Scientific Enlightenment, Div. One.
Book 2: Human Enlightenment of the First Axial

2.B.4. A Genealogy of the Philosophic Enlightenment in Ancient India

Chapter 4: Buddhism
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copyright © 2004, 2007 by Lawrence C. Chin. This is unfinished manuscript.


Difference and identity between Buddha's teachings and that of the Upanishads, and the meaning of Nibbana

Again, following Dasgupta. "[H]e who carefully reads the Upanishads cannot but think that the reason why the Upanishads speak of the self [atman] as bliss [ananda] is that it is eternal [the meaning of its identity with Brahman]." (Ibid., p. 110) Again, the second mode of salvation, a realization amounting to the extrication from the thermodynamic delimitations or temporal and spatial finitude: eternal life, bliss. "But the converse statement that what was not eternal was sorrow does not appear to be emphasized clearly in the Upanishads. The important postulate of the Buddha is that that which is changing is sorrow, and whatever is sorrow is not self." (Ibid.) This is Buddha's added reminder, on which the Hindus should not disagree with the Buddhists. "What is changing" refers to what is temporal, not eternal, the world of beings, of genesis and dissolution -- think back to Plato and the Presocratics -- or namely the thermodynamic finitude, which, as said, is the condition of possibility of suffering (dukkha; i.e. evil suffered), on which Buddha concentrated but which the Christians passed over, as well as of evil done or sin, which Buddha more or less passed over but on which Christians dwelled. "The point at which Buddhism parted from the Upanishads lies in the experiences of the self. The Upanishads doubtless considered that there were many experiences which we often identify with the self, but which are impermanent. But the belief is found in the Upanishads that there was associated with these a permanent part as well, and that it was this permanent essence which was the true and unchangeable self, the blissful." (Ibid.) The is the search for what is conserved -- the hypokeimenon again -- beneath the superficial coming-into-being and passing-aways, like the search in physics for that constant amount of energy which materializes now as this and then as that, or for the real same (GUT) force behind the apparently diversified and illusory forces of electromagnetism, weak, and strong nuclear force -- only this permanent one force before the symmetry-breaking into the three forces and associated with these (so to speak) impermanent forces behind the scene is the true force. "They considered that this permanent self as pure bliss could not be defined as this, but could only be indicated as not this, not this (neti, neti)." That is, the ineffability of the eternally conserved or underlying same Source because it is not-a-thing. "But the early Pali scriptures hold that we could nowhere find out such a permanent essence, any constant self, in our changing experiences. All were but changing phenomena and therefore sorrow and therefore non-self, and what was non-self was not mine, neither I belonged to it, nor did it belong to me as my self." It seems that Buddha was making the same observation which David Hume was to make two thousand years later, that there was no such "personal identity" within a person since all there was was simply a succession of impressions of the self (just as there was no causation since there was merely the following of one event upon another). But what caused Buddha to such observation was not the nihilistic differentiation which prompted Hume, but the realization that there was really nothing there at all, that Brahman was nothing, literally. Buddha therefore differed from the Hindus in that the search for Nibbana, as the salvational search for the identity between the self and the eternally conserved substrate-source, had resulted in the realization that this conserved substrate (like energy) which necessarily subsisted under all variations and changes (just as energy despite all its materializations as this here or that there forever remained the same amount) was the conservation of nothing, or rather more precisely virtual reality (that amount of energy in the universe was zero!). This was merely a more clear-sighted definition or perception of the essence of the Brahman (the conserved reality); hence Buddha's disagreement with the Upanishad Hindus, both doing the same thing and looking for the same thing, lay in his more precise perception of the same phenomenon. When Brahman as the constant or conserved behind all changes was recognized as nothing, it became Nibbana. "The true self was with the Upanishads a matter of transcendental experience as it were, for they said that it could not be described in terms of anything, but could only be pointed out as 'there', behind all the changing mental categories. The Buddha looked into the mind and saw that it did not exist." (Ibid.)

"But how was it that the existence of this self was so widely spoken of as demonstrated in experience? To this the reply of the Buddha was that what people perceived there when they said that they perceived the self was but the mental experiences either individually or together. The ignorant ordinary man did not know the [four] noble truths and was not trained in the way of wise men, and considered himself to be endowed with form (rupa) or found the forms in his self or the self in the forms. He experienced the thought (of the moment) as it were the self or experienced himself as being endowed with thought, or the thought in the self or self in the thought. It is these kinds of experiences that he considered as the perception of the self" (p. 110 - 1). This is the dissolution of the ego in Nibbana: the same perceived identity between the self (Atman) and the conserved substrate of all existence (Brahman) is however so refined that the conserved substrate (Brahman) is perceived not as being simply, but as non-being, or rather, as neither being nor non-being nor both nor neither.

We have to remember from the outset that Nirvana, or Nibbana in the original Pali, which is the attainment of boddhi, the state of enlightenment, the state of reunion with the Source, the moment of the vision of the source of being, is in outline the same as Parmenides' vision of the Is during the transport or Plato's vision of the Agathon. Nibbana, despite its differentiation to the point of neither being nor non-being nor both nor neither, is just the moment of the complete anamnesis of Conservation. Parmenides, when it comes to the source, cannot say any more than "Is", and Plato similarly emphasizes that nothing can be said regarding the Agathon. Nothing can be said of Nibbana as the Buddhist has emphasized, silence being its proper expression according to the Ch'an Buddhists, and Laozi has emphasized the unspeakability of the Dao. The source of being, the hypokeimenon or the Underlying, is the substrate whose manifestations, whose self-shufflings here and there, constitute things, but which by itself is total indeterminateness, where all distinctions between things are extinct and the individual self (atta) that the unenlightened ones cling to proves bogus. The attempted description in Udana 8.3 of Nibbana leaves no doubt that it is, however differentiated, the same recall of the substrate, of Conservation, as is Brahman or Dao or hypokeimenon:

There is, monks, an Unborn, Unbecome, Unmade, Uncompounded (ajatam abhutam akatam asankhatam). [The description of the substrate of eternal conservedness!] If there were not this Unborn..., then there would be no deliverance here visible from that which is born, become, made, compounded. [The description of the temporal existence and salvation therefrom as the return to the Source.] But since there is this Unborn, Unbecome, Unmade, Uncompounded, therefore a deliverance is visible from that which is born, become, made, compounded. (Quoted by Maurice Walshe, Digha Nikaya., p. 29)

Walshe comments: "... the above quotation could certainly be applied to the Atman as understood in Vedanta, or indeed to the Christian conception of God. [I.e. it is the description of arch, upokeimenon, upomenoush.] However, to the followers of those faiths it would be an insufficient description, and the additions they would make would for the most part be unacceptable to Buddhists. It can, however, be suggested that this statement represents the fundamental basis of all religions worthy of the name [i.e. all religions and philosophies are anamnesis of Conservation], as well as providing criterion to distinguish true religion from such surrogates as Marxism, humanism and the like [which, as secularization of Christianity, hijack religious forms to produce power-mechanism but are devoid of any spiritual, i.e. anamnesic, content]." (Ibid.)

What is particular about the Buddhist Nibbana is, of course, that it has carried the memory of Conservation to its logical conclusion: here Being, the eternal substrate of conservedness, has passed into non-Being, or the ambiguous neither nor. It is because the world is a illusion in a double sense, that it is a fabrication of the mind and that it is really nothing, that salvation, Nibbana, itself is non-existent, merely a metaphor. Nibbana means extinction (etymologically, "blowing out" as of a lamp; ibid., p. 28), and what it extinguishes is not existence, but the illusion that there is existence at all.

The mythic background of Buddhist teachings

As said, philosophy (salvation of the second mode), just like the first mode, sprang from the milieu of mythic shamanism or intraworld religiosity which defines a world-view based on the continuing existence of the soul (pneuma) after death, and it is this functional view of consciousness as an independently existing entity -- as "soul" -- which is responsible for the widespread idea at the time of reincarnation -- which becomes differentiated as "re-birth" in Buddhism -- and for the conception of reality as multilayered into the otherworld of the dead (hells, heavens, the Hade) and the this-world of the living and the empirical. Although philosophy in both India and Hellas represents the transcendence of mythic or shamanistic consciousness -- unlike the first mode, e.g. Christianity, which remains operative within its bounds -- the persistence of this mythic conception of the structure of reality within it is responsible for its somewhat problematic nature in contemporary time when this mythic reality of multi-tiered cosmos has been supplanted by the one revealed by modern sciences (i.e. the Universe). Chinese philosophy (Daoism) does not have this problematic nature because it contains effectively no mythic structure of reality within.

The task is here to outline first the mythic conception of the structure of reality within which Buddha formed his system of salvation. This mythic "scheme of post-mortem worlds... while having much in common with general Indian ideas, is in many of its details unique." (Maurice Walshe's introduction in Digha Nikaya, The Long Discourses of the Buddha, p. 37)

The Formless World Arupa-loka Jhana-level
(31) Sphere of Neither-perception-nor-non-perception (devas of) nevasaññanasaññayatanupaga deva .
(30) Sphere of No-thingness (devas of) akiñcaññayatanupaga deva 7th jhana
(29) Sphere of Infinity of Consciousness (devas of) viññanañcayatanupaga deva 6th jhana
(28) Sphere of Infinity of Space akasanañcayatanupaga deva 5th jhana
The World of Form Rupa-loka Jhana-level
(27) Peerless devas akanittha deva .
(26) Clear-sighted devas sudassi deva .
(25) Beautiful (or Clearly Visible) devas sudassa deva.
(24) Untroubled devas atappa deva.
(23) Devas not Falling Away aviha deva).
(22) Unconscious beings asaññasatta).
(21) Very Fruitful devas vehapphala deva).
(20) Devas of Refulgent Glory subhakinna deva 4th jhana
(19) Devas of Unbounded Glory appamanasubha deva.
(18) Devas of Limited Glory parittasubha deva.
(17 Devas of Streaming Radiance abhassara deva 3rd jhana
(16) Devas of Unbounded Radiance appamanabha deva
(15) Devas of Limited Radiance parittabha deva.
(14)Great Brahmas maha brahma.
(13) Ministers of Brahma brahma-purohita deva.
(12) Retinue of Brahma brahma-parisajja deva 2nd jhana
The World of Sense-Desires Kama-loka Jhana level
(11) Devas Wielding Power over the Creation of Others paranimmita-vasavatti deva.
(10) Devas Delighting in Creation nimmanarati deva.
(9) Contented devas tusita deva.
(8) Yama devas yama deva.
(7) The Thirty-three Gods tavatimsa deva.
(6) Devas of the Four Great Kings catumaharajika deva.
(5) Human world (manussa loka 1st jhana
(4) The animal world tiracchana yoni.
(3) The world of hungry ghosts peta loka.
(2) The asuras ("titans") asura.
(1)
Hells
niraya).


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