PRESENTED TO THE BUDDHA CENTRE ON JULY 27 AND 30, 2013, AND AGAIN TO THE NEW BUDDHA CENTRE ON SATURDAY, AUGUST 24, 2024

Talk 7

The Way of Transcendence

The Buddha did not like to answer questions about the world, whether it is eternal or not or whether it is finite or not; the relationship between the soul and the body; and the post-mortem status of a Tathagata. He discouraged speculating about such things. The Buddha said that, instead of speculating, one should work on oneself. This need not imply that the questions have no answers. Thus, the Buddha describes the world; he denies the reality of the soul; he affirms the Deathless. One cannot infer from this passage that the Buddha denies ontology, although it is widely interpreted this way. What the Buddha seems to be criticizing is not the validity of ontology, but rather the soteriological value of a certain mode of questioning, i.e., trying to infer the nature of the transdual from the standpoint of the dualistic reasoning faculty.

In these passages and others, the Buddha presents the alternatives in terms of two or four logical contraries. For example, the statements that (a) after death a Tathagata exists, (b) after death a Tathagata does not exist, (c) after death a Tathagata both exists and does not exist, and (d) after death a Tathagata neither exists nor does not exist. The Pali Canon repeats this logical construction, called a tetralemma, all through. The Buddha makes it clear that none of these statements is true or false. He does not say there is no truth. Rather, he implies that one cannot realize the truth this way.

Rather, one must work on oneself to discover the actual experience of the transdual. Spiritual realization is essentially non-rational and experiential. One cannot reach it by questioning. Therefore, one cannot reach enlightenment by questioning. The Buddha points toward the answer by indicating that the inquirer should pursue self-knowledge, especially the Four Truths. The Four Truths are not theories but matters of fact subject to immediate experiential verification. By starting with consciousness, one establishes what one knows. Then one can reason from the known to the unknown. Thus, the Four Truths are not merely psychological; they are ontological. Suffering, desire and its cessation, and the path itself exist within an ontological context. They also indicate its nature, and it, theirs. In this way, the Buddha developed a phenomenology of transcendence, not a psychotherapy or relaxation technique. He had to. Spirituality without ontology is incomplete and therefore imperfect. The teaching is perfect.

The apparent denigration of questioning in these passages also reflects a division already present in the ascetic movement between the proponents of wisdom, the cure for ignorance, and the proponents of renunciation, the cure for desire. In time, these separated into the Mahayana and Hinayana schools.

Ignorance is the root of the chain of cause and effect, and desire, the eighth of the intermediate causal links. The proponents of wisdom argued that, since ignorance is the root of the chain of cause and effect, the most effective way to attain enlightenment is to cultivate wisdom directly. Wisdom corresponds to Right View, the first step in the Eightfold Path. The Buddha bases Right View on seclusion, cessation, and dispassion, “maturing in release.” A more ascetic school, probably associated with monasticism, held that one should regard the renunciation of craving and purification, exemplified by the Vinaya, as primary.

The primacy of desire seems to underlie the popular view that one finds in many interpretations that the path consists of ethics and meditation, with wisdom as the goal of enlightenment itself and in that order. Such a view seems to be inconsistent with the Eightfold Path, as pointed out by Dr. Peter Masefield. The Eightfold Path presents meditation as the culmination of a path that begins with wisdom and intention. Ethics or self-control follows this. This view leads to different conclusions as to how the mind ought to be cultivated in the first place, either by developing the mind and the will or by following ethical precepts and practising meditation. The latter is included in the former, but at a later stage. The Dalai Lama discusses the value of knowledge and meditation in relation to each other in an interesting YouTube video. He warns that the practice of meditation, pursued in isolation, without the corresponding development of the mind, can lead to dullness rather than clarity. Perhaps this is why the Buddha said that no path that excludes the Eightfold Path is valid.

The Buddha describes a series of monastics who attain a little. Agitated by the experience of awakening, they fall into various errors. The lowest one falls into the error of pride because of the prestige of becoming a monastic; he denigrates others. The Buddha says that this monk has only attained the “twigs and leaves” of the spiritual life, which he compares to the heartwood of a great tree. The next lowest monastic is attached to morality and becomes self-righteous. The Buddha says that this monastic has attained the outer bark of the spiritual life and stopped there. The Buddha warns against attachment to rules. The preeminent example is Devadatta, the Buddha’s cousin and brother-in-law. Devadatta broke away from the Buddha and sought to establish a separate community based on a much more rigid interpretation of the rules than the Buddha. The next monastic is attached to concentration; he becomes arrogant. He has attained the inner bark of the spiritual life. The next monastic achieves knowledge and vision; he looks down on others. His is the sapwood. Finally, the monastic who achieves perpetual emancipation has attained the heartwood of the tree, enlightenment itself. The Buddha says that there is no falling away from it. It is a qualitative and definitive change of state.

The implication of this story is that the path leading to enlightenment begins with ordination and leads to enlightenment by way of the progressive cultivation of self-control, concentration, and wisdom. In this case, one should not conflate wisdom with emancipation but it is its immediate precursor. Emancipation is a “leap” in which time ceases (i.e., the eternal present of the metaphysical point of view). In the Einsteinian equations, this would mean one is travelling at the speed of light (interestingly, the Dalai Lama associates this with Shambhala). Thus, wisdom is second only to enlightenment. It is also the first step of the Path. This dual view of wisdom creates a paradox.

The Eightfold Path is the subject of the Fourth Truth of Buddhism. It consists of eight steps: Right View, Right Intention, Right Speech, Right Action, Right Livelihood, Right Effort, Right Mindfulness, and Right Concentration. The Eightfold Path is the template for the practice of the Buddhist path or way, not only in the Pali Canon but also for all of Buddhism. Its purpose is the fading away of lust, abandoning the fetters, uprooting the underlying tendencies, understanding rebirth, destroying the taints, and realizing the fruit of true knowledge and liberation for the sake of gnosis, vision, and final emancipation without attachment. In other words, detachment and wisdom are both the means and the goal.

Right View is formally the knowledge of the truth of suffering, formulated in the Four Truths. Right Intention is the intention to renounce unwholesome intentions. Right speech is the renunciation of lying, gossip, harmful speech, etc. Right Action is the observance of the other moral and ethical norms. Intention, speech, and action correspond to mind, speech, and body. Right Livelihood consists of earning a living by ethical means, implied in Right Action. Right Livelihood prohibits Buddhists from trading in weapons, human beings (i.e., slavery and prostitution), flesh (i.e., breeding animals), intoxicants, and poisons. Right Effort is the desire and effort to cultivate wholesome actions, apparently an intensification of Right Intention. Right Mindfulness is clarity of consciousness with respect to the experience of body, mind, and phenomena. Right Concentration refers to the practice of meditation, consisting of seclusion, the cultivation of awareness, and mental concentration leading to the four meditative states.

There are several things worth noting about this presentation of the path. First, the Pali word sammā, often translated as ‘right,’ conveys a deeper meaning which underscores that each step of the Eightfold Path must be fully realized in its entirety before moving on to the next. This challenges the common interpretation of the Path as a linear progression from an inferior to a superior state. Some might reduce Right View to an intellectual exercise or a simple formality, but such an interpretation misses the point that Right View is a profound, transformative realization, not just a concept to be learned. The Eightfold Path is not merely about adhering to external rules or steps; it’s about genuine, lived experience and transformation at every stage.

Dr. Peter Masefield makes a similar point with respect to the translation of ariyan in the context of the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path. While dictionaries typically render ariyan as ‘noble,’ Dr. Masefield criticizes this translation and suggests the term ‘supermundane’ instead. By this, he emphasizes the extraordinary, transcendent nature of the Path, to highlight the depth and transformative nature of the Path, which cannot be approached casually or as a mere formality.

View refers to an awakening by which one experiences the truth of the teaching as direct intuitive certainty. View excludes the perfection of the will; otherwise, the Path would not need to refer to Intention. Since it is will, volition, or intention that underlies moral causality, the establishment of View alone cannot mean that one no longer generates karma. The canon also refers to this experience as “opening the dharma eye.”

By this experience, one becomes a student. One wonders about the notion that View automatically means that one becomes a stream-entrant (or stream-winner). A stream-entrant will attain enlightenment and has ceased to generate new causes and effects. Karmic non-generation could only be true of the aspirant who had perfected his intention. Of course, the perfection of view logically leads to the perfection of intention, so perhaps the distinction is merely semantic.

One might compare View with the Christian concept of conversion (metanoia). Nevertheless, the attainment of View is far more than a conversion in the common sense. Technically, View is a qualitative transformation of the mind. One might understand the Eightfold Path as a progressive refinement of a substance, such as gold, which has already gone through a fundamental transformation but none of its changes defile it. This is the meaning of the “graduated path.” It is the hypostatization of a potential that manifests in the first step and is always present in essence.

All wisdom traditions of the world report the “awakening” experience. What is unique to Buddhism is that the central aspect of View consists of a deep realization of the truth of suffering, including its cause and cure. This realization is the immediate trigger of the realization of View. Elsewhere, the Buddha says that the realization of change is the decisive experience of his enlightenment. Still others mention awareness of the breathing. All these things are interrelated; all lead to the comprehensive and essential realization of emptiness, emancipation, and finally the “leap into the transdual itself. Masefield quotes a passage in which the Buddha says, “‘Right view races on ahead,’ which it does according to the commentary, ‘in order to prepare the path’” (p. 39, quoting the Samyutta Nikaya i.33). It is, as it were, a decisive glimpse of a future attainment.

Therefore, it follows there are at least two distinct transformative states, perhaps more: an initial awakening followed by enlightenment or emancipation. Enlightenment and emancipation can be further differentiated with reference to the Buddha’s enlightenment at the age of 35 and his ‘”final emancipation” at the age of 80. We have also referred to an illumination or kundalini-type experience that he had while still an ascetic. In addition, there is the intimation of his childhood experience under the rose-apple tree.

The Eightfold Path is clearly a sequence of steps. Nevertheless, the conventional order of the path begins with the cultivation of ethics or self-control. The cultivation of meditation follows ethics, culminating in wisdom as the effect of the practice of the foregoing. Convention hardly mentions intention and effort. The actual order of the path as presented by the Buddha (I do not believe any texts present the Eightfold Path in any other order) proceeds from the establishment of perfect wisdom to the will to attain to self-control (speech, action, and livelihood) to cultivating wholesomeness. The path culminates in meditation, consisting of energy, awareness and concentration. The sequential view of the Eightfold Path presents a different picture of the path than the usual presentation by those who might wish to make the observance of Vinaya the foundation of the path and meditation its exclusive spiritual practice, with little emphasis on study. However, this can lead to an imbalance that can lead to delusion.

Another noteworthy point is the inclusion of Livelihood in this very august list. This shows that the householder can pursue the path as such; a monastic cannot practise livelihood, strictly speaking, since a monastic may not work. The only possible conclusion is that the Path is not reserved for a monastic elite, but for a spiritual elite that includes both monastic and lay Buddhist practitioners. The noble community exists within and above the ignoble community. The Buddha recommended the practice of meditation to both householders and women.

The Buddha also addresses the thorny question of who can teach. He had already devolved the formula of ordination to the monks. This made the Buddhist community a decentralized, if not perfectly flat, social network. In accord with the Buddha’s last words, the community did not become truly hierarchical until after his death, when they instituted a hierarchy based on seniority.

The Buddha states that anyone who has attained the first meditative state may teach. Implicitly, this assumes that wisdom and self-restraint have already been mastered, as these qualities are foundational to the path and precede the attainment of deeper meditative states. On the other hand, the first meditative state is primarily a mental state, characterized by the presence of thinking, rapture, and the pleasure of seclusion, rather than being purely cognitive or intellectual in nature.

Two Ordinations

When Ananda suggested that the spiritual life consists half of “virile effort” and half of the companionship of good friends and comrades, the Buddha declared the companionship of good friends and comrades to be the entire spiritual life! The community is egalitarian. The Buddha says that, to achieve such an order, the members must rely on each other as they rely on the Buddha himself; everyone teaches everyone else. The community venerates the Buddha, less as an idol than as an equal, “by relying upon the Buddha [also] as a good friend.” The community also shared property equally, like the inhabitants of Uttarakuru.

Nevertheless, the Buddha ordained other recluses as though he were releasing them from the household life into homelessness. The ascetics say to the Buddha, “We were very nearly lost, we very nearly perished, for formerly we claimed that we were ascetics, though we were not really ascetics; we claimed that we were Brahmins though we were not really Brahmins; we claimed that we were arhants though we were not really arhants. But now we are ascetics, now we are Brahmins, now we are arhants.”

The Bodhisattva began his spiritual career as a recluse. This inverts the relationship of Gotama to the group of five ascetics with whom he started. They rejected him because, being close to death, he violated his vow of abstinence (in their view) by eating some rice pudding offered to him by a village girl, Sujata. Sujata believed that he was the spirit of the tree under which he sat. Now the Buddha is receiving the ascetics into the homeless life. The interaction is clearly a kind of initiation or transmission. It includes elements of supplication, characterized by humility and contrition; conversion; and usually some instruction by the Buddha (the so-called “dharma in brief”). An acceptance and a sending forth follows the transmission, in what appears to be a formalized practice.

The ascetics were recluses. They were the yogis of other non-Vedic schools who, like the Buddha, were hostile to the Brahmans. They came to the Buddha and accepted his teaching. He in turn recognized them and accepted them into the order. Then they go forth into seclusion, apparently from the community as well, often to attain emancipation.

The Buddha seems to have instituted two parallel formulas of ordination, including an extended community. A reclusive elite lived between society and the community. One thinks immediately of the Tibetan mahasiddhas of the 8th to 12th centuries. A similar tradition survives today amongst the Thai forest monks. Admission to the extended community appears to have been highly decentralized and relatively easy. Admission to the noble community appears to have been the prerogative of the Buddha and, perhaps, his closest disciples.

Such recluses must have lived on the edge of society. They still engaged in alms gathering; therefore, they could not have been utterly solitary. Even Kondanna, the Buddha’s first disciple, did not live so far that he was unable to travel on foot to the Buddha and worship his feet before returning to his Himalayan retreat. There he died the next day. The texts imply that the imminent death was the reason for the visit, so it could not have been far. These recluses practised the last three steps of the Eightfold Path –Effort, Mindfulness, and Concentration. They lived alone in clearings, forests, and other secluded places.

The practice of meditation leads naturally to progressively subtle states of mind. This culminates in the realization of sentience, mind, emptiness, concentration, and bliss – the “divine eye” of the “pure bright mind.” Commonly referred to as Luminous Mind, this is a clear precursor of the Mahayana doctrine of the Clear Light.

He realizes his identity with all other beings. He understands his former births and the mechanisms of moral causality and rebirth. A key point is the repeated statement that one realizes all these states in and with the body. The Buddha rejects the theory of a soul that separates from the body. However, the Buddha does not deny the reality of meditative states of mind. Since the soul does not dissociate, one can only experience these states in the body. Realizing the nature of reality, he achieves transcendence and experiences the direct and intuitively certain fact of liberation. This group may have been the nucleus of what became the community of saints.

Another place to which the Buddhist recluses retired was the charnel ground. The Indian charnel ground was not a pleasant place. The remains of corpses in all stages of decomposition filled it. Some still had pieces of cloth clinging to them, which the early Buddhist recluses gathered, pieced together, and sewed into robes. Ascetics survived on the food offerings left for the dead by relatives and friends.

The standard period of meditation in a charnel ground was twelve years. Padmasambhava completed the charnel ground meditation more than once. Meditating in charnel grounds was a pan-Indian practice. Non-Buddhist recluses outside the Brahman orthodoxy also observed it. Recluses must have included proto-Shaivite and proto-Tantric practitioners. They also practiced sleep deprivation and fasting. Here is more evidence of a proto-Tantric thread in early Buddhism.

Meditating in a charnel ground brings one face to face with the reality of human existence, with a bodily immediacy of transformative power. Such practices appear to have been reserved for an elect within the Buddhist community. They requested permission from the Buddha to go forth. They also gained inspiration from a personal encounter with the Buddha himself. Not only monastics approached the Buddha in this way. Householders too “went forth.” Some achieved enlightenment after a relatively brief time.

Summary

In summary, the discussion of the Buddhist way of transcendence involves questions concerning the ontological status of enlightenment, the role of questioning, the role of rationality, and the nature of the human state. The Buddha said that asking and answering such questions would not lead to the desireless state. Nevertheless, the Buddha himself asked and answered such questions in a 45-year conversation with anyone who cared to approach him.

The Eightfold Path begins with the cultivation of perfect wisdom. The Buddha describes the world; he denies the reality of the soul; he affirms the Deathless. The Buddha recognized that reason could only lead so far. A “leap”  into the void follows the mastery of reason. One must cultivate reason to transcend it. Ignorance is the root of the chain of causality. The direct cognition of transdual reality can induce an intellectual simulacrum of the experience of transcendence that can trigger the Buddha-potential resulting in complete transcendence.

By cultivating the appropriate qualities, anyone can achieve awakening, ultimately. The realization of the ubiquity of suffering leads to the deep ontological realization of suffering, change, and emptiness. This definitive transformation of state makes one a student of the teaching. It sets one upon the path that leads inevitably to enlightenment. It is subject only to the contingency of “unripened” causes. The attainment of View is not absolute. It is only the first step, decisive though it is. Volition is always present. Therefore, one can still deviate from the path at any time prior to complete and perfect enlightenment, which is a qualitative change of state from which there is no return.

The community includes the ignoble and the noble, as suggested by Dr. Masefield, thus creating a community within a community. Although it is the culmination of the path, many people, including householders, may practise meditation beneficially. It is not secret. Enlightenment consists in the attainment of the Divine Eye of the Luminous Mind. There is no soul. One experiences all spiritual realizations in the body. All are immediate, certain, and blissful. Enlightenment is not affectless. It is a state of deep and abiding bliss.

Buddha Centre, Saturday, August 24, 2024

---