Clearing Away the Mess

       Before we start we need something we can work with, so I'd like to spend some time illustrating from exactly which concept of Buddhism we will be setting out on our quest for enlightenment.  When you think Buddhism, what are the first things that come to mind?  Temples, perhaps, big statues, Asian people, hand gestures rubbing bellies and closing your eyes as you just sit there meditating on whatever it is that Buddhists meditate on.  Maybe you think of monks dressed in old clothes, wearing big reed sombreros and standing silently on street-corners with out-thrust cups.  If you've taken a comparative religion course maybe you're arrested (or deterred) by the rank and file legion of deities that compose the four-cornered mandala of the Mahayana universe, Buddhas, Bodhisattvas, Arhats, guardian figures ghosts and local vengeful spirits assimilated into the larger Buddhist pantheon as it spread out from India across the Asian continent.  This conception of Buddhism looks to the naturalist observer as an unworkable muddle of imaginative fantasy, and Owen Flanagan begins his challenging and insightful investigation of a Buddhist-inspired secular system of ethics, The Bodhisattva's Brain: Buddhism Naturalized by questioning whether it is even possible to speak coherently about Buddhism minus those supernatural appendages: "Could it be that if you subtract the hocus pocus about rebirth and karma, and bodhisattvas flying on lotus leaves, and Buddha worlds, and nonphysical states of mind, and deities (although not a creator god), and heaven and hell realms, and oracles, and lamas who are reincarnations of lamas, there is no Buddhism left?" (Flanagan, 4)  While I won't pretend to have taken even a single step towards Buddhist scholarship and therefore won't be tackling problems of theological taxonomy, I have seen enough in Flanagan's book and my other (admittedly sparse) readings of rationalist interpretations of some Buddhist thinking to be confident in the existence of core principles that provide valuable insights into the world and the self as they truly are at their most physical.
              In our search for a Buddhism that cleaves most closely to observable reality, we would be prudent to seek out the words of it's nominal founder, Siddhartha Gautama, often called "the historical buddha" because, well, we have historical evidence of his actual existence.  "It might be claimed that 'naturalistic Buddhism' is possible because it once was, or is now, actual," Flanagan says, pointing to Siddhartha's teachings as a potential example of just such ancient naturalism.  What is it about the teachings of the historical Buddha, however, that separate his Buddhism from the more superstitionally profligate Mahayana Buddhism, say?  A few months ago I read a spectacularly useful book by a practicing monk named Koike Ryunosuke called Buddha no Kotoba: The Buddha's Voice Reinterpreted in Modern Words, which purported to be exactly that: a reworking of Siddhartha's teachings for a modern audience in contemporary Japanese using contemporary concepts, often heavily steeped in the scientific language of brain chemistry and computer-inspired models of input and output that suggest a fundamentally materialist theory of mind.  It's just one translation, but it seems as if you can get away with putting words in the Buddha's mouth that speak of the self as the non-supernatural result of fully physical processes, as gray matter interacting with gray matter to create a temporary and transient person who calls itself "I."
         Which leads me to what I really want to talk about: a particular Buddhist conception of self.  Books such as Koike's and a few others I perused, most notably two collections of Zen sayings with relevant commentary (one that actually does explain the sound of one hand clapping), and an introduction to mediation expressly written in an attempt to dispel the mystical connotations commonly attached to it led me to the doorstep of this concept of who we might be, but it was Flanagan's scholarly work that gave me the proper terminology.  Have you, by any chance, ever come across the words "Atman" and "Anatman?"  I certainly hadn't, but they are crucial to what I am trying to explain here.  Put simply, "Atman" is the concept of personhood that posits an unchanging, eternal soul inside of and separate from the body, whereas "Anatman" exists without such a thing.  Next time I want to discuss the possibility that we are all, in fact, "Anatman," and begin to contemplate what that means and where it might take us on our journey towards enlightenment. 

Where is the Western Paradise?

I mentioned in my other blog that I would be talking about my journeys in Buddha-land; this is the first of those posts.

When I was about twelve years old I developed an intense interest in the back-end of wardrobes, but after checking a few and finding nothing but wood-paneling I worried that there might not be anything there.  With a sinking heart I opened hotel closets, pulled aside my friends’ clothes when they were in the bathroom, and looked twice when passing furniture stores because just maybe something might be mixed in amongst the dressers and armoires that would open onto another world.  Eventually, I got older and figured out that the only such portal was in my head, but even after transmigration ceased being a practical possibility the theoretical appeal never quite went away.

            That, I think, is where my fascination with Buddhist enlightenment came from: it gave me one last chance to board the train to fairy-land. 

For what are looking like more and more ho-hum reasons I wanted to think of the world as a mundane sheet drawn over a sparkling second-life, but it’s clear now that no hole in the forest leads to Redwall Abbey and no door in the mountainside to Minas Tirith.  Bash up against every wall in every train station in the world and you’ll still never make it onto Platform 9 and ^¾.  In such a methodical way my childhood fantasies went one by one into the wood chipper of reality.

Enter Buddhism.  Maybe Tatooine and Tar Valon and Midgaard are all made-up, but Deer Park is a real place and they say Siddhartha reached enlightenment there.  What exactly does that feel like?  How does it work?  When you finally understand the sound of one hand clapping, does the other one sweep out of the ethereal mists and pull back the mythic curtain once and for all, revealing the glorious whatever-it-is that’s hiding beneath?

I’d like to make the argument that enlightenment is real, and you can reach it by following the eight-fold path, but it doesn’t disclose a new world so much as it casts this one in a bit of a softer light.  Give me a few posts and maybe you’ll admit I'm not crazy.  I'll begin by showing that Buddhism (of which there are admittedly many forms) contains a stripped-down world-view based on a few simple logically inescapable premises that are perfectly compatible with scientific objectivism.  From there, I'll define the optimal way of life as described by that world-view, and pursue it to the realization (awakening, enlightenment) awaiting if you follow it all the way to the end.  I'll finish with a discussion of what that might be like, how to get there, and whether or not getting there is worth it.  Amu Namida Butsu.

Mission Statement

      Some people think mission statements are silly, but I like them.  They let you know what you're in for.  Here's mine.  When I was in college someone asked me to recommend a book that changed my life but even though I was an English major and did nothing but read I couldn't come up with anything.  Now that I'm well out of college I continue to do nothing but read, but the authors are entirely different.  I've replaced non-stop fiction with all scientific non-fiction all the time, and like magic I suddenly have a library of life-changing books I'd like to recommend.  Allow me to use this space for that project.

      Now here's a couple supporting paragraphs that you could probably skip if you wanted.  I didn't used to care about science.  I used to have nightmares about science.  Science represented for me all that was dead and dull about the world.  I played baseball in college.  We were a squad composed largely of scrappers who peaked in elementary school, achieved veteran status in Junior High, and survived as competent utility-types in High School.  You shouldn't be washed up at 19 years old, but even though stats can be misleading 33 consecutive losses don't lie.  Some of us were washed up.  I was washed up, and even though you're doing your best to keep a positive outlook losing day after day after day accumulates and every now and again tempers flare up from the cold embers of futility before being choked back down.  One of my friends, Adam, was a biology major who really loved amphibians and stuff.  I was an English major who really loved... well, by the end there wasn't a lot I loved about English but there were things I was committed to.  One game, already down ten or fifteen by the third inning, the dugout crackly with frustration, Adam and I were talking and then I was yelling, "Look man, you believe in the importance of objective facts and shit, but I believe in the relative truth of my own subjective experience, alright?  Just let me believe what I want to believe for whatever reason I want to believe it!" 
     
      It's not uncommon for teammates to chew each other out in the heat of competition (or in our case, in the slow boil of an eternal ass-whooping) but the content of our argument is suggestive of why we were no good at sports.  It is also suggestive of something else, however; I considered empirical phenomenon in the physical universe irrelevant next to the noises and pretty colors in my head.  If it wasn't stated in tripping tetrameter with irregular line breaks, the gravitational constant could suck my ass.

      I no longer think that way.  I have come around to both the necessity of hanging one's life upon observable facts and the kick-ass nature of those facts themselves.  Science used to seem irrelevant and boring; now it strikes me as pressing and riveting.  What changed?  Not the science itself.  The gravitational constant is the same as it (probably) has always been, the periodic table contains the same old elements, the sun is still a big ball of gas, and not, in fact, the chariot of Apollo.  The difference, is that I found books that spoke about those dry familiar facts in the sort of juicy words I like to sink my teeth into.  Somebody showed me a youtube video about Carl Sagan and the physical sciences spread out before like a yellow brick road plumbing the horizon line.  I don't think there's an Emerald City at the end of the road, unless the Grand Unified Theory of Everything happens to dress in green, but the landmarks along the way are enough to distract me.  I was a depressed English major who loved words, hated books, and left scientific principles gathering dust in neural storage bins.  Now I'm a whatever I am who loves words and finally sees a worthwhile subject to which he might apply them.  If I can reflect a little bit of light on the universe by rephrasing the discoveries of greater minds than my own, if I can turn around and point out to someone the road which in turn was pointed out to me, well they say that payback is a bitch but giving back makes you feel real good.   Actually, you know what, payback sounds pretty good to me.  My worldview has taken a few punches over the years, so now maybe it's time to crack my knuckles and pass the bruises on.