Reflections on Buddha

A question:

“My Problem with Buddhism: it is life-negating and hard for any existentialist to buy into. So this harks back to my university days where I studied Mahayana Buddhism. While I was really impressed by it in a number of ways, I could never get myself to accept the first noble truth, aka life is suffering (a negative experience) or that Nirvana was a particularly compelling end goal as it would seem just to be an end to any type of meaningful existence.

Anyone else feel the same way or am I missing something compelling about their sales pitch? or does it only appeal to people who think existence is a fundamentally negative experience?”

I had the same feelings and discomfort about Buddhism. Once I wrote:

“The very noble questions of existence, “why do we live and die?” and whether there is a point in our existence, our very fears of vulnerability and "not knowing" are the mask on the fact that this incompleteness and imperfection, this incorporation and integration in the biosphere and the universe, these noble Buddhist principles of impermanence, that life is suffering of birth, and aging, and sickness and death are at the same time superimposed by the fact that they are the condition of understanding, joy, and love. In this way "death" will lose its senseless and cruel sense. To be able to grow and to become, to find my way about on the earth, I need to be inherently an open system, who exists because of its already connection to biosphere and stardust of universe, in constant growth and decay/change to the point of death, like a flower, a tree, any animal, any seed, and any transformation of one's body. It is like a cell in our body asks why it comes into being, grows, and dies, it is as if a leaf or branch or tree complains about its transient existence, not knowing that it exists and perceives and connects to the world BECAUSE of this ephemeral and impermanent constitution. It reminds me of Kant's analogy of the false perception of a pigeon who thinks that if there were no pressure of the air, it could fly higher! Not knowing, it flies because of the air pressure.”

Now, I think a bit differently. We should remember that Buddhism is a response to the pendulum extreme swing of Hinduism, which essentially says the same thing as Buddhism in one major sense: the essence of God or that-which-transcends-being-and-not-being is within us. However, he undoes the Atman self of Hinduism because it became a source of pride and greed for immortality and caste system for centuries in India. It created diversity of gods and goddesses (33 gods or some say 330 millions) that supposedly were to converge to the same Godhead: Brahman. Starting from wonderful premises and divine intuition, the priority of “joy” to “pleasure”[1], which is also the essence of Buddha’s eightfold path, Hinduism fell into its pendulum swing of excess. Buddhism is a response to this greed for immortality. Consequently, we have Buddha’s reflections on suffering (dukkha) and what skills and ethical practices are required to overcome it, instead of addressing the problem of suffering of sickness, old age, and death with a hope for becoming immortal, in becoming Brahman. He borrowed the major insight of Hinduism, the priority of joy to pleasure, meditative practices and eightfold path to undo cravings as the central notion and dissolved the greed of immortality in his Dharma Seals: impermanence, no-self, and nirvana.

Joseph Goldstein explains the etymology of the word “dukkha” (suffering) as follows:

The word [dukkha] is made up of the prefix du and the root kha. Du means “bad” or “difficult.” Kha means “empty.” “Empty,” here, refers to several things—some specific, others more general. One of the specific meanings refers to the empty axle hole of a wheel. If the axle fits badly into the center hole, we get a very bumpy ride. This is a good analogy for our ride through saṃsāra. On my first trip to Burma, a group of friends and I went up-country to visit Mahāsi Sayadaw’s home temple. We made part of the journey in an oxcart, and it was undoubtedly similar to modes of transportation in the Buddha’s time. This extremely bumpy journey was a very visceral example of dukkha, the first noble truth. In more general philosophical terms, “empty” means devoid of permanence and devoid of a self that can control or command phenomena. Here we begin to get a sense of other, more inclusive meanings of the term dukkha. Words like unsatisfying, unreliable, uneaseful, and stressful all convey universal aspects of our experience. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dukkha#Etymology)

If we take this etymology of the word “suffering” or “dukkha” in Buddhism, then Buddha’s four noble truths makes more sense:

First noble truth: 1) Suffering as a noble truth: Birth is suffering, aging is suffering, sickness is suffering, death is suffering, sorrow and pain…and despair are suffering, association with the loathed is suffering, dissociation from the loved is suffering, not to get what one wants is suffering—in short suffering is the five [groups] of clinging’s objects.

2) This the origin of suffering, as a noble truth, is this: It is the craving that produces renewal of being, accompanied by enjoyment and lust—in other words, craving for sensual desires, craving for being, craving for non-being.

3) Cessation of suffering, as a noble truth, is this: It is remainderless fading and ceasing… letting go and rejecting, of that same craving.

4) The way leading to the cessation of suffering, as a noble truth is this: It is simply the eightfold noble path of right view, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration.

It is not that sickness, old age, and death are suffering per se, as we might think. It is our perception of these seemingly negative problems that is the cause of suffering and gives rise to discomfort, anxiety, despair, and dissatisfaction. The three poisons of greed, hatred, and delusion give rise to excessive desire for wealth, fame, honor, and sexual pleasure, a desire for immortality gives rise to excessive rejection of pleasures and the world altogether (pendulum swings); the craving for more and more and stopping the wheel of samsara and impermanence brings about constant desire upon desire, including desire for immortality. But life as such is not suffering, nor death is despair. According to Buddha, the perception of suffering is the result of the axle fitting badly into the center hole or hub, so we get a very bumpy ride.

In his book “No Death, No Fear”, Thich Nhat Hanh wrote:

Our greatest fear is that when we die we will become nothing. Many of us believe that our entire existence is only a life span beginning the moment we are born or conceived and ending the moment we die. We believe that we are born from nothing and that when we die we become nothing. And so we are filled with fear of annihilation.

The Buddha has a very different understanding of our existence. It is the understanding that birth and death are notions. They are not real. The fact that we think they are true makes a powerful illusion that causes our suffering. The Buddha taught that there is no birth, there is no death; there is no coming, there is no going; there is no same, there is no different; there is no permanent self, there is no annihilation. We only think there is. When we understand that we cannot be destroyed, we are liberated from fear. It is a great relief. We can enjoy life and appreciate it in a new way.”

This is the logic of “neither…nor” that is so alien to our Western ears. It is neither permanence nor impermanence, it is transcending both, say into “emptiness”. Now, in Ratnakuta Sutra, Buddha says:

“If you are caught by the notion of being and non-being, then the notion of emptiness can help you to get free. But if you are caught by the notion of emptiness, there’s no hope.”

And Thich Nhat Hanh elaborates:

“The teaching on emptiness is a tool helping you to get the real insight of emptiness, but if you consider the tool as the insight, you just get caught in an idea.” (p.20)

We have to go beyond the idea of permanence, but we also have to go beyond the idea of impermanence. Then we can be in touch with Nirvana. The same is true of no self. No self is the match; it helps to give rise to the fire of the insight on no self. It is the awakened understanding of no self that will burn up the match of no self. This is a way Buddha tries to resist the pendulum swing from Atman (the Self) to Anatman (No-Self). However, most Buddhists fall into this extreme swing. How? By exaggerating on “dependent origination” and that our awareness of our existence and non-existence is not the gift a kind of “divine self” given to us by the Nameless. I will come to this later.

Thich Nhat Hanh continues: “To practice is not to store up a lot of ideas about no self, impermanence, nirvana or anything else; that is just the work of a cassette recorder…. We want to go beyond ideas to have real insight, which will burn up all our ideas and help us to be free.” (p.21)

Pay attention that according to Thich Nhat Hanh, Buddhism doesn’t claim that we don’t have any true nature or utterly no selfhood, the problem is with language. The self or no self is the eternal and ultimate dimension in each one of us. He states:

“Our true nature is the nature of no birth and no death. We do not have to go anywhere in order to touch our true nature. The wave does not have to look for water because she is water. We do not have to look for God, we do not have to look for our ultimate dimension or nirvana, because we are nirvana, we are God. You are what you are looking for. You are already what you want to become. You can say to the wave, “My dearest wave, you are water. You don’t have to go and seek water. Your nature is the nature of nondiscrimination, of no birth, of no death, of no being and of no non-being.” (p.24)

I need to clarify that when Thich Nhat Hanh says we are Nirvana, we are God, he doesn’t mean we are literally God, but that we have God within us, it is in our conscience, our reflection, our practice of meditation and prayers, and burning all notions in coincidentia oppositorum. Similar to Jesus’s “the Kingdom of God is within you.”

“The Whole Cosmos Has Come Together In Order To Help The Flower to Manifest.”

This is the essence of all spiritual teachings. The major idea is what we call “potentiality” or “possibility” or “essence”—the water from which waves are manifested—the “unity” that is not in contradiction to “diversity”. However, we are inclined to solidify “essence” in a “substance”, whether God is a person or our essence is soul or Atman, something tangible. God, Thich Nhat Hanh says, is not a being or non-being, we need to transcend both and all notions including the notions of creation and destruction to get a feeling of God. (p.32)

Dharma Seals consists of three notions: impermanence, no self, and nirvana. Thich Nhat Hanh says:

“Thanks to impermanence, everything is possible. Life itself is possible. If a grain of corn is not impermanent, it can never be transformed into a stalk of corn. If the stark were not impermanent, it could never provide us with the ear of corn we eat. If your daughter is not impermanent, she cannot grow up to become a woman. Then your grandchildren would never manifest. So instead of complaining about impermanence, we should say, “Warm welcome and long live impermanence.” We should be happy. When we can see the miracle of impermanence, our sadness and suffering will pass.” (p.41)

No self means inter-being or dependent origination. When Buddha says there is no permanent self it means our body and soul evolve; it won’t remain the same. But if it won’t remain the same does it mean that there is “nothing” there, yes if it means what remains there is “no-thing”; no, if it is annihilation and nihilism. The soul and body evolve and there is dependent origination of all and all. However, if we just see the dependence (the same) we lose sight of diversity of things (the difference). They come together: dependent origination and an evolving separate soul or essence. Nirvana or the Kingdom of God is practicing no-self into dependent origination within and to cosmos and God and practicing dependent origination and God within and in relation to an evolving soul.

Thich Nhat Hanh says “The flower is full of everything except one thing: a separate self, a separate identity.” (p.48). He clarifies that “inter-being is not being and it is not non-being. Inter-being means being empty of a separate identity, empty of a separate self.” It seems Thich Nhat Hanh makes a mistake when he puts all his emphasis on “inter-being”, to see the essence of seed and not to see the flower, again it is losing sight of coincidentia oppositorum. Where does the mistake happen? Exactly in the same place that all reductive mistakes happen: when we reduce the ineffable into seeable, understandable, say, fundamental particles, the measureable, genes, or environment. A flower is the same as the whole Cosmos, but what is Cosmos? What is God? Can we reduce Cosmos or God to seeable or non-seeable? Can we reduce everything to some fundamental and evidential and verifiable essence? This is not the original message of Thich Nhat Hanh Buddhism. Dependent origination is one side of the pole and the other pole is the “no-thingness” of the Giver, an awareness (not only intelligence) loving giving source, to which we return. Buddha calls it Nirvana.

We have the seed of an evolving soul which is dependent on the universe and God to be, to become, and to disappear in the universe and God. But it is a seed that is not reducible to natural causes or merely biosphere. It is “more”, this “more” is not something, is not static, it is becoming of what has been given to us, humans, in distinction to all living beings. Not that we are “better” but that we are the house of language and being, and more importantly eternal love.

In his interview with a Buddhist monk, Heidegger insightfully clarifies this point:

In answer to the Bhikku’s first, very general, question: “You have thought the essence of human beings for decades, which understanding did you gain?” Heidegger launches into his familiar refrain—“one question was never asked [in “Occidental” philosophy], that is, the question of Being.” Heidegger defines “the human being” as “this essence, that has language,” in contrast to “the Buddhist teachings,” which do not make “an essential distinction, between human beings and other living things, plants and animals.” For Heidegger, consciousness—“a knowing relation to Being” through language—is the exclusive preserve of humans.

http://www.openculture.com/2014/05/martin-heidegger-talks-philosophy-with-a-buddhist-monk.html

Heidegger’s “essential distinction” between human beings and other living beings is also shared by so called Western religions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The point is that this understanding of essential inter-being, about which Thich Nhat Hanh and Buddhism talk is perceived and understood by us. While all living beings share the inter-being with us and experience and perceive it in their own unique being, we, human beings, understand (have a knowing relation) and existentially and lovingly live this essential inter-being, this is God’s gift to us.

Now, if we fall into “speciesism” and crude “humanism”, we have NOT again transcended the opposites of inter-being and the manifestation of inter-being in different beings. Again we are falling back on what is distinct in us as human beings and not as what is common between all of us. So the point of this gift is not arrogance but praising God for the gift and a deep sense of gratitude.

Inter-being is “emptiness”, not “nothingness” (if we don’t take it as “no-thingness”), and thanks to it, as Nagarjuna says, everything is possible, thanks to the impermanence of our manifestations in the world and cosmos things evolve, and becoming is possible within being. But we, human beings, understand this through not only language (though language is essential for it), but through our emotional-moral apparatus, through love.

Thich Nhat Hanh, however, clarifies that it is misleading we think that no-self is what we are, as well as impermanence or inter-being. As soon as we get stuck in a concept, we lose sight of the divine, whether it is nirvana, language, or being. He states:

“Impermanence and no self are not rules to follow given to us by the Buddha. They are keys to open the door of reality. The idea of permanence is wrong, so the teaching on impermanence helps us correct our view of permanence. If we get caught in the idea of impermanence, we have not realized nirvana. The idea of self is wrong, so we use the idea of non-self to cure it. If we are caught in the idea of non-self, then that is not good for us either. Impermanence and no self are keys to the practice. They are not absolute truths. We do not die for them or kill for them.” (p.32)

Thich Nhat Hanh makes it clear how we go through pendulum swings to rectify mistakes, from the self (Hindu Atman) to no self (Buddha Anatman), from separate self (Western autonomous subject) to complete dependent origination (Eastern Universal Self). From the fact that there is only inter-being (transcendence of being and non-being) we should not so fall back on the ancient priority of the organic and universal to particular or to the modern version of priority of the social to the individual or on the contrary from there to our crude libertarianism and the unique singularity of individuals and the priority of the particular to the universal.

Thich Nhat Hanh rectifys a misunderstanding: no self doesn’t really mean that nothing is distinguished about us, but it is to rectify the excessive desire for immortal soul or Atman of Hinduism to bring it to equilibrium. Now if we reside in no-self and no-God of Buddhism again the pendulum is moving to the other extreme and not seeing that the emptiness essence or divine non-being/being essence is within and without us. The excess of this divine essence within all living beings, again ignore the fact that we have a knowing relation to Being and Non-being. We have a knowing relation to God and this is our gift, all praise to all gifts given to all worlds and beings and to us by God; all praise to God, the ineffable, the beginning and the end, the Nirvana.

[1] Three thousand years ago, Nachiketas seeks wisdom of life from the King of Death (Yama), narrated in Katha Upanishads.

Death says: Take horses and gold and cattle and elephants; choose sons and grandsons that shall live a hundred years. Have vast expanses of land, and live as many years as you desire. Or choose another gift that you think equal to this, and enjoy it with wealth and long life. Be a ruler of this vast earth. I will grant you all your desires. Ask for any wishes in the world of mortals, however hard to obtain. To attend on you I will give you fair maidens with chariots and musical instruments. But ask me not, Nachiketas, the secrets of death.

Nachiketas: All these pleasures pass away, O End of all! They weaken the power of life. And indeed how short is all life! Keep thy horses and dancing and singing. Human cannot be satisfied with wealth. Shall we enjoy wealth with you in sight? Shall we live whilst you are in power? I can only ask for boon I have asked. When a mortal here on earth has felt one’s immortality, could he wish for a long life of pleasures, for the lust of deceitful beauty? Solve then the doubt as to the great beyond. Grant me the gift that unveils the mystery. This is the only gift Nachiketas can ask….

Death: There is the path of joy, and there is the path of pleasure. Both attract the soul. Who follows the first comes to good; who follows pleasure reaches not the End… There is the path of wisdom and the path of ignorance. They are far apart and ends to different ends. You are, Nachiketas, a follower of the path of wisdom: many pleasures tempt you not. Abiding in the midst of ignorance, thinking themselves wise and learned, fools go aimlessly hither and thither, like blind led by the blind…. Not even through deep knowledge can the Atman be reached, unless evil ways are abandoned, and there is rest in the senses, concentration in the mind and peace in one’s heart.”

This narration has been resonated through history from East to West, all over where death is contested and the path to overcome it is through joy. As Thomas Merton says: “The only true joy on earth is to escape from the prison of our own false self, and enter by love into union with the Life Who dwells and sings within the essence of every creature and in the core of our own souls.”

This is the essence of all mystical traditions, from Upanishads to Buddhism, from Lao Tzu to Confucius, from Socrates to Euripides, from Jewish Kabbalah to Islamic Sufism. Two things: overcoming the false self or taking off the mask, and abandoning false ways-- concentrating on merely a life of pleasure-- hence stepping in the life of joy.

04/17/16