to put it is that the present moments contain the seeds of enlightenment.
At a very (very!) basic level, Buddhist philosophy agrees that there are
- Five skandhas (loosely: corporeality, bundled feelings, perceptual awareness, intentions, concepts)
- Twelve ayatanas (loosely: six sense faculties like eyes, ears, etc. and six objective datums that correspond to these faculties)
- Eighteen dhatus (loosely: conscious application of the faculty and its dhatu)
- Various dharmas or activities that arise from the combination of skandhas, ayatanas and dhatus. Examples would include things like emotions (sorrow, anger, greed) or physical things (aging, living). Anything which is part of our experience is a dharma–so, for example space, “thusness of being”, etc.
For the Abhidharma, as I understand it, the dharmas are real entities–these are entities which are irreducible to anything else and which are ultimately (as opposed to conventionally) real. This is what Nagarjuna thought was incorrect–even the dharmas are sunya. There is no level of reality which is exempt from pratitya-samutpada. Yet purportedly this doesn’t leave us in a nihilistic spot as I’ve talked about before.
Where experience comes in is the bodhisattva who recognizes the emptiness of dharmic reality by way of enlightenment. The idea is that this bodhisattva, through meditation and skillful practice can recognize the emptiness of reality, instead of mistaking it for something else: like realizing that a speckled rope is not a snake. This awareness comes through focusing upon the “I” that we think exists in a substantial way, and then carefully disentangling the conditions of its existence. Determining that the “I” is not the body, not the mind, not an emergent thing from the body and the mind, etc., all takes place in meditation–as well as logical analysis displayed in Buddhist texts. Both are necessary for one another.
But how to move from the emptiness of the self to the emptiness of all things? On my “to-read” list is Jeffrey Hopkins’ Meditation on Emptiness, which is available in preview form through Google Books. He distinguishes between inferential awareness of emptiness (in which a meditator can move through the same inferences regarding the self’s arising in the context of other objects, like apples and houses) and “direct awareness” of emptiness in which “all appearances of subject and object are extinguished in suchness-emptiness-and subject and object become like water poured into water, undifferentiable” (96).
After attaining this direct knowledge, the practitioner can then enter into another level of awareness in which “phenomena appear to be inherently existent, he, like a magician viewing his own creations, knows that all phenomena are empty of inherent existence” (98). This image of a magician and his creations comes from Nagarjuna and is the subject of heavy criticism by his opponents. I believe it’s part of the Vigrahavyavartaani, but I’d need to double-check that.
So…all of this is mildly interesting for people with an interest in Buddhist philosophy. The question I have, though, is with regard to attempts to bring Buddhism and neuroscience together (papers like “Neural Correlates of Mindfulness and Concentration in Buddhist Monks: A fMRI study” and so on). It seems like while there may be a way to construct an inferential argument from the emptiness of the self to the emptiness of all reality, there is no parallel between experiencing the emptiness of the self to experiencing the emptiness of all reality. Rather, the meditator’s experience of a blurred subject/object distinction is a brain-based mechanism (theorized in various ways) framed by the analysis which precedes and follows the meditative experience.
The neuroscientist may have a Western-informed way to describe skandhas and dhatus, but they can arrive at a similar conclusion: the “self” as we thought it exists does not. Perhaps–perhaps–a physicist might have a Western-informed way to describe the asamskrta-dharmas like space and time and come to a similar conclusion about the emptiness of reality.
However, is there a parallel move in Western science that supports our experiencing reality as empty? Take, for example, the supposition that the posterior superior parietal lobe is implicated in our sensing a distinction between our self and the world and that during meditation this lobe goes haywire (a technical term, yes). There doesn’t seem to be a move we can make to say we’re experiencing the ultimate nature of reality. To go back to the magician metaphor, perhaps I could state that once I’ve had this meditative experience, I am now aware of my (brain’s) contribution to structuring reality. But I am in no position to privilege that experience as epistemically significant, especially given a neurobiological explanation which tells a story about how the experience arises.
Maybe this does fit with Nagarjuna’s understanding of emptiness, if we’re going to say that once we attain the level of a bodhisattva, we still see the world as others do, but don’t cling to it as essential (I think Candrakirti’s metaphor of having a cataract and realizing that we’re not seeing hairs on our lens is apt here). So we wouldn’t need a meditative experience to have an epistemic weight? What, then, is its role, aside from strengthening what has been understood through logical inference and, of course, those changes in the brain/personality mix which urge us towards more ethical actions?
The Question Rephrased
Edit: As I see it, after thinking again, the question is this:
Suppose I’m in the desert and looking for water (an apt metaphor, actually, for the Buddhist quest for enlightenment). At the horizon, I see a shimmering body of water. I know, however, that this can be an optical illusion based on the way that light and my brain work together. However, I happen to have a map and a compass which tell me that in fact, just beyond the horizon where that (illusory) shimmering body of water is, there is a real oasis.
Without the knowledge that I could be seeing an optical illusion, I might go in the direction of the shimmering water and find an oasis. However, my experience of seeing a lake wouldn’t have been a veridical one, and my finding the oasis would simply be a coincidence. And, without that experience and only the map, I would have found the water.
Is this a similar story as what is happening in meditation? The sense of self/object distinction disappearing is coincidentally useful for cultivating a sense of compassion, ethical feelings, etc. But it doesn’t map onto experiencing the reality of self/object relationships. So, without meditative experience, we can still get to emptiness, through inference and logic.
Various Sources Used:
Jeffrey Hopkins, Meditation on Emptiness, Wisdom Publications, March 25, 1996
Kenneth K. Inada, “The Range of Buddhist Ontology,” Philosophy East and West, Vol. 38, No. 3,(Jul., 1988), pp. 261-280.
Kenneth K. Inada, “The Metaphysics of Buddhist Experience and the Whiteheadian Encounter,” Philosophy East and West, Vol. 25, No. 4, (Oct., 1975), pp. 465-488.
July 25th, 2008 at 3:34 pm
As a spectator in your mystical studies, I thought I’d share an experience I had that was strange to my Westernish being, and since it was thus, I filed it in the back of the mind with “weird stuff” (underneath LSD & THC and above Sesame Street;).
When I traveled to Jerusalem almost 10 years ago to study BH, I took a trip to the market where I was browsing through embroidered cotton shirts, beautiful silver Judaica, lovely aromatic spices sold by Arab merchants, and the altogether absurd - a holographic picture which sometimes was Jesus, but at a different angle was Mary. Going about my business I saw something that I didn’t quite know what the symbol was amongst various talismen, I reached my hand toward it, and when I touched the Hamsa, I experienced (heard, felt) something very wierd. It was as if someone had rung a tuning fork or a gong deep inside me, which physically resembled tinitis and vertigo, both of which I’ve experienced, but not of the magnitude that happened that day. It didn’t have visual effects, except that it was a strange sensation that caused all of my focus to stay on the thing I was touching, as if that one point in reality was holding me there. I asked the merchant what it was, and he said it was an amulet, it wards off the “evil eye”.
Since I was thoroughly Calvinist at the time, I shrugged it off, as, gee that’s weird. But, for some people, that might have been a “Damascus road” moment - if you will. It was some sort of ‘universal harmonic’, and though I didn’t have a “Zen” experience of cosmic union on the order of THC or MDMA, I wonder if I hadn’t been so thoroughly Western in my thinking, whether I might have?
July 28th, 2008 at 1:56 pm
But isnt the western-scientific way of seeing our selves inherently an acknowledgement of emptiness? As I understand it, the doctrine of emptiness was supposed to be a middle ground between eternalism and nihilism, and the western-secular view of seeing the self as possibly emergent (which I take as being a “dependent arising”) on other phenomena, which are in turn dependent arisings of other phenomena, right down to the very notion of “properties” as dependent arisings from quantum measurement events… these seem to me entirely complimentary to the Buddhist notion of emptiness as dependent arisings. That is, the world is “real” in the same way our minds are real… neither eternal, nor non-existent. Consciousness brings the whole of the universe with it, and they all have the same ontological status - neither eternal, nor illusionary, but tied together in that World-Knot.
I thought it was a mistake to read “emptiness” as non-existence. Intellectually, I kinda feel like the secular West already knows, intellectually, what “emptiness” means, even if they cant relate to the Buddhist pedagogy. The impossible part though I think is to really live this knowledge… and maybe that is what the meditative experience of the teaching is supposed to impart.
July 28th, 2008 at 2:23 pm
@ Julie - I’m really not sure what to do with that experience. I guess the question you might ask is whether the experience was of anything greater, since it didn’t break through your Western thinking. (The paradigmatic example is Saul on the road to Damascus who certainly wasn’t prepared to think of Yahweh as incarnate in an executed rebel).
@ Jeong - I hope I didn’t equate ‘empty’ with ‘non-existent’–since yes, I do think that’s a misreading. But your description of the “western-secular view” does seem to fit with Buddhism. However, I am not sure that the West knows what emptiness means–since there’s also a thick strand of reductionism in the culture. Guess it depends by what we mean by “the West.”
Anyway, my big problem is what you’ve expressed here: “Consciousness brings the whole of the universe with it, and they all have the same ontological status - neither eternal, nor illusionary, but tied together in that World-Knot.” I may be trapped in dualism, but I still have the intuition of a world “out there” which imparts causal pressures on me, even though perhaps I don’t have access to it outside of my consciousness. So…how am I experiencing anything more than my self’s emptiness? I’m not as familiar with his thought, but perhaps this is where Vasubhandu went…
July 30th, 2008 at 12:03 am
“since it didn’t break through…” Just a thought, but the next time I had the sort of experience was at the end of a Kundalini yoga session, when they rang a cymbal, I had my eyes closed, but was startled because I flashed a little to the other experience. Subjectively, I haven’t yet attached the experience to an “anything greater” that I *understand*, having filed it in the weird stuff file, but that said, it is filed in phenomena I cannot quite account for. If I were more versed in the meditative, mystical, would I then attach it to “anything greater”, and construct narrative around that? Sort of the way evangelicals craft conversion experiences from “signs”.