Seeking clarity for myself (if not for others!), I consistently return to the thought that prior to any diversification I need to rest in a unity, in One, in faith, in trust, in pure acceptance. This guarantees absolutely nothing but is the only ground, the firm ground of emptiness.
Whether heading for the Pure Land or heading for hell, all is in Amida's hands.
This is all in keeping with those in Zen who speak of the living unity of experience that precedes dichotomies of mind and body, subject and object. To arrive here involves for most the "examined life", one that calls us to the critical examination of all our preconceptions, each and every presumption given us, unasked, by our culture, upbringing, our unique time and place. I have found that this involves more a stripping away of ideas rather than any gradual accumulation - it seems to me that often the path of accumulation is a way of confirmation bias, a seeking for facts that support preconceived ideas, avoidance of genuine consideration of what counts against them. Stripping away however, the via negativa, the way of negation, is a way that is nevertheless supported by a complete trust in Reality itself, that sustains us no matter what.
At this point I often reflect upon just how anyone even begins to enter any path, breaking away from convention, from their own preconceptions. I think now that what answer there is is found in the Mahayana insight of upaya, or expedient means. This suggests that this very earth, reality itself, brings forth fruit of itself, having a healing, natural power. Our earth,space itself, is always holding and offering the potential of awakening as part of its nature. As has been said by another, Zen Buddhism developed and cannot be fully understood outside of a worldview that sees reality itself as a vital, ephemeral agent of awareness and healing, recognising the liberative qualities of spatiality and temporality.
Each of us is unique, irreplaceable, and the dharma rain falls upon all equally, calling for an answer.
Carl Jung once said that there is absolutely no truth that does not "spell salvation to one person and damnation to another.......there is no good that cannot produce evil and no evil that cannot produce good", which can be a frightening thought to the doctrinaire who preach an absolute truth needing to be accepted by all.
A case in point arises from reading about the understanding of certain philosophers/philosophical ideas where such ideas has led their proponents to "anguish", to mental breakdown, to the thought of being "condemned" to freedom. I speak of David Hume and his extreme Empiricism, who saw that the "self" was merely a succession of impressions and not substantial........of Sartre and his Existentialist anguish when realising that he has "no essence" then cries out in misery that he is "condemned to be free" and that "man is a useless passion". Well, maybe so.
Yet the strange thing is that such insights and thoughts were the bread and butter of the Buddha, who saw such things - an unsubstantial self, of being without essence, of each moment being contingent, of the radical freedom of being (or non-being!) - as being a blessed release from suffering. What to make of such things?
Well whatever we make of them, back now to what was stated near the beginning of this rather dense blog, of the living unity of experience that precedes dichotomies of mind and body, subject and object. My friend and mentor Thomas Merton had this to say in his essay "The New Consciousness" drawn from his book "Zen and the Birds of Appetite":-
Meanwhile, let us remind ourselves that another, metaphysical, consciousness is still available to modern man. It starts not from the thinking and self-aware subject but from Being, ontologically seen to be beyond and prior to the subject-object division. Underlying the subjective experience of the individual self there is an immediate experience of Being. This is totally different from an experience of self-consciousness. It is completely nonobjective. It has in it none of the split and alienation that occurs when the subject becomes aware of itself as a quasi-object. The consciousness of Being (whether considered positively or negatively and apophatically as in Buddhism) is an immediate experience that goes beyond reflexive awareness. It is not “consciousness of” but pure consciousness, in which the subject as such “disappears.”
Posterior to this immediate experience of a ground which transcends experience, emerges the subject with its self-awareness. But, as the Oriental religions and Christian mysticism have stressed, this self-aware subject is not final or absolute; it is a provisional self-construction which exists, for practical purposes, only in a sphere of relativity. Its existence has meaning in so far as it does not become fixated or centered upon itself as ultimate, learns to function not as its own center but “from God” and “for others.” The Christian term “from God” implies what the non-theistic religious philosophies conceive as a hypothetical Single Center of all beings, what T. S. Eliot called “the still point of the turning world,” but which Buddhism for example visualizes not as “point” but as “Void.” (And of course the Void is not visualized at all.)
In brief, this form of consciousness assumes a totally different kind of self-awareness from that of the Cartesian thinking-self which is its own justification and its own center. Here the individual is aware of himself as a self-to-be-dissolved in self-giving, in love, in “letting-go,” in ecstasy, in God—there are many ways of phrasing it.
The self is not its own center and does not orbit around itself; it is centered on God, the one center of all, which is “everywhere and nowhere,” in whom all are encountered, from whom all proceed. Thus from the very start this consciousness is disposed to encounter “the other” with whom it is already united anyway “in God.”
The metaphysical intuition of Being is an intuition of a ground of openness, indeed of a kind of ontological openness and an infinite generosity which communicates itself to everything that is. “The good is diffusive of itself,” or “God is love.” Openness is not something to be acquired, but a radical gift that has been lost and must be recovered (though it is still in principle “there” in the roots of our created being). This is more or less metaphysical language, but there is also a non-metaphysical way of stating this. It does not consider God either as Immanent or as Transcendent but as grace and presence, hence neither as a “Center” imagined somewhere “out there” nor “within ourselves.” It encounters him not as Being but as Freedom and Love. I would say from the outset that the important thing is not to oppose this gracious and prophetic concept to the metaphysical and mystical idea of union with God, but to show where the two ideas really seek to express the same kind of consciousness or at least to approach it, in varying ways.
Rather long, yet to me, because it is expressed in basically western terms, offers clarity.
Clarity, but let me pick up Merton's words that T.S.Eliot's "still point of the turning world" is visualised by the Buddhists not as "point", but as "void." But "Void" in any nihilistic sense? Merton knows better, being himself very familiar with the apophatic mystics of his own Christian Church. But the word "void" drives others into musings upon the nothingness of the "languid east" that seeks a "nihilistic return to nothingness" (as I have had occasion to read once), with the Buddha happily contemplating his navel for all eternity. That such is a misconception, simply the application of western logic dropped upon words and concepts of another order entirely - even another logic - is sometimes never given thought. Which in our times of Interfaith dialogue is rather sad and frankly, not excusable.
Perhaps, gradually, we of the West can acclimatise ourselves to "eastern" ways of seeing things.
A simple contrast is that of "internal relations" as opposed to "external relations". Western logic, where A is A and B is B and never the twain shall meet (!) each "thing" exists independently and any relationship between "things" becomes a third factor. By contrast, in internal relations, the necessary third factor is that which overlaps, or interlinks, in fact the shared part of A and B. Such a contrast has obvious implications for the relationship between "knower" and "known", subject and object. This leads, as far as Dogen's thought is concerned, to "we are that which we understand" while the internal model implies engagement and praxis in preference to observation and analysis.
William Blake, though of the West, saw that we murder to dissect. Maybe, like all things, it is not necessarily a case of "either/or" but of "both/and", and each way is a part of being human.
However, in suggesting this, consideration should be given to the so called "argument by relegation" where opposite positions are treated not by refuting them, but by accepting them as true, but only true as a part of the full picture. One way of knowing is not to cast aside but rather the idea is perhaps to live/know just which form of knowledge encompasses/enfolds the other.
Moving on, an example of misunderstanding, one which can lead to "nothingness" being decried and misunderstood, is in the translating of certain Buddhist philosophical texts.
Nagarjuna, a prominent thinker of the Mahayana school of Buddhism, uses the sanskrit phrase "na vidyate" which is often translated as "does not exist" when in fact a true literal translation is "not seen" or "is not found". Thus the experiential nature of Nagarjuna's idiom is lost and transformed into a conclusion of thought. Translators also turn phrases meaning "are not evident" or "do not occur" into "do not exist." Nagarjuna in fact said "does not exist" (na asti) when he meant it, and therefore such a phrase should not be used more generally merely because it fits modern thought better, or worse, preconceptions.
Myself, I think of my very last blog where the Japanese terms for "being" were mentioned - "having at hand" or "something that strikes the hand", this opposed to nothingness, meaning something like "present, but not to hand." Whatever, I ramble, and I doubt that many have reached this far in this dense blog.
No matter. Myself, I find ever and ever greater clarity, even as Reality itself becomes ever more ineffable.
"Faith seeking understanding".
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