Many
of the formidable social and cultural problems we face today are rooted in the
sharp schism that has divided Western civilisation between science and
religion, where science claims invincible knowledge based on the empirical investigation
of the natural world, while religion can do little more than call for faith in
supernatural creeds and obedience to codes of ethics that require restraint,
self-discipline, and self-sacrifice. Since religion, as traditionally
understood, often rests on little more than blithe promises and pompous
threats, its appeals to our allegiance seldom win assent, while the ethical
ideals it advocates stand hardly a fighting chance against the constant
injunctionÞthrust upon us by TV, radio,
and signboardÞto enjoy life to the hilt
while we can. As a result, a vast portion of humankind today has become
alienated from religion as a meaningful guide to life, left with no alternative
but to plunge headlong into the secular religion of consumerism and hedonism. Too
often those in the religious camp, sensing the threat secularism poses to their
own security, feel driven towards an aggressive fundamentalism in a desperate
bid to salvage traditional loyalties.
The
quest to establish a sound basis for conduct in today's world has been made
particularly difficult because one consequence of the dominance of the
scientific world view has been the banishment of values from the domain of the
real. While many scientists, in their personal lives, are staunch advocates of
such ideals as world peace, political justice, and greater economic equality,
the world view promulgated by modern science grants to values no objective
grounding in the grand scheme of things. From this perspective their root and
basis is purely subjective, and thus they bring along all the qualities the
notion of subjectivity suggests: being personal, private, relative, even arbitrary. The overall effect of this scission, despite
the best intentions of many responsible scientists, has been to give a green light
to lifestyles founded on the quest for personal gratification and a power drive
aimed at the exploitation of others.
In
contrast to the classical Western antithesis of religion and science, Buddhism
shares with science a common commitment to uncover the truth about the world.
Both Buddhism and science draw a sharp distinction between the way things
appear and the way they really are, and both offer to open our minds to
insights into the real nature of things, normally hidden from us by false ideas
based on sense perception and
ßcommon sense.û Nevertheless, despite this affinity, it is also necessary to recognise
the great differences in aim and orientation that separate Buddhism and
science. While both may share certain conceptions about the nature of reality,
science is essentially a project designed to provide us with objective, factual
knowledge, with information pertaining to the public domain, while Buddhism is
a spiritual path intended to promote inner transformation and the realisation
of the highest good, called enlightenment, liberation, or Nibbàna. In Buddhism,
the quest for knowledge is important not as an end in itself, but because the
main cause of our bondage and suffering is ignorance, not understanding things
as they really are, and thus the antidote needed to heal ourselves is knowledge
or insight.
Again,
the knowledge to be acquired by the practice of the Dhamma differs
significantly from that sought by science in several major respects. Most
importantly, the knowledge sought is not simply the acquisition of objective
information about the constitution and operations of the physical world, but a
deep personal insight into the real nature of one's personal existence. The aim
is not to understand reality from the outside but from the inside, from the
perspective of one's own living experience. One seeks not factual knowledge but
insight or wisdom, a personal knowledge, inescapably subjective, whose whole
value lies in its transformative impact on one's life. Concern with the outer
world, as an object of knowledge, arises only in so far as the outer world is
inextricably implicated in experience. As the Buddha says:
ßIt is in this body with its perception and thought that I declare is the
world, the origin of the world, the cessation of the world, and the way to the
cessation of the world.û
Because
Buddhism takes personal experience as its starting point, without aiming to use
experience as a springboard to an impersonal, objective type of knowledge, it
includes within its domain the entire spectrum of qualities disclosed by
personal experience. This means that Buddhism gives prime consideration to
values. But even more, values for Buddhism are not merely projections of
subjective judgements which we fashion according to our personal whims, social
needs, or cultural conditioning; to the contrary, they are written into the
texture of reality just as firmly as the laws of motion and thermodynamics.
Hence values can be evaluated: rated in terms of truth and falsity, ranked as
valid or invalid, and part of our task in giving meaning to our life is to
unearth the true scheme of values. To determine the true gradation of values we
must turn our attention inwards and use subjective criteria of investigation;
but what we find, far from being private or arbitrary, is an integral part of
the objective order, permeated by the same lawfulness as that which governs the
movements of the planets and the stars.
Affirmation
of the objective reality of value implies another major distinction between
Buddhism and science. In order for the liberating knowledge of enlightenment to
arise, the investigator must undergo a profound personal transformation guided
by inner perception of the genuine values. While natural science can be
undertaken as a purely intellectual discipline, the Buddhist quest in its
entirety is an existential discipline which can only be implemented by
regulating one's conduct, purifying one's mind, and refining one's capacity for
attention to one's own bodily and mental processes. This training requires
compliance with ethics all the way through, and thus ethical guidelines support
and pervade the entire training from its starting point in right action to its
culmination in the highest liberation of the mind.
What
is especially noteworthy is that the ethical thrust of the Buddhist training
and its cognitive thrust converge on the same point, the realisation of the
truth of selflessness (anatta). It is
just here that contemporary science approaches Buddhism in its discovery of the
process nature of actuality, implying the lack of an ultimate substance
concealed behind the sequence of events. But this correspondence again points
to a fundamental difference. In Buddhism the impermanent and substanceless
nature of reality is not simply a factual truth apprehended by objective
knowledge. It is above all an existential truth, a transformative principle
offering the key to right understanding and right liberation. To use this key
to open the door to spiritual freedom, its sole purpose, we must govern our
conduct on the premise that the idea of a substantial self is a delusion. It is
insufficient merely to give intellectual assent to the idea of selflessness and
turn it into a plaything of thought. The principle must be penetrated by
training ourselves to discover the absence of selfhood in its subtlest hiding
place, the deep recesses of our own minds.
It is
to be hoped that Buddhist thinkers and open-minded scientists, by sharing their
insights and reflections, can show us an effective way to heal the rift between
objective knowledge and spiritual wisdom and thus bring about a reconciliation between science and spirituality. In this
way spiritual practice will become an integral part of the discipline aimed at
knowledge, and spiritual practice and knowledge in combination will become the
tools for achieving the highest good, enlightenment and spiritual freedom. This
has always been the position of Buddhism, as evidenced by the most ancient
texts themselves. We must remember that the Buddha, the Enlightened One, is not
only, like the scientist, a lokavidu#3,
ßa knower of the worldû but also, above all, a vijjàcaraõasampanno,
ßone complete in both knowledge and conduct.û
Bhikkhu
Bodhi
Landscapes of Wonder: Discovering the Buddha's
Dhamma in the World Around Us. Bhikkhu Nyanasobhano.
It is
often said that, since times are different and people have changed, the
Buddha's teaching, so suitable for ancient
In
his book of brilliant, beautifully written essays, American Buddhist monk and
author Bhikkhu Nyanasobhano strikes a very different note. For him, `the
long-honoured, ever-fresh Dhamma needs no revision to move the heart and guide
the conduct of a man or woman today, because it is the abiding essence of
goodness and peace, which the Buddha kindly taught for the welfare of living
beings.' The essays in the book deal with a wide variety of topics, including
lessons on suffering, compassion, morality, insight meditation, and liberation.
All are written in a rich and flowing language that carries the reader
effortlessly along.
Besides
these expository essays, the book offers a second type of essay, perhaps unique
to our author. This is the contemplative excursion. With a short, opening
invitation, Ven. Nyanasobhano draws us away from our busy-ness and
self-absorption to some solitary place, where he probes a particular aspect of
the natural landscape for its deep and vital truths. He reminds us that in our
daily lives we are surrounded by messengers which
teach us, if we are aware and alert enough to learn, the invariable facts of
existence repeated so often by the Buddha. A swollen stream, a rotting log, the
glimpse of a glorious white craneÞthese can teach us the
truths of impermanence, suffering, and essencelessness just as eloquently as
the Buddhist texts. Our task, he reminds us, is to learn how to see and to
persevere in our contemplations. Ordinary events speak the Dhamma clearly, if
we know how to listen. We do not need the spectacular or the marvellous. Even
our own fear, irritation, and grief, as they arise and pass away, can be
precious objects of contemplation.
These
essays remind us that the constant changes we readily observe in our bodies and
minds prove that, apart from Nibbàna, there is no respite from impermanence,
old age, sickness, and death. Ven. Nyanasobhano makes it clear that the
Buddha's message is not an offer of a cushier bed in sam#1sàra, but the
glorious promise of complete liberation to be sought with the greatest urgency.
There is no false comfort in tiptoeing around the unpleasantness of death, but
Buddhism teaches us how to prepare ourselves to weather the onslaught of life's
harsh lessons and thereby to develop wisdom. The challenge we are offered is to
stop craving, to strengthen ourselves with detachment, to view things calmly
and wisely, without becoming entangled by them; for it is entanglement that
brings suffering.
In
`The Life of Honour,' Ven. Nyanasobhano uses his poetic skills to rouse,
inspire, and encourage us to lead an ethically upright life. He demonstrates
how, by relying on the Five Precepts, the Noble Eightfold Path, and a clear
understanding of cause and effect, we can achieve a consistent integrity in our
conduct. Right and wrong, he argues, are not matters of public opinion. Rather
than blindly following popular sentiment on such difficult issues as
euthanasia, abortion, or capital punishment, we should investigate intentions
and results, the law of kamma, which is influenced neither by majority opinion
nor by personal views.
The
Buddha taught us to live harmlessly, to show compassion to all living beings
who, like ourselves, are caught in the wheel of birth and death. In his essay
`Fellow Travellers,' Ven. Nyanasobhano shows how careful attention to the
animal realm can be very instructive since the world of animals presents an
intensified picture of our own condition. Elsewhere in the book he extols the
advantages of monastic life, which offers its members not only a blameless
means of livelihood but also structure, discipline, tradition, and communal
support. But he also points out that lay Buddhists can and should seek
spiritual accomplishments as well. In return for the support they offer the
Sangha, lay Buddhists receive inspiration, instruction, and the precious
opportunity to make merit by acts of faith, respect, and generosity.
Landscapes of Wonder is rich with observations informed by the Dhamma and
deepened by the freedom and discipline unique to life in the Sangha. There is a
special pleasure in finding the Dhamma explained in the context of the North
American terrain, with its stark winter landscapes and the raw beginnings of
spring. Ven. Nyanasobhano presents the Buddha's ageless teaching so freshly and
lucidly, and in such poetic English, that the writer of the book's foreword
hardly exaggerates when he says, `American Buddhism has at last found its
Thoreau.'
There
is good reason to rejoice that Theravada Buddhism still flourishes in the
world, all the more so that it continues consistent with the original
teachings. Just as I have never detected a single point of disagreement between
my American teacher and my Burmese sayadawÞthough they were born
forty years apart, ordained in different lineages, and practice in different
worldsÞso I take comfort and
satisfaction in noting that everything Ven. Nyanasobhano writes is in complete
accord.
Visakha
Kawasaki
Ahir,
Vipassana.
van Gorkom, Nina. Cetasikas. (London: Zolag, 1999)
van Gorkom, Nina.
In
the last instalment of this series we saw that the Buddha counters his
misguided disciple Sàti's conception of consciousness as a persisting,
self-identical entity by explaining that consciousness is dependently arisen.
Consciousness is not a single, simple, uniform entity maintaining its identity
behind its changing modes; it is, rather, a generic designation for the factor
of awareness present in six types of evanescent cognitive eventsÞeye-consciousness mind-consciousnessÞeach of which occurs as the bare act of cognising an object. Each type of
consciousness arises in dependence on two main conditions: an internal
condition, the sense faculty, and an external condition, the object. Thus
eye-consciousness arises in dependence on the eye and forms and has the
function of cognising forms through the eye; mind-consciousness arises through
the mind door (which the commentary identifies with the bhavaïga
or `life continuum') and can take any type of object, including the objects of
the physical senses, but is particularly equipped to apprehend non-sensuous
objects such as concepts and ideas.
The
Buddha illustrates this differentiation in the types of consciousness with the
simile of fire. Just as fire, though seemingly one, is
actually distinguishable into different types of fire by reference to the
particular kind of fuel which it burnsÞas a log fire, a faggot
fire, a grass fire, a chaff fire, etc.Þso consciousness is
reckoned by way of the conditions in dependence on which it arises. While Sàti
insists it is the same consciousness that transmigrates from life to life, for
the Buddha consciousness does not preserve its identity even on two successive
occasions. Each act of consciousness is discrete and perishes almost
immediately after it arises, without passing over from one sense faculty to
another. It comes into being with the support of its conditions (which are themselves subject to incessant impermanence), performs its
momentary function, and then perishes, giving rise to the next occasion of
consciousness so quickly that, without sustained attention to the immediate
flow of experience, one cannot detect the transition from one occasion to the
next.
Nevertheless,
the fact that any particular occasion of consciousness is impermanent and
dissolves almost immediately after it has arisen does not mean that the process
of consciousness comes to an end with death or that there is no survival beyond
the body. Just as much as he teaches the insubstantiality of consciousness, the
Buddha also teaches that rebirth is real, that deeds have consequences, that we
inherit the fruits of our good and bad kamma; and what makes rebirth a reality
is precisely that consciousness continues on, that it survives the demise of
the body. Although consciousness is not a persisting entity that can be
identified as `my self,' this process of cognition is driven and sustained by a
dynamic configuration of conditions, and as long as these conditions remain
operative at the time of death, the stream of consciousness will continue
beyond death, arising on the basis of a fresh set of supporting conditions.
Thus, while it is wrong to say (as Sàti did) that `this same consciousness runs
and wanders on through the round of rebirths,' it is not wrong to say that
consciousnessÞunderstood as a procession of
events constantly arising and perishingÞcontinues on from one
life to the next. It continues on, however, not as a lasting self, but as a
sequence of momentary `frames' of cognitive activity each of which expires as
soon as it has acquired full actuality. In this way consciousness can serve as
the `channel' for the rebirth process, the reservoir of past experience,
dispositions, and karmic formations that underlies continued personal identity
through the sequence of lifetimes.
In
the next section of the sutta (§§9Ý14) the Buddha turns the
examination of the conditionality of consciousness into a wider demonstration
that the five aggregates in their entirety are dependently arisen. He draws out
this point by asking the monks a series of questions. He first asks them if
they see `This has come to be (bhåtam idaü).' In the original Pali, as much as in translation,
the phrasing of the question is compact and cryptic, but the commentary
clarifies the meaning by telling us that `this' refers to the five aggregates
as a whole. The commentary says that, having shown the conditionality of
consciousness, the Buddha undertakes this inquiry to establish the conditioned
nature of all five aggregates. Underlying the passage, but unexpressed, is the
presupposition that the notion of an àtman, of a substantial self, and the idea
of conditionality are mutually contradictory and exclusive. If within the
person there is a self, it would have to be something uncreated and unconditioned,
something which exists by its own inherent power of being; and if this were the
case, it would exist independently of causes and conditions. But when the monks
affirm that `this'Þthe assemblage of the five
aggregates making up our personal beingÞ`has come to be,' at
one stroke this proclaims the utter conditionality of the individual. Whatever
we refer to as `I' and `mine' is comprised within the five aggregates, and
since these five aggregates have all `come to be,' this means that they can neither
be identified as an enduring self nor seen to contain any such a self within
their fold.
The
next two questions reinforce this point. Taken together, the Buddha's questions
and the replies of the monks establish that the five aggregates have arisen from
their own specific conditionsÞspoken of here as `nutriment'
(àhàra)Þand pass away with the cessation of those
conditions. Thus we find in this passage an application of the general
principle of dependent origination to the five aggregates, with the conditions
pointed to by the word `nutriment.' The general principle of dependent
origination (which we will meet later in the sutta) states, `When this exists,
that comes to be; with the arising of this, that arises. When this does not
exist, that does not come to be; with the cessation of this, that ceases.' In
this formula, the place of `this exists' is taken by the nutriment, and the
place of `that (which) comes to be' by the five aggregates. Similarly, in the
part dealing with cessation, the `this' that ceases first is the nutriment, and
the `that' that consequently ceases is the five aggregates. We will explore
this theme more fully in the next instalment of this series.
(to be continued)