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17 July, 2016
This was first written as a post-script to this. But since it seemed to develop its own independent logic, it was pulled out and given its own slot.
Both formerly & now, Anuradha, it is only stress that I describe, and the stopping of stress.
~ Anuradha Sutta: To Anuradha, Samyutta Nikaya, 22.86; translated from the Pali to English by Thanissaro Bhikkhu, accessible here.
There is monks, that sphere where there is neither earth nor water, nor fire nor wind, nor sphere of the infinitude of space, nor sphere of the infinitude of consciousness, nor sphere of nothingness, nor sphere of neither perception nor non-perception, nor this world, nor the next world, nor sun, nor moon. And there, I say, there is neither coming nor going nor stasis, nor passing away nor arising: without stance, without foundation, without support (mental object). This, just this, is the end of stress.
~ Nibbana Sutta: Unbinding (1), Udana, 8.1; translation extracted from Mind Like Fire Unbound: An Image in the Early Buddhist Discourses by Thanissaro Bhikkhu; the full sutta, translated from the Pali to English by Thanissaro Bhikkhu (with slightly alternative wordings) can be accessed here.
Ananda: Lord, could a monk have an attainment of concentration such that he would neither be percipient of earth with regard to earth, nor of water with regard to water, nor of fire...wind...the dimension of the infinitude of space...the dimension of the infinitude of consciousness...the dimension of nothingness...the dimension of neither perception nor non-perception...this world...nor the next world with regard to the next world, and yet he could still be percipient?
The Buddha: There is the case, Ananda, where the monk would be percipient in this way: 'This is peace, this is exquisite --- the resolution of all fabrications; the relinquishment of all acquisitions; the ending of craving; dispassion; cessation; Unbinding.'
~ Samadhi Sutta:Concentration, Anguttara Nikaya, 10.6; translated from the Pali to English by Thanissaro Bhikkhu, accesible here.
Ananda answering a query by Udayin: Once, friend, when I was staying in Saketa at the Game Refuge in the Black Forest, the nun Jatila Bhagika went to where I was staying, and on arrival -- having bowed to me -- stood to one side. As she was standing there, she said to me: 'The concentration whereby -- neither pressed down nor forced back, nor with fabrications kept blocked or suppressed -- still as a result of release, contented as a result of standing still, and as a result of contentment one is not agitated: This concentration is said by the Blessed One to be the fruit of what?'
"I said to her, 'Sister, the concentration whereby -- neither pressed down nor forced back, nor with fabrication kept blocked or suppressed -- still as a result of release, contented as a result of standing still, and as a result of contentment one is not agitated: This concentration is said by the Blessed One to be the fruit of gnosis (arahantship).'
~ Ananda Sutta: With Ananda, Anguttara Nikaya, 9.37; translated from the Pali to English by Thanissaro Bhikkhu, accessible here.
There are mergers, there are acquisitions, and then there are appropriations. Mergers create a giant. Acquisitions fatten an existing one. Appropriations fabricate one on steroids. The Indian Philosophical Tradition is one such giant-on-steroids under which the investor has tried to appropriate every damn philosophy out there in the market-place since time immemorial. After a point, to manage this giant, the investor is forced to evolve a system of classification and grouping because he realizes one company is making cheese while another is making railway carriages. They have nothing in common.
In the real world, such giants on steroids work as holding companies because the one making cheese can transfer surplus in form of cash to one making railway carriages. In the domain of philosophy, however, such a transfer, for one, is not possible. And whenever it is carried out, it creates a set of problems which language and common-sense find hard to grapple with.
Thus, when the Buddha, and Buddhism, are appropriated under the pervasive category of Indian Philosophical Tradition (mind you, without their permission) it results in a few awkward slips such as the ones below:
1. The Buddha being labelled an agnostic champion of the 'path of knowledge'.
2. Hinduism being a religion which has a strong dose of aesthetics while Buddhism being like that nerdy classmate who seriously needs to get out and enjoy life.
The writer found the first reference in the introductory pages of The Idea of Justice by Amartya Sen. The second was implied in one of the philosophically profound articles in that great canon of self-help guide called The Speaking Tree, sanctified within the popular pages of The Times of India.
Both derive their nourishment (the first more than the second) from a popular stream of thought in Indian tradition that there are many ways to salvation, of which three are called out and imbibed within the popular consciousness. There is one that flows through the path of knowledge; another flows through the path of devotion; and, yet another which flows through the path of exertion of the, hopefully, moral kind. At best, this can be accepted as a philosophical proposition. More realistically, it needs to be viewed with sufficient skepticism because to prove the truth of this proposition requires the stamp of approval from an individual who has gone through all the three paths (if there are indeed in reality three such primary-level paths), and is in a position to demonstrate equivalence of all three.
This classification is more likely an outcome of those who made an attempt to chronicle and document, and not the ones who were busy in spiritual pursuits of one kind or another. As a system of classification, it is what a management consultant would call MECE (mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive). It is so broad and tight that it encompasses literally everything. While this system is a credit to the intellect that classified, it is a discredit to the things that chanced to be classified.
To understand why, specifically in the case of the Buddha's teaching, let us consider the following bit of sage advice:
(i) Fabrications have ignorance as their prerequisite,
(ii) consciousness has fabrications as its prerequisite,
(iii) name & form have consciousness as their prerequisite,
(iv) the six sense media have name-&-form as their prerequisite,
(v) contact has the six sense media as its prerequisite,
(vi) feeling has contact as its prerequisite,
(vii) craving has feeling as its prerequisite,
(viii) clinging has craving as its prerequisite,
(ix) becoming has clinging as its prerequisite,
(x) birth has becoming as its prerequisite,
(xi) stress & suffering have birth as their prerequisite,
(xii) conviction has stress & suffering as its prerequisite,
(xiii) joy has conviction as its prerequisite,
(xiv) rapture has joy as its prerequisite,
(xv) serenity has rapture as its prerequisite,
(xvi) pleasure has serenity as its prerequisite,
(xvii) concentration has pleasure as its prerequisite,
(xviii) knowledge & vision of things as they actually are present has concentration as its prerequisite,
(xix) disenchantment has knowledge & vision of things as they actually are present as its prerequisite,
(xx) dispassion has disenchantment as its prerequisite,
(xxi) release has dispassion as its prerequisite,
(xxii) knowledge of ending has release as its prerequisite.
~ Upanisa Sutta: Prerequisites, Samyutta Nikaya 12.23, translated from the Pali to English by Thanissaro Bhikkhu, accessible here
At first sight, this kind of a chain-of-causation fits perfectly inside the 'path of knowledge' group. The unfortunate part is that over the ages no one has gained any enlightenment 'knowing' the above. Enlightenment is an inevitable effect of 'seeing' the above with the elements which go into 'getting to the knowledge & vision of things as they actually are (xviii)' cooking up bit of a medlee. Not the least amongst these elements is a sincere emotional turbulence to make an individual sensitive to stress & suffering in the world. This is followed by a deep-seated conviction that there is an answer to be found and it goes through the Buddha, his doctrine and the example of his disciples. This is not a faith borne of and kept in force by custodians of customs. It is a faith that derives its existence from sheer necessity. Such a faith is needed to protect the discoverer till such time he discovers the gold mine. On the path to the gold mine, the discoverer, holding the tender & firmly loyal hand of the deeply caring maiden of conviction (faith), will go through a series of transformations which, for lack of an accurate phrase, may be described as states infused with extremely subtle pleasure.
This aesthetic of pleasure ultimately culminates, logically BUT ironically, in dispassion from what produced the sublime pleasure. This dispassion, in turn, leads to "release and knowledge of ending (xxi & xxii)". What is not stated but implied is that it is impossible to walk on this path without sheer force of resolve and exertion of the moral kind, which our intelligent chronicler & classifier had subsumed under the rubric of 'path of karma / exertion'.
Thus, while the objective of the Buddhist path is the knowledge of ending, it is somewhat practically unhelpful, and counter-productive, to treat the entire path as a path of knowledge. It is not a dry exercise in logical reasoning which fulminates in knowledge. The path has an aesthetic. Except, it may not be the aesthetic of joyous and innocent love. It is an aesthetic which follows from mindfulness, alertness, constant self-questioning and concentration, qualities of mind, amongst others, that go into making of the album The Dark Side of the Moon; producing a composed & memorable debut at the Lord's cricket ground; bringing to cinematic fruition the pathos that inheres like a leech and refuses to depart Shambhu's family in Do Bigha Zamin; moulding Spinoza, the man, and Ethics, the philosophy of the man that served to "calm the sometimes unbearable emotional turbulence during youth" of an artist like Goethe (wikipedia) --- as equally as leading the deserving attainer to his ultimate & deserving release.
For why would anyone, except a rank fool in disguise of a blind believer, make an attempt to embark on this path, if all along he had absolutely zero respite? Why would anyone continue to trudge along unless at regular intervals there was an oasis to stop by, rest and relax? There is no desert worth its name without a string of pleasure-giving oases. Likewise, there is no path to release worth its name without devotion for companionship and a sublime aesthetic for encouragement.
Let us say an artisan comes across a dilapidated temple in midst of nowhere. Inside, he notices an idol with its form disfigured, broken pieces lying around it, scratched with an uneven regularity, hardened, and crusted evoking a sorrowful sight. The artisan, if he is caring and heedful will notice the plight of the idol. On closer inspection, he finds out that it is made up of clay & mud. This gives him faith that it can be mended and gotten back to its original form. He collects all the broken pieces of shards lying around and gently removes the idol. Next, he identifies a source of water. He takes the idol and the broken pieces to that source of water. He dips them once in the water, he dips them twice, and so forth till he is sure the clay & mud has absorbed the water in just the adequate quantity to make them soft, malleable, mouldable with just the right amount of elasticity. He then mushes all the clay together and kneads them into a single mass of clay & mud. Having thus prepared the base, he then slowly, doggedly, extremely carefully gives shape to the mouldable mass of clay to impart it the form of the original idol.
Now, perform the following substitution: the artisan is each of us; the idol made of clay & mud is nothing but our minds; the sense of sorrow that the artisan felt is the first inkling in our hearts that there indeed is stress within and without us; the artisan's faith that the idol can be brought back to shape is our own faith in our chosen spiritual tradition; the exertion to identify the source of water and wet the clay is our own initial self-exertion; the water is the aesthetic or sublime pleasure necessary to un-crust our hardened mind, soften it so much so that it becomes receptive to proper guidance, and hence, mouldable; the process of giving shape to the prepared mass of clay is nothing but our intellect at work to understand the deeper truths of the mind; and finally, the idol that actually did emerge is nothing but the goal that each of us must strive towards.
If there is one take-away from the above analogy it is this: that many elements go into attaining release. From the outside it may seem that one quality seems to override all else, but those who are within the process will find it difficult to clearly make this distinction. Thus, to believe the devotional exertions of Meera to be largely divorced from support of knowledge at every step of the way and bereft of any sense of logic stands on par with the assertion that Buddhism lacks an aesthetic in any visibly substantive measure. For one thing is readily verifiable: the human mind strains itself after something provided it sees a clear & immediate gain for itself from that something.
The doctrine of the Buddha works because it takes this primal logic of the mind of acquiring what is pleasure-some and averting what is not pleasure-some (or painful) as its starting point, and using it to the mind's utmost advantage by suitably training it to see benefit in turning away from wrong notions of pleasure by seeing them as actually painful, and instead turning the mind to the right sources of ultimate pleasure. When this aspect is developed to its most logical extreme, it dovetails into the kind of insight to the release that the Buddha attained, and the one he, subsequently, held to be unsurpassable.
If anything, if this path is to be characterized, it might be characterized as a path that subdues passion, cultivates dispassion towards phenomenon that are sure to bring stress, and, instead, directs the discoverer to the ultimate aesthetic of liberation. But, then, doesn't the meaning of the very conception of liberation / release couch the conception of dispassion within it? If so, then, shouldn't every path that pegs its claim to release go through the process of developing the right kind of dispassion?
To answer this question truthfully and accurately will require one to experience & investigate first-hand the psychology of the moment at which the mind 'disconnects' itself from 'something' and, consequently, to understand what are its causes. It is mentioned repeatedly in the Pali Canon that there is only one way to the kind of release the Buddha discovered. If there is any other way to a release which claims its equivalence to the Buddha's, then, it should be possible, without too much difficulty, to prove its equivalence to the noble eight fold path. In case that equivalence cannot be demonstrated in theory and practice, then that is not the way to the type of release the Buddha discovered. In that sense, there is almost an one-on-one mathematical-type mapping ascribed to the relation between the goal and the path.
The logical implication of all this is: if there is any other path that cannot be proven to be equivalent to the path in the Buddha's doctrine, then it will lead to a different type of outcome. At this point it is important to remember that the Buddha did try different approaches and finally settled on a particular approach as means to, what he deemed as, full & final release. In short, the Buddha reached his goal through a process of empirical elimination.
A certain structure of questions emerges within the mind of the curious learner as well as an unbiased investigative journalist of spirituality:
1. Are some means better suited to physical, temperamental and intellectual endowments of some than others?
2. Do all such means lead exactly to the same end result?
3. If yes, then is the current method of classification appropriate wherein the means are classified based on what is instinctively perceived to be the most dominant skill required? Or an alternative method is called for because every mean needs a different mix of skills at different points of time?
4. If no, then what are the differences between the ends? Is there any distinct possibility that these ends are actually part of a certain series wherein one end serves as the foothold for the next one, ultimately culminating in a singular attainment?
5. Are such questions likely to invite critical approbation by the practitioners themselves, and hence are deemed an inappropriate set to ask in the first place?
If these indeed are inappropriate questions, then it also follows that it is equally inappropriate to try classify and characterize paths & doctrines in nice logical and philosophical categories. On the other hand, if it is permissible to momentarily bring these questions into attention (only to later discard them at the first opportune moment so that we do not become chained to them), then what purpose would their momentary consideration serve? Possibly to help an individual adopt a path suited to his needs & capacities along with the knowledge of what are the limitations which the path of his choice will subject him to as well as the end to which it will lead him to.
But the keen student (and the nosy journalist), who has kept his head about himself so far, will face a significant hurdle at this step. For, to answer this last question, he would need to try out all approaches himself, and then come to his own conclusion. That is, outside of the empirical process, there is no other process which can help him answer this question satisfactorily for himself. Any other approach would involve a process of intellectual fermentation which is long-hand for speculative (chancy) theorization. At best, if one has to ferment about such things, the fermenting can lead to only one definite thought: a profound doubt about the validity of specious classifications.
Our good friend of antiquity, the one who chronicled & classified, was in effect theorizing and philosophisizing. And he could so readily theorize and convince all his other good friends, and the generations thereafter, simply because the terms spirituality, liberation, release and what-have-you-not remain so poorly defined, understood, respected and appreciated even by men of no mean learning. To expropriate spiritual men of old for elaborating on social & political conceptions, or to espouse the qualities of one religion over another, requires elongating, stretching, loosening the term spirituality and making it some huge homogenous cauldron into which almost everything goes.
[Imagine comparing the output of The Rolling Stones and The Beatles in the same breath. It would not make any sense to the lover of rock music, especially after The Beatles released that not-enough-noticed album called The Rubber Soul.]
Because of imposition of this loose standard on the term 'spirituality', it allows many a knowledgeable men to get away with very little contact with original scriptures of Buddhism, and, instead, approach Buddhism from the lens of their own philosophical inclinations. The Indian Philosophical Tradition's habit of appropriation often places a challenge to knowing the Buddha and Buddhism by pre-classifying and nicely pigeon-holing an entire doctrine. Rather, it is useful to actually get all of these different doctrines within the Indian Philosophical Tradition out of their pigeon-holes and let each be studied on its own terms.
Magnanimity in welcoming all traditions under one fold is playing on a sticky wicket. Such magnanimity is sometimes short-hand for an extremely subtle form of conceit by claiming everything as 'Ours' and 'Mine'. It takes a bit of dispassion (no pun intended) to remove that label called 'Indian' and make a definitive pick from the maze of long-hidden cob-webbed pigeon-holes.
Making a pick means having the choice to get drawn towards description of one type of goal, and the personality behind it, more than another. Since we seem to be living in a very intolerant India (which, for another, but equally magnanimous reason, seems to quite easily tolerate deaths of new born babies with an unenviable ease), it should logically follow that most of us should not find it very difficult to make instant, hard and definite choices (and thereafter throw away quality time fighting about individual choices).
However, it appears that our intolerance (or tolerance, as both terms are habituated to periodic exchange of their meanings) is of a very slippery nature. The Indian Philosophical Tradition becomes quite tolerant, acquisitive and appropriative when it realizes the dominant narrative to be slithering away from its iron-clad fist. In some sense, the great Indian Philosophical Tradition wears the undercoat of politics underneath the overbearing overcoat of spiritual philosophy. It is a political philosophy par excellence because even a scrupulous researcher is so enchanted by its philosophical, and, we may add poetic, charms that he fails to notice the subtle politics underlying it.
At other times, the tradition is very clear about what is and who are very much excluded from its bounds. Usually, it is those foreigners who came from somewhere out there in the West, followed by another set, though with a whiter skin, also from the West. One thought that avowed polytheists would have no issue mingling with avowed monotheists. And indeed, for quite some time, the common man had no such issues. Until, some people on both sides of the theistic divide decided to resuscitate and revive our old, ambiguous, and slippery ways of grouping, classifying, and identifying.
Apparently, the giant fabricated on steroids reached the limit of how many shots of steroids he could bear. Now we know why Warren Buffett & Charlie Munger are so smart. They built a holding company on a cash cow of insurance that never stops giving. Maybe, the great Indian Philsophical Tradition could learn a bit from Protestant Capitalists, at least one of whom also loves his Steak & Cherry Coke. It badly needs to: right now, under its new set of owners it is so disoriented that it has started appropriating everything under the sun, including Ambedkar. Now, that is one appropriation which even a giant on steroids with a motley group of disoriented and inexperienced owners may not be able to see through.
The poetic license which our ancient chronicler and his modern cousin were granted has fooled many a good-hearted and intelligent men. Language has its limitations in expressing higher states of existence (if existence is indeed the appropriate noun to reference them). Thus, the recourse to poetry is taken as an inevitable necessity. But poetry has one drawback: it can often unknowingly, and sometimes surreptitiously, make different states appear all the same, so much so it can convince the rookie discerning believer, the blind faithful, and the non-believer, that cheese and carriages spring from the same factory. It may require an audit of the psychological and moral underpinnings of these same states, as well as a philosophical and linguistic scrutiny of the poetic words, to call out that cheese really is different from a railway carriage.
For the user, these two economic goods certainly lead to different end results. For the investor, on the other hand, both are a means to accumulate wealth. Our chronicler was probably fancying himself an investor when exercising his poetic license. In the process, he forgot about the poor consumers.
A poetic license is always rooted in the politics, science and society of its time. As a result, our understanding of spirituality from second-hand sources will also have a political lens, amongst others, unknown to us. Which is the reason why it is important to really focus on early philosophy behind any spiritual tradition and not the later elaborated versions of it. It is in the earlier tracts of the philosophy that the real spiritual element, if any, can be discerned in its purity. Indeed, this seems to hold true for any field and discipline: rock n roll, hindi film music (the classic 50s), computer programming (the heady ferment at AT&T Bell Labs in the late 60's and early 70's), genetics today, etc.
From all this mental ferment a singular question can be vaguely perceived: how should a believer and practitioner of a spiritual tradition really locate himself in his own socio-political environment, adhere to his conduct in line with his spiritual leanings, and strike a balance between the material and the spiritual, if at all his circumstances demand that he strike such a balance? Maybe if we really do have to classify spiritual traditions, the historical responses of spiritual traditions to this question may provide a more concrete basis for classification than the one based on knowledge, devotion and karma as these three so strongly feed into each other during the actual practice of any path deserving of the qualifier spirituality.
Unlike our investor-chronicler this is not a question of spirituality-disguised-as-poetry-disguised-as-philosophy-sustained-by-political-sophistry. This is a question of urgent relevance to those who, enticed by the initial charms of a spiritual tradition were drawn in, only to later recant and renounce their association, deeming it to be too impractical, difficult to adhere to in the 'modern context', and in some cases, developing a cold cynicism to all things spiritual. One hopes that the next set of popular archivists, chroniclers, and philosophers will make it easier for the incipient believer to firmly answer this question for himself, and allow him to continue to reason, accompanied by an unyielding sense of devotion, in order to realize the very aesthetic of the bliss of release as defined by his chosen spiritual tradition.
In that sense we are all wayfarers, except that our ways might lead us to very different destinations. Let us hope our destinations are not too far apart so as to enable us to stay in touch through all the latest social media gizmos and learn from each other. Else, it is difficult to justify the billion dollar valuations of companies behind the production & pushing out of absolutely futile gizmos. Certainly not the kind that the early and purer spiritual tradition (the karma police knocks on the door; quickly display the poetic license to be allowed loose usage of the term spirituality) of computer programming had in mind during the 60's and 70's when inventing a new language for the human mind to express itself with.
Quite appropriately, the field of computer programming seems to offer an apt example of what happens when an activity mixes with the socio-political milieu of subsequent times. If the art and science of computer programming could be mutilated to take the form of social media with its unquantifiable potential to dramatically unleash the reactive capacity of the mind with damaging consequences, is it any wonder that the bliss of release of spiritual traditions can be easily misunderstood by later generations who were deprived of personal contact with the original founder of the tradition, or did not exert themselves sufficiently to solicit first-hand accounts of his or her teaching?
Initial draft proof-read and corrected with help from Bibhas Mondal. The errors, if any, maybe on account of subsequent modifications and are all attributable to the writer.
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