REL 260: Buddhist Thought

SOON…

In the interview we watched in class, Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse Rinpoche describes how jealousy, pride, aversion, attachment, and ignorance – known as the 5 poisons – all have a positive side depending on how you handle them. He goes on to use an example of zodiac signs and how each sign has negative traits and positive traits. He states that he is a Gemini and that a negative trait of a Gemini is seeing both sides; but he explains how he also sees that as a positive thing. He goes back specifically to the poisons to conclude that anger can be destructive if you do not channel it correctly.

Although we haven’t learned about the 5 poisons, I really liked his explanation because it was really great to see someone of his stature making all these references to modern day culture in order to explain various buddhist ideals like astrology (and Beyonce). This explanation reminded me of Aristotle’s doctrine of the mean. The doctrine of the mean deals with the fact that Aristotle saw things on a scale of vices and virtues; with this scale people are supposed to learn to find the sort of middle way or mean of the two in order to be a morally upright person. 

One problem I had with Aristotle was trying to figure out how his doctrine would work in the real world. I understand why it’s best to be in the mean, but it can also make things complicated as well. The mean could be hard to achieve when put under certain circumstances in respect to different virtues/vices! I wonder if it is ever okay and if you would still be considered virtuous if you were to ever be more on the side of one of the extremes rather than being exactly at the mean. I especially wonder how this works if you were to be put under a certain circumstance and the circumstance made for a justifiable reason for you being on the extreme side rather than at the mean. I too wonder how this functions in Buddhism. Buddhism does have the 5 poisons and various lists that are essential to it, but I’d be interested in learning specifically about emotions (good vs. bad and how to deal with said emotions). For example, I’d be interested in how both Aristotle and Buddhists would view someone who had to harm someone as a means of protecting themselves? Would that be seen as justifiable? Would it not be justifiable? If it is not justifiable, then what would be the proposed alternative to how one should act when faced with danger? For example, if someone was coming at you with a weapon with the intent to harm and/or kill you (it would seem the scale for this situation would be pacifism on one end and violence on the other) and you responded in a violent manner by harming the person and/or killing them as a means of self defense, thus falling onto the violent side of the scale, how would that affect you in terms of virtue? Would the mean for each scale be relatively adjusted in terms of the circumstance or is it fixed no matter what?

Works Cited:

BBS. “Jangchub Shing- An Insight into Buddhist Truths (Guest Speaker- Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse Rinpoche).” YouTube. YouTube, 4 Feb. 2014. Web. 6 Apr. 2015. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zEmS09KuC_I>.

Aristotle. Nichomachean Ethics of Aristotle. Trans. Terence Irwin. 2nd ed. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1999. Print.

In Mahayana Buddhism, the Mind-only school states that consciousness alone exists and that everything you see or feel is just an illusion of the mind. Therefore, everything’s true nature is emptiness, except the mind. However, if the appearance of our world is only projected through one’s mind, then why would the mind find the need to project false illusions in the first place? Why does it lead us to believe there is an “I”? Vasubandhu explains by saying consciousness is dependent on sensation.

To get a better understanding of this, we must look at the eight kinds of consciousness in Yogacara. The first five are the senses of seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and touching. And in order to have these senses we need our organs: eyes, ears, nose, tongue, and skin. The six consciousness is the mind. Here, the mind gets treated as just another sensory organ. As it takes in sensory information, it reflexively interprets emotions and thoughts, derived by the sense of ego. For example, when you perceive a piece of chocolate cake, either by sight, smell, or taste this is the part of the mind that says, “this is chocolate cake”.  Though, this is interesting because that means the sense conscious realms only exists when you are perceiving something through the senses. If you’re not eating the cake, you’re not tasting anything. If you don’t see it, the mind consciousness also doesn’t exist.

Since the six realms of consciousness above are all based on direct perceptions, they are all temporary. Yogacara believes that there is another layer to the mind that retains long-term impressions, causing a sense of continuity. Otherwise known as manas, this inherent part of the mind overlaps with the mind consciousness, creating the concept of the Self. As a result, we interpret reality in a self centered way, giving way to selfishness, greed and ignorance. These personality traits are the seeds that generate attachments, karma, and continue the cycle of samsara.

In order to truly create a sense of self, the manas depends on the experiences accumulated in the the deepest level of consciousness. The “store-consciousness” is the most fundamental part of the mind that stores the perceptions of every experience we’ve ever had. As, D’amto said, “It is actually the store consciousness that is bound to itself…that is at the root of both the subjective aspect of experience and the experience of objects” Each experience becomes the foundation that generates one’s sense of self and their view of the world.

But of course, in Buddhism, there is no permanent self.  In Yogacara, true knowledge begins when consciousness ends. With the eight consciousnesses, it definitely strengthens my understanding that we are just a sum of our experiences. But this brings me back to the view that all phenomena are interconnected and empty of an intrinsic self. I agree with Candrakirti, that if the mind relies on external phenomena to exist, then how can it be bound to itself? As MSA/Bh says, “the doctrines of representation-only and mind-only are not to be understood as ultimately valid, since in the end the goal is to realize that even mind does not exist” (D’amto 204). For me, it is easier to accept that Mind-Only is just a tool to detach from the self in order to understand the higher nature of emptiness.

D’Amato, M. “Three Natures, Three Stages: An Interpretation of the Yogācāra Trisvabhāva-Theory.” Journal of Indian Philosophy 33.2 (2005): 185-207. Web.

The chapters in both of Garfield’s books prompt me to think more about our class’ discussion on what constitutes a religion versus what constitutes a philosophy. The class came up with several characteristics that comprise a religion, one of them being a creation story. While this is not fundamental to all recognized religious, including Buddhism, Nagarjuna’s discussion of emptiness made me question the absence of this in Buddhist texts. I do not want my Catholic upbringing to cloud my idea of what a creation story should look like, considering the Bible paints a concrete picture of how everything came to be. Thus, while I am calling on my religious background in order to make sense of this aspect of Buddhism, I argue that a creation story of any kind is absent from Buddhist teachings, based on the way in which Nagarjuna discusses existence and interconnectedness.
Nagarjuna’s conceptualization of existence has to do with the way in which everything derives from something else, or the idea that everything is interdependent. Taking that idea one step further, he posits that to exist is to be empty or essence-less. Thus, if something has essence, it is independent (Garfield, 27). Presumably, there was a time in which one, single thing existed before all others existed, meaning it was independent. But according to his teachings, it is not possible for something to exist independently. An absence of an explanation for how the first thing came to exist causes me to struggle with understanding Nagarjuna’s conceptualization of existence. While I can make sense of the interdependence theory, I long for some sort of explanation for how this interdependency came to be.
I wonder if my longing for an explanation has to do with my religious background, and the idea that religion should provide some sort of explanation for the start of life. Clearly, this is not a fundamental part of Buddhism, but it seems as though it should be, simply because Nagarjuna provides such a well-developed theory on existence. In this way, Buddhism seems to align more with a philosophy than a religion. This school of thought does not attempt to explain inception, but rather, provide an explanation for the way in which things currently exist.
In Garfield’s discussion of Nagarjuna’s Mulamadhyamakakarika, he breaks down Nagarjuna’s four conditions, which provide an explanation for phenomena’s existences. The counterargument to these conditions is the closest thing I’ve encountered to an acknowledgment that something has to exist as independent in order for other things to exist. “For in philosophical context in which Nagarjuna is writing, there are those – indeed including most Buddhist philosophical schools – who would accept his classification of conditions, but who would then assert that in order for conditions to function as explanatory, they must themselves have an independent inherent existence” (Garfield, 104).
The above quote gives light to an argument not present in Nagarjuna’s school of thought, but nonetheless valid, as it lends itself to the idea that something has to exist outside of this interconnectedness. Perhaps Nagarjuna rejects this idea because it complicates the narrative of interdependency, and asks one to develop an explanation for how things exist independently. Regardless, I would like to examine other schools that entertain this idea in order to understand how Buddhists’ conceptualize independent phenomena.

Garfield, Jay. The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995. Print.

For the past two weeks in class, we have read about and analyzed two of the Three Turnings of the Wheel of the Dharma: emptiness and consciousness (or mind-only). As we have discussed, followers of Mahayana Buddhism believe that the second turning, that of emptiness, is the definitive teaching of the Buddha. According to the Mahayana tradition, there is no discernible essence of the world on which all things are dependent. Instead, all phenomena are interdependent and could not exist otherwise. In the Mind-Only school of thought, however, it is believed that nothing exists independently of the mind; that is, the mind is the underlying essence of all phenomena that exist and occur in the world.

After reading Nāgārjuna’s philosophy of emptiness, then Vasubandhu’s Treatise of the Three Natures and finally Candrakīrti’s rebuttle to the argument for an emphasis on mind, I find myself more persuaded by the teaching of emptiness as the definitive teaching of the Buddha. Like others in our class, I at first pushed back against the suggestion that I might be essenceless – a totally dependent function of other dependent functions. However, as I tried to identify a part of myself that did not form based on some other phenomenon I had experienced, I found the task impossible.

Although Vasubhandu would argue otherwise, even our minds are dependent, for without anything to perceive, a mind does not exist to do the perceiving. Moreover, to enlightened beings, form does not exist therefore mind has no form. In Candrakīrti’s words:

(91) Within the context of everyday affairs, all five psychophysical constituents taken for granted in the world do exist. However, none of the five appears to a yogi who pursues illuminating knowledge of reality.

Therefore, seeing as this is so,

(92a-b) If form does not exist, then do not cling to the existence of mind; and if mind exists then do not cling to the nonexistence of form.

The message in these verses is: if you plan to become enlightened, don’t count on mind sticking around as the foundation of the universe if it has no form. But these verses also show that mind is dependent on form, and that alone means it cannot be the underlying, independent essence of the universe.

So after coming to terms with emptiness and beginning to understand myself as just another interdependent being, void of essence and therefore, as I understand, without a self, I started to think about uniqueness. Does our interdependence and lack of self mean we are no longer individuals? Certainly interdependently occurring phenomena can come together in different ways to form different types of people, making every separate person unique. But doesn’t the existence of uniqueness undermine the concept of no-self?

A key characteristic within buddhism is conflict. There are different opinions and beliefs that lead to disagreements. This is in part because the buddha did not write down his words. As a result within the Mahayana school of thought, his sutras are either interpreted as being literal, or metaphorical. Within Mahayana Buddhism there are the three turnings of the wheel of the dharma. The first, the four noble truths are the base. The second is Madhyamaka, which teaches emptiness. And the third is the yogacara, which focuses on Mind only. The first turning is uncontested, the other two are controversial.

Within Mahayana buddhism there is much conflict because of the divergence between the second and third turnings of the wheel of the dharma. “There is a very clear impression that the distinction is based on purely subjective criteria, which explains why, quite frequently, the scholars are not in agreement” (Lamotte, 17). The sutras are interpreted at will, and as Lamotte discusses this has led to disagreements and differences within the Mahayana school of thought. In the Madhyamaka belief all things lack an essence. “Given that things have no intrinsic nature, they are not essentially different” (Garfield 112). We have no essence because all things arise from something else, we are interconnected. However within the Yogacara this differs: “The doctrine of mind-only may be described as the view that reality is nothing-but mind” (DAmato 205). By interpreting the buddha’s words in this way, the yogacara belief is that we have an essence. This can be seen as problematic as many believe that we do not, and by focusing on the mind, there is risk in forming attachments to the idea of having an essence. This is examined by Huntington who examines both the madhyamaka and yogacara. The Yogacara is limited in that it only sees the essence less of  objects, and not the subject. “Some of those who understand the objects lack of intrinsic difference will immediately comprehend the similar lack of any intrinsic existence in the subject” (Huntington, 318). The Yogacara is limited because it does not look beyond the object, it fails to see the emptiness in everything, which Huntington sees as foolish, he believes that the second step in understanding emptiness is to understand that everything is empty, not just objects. By placing so much value and emphasis on the mind and soul, some believe the Yogacara fails to fully grasp the Buddha’s words. It interprets the sutras incorrectly, focusing on the metaphor and believing it to be literal. This conflict in opinion is a result of the open nature of the Mahayana tradition.

If the Buddha often said conflicting words, how are we to be sure which is true and which is not? The sutras are conflicting, and can be understood in a variety of ways. This has led to the confusion present in Mahayana today. If the Buddha’s words had been written down in his lifetime it would be much easier to grasp his true meanings.

Works cited

D’Amato, M. “Three Natures, Three Stages: An Interpretation of the Yogācāra Trisvabhāva-Theory.” Journal of Indian Philosophy 33.2 (2005): 185-207. Web.

Garfield, Jay. The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995. Print.

Huntington, C.W., Jr. “Chapter 27.” Buddhist Philosophy: Essential Readings. By William Edelglass and Jay L. Garfield. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2009. N. pag. Print.

Lopez, Donald S., and Etienne Lamotte. “The Assessment of Textual Interpretation in Buddhism.” Buddhist Hermeneutics. Honolulu: U of Hawaii, 1988. N. pag. Print.

Embarrassingly enough for a religion major who studied ancient Greek once upon a time and who should perhaps have known or been able to parse it already, I have learned a new word in the course of our readings: soteriological, meaning related to salvation, as in: “the three-nature theory in the MSA/Bh should not be interpreted as an ontological model simpliciter, but as a soteriologico-ontological model, identifying three progressive stages of ontological realization, culminating in the perfected, non-conceptually-constructing awareness of thusness” (D’Amato, 185). (Obviously, replacing “salvation” with “enlightenment” is a somewhat ham-fisted move, but for the purposes of D’Amato, Garfield et al., it seems logical.)

Yogacara is, after all, a yoga and by its nature rooted in praxis. It examines the nature of truth, including through the three-nature theory, not merely for its own sake but as part of a guiding project towards enlightenment. Madhyamaka, on the other hand, has built into it a fundamental gap between comprehending and fully comprehending emptiness; I’m thinking here of Professor Kassor’s example about being able to describe versus knowing experientially how to ride a bicycle. At least in my understanding, to attain enlightenment is to attain the experience, not just the theoretical knowledge, of all phenomena as essence-less—to learn how to ride the bike.

If we wish to push the metaphor further, we can say that the way to learn to ride a bike is to practice. Yet madhyamaka texts such as the Mulamadhyamakakarika seem to offer more descriptions of the phenomenology of bike-riding than training wheels, let alone advice on how to practice. What does it mean for a theory to be “soteriologico-ontological”—not just a description of the nature of being, but a description of the nature of being for the purpose of attaining enlightenment? Does it mean that compared to the philosophy of emptiness, coming to a fuller understanding of the three natures helps you to grasp specific aspects of riding the bike?

I want to comprehend that phenomena are without essence. No matter what troubles I have detaching from essentialism, I want to root them out. Madhyamaka is beautiful to me, elegant in the way that it makes no compromises—absolutely nothing that exists exists independently, not even the mind. (I don’t believe this makes me a nihilist, but I wouldn’t be too torn up if it did; there are worse things to be.) But where does madhyamaka give me a place to start?

Yogacara’s theory of three natures—the imagined, the dependent, and the perfected—breaks down madhyamaka’s sweeping declaration of interdependence and complicates it. This nuance serves as training wheels rather than demanding that I get on and start riding immediately, already knowing instinctively how not to fall over. The only problem is that keeping the mind intact as essential might mean render the goal of enlightenment completely different. Is yogacara training for some mode of transport that isn’t a bike at all?

Vasubandhu’s mind-only school explains that what one perceives to be true is only a projection of one’s mind.  Hence, external objects do not exist independent of the mind, which is what I believe Vasubandhu means by nonduality. If the mind is the fundamental reality, I was curious to what Vasubandhu would have to say about dreams.

Perhaps dreams reinforce Vasubandhu’s mind-only philosophy, for dreams can create a very real experience. However, the logic of why dreams fall in line with Vasubandhu’s philosophy is hard to delineate. I struggle to understand, if “all subject-object duality in the experience is illusory, and is tied up with the imagined” (Garfield, Vasubandhu’s Trisvabhavanirdesa, 41) then what makes our waking experience distinct from our dream state? For example, our dream experience can not bring about real effects. You cannot die in “real life” if you die in your dream. This is the main argument I can think of that can be used against Vasubandhu’s mind-only philosophy.

Garfield writes, “consummating our understanding is also something that is done. When we achieve consummate knowledge, we stop imagining, and experience the dependent nature as it is, empty of the duality, independence and externality we once imagined it to have. The consummate nature of things is the fact that they are not as they are imagined to be” (Garfield, Vasubandhu’s Trisvabhavanirdesa, 37). This may be a bit forced, but perhaps we are able to distinguish the dream experience from a waking experience because we can achieve consummate knowledge after dreaming. By this I mean once one realizes he or she is no longer dreaming, one has stopped imagining, and hence the momentary reality of the dream is nonexistent.

However, I believe it’s also possible to argue that dreams are as much a real experience as waking experiences as long as one is in the dream state. Dream experiences much like in waking experiences are imagined and objects can exist in space and time as mental projections.

The interconnection between dreams and waking experience is fascinating, and I believe there is a lot that can be explained by Buddhist philosophy when it comes to explaining the capabilities of our minds. For instance, I wonder how phenomenon such as lucid dreaming is explained by Buddhist philosophy. I would imagine that lucid dreaming is way of awakening consciousness in the dream state.

In Garfield’s reading, Nagarjuna describes the Buddhist teaching of emptiness as everything being empty—“to exist is to be empty” and even emptiness is essenceless. Not too long ago, I had been dwelling on my confusion of this concept. My initial thoughts were chaotic—does it mean humans are empty too? But we have souls, how could that be? And what about objects? Yeah, a table doesn’t have a soul but it is unique in its property and design. I’m so confused! But the more I re-read the text with my undivided concentration, the more it started to make some sense. Although I have not reached a complete comprehension of this teaching, my growth in better understanding it has led to a greater discovery of psychological influence on the School of Emptiness.

There is a deeper connection between emptiness (the two truths) and the mind, in which the mind plays a role of interference. It seems that emptiness is a central teaching in Buddhism, but one that is difficult to grasp. Why? Because we as humans are subconsciously abstracted by worldly affairs. Nagarjuna states that “the emptiness of any phenomenon is dependent on the existence of that phenomenon, and on its dependence, which is that in which its essencelessness consists. Emptiness is itself dependent, and hence empty.” Such a belief that everything is interrelated, on an equal level of existence, and equally interdependent/empty/lacking in existence can also be misinterpreted by the mind and our relation to the world. Our cognitive functions of understanding and perception allow us to believe that Nagarjuna’s claim fails to show valid proof that this is true. And although we seek for concrete evidence, humans are also innately intuitive and emotional—in that the amygdala, which is an area in our brains that controls our emotions, plays a primary contribution to our mind’s distraction in believing Nagarjuna’s teaching of emptiness.

Furthermore, Garfield’s reading explains that there are two truths of the world we live in—the ultimate truth and the conventional truth—which are both deeply rooted in Nagarjuna’s principle of emptiness. These truths inform a distinction of the way things are and the way things are perceived. In other words the ultimate truth is the reality that everything is empty and the conventional truth is the appearance that our minds trick us into believing. It seems that these truths exist for the purpose of setting in stone the distinction between actuality and perception. More importantly, Nagarjuna argues that the ultimate truth “is what is real” while the conventional truth is “merely [an] illusion”. So if this is the case, I raise a bigger question for Buddhists—why do humans ignore, averse, and attach to things in life even if they are aware that these are detrimental to their paths in achieving the ultimate goal of leaving the cycle of samsara and entering nirvana? Is it because humans instinctively (try to) find soul, or “atman”, in things in life? Or is it that our personal relation to the world has strayed us from believing in what is actually true—the ultimate truth? This brings us back to the power of the brain and its abilities to control our perception of such a belief. But then again, even our brain is essenceless.

I believe the actuality of provisional and definitive meaning is brilliant. Provisional meaning can be used by a master as an aid, helping to teach a student about the truth.
An example of a provisional teaching given by the Buddha is “mind alone”. Even though mind alone is not a definitive truth or teaching, the Buddha taught “mind alone” to those who were too attached to form. This means that the Buddha could identify those who were too attached to form and then dispense upon them the provisional teaching of “mind alone”, instead of the truth,  (that objective form does exist),  because the provisional teaching of “mind alone” would actually benefit the student more then being told the truth. This weeks reading offers a quotation that is helpful in understanding the Buddha’s use of “mind alone”: “Just as a physician dispenses medicine to one patient or another, so the Buddha also teaches “mind alone” to living beings.” (317) The provisional teaching of mind alone is given to those who need it and not to everyone.
Now i’d like to explore the definitive truth that there is infact objective form and consciousness and not just “mind alone”. The text points out that “If form does not exist, then do not cling to the existence of mind; and if mind exists, then do not cling to the nonexistence of form.” (315) This is an important rule of thumb because when either objective form or pure consciousness is extinguished the other also is. The pure awareness that is consciousness is said to act as a mirror, simply witnessing the world and reflecting it; but this consciousness has nothing to reflect without objective form: physical objects, thoughts, memories. Therefore without objective form, the agency of the mind has no value.

I would like to argue that objective form does not exist without consciousness and conventional truth does not exist without ultimate truth. I would also like to investigate a comparison between objective forms relation to pure consciousness and conventional truths relation to ultimate truth.
This weeks reading connected consciousness and objective form to conventional and ultimate truth, by stating that “In arguing that consciousness (or mind) alone exists without objective form, you destroy the relationship between conventional and ultimate truth”.
When mind is focused on conventional truth, mind also declares the presence of objective form. For example when the mind is engaged in communication about setting up chairs for a performance, its adherence to the conventional truth of the presence of the essence of a chair simultaneously affirms the existence of a chair as objective form. Conventional truth allows for the existence of consciousness in that conventional truth provides consciousness with a landscape in which to express. Objective form grounds the experiences of the mind in conventional truth.. therefore objective form both pays respect to conventional truth, and serves consciousness.
This weeks reading states, “once the reality [of form] is denied, your efforts [to establish consciousness] are pointless. (316) Similar to how objective form grounds the experiences of the mind in conventional truth, and provides consciousness with a landscape in which to express; without the reality of objective form, consciousness has no purpose. Without objective form grounding the experiences of the mind, consciousness is not provided a landscape it which to express its agency.

With each new reading, I find that I come up with a long list of questions that far exceeds the list of answers I discover. All I could think of while reading chapter 27 of Buddhist Philosophy, in which C.W. Huntington Jr. explains that our world is only created in our minds, was The Matrix films. To be honest, the idea of the “material world” being completely constructed in our minds is one that we could probably find as a theme in several books, movies and television shows, but this film in particular was truly the first time I had ever seen or thought of such a concept. I have not seen The Matrix in quite some time, so my memory of the details are not very clear, but it is interesting to think about this concept in the context of the film. The main character is clearly unaware that the world he lives is not real. He continues to live in his created world until the events that lead to the realization that nothing around him is real. So is finding out that nothing is real in our worlds equivalent to enlightenment or understanding the Four Noble Truths? Is living in our mentally constructed worlds the ultimate suffering?
What confuses me most about the idea brought up in chapter 27 is that if we create the material world we live in, why do we also create suffering? If suffering is the horrible thing that leads us to the cycle of rebirth, and therefore more suffering, why do we have to have it there? Would it be better if we could create an existence without suffering? Then again, without suffering would there be a need for enlightenment or a need to find our way out of samsara? Suffering is the reason why we want to find a way out of the cycle of rebirth. So without it, there would not be a need for Buddhist philosophy because one of the most basic elements, suffering, would not exist.
So does this then mean that Buddhism relies on suffering for its existence? Without suffering, would Buddhism have been created? I do not think it would exist without suffering, as it all began with the discovery that life is suffering. Since it does exist now, what then happens to Buddhism if we all understand that life is suffering and that we can escape it, and then actually follow through and find a way out of the cycle of samsara?

Works Cited:

Huntington, C.W. Jr. “Candrakīrti’s Madhyamakavatarabhasya: A Madhyamaka Critique Vijñānavāda’s View of Consciousness.” Buddhist Philosophy: Essential Readings. Ed. Edelglass, William, and Jay Garfield. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009. 309-319.