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Buddhaghosa, Butön, Cloud of Unknowing, Confucius, Dov Baer, Meister Eckhart, mystical experience, Ninian Smart, perennialism, phenomenology, Śāntideva, Tāranātha, Tibet, Victor Mair, Yoga Sūtras, Zhuangzi
When I was in grad school, a big academic fashion was to heap scorn on the idea that mystical experience could be something cross-cultural: everything was reducible to social context, and the similarities of experience didn’t really matter, as I had once argued myself. But the roots of that idea were often more asserted than argued: the famous article by Steven Katz, which inaugurated the approach, didn’t bother to justify its assumption that “There are NO pure (unmediated) experiences“, assuming perhaps that italics and capital letters were the only support necessary.
A little while ago I noted how Robert Forman’s collection of essays illustrate “cool” mystical experiences, where distinctions of senses and self drop away and the mind ceases to fluctuate, in sources as varied as the Indian Yoga Sūtras, the Ukrainian Hasidic Dov Baer and the German mystic Meister Eckhart. Something similar seems to be going on in the Sri Lankan systematizer Buddhaghosa and the medieval English Cloud of Unknowing, which both involve, in Ninan Smart’s terms, a “systematic effort to blot out sense perception, memories, and imaginings of the world of our sensory environment and of corresponding inner states.” And it turns out that once your mind is no longer prejudged to deny any cross-cultural similarity, you start noticing it in a lot of other places.
Eckhart and Baer are relatively marginal figures within the histories of Christianity and Judaism. The same is not at all true of the Zhuangzi, one of the two texts that are always referred to as core to philosophical Daoism. It’s always hard to say anything with confidence about the Zhuangzi, composite text that it is. But once you’ve noticed how many other contexts cool mystical experience shows up in, then it’s hard not to be struck by this passage from chapter 6:
“I’m making progress,” said Yen Hui.
“What do you mean?” asked Confucius.
“I have forgotten rites and music.”
“Not bad, but you still haven’t got it.”
Yen Hui saw Confucius again on another day and said, “I’m making progress.”
“What do you mean?”
“I have forgotten humaneness and righteousness.”
“Not bad, but you still haven’t got it.”
Yen Hui saw Confucius again on another day and said, “I’m making progress.”
“What do you mean?”
“I sit and forget.”
“What do you mean, ‘sit and forget’?” Confucius asked with surprise.
“I slough off my limbs and trunk,” said Yen Hui, “dim my intelligence, depart from my form, leave knowledge behind, and become identical with the Transformational Thoroughfare. This is what I mean by ‘sit and forget’.”
“If you are identical,” said Confucius, “then you have no preferences. If you are transformed, then you have no more constants. It’s you who is really the worthy one! Please permit me to follow after you.”
This translation is by Victor Mair, a Penn professor known for his cranky rants about popular misunderstandings of Chinese characters, so I feel confident that this is a serious scholarly translation, not just some random woolly hippie translating on vibes. And the state of mind described in this translated passage, where one sits and forgets (zuòwàng 坐忘) in order to “dim my intelligence, depart my form, leave knowledge behind”: that sure looks a lot like Dov Baer saying one should “forget oneself totally”, like Eckhart saying “a man should flee his senses, turn his powers inward and sink into an oblivion of all things and himself” – like the “systematic effort to blot out sense perception, memories, and imaginings of the world of our sensory environment and of corresponding inner states” in Buddhaghosa and the Cloud of Unknowing.
But where I was even more startled to notice this kind of mystical forgetting is in Śāntideva. After all, I did my dissertation on the guy! Yet with my grad-school anti-mystical blinkers on, for a good two decades I had managed to neglect the significance of Bodhicaryāvatāra verse IX.34:
When neither existents nor nonexistents stand before the mind, then, because it has no other destination, then the mind, without objects, becomes tranquil.
The Tibetan historians Butön and Tāranātha had no such neglect. They tell the story of Śāntideva’s first reciting the text, and say that when he got to this specific verse, he floated into the air and his body disappeared, the remaining lines recited by a disembodied voice. I don’t believe that description as a historical account, but it’s a strong indicator that the Tibetans viewed this verse as a particularly powerful spiritual realization.
And the content of that verse, what constitutes the realization, is striking. It is about a mind emptying itself of content, where neither existents nor nonexistents stand before it – one might say “leaving knowledge behind”, or “sinking into an oblivion of all things and himself”. There isn’t a physical practice of sitting, the way there is in Zhuangzi; the verse is part of a metaphysical argument, responding to a hypothetical Yogācāra objector. But what appears here is an intentionally tranquil, objectless state of mind, leaving behind distinctions, that sure sounds a lot like those described by revered sages in very different times and places – whether it’s Eckhart’s “oblivion of all things and himself” or the Yoga Sūtras’ “cessation of the fluctuations of consciousness”.
The comparison here is still in relatively broad strokes; we shouldn’t jump to the conclusion that these experiences are all exactly the same. Still, I’m having a harder and harder time accepting the conclusion that it’s social construction all the way down. People in different cultures put different cultural meanings and values on rainfall and the way it makes plants grow, but all across the world they still know what rain is and the fact that it makes plants grow. And it does seem that in many unconnected parts of at least the Old World, revered sages see that a practice of forgetting things and self – by whatever means – can lead one to a spiritually beneficial state of mind.
Of course it’s not social construction all the way down; would anyone say that the sweetness of honey is social construction all the way down? Or the depth of sadness, or the energy of excitement? Why would states of deep meditation be uniquely so? I’d say it’s time to stop giving reverential attention to failed theories like blank slateism and its social constructivist offshoot…
I guess it’s not that surprising that there is mysticism in Śāntideva, artfully condensed in verse IX.34. Chapter 9 of the BCA is a scholarly exposition of the Mādhyamaka school, in its Prasaṅgika variation, and Mādhyamaka is fundamentally a formalized version of the Prajñāpāramitā spiritual approach. If we look into the Heart Sūtra, which is a masterful summary of Prajñāpāramitā, we find a highly condensed presentation of this same mystical insight: “in emptiness there is no form, no sensation, no recognition […] no consciousness [ … ] they [bodhisattvas] rely on and abide by the perfection of wisdom. Since their minds are unobscured, they have no fear. They transcend all error and attain the ultimate nirvāṇa.”
(Btw have you seen Jayarava Attwood’s blog? He’s built a whole online career digging deep into the Heart Sūtra, and much of it is as insightful as it is contrarian.)
My question with Śāntideva’s mysticism is how much of it remains effective and functional, under the heavy layers of Mādhyamaka scholasticism and bodhisattva ideology. Whereas the Prajñāpāramitā sūtras are more or less instructing their readers to sit and emptiness right there in their meditative experience, Nāgārjuna takes the approach that you should first argue with your own mind to deconstruct anything that you believe in, explicitly or implicitly. In Śāntideva’s version, this means debating (at least) your inner materialist, your inner Hindu, your inner Hīnayānist / Abhidharmika, your inner Yogācārin / idealist, and even your inner Svātantrika Mādhyamika, assuming you can find one. By the time you’ve mentally defeated all those with the supplied arguments, no positive or negative belief is supposed to remain standing, so the mind will have no choice but to give up and fall into peace.
But does this actually work? Is the way to the peace of Śūnyatā to first fill your mind with over a thousand years of subtle and subtler philosophical distinctions and arguments? It seems to me like the most common effect of doing that, is to end up quite attached to the whole Mādhyamaka scholastic enterprise, and to whatever details of interpretation your sub-sub-school likes to insist on.
At the same time, the BCA devotes one large chapter to wisdom, but it’s entirely placed within the framework of the bodhisattva’s path to Buddhahood. But that is supposed to take “three countless aeons” to reach fruition, which in practice means that you shouldn’t expect to feel any results, such as finding yourself any freer, within a puny human lifetime. So the mystical realization is dangled before your eyes, but then quickly and skillfully taken away into an astronomically far-away future.
I originally studied the Bodhicaryāvatāra the traditional way, verse by verse with the Tibetans, so I find it very interesting to read about your experience learning it in a Western academic context. It really looks worlds apart.
But ultimately after some years of digestion I came to quite dislike Śāntideva’s approach. All the ingredients are there, deep wisdom and selfless compassion, but wisdom comes only at the end, and all the chapters on training oneself to be patient and compassionate seem just too forceful and artificial, as if there was an underlying deep mistrust of the very depths of human nature.
Where is the spontaneity of the sage who, having found wisdom, just acts compassionately with others, right there in the present moment, simply because that’s the most natural thing to do? And smiles with understanding at the imperfect but perfectly human actions of others?
Thanks, skaladom; these are great comments. I’m more sympathetic to Śāntideva’s approach than you are, clearly. In part because I’m persuaded by his view that the power of pāpa is dark and terrible; I think the course of human history gives us plenty of reason to have an “underlying deep mistrust of the very depths of human nature.” It’s gradual and not sudden path, and that for a reason. The “spontaneity of the sage” doesn’t come until after a lot of disciplined self-work; if you try to jump straight there, you won’t get the spontaneity of the sage, but the spontaneity of the beast. I’m a bit more sympathetic to sudden-path views than I used to be, but I definitely get why that’s not where Śāntideva goes. (Late last year I posted a four–part series charting my own evolution on the question.)
I have seen Jayarava’s blog and used to be in regular dialogue with him. He is smart and well informed. But he blocked me – on Twitter I think – for reasons I was never clear about; he doesn’t seem to be inclined to further dialogue with me, so I haven’t really kept up with him.
Thanks for the reply, I think I went a bit overboard ranting at the holy cow. I agree that the BCA delivers a truly powerful statement about the power of pāpa, and that is an important thing to do in the world.
And I surely don’t expect Śāntideva to teach subitism, that’s just not his thing at all. But, given that it does contain some real mysticism, as you pointed out, I can’t help comparing it with the mystical literature of poets like Hafez, Kabir, Longchenpa or Milarepa, who regularly manage to make even a very ordinary reader feel like they got an undeserved peek beyond the curtain. Despite some really beautiful sections, I just don’t get much of this vibe with stern Śāntideva, for the reasons I outlined.
Well, I mean, there’s a reason I missed it the first time! Mysticism is clearly not “his thing” – which may make it all the more significant that it’s still present nevertheless.