Slouching Toward Gautama: Toward a Buddhist Politics of Freedom

[ellisonz]

By Zach Dorfman
The Montréal Review, September 2011
Zach Dorfman is the assistant editor of the journal Ethics & International Affairs, a quarterly academic journal of moral philosophy and international relations published through the Carnegie Council in New York. He previously served as an editorial assistant at Tikkun Magazine, a bimonthly devoted to the intersection between progressive politics and religious life. His most recent essay, "A Diaspora of the Mind," was published in Zeek Magazine.

"All our attitudes, moral, practical, or emotional, as well as religious, are due to the 'objects' of our consciousness, the things which we believe to exist, whether really or ideally, along with ourselves."

--William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience

***

There is a central teaching in certain schools of Mahayana Buddhist metaphysics that all phenomena are shunya, or empty of inherent existence. Things only exist in their relation to one another, through the myriad arising and cessation of causes and conditions. Subject and object, self and other, the one and the many: all becoming simultaneously through some spontaneous irruption. Life, which presents itself as so dense -- like some gossamer web of being, solid from a distance -- is in fact far more delicate than we credit it to be. Causes beget causes and what we thought we knew, what we knew we knew, recedes into a distant mental space that nevertheless maintains an aura of familiarity, like the bedrooms of our infancy. This place is all silhouettes and shadows, lacking one piece of recognizable furniture, but it nevertheless has the capacity to absorb us completely.

While such terrible complexity underlies even the most simplest-seeming of objects, and we may not be able to identify the essential or inherent qualities or causes of any given phenomena, they nevertheless appear to us as solid, real "things." The central teaching of this school of philosophy is also its central paradox: phenomena arise interdependently, but they are empty. Emptiness, or shunyata, characterizes all objects, all beings, and all processes. Where we see stability, there is only unyielding flux. The essence of phenomena is to have no essence at all, except the provisional meanings that we individually and collectively ascribe to them: there is no "there" there. Seemingly impregnable from the outside, objects cannot withstand analysis. They disappear in the web of their own relations. Our most coveted possessions, spaces we've furtively made our own, the ideas of people we've loved and lusted after, all dissolve to the touch. This fact doesn't make these mental objects any less real, or their emotional force any less intense. It just means we have to take these ideal types for what they are, and, secure in the fact that they are fleeting -- transitory -- accept that we are no different.

But there is another layer to this paradox. Straining for an unattainable mental object, we end up preserving the world as it is. Sometimes a cup is just a cup.

More: http://www.themontrealreview.com/2009/Toward-a-Buddhist-politics-of-freedom.php

[marasinghe]

1. nice post, ellisonz. o/

if i might add:

".... all phenomena are shunya, or empty of inherent existence ...." -- is not limited to 'certain schools of Mahayana'. while i might quite possibly be mistaken on this point, to the best of my knowledge, this is a tenet of the Buddha's teaching which is accepted -- if, perhaps, not emphasized -- by most Buddhist sects.

this thesis is taken to the point of stating that: 'the Universe itself has been constantly expanding from & contracting to, nothingness (or sunyatta), in all its manifestations; and this process has been going for a period beyond even the knowledge of the Buddhas themselves. it is postulated that the Univers has been creating itself from nothingness, expanding to an unstated extent & collapsing back to nothingess; then back to expansion, etc.; going through this process over & over again, perhaps ad infinitum.

(Universe taken to mean: all of existence - 'Sansara'; and infinity taken to be: a period of time which no living being can travel - in thought, meditation, or imagination - not even a Buddha.)

http://www.buddhistlibraryonline.net/en/the-teachings/suttapitaka/dighanikaya/pathikavaggapali/27-dn27-agganna-sutta/61-Agganna.html

http://www.buddhistlibraryonline.net/index.php

[ellisonz]

2. Thank you.

I was spending some time over in the Religion group (mistake), and go to thinking about what the Buddhist message might be in regard to the question of "faith" and existence:

From a Mahayana Buddhist perspective, the basic critique of a Creator-God usually proceeds along the following lines. Say you assume the existence of an eternal, omniscient, omnipotent, Creator-God. If he were eternal he would be utterly causeless, always existing, creating but never created, an unmoved mover. He would be beyond causation, prior and posterior to it. But if he were in fact beyond causation, he would be unable to himself cause anything, because only beings or objects with causal power can affect other like objects. To exist beyond causality, then, most likely means to not exist at all. Of course, it is possible that a quasi-impotent God could abide outside the realm of human perception, and be granted a sort of "permanent observer" status, viewing the goings-on of the cosmos from afar. (2) I doubt, though, that most believers from within the monotheistic tradition would find this idea of God accurate or desirable. A God who cannot provide wish fulfillment is probably not a God worth worshiping.

I think the last two sentences of that paragraph are too dualistic, and as he states right up front "Sometimes a cup is just a cup." - I think many there spend too much time there engaging in incorrect thinking, the question shouldn't be what some people think about such questions, or what what can be proved, but what we conceive our existence being and not-being. You are correct in your point, this is not just a Mahayana idea, this is the central idea, the incomprehensibility of Saṅsāra:

"Long have you (repeatedly) experienced the death of a father... the death of a brother... the death of a sister... the death of a son... the death of a daughter... loss with regard to relatives... loss with regard to wealth... loss with regard to disease. The tears you have shed over loss with regard to disease while transmigrating & wandering this long, long time — crying & weeping from being joined with what is displeasing, being separated from what is pleasing — are greater than the water in the four great oceans. "Why is that? From an inconstruable beginning. A beginning point is not evident, though beings hindered by ignorance and fettered by craving are transmigrating & wandering on. Long have you thus experienced stress, experienced pain, experienced loss, swelling the cemeteries — enough to become disenchanted with all fabricated things, enough to become dispassionate, enough to be released."

http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/sn/sn15/sn15.003.than.html

[marasinghe]

3. very good 2nd post, as well.

cheers ~