|
by Stephen
Batchelor
This essay
appears as a chapter in Ursula King (ed.). Faith and Praxis in a
Postmodern Age. London: Cassell, 1998. It was first delivered as a paper
at a conference celebrating the thirtieth anniversary of the Department of
Theology and Religious Studies at the University of Bristol.
1. Buddhism
The metaphor often
used to describe Buddhism is that of a ‘path.’ Buddhism regards itself as
the ‘central path’ (or the ‘Middle Way’). But this is a fluid notion that
can be continuously expanded. In the Buddha’s first discourse it is
presented as a moral resolve to avoid the extreme behaviours of indulgence
and mortification. By the time of Nagarjuna -- some six hundred years
later -- it has become a philosophical perspective that avoids the
pitfalls of asserting either Being or Nothing as absolutes. In both cases
it remains a metaphor: a device that creatively imagines a link between an
everyday reality (a road, a street, a highway) and an organizing principle
in a system of thought and practice. While Buddhist orthodoxies have
sought to fix this link with dogmatic definitions of ‘path,’ the ambiguity
and contingency of its metaphorical nature keep breaking out in playful
irreverence.
This is noticeable
in Ch’an (Zen). A monk visits the Ch’an Master Chao-chou and asks: ‘Where
is the great way?’ (Now to complicate matters, remember that the Sanskrit
marga (path) was translated by the Chinese tao, which in English we prefer
to render as ‘the Way’ (replete with definite article and capital to lend
it spiritual legitimacy, forgetting the absence of either definite
articles or capitals in either Sanskrit or Chinese). Having fallen for
this linguistic sleight of hand myself, I was able to be surprised while
standing on a street corner in Hong Kong and reading on the street sign:
‘squiggle’ ‘squiggle,’ followed by one of the few Chinese characters I
could recognize, ‘tao’ -- and beneath it in English ‘Prince Edward Road.’)
‘Where is the great way?’ asks the monk. And Chao-chou replies: ‘Go back
to the lights, turn left and it’s the second on the right’ (or words to
that effect).
I was once walking
along the coastal path between Kingswear and Brixham in South Devon. The
footpath threaded through a patch of woodland on the cliff edge and in
post-monastic fashion I contemplated the track about six feet in front of
me. I was suddenly hit, like a soft blow in the stomach, by what it meant
for this thing to be a path. It was a path: (1) because it led somewhere,
(2) because it was free of obstructions, and (3) because it was used by
others. In what sense is the Buddhist ‘path’ comparable to these aspects
of a footpath? How could I link this visceral insight of walking on a path
with the metaphor of ‘path’ as spoken of in Buddhism? To what extent did
my internalized Buddhist idea of a ‘path’ contribute to my experiencing
this actual path in such a way? Might this be an instance of how an idea
from another culture is digested?
A path is most
explicitly experienced as such when you find it again after having lost
it. When driving at a constant 70mph along a motorway, we are oblivious to
the path-like nature of the experience. Like a telephone, or a hand, we
tend only to notice a path when we lose it or it breaks down. At the
moment of finding it again or recovering its use, we experience
exhilaration, gratitude and relief - but no sooner have these feelings
surfaced than we forget the startling, gift-like nature of the thing and
once more take it for granted.
At the moment of its
recovery, a path reveals itself. Even if we haven’t a clue where it will
lead, we know it will lead somewhere--which is infinitely preferable to
the terror of being lost. And simultaneous with the recovery of purpose
and direction, we recover freedom of movement. A path is a negation; it is
what it is due to the absence of obstruction. Being lost entails not only
loss of direction but also loss of the freedom to move. We get entangled
in brambles and undergrowth, stuck in gullies, bogged down in sand and
mud. A path is nothing but a stretch of ground from which such obstacles
have either been removed or circumvented. And simultaneous with the
recovery of direction and freedom, we recover community. For recent
footprints show that others have followed the same track. A path is
witness to the presence of creatures like ourselves, while to be lost is
to be terribly alone. Even if the path is deserted, even if no one has
passed by in days, we are reconnected to the human (and animal) community.
And simply by walking along it, we too maintain it for those who will come
later. Being on a path implies both indebtedness to those who have
preceded us and responsibility for those who will follow.
Do these implicit
elements of a path illuminate the metaphor of ‘path’ in Buddhism? How does
the central path embody purposeful direction, unobstructed freedom of
movement and realization of community? There are parallels with the
doctrine of ‘taking refuge in the three Jewels.’ The three Jewels (Buddha,
Dharma and Sangha) are the primary, non-negotiable values in which
commitment to a Buddhist way of life is rooted. A Buddhist is even defined
as a person who consciously commits him or herself to these values.
‘Buddha’ here refers
not to the historical figure of Gautama, but to the awakened perspective
on life (enlightenment) realized by Gautama. It is the goal, the
destination of the path. Just as walking along a path draws one to an as
yet unknown but intimated destination, so the practice of Buddhism draws
one to an as yet unknown but intimated meaning. Engaging in the practice
grants one confidence in the direction and purpose of one’s life. ‘Dharma’
refers not only to the teaching of Gautama but more crucially to the
application of that teaching in the world. It is equivalent to the act of
walking along the path. Like walking, it requires a rhythmic and unimpeded
pace, unobstructed by the thickets of hesitation, aggression, attachment,
restlessness and lethargy. And ‘Sangha’ means community. This practice
entails participation in a communal endeavour. It cannot take place in
isolation. For we belong to a tradition; we follow in the footsteps of
those who have preceded us. But this tradition evolves. The path is
maintained for those who will come later only by what we do now. In
practising this way of life, we are simultaneously indebted to and
responsible for a community of which we are a part.
So ‘taking refuge in
the three Jewels’ ceases to be merely the formal act of admission to the
Buddhist religion, and becomes instead a metaphor of sustained
authenticity in treading the path. (‘Jewel’ in Sanskrit, by the way, is
ratna, the common word for a precious gem. When it came to be translated
into Tibetan, instead of the common word for jewel, the Tibetans chose (or
coined?) the term dkon mchog - literally: ‘supreme rarity.’ So the ‘three
Jewels’ become the ‘three Supreme Rarities.’ ‘Supreme Rarity’ was
subsequently used by Christian missionaries in the nineteenth century to
translate ‘God.’)
Yet this path is not
(like an ordinary path) something apart from oneself on which one treads.
One creates this path within the contours of one’s own internal and
communal landscape. It is like a thread weaving its way through the
unfolding fabric of experience. A many-stranded thread, though,
irreducible to any particular activity (like meditation). Embracing one’s
vision, ideas, speech, action, livelihood, resolve, mindfulness and
concentration, it encompasses the complexity of being in a world.
Over time metaphors
undergo shifts of nuance and association. Is it still possible to
understand the metaphor of path today as it would have been understood in
the societies of Asia where it originated? What does a path mean for
someone used to the rectilinear grid of a modern city? Probably little
more than one of several possibilities for recreation. In an urban
environment paths have become a functional network of streets that go
everywhere and nowhere, whose macadam surface is welded to the concrete
and brick on either side. Wilderness has been either sealed over or
trapped within parks. Elsewhere it is mapped, owned, legislated, fenced
off, monitored from the air, criss-crossed with roads.
In those traditional
societies where this metaphor of path evolved, wilderness was dangerous
and unknown. You would not walk alone on the paths that threaded through
it. You would travel in well-organized caravans, in the company of those
you trusted, armed to the teeth. Paths were rare and one’s survival
depended on them. But this has changed. Today wilderness itself has become
a ‘Supreme Rarity,’ a value in danger of being lost, the survival of which
is under threat. While path (in its contemporary guise of roads, railways,
air lanes, the information superhighway) is becoming a metaphor of
domination rather than freedom.
The large
authoritarian institutions that Buddhist societies have created reflect
the clumsy, slow-moving but protective caravans that crossed the forests,
steppes and deserts of Asia. Today the individual in search of awakening
may well start out on those well-trodden and familiar roads but, growing
in self-confidence, may want to branch off onto footpaths and seek
indistinct trails that peter out. Such a person longs not for the security
of the path but for those unknown places where there is little trace of
marauding humanity. He or she may be more deeply inspired by the metaphor
of open, untrammelled wilderness rather than that of a path.
So might we discern
a trend in Buddhism of moving away from dependence on organized religious
institutions towards a more individuated form of practice, in which each
person finds his or her own way within the dharmadhatu: the ‘Dharma
realm’? A way of life that subverts the traditional legitimating myth of
‘path’ with a myth of recovered wilderness? After centuries in premodern
societies, Buddhism finds itself abruptly catapaulted into postmodern
societies, where even its central metaphor of ‘path’ is questionable.
2. Agnosticism
The term ‘agnostic’
was coined by Thomas Huxley in the 1880s as a joke. As the member of a
small philosophical circle, he felt out of place with people who could so
easily identify themselves with a particular persuasion. So he decided to
call himself ‘Agnostic’ in order that he too, as he said, ‘could have a
tail like all the other foxes.’ ‘It came into my head,’ he recalled, ‘as
suggestively antithetical to the "Gnostic" of Church History who professed
to know so much about the very things of which I was ignorant.’ 1 He
nonetheless came to see it as demanding as any moral, philosophical or
religious creed. But instead of a creed, he saw it as a method realized
through ‘the vigorous application of a single principle,’ positively
expressed as: ‘follow your reason as far as it will take you,’ and
negatively as: ‘do not pretend that conclusions are certain which are not
demonstrated or demonstrable.’ 2 He called it the ‘agnostic faith.’
Whatever Huxley’s
motives in coining the term, it caught on. Within less than twenty years
it was being applied to Buddhism by Ananda Metteyya (Allan Bennett), the
first Englishman to take the vows of a Buddhist monk. Bennett had ordained
in Burma in 1901 and set out to promote the Dharma in the West via
Buddhism: An Illustrated Review, a magazine he edited in Rangoon. The
October 1905 issue quotes from a letter he wrote to the 1904 Free Thought
Congress (a celebration of the pro-scientific/anti-religious position
inspired in large measure by Huxley): ‘The position of Buddhism on these
vital problems,’ writes Bennett, ‘is exactly coincidental, in its
fundamental ideas, with the modern agnostic philosophy of the West...’ 3
The idea is further developed in the same issue in an article ‘Buddhism an
Agnostic Religion’ by Professore Alessandro Costa.
A key source for
Bennett’s and Costa’s view of the agnostic nature of Buddhism would
doubtless have been this famous passage from the Culamalunkya Sutta in the
Majjhima Nikaya:
Suppose,
Malunkyaputta, a man were wounded by an arrow thickly smeared with poison,
and his friends and companions brought a surgeon to treat him. The man
would say: ‘I will not let the surgeon pull out the arrow until I know the
name and clan of the man who wounded me; whether the bow that wounded me
was a long bow or a crossbow; whether the arrow that wounded me was
hoof-tipped or curved or barbed.’
All this would still
not be known to that man and meanwhile he would die. So too, Malunkyaputta,
if anyone should say: ‘I will not lead the noble life under the Buddha
until the Buddha declares to me whether the world is eternal or not
eternal, finite or infinite; whether the soul is the same as or different
from the body; whether or not an awakened one continues or ceases to exist
after death,’ that would still remain undeclared by the Buddha and
meanwhile that person would die. 4
Over the course of
its history, though, Buddhism has tended to lose its agnostic dimension
through becoming institutionalized as a religion with dogmatic belief
systems. Periodically (as with Zen and Tantra) this process has been
challenged and even reversed, but in traditional Asian societies this
never lasted long. The power of organized religion has swiftly reasserted
itself - usually by subsuming rebellious ideas into the canons of a
revised orthodoxy.
Consequently, as the
Dharma emigrates westward, it is treated as a religion -- albeit an
‘eastern’ one. The very term ‘Buddhism’ (an invention of Western scholars
for which there is no exact equivalent in Asia) suggests that it is a
creed to be lined up alongside other creeds. This perception of Buddhism
as a religion obscures and distorts the encounter of the Dharma with
secular, agnostic culture. Yet could it be that the Dharma might in fact
have more in common with Godless secularism than with the bastions of
religion? Might agnosticism serve as a more fertile common ground for
dialogue than any attempt to make Buddhist sense of Allah?
Today the force of
the term ‘agnosticism’ has been lost. It has come to legitimate an
avoidance of the existential questions posed by birth and death. Just as
the modern agnostic tradition has tended to lose its confidence and lapse
into scepticism, so has Buddhism tended to lose its critical edge and
lapse into religiosity. What each has lost, however, the other may be able
to help restore. In its encounter with secular culture, the Dharma may
recover its agnostic imperative, while agnosticism may be helped to
recover its soul.
So what would be the
features of an ‘agnostic Buddhist?’ Such a person would not regard the
Dharma as a source of ‘answers’ to questions of where we came from, where
we are going, what happens after death. He or she would seek such
knowledge in the appropriate domains: astrophysics, evolutionary biology,
neuro-science etc. An agnostic Buddhist would therefore not be a
‘believer’ with claims to revealed information about supernatural or
paranormal phenomena, and in this sense would not be ‘religious.’ An
agnostic Buddhist would look to the Dharma for metaphors of existential
confrontation rather than metaphors of existential consolation. He or she
would start by facing up to the primacy of anguish and uncertainty (dukkha),
then proceed to apply a set of practices to understand the human dilemma
and work towards a resolution. An agnostic Buddhist would eschew atheism
as much as theism, and would be as reluctant to regard the universe as
devoid of meaning as endowed with meaning. (For to deny either God or
meaning is surely just the antithesis of affirming them.) Yet such an
agnostic stance would not be based on disinterest. It would be founded on
a passionate recognition that I do not know. It would confront the
enormity of having been born instead of reaching for the consolation of a
belief. It would strip away, layer by layer, the views that conceal the
mystery of being here at all.
This process of
stripping away consolatory illusions by holding true to agnosis
(not-knowing) leads to what could be called ‘deep agnosticism.’ A Zen koan
(case 41 of the Gateless Gate) illustrates this well. It reads:
Bodhidharma sat
facing the wall. The second patriarch, standing in the snow, cut off his
arm and said: ‘Your disciple’s mind is not yet at peace. I beg you,
Master, give it rest.’ Bodhidharma said, ‘Bring me your mind and I will
put it to rest.’ The patriarch replied, ‘I have searched for the mind but
have never been able to find it.’ Bodhidharma said, ‘I have finished
putting it to rest for you.’ 5
This deep
agnosticism is further evident in such formal Ch’an concepts as wu-hsin
(no-mind) and wu-nien (no-thought) (as well as the popularized ‘Don’t Know
Mind’ of the Korean Son Master Seung Sahn). It also reflects the Sixth
Ch’an Patriarch Hui-neng’s initial insight as a young boy when, after
receiving payment for some firewood, he chanced across a man reciting the
Diamond Sutra. According to tradition, it was upon hearing the words ‘must
produce a mind that stays in no place’ 6 that Hui-neng was suddenly
awakened.
As one of the best
known texts of the Perfection of Wisdom (Prajnaparamita) literature of
Mahayana Buddhism, the Diamond Sutra takes as its central theme the idea
of emptiness (sunyata). ‘Emptiness’ is a deliberately unappetizing term
used to undercut yearnings for religious, psychological or metaphysical
consolation. Although a noun, it does not in any way denote a thing or
state. It is not something one ‘realizes’ in a moment of mystical insight
that ‘breaks through’ to a transcendent reality concealed behind yet
mysteriously underpinning the empirical world. Nor do things ‘arise’ from
emptiness and ‘dissolve’ back into it as though it were some kind of
formless, cosmic stuff.
So what is
emptiness? According to the 2nd century CE philosopher Nagarjuna:
‘Whatever is contingently emergent is said to be emptiness.’ 7 Emptiness
is the simple negation of any intrinsic, non-contingent identity in either
oneself or anything else. Although the restless mind of Bodhidharma’s
disciple appeared to exist in and of itself and be tormented by an anguish
fused with its own self-identity, by enquiring deeply into its nature, he
found nothing he could put his finger on and say, ‘this is it!’ Emptiness
is the infinite unfindability of things. But this does not mean that
nothing exists; it only implies that the deeper one delves into the heart
of things, the more their utter contingency becomes apparent. Rather than
being confined as fixed essences, things are released as changing,
processual events configured by an unprecedented and unrepeatable matrix
of causes, conditions, components as well as conceptual and linguistic
conventions.
Nagarjuna continues:
‘Emptiness is contingently configured; it is the central path.’ 8 So
emptiness is as contingent as anything else; it has no privileged
ontological status. Even more surprising is Nagarjuna’s equating of
emptiness with that key metaphor of the Buddhist enlightenment project:
the central path. In 1397, while in a hermitage in the hills north of
Lhasa, the Tibetan philosopher Tsongkhapa commented on this passage.
‘Emptiness,’ he explains, ‘has relinquished the extremes of Being and
Nothing. Thus it is both the centre itself and the central path. Emptiness
is the track on which the centered person moves.’ 9
Track? The Tibetan
word Tsongkhapa uses for ‘track’ is shul, a somewhat obscure term defined
by the dictionary as rjes, which means an ‘impression,’ i.e. a mark which
remains after that which made it has passed by--a footprint, for example.
In other contexts, shul is used to describe the scarred hollow in the
ground where a house once stood; the channel worn through rock where a
river runs in flood; the indentation in the grass where an animal slept
last night. All these are shul: the impression of something that used to
be there.
A path is a shul
because of its essentially negative nature: it is an impression in the
ground left by the regular tread of feet, a passage which is clear of
obstruction. So we can translate shul as ‘track,’ which in English too
means a path as well as an impression left by an animal or a person. To
experience the ‘track-like’ nature of emptiness would be like recovering a
path that had been lost, or stumbling into a clearing in the forest, where
suddenly you can move freely and see clearly. To know emptiness is to
experience the shocking absence of what normally determines the sense of
who we are. It may only last a moment, before the habits of a lifetime
reassert themselves and close in once more. But for that moment, one
witnesses oneself and the world as immediate, vivid, open and vulnerable.
This free and open
space is the very centre of Dharma practice. As Tsongkhapa says, it is
both the centre and the central path. It is both wilderness and track. A
life centered in awareness of emptiness is a way of being in this
changing, shocking, painful, joyous, frustrating, awesome, stubborn and
ambiguous reality. Emptiness is a way of being that leads not beyond this
reality but into its heart. Rather than a state of transcendent, mystical
absorption, it is a dynamic, processual experience: the track on which the
centered person moves.
As a negation,
emptiness can offer no definitive, positive revelation of Reality. As this
awareness becomes stiller and clearer, things become not only more vivid
but also more baffling. The more deeply we know something in this way, the
more deeply we don’t know it. The ultimate ambiguity of experience is that
it is simultaneously knowable and unknowable. No matter how well one may
know something, at the same time one has to confess ‘I don’t really know
what this is.’ One has to let go of the insistence to pin things down in a
categorical way. One is invited to encounter their mystery.
Such unknowing is
the tap root of deep agnosticism. When even the concept of emptiness is
suspended, the mind has nowhere to rest. And we are free to begin a
radically other kind of questioning: a perplexity which is already present
within unknowing itself. When we find ourselves baffled and puzzled by
things, they present themselves as questions. Habitual assumptions and
descriptions suddenly fail and one hears one’s stammering voice cry out:
‘What is this?’ Or simply: ‘What?’ or ‘Why?’ Or perhaps no words at all,
just ‘?’ Such perplexity is neither frustrated nor merely curious about a
specific detail of experience. It is an intense, focused questioning into
what is unfolding at any given moment. It is the engine that drives one
into the heart of what is unknown.
This perplexed
questioning is another way of understanding the centre and the central
path. In refusing to be drawn into the answers of ‘yes’ or ‘no,’ ‘it is
this,’ or ‘it is that,’ it lets go of the polarities of affirmation and
negation, something and nothing. Like life itself, it just keeps going,
free from the need to hold to any fixed position -- including those of
Buddhism. It prevents awareness from becoming a passive, routinized
stance, which may accord with a belief system but renders experience numb
and opaque. Perplexity keeps awareness on its toes. It reveals experience
as transparent, radiant and unimpeded. To give Tsongkhapa a Zen twist:
Perplexity is the track on which the centered person moves.
3. Postmodernity
A postmodern world
that takes for granted the plurality and ambiguity of perception, the
fragmented and contingent nature of reality, the elusive, indeterminate
nature of self, the arbitrariness, inauthenticity and anguish of human
existence, would seem to fit Buddhism like a glove. Yet this is nothing
new. Western advocates of Buddhism, from Schopenhauer onwards, have all
tended to be impressed by the compatibility of its doctrines with their
own way of seeing the world.10 Kantians saw the views of Kant in Buddhism,
Logical Positivists those of Bertrand Russell, just as today
Deconstructionists behold the unravellings of Jacques Derrida. Within the
last hundred years the teachings of the Buddha have confirmed the views of
theosophists, fascists, environmentalists and quantum physicists alike.
Then is Buddhism just an exotic morass of incompatible ideas, a ‘Babylon
of doctrines’ as the 16th century missionary Matteo Ricci suspected? Or is
this another illustration of the Buddha’s parable of the blind men who
variously interpret an elephant as a pillar, a wall, a rope or a tube
depending on which bit of the animal’s anatomy they clutch? There may well
be as many kinds of Buddhism as there are ways the Western mind has to
apprehend it. In each case ‘Buddhism’ denotes something else. But what is
it really? The answer: nothing you can put your finger on. To fix the
elephant in either time or space is to kill her. The elephant is both
empty and perplexing. She breathes and moves--in ways no one can foresee.
This fluidity has
enabled Buddhism throughout its history to cross cultural frontiers and
adapt itself creatively to situations quite different from those in its
lands of origin on the Indian sub-continent. (The most striking example
being that of its movement nearly two thousand years ago to China.) This
creative process requires Buddhism to imagine itself as something
different. It entails adopting compatible elements from the new host
culture while at the same time critiquing elements of that culture which
are at odds with its own Buddhist values. So it is hardly surprising that
Buddhists today would not instinctively home in on elements of
postmodernity that resonate with their own understanding of the Dharma.
The danger is that, for the sake of appearing ‘relevant,’ they sacrifice
the equally vital need to retain a lucid, critical perspective.
The element of
postmodernity that potentially promises Buddhist voices access to
contemporary culture is implicit in Jean-François Lyotard’s simplified but
seminal definition of ‘postmodern’ as ‘incredulity toward grand
narratives.’11 The grandest of all these grand narratives for Lyotard and
others is the European Enlightenment Project itself: the certainty of
human progress through reason and science, which began in the 18th
century. As soon as conviction in this myth wavers, a host of other
assumptions are thrown into question. Through focusing on change and
uncertainty rather than assured continuity, through emphasizing
contingency, ambivalence and plurality, postmodern thinkers have come to
hear voices of the Other: those the Enlightenment Project has either
suppressed, ignored, or disdained: women, citizens of the Third World,
non-European systems of thought such as Buddhism.
As a Buddhist I find
myself reading erudite texts on themes such as the nature of the ‘self,’
which explore ideas quite familiar to me as a Buddhist yet fail to make
even a passing reference to the fact that this kind of analysis and
discourse has been pursued in Asia for more than two thousand years. I
sense at these times what women must feel about texts that blithely assume
a male perspective as normative. The habit of treating the ‘East’ as Other
is a deeply engrained European trait that goes back at least as far as
Euripedes and is ironically perpetuated even by postmodern writers. Yet
there are signs of change. After the usual Eurocentric analysis, Galen
Strawson concludes in a recent article, ‘The Sense of the Self:’ ‘Perhaps
the best account of the existence of the self is one that may be given by
certain Buddhists.’12 Note the hesitation: ‘Perhaps...,’ ‘...may be...,’
‘...certain Buddhists...’ (not all of them of course).
Whatever features of
postmodernity may be apparent in Buddhism, it would be foolish to describe
Buddhist thought as ‘postmodern’ -- for the simple reason that Buddhism
has undergone no phase of modernity to be ‘post’ of. Buddhist cultures
have evolved according to the grand narrative of their own Enlightenment
Project. Consequently, two broad but opposing trends can be seen in the
way Buddhism encounters contemporary Western culture.
In recognizing, on
the one hand, the breakdown of the grand narratives of the West, Buddhists
might seek to replace them with their own grand narrative of
enlightenment. This is explicit in the stated goals of at least two of the
most successful Buddhist movements in Britain today: the Friends of the
Western Buddhist Order (FWBO), who aim to create a ‘New Society’ founded
on Buddhist principles, and Soka Gakkai International (SGI), who seek to
realize ‘Kosen Rufu’ -- the worldwide spread of Nichiren Daishonin’s
Buddhism.13 Although both organizations are contemporary reformed Buddhist
movements, from a postmodern perspective they remain entranced by the
legitimating myth of a grand narrative that promises universal
emancipation. If a defining trait of our times is indeed widespread loss
of credibility in such narratives and their inability any longer to compel
consensus, then such ambitions may be doomed to frustration.
Yet, on the other
hand, if Buddhists find themselves in sympathy with postmodern incredulity
towards grand narratives, then they might be compelled to imagine another
kind of Buddhism altogether. They will try to rearticulate the guiding
metaphors of Buddhist tradition in the light of postmodernity. An attitude
of incredulity would itself tend to resonate more with the metaphor of
wilderness than with that of path, with the possibilities of unbounded
landscape as opposed to the secure confinement of a highway.
The key notion in
such an endeavour would be ‘emptiness.’ For here we have a notion that
shares with postmodernism a deep suspicion of a single, non-fragmentary
self, as well as any ‘transcendental signified’ such as God or Mind. It
too celebrates the disappearance of the subject, the endlessly deferred
play of language, the ironically ambiguous and contingent nature of
things. Yet in other respects it parts company with the prevailing
discourses of postmodernity. Meditation on emptiness is not a mere
intellectual exercise, but a contemplative discipline rooted in an ethical
commitment to non-violence. It is not just a description in unsentimental
language of the way reality unfolds, it offers a therapeutic approach to
the dilemma of human anguish.
Proponents of the
doctrine of emptiness, at least from the time of Nagarjuna, have been
subjected to the same kind of criticism as postmodernists receive today.
They too have stood accused of nihilism, relativism, and undermining the
basis for morality and religious belief. And not only from non-Buddhists;
the concept of emptiness is still criticized within the Buddhist tradition
itself.14 The history of the idea of emptiness has been the history of the
struggle to demonstrate that far from undermining an ethical and authentic
way of life, such a life is actually realized through embracing the
implications of emptiness.
The emptiness of
self, for instance, is not the denial of individual uniqueness, but the
denial of any permanent, partless and transcendent basis for
individuality. The anguish and uncertainty of human existence are only
exacerbated by the pre-conceptual, spasm-like grip in which such
assumptions of transcendence hold us. While seeming to offer security in
the midst of an unpredictable and transient world, paradoxically this grip
generates an anxious alienation from the processes of life itself. The aim
of Buddhist meditations on change, uncertainty and emptiness are to help
one understand and accept these dimensions of existence and thus gently
lead to releasing the grip.
By paying mindful
attention to the sensory immediacy of experience, we realize how we are
created, moulded, formed by a bewildering matrix of contingencies that
continually arise and vanish. On reflection, we see how we are formed from
the patterning of the DNA derived from our parents, the firing of a
hundred billion neurons in our brains, the cultural and historical
conditioning of the twentieth century, the education and upbringing given
us, all the experiences we have ever had and choices we have ever made.
These processes conspire to configure the unrepeatable trajectory that
culminates in this present moment. What is here now is the unique but
shifting impression left by all of this, which I call ‘me.’
Moreover, this
gradual dissolution of a transcendental basis for self nurtures an
empathetic relationship with others. The grip of self not only leads to
alienation but numbs one to the anguish of others. Heartfelt appreciation
of our own contingency enables us to recognize our inter-relatedness with
other equally contingent forms of life. We find that we are not isolated
units but participants in the creation of an ongoing, shared reality.
A postmodern
perspective would question the mythic status of Buddhism and Agnosticism.
In letting go of ‘Buddhism’ as a grand, totalizing narrative that explains
everything, we are freed to embark on the unfolding of our own
individuation in the context of specific local and global communities. We
may find in this process that we too are narratives. Having let go of the
notion of a transcendental self, we realize we are nothing but the stories
we keep telling ourselves in our own minds and relating to others. We find
ourselves participating in a complex web of narratives: each telling its
own unique story while inextricably interwoven with the tales of others.
Instead of erecting totalitarian, hierarchic institutions to set our grand
narratives in brick and stone, we look to imaginative, democratic
communities in which to realize our own petits recits: small narratives.
Such a view is
inevitably pluralistic. Instead of seeing itself in opposition to other
grand narratives that seem to contradict or threaten it, Buddhism
remembers how in its vital periods it has emerged out of its interactions
with religions, philosophies, and cultures other than its own. This
reminds one of the traditional Hua-yen image of the Jewelled Net of Indra:
that vast cosmic web at the interstices of which is a jewel that reflects
every other jewel. Today this image suggests the biosphere itself: that
vast interdependent web of living systems that sustain each other in a
miraculous whole. Which brings us back to the metaphor of wilderness as an
image of a postmodern, postpath practice of Buddhism.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Notes
1. From T.H.
Huxley’s essay ‘Agnosticism’ (1889) included in Science and the Christian
Tradition. London: Macmillan, 1904, p. 239.
2. Huxley, op cit.,
245-6
3. Buddhism: An
Illustrated Review, Vol II, no.1, Rangoon, October 1905, p. 86.
4. Abridged from the
Culamalunkya Sutta (Majjhima Nikaya 63). Tr. Nanamoli Thera and Bhikkhu
Bodhi. The Middle Length Sayings of the Buddha. Boston: Wisdom, 1995,
pp.534-6.
5. Yamada, Koun.
Gateless Gate. Los Angeles, 1979, p. 208.
6. Yampolsky, Philip
B. The Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch. New York: Columbia
University Press, p. 94.
7. Nagarjuna.
Mulamadhyamakakarika XXIV:18 a-b. My own translation from the Tibetan: /rten
cing ‘brel bar ‘byung ba gang/ /de ni stong pa nyid du bshad.
8. Nagarjuna.
Mulamadhyamakakarika XXIV:18 c-d. My own translation from the Tibetan: /de
ni brten nas gdags pa ste/ /de nyid dbu ma’i lam yin no.
9. Tsongkhapa. rTsa
she tik chen rigs pa’i rgya mtsho. Sarnath: 1973, p. 431. The Tibetan
reads: ...stong pa nyid de ni yod med kyi mtha gnyis spangs pas dbu ma
dang de’i lam ste dbu ma pas bgrod pa’i shul yin no.
10. See Andrew P.
Tuck. Comparative Philosophy and the Philosophy of Scholarship: On the
Western Interpretation of Nagarjuna. New York/Oxford: OUP, 1990.
11. Jean-François
Lyotard. The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. Tr. Geoff
Bennington and Brian Massumi. Manchester: Manchester University Press,
1986, p.xxiv. I have translated Lyotard’s grands récits as ‘grand
narratives’ rather than ‘metanarratives’ as found in this English
translation.
12. Galen Strawson.
‘The Sense of Self.’ London Review of Books, 18 April 1996, pp. 21-2.
13. For further
information on these organizations, see Stephen Batchelor. The Awakening
of the West: The Encounter of Buddhism and Western Culture. London:
Thorsons, 1994.
14. See, for
example, S.K. Hookham. The Buddha Within: Tathagatagarbha Doctrine
According to the Shentong Interpretation of the Ratnagotravibhaga. Albany:
State University of New York Press, 1991.
Return
to Table of Contents
|