In this talk I will talk about my own experience studying Western philosophy, and the parallels I found with Buddhist philosophy’s journey through the different turnings of the dharmachakra.
I talk about the Buddha’s own view on unuseful philosophical enquiries, and also how papanca and views are generated.
I talk about attachment to moral codes, and the importance of the Perfection of Wisdom sutras.
The first topic is that in Bante’s lecture “A vision of Human Existence” he says “In Buddhism there is no such thing as philosophy”.
When I heard this, I actually felt a wave of relief wash over me.
I have come to hate philosophy.
There was a time when I loved it, and was hungry for it. At University, I studied law for my first year, and decided to switch to Philosophy for my second and third years.
This was my first real act of rebellion against my Father, who had decided that a law degree would look good on my CV, especially combined with an accountancy qualification.
But more important to me than my future CV was a thirst to grapple with the big questions in life like “why are we here”, “what is the nature of existence”, “why is ethics important”, “how should we live our lives” etc etc.
I did indeed grapple with these questions, but I found that the big problem was that all philosophy is expressed in language. Language works very well for concrete objects, or for doing things like building bridges, but when it comes to exploring abstract concepts far removed from the real world it becomes less and less useful.
Every philosopher seems to have their own system of abstractions which they built up. They have their own terms which they define using their other abstractions.
Religious philosophers were the worst, because they might have papal authority behind them, so if you disagreed, you could face such punishments as being excommunicated, burnt as a heretic, or sent to eternal damnation. So normally better just to tow the party line, and pay lip service to anything that was taught.
So what was at first an exciting exploration into our world, ended up in a pedantic and over analytic waste of time. Modern philosophy always spent a lot of time having to define how they used concepts, and then did a lot of thought experiments, and then built layers of conclusions on top of these.
It all seemed very baffling, and useless. The only point of all these essays and papers seemed to be to justify ones academic career, and ultimately income.
Then I came across the work of Friedrich Nietzsche, who seemed similarly frustrated by the shortcomings of Western analytical philosophy. He wrote the book “Twilight of the Idols” subtitled “How to Philosophise with a Hammer”.
It is a massive rant against decadent analytical philosophers from Socrates onwards, especially Christianity.
He is definitely not right all the time, but he does make some very good points, with a lot of energy and emotion.
So having experienced in my own brief academic life as a student, my own journey from love of philosophy, to hatred of abstract, analytical philosophy, to finally the love of the “anti philosophy” teachings of Friedrich Nietzshe, and the existentialists and logical positivists that came after him. It was very interesting to see a similar scenario played out over centuries of Buddhist teachings.
It all started with the Buddha’s enlightenment experience, and his need to communicate this. How can you communicate something that is beyond word and concepts through words and concepts.
It is not easy, but he gave it his best shot.
The most important thing to remember is that all the dharmic teachings are just like a raft to get us from place A to B. They are not describing things that are existing in their own right. The goal of the teachings is to free us from our limited world with our limited views, and offering a more radical, expansive way of experiencing the world.
We have all probably had experiences of having a limited view, and then meeting someone who allowed us to think in a bigger way.
We may think we cannot do something, and meet someone who inspires us to believe in ourselves, and give us the confidence to just go out there and do it anyway. We then realise that the main thing stopping me was not lack of skill, it was just fear expressed and justified through a limiting belief that we could not do it.
Often what happens is that we have a position that we are attached to for some emotional reason. It is possible to argue pretty much any case you want. Then it becomes a solid impenetrable mass of beliefs and philosophy, that is impossible to argue against, because anything you say there would be an answer for.
But after changing our mindset and suspending our limiting beliefs we can expand our experience of what is possible.
Examples of wrong views might include: “There is no possibility of spiritual development”, “I don’t have enough time or money or skill etc to do X” etc.
So a useful process is to reduce the hold that our wrong and limited views have over us. One avenue that helps this is to reduce our interest in useless philosophical questions.
The Buddha himself seemed to be very keen on avoiding the waste of time inherent in idle analytical philosophy and speculation.
Malunkyaputta demanded that the Buddha answer his questions about whether or not the cosmos is eternal or infinite, and whether or not the soul and the body are the same. He also asked him whether or not the Tathagata exists after death. He also threatened to drop out of his monastic lifestyle if the Buddha does not answer.
The Buddha responded “Foolish man, who are you to be making demands of anyone”.
The Buddha refused to answer Malunkyaputta’s questions, and I believe that is to his credit. We waste so much time having pointless discussions about things that are unknowable, and make no difference to our lives. Let us focus on following the tried and trusted noble eightfold path instead.
Or in the words of the Buddha: “And why are they undeclared by me? Because they are not connected with the goal, are not fundamental to the holy life. They do not lead to disenchantment, dispassion, cessation, calming, direct knowledge, self-awakening. Unbinding. That’s why they are undeclared by me.”
The next thing I want to discuss is how the Honey Ball Sutta shows how views are generated.
The Buddha mentions various unskilful things such as obsessions of views. Maha Kaccana then explains to the Bhikkus what the Buddha actually meant.
First there is contact, then feeling, then perception (which is labelling in the mind). What one perceives, one thinks about, and then complicates with papanca.
After papanca, the perceptions and categories of papanca assail him with regard to past, present and future forms.
This problem of papanca, which is translated by Bhikkhu Bodhi as mental proliferation lies at the core of the Buddha’s teachings.
The fact is that we proliferate in this way most of the time.
The Buddha implied that if we could stop doing this, we would become enlightened. In fact, one synonym for enlightenment is nisprapanco.
This is the normal waking consciousness for most of us. We just have a mass of thoughts rushing to fill our brain, ceasing only for brief moments of spaced outness, intoxication or sleep.
If this was true in the Buddha’s day, when people lived so close to nature, the problem is much worse today when we suffer from data overload from TV, email and social media.
A busy overcrowded mind is so much our normal experience, that it feels really special to go on retreat, and have this proliferation die down a bit.
It is important that we guard the gates of our senses, so that we become more content, and less likely to get caught up in papanca and wrong views.
One wrong view that is especially prevalent in any spiritual group including Triratna is attachment to moral codes and religious observances.
It is where we forget the origins of these codes, get attached to them, and make them important in their own right rather than as a means to an end.
At the same time, we can pompously inflate our egos, because we are so holy and spiritual following these codes, unlike apparently lesser beings who do not follow them.
The reality is, this is just herd mentality.
Bhante in particular faced a lot of opposition from traditionalists when he breached their expected norms of behaviour, such as growing his hair long.
It is important for us always to remember that it is our inner experience that is important, which is not the same thing at all as conforming to a prescribed set of behaviour.
All of us probably at times, can get a bit too judgemental and holier than thou. We have to continually remind ourselves not to take ourselves too seriously. That is something our spiritual friends can definitely help us with.
In our movement, we do hold the Perfection of Wisdom sutras in very high regard. The Heart Sutra is in unison in a pivotal place in our puja. Bhante also has a special affinity with the Diamond Sutra, as it is what he was reading when he first realised he was a Buddhist.
It is useful to consider the historic context of these sutras, and why they came to be written. Without doing this, it is easy to misunderstand them, and get confused by their paradoxical nature.
Buddha had a cosmic experience that went beyond the language available to him to describe it. Nevertheless he attempted to describe his experience, and also a very detailed path that others could follow to come to the same experience.
He, and the abhidharma scholars after him used many detailed concepts to describe different mental and spiritual states.
This did start out as a very useful exercise, but as it went on, all the concepts took on a life of their own, and became crystallised. People became overly attached to them, and seemed to forget the raft analogy, that they were only a means to an end.
It fell to Nagarjuna, and the Madyamika school to remedy this situation, and create the perfection of wisdom sutras, to put things back in balance.
Once we realise the historic reasons why the Heart Sutra exists, it makes perfect sense. It is a breath of fresh air to let go of the attachment to all these philosophical systems that had actually started to turn into wrong view.
Bhante writes that “The only way you can get to reality is by destroying your ideas about reality”, and also “Reality in its true state, above and beyond all our systems of thought about it, is like the clear, cloudless sky. In sunyata, no dharmas exist.”
These statements seek to explain the Heart Sutra.
These perfection of wisdom ideas got taken to even more paradoxical and dramatic expressions in the Zen tradition. A Zen master on hearing the question “Suppose I meet the Buddha on the road, what should I do”, famously responded “Kill Him”.
This is a shocking and sacrilegious answer, but it does make the desired point, that all of Buddhism is contained within our own actual and potential experience. We do not need outside figures and teachings. Yes they can be helpful, but they can also be a trap.
I do think it is great that Buddhism is vast enough, and secure enough in its wisdom to be able to include these paradoxical ideas. The fact that it does this is yet another reminder, that it is not about scholastic knowledge or conformity, it is all about wisdom which is on a whole other level from knowledge.
I think it all boils down to different levels of consciousness.
I can see an analogy here with the way scientists experience the world. They can see the world as a collection of quanti, and quarks. Next level up sees electrons, neutrons and protons. Then atoms. Then molecules. Then cells. Then we have organs. Bodies.
Then we can consider life from the vast perspective of galaxies drifting apart over the billions of years since the big bang.
Then we have psychological levels of reality, with conditioning, anchors, relationships, intimacy, manipulation, persuasion.
We have so many different contexts in which we can view the universe, but our language does not tell us which context we are talking from within. Our language is very one dimensional, whereas our universe is multidimensional.
Another way of looking at it is a computer.
First you need the bios which is hardcoded on the motherboard. Then you have the operating system, eg Windows 8, or ios 6.0. Then you may have an application such as excel. And within excel you can have macros, which are like mini programs.
If you have a string of computer code, it is only intelligible if you know which program it is to be read in. It may make sense in DOS, but not in Pascal.
This is exactly the same when we speak in our English language.
If we say our this table is solid, that is how we as humans experience it, whereas a sub atomic scientist may see it more as a collection of waves and energy.
That is why we end up with paradox and contradiction, because we are using language at two or more different levels of reality altogether.
The journey towards enlightenment involves a loosening of the perception of these different realities, so that we continually see things from a broader and broader perspective that includes everything.
So apparently contradictory things no longer contradict each other, as they are just seen to be descriptions of different layers of reality.
In the same way this broader perspective recognises that there is no contradiction between the pali canon, the abhidharma, the madyamika, and the yogacara. They are all true and useful. It just depends which context you are viewing the path from.
In conclusion, I would recommend that we do not get too caught up and attached to Buddhist teachings.
They are there for one purpose, to help us get enlightened.
To cling onto the concepts too tightly, and too conceptually is counterproductive, and against the intention of the Buddha.