THIS TALK WAS PRESENTED TO THE MEMBERS OF THE BUDDHA CENTER ON SATURDAY, AUGUST 23, 2014.
I
Refuge
A Buddhist accepts the Three Jewels, by taking “refuge” in the Buddha, the Teaching, and the Order. What is “taking refuge”? To take refuge is to seek the protection of good as a defence against evil. It can be a physical cave, or a city, or it can be a relationship with a person or authority. In all cases, there must be actual protection for a thing to be a refuge. Otherwise, it is simply a lie. So what does it mean to take refuge in the Buddha? For one thing, the Buddha died long ago, and made it clear he wasn’t coming back. The protection must be actual. Two possibilities present themselves: either the Buddha continues to exist in some transcendent sense and can confer actual protection (cf. the Third Jewel), or the Buddha was referring to something else. Possibly, we should study his example, as a spiritual hero who has attained realization. Studying his example may include seeking to understand him personally, or getting to know his mind, as far as it can be known from the writings passed down to us. This can be taken far. It is easy to see this in the worship of the charisma of a teacher. This can range from “spiritual friendship” to regarding the teacher as the actual Buddha. One may also worship the Buddha nature in oneself, and identify oneself with the Buddha, including visualization during meditation. “Buddha,” as the quality of fully realized sentience, is also the fundamental nature of reality and the self. All of this is implied in the First Jewel.
The Second Jewel is taking refuge in the Teaching. The Buddha also said that after his death the Teaching is to be regarded as the Buddha. Some scholars opine that the original formula consisted of taking refuge in the Teaching only. The Teaching is the teaching of the Buddha, but the Buddha made it clear that it is also primeval, the original and true spiritual way that is ultimately coterminous with the nature of reality itself (cf. Vedic rita). Taking refuge in the Teaching means that we redress the ignorance that is the fundamental cause of suffering, more fundamental even than desire, and we take refuge in the Teaching by eschewing lying, striving ever towards the truth, not evading or avoiding truth, eschewing authorities, and discovering the truth for oneself primarily by the study of books and listening to teachers, and independent reading and reflection, but also by a personal commitment to view reality objectively, rationally, and scientifically and without attachment. All of this is implied in the Second Jewel.
The Third Jewel is taking refuge in the Order. The Order is formally the community of monastics, but it is also the community of all beings, the community of all Buddhists, and the community of all superior beings, including the Buddhas, Bodhisattvas, Arahants, and perhaps some divine beings who have converted to Buddhism. We take refuge in each of these in diverse ways, primarily by following the precepts, but the ultimate refuge can only be taken in the noble community of Buddhas, Bodhisattvas, and Arhants. All of this is implied in the Third Jewel.
From the foregoing, we conclude that the following represent the highest vibration of the Three Jewels:
- I take my refuge in the universal and innate Buddha nature that is the fundamental reality of mind.
- I take my refuge in the power of truth of the primeval way.
- I take my refuge in the community of saints.
He who takes refuge is a refugee. A refugee is always in a state of flight, escaping from the evil that threatens them. The evil that threatens the Buddhist refugee is desirous attachment, personified as Mara, the evil itself being worldly bondage and rebirth. Existence can never be redeemed. However deep one look into existence, one finds ever self-proliferating violence, chaos, conflict, and suffering. Look at that bird there, twittering happily in a tree. What is that hanging from its beak? Oh, it’s a worm, writhing in agony as the lovely bird consumes it alive. All life is like this. There is no world, the Buddha says, in which the preconditions of suffering are not fundamental, for what world is devoid of change. This flux or continuous change frustrates attachment and creates suffering. On the other hand, desirous attachment itself creates these worlds for where there is perfect detachment, there is no desire for rebirth, and therefore rebirth itself ends once all existing karma is expiated. In this way, existence is an illusion or a delusion. Existence is created by the mind and can be destroyed by the mind. This is the answer to the question why we cannot create a perfect society of ultimately enlightened beings and so redeem existence from itself. If this were possible, it cannot be on the plane of change.
Still, human beings continue to labour and to build. The scriptures teach that we humans are in a unique situation to appreciate the teaching, neither too distressed nor too blessed to be too involved in other, positive or negative actions respectively with no time or intention to develop the thirst for transcendence. However, human beings have large groups that are either too poor or too rich to appreciate the teaching, paralleling the condition of higher and lower beings.
When the order and society are the same, such a society can be said to be as enlightened as possible within the human state. Shambhala is a city like this, and like Shambhala such a society will spontaneously produce many enlightened beings, as well as spiritual culture and a proliferation of the high arts and the best qualities in people generally. Creating such a society may be the next step in human evolution, as the present stage draws close to its inevitable end. Ironically, Buddhism, with its long history of poverty, may become the true religion of technocracy, as prophesied in the Kalachakra.
Some people long for the end of the world, whereas others who criticize Buddhism say that Buddhism is nihilism because once all beings are enlightened, existence will cease. However, where the scriptures refer to the end of the world, they are always referring to the end of desirous attachment and rebirth, for the world is beginningless and infinite therefore must be endless as well. The world is none other than the principle of temporal differentiation itself, the originating principle that is one polarity of the whole and therefore essential. Since the ultimate principle of differentiation is the karmic agency itself, there are an infinity of beings caught in an endless cycle of transmigration, illusory may be, but experienced for all that.
II
The Noble Truths
The only thing more fundamental to formal Buddhist belief than the Four Noble Truths is Taking Refuge in the Three Jewels. All Buddhists accept the Four Noble Truths. However, what do the Four Noble Truths mean?
The popular formulation of the Four Noble Truths goes something like this:
- Life is suffering.
- Suffering is caused by desire.
- The end of desire is the end of suffering.
- The way to end desire is the Noble Eightfold Path.
I will restate these principles as follows in more exacting language, to clarify what we are really talking about:
- The nature of rebirth is to suffer.
- The root cause of suffering is desirous attachment.
- Through the extinction of desirous attachment, suffering ceases.
- The way to extinguish desirous attachment is to follow the noble eightfold path in accordance with the middle way between all extremes. The eight steps are an elaboration of the perfections of the body (word, deed, and livelihood); heart (effort, mindfulness, and meditation); and mind (understanding and intention).
Much is made of the psychological implications of the Buddha’s teachings, and his apparent reticence with respect to questions concerning metaphysics. Nevertheless, a metaphysical construct underlies and implies them, as they too are implicit in reality. Therefore the question arises, What is the reality implied by the Four Noble Truths? Alternatively, what is their essential nature?
Rebirth is the fundamental characteristic of the world, the differentiated phenomenology that human beings as sentient subjects experience in and through the body as “lived reality,” governed by moral causality, the law of cause and effect on all levels – mental, verbal, and physical. It is rebirth, driven by moral causality, and characterized by suffering, that is the fundamental problem of the Buddha. The Buddha does not accept any mode of existence that implies change (or flux) as a solution to this problem, since desire posits stasis and all lived realities are impermanent and transitory by nature. This is the very definition of the world. Therefore, the Buddha posits transcendence as an absolute goal that necessarily implies the cessation of lived reality. This may or may not imply the cessation of the ontological substrate itself, since there are infinite numbers of suffering beings besides oneself. Salvation only applies to the individual who achieves the goal of absolute transcendence on their own. The salvation of one does not imply the salvation of all. Therefore, we take the view that the world, understood metaphysically or ontologically, is infinitely differentiated, rather than finite and limited. This in turn leads us further, to the ultimate view that the world is the natural antipode of emancipation and that reality itself must be transdual. This view is called the “clear light.” This leads to the realization that the world and emancipation are one, and further to the realization that pain and suffering themselves are illusions, swallowed up in the natural perfection that must be the true ground. Nevertheless, the experience of suffering exists, even if only as the illusion of an omniscient and perfect Buddha nature. This is the transdual view.
The infinity of the world implies an infinity of individually differentiated mind streams. This also corresponds to what we experience in the world. These mind streams are not “selves” because their continuity is temporal, not spatial. “Self” is not a “thing.” Mind streams are the fundamental reality of the world and their interaction creates perception that in turn creates lived reality, characterized by desire, suffering, and ignorance. However, as we have shown desire and suffering to be illusions, so too is ignorance an illusion of the underlying Buddha nature that is the subtle essence of the mind streams themselves. The mind streams themselves are essentially information, i.e., causal propensities or tendencies. Thus, lived reality itself is information. “Matter” is a delusion of the senses.
The Buddha never states that transcendence implies cessation in the ontological sense. In fact, he continuously implies that the individual who achieves transcendence is immortal. What is rejected is not even the world, which, as I have shown, is ontologically essential and therefore indestructible, but illusory attachments that create the illusion of suffering, concealing the fundamental Buddha nature from its own realization. The cessation implied by emancipation is the cessation of an illusion resulting from the delusion that lived reality presents a complete and self-sufficient explanation of existence, especially the belief in a self that underlies the illusions of permanence, satisfactoriness, attachment, etc. Desirous attachment is therefore ultimately extinguished by the realization that there are no “selves,” no permanent things that can be possessed and held in stasis forever, and that therefore to desire these things in a fixed way or “with attachment” inherently causes pain. That this view has social and political implications is obvious. It is also obvious that our society is based on the exact opposite of this and is therefore doomed to annihilation.
Theoretically, one can enjoy existence from moment to moment, without attachment, as a Buddha does, but such a solution is short-lived, for the price of the enjoyment of existence is the end of rebirth. If I were not attached then why would I create the karma of rebirth? It is a Catch-22. This karma itself is created by desirous attachment. This is why vitalistic mysticism or mystical hedonism so-called (of the type associated with Aleister Crowley, for example; see J.F.C. Fuller, The Star in the West) is self-contradictory and often self-destructive. One can only enjoy the world when and to the extent that one renounces it. Only the real renunciate dare practise Tantra, the rarest jewel of all. “The world only gives herself up to those who do not desire her.”
Since desirous attachment is caused, i.e., by ignorance, it is not essential and can be extinguished through karmic means on the levels of body, heart, and mind in accordance with the middle way between extremes. The middle way has two aspects. Horizontally, it is the energy of peace, balance, and equilibrium. Vertically, it is the power of truth achieved by the pursuit of the transdual. The perfection of the body implies control of speech, action, and livelihood, both negative (i.e., self-restraint) and positive (i.e., good speech, virtuous deeds, and good livelihood). This latter is for the bodhisattva, who seeks rebirth in the service of all. The arhant who seeks to transcend rebirth as soon as possible and for himself alone avoids the worldly inveiglements that create merit that may lead to rebirth.
I have written elsewhere on the perfections of the body and how too literal understanding here is self-contradictory. The Buddha himself refers to these perfections as elementary and inferior, which is not to say that they are not necessary. The core perfections here are not killing, not stealing, no wrongful sex, no drunkenness, and not lying.
The perfection of the heart includes effort, attention, and meditation. The perfection of effort implies enthusiasm. The perfection of attention implies the realization of the essential emptiness of awareness. The perfection of meditation implies mental concentration.
Finally, the perfection of mind includes understanding and intention. Understanding implies the complete and perfect comprehension of the teaching as the fundamental law of life. He who has right view knows through questioning that the teaching is true. He knows. Intention implies the will to achieve enlightenment for the benefit of all beings, the ultimate altruistic aspiration.
The perfection of the body is the perfection of action.
The perfection of the heart is the perfection of energy.
The perfection of the mind is the perfection of reason.
III
The Eightfold Path
The Noble Eightfold Path is the conventional English translation of the Fourth Noble Truth of the Buddha, which exposes the spiritual praxis by which the Third Noble Truth, i.e., the cessation of existential or ontological suffering, articulated in the first three noble truths, is realized. The Noble Eightfold Path consists of eight “limbs” and is conventionally translated as:
- Right View
- Right Intention
- Right Speech
- Right Action
- Right Livelihood
- Right Effort
- Right Mindfulness
- Right Concentration
Later in His career, the Buddha reformulated the Noble Eightfold Path in terms of three primary attainments: Wisdom, Morality, and Meditation. Dr. Peter Masefield has severely criticized the conventional translation of ariya as “noble,” but in fact almost every word of the conventional English translation is inadequate and misleading, both intrinsically and in terms of their connotations in English. The conventional English translations are too general and too vague to express what the eight critical constituents of the Buddhist praxis are in fact. In particular, the translations do not express the sequential nature of the path, a point made emphatically by Dr. Masefield in his Ph.D. thesis and subsequent publication, Divine Revelation in the Pali Canon. Thus, the impression that is left on the English reader is that this just is a set of injunctions, not unlike the injunctions of ethical and belief-based religions like Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, rather than a yoga. This vagueness has been taken up by religious Buddhists, both Western and Asian, so that the Noble Eightfold Path becomes little more than a belief system and an ethical system culminating in a vague notion of “meditation,” which in popular thinking connotes little more than relaxation therapy. Nothing could be further from the truth. As pointed out by Khyentse Norbu in his book, Not for Happiness: A Guide to the So-Called Preliminary Practices. In this work, Khyentse Rinpoche addresses the misconception that Buddhist practice is primarily about achieving comfort or tranquility. He asserts that if one’s aim is merely to feel good or relax, then “you are far better off having a full-body massage than trying to practice the Dharma.” The book emphasizes that genuine spiritual practice, especially the Ngöndro preliminaries, often challenges one’s comfort zones and is not intended to provide the kind of ease most worldly people seek. Another relevant work is What Makes You Not a Buddhist, where Khyentse Rinpoche challenges common misconceptions and superficial understandings of Buddhism. He encourages readers to move beyond the romanticized aspects of the tradition and engage deeply with its core teachings. Both books offer critical insights into the authentic aims of Buddhist practice, contrasting them with diluted modern interpretations.
Consequently, many Westerners practice “meditation” based on little more than an intellectual assent to a system of doctrines – and sometimes not even that – and the following of basic ethical rules. As I have shown elsewhere, the Buddha Himself disparaged both religion (Brahmanism) and ordinary ethics, which He designated as “elementary matters of mere morality.”
When one looks at path in this way, the structure of the way as a reflection of the anatomy of the person becomes self-evident. Thus, the first two parts correspond to the faculty of thinking; the following three parts correspond to speaking and action, thus completing the triad of thought, word, and deed. The concluding, supermundane parts correspond to will, consciousness, and transcendent or transdual consciousness, respectively. Students of the doctrine of selflessness may also be disconcerted to discover that sati also means “self-possession,” “self-consciousness,” i.e., the sentience of sentience, as distinct from the sentience of phenomena.
The most disconcerting element of this exegesis, which also forms a critical aspect of Dr. Masefield’s analysis, is that the first part of this method does not refer merely to intellectual or philosophical belief, but rather to salvific knowledge, wisdom, or gnosis – a detail that is almost entirely neglected in the West, and thus (according to this interpretation) vitiating or at best diminishing the nearly exclusive Western emphasis on practice. The anti-intellectual prejudice is so ingrained in certain circles of Western Buddhism that anyone who thinks about the teachings is disparaged as a mere academic. Some Buddhist groups regard questioners as potential troublemakers. This merely mirrors the modern Western prejudice against philosophical speculation and the widespread ignorance that characterizes North American society in general. On the other hand, certain religionists would also have it that ethics or morality constitute the basis of the method, followed by meditation, with wisdom as the culmination of the path. This interpretation is precisely opposite to the exposition of the Buddha Himself.
IV
The Daggers of the Path
Soon after one begins to study religion phenomenologically as the exploration of actual experiences, one discovers that experiential spirituality includes both active and passive aspects. The passive approach is characterized by obedience to an established religious authority.
The active approach to the phenomenological exploration of spiritual experience entails the deliberate induction of experiences that may be described as “spiritual,” “religious,” or “mystical.” Experiences of this type are not merely experienced; they are also sought and have been for tens of thousands of years. It is certainly true that the religious monuments referred to above are amongst the greatest works of human genius and true wonders of the world, if by “greatness” we mean beauty, sublimity, profundity, humanity, depth, splendour, grandeur, and ultimate righteousness, as well as the capacity to induce these qualities in others. The traditions associated with these icons receive the utmost veneration of billions of humans and have since early in their inception. All tend to various degrees of mutual animosity and hostility.
Orthodoxy tends to preserve traditional modes of thought and moral and ethical systems that affect the societies with which they co-exist. Thus, over time they become ossified and ineffective. The growing power of science, technology, and industry has led to a new world order, a secular society that tolerates tradition because of its stability but is fundamentally hostile to it.
Both orthodoxy and the new world order are inherently interested in their own beliefs, values and systems of organization and all therefore are authoritarian in principle. Active experiential spirituality, on the other hand, is inherently individual, experimental, challenging, and even dysfunctional (a common characteristic of all creative states). Thus, orthodoxy and the new world order both dislike it. Yet the authentic phenomenological exploration of experience leads inevitably to it, for no one can understand what one has not experienced and the direct experience of being demands the daring to demand a personal and direct relationship with it. Without this direct and personal relationship to being, there is no authenticity and no truth. In the words of Heidegger, science does not think. This judgment stands inscribed above all the portals of academe today, which collaborates with the new world order in the service of tradition, whilst bantering or bickering over footnotes.
It is only when we imagine a world that is totally free that we realize just how truly unfree we are, as we enter the era of scientific totalitarianism foretold by Huxley. Any discussion of active spiritual phenomenology therefore carries with it an aura of danger and risk.
When one studies spiritual and religious experience in this way one begins to recognize the recurrence of methods and techniques that parallel Jung’s doctrine of the archetypes, which have the capacity to induce authentic and transformative personal spiritual and religious crises in suitably prepared individuals in appropriate and supportive settings. These methods and techniques are complex, incorporating many different elements, conditioned by psychology, symbology, metaphysics, historical tradition, time, culture, place, etc. However, when one analyzes these one does not find increasing complexity. Instead, one discovers a finite set of active methods and techniques that in turn correspond to the methods and techniques used by archaic peoples whose origins in prehistory presumably reflect universal dynamics that underlie the historical traditions that survive today. These methods and techniques appear to operate in conjunction with inherent characteristics of human psychology to induce altered states of consciousness, including alterations in physical sensing, emoting, thinking, and changes in energy and behaviour. Although difficult and dysfunctional changes do occur, the overwhelming preponderance of judgment of those who have had these experiences, including highly educated and trained observers, is that they are positive, blissful, truthful, energizing and ennobling experiences, and that they lead to real, long-lasting and beneficial psychological changes and social behaviours. Similarly, Mircea Eliade found that the shamans were the psychologically healthiest and most integrated members of society. The religious monuments of tradition originate and produce experiences of just this type, much of their art, literature and oral traditions originating in just this type of experience. The scientific totalitarianism of the new world order, however, places a negative construction upon these experiences as well as tradition itself, the influence of which is being progressively eroded by the influence of the former, including judgments that these experiences are bizarre, dysfunctional, delusional, disorienting, false and individually and socially dangerous aberrations. Under the current dominant system of scientific totalitarianism and global corporatism, spiritual experience is increasingly medicalized and suppressed with drug treatments if necessary to induce a return to consensual conformity. It is barely tolerated in the form of the creative fringe.
Dharmata 