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From: david@star2.cm.utexas.edu (David Sigeti)
Newsgroups: talk.religion.misc,soc.religion.eastern
Subject: Re: Buddhism and the reality of the phenomenal world (was Re: bloody Buddhists!)
Message-ID: <1990Dec20.012217.6422@nas.nasa.gov>
Date: 20 Dec 90 01:22:17 GMT
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In article <1990Dec18.184453.16768@noose.ecn.purdue.edu> 
muttiah@maize.ecn.purdue.edu (Ranjan S Muttiah) writes:

   In article <1990Dec18.004932.9293@nas.nasa.gov> 
   david@star2.cm.utexas.edu (David Sigeti) writes:

   [I have added two paragraphs of context.  Ranjan quoted just the
   sentence with the capitalized phrase. DES]

      In psychological terms, we might say that what is wrong with our
      approach to the world has two aspects: an affective aspect,
      grasping; and a cognitive aspect, principally a belief in
      "essences".  Although refuting the cognitive error is clearly
      not going to solve the problem on its own, doing this can be a
      valuable *aid* to curing our habitually misdirected approach to
      the world.  This is precisely the purpose of the many statements
      in the Buddhist literature that are sometimes misinterpreted to
      be saying that the phenomenal world is somehow illusory or
      nonexistent.  When the sutras say that "the sentient beings are
      not really sentient beings," they are not saying that the
      sentient beings are not there at all.  Rather, they are saying
      that the sentient beings are not what we take them to be.  In
      particular, *we* are not what we take *ourselves* to be.
      
      This is worth repeating: WE ARE NOT WHAT WE THINK WE ARE [*].
                               ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ 
      I can't think of a more important insight in the whole of
      Buddhism.  I found this conclusion increasingly evident and
      inescapable pretty early in my practice of zazen: "Good Heavens,
      I really am *not* what I thought I was."  When the emperor asked
      Bodhidharma, "Who are you?"  Bodhidharma replied, "I don't
      know."  Do *you* know who *you* are?  Lin-chi (Rinzai) said, "No
      man, but causation."  There is no human being, only a chain of
      causation.  The old man (who was really a fox) said to Pai-chang
      (Hakujo), "I am not a human being."  Indeed, are any of us
      "human beings"?
	    
   So say we reach some stage of attainment (whatever that is) say
   this follows from [*].  Then we discover that the method of that
   attainment itself was flawed by [*].  Thus [*] is self contradictory.

   Is this QEA or QED ?

This is a very perceptive observation and it goes right to the heart
of what I was trying to say in the capitalized phrase.  Each of us
continually takes herself to be *something*.  Sometimes it is a
location in space, sometimes a part of the body (often a spot between
and just behind the eyes).  Sometimes we ruminate and take ourselves
to be our stream of thoughts.  We may meditate and take ourselves to
be a point of (supposedly) pure awareness.  But always *something*.
Of course, the problem is that this *something* is constantly
shifting.  Not only is the thing that we take ourselves to be itself
changing constantly, but we ourselves are constantly shifting our
point of view, constantly changing what it is that we think we are.

The sensible conclusion is, of course, that we really aren't anything
at all.  It is characteristic of the Pali suttas that they simply
state this conclusion baldly -- "All things are without self
(anatta)".  This method has many virtues, especially if one is
attempting to *found* a new religion/philosophy.  The problem comes
when one attempts to *practice* the philosophy.  Then the abstract
nature of doctrine becomes a major problem.  To say abstractly that
"there is no self," already presupposes (or creates) a distance from
the immediate experience that the statement seeks to affirm.  The
Mahayana sutras attempt to deal with this problem by enumerating
endlessly the things that we aren't, thus bringing the reader closer
to seeing that she is not anything at all.  The Zen masters were even
more direct, pointing directly to this very experience of "not being
anything".  The old man (who is really a fox) has gotten far enough to
see clearly that he is not a "human being".  Bodhidharma really
*doesn't* know who he (or anyone else) is.
--
David Sigeti    david@star2.cm.utexas.edu    cmhl265@hermes.chpc.utexas.edu