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Advaita Vedānta, al-Hallāj, Eknath, Emmanuel Lévinas, Hugh van Skyhawk, nondualism, Paul Hacker, Paul J. Griffiths, Paul Williams, Ramprasad Sen, Śāntideva, Swami Vivekānanda, T.R. (Thill) Raghunath, Upaniṣads, Wilhelm Halbfass
A curious phenomenon in the study of South Asian and especially Buddhist traditions is the number of Catholic scholars named Paul who have approached these traditions – and especially what Skholiast has called their ātmanism – with a critical eye. The two thinkers I have primarily in mind are the late Paul Hacker (whom I discussed last time, and the living Paul Williams. (The thought of Paul J. Griffiths, who moved in his writings from Buddhology to Catholic theology, bears a strong resemblances to these other Pauls, though I have less to say about him today.) That these men are all named Paul can only be a coincidence. That they are all Catholic is less so; for there are striking affinities in the ways that they (in many respects independently of one another) approach South Asian and Buddhist tradition, affinities that are far less coincidental.
Hacker, as I noted last time, attacked the key figures of modern Hinduism, which he called “neo-Hinduism” and which I think the term “Hinduism” should probably be reserved for. For Hacker, men like Swami Vivekānanda made a mockery of Indian tradition, by creating something new that claimed itself to be old. The general historical question here parallels questions about Yavanayāna Buddhism: much of what we take now as authentic Asian tradition is new and at least partially Western, but that does not necessarily make it illegitimate.
So far, it’s pretty much the usual story of 19th-century reform. But Hacker takes his critique much further than the basic historical point, and this is where it gets interesting to me. Hacker’s special ire, beyond his general disdain for modern Hinduism, is reserved for the “tat tvam asi ethic”, the idea that because we are all ultimately one infinite spirit (“you are that,” as the Chāndogya Upaniṣad supposedly claims), we should help each other because we are really helping ourselves. For Hacker, it is not merely the case that classical Advaita Vedānta thinkers never adopted an altruistic or activistic ethics based on the tat tvam asi of the Chāndogya Upaniṣad, but that they could not have. For, Hacker claims, “From the philosophical point of view, to base the tat tvam asi ethic on the foundation of the Vedāntic monism of consciousness is a logical impossibility.” (“Schopenhauer and Hindu ethics,” p. 305) On the next page he goes on to describe the tat tvam asi ethic not merely as a “logical impossibility” but as a “logical monstrosity.” (p. 305, my emphasis) Hacker wants to show the tat tvam asi ethic is a modern invention because, in his mind, the great Vedāntic sages of old were way too wise to ever have fallen for such a load of garbage.
What is it about Vivekānanda’s tat tvam asi ethic, in Hacker’s mind, that makes it logically impossible and even monstrous? For Hacker, genuinely ethical behaviour – by which he means altruistic behaviour – depends on the existence of separate persons, whose differences are irreducible:
Ethical behavior presupposes an interpersonal relationship, which loses its metaphysical justification if individual personhood has no ultimate reality…. Neither the monism of will nor the monism of consciousness or spirit has a real place for the concept of person. But when this concept is not taken seriously, ethics remains on a naturalistic level; that is, there is no true ethics, good and evil have no truly metaphysical relevance, and ultimately there are only ways of realizing or veiling the impersonal universal One…. There is no sense in which an identification of a “that” with a “thou,” such as we have in tat tvam asi, can explain why good and bad behavior exist. Interpersonal relationship is not identity, and it is certainly not identity of a person with an impersonal being.
As philosophical argument I do not think this goes very far, not by itself anyway. Much of it depends on the semi-tautological identification of “ethics” with altruism. If one acknowledges that an ethics can be based on self-interest and that other-interest can be grounded in self-interest, then there seems little logical problem here: the tat tvam asi ethic might not really or ultimately be altruistic, but so what? Even in historical terms, Hacker seems to be on poor ground in believing that such a monistic ethic is purely modern. Hugh van Skyhawk, replying to Hacker in the 74th (1993) volume of the Annals of the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, argued that a similar view was found in the sixteenth-century Marathi poet-saint Eknath (also spelled Ekanāth or Ekanātha). Eknath told his listeners (in Skyhawk’s translation) that the true yogī “immediately gives up his own interests and ventures into difficulties for the sake of others”; and argues for such altruism on strongly nondualist grounds:
He, for whom there is no more “I” and “mine” and “thee” and “thine” by virtue of the contact with the worship of the divine non-duality and the Self is called the highest bhakta. If he gives his fortune (nijavitta) to another, no misgivings arise in his citta. He does not even sense a trace of alienation. No feelings of doubt arise. The object in the right hand is given to the left hand. Who is the giver here? Who is the receiver?
Overall, then, Hacker’s arguments against monist ethics aren’t particularly persuasive. What excites me about Hacker’s arguments is his reasons for making them. Wilhelm Halbfass’s introduction to his collection of Hacker’s writings stresses the increasing importance in Hacker’s work of his conversion to Roman Catholicism. And Catholicism, it seems to me, stresses encounter over ātmanism: it is all about one’s relationship to a God with whom one is not identical.
The point is highlighted in the much more powerful arguments of another Catholic Paul, Paul Williams. Williams, to my knowledge, says nothing about Hacker in his work; since Williams is a Buddhologist, he may well be entirely unaware of Hacker. And yet Williams’s criticism of Śāntideva (in the final chapters of his Altruism and Reality parallels Hacker’s criticism of Vivekānanda in remarkable ways. Among Śāntideva’s most famous passages (now even excerpted in an introductory ethics text) is his “equalization of self and other” in verses VIII.90-119 of the Bodhicaryāvatāra, in which he argues that, since the self is an illusion (a standard Buddhist view), egoistic action does not make logical sense and we should be altruistic (an innovation of his). Śāntideva is not a monist like Vivekānanda; he is strongly opposed to the Vedāntic idea of a universal cosmic self. Nevertheless, there is a close parallel in that both Śāntideva and Vivekānanda try to deconstruct our ideas of self in order to deconstruct ethical egoism and urge altruistic action. And so Williams’s criticisms of Śāntideva turn out on similar lines to Hacker’s criticisms of Vivekānanda.
Unlike Hacker, Williams makes no attempt at historical criticism; Williams has no doubt that Śāntideva actually believed all this. He simply thinks that Śāntideva is dead wrong. In thinking and arguing this, he has provoked a strong reaction among Buddhologists, no less than five of whom (Barbra Clayton, John Pettit, Jon Wetlesen, Mark Siderits and José Cabezón) have tried to refute him in print. I’m not going to examine today whether Williams is right or wrong (it is a complex question); but I want to explore important points in his arguments.
What Williams claims, against Śāntideva, is that there can be no compassion unless there are persons feeling the compassion for other persons. Compassion requires the existence of persons feeling suffering; without sufferers, there is no suffering and no compassion. (T.R. (Thill) Raghunath made a similar argument in a recent comment.) If the self is deconstructed, so too is suffering, and indeed perhaps all reasons for action.
Both Paul Hacker and Paul Williams, then, are trying to tell us: you cannot have it both ways. Either you can have a nondual view (monist or otherwise) that deconstructs our everyday selves, or you can have the commitment to altruistic alleviation of others’ suffering. The two don’t make sense together; and the first certainly isn’t an argument for the second.
Such a view seems to me to have profound roots in the Abrahamic monotheisms; while the Pauls in question are Catholic, one could surely also imagine it being made by a Jew. For indeed the criticism reminds me strongly of Emmanuel Lévinas and his insistence on the irreducible otherness of other people – with God as the ultimate other. (For breaking down the distinction between himself and God, al-Hallāj was tortured and killed.) The ethical deconstruction of self seems important to a nondual view of the world; but to refute such nonduality seems central to theism. (But not only Abrahamic theism: the nineteenth-century Bengali devotional poet Ramprasad Sen criticized nondualism by saying “I want to taste sugar, not to become sugar.”)
This is the puzzle of non-dualism. You can’t understand non-dualism through logic because logic depends on comparison. Logic says that either something exists or something doesn’t exist. And, based on this, the intellect contrasts emptiness with existence and emptiness thereby becomes associated with nothingness. But Buddhism views both eternalism and nihilism as mistaken views.
The turn of the (19th) century meditation master and scholar Mipham said: “The elephant bathes in the river to wash off the dust and then rolls in the dust to dry off from the river.” Like that, the intellect can only accomodate either the concept of eternalism (god exists) or nihilism (god doesn’t exist) and can’t adopt a non-conceptual view.
JW, Why do you and other Buddhists persist in
(ab)using the English word “emptiness” when it has an established meaning justifying an “association” with “nothingness” if you do not want people to think of the latter when they hear your portentous claims on “emptiness”?
Further, the concept of the “Great Void” or Sunyata is definitely part of the Buddhist philosophy of “emptiness”. One of its constitutive claims, as far as I know, is that ultimate reality is the “Great Void” or Sunyata.
Anyway, what is clear is that the “doctrine of emptiness” is no less ambiguous than the “doctrine of the Tao”.
And so the intelelct is needed here just to explain what the heck it is Buddhisst are talking about. Are they talking about “interdependence”, “dependent causation”, denial of Svabhava of things, or the “Great Void”? Perhaps, they select one of these depending on the way the winds of the debate or argument blow?
“Buddhism views both eternalism and nihilism as mistaken views.”
It is already given to our precious commonsense and common experience that things are not eternal and that dissolution is a process of transformation.
For Buddhism to have a semblance of value or significance here, it must state what it is affirming if it is denying eternalism and nihilism.
“Like that, the intellect can only accomodate either the concept of eternalism (god exists) or nihilism (god doesn’t exist) and can’t adopt a non-conceptual view.”
“a non-conceptual view”? How can you speak of a “view”, in this context, in the absence of concepts? If you think of a “view”, you can’t escape thinking of concepts or ideas which form elements of that “view”. So, “non-conceptual view” is a contradiction in terms, or, you had it coming, nonsense.
Well, Thill, apparently I haven’t persuaded you!
For the record, shunyata is conventionally translated as “emptiness”. I think it is a choice to use the word “emptiness” — since we have to use concepts, the concept of emptiness may be slightly more accurate than the concept somethingness. The Zen teachers sometimes use the concept of “not two” to try to convey a sense of the experience.
Impermanence, which as you point out is easy to understand, is only one aspect of experience. And the “mistaken view” of eternalism posited by Buddhists is not just the view that there are phenomena that are unchanging over time. Eternalism is the view that things exist in a solid way even in a single moment. Experience is so momentary and unique that even if you could isolate an experience in a single moment, there would be nothing solid to grasp — the experience would be indescribable and the “thing” has no essense and is “empty”.
This experience is sometimes spoken about as “egolessness of other”. And when emptiness of “other” is experienced, there is no self as well –because “self” is a concept that depends on the existence of other. This so-called “two fold egolessness”, as you note, is the concept of interdependence. So interdependence is not simply based on causality — that an egg depends on a chicken and on sunlight and grain and a temperate climate, the causes and conditions that bring the egg into our experience. Interdependence also means that in a single moment an “egg” depends on the concept of “not egg”.
For starters, I don’t think translation is the issue. Śūnya in Sanskrit and sūnya in Pali do generally mean empty or void: a śūnyageha is an empty house, and when Indian mathematicians invented the number zero, they expressed the concept with the word śūnya. The connotation of nothingness in śūnyatā is there in the Sanskrit, not just the English.
The claim made in Madhyamaka texts (as you note, Jim) is that any concept, in any language, is going to be inadequate to express the nature of emptiness. “Emptiness” or “śūnyatā” is probably the closest, but it’s not all that close; it points us in the right direction but doesn’t get us there. The idea is to take us to what Jim calls a “non-conceptual view”; and I don’t think that is an oxymoron. The idea of a “view” may itself be somewhat helpful here: one can just look and see the information gathered by the senses without words or concepts.
Now, one might well argue (as Hegel does) that when one looks without concepts, “immediately” in Hegel’s terms, no information is actually gained, nothing is actually learned or known. But it seems to me that what’s at issue in your (very interesting and thought-provoking) continuing debate is going to be this very question. Must knowledge be expressed in concepts? Thill, it seems to me that your comments on the issue to date have been begging the question; they have assumed the two points most at issue. The first of these (which Hegel would share and Buddhists and Advaitins would oppose) is that to count as real knowledge, knowledge must be expressible in concepts. The second, which Hegel would also oppose, is that ambiguity is problematic and knowledge must be expressible in precise concepts. These assumptions, I think, are both commonplaces in contemporary English-language analytic philosophy, but they are specifically disclaimed by your opponents in this debate, and therefore they cannot be taken for granted.
I agree that the basis for knowledge is a very key point. I am not much of a scholar, but from my reading Buddhism uses two concepts. The first is prajna, literally translated as “best knowledge”. And the second is jnana, often translated as “wisdom”.
I understand prajna to be insight derived from the intellect (and therefore inherently dualistic). The concept differs slightly from what we might call conventional intelligence in that prajna is non-territorial. In other words, intellect employed to establish territory and to win arguments is a biased use of intelligence and is not prajna. Prajna is intelligence tinged with curiosity, open minded and inquisitive.
Chogyam Trungpa used a distinction between “looking” and “seeing” to illustrate this. The concept of “looking” implies a preconceived notion of what one will find (Trungpa associated this approach with eternalism — having a concept of god and then looking for evidence of god’s presence in the world — for example). The concept of seeing, by contrast, does not have this bias. So prajna involves “seeing and then looking” — experiencing the world without bias and then employing intellect (prajna) to understand it. Conventional intelligence involves “looking and then seeing” — having a preconceived notion of what exists and then using intelligence to find it.
The structure of the Four Noble Truths in Buddhism follows this logic of “seeing, then looking”. The first noble truth is “seeing” suffering and the second noble truth employs intellect to “look” for the cause of suffering. It is a very experientially oriented process and opposite from an abstract world view. The fourth Dalai Lama analogized to a person walking down the street who is suddenly hit by a bucket of water and then turns to find the cause. The experience of being drenched is suffering — the first noble truth. The employment of intellect (prajna) to find the cause is the second noble truth. The third and fourth noble truths employ the same approach — conveying an insight that is very important to Buddhism — that the third noble truth — cessation of suffering (or enlightenment) is uncreated and is simply experienced. An experience of cessation comes before the path. Path, the fourth noble truth, is the investigation of enlightenment — through the use of intellect and skillful means (prajna and upaya).
The concept of jnana (wisdom) is something else altogether. My understanding of this — which may not be accurate — is that jnana is an understanding that is spontaneous and uncreated. I believe it is similar to the concept of inspiration arising from the world — knowledge that in ancient Greece would be seen as descending from a muse. It is non-dual — understanding obtained in one leap in the sense of a “eureka” moment.
Amod: “The claim made in Madhyamaka texts (as you note, Jim) is that any concept, in any language, is going to be inadequate to express the nature of emptiness.”
This begs the crucial question of the coherence and verisimilitude of the concept of “emptiness”. It is obvious that “emptiness” is a word and a concept. The claim made in “Madhyamaka texts” that “any concept…is going to be inadequate to express the nature of emptiness.” implies that the concept of “emptiness” or “Sunyata” is also inadequate! It is, therefore, a clear case of incoherence if an adherent of these “Madhyamaka texts” were to also claim that the concept of “emptiness” or “Sunyata” corresponds to reality! It makes no sense to claim that no concept can express the nature of emptiness, and, in the same breath, to affirm the verisimilitude of the concept of “emptiness” and the claims hinging on it!
If the “Madhyamaka” take recourse to some waffling here and aver that the concept of “emptiness” comes “close” to the nature of emptiness, they are only affirming again the verisimilitude of the concept since “verisimilitude” means “approximation to truth”.
And, of course, they need evidence for their central claim, assuming that it is coherent all the way down, that the concept of “emptiness” has greater verisimilitude over rival concepts.
I have already pointed out that the Buddhist theory of “emptiness” is inconsistent with commonsense and science. So, even if it is a signpost, it is a signpost to nothing! LOL
Amod: “The idea is to take us to what Jim calls a “non-conceptual view”; and I don’t think that is an oxymoron. The idea of a “view” may itself be somewhat helpful here: one can just look and see the information gathered by the senses without words or concepts.”
I agree that one can observe something intensely and attentively without the distraction of thoughts and feelings. This just means that one is absorbed by what one sees, but any recognition or understanding of one’s visual experience and the objects in one’s visual field, or recourse to the concept of “information”, entails that words and concepts have come into play. Information cannot be grasped without words and concepts. Just perform a “Gedanken experiment” and ask yourself what it would be to gather or discern information about your favorite scenery without recourse to words and concepts!
Amod: “Now, one might well argue (as Hegel does) that when one looks without concepts, “immediately” in Hegel’s terms, no information is actually gained, nothing is actually learned or known.”
If I understand or recognize that I have looked “immediately”, I have already deployed the concept of “immediate looking”! Obviously, one has no clue on the nature of one’s looking if one does not recognize or understand it! And there is no way anyone can intelligibly assert that they looked without concepts and at the same say that this looking was “immediate” and “without concepts”. A mode of looking which is recognized as “looking without concepts” is still concept-laden albeit the concept of “looking without concepts”!
It’s kinda like the trick someone is trying to pull when they claim that they had no thoughts in their mind while they were meditating. Well, they were thinking all that time “Wow! I have no thoughts in my mind.”!!!! LOL
Amod: “Must knowledge be expressed in concepts? Thill, it seems to me that your comments on the issue to date have been begging the question; they have assumed the two points most at issue. The first of these (which Hegel would share and Buddhists and Advaitins would oppose) is that to count as real knowledge, knowledge must be expressible in concepts. The second, which Hegel would also oppose, is that ambiguity is problematic and knowledge must be expressible in precise concepts. These assumptions, I think, are both commonplaces in contemporary English-language analytic philosophy, but they are specifically disclaimed by your opponents in this debate, and therefore they cannot be taken for granted.”
Well, Buddhist and Advaitins are not known for echewing concepts. In fact, their literature is marked by an excess of concepts and conceptual distinctions, quite in bad taste for those who want to emphasize the importance of “going beyond concepts” or “non-conceptual knowledge of Reality”!
First, I will show that the idea of “ineffable knowledge” is incoherent. To say that some form of knowledge is ineffable is to say that the object of knowledge cannot be described in words. But then one has already conveyed some knowledge of the nature of that object in making this very claim! Further, one must already know a great deal about the object in question to make the comparison with other “effable” objects and to determine that this object is “ineffable”. Thus, typically in mystical literature, you have claims to the effect that the object is beyond “time , space, and causation” and “thought and feeling” and such as reasons for the conclusion that it is ineffable. But to know that something is beyond “time, space, and causation” and “thought and feeling” is already to know a great deal, and a great deal of “effable” stuff, about that object. So, the claim that the object is ineffable and ineffable for those reasons is self-refuting! Hence, claims on “ineffable knowledge” are self-refuting.
This implies that all knowledge is “effable” or expressible, albeit in varying degrees. Now if all knowledge is “effable” or expressible, then this presupposes that he who knows must also know that he knows. If I do not know that I know, there is no possibility that I can express my knowledge.
And how can I know that I know if I do not use the concept of “knowledge”?
So, all expression of knowledge presupposes that the knower knows that he or she knows. And this implies that he or she has already used the concept of “knowledge”. Hence, all knowledge and all expression of knowledge must involve at least one concept, namely that of “knowledge” itself.
Therefore, there is no such thing as “non-conceptual knowledge”. It is an oxymoron.
Well, unless you are exploiting ambiguity for literary purposes, it is problematic if you are trying to convey knowledge or information about something. The obvious reason for this is that it is unclear and confusing! Ambiguity entails that what is conveyed can be understood in more than one sense and when you have alternate meanings you don’t know in which sense you should take what has been conveyed. As a result, you fail to grasp the information which is the point of the communication.
Hegel is an (con) artist of ambiguity and created truly grotesque formulations. No wonder Schopenhauer in his revulsion at Hegel’s style called him “the Caliban of the intellect”!
I am sure you will agree that “disambiguation” can make a difference not only between life and death, but also “bondage” and enlightenement.
Well of course the concept of emptiness is inadequate: that’s the whole point. Madhyamakins come right out and say that emptiness is itself empty. The same with the point that Buddhists and Advaitins speak in concepts. This response reminds me a bit of Derrida thinking he’s so clever for pointing out that Plato and Rousseau promote the superiority of oral discourse but doing so in writing. Has nobody ever heard of the idea of choosing the lesser evil? The claim is not that the “emptiness” concept corresponds to reality, but that it is closer to reality than the other concepts we have and the ones we usually use. One uses imperfect words to get something relatively close to what is beyond those words, because there is no other way to get there. Is this “bad taste”? Then so is using disease to prevent disease – the principle behind modern inoculation and vaccination. Those tasteless, hypocritical doctors!
More generally – so the claim goes – concepts are required in order to get one to a reality beyond concepts. One makes highly inexact, and indeed incorrect, statements that say something approximately resembling the (ultimate) truth without being (ultimately) true, because that’s the only way one can get to knowledge that actually is correct and is ultimately true.
Re “It’s kinda like the trick someone is trying to pull when they claim that they had no thoughts in their mind while they were meditating. Well, they were thinking all that time ‘Wow! I have no thoughts in my mind.’!!!! LOL”: Not at all. I’m hardly an expert on meditation, but even in my limited experience there is a painfully obvious difference between having the thought “Wow! I have no thoughts in my mind” and actually having no thoughts in my mind – at least to the extent that “having a thought in one’s mind” consists of a silent sentence being said or written in the mind.
” Information cannot be grasped without words and concepts. Just perform a ‘Gedanken experiment’ and ask yourself what it would be to gather or discern information about your favorite scenery without recourse to words and concepts!” Easy: it would be gathering information about the scenery the way a dog or a bird or a horse or a monkey gathers information about the scenery. No words involved at all, but information is clearly being processed. It is of course very difficult for adult human beings to gather such information without words, since words are such an ingrained habit, but for a toddler it is simple. If one were to deny that the nonverbal information retained by nonhuman animals is knowledge, one would likely be doing so through a mere tautologous redefinition of knowledge. It should be pretty obvious that there is knowledge that itself does not involve words. The more important, open, question is whether there is knowledge that cannot be described in words.
And it’s on that question that I think your questions have staying power. As humans, we do express knowledge in words all the time. And moreover, as you point out, by characterizing something as ineffable one still says something about it. Even if what one says is not quite true, as is claimed, it’s still supposed to be truer than other linguistic characterizations. And this does throw real doubt on the claim of a given knowledge to be inexpressible in words – or at least, to be completely inexpressible in words. Some knowledge does indeed seem to be partially inexpressible. To one who has never tasted a tomato, one can describe the taste of a tomato with some words through comparisons, but these comparisons will not express the entirety of the experience of tasting a tomato. This experience would then seem partially, but not totally, ineffable.
Finally, re ambiguity: again, begging the question, especially when it comes to Hegel. You say: “Ambiguity entails that what is conveyed can be understood in more than one sense and when you have alternate meanings you don’t know in which sense you should take what has been conveyed. As a result, you fail to grasp the information which is the point of the communication.” But this is already presuming that the point of the communication is to convey information which has one sense and one sense only; and that what is conveyed is always best understood in only one sense. This is the presumption of analytic philosophy, that all words should be used with exactly one (1) meaning; but this is not the way language works in real life. We do not learn words with singular and unambiguous definitions; we learn them in their context, surrounded by a web of meaning. In many particular circumstances we may want to reduce that ambiguity for the sake of providing exact practical directions or falsifiable hypotheses; but it is a foolish conceit to think that that is or should be the ideal of all communication. For sometimes that full web of meaning is exactly what must be conveyed to provide an idea in its full depth. The “unless you are exploiting ambiguity for literary purposes” gives the game away; for literary and rhetorical purposes are vital for a great deal of communication. To insist on singularity of meaning and bracket literature out as a side case is to presume that life is a science and not an art. It seems to me that one who thinks that way has likely not lived very much.
Hacker converted to Roman Catholicism? How anyone could convert to RC after their critical engagement with Advaita tradition beats me! I guess there are more things about the human mind than can be comprehended in any philosophy!
I wonder if Hacker took recourse to double standards in the face of the insurmountable problems of coherence pertaining to the doctrine of the Trinity.
Does he see that if Jesus and the Father are “not two” and the Holy Ghost and the Father are “not two”, then it must be that Jesus and the Holy Ghost are “not two”?
JW, a Christian can also argue in your vein about the doctrine of the Trinity and claim that logic, and particularly elementary logic of identity, cannot help us in our attempts to “understand” the profundity of the doctrine of the Trinity.
Would that persuade you to accept the doctrine of the Trinity?
Quite a few comments in a few days!
I don’t have much to add except that I have no problem with Christian Trinitarians.
When you look at the great figures who have achieved or claim to have achieved or are believed to have achieved the status of self realised sage in the Hindu* tradition then it is remarkable how many of them in their public work with the devotees stress the usefulness of social service. Ethical behaviour is regarded as an essential part of yoga without which the summum bonum of realisation will not be achieved. Hindus* who are puzzled about what to do in any particular circumstance have the resource of the Dharma Sastras which covers every eventuality. To say that all action is impermanent and self-perpetuating and that strictly there is no good or bad karma only just karma and that freedom (kaivalya) comes from knowledge does not abrogate the need for work. That two goods should contradict each other seems a perverse interpretation arising out of sectarianism. Chapter two and three of the Gita go into the whole subtle relationship between the Gunas and the cultivation of a mental attitude that leads to peace.
That sounds like the Categorical Imperative and also a warning against quietism which one recollects was a prior criticism of the Hindu* Dharma.
From within the tradition itself come many criticisms of the sort Hacker makes and the answer to them usually comes in the form of ‘you are where you are and you know what you know and are rapt by maya just as everything is but until you have surpassed ignorance/avidya you must ‘speak the truth and follow dharma’.
One notices that Krishna does not let himself off Dharmic behaviour, he is no illuminatus that has gone past that as the cultivators of the transgressive claim. But that’s another argument.
There’s a crucial distinction to be made – studiously neglected by Hacker – between “ethical behaviour” and “social service.” Every tradition that emphasizes individual illumination (Advaita, Jainism, Theravāda, the Yoga Sūtras) still stresses yama and niyama, restraints and observances of some sort: one must refrain from lying, stealing, harming others and so on, for to do so would cloud the mind from its necessary purity. There is a clear ethics going on here, but one that involves no social service or social action.
The śāstras and the Gītā go one step further toward social action in that one must do one’s dharma; but this is a conservative dharma, adhering to one’s fixed place in society, not working to change it. The ideal of social transformation and activism, so prominent in Vivekānanda, is new. How new is in some dispute – some have argued that the bhakti poets’ works contained an element of activism – but it doesn’t go back further than their time. Even Vivekānanda’s guru Ramakrishna thought social activism was a waste of time; as I recall, Vivekānanda himself came around to Ramakrishna’s view later in life.
Amod: “Every tradition that emphasizes individual illumination (Advaita, Jainism, Theravāda, the Yoga Sūtras…”
I think we need to move forward from Advaita to a consideration of Visistadvaita and Dvaita traditions. It is high time that Ramanuja’s and Madhva’s arguments against the non-dualism of Shankara and in favor of their own original points of view on Brahman and its relation to the world and individuals, the reality of the world, the diversity of individuals, etc., entered into the mainstream of Western philosophical discourse.
We really need to repair the significant damage done by Buddhism and Advaita to the image of Indian philosophy and culture in the West and to the wellsprings of vitality and life-affirmation in Indian culture.
I suspect that the origins of the myth of a world-negating, world-shunning, world-escaping, asocial Indian ethos lie squarely within the folds of the idealist Buddhism and Advaita.
Instead, we should now consider and raise to prominence the realist, nastika or atheist, “worldly wisdom” and hedonist traditions or streams of thought in India.
Funny that you mention Rāmānuja – I was recently reading him (his Gītā commentary) in the hopes of finding a more worldly Indian philosophy, and came away pretty disappointed. A great deal of his thought seems to rest on the idea of permanently existing individual souls, an idea which strikes me as highly implausible. It seems like the kind of view that is at least theoretically subject to empirical testing, and which we have not a whit of empirical evidence for and a reasonable amount against.
By contrast, a monism like Śaṅkara’s is something a priori, not disprovable by experience because it deals with the kinds of claims that experience itself depends on. Having been exposed to both, I find Śaṅkara’s thought significantly more plausible.
As for the realist, nāstika, atheist or “worldly wisdom” traditions in India… well, there aren’t that many of those (unless you count Buddhism and Jainism, which it doesn’t sound like you do). Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika is often considered realist, but based on what I know of it so far it seems close to worthless as a system of practical philosophy – the ideal there seems to be what is taken as a reductio ad absurdum in other systems, namely to become completely insentient. The Cārvāka-Lokāyatas are wholly another matter, but they died out a long time ago and left us precious little in the way of ideas to be learned from.
There is a reason why people – in East Asia as well as Europe and North America – have been much more attracted to the “unworldly” streams of Indian philosophy. There’s just a lot more of value to be found there.
“the nineteenth-century Bengali devotional poet Ramprasad Sen criticized nondualism by saying “I want to taste sugar, not to become sugar.”
Ramprasad surely understood that experience, enjoyment, and knowledge of anything, whether sugar, the human beloved, or the Divine beloved, presupposes distinctions between the subject, the experience, and the object of experience.
I propose that the competition for the “Oxymoron of the day” be adjudicated in favor of “nondual experience”, “nondual knowledge”, and such philosophical exotica.
Amod:
http://www.belurmath.org/relief_news_archives/relief.htm
This is the page of the Ramakrishna Mission relief agency. They claim to have been active right from the Master’s time and that he approved of such service.
The “Ramakrishna” Mission was actually founded by Vivekānanda – Ramakrishna had little or no part in its creation – and so it adheres to Vivekānanda’s philosophy rather than Ramakrishna’s. Narasingha Sil notes how a fellow monk had already charged Vivekānanda with falsely introducing social service into Ramakrishna’s teachings; in reply Vivekānanda said, “Hands off! Who cares for your Ramakrishna? Who cares for your Bhakti and Mukti? Who cares what your Scriptures say?… I am not a slave of Ramakrishna, but of him only who serves and helps others, without caring for his own Bhakti or Mukti.” It seems that promoting social service was more important to V than representing Ramakrishna’s thought accurately, and one might expect the organization he founded to carry on this tradition.
Even in Saradananda’s Sri Ramakrishna, The Great Master – itself in Vivekānanda’s tradition – we find the criticism that his followers “were being carried far away from the religious ideal of the nation and were regarding social reform as the acme of their practice of religion.” (789) In M’s Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna we find this direct quote from Ramakrishna:
“Sambhu Mallick once talked about establishing hospitals, dispensaries, and schools, making roads, digging public reservoirs, and so forth. I said to him: ‘Don’t go out of your way to look for such works. Undertake only those works that present themselves to you and are of pressing necessity — and those also in a spirit of detachment.’ It is not good to become involved in many activities. That makes one forget God. Coming to the Kālighāt temple, some, perhaps, spend their whole time in giving alms to the poor. They have no time to see the Mother in the inner shrine! (Laughter.) First of all manage somehow to see the image of the Divine Mother, even by pushing through the crowd. Then you may or may not give alms, as you wish. You may give to the poor to your heart’s content, if you feel that way. Work is only a means to the realization of God.” (143)
So, definitely not an absolute criticism of social action, but the attitude is neutral at best; you can do social action if you want, and it can even help you realize God, but you certainly don’t have to, and too much of it can be an impediment.
Amod:
The other great resource on the life and teaching of Ramkrishna is The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna by M. a close account of his teaching and conversation from 1882 to 1886. It’s an extraordinary record that runs to 1056 pages. On the day of the Master’s birthday 1885 he records this conversation with a householder devotee.
This seems to me absolutely unsurprising and in line with the dharma sastras. Unfortunately the waters have been muddied in relation to Ramakrishna.
Amod, I see your point about the erroneous claim that altruism and ethics should be the same.
Yet I also see the point the two were trying to make clear: it is somehow paradoxical to claim that others do not exist as others and that one wants to help *them*. This does not mean that one cannot engage in what a Christian (why do you think Evangelicals or Orthodoxes would be different from Catholics?) would call an ‘altruistic’ action. It just mean that one would engage in it for other reasons. For instance, because s/he does not feel any longer any attachment to her/his life and is hence ready to sacrifice it for the sake of decreasing the suffer (in what a Christian, a Jew, a Muslim, a laukika man would call ‘another’).
Eknāth’s quote also points to the same, since he says that one helps the others not out of altruism, but just like the link hand helps the right one.
“Altruism”, which involves considering and promoting the interests and well-being of others without regard to one’ own interests and well-being, is an essential aspect of the ethics or the ethical life.
For Schopenhauer, altruism expressed in the form of compassion is synonymous with the ethical. He would view “ethical egoism” as a contradiction in terms. for him, an action counts as truly moral or ethical only if it has its motivation or basis in compassion. If it is motivated by egoism or self-interest, he would consign it to the realm of prudence or “worldly wisdom”.
Good point – I hadn’t really thought through the difference between Catholics specifically and other Christians (or even other monotheists) on this point. I suppose what seems to me most specifically Catholic here is that the Pauls don’t just assume the nondual traditions are wrong – they learn about them and engage in dialogue with them in order to refute them, as the Jesuits did (or were supposed to do).
And yes, the point is taken that the nondualist systems aren’t really altruistic – but again, I think, one must ask: “so what?” They haven’t established why one should consider a “purer” or “truer” form of altruism any better.
The idea that ‘oxymoron’ means the same as ‘a contradiction in terms’ is a harmless solecism in its own way but it may demonstrate a crucial lack of understanding of a central feature of poetry, mysticism and the fertile area that spans both Mythos and Logos.
Examples of classical oxymoron:
“And as they run they look behind,
and snatch a fearful joy.” (of truant schoolboys)
“Faith unfaithful kept him falsely true”
Examples may be multiplied but is it the case that they are all just examples of incoherent contradiction that explodes into vapid nonsense. I don’t think so. We can find a clear area of sound observation in love/hate, attraction/repulsion etc as a unitary emotional constellation. TheNegative Capability
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_capability
of Keats is too well known to be analysed here. Hegel has been mentioned. Do we forget his sublation idea which Advaita pinched. The culprit was Radhakrishnan.
My point is that when you move away from the comforting simplicity of bi-valent logic you do not descend into gibberish. The destination of your journey is the apophatic, passing through those areas of apparent contradiction via the cross roads of coincidentia oppositorum. If you are prepared to dismiss, as foolish, questions such as ‘if I am only acquainted with the appearances how do I know the real’ because the answer suggested has the form ‘because the appearance is the reality’ then good luck to you, shut the door on the way out, Plato and Aristotle and Kant and Shankara will remain in the room. It’s the aporiai that keeps them there.
Well, “incoherence” and “nonsense” are my preferred terms. If you are pointing out that oxymoron is also a literary device, I cannot disagree. My target is philosophical, metaphysical, religious, and theological claims. However, the Greek etymology of “oxymoron ” clearly shows that the term refers to the conjunction of incompatible notions, e.g., Sharp and dull.
Both in the East and the West the mode of criticism of claims in terms of their patent or implied absurdity has a long and distinguished history. When the Carvakas compared the Vedic utterances to the croakings of frogs, they were essentially making the point that those utterances were unintelligible.
In my view, the identification and elimination of truncated nonsense is one of the important tasks of philosophy. As Volataire put it, those who subscribe to absurdities will not find it difficult to support atrocities. So, given the dangers of philosophical, and religious nonsense, it is imperative to identify and eliminate it from our consciousness. One could also see this as part of the process of purification of one’s intellect and consciousness. It’s getting rid of garbage. And the mind is all the more lighter and luminous! So, the elimination of nonsense from the mind has a “spiritual” or contemplative benefit, not to mention the salubrious effects on other areas of one’s life. It is not, as it is often caricatured to be, a sterile exercise in logic and/or semantics.
Ever heard of the reign of terror?
Ever heard of the “Holy” Inquisition, the Crusades, Jihad,etc ?
Aren’t all sorts of zealots frightening?
Why divert attention from issues of clarity and coherence to religious or anti-religious zealotry?
Just saying Robspierre was “getting rid of the garbage”.
You are confusing the elimination of nonsense and the elimination of the adherents of nonsense. If some have eliminated the adherents of nonsense, or the adherents of competing nonsense, that is not evidence against the enterprise of identifying and eliminating nonsense or verbal garbage.
Whatever his pretext, Robespierre was concerned with eliminating threats to the consolidation of power than anything else. Hence, even Lavoisier was not spared.
It may be of interest to you that I think that the discourse of the French revolutionaries was not bereft of dangerous nonsense.
MR: “If you are prepared to dismiss, as foolish, questions such as ‘if I am only acquainted with the appearances how do I know the real’ because the answer suggested has the form ‘because the appearance is the reality’”
The question “If I am acquainted with the appearances, how do I know the real?” presupposes the distinction between appearance and reality. But the so-called answer “because the appearance is the reality” denies this presupposition because it identifies appearance with reality. If you deny the the distinction between appearance and reality, how can you still continue to ask “If I am acquainted with the appearances, how do I know the real?”???
If you still think this makes sense, good luck to you!
Don’t forget that Plato, Aristotle, Buddha, Jesus, Shankara, Kant, etc., were all human beings and not gods, or worse, Brahman. The coherence or truth of an idea or claim doesn’t become self-evident just because it was proffered by one or more of them.
MR: “TheNegative Capability
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_capability
of Keats is too well known to be analysed here.”
I just want to point out an interesting piece of “synchronicity” here. For a couple of days now, I have been preoccupied with Keats, especially his last days in Rome. Interesting that you should bring him up without any reference to him on my part.
I am not a student of Buddhism so take this comment for what it is worth. My knowledge of Buddhism comes from the fact that I’ve had a friend for the past twenty years or so who has gone from student to monk and who now has “graduated” to become an Abbot (his word for it) of his own community. I have been his friend through this whole process and sort of an escape, I think. He would come over and have a few drinks away from his sangat and talk about things not Buddhist–and things not radical Euro-leftist. Since I have never been his student I could be his friend. I think it was from Amod that I got the interesting statement that a teacher can be a friend to his student but a student can never be a friend to his teacher. Occasionally the topics would drift toward Buddhism and he often vented his frustrations. One thing he made clear to me is that Buddhism is a religion, not a philosophy. While he is, of course, a scholar of Buddhist literature he maintained that none of that really mattered. The only thing that mattered to him was Za-zen. What is experienced in Za-zen cannot be expressed in language (so I gather). It can only be hinted at. The problem with taking the literature too seriously is that one gets hung up in arguments about what is and what isn’t rationally coherent. If you have a problem with that maybe Zen Buddhism just isn’t for you. Mind you I’m not a Buddhist so maybe I do have a problem with that but if you’re arguing about its coherence you are not, as I understand it, arguing about Zen.
D: “One thing he made clear to me is that Buddhism is a religion, not a philosophy. While he is, of course, a scholar of Buddhist literature he maintained that none of that really mattered.”
He can’t possibly be a “scholar of Buddhist literature” if he said that “Buddhism is a religion, not a philosophy”!
“none of that really mattered” to what? To what is that Buddhist literature alegedly unimportant or irrelevant?
“The only thing that mattered to him was Za-zen.”
It would of course be a monstrous form of egoism to conclude from this that the only thing which matters in Buddhism or even Zen Buddhism is Zazen! Even Dogen wrote poetry and gave innumerable sermons.
Who knows, he’s a zen master, maybe he was speaking in koans.
He is a “Zen master”? Is this another koan? LOL LOL LOL
Well that probably is not a term used by Buddhists. The proper term is, I believe, that he has received shiho.
“he has received shiho.”
Oh, an “exotic” Koan!
What about Koans? Particularly in Korean Zen, a sustained engagement with Koans, inclusive of entertaining probing questions on their meaning, and, therefore, their coherence, is an essential part of practice.
Koans do not have rational solutions.
What do you mean by a “rational solution”?
In any case, my point had to do with the legitimacy of the task of questioning meaning and coherence in Zen Koan reflection. You have not refuted that point.
I’m not trying to refute anything. We just disagree.
Is your diasgreement with my point that Koan reflection involves questions on meaning and coherence a rational disagreement? Do you have reasons for that disagreement?
We disagree that there is any point to this.
I disagree that “we disagree that there is any point to this”. You were at first disagreeing that “questioning coherence” had a place in Zen. When I gave you an example of questioning meaning and coherence in the Korean Zen tradition (consider the work of Kusan Sunim, a true “master” in the Korean Zen tradition)of Koan reflection, you simply retorted that you disagree without giving any reasons!
I leave you with a Koan:
What is the sound of disagreement without comprehension?
I think I was actually disagreeing that arguing coherence has any place in zen.
Questioning meaning and coherence is a form of argument, whether carried on in one’s own mind or with others. Kusan Sunim, for one, encouraged it in Koan pratice.
How can you claim to be on the path of understanding how things really are if you don’t care for the distinction between sense and nonsense, coherence and incoherence? Concern for those distinctions is an elementary requirement for any inquiry into the nature of reality.
Maybe you missed this but I’m not a Buddhist. I’m a western rationalist. I prefer the scientific method. I didn’t really make any claims except that I think Buddhism makes claims beyond that method. If I really thought those claims were completely valid I would probably be a Buddhist.
“I prefer the scientifc method”.
Well, we have been at this for sometime now. It’s been interesting, but I will have to bid “adieu” for now with the comment that if you prefer the scientific method, then you must question the coherence of claims. It is an elementary requirement. It doesn’t matter whether you are dealing with Buddhist claims. No claim, however venerable or “sacred”, has any immunity to scrutiny in terms of coherence and truth.
But it really doesn’t hurt to show them a little respect. I have questioned claims and come to my own conclusions. I don’t feel the need to be an evangelist for my own conclusions.
Accusations of “offense” and “disrespect” are part of the tactics of religious believers to muzzle, intimidate, and suppress criticism. The issue is not whether an analysis of nonsense is offensive or disrespectful. The issue is whether the analysis is sound. Charges of offensiveness and disrespect are just red herrings.
But you’re not going to change their minds by arguing with them. It’s not like religious people spend their lives thinking about a problem and you can suddenly come along and point out a glaring paradox that they had never considered. I think Michael Reidy brought up “negative capability” as a term for the stance of those who suspend such paradoxes in their minds. I’m not suggesting we should grovel before religious authorities but if you can’t have productive dialog with them you might as well just smile and say hello. Or maybe discuss football with them. Maybe they aren’t interested in our analysis.
I am just sharing my analysis of philosophical claims and carrying on discussions with those who want to do so on this forum. That’s all.
that’s fine. By a peculiar inversion of facts, the philosopher or the skeptic is now charged ad hominem with some form of “odium theologicum” whereas it is truly the characteristic of the religious believer or theologian who takes analysis of beliefs personally. Perhaps, they can’t help doing so because they have invested their identity and emotional security in those beliefs.
All the same Bertrand Russell’s comment is right on the money:
“Persecution is used in theology, not in arithmetic, because in arithmetic there is knowledge, but in theology there is only opinion.”
“I don’t feel the need to be an evangelist for my own conclusions.”
So, scientists who argue for their theories are also evangelists for their conclusions?
I hope you are not trapped within the mindset which while not sharing religious beliefs still accords it special status and immunity against rational scrutiny.
Science doesn’t need evangelist because is has testable theories.
But does a scientist who promotes a theory become an “evangelist” for doing so? Does a historian who proffers an analysis of an event become an “evangelist” for doing so? Why should a philosopher who offers an analysis of religious claim be any different from a scientist or a historian? If you don’t know this already, you should know that philosophy has rigorous standards`of evidence and logic as its “testing criteria”.
Scientists are dealing with facts which are measurable in some way. A historian gives the best account of events that s/he can. Neither lives in the religious realm-at least not professionally. Trying to rid the world of error–the whole world, not just what lives between your ears–is an evangelical stance.
Personally I’m very suspicious that even the deepest human experiences like love and friendship (and need I say religion) are probably founded on errors of perception and of fact. I’m all for using science where it belongs, which is in the world of things. Please debunk as much nonsense as you can. I welcome it. If a fundamentalist claims the world is 5k years old I think you should humiliate him publicly. But I think we’re talking about a qualitatively different thing when a person (of any sect-or art for that matter) claims that s/he has experienced something outside of the bounds of reason–something irrational. If they try to bring that into the common ground or try to legislate it or force me into similar conclusions they’re going to have a fight. But I think as personal experiences those things are beyond criticism. I can’t convince or dissuade you that do do or do not love your wife.
My statement on Buddhism is that as a religion it is not in the realm of science.(Not defending Gould here, just happen to agree in this instance). There is much philosophical literature and tradition in Buddhism but that isn’t what makes it Buddhism. Those are tools to help students but if one experiences the state of mind (or whatever it is) that inspired that tradition then s/he no longer has use, personally, for those things. Now if one is a teacher that may be a different story.
I don’t think that philosophy stands on the same ground as science. It often soars far beyond science but to say that it is grounded the way science is does both an injustice. I’m not sure metaphysicians are ever really sure that they are talking about the same thing when they argue. I’m not dismissing that I’m just saying it’s got a lot more in common with religion than science. How could it be as exact(and as limited) as science when it comes down to the definitions of something as slippery as words?
If as a philosopher you want to analyze religion that is your prerogative. I just don’t think you should expect religious people to take you very seriously. If a religion makes claims of fact..well go get them cowboy.
I’m not a monk so I’ll have to just guess….silence?
Think again and question! :)
It’s asking you about the sound of disagreement without comprehension!
D: “Trying to rid the world of error–the whole world, not just what lives between your ears–is an evangelical stance.”
Well, you are attacking a straw man. I have not set out to rid the whole world of error or propagate “the Truth” to the four corners of the earth. What I have done is to examine specific philosophical claims or religious claims with a philosophical upshot.
D: “If as a philosopher you want to analyze religion that is your prerogative. I just don’t think you should expect religious people to take you very seriously.”
The analysis is not meant to get religious believers to take it seriously. I don’t particularly expect those who believe that a woman can give birth without having had sex with a man, a man can live in the belly of a whale for three days, a human being is identical to God or Brahman, and so on to have any comprehension or respect for a rational analysis of such beliefs.
D: “If a religion makes claims of fact..well go get them cowboy.”
You seem to have accepted Gould’s views on religion and science uncritically. Why should criticism of religion be confined only to its claims of fact? What makes its rituals (human sacrifice, animal sacrifice, ect) exempt from criticism? What makes its value systems immune to criticism? What makes the structure of religious beliefs immune to a logical analysis of coherence or consistency of its elements?
Kindly re-examine again the idea you have uncritically accepted from Gould (it is implied by his views, I think) that only criticism of factual claims made by religion is legitimate!
D: “But I think as personal experiences those things are beyond criticism.”
If I claim that I had a “personal experience” in which God asked me to kill my children or all the Muslims in America, is this also “beyond criticism” as a “personal experience”?
Any rational person would say that this was a dangerous delusion. Is that not a criticism of that “personal experience”? And is it not legitimate as a criticism of that “personal experience”? So, just because something is a personal experience, it doesn’t mean it is immune to crticism or inquiry.
It is a legitimate task of a philosopher to examine claims of “personal experiences” in religion and their logical relationship to other claims based on those personal experiences.
I recommend an introductory text on the philosophy of religion, if you have not read any. Pl. read any sections or chapters on “Religious Experience”.