A Mercifully Short Essay on Emptiness

8/3/2019 A Mercifully Short Essay on Emptiness

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Why would I of all people, someone barely literate, try to write something fairly technical

about religion unless out on insane arrogance or some other delusion. The answer is out

of necessity. I had to think a lot about religion because being someone who embodiesreligious pluralism I experienced some of the many kinds of pain that can result from

selecting an inferior religious or spiritual path. By embodying religious pluralism I meansomeone who has a functioning religious impulse but no strong identification with aparticular tradition or sect within one. The problem is that we have no justifiable way to

determine the relative values of the religions. Although this does not mean that we cant

make some valid distinctions. But if we know that kind of pain it can lead to an impasse.Moreover, religious leaders cannot really speak to this issue since they cannot, for

structural reasons, admit that their religion might be inferior. That is, from a certain

point of view a second best religion must be a contradiction in terms since no religionadmits to being one.

If John Hicks metaphor for describing religious pluralism, the great supermarket of

religion, is useful it would follow according to the logic and language of commercialism

that the customer is king. What does that mean? I mean by it that there must be adiscourse written from the point of view of the follower or potential follower of religion

although I dont know what to call it. This discourse will amount to saying that in

addition to getting salvation from religion we also need salvation from religion but this is

also through religion. And while we cant determine what the best religion is we candetermine the best type of religion. I am confident this is right since one we reject

Tillichs claim that Christianity is the best religion it is a very minor extrapolation from

his work.

The parts of this essay labeled as an exercise and a corollary may be, and as far Iknow are, a new way to illustrate the key Buddhist term emptiness. The advantage, if it

is an advantage which will be discussed below, is one of clarity compared to thetraditional explanations. Emptiness means that the structure of experience does notconsist of the two independently existing elements of the subjective self and the object.

The word object stands for any thing and every thing (the world) that the subject is or

can be aware of. Although Im not a Buddhist and certainly cannot speak as a Buddhist itis useful to use Buddhist terminology to explain what could be called generically and

more properly given the topic of religious pluralism, non-duality, since it is the most

accessible and familiar. Of course if the structure of experience is not dualistic this fact

does not belong in principle to Buddhism or in practice. Still the Buddhist literature is theonly elaborated discussion of non-duality that I personally know of.

Even if the upcoming illustration, the exercise is actually a demonstration, is as clear as

I think it is it would have little meaning except possibly for someone like me whostruggled unsuccessfully for years to understand the standard explanations of emptiness.Consequently it will have to be put in some kind of context. Part of this contextualizing

will be to show that emptiness can provide answers for the contemporary religious

problems not just of religious pluralism but also corruption. Emptiness can also shed lighton the confused relationship of religion and post-modernism.


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understand the religious problem and feel it to be a problem and especially if this

understanding results in some kind of religious practice then knowing experience is not

dualistically structured can be regarded as salvation. By the word salvation I mean theinitial conversion from a mundane to a spiritual life even in the absence of what would be

considered a conversion experience. That is, the more natural resolution of the core

mystical experienceIf there is no need to self-consciously control our experience how can it be reconciledwith practice? There can be reconciliation because in general no need to control our

experience is the practice. Or at least certain kinds of practice may be preliminary to,

and thus under the auspices so to speak of no need to control our experience. Practiceis necessary because our control efforts are compulsory and more or less unceasing. And

there are numerous kinds of practice because there are multiple aspects of our control

efforts, for example personality type.

How are we compelled to control our experience? Once the dynamics self-consciousnessare established in the course of our socialization we could not simply decide to stop, after

considering the situation, since that would just be a continuation of it. Another reason is

that we cannot control our minds. Religious teachers who teach concentration, whichmeans to focus on a single thought or sensation for an extended period, tell us that

without considerable practice we are unable to concentrate for more than a few seconds.

But the most compelling reason in the sense of being the most difficult to see any way

around is that if we think experience is dualistically structured it seems that we arecompelled to self-consciously control our experience due to the fundamental structure of

reality itself .If the trajectories of independently existing objects are to an extent

predictable, and if experience is more or less determined by the objects with which weare in contact with through the senses then it seems like we must consider alternative

courses of action for their effect on the quality of our experience.

Why is any of this a problem? Imagining ourselves in pleasant or painful situations it theassociated (respective) pleasant and painful emotions that motivate us towards the formerand away from the latter. And experience shows that if there is some aspect of our

experience that we cannot control the negative motivating emotions do not just go away.

In fact if we see our emotions and associated thoughts as independently existing, whichof course we do, they can in principle, and obviously do in practice, become topics of

self-conscious reflection and additional control efforts. And this process again can

obviously in theory, and I think does in practice, become a self-reinforcing spiral that

necessitates the formations of the defense mechanisms. At every turn of such a spiral wewould become more fragmented, tense, and symbolically oriented which is a pretty good

description of the average adult in a general way. Consequently a tremendous resistance

to thought develops which is only truly apparent in the resolution of the core mysticalexperience that is frequently called a flow state. This self-reinforcing spiral also

operates when things go well. This can lead to such emotions as complacency and

arrogance.

The mechanism of the self-reinforcing spiral while probably too simplistic nonethelesscaptures important features of or chronic negative emotionalism. And it can explain the

following kind of instruction for practice. Not doing, not constructing, not fabricating,

not altering or manipulating your mind while remaining undistracted this is the heart


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essence of meditation. A more succinct version from the same Buddhist school is to

leave the mind in its uncorrected state.

Another consequence of subject-object dualism is that a significant meaning of the word

meaning is knowledge sufficient for some purpose. And it appears because of subject-object dualism that our essential purpose is controlling our experience. But unless we

have certain knowledge of some desirable final outcome for our control efforts, which ofcourse we do not, then in an overall sense our lives are meaningless, that philosophicallyis called nihilism. If there is not an imperative rooted in the fundamental structure of

experience to self-consciously control our experience then the problem of nihilism is

dissolved.

The ontological philosophy of religion also bears on another aspect of meaninglessness.An important part of religious discourse has become meaningless under the condition of

religious pluralism. Pluralism is certainly the present culmination of the historical

development of religion. The problem is how to determine the best religion from amongthe available options. This is not a trivial concern. From a certain point of view a second

best religion is virtually a contradiction in terms since no religion presents itself as such.

Most religions make explicit claims of superiority and in that context even if a religiondoes say the religions are equal it is an implicit claim of superiority. An easy way to

describe the difficulty is to point out that the person with ordinary perceptions has no

justifiable way in principle to choose between conflicting supernatural doctrines These

doctrines include the rejection of the supernatural from religion altogether. Apparently ifwe acquire a strong identification with a certain religion or a tradition as part of our social

conditioning the claims of superiority by the religion in question seem intuitively correct

and allow us to proceed. Lacking such identification can lead to an impasse since theimplication of choosing an inferior religion will be that we will experience unnecessary

suffering compared to one that is first rate since our spiritual growth will be delayed or

even prevented.

As far as I know religious pluralism was not a major concern of Tillichs. Yet there is ananswer for it implicit in his work. Consider: Anyone who is open to the Holy Spirit is a

saint despite their lack of saintliness. This is quite similar to Dogens To sit in

meditation is to be completely enlightened even though it may take thirty years to fullymanifest. Both of these non-dual philosophers point to there being a qualitative and a

quantitative or functional aspect to the ontological philosophy of religion. The first

temporally, the qualitative aspect or salvation, can be said to be knowing that there is

know need to control our experience which then becomes the basis for practice. Andwhile in most cases our control efforts will continue with all of their suffering it is not a

fundamental problem.

The reader will note that the upcoming exercise and corollary are given in visual terms.Is there a special significance to visual phenomena or ism vision merely another sensefield? In at least one school of Buddhism that is currently prominent in the west

(Nyingma/ Dzog-chen ) visual space is equated with experience in general and even

with being. It is worth noting that Martin Heidegger tells us that for the ancient Greeksvisuality was also integral to being. I can think of a few reasons why this might be so.

First of all I can think of no way that subject-object dualism could be described without

reference to visual space even if it is in some way a corruption of non-duality. Secondly


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all of the other senses and their objects can be located within visual space while the

reverse is not he case. For example we cannot smell the sun but we can locate the source

of smells.

I am well aware of the value of the practice in religious writing of what could be calledtactical obscurity that engages, and forces a reader to think, more than they otherwise

might. The problem is that what is to be transmitted is well outside our habitual andautomatically functioning frames of reference. So clarity and brevity might be preciselythe wrong approach. This mainly is a problem with reading. What will be read will just

go by too quickly. So the illustration of emptiness should be done as an exercise, can

and should become a topic for meditation and can serve as a framework forcontemplation.

A succinct definition of the key Buddhist term emptiness is that phenomena do not

inherently exist. Since we already know if were at all sophisticated that phenomena

exist nowhere else but in the brain or perhaps the mind how is it that we perceivephenomena as inherently, or synonymously, independently existing? That is, existing

independently of the mind or brain although we will have to expand this list a little.

An exercise: If you pay close attention as you move your focal point in tiny increments

over say a wall you can easily see that you are not in fact moving your gaze over singlephenomenon. Put another way you are not shifting your gaze from one part to another of

the original phenomenon as we usually assume because subsequent views are not

contained in prior ones. If that usual assumption were correct it would mean thatphenomena do exist inherently, separately from the brain or mind and we must add the

position of the eyes. A corollary: If we cannot shift our gaze over a phenomenon we

cannot bring it to rest on one either.

Is there principle or doctrine in Buddhism that explains the example and corollary? Yes,it is and must bepratiyasamutpada which is frequentlytranslated from the Sanskrit as

dependent arising and which is considered synonymous for emptiness. Its meaning,best understood in relation to the above definition of emptiness, is that something that

exists in dependence on something else cannot exist independently of those elements orelement. Something that exists dependently has no capacity to exist on its own or put

another way under its own power.. A good example of this type of existence is the image

of say a car on a television screen. The image depends on the screen, the electronics inthe set, the transmitter, antennas and so on. So when we turn off the television or the

picture is interrupted for any number of reasons the image of the car no longer appears.

The above example may be a little misleading because the image of a car on a television

screen is doubly dependent. It is dependent on the elements described but it is also a

phenomenon. The phenomena in our brains or minds also depend on a number ofelements such as the eye, nervous system, parts of the brain and so on. The reason we

cant scan a visual phenomenon in the way described in the initial example is becausewhen the relationships upon which visual phenomena depend change a new phenomenon

results. And we cant rest our eyes on a phenomenon because it does not exist

independently but is produced by a certain position of our eyes.

We are now in a position to make a few more points. One of these is that we cannot movetowards or away from phenomena. Another is that no phenomenon could skim across a


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visual scene. And no phenomenon could exit from or enter to an outside of a scene.

Theses few points result in some structural changes to our ordinary views.

This undermining of the objectivity of phenomena also undermines the subjective self

understood as a point of view at the center of the phenomenal field that we somehowinhabit. The only way such a thing as a point of view could be established is if it could

move in relation to phenomena or vice versa. In the initial example our unexaminedassumption is something like that our point of view is rotating and connected to our focalpoint, in effect, by a radial line. In this way the pure or pristine nature of consciousness is

maintained as it logically must be in the sense that it is not tainted with objective

elements. Thus subject-object dualism, the philosophical opposite of emptiness, isovercome.

Also affected is our usual understanding of time. Usually we measure time as the

movement of a variable part or parts of a scene relative to a fixed part or parts. For

instance the sun moves across the fixed bowl of the sky, the suns shadow movesaround the face of a sundial, or the hands of a clock move over its face. And a typical

representation of time is that the subjective self fixed viewing the present moment is

located in an infinite series of past and future moments that transit from the former to thelatter.

But if phenomena cannot move within a scene how can our usual understanding of time

be accurate. And if there is no outside of a scene we could not place the present

moment within an infinite series of past and future moments. And if no phenomenon canskim across a scene no scene could undergo modifications because of the displacement of

its parts. But then it would seem like time would be completely static. How then can the

dynamism of experience or essentially of time be accounted for?

The answer to this apparent dilemma is surely one of interpretation. With the initialexample where we ordinarily would think that we were moving our focal point over a

phenomenon upon closer examination we were not. And while no phenomenon canskim across a scene, the image of a car on a television screen for example, they can

provide the illusion and indication of movement.

There is no doubt that we can enmesh ourselves very precisely, without calculation, and

with accurate prediction, in temporal sequences such as in a game of table tennis. And

our survival depends on this capacity. If we see a speeding car bearing down on us the

thing is not to reflect that no phenomenon is moving. The thing to do is to get out of theway. To say that there is very good evidence that the world is made up of independently

existing moving parts seems to be a gross understatement. But the Buddhists say that this

is not the fundamental structure of experience and that this has profound existential

significance.If we have performed the initial illustration and understood the subsequent points are we

enlightened? Unfortunately were not going to function like an advanced practitioner or a

saint. Subject-object dualism, the philosophical opposite of emptiness is too entrenchedfor that.


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A Mercifully Short Essay on Emptiness