BEYOND MATERIALISM AND AGNOSTICISM
We are all skeptics concerning views and opinions other than our own. The challenge that Buddhism presents is to develop a true spirit of skepticism toward our own unquestioned assumptions, for it is these—not the beliefs of others—that lie at the root of our suffering. So how shall we define “skepticism”? Michael Shermer, executive director of the Skeptics Society and publisher of its magazine Skeptic, gives this promising definition:
Skepticism is . . . the application of reason to any and all ideas—no sacred cows allowed. In other words . . . skeptics do not go into an investigation closed to the possibility that a phenomenon might be real or that a claim might be true. When we say we are “skeptical,” we mean that we must see compelling evidence before we believe.1
This sounds like a fine place to start. But it raises the all-important question—What constitutes compelling evidence?—that was asked in the prologue regarding the skeptical ideal expressed by William Kingdon Clifford: it is wrong to believe anything on insufficient evidence. Taking this ideal to its extreme means not believing anything unless we have seen the evidence for ourselves. But if scientists were to go that far, they would never begin any fresh research, for they would never finish replicating for themselves the findings of all their predecessors and contemporaries. In reality, we need to rely upon the authority of others who have found compelling evidence for their assertions. The scientific community produces thousands of peer-reviewed journals whose editors have the task of identifying rigorous research methods and compelling evidence. But are scientific experts the only people we can trust as arbiters of reality? What about our own first-person experience?
Shermer has a ready answer for that question: “Everybody has eyes and ears and a brain that perceives and so on. I think they’re all equally unreliable as eyewitnesses. We’re very bad at recounting things we think we saw.” Although sensory appearances can certainly be misleading at times, surely we can trust our own senses to some degree? Neil deGrasse Tyson, director of the Hayden Planetarium, responds to the contrary: “As a scientist, I need something better than your eyewitness testimony. Because even if in the court of law eyewitness testimony is a high form of evidence, in the court of science it is the lowest form of evidence you could possibly put forth.” In his ABC News documentary “The UFO Phenomenon—Seeing Is Believing,” the late Peter Jennings concluded on the basis of interviews with Shermer, Tyson, and others that “For scientists, seeing is not believing. For them, only physical evidence will prove that UFOs are visiting Earth.”2 Of course, even physical evidence produced by members of the general public—who don’t know how to collect such evidence properly—may be dismissed by scientists. Even physical evidence produced by scientists may not be taken seriously if it makes no sense within the framework of the generally accepted scientific worldview.
Another problem looms in our search for the criteria for compelling evidence. How can we acquire such evidence about our own subjective experience? We can be vividly aware that we are hungry or satiated, happy or sad, calm or agitated, and we may witness thoughts and images arising in our minds while we are awake and while we sleep. But such first-person experience often lacks any physical evidence—it is only a subjective impression. Surely such subjective experience should also qualify as compelling, for we know better than anyone else how we feel and what we are experiencing, regardless of whether these feelings and experiences correspond to anything in the objective world. At a meeting with the Dalai Lama in April 2009 at his home in Dharamsala, India, Princeton University cognitive psychologist Anne Treisman responded that on the contrary, perception is a kind of externally guided hallucination. We create experience rather than “photographing” it. For this reason, psychologists regard subjective reports as data rather than as factual accounts, and this includes the subjective reports of contemplatives—even adepts who are subjects in scientific studies of meditation.3
Sifting out everything that does not constitute “compelling evidence,” it appears that the only evidence that qualifies for staunch defenders of the faith of the Church Scientific is physical evidence that is compatible with the beliefs of scientific materialism. Such skeptics play a role like that of Roman Catholic priests in the medieval era, especially members of the Inquisition, when only ordained priests were authorized to read and interpret the one book of divine revelation. They also exercised exclusive authority to interpret others’ religious experiences and determine whether they were acceptable or heretical. Likewise, advocates of the Church Scientific insist that only scientists are authorized to read and interpret the one Book of Nature. Only they have the authority to interpret others’ experiences and determine whether or not they are “compelling,” i.e., not heretical. It is appropriate to be skeptical of this unique authority that scientists claim, and it is imperative to reaffirm the value and integrity of first-person experience. The Church Scientific that seeks hegemony over the intellect and the whole of human experience is in dire need of a protestant reformation.
Contemplative inquiry and its resulting insights are commonly dismissed by materialists on the grounds that such methods do not meet the scientific requirement of objectivity. This ideal, which can be traced back to Descartes, is of a disengaged observer who objectifies the outside world and eliminates contamination by subjective biases stemming from individual perceptions, assumptions, emotions, desires, and fears. Even though quantum physics has disproved the possibility of making truly objective observations of elementary particles without any effect of the observer on the phenomenon observed, this principle has been enormously useful in studying the objective world. However, it categorically excludes all subjectively experienced mental states and processes from scientific observation. Furthermore, in the minds of many scientists and philosophers who believe that the scientific method is the only way to study nature, subjective experience itself is excluded from the natural world. Such methodological idolatry compels them to believe that subjective experiences can be understood only when they are fully explained in the objective terms of the physical sciences.4
The Buddha declared that the root of suffering lies in ignorance and delusion, so skepticism toward popular beliefs is imperative. During his time, India accommodated a wide range of philosophical and religious beliefs, and it never suffered from ideological uniformity enforced by a union of church and state. Materialism and agnosticism were among the many schools of thought advocated by diverse groups. For example, Ajita Kesakambali, an Indian philosopher living in the sixth century b.c.e., professed that a human being consists only of physical elements, so death results in personal annihilation, with no good or bad consequences from one’s deeds in any future existence.5 The Indian ascetic Sanjaya Belatthaputta, a contemporary of the Buddha, promoted a pure form of agnosticism, declaring only ignorance about the existence of an afterlife, reincarnation, and karma.6 Moggallana and Sariputta, who became the Buddha’s principal disciples, first followed Sanjaya, but they eventually grew disillusioned because his teachings did not satisfy their yearning for liberation.
India at the time of the Buddha was influenced by three main approaches to seeking knowledge. First, like Judaism, the Brahmanic tradition embraced a religious path relying primarily on sacred scriptures and commentaries orally passed on from generation to generation. Second, like many Greek thinkers of the same era, adherents of the Indian Upanishadic tradition emphasized philosophical reasoning as the primary method for understanding the universe. Third, many Indian contemplatives adopted a radically empirical approach by using extrasensory perception and intuitive knowledge gained from the achievement of samadhi as their principal means for gaining insight and liberation. When questioned on his own epistemological position, the Buddha identified himself as one who embraced the third approach of emphasizing the development of direct, experiential knowledge.7
The Buddha encouraged his disciples to learn from their own experience what constitutes genuine happiness, carefully examining whether or not such hedonic pleasures as material gain, sensual pleasures, and reputation are sources of true happiness. Then, based on this understanding, one should pursue genuine happiness.8 He went on to discuss vari ous levels of happiness resulting from pure ethical conduct, restraint of the senses, and achievement of authentic samadhi, and ultimately from direct contemplative insight into the nature of reality.9 There is a causal sequence among these successively higher states of well-being. Authentic samadhi cannot arise without a high standard of ethics, and the realization of nirvana by way of contemplative insight cannot arise without authentic samadhi.10 In order to reach even the first stage of the path to liberation as a “stream enterer,” one’s mind must be free of the five obscurations: sensual craving, malice, laxity and dullness, excitation and guilt, and uncertainty; for this, the achievement of meditative stabilization (Skt. dhyana; Pali jhana) is indispensable.11 The Buddha was not recorded as having said it is possible to become a stream enterer, let alone achieve nirvana, without having achieved at least the first level of dhyana. However, he did imply that access to this stage of meditation, which is commonly described as “achieving shamatha,” is sufficient.12
On the basis of a firm foundation in ethics and with attention refined through the achievement of shamatha, one is well prepared to engage in the practice of contemplative insight, putting to the test of experience a range of hypotheses that are traced back to the Buddha. This is analogous to the integrated practice of theoretical and applied physics, in which theoreticians provide hypotheses that can be tested by experimentalists. Within the Indian tradition, four philosophical schools of interpretation of the Buddha’s teachings gradually arose, and they are often seen by scholars as four disparate, competing views. Another way of considering them is as a sequence of ever-deepening ways of viewing reality resulting from successively deeper levels of contemplative insight. Examining the central themes of the following four worldviews reveals that they can be applied in a coherent, integrated fashion to a single individual’s spiritual maturation, through the practice of open-minded, radically empirical inquiry.13
VAIBHASHIKA: DUALISTIC REDUCTIONISM
The radical empiricism of the Buddha’s teachings on vipashyana, or insight meditation, is particularly clear in his core instructions to the contemplative Bahiya, who realized nirvana shortly after hearing this advice:
In the seen there is only the seen; in the heard, there is only the heard; in the felt, there is only the felt; in the cognized, there is only the cognized. That is how you should train yourself. When for you there is only the seen in reference to the seen, only the heard in reference to the heard, only the sensed in reference to the sensed, only the cognized in reference to the cognized, then, Bahiya, there is no you here. When there is no you here, there is no you there. When there is no you there, you are neither here nor there nor between the two. This, just this, is the end of suffering.14
A central theme of Buddhist contemplative insight is the experiential identification of the extent to which our ordinary experience of the world is filtered through and even constructed by words and concepts. In particular, the close application of mindfulness to physical and mental events is designed to lead to an undistorted, direct experience of things as they are, independent of oral tradition and reasoning.15 Such meticulous attention reveals two distinct types of phenomena: those that are perceived by way of our physical senses and those that appear exclusively to mental awareness. This duality is accepted at face value by the Vaibhashikas, which literally means “advocates of particularities.”16 According to Indo-Tibetan Buddhism, this worldview is the most fundamental—and the most primitive—of the traditional ways of interpreting the Buddha’s teachings. The Vaibhashikas’ method of inquiry is a form of pragmatic, experiential reductionism, in which the theoretical teachings of the Buddha are used to guide a radically empirical investigation of the constituents of our own existence and the world around us.
As we closely apply mindfulness outward to the phenomena arising in our five sensory fields, we perceive a world composed of physical things that we see, hear, smell, taste, and touch. When we turn our mindfulness inward, we directly perceive a wide range of mental phenomena, including discursive thoughts, mental images corresponding to the five physical senses, and other subjective mental processes such as desires and emotions. The physical phenomena that arise to the five senses and the mental phenomena that arise to mental perception have very different characteristics; most significant is the fact that the former tend to be “public,” because multiple observers can witness them, while the latter are more “private,” in that each person has privileged access to his or her own thoughts.
When such mindfulness is empowered by samadhi acquired through the prior achievement of shamatha, our attention will be characterized by the two primary qualities of stability, the lack of distraction, and vividness, which includes qualitative and temporal aspects. We may draw on the qualitative vividness of attention to examine the constituent parts of physical phenomena down to the individual particles, or material atoms, of which they are composed. Drawing on the temporal vividness of attention, we may inspect the arising and passing of individual moments of both physical and mental phenomena. According to the Vaibhashikas, these fundamental constituents of matter and distinct moments of arising and passing of mental events are ultimately real. The conceptual mind projects its constructs onto configurations of atoms and identifies them in various ways, labeling the “things” that make up our familiar world. Likewise, the conceptual mind superimposes constructs onto configurations of mental events, labeling them as “attitudes,” “emotions,” and other mental processes. But all such conceptually designated phenomena have only a relative, conventional existence. When we recognize that in the seen there is only the seen, and so forth regarding what is heard, felt, and mentally perceived, all conceptual constructs are peeled away and we come to know reality as it is: an ongoing flow of names and appearances (Skt. nama-rupa).
In the midst of this stream of dualistic experiences of physical and mental phenomena, we carefully examine whether any of these events are unchanging, whether any are true sources of happiness, and whether any are truly “I” or “mine.” In so doing, we discover that all the events manifesting to our six senses arise and fall in a constant state of flux, and as long as the mind is under the influence of mental afflictions, all appearances are by nature unsatisfying. When the veils of conceptual projections are removed, we find in addition that among all the causal interactions of physical and mental processes—in body and mind—there is no evidence of an unchanging, unitary, independent self, or ego. All phenomena are found not to be “I” and “mine.” They are simply events, arising and passing in dependence upon prior causes and conditions.
In modern terms, the Vaibhashika view is said to be one of naïve realism because its proponents believe that the phenomena directly appearing to our physical senses—including colors, sounds, smells, tastes, and tactile sensations—are really “out there” in the objective world, existing inde pendently of our perceptions of them. All such appearances are said to arise “nakedly” to our senses, for there is nothing between these objective phenomena and our subjective awareness of them. When we perceive appearances as they are—impermanent, unsatisfying, and selfless—we see reality as it is, and we discover the path to liberation. This is a claim that can be tested experientially. A wide range of mental afflictions involving craving and hostility arise from three fundamental misperceptions: grasping onto impermanent phenomena as unchanging and enduring, regarding phenomena that are by nature unsatisfying as true sources of well-being, and viewing impersonal things and events as “I” and “mine.” As we come to perceive events as they really are, the mental afflictions arising from these deluded ways of misapprehending reality subside, and the suffering they catalyze vanishes. We experience the truth of this path to freedom from the inner causes of distress.
SAUTRANTIKA: PLURALISTIC REALISM
According to the Vaibhashika worldview, only the fundamental units of matter and states of consciousness are real; all their compounded configurations have only a relative, conventional existence. But as we probe more deeply into the phenomena immediately arising to all six senses, including mental consciousness, there seems to be no good reason to regard the smallest constituents as any more real than their compounds and emergent properties. A mountain is no less real than the atoms of which it is composed, and a prolonged sense of happiness is no less real than individual moments of pleasure. We conclude that everything that arises in dependence upon causes and conditions and with causal efficacy to influence other phenomena is real, independent of our concepts and labels, and this is equally true of individual atoms, planets, and galaxies. This broadened appreciation of what is real characterizes the Sautrantika view, whose proponents adhere to the “collections of discourses” of the Buddha.17
As we further investigate the range of real phenomena that present themselves to our six senses, it may dawn on us that we directly perceive more than just material phenomena composed of atoms along with states of consciousness consisting of momentary pulses of cognition. We also have an immediate experience of the passage of time, and we perceive other sentient beings, both human and nonhuman, as well as phenomena like beauty, change, quantity, speed, and causal interactions. Such things are not composed of atoms; nor are they subjective states of awareness. Nevertheless, they do arise in dependence upon prior causes and conditions, and they contribute to the arising of subsequent events, both physical and mental. This third category of real, impermanent phenomena that are neither material nor mental is called abstract composites. The dualistic reductionism of the Vaibhashika view proves inadequate to account for the full range of perceptual experience.
We continue to distinguish between ultimately real phenomena and those that have only a relative, conventional existence. The former directly appear to any one or more of our six senses, independently of how we conceive of them or label them. But the latter aspects of our experience exist only due to conceptual constructs and social conventions. I may regard my body and mind, as well as my possessions, relatives, homeland, and so on as being “mine,” and others may agree. But as I carefully inspect the actual nature of the body, mind, objects, people, and places that conventionally belong to me, it becomes apparent that there is nothing in them to indicate my ownership: it is mere social convention. Nevertheless, when I reify something as being mine, I fall into the delusion of conflating what actually appears to the senses with what is conceptually projected upon those appearances. Things such as property rights, political borders, and the meanings of symbols do exist—but only conventionally.
In our earlier investigation of our own bodies and minds, we determined that they are selfless, because no unchanging, unitary, independent self could be found in the body, the mind, or their interactions. Even as we continue to apply mindfulness to our own sense of personal identity, we may continue to experience a strong sense of being someone—a self, an observer, and an agent—who is substantially and autonomously real, abiding in the midst of our mental and physical activities and exerting some degree of ownership and control over them. We may sense that we are not immutable, that we do indeed change, but not quite as rapidly as the mental and physical processes we experience. This sense can arise quite vividly when we observe our own thoughts arising and passing while remaining convinced that we, as the observers, have a more enduring, less transient nature.
As we utilize all the qualitative and temporal vividness of our samadhi in the close application of mindfulness to the body and mind, we may see increasingly clearly how all physical and mental processes continuously arise as dependently related events, with no empirical evidence that they are influenced by an autonomous, controlling self. Our habitual sense of being separate and in charge is revealed to be yet another conceptual projection with no basis in reality. This knowledge constitutes a subtler insight into the selfless nature of phenomena than merely perceiving them to be devoid of a permanent, unitary, independent self. With this deeper insight, a subtler range of mental afflictions is dispelled and greater freedom from their resultant suffering is attained.
Turning our attention outward once again, we may have qualms concerning our earlier conclusion that the purely objective nature of sensory appearances exists independently of our subjective awareness. If colors, for instance, are really out there, this should be true of all appearances of colors, including those of a rainbow. But if a rainbow exists objectively, independently of anyone observing it, it should be visible from all sides, which is not so. Rainbows are seen only when the sun is behind the viewer, not from the opposite direction or the sides. The same is true of mirages, which can be seen only from certain angles. Likewise, when we perceive our own reflection in a mirror as we stand five feet in front of it, we know that our reflection doesn’t really exist where it appears—five feet behind the mirror. Moreover, colorblind people see only shades of grey, and people with imperfect vision see blurry images. Finally, given the diverse visual capacities of various species, from bumblebees to bats to baboons, it seems clear that they do not perceive the world in exactly the same ways. The appearances we perceive of the world around us arise partly in dependence upon our own sensory faculties, which means appearances don’t exist externally and independently of our perceptions of them. The Vaibhashika assumption of appearances arising nakedly to our senses seems untenable.
We conclude that what we directly perceive with our physical senses consists of subjective representations of objective phenomena that are really out there, independent of our percepts and concepts. In modern terminology, this view is called metaphysical realism: the physical world is objectively real, but it is perceived and conceived in various ways, depending on the specific nature of our sensory faculties, conceptual frame works, and languages. Objective reality in and of itself is unknowable apart from our subjective perceptions and the theories we formulate on the basis of them. But real objects must exist out there in order to account for the consensual nature of our experience, the fact that we experience so much of the world around us in common ways. And the physical world must be objectively real, independent of our sensory experiences, to account for the fact that natural processes occur—like grass growing and fruit decaying—even when no one is observing them. The world makes a lot of sense when seen as an objective, physical reality that can be perceptually observed and conceptually understood in many subjective ways.
YOGACHARA: PHILOSOPHICAL IDEALISM
Before we get too comfortable with this way of viewing reality, let us reinvigorate our spirit of radical empiricism and ask: Who has ever observed this physical reality—composed of matter, energy, space, and time—that objectively exists independently of all subjective sensory appearances? If we closely apply mindfulness to the immediate contents of our sensory experience, we perceive only appearances. If we recognize that in the seen there is only the seen, in the heard only the heard, and so on, we see that these appearances arise in the space of our minds as qualia, without physical attributes. The colors we see—as opposed to the frequencies of photons to which they correspond in the objective world—are not composed of matter or energy and do not exist in physical space, independent of awareness. Visual qualia have no mass, charge, or momentum—they have no physical attributes at all. This is also true of the sounds we hear, as opposed to physical sound waves that strike the eardrum; the smells we experience, as opposed to molecules suspended in the air; the tastes we experience, as opposed to the molecular components of our food; and the tactile sensations we feel, as opposed to electrochemical processes in the body.
In short, all that we immediately experience in our own bodies and the world around us consists of appearances to our five senses, but none of these appearances has physical qualities. We conceptually assign the attributes of mass, electrical charge, momentum, and so forth to physical objects and processes that occur invisibly and independently of our sensory impressions. In other words, the real, absolutely objective physical world existing independently of our perceptions—including all scientific measurements and observations—is one that we know only conceptually. From a radically empirical perspective, all that we know by way of direct perception consists of appearances to our own minds. These appearances are not composed of matter or energy and have no location in objective space independent of awareness, because they are not physical.
The very existence of an absolutely real, objective, physical universe is something that we can know only by means of rational inference. But how compelling is this so-called inference? In modern terms, the objective universe is a kind of “black box,” whose interior we can never inspect to see what’s really inside. We can observe only appearances allegedly produced by an unseen reality. The colors we see, for instance, are said to be generated in part by electromagnetic fields interacting with the retina, which then catalyzes a series of electrochemical events in the optic nerve and the visual cortex. But we never perceive electromagnetic fields themselves, nor do we perceive the retina, optic nerve, or brain, even though we may acquire impressions of these phenomena either through “direct” observation or via computer-generated imagery.
We are attempting to causally infer the existence of physical entities and processes on the basis of their nonphysical effects, namely our sensory representations of them. But without knowing the actual nature of any physical entity as it exists from its own side, independent of our observations and measurements, we are in no position to determine how closely our sensory appearances “re-present” reality. We can never compare our experience to what exists independent of it—there is no way of poking into the black box of the objective physical world.
The assumption we have been maintaining is that such an independent physical world must exist, for without it, there would be no explanation for the commonality and replicability of our experience of the world around us. We collectively look at the sky and see the same stars, planets, sun, and moon, all moving through space while the Earth spins, whether or not anyone is looking. Likewise, stars form and collapse independently of our observations of them. But is this the only possible explanation? According to Buddhist epistemology, it is possible to infer the existence of a cause on the basis of its effects only if one can observe the cause and determine that it uniquely causes the inferred effect.18 For example, one can infer the existence of fire on the basis of the presence of smoke only if one has already observed fire itself and knows that it alone is capable of producing smoke. If one were never able to observe fire or its production of smoke, one could not causally infer the existence of fire on the basis of observing smoke. For smoke might be produced by something else entirely, something unimaginable.
Likewise, we have been assuming that the commonality of our experience of the world around us must be due to the fact that the appearances we perceive are representations of physical things and events that exist independently of experience. But how can we assume that the universe as it exists independently of our perceptions and thoughts corresponds to our human concept of “physical”? The very notion of physicality has evolved together with the evolution of modern physics, and it now includes such invisible, undetectable entities as dark matter and dark energy, which are said to constitute most of the physical universe. But since no one can observe any physical entity as it exists in itself, no one can guarantee that physical entities alone generate our subjective experience of the world. In short, to be a radical empiricist—in the seen to acknowledge just the seen—compels us to question the fundamental metaphysical assumption that underlies virtually all of modern science: the necessary existence of a physical world prior to and independent of consciousness.
From a radically empirical perspective, all that we truly know is the reality of our own awareness and the sensory and mental appearances that arise to it. Whatever exists independently of these appearances is unknowable in principle, and there are no grounds for attributing existence to something that can never be known. Most of modern science—with the exception of quantum physics—is based on the metaphysical assumption that scientific theories “re-present” the objective, physical, quantifiable world that is really out there, independent of all our measurements and observations. But this assumption demonstrates a limited imagination that asserts that the commonality of experience can be explained only by invoking the existence of such an invisible and ultimately unknowable physical universe. In fact, all that we actually know is the mind and its appearances—they are all that we can confidently claim to exist. This is one assertion of the Yogachara, or Chittamatra (“mind-only”) school of Buddhism, which is a form of philosophical idealism.19
Instead of adopting the materialist stance that physical reality is ultimately real and mental phenomena are emergent properties of physical processes, radical empiricism leads us to the opposite view: only the mind and its appearances are ultimately real; the so-called physical world is nothing more than a conceptual construct superimposed on nonphysical sensory appearances. This means that the materialist assumption behind scientific discoveries concerning the nature of objective reality independent of appearances is simply a pervasive delusion. An absolutely objective physical world doesn’t exist at all, and any statement about what occurs independent of appearances is fictitious. This conclusion has also been reached by some contemporary quantum physicists.
How then shall we account for the commonality of our experience? It is not only humans who perceive and interact with the physical world but also animals, however different our perceptions and interpretations may be. We can explain the consensual nature of our experience as resulting from the fundamental role of the mind in nature and the profound entanglement of the individual mind-streams of sentient beings inhabiting the universe. Such a hypothesis might seem shocking to those of us accustomed to revering science as the most authoritative method for exploring reality. But reliance upon objective, quantitative measures is a very recent trend in human history; it became globally dominant only in the twentieth century. For centuries prior to the current reign of the Church Scientific, contemplatives in the East and West devoted lifetimes to penetrating observation of the mind through such practices as settling the mind in its natural state, described in chapter 11. When one’s awareness becomes immersed in this radically empirical approach to the investigation of the mind, it is easy to reach the conclusion that the mind alone is real. As William James so cogently declared, “for the moment, what we attend to is reality.”20 If an individual or society focuses all attention on physical reality, this is certain to be taken as exclusively real; and if all attention is focused single-pointedly on the mind and its appearances, this too will be taken as exclusively real.
This “mind-only” conclusion is not derived on the basis of logical reasoning alone; instead, it requires a combination of experiential, contemplative inquiry into the nature of the mind and its relation to the world of the physical senses together with the use of reason to make sense of one’s observations. This is a rational conclusion based upon empirical investi gations using contemplative science rather than materialistic science as we know it today. The culmination of such contemplative inquiry is not merely the intellectual formulation of a philosophical position, but rather an immediate, nonconceptual experience of the nonduality of subject and object.21 Appearances are directly perceived to be empty of any external, independent reality, physical or otherwise. In the seen, there is only the seen, in the heard, only the heard, in the felt, only the felt, and in the mentally cognized, only the mentally cognized.
When we come to this direct realization, we perceive reality for the first time as it actually is, consisting only of the mind and its appearances, arising nondually from moment to moment. Appearances are ungrounded in any other reality—not in matter, energy, space, or time. We experience appearances nakedly, for they are not “re-presentations” of anything else. They are what they are, and the sense of a reified bifurcation into self and other, or subject and object, vanishes. As a result, we attain freedom from a range of subtle mental afflictions and obscurations that arise in dependence upon the delusion that grasps onto an absolute distinction between subject and object. This is a true revolution in our understanding and experience of the natural world, and it destroys the very foundations of virtually all of modern science, with the exception of the most fundamental branch of physics, quantum mechanics.
MADHYAMAKA: ONTOLOGICAL RELATIVISM
The preceding application of radical empiricism and logical reasoning leads to the conclusion that only the mind, together with its emergent appearances, is real. Within the field of experience, we continue to identify a class of phenomena as physical—from subatomic particles up to galactic clusters—but they have no external existence independent of the mind. Such physical entities have only conventional existence. To the delusional, dualistic mind, even without conscious labeling, physical objects appear to be already existent as the referents of their names. In other words, even before we verbally or conceptually identify the entities that objectively appear to us, we have a sense that they are already awaiting the labels we impute upon them. This assumption that entities
are self-defining affects every sentient being—even those who do not use language, such as animals and babies—and it is illusory. But in the same spirit of radical empiricism, we may investigate the nature of the mind itself: Is its appearance any less illusory than that of the physical world?
Let us now turn the focus of our contemplative inquiry inward upon the very nature of the mind that observes phenomena and acts upon them.22 Materialists regard only the physical world and its emergent properties and functions as real; everything else is illusory. However, the preceding line of contemplative and philosophical inquiry led us to the conclusion that only the mind and its emergent properties and functions are real, everything else being illusory. The physical world, as something absolutely objective but hidden behind the veil of subjective appearances, turned out to have no basis in reality. What about the mind? When we seek to observe the mind itself—the source of emergent appearances and functions—is it anywhere to be found? Following the Buddha’s maxim, “in the cognized, there is only the cognized,” all that we actually experience are appearances and awareness; nowhere is a “mind” found apart from this flow of ever-changing appearances and awareness. Just as no inherently existent physical world is ever found that underlies appearances of the objective world, so there is no evidence of an inherently existent mind that underlies subjective experience.
The very distinction between mind and appearances is purely nominal, and the more deeply we probe into the immediate contents of experience, the more clearly we perceive that appearances are as empty of inherently existent mind as they are of inherently existent matter. Both “matter” and “mind” are simply conceptual constructs imputed upon appearances; neither has any existence of its own, independent of these conceptual imputations. Just as the physical world has no inherent existence, independent of words and concepts, neither does the world of the mind have any inherent existence, independent of words and concepts. There is no real physical world existing independently “out there,” and there is no real mental world existing independently “in here.” We may now adjust our earlier translation of the Buddha’s instructions to Bahiya, replacing “you” with “thing,” referring to any inherently existing subject or object:
When for you there is only the seen in reference to the seen, only the heard in reference to the heard, only the felt in reference to the felt, only the cognized in reference to the cognized, then, Bahiya, there is no thing here. When there is no thing here, there is no thing there. When there is no thing there, things are neither here nor there nor between the two. This, just this, is the end of suffering.
The very distinction between external and internal is purely conventional, having no existence apart from words and thoughts. Conventionally speaking, the physical world may indeed be said to exist independently of sensory appearances, and there are dimensions of consciousness that exist independently of any physical basis. But these external physical and internal mental phenomena do not inherently exist independently of conceptual designations. By recognizing the symmetry of the emptiness of physical and mental phenomena, objective and subjective, we avoid the philosophical extremes of both materialism and idealism. This is the Madhyamaka view.23 All phenomena exist only relative to the ways they are known. Perceptual appearances exist relative to perceptual experience, and conceived objects, such as elementary particles, energy, and space-time, exist relative to the minds that conceive them. These are all relative, or conventional, realities. Only the emptiness of inherent nature of all phenomena is ultimate. This is the sole invariant in all of nature.
While abiding in nonconceptual meditative equipoise, directly realizing the emptiness of inherent existence of all things, we find that sensory appearances vanish into a spacelike vacuity. When we emerge from such meditation, appearances arise once again, but they now exhibit a dreamlike quality. Even though objects appear to exist from their own side, independently of words and concepts, we intuitively know that such appearances are illusory. Nothing during the waking state exists by its own inherent nature, from its own side, any more than appearances in a dream. As for the commonality of experience and the regularities of causal interactions that seem to occur independently of appearances, these can be understood by perceiving all phenomena arising as dependently related events, without any inherent basis in mind or matter. When we truly fathom this way of viewing reality without falling to philosophical extremes, we see that it is only because all phenomena are empty of inherent nature that they can causally interact, and insight into their dependently related mode of existence reveals their emptiness of inherent existence. This direct, nonconceptual, experiential insight uproots even the subtlest of mental afflictions and obscurations.
THE GREAT PERFECTION: THE ONE TASTE OF PURITY AND EQUALITY
Imagine that you are in the midst of a prolonged nonlucid dream, unaware that you are dreaming, and you devote yourself single-pointedly to the shamatha practice called settling the mind in its natural state (see chapter 11). When you withdraw your awareness from all sensory appearances in the dream, all appearances dissolve into the substrate, and your dreaming mind dissolves into the substrate consciousness. Now imagine that you return to the dream and practice vipashyana, probing into the nature of all objective and subjective appearances. Finally, when you achieve a nonconceptual realization of the emptiness of inherent nature of all phenomena, all appearances again dissolve into the substrate, not because you have withdrawn your awareness from them but because your nonconceptual mind no longer imputes existence upon any of them. Your mind again dissolves into the substrate consciousness, but instead of apprehending the mere vacuity of the substrate, you directly realize the emptiness (Skt. shunyata) of all phenomena, also known as ultimate reality (Skt. dharmata), and the absolute space of phenomena (Skt. dharmadhatu). This is nirvana itself, and according to the Buddha, the phenomenal world of samsara would not exist without it.
Now imagine that you reactivate your conceptual mind and reengage with the world of appearances, which you clearly see to be dreamlike. Then suddenly it dawns on you that everything you are experiencing is not like a dream, it actually is a dream. Now you become lucid, “breaking through” your dreaming consciousness to waking consciousness, so that you are awake within the dream. You see that whatever occurs—both heavenly experiences and hellish ones—can neither harm nor benefit you. You perceive the “one taste of equal purity” concerning all that appears within the dream as well as the absence of appearances in the dreamless experience of the substrate. Being fully awake, you are not deluded into reifying things and events in the dream; nor is your mind withdrawn into the substrate. If you should display “supernormal abilities” and someone were then to ask you whether you are human, your reply would be, “No.” You are not anyone within the dream, human or otherwise. You are awake.
Such was the Buddha’s reply when asked these questions about the nature of his identity.24 According to the view of the Great Perfection, the culmination of the path of radical empiricism occurs when we realize the nonduality of samsara and nirvana, no longer bound within the miseries of the former yet not lost in the utter transcendence of the latter.25 For the first time, we are truly awake to the nature of the whole of reality manifesting as displays of the nonduality of primordial consciousness and the absolute space of phenomena. Now that we are perfectly awake to this Great Perfection, all that remains to be done is to awaken everyone else.