Metaphysics Friday

This article at Philosophy Now about Buddhist metaphysics seems a nice, succinct overview.   A couple of extracts:

Buddhism is often described as the philosophy of the ‘middle way’, in that the Buddha is alleged to have always urged his devotees to avoid ‘extremes’ in the quest for enlightenment – initially, the extremes of asceticism or self-indulgence.

Many scholars, like Sangharakshita, have emphasized that Buddhism is a form of ‘atheistic spirituality’ – a religion without a god – in that it attempts to steer a middle way between the theistic spirituality of the Hindu Vedanta tradition and the atheistic materialism of the Samkhya and Lokayata philosophies. But given the focal emphasis that Buddhism places upon the mind, its complete denial of a self, and the extreme idealist tendencies that developed within the Buddhist tradition, it is doubtful if Buddhism as a spiritual tradition ever took the middle way doctrinally. Indeed, many later Mahayana Buddhists, including such well-known figures as Daisetz Suzuki and Chogyam Trungpa, may best be described as advocating not a middle way between spirituality and materialism, but a form of mystical idealism. ....

Aware of the apparent contradiction between the Buddhist concept of ‘no self’ (anatta), and the Buddha’s apparent ethical emphasis on the human subject as an embodied self with moral agency, some early Buddhists came out as phenomenalists. They had the notion of two realms of being, that of everyday life (laukika), and of a transcendental realm (lokuttara), which in turn was linked to the idea of two truths; the conventional truths of everyday life (our common-sense realism) (samvrti satya), and the absolute truths (paramartta satya). The latter truths are alleged to give us knowledge and experience of things ‘as they really are’. Under the latter perspective, not only are human beings in an absolute sense now alleged to be ‘unreal’ or as ultimately having no real (mind-independent) existence, so are all the material things and organisms that humans acknowledge and interact with in their everyday lives. We are thus informed by these Buddhists in accordance with this ‘phenomenalism’, that ultimately speaking, the substantive objects and enduring persons of everyday life do not exist: they are ‘fictions’ or ‘illusions’, or more specifically, merely constructs of the human mind. All material things are in this way mind-dependent, hence the label ‘phenomenalism’ (‘phenomena’ is Greek for ‘the things/experiences of the senses’). Buddhist phenomenalism is therefore a completely anti-realist metaphysic. What exists and has reality according to it are only fleeting mental events or moments of experience – described in the Abhidhamma as dhammas. This metaphysic is invariably linked by contemporary Western Buddhist scholars to the process theology of Alfred North Whitehead, or to the anti-realist subjectivism of postmodernist philosophy.

And further down:

  It is doubtful if the Buddha expressed any real interest in epistemology, nor was he really         interested in understanding the material world and its rich diversity of life-forms in any sort of scientific sense. His concern – as he continually emphasized – was ethical: the understanding and alleviation of suffering.

It is however clear that the Buddha’s emphasis on ‘right views’ and on the cultivation of wisdom (prajna) has two very different interpretations. On the one hand it has an empirically-sourced meaning: wisdom is a result of understanding the impermanence of human life, and the fact that all things arise and cease to exist according to specific causes and conditions. For the Buddha, greed, hatred, and egoism invariably give rise to suffering. As with Aristotle, wisdom involves the application of empirical knowledge – about impermanence and conditionality – to ethics, thereby (for Aristotle) enhancing human flourishing and well-being, or (for the Buddha) enabling the alleviation of suffering with respect to sentient beings. There is, therefore, no alienation between empirical knowledge and practical wisdom. (It is also worth noting that what really ‘expands the mind’ is not the ingesting of psychedelic drugs, nor inducing some transcendental or mystical state through deep meditation, but empirical knowledge – contrary to even what most Buddhists think.) On the other hand, the ‘transcendental’ interpretation of wisdom has less to do with empirical knowledge and ethics than with the cultivation of a spiritual or mystical intuition, and the realization, through deep meditative states, that the world – reality – is pure empty consciousness or absolute all-mind.

 I'm going to push my luck and extract more than I usually would, and press on:

It follows that both the experience and understanding of enlightenment within the Buddhist tradition has two very different kinds of meaning; either ethical (this-worldly) or metaphysical (other-worldly). Similarly, although Buddhist scholars invariably equate the concept of awareness or awakening (bodhi) with the experience of non-dual consciousness or emptiness (nirvana), awareness and emptiness imply two very different conceptions of enlightenment. Enlightenment as awareness suggests a common-sense realism. It posits that things in the world are transient and continually undergoing change, and that nothing is self-existent, in that all things are subject to specific causes and conditions. The human person as an ‘existing being’, to employ the Buddha’s own phrase, is no exception. The person as an embodied self is continually changing, and embedded in a complex web of relationships with both the natural world and with other people. Enlightenment as awareness thus entails a theory of knowledge that is historical, dialectical (that is, relational and dynamic) and this-worldly. Enlightenment in this sense occurs when an embodied self becomes fully aware of the truth that everything changes and that all things are subject to causes and conditions. Ethical conduct is here based on empirical knowledge, of the world as experienced in everyday life. It requires us to realize that suffering, along with sorrow and despair, arises from the three ‘poisons’, namely, greed, hatred and delusion – all egocentric strivings. And, as indicated, enlightenment as awareness also suggests a concept of wisdom akin to that of Aristotle; namely the application of empirical knowledge to the question of how to alleviate suffering, through the cultivation of wholesome mental states such as compassion, non-violence, generosity, and loving kindness.

In contrast, it appears that for many Buddhists – Daisetz Suzuki is a prime example – enlightenment as nibbana or emptiness implies a quite different worldview – that of mystical idealism. This involves the attainment of a state of mind that transcends the experiences of everyday life. This is a state of mind characterised as being unconditioned, eternal (or timeless), and empty (or disembodied). So here enlightenment is described as a form of non-dual consciousness that transcends both time and the material world of things. It leads to the understanding that ‘physical reality is created out of consciousness’ as one well-known scholar puts it (Bringing Home the Darma, Jack Cornfield, 2012, p.241). Enlightenment as nibbana therefore implies that ‘things as they really are’ are ‘mind-only’, as the ‘absolute all-mind’ or as the ‘cosmic consciousness’ beyond both the subjective mind and the body. For Suzuki, as for Nietzsche, it is a consciousness even beyond good and evil. This idea, however, appears to be completely at odds with the Buddha’s ethical philosophy.

And a point I haven't really heard made before:

Many contemporary Buddhists are dissatisfied with what they see as the overemphasis on meditation and the attainment of individual enlightenment. They have instead stressed the crucial need for a socially engaged Buddhism. This implies being directly involved in contemporary issues, specifically those relating to the ecological crisis and to social justice. It is also worth noting in passing that concepts of ‘no self’ and the ‘unconditioned’ were for the Buddha ethical concepts rather than metaphysical ones. They implied a rejection of egoism, not of the embodied self, and of seeking freedom from the unwholesome emotions of greed, hatred, and the craving for a permanent self.

I think it fair to say that the general approach taken by the writer aligns with a view of Buddhism taken by Karen Armstrong in her biography of Buddha which I am (very slowly) reading.  She keeps emphasising that his approach was actually very pragmatic - working out by his own experience what "worked" to solve his spiritual concerns.   

Update:  I wanted to further add that this analysis provides some justification for my long held feeling that the religion is too concerned with the self - even though it also believes there's no self there!   And I like religions that are heavily into charitable works, but one that has an "anti-realist metaphysic" is hardly likely to be motivated to do that.   I am happy to read that there are some Buddhists who want it to be more socially engaged.