Thursday, July 15, 2010

Buddhist Economics

“Right Livelihood” is one of the requirements of the Buddha’s Noble Eightfold Path. It is clear, therefore, that there must be such a thing as Buddhist economics.

Buddhist countries have often stated that they wish to remain faithful to their heritage. So Burma: “The New Burma sees no conflict between religious values and economic progress. Spiritual health and material well-being are not enemies: they are natural allies.” Or: “We can blend successfully the religious and spiritual values of our heritage with the benefits of modern technology.” Or: “We Burmans have a sacred duty to conform both our dreams and our acts to our faith. This we shall ever do.”

All the same, such countries invariably assume that they can model their economic development plans in accordance with modern economics, and they call upon modern economists from so-called advanced countries to advise them, to formulate the policies to be pursued, and to construct the grand design for development, the Five-Year Plan or whatever it may be called. No one seems to think that a Buddhist way of life would call for Buddhist economics, just as the modern materialist way of life has brought forth modern economics.

Economists themselves, like most specialists, normally suffer from a kind of metaphysical blindness, assuming that theirs is a science of absolute and invariable truths, without any presuppositions. Some go as far as to claim that economic laws are as free from “metaphysics” or “values” as the law of gravitation. We need not, however, get involved in arguments of methodology. Instead, let us take some fundamentals and see what they look like when viewed by a modern economist and a Buddhist economist.

There is universal agreement that a fundamental source of wealth is human labour. Now, the modern economist has been brought up to consider “labour” or work as little more than a necessary evil. From the point of view of the employer, it is in any case simply an item of cost, to be reduced to a minimum if it can not be eliminated altogether, say, by automation. From the point of view of the workman, it is a “disutility”; to work is to make a sacrifice of one’s leisure and comfort, and wages are a kind of compensation for the sacrifice. Hence the ideal from the point of view of the employer is to have output without employees, and the ideal from the point of view of the employee is to have income without employment.

The consequences of these attitudes both in theory and in practice are, of course, extremely far-reaching. If the ideal with regard to work is to get rid of it, every method that “reduces the work load” is a good thing. The most potent method, short of automation, is the so-called “division of labour” and the classical example is the pin factory eulogised in Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations. Here it is not a matter of ordinary specialisation, which mankind has practiced from time immemorial, but of dividing up every complete process of production into minute parts, so that the final product can be produced at great speed without anyone having had to contribute more than a totally insignificant and, in most cases, unskilled movement of his limbs.

The Buddhist point of view takes the function of work to be at least threefold: to give man a chance to utilise and develop his faculties; to enable him to overcome his ego-centredness by joining with other people in a common task; and to bring forth the goods and services needed for a becoming existence. Again, the consequences that flow from this view are endless. To organise work in such a manner that it becomes meaningless, boring, stultifying, or nerve-racking for the worker would be little short of criminal; it would indicate a greater concern with goods than with people, an evil lack of compassion and a soul-destroying degree of attachment to the most primitive side of this worldly existence. Equally, to strive for leisure as an alternative to work would be considered a complete misunderstanding of one of the basic truths of human existence, namely that work and leisure are complementary parts of the same living process and cannot be separated without destroying the joy of work and the bliss of leisure.

From the Buddhist point of view, there are therefore two types of mechanisation which must be clearly distinguished: one that enhances a man’s skill and power and one that turns the work of man over to a mechanical slave, leaving man in a position of having to serve the slave. How to tell the one from the other? “The craftsman himself,” says Ananda Coomaraswamy, a man equally competent to talk about the modern West as the ancient East, “can always, if allowed to, draw the delicate distinction between the machine and the tool. The carpet loom is a tool, a contrivance for holding warp threads at a stretch for the pile to be woven round them by the craftsmen’s fingers; but the power loom is a machine, and its significance as a destroyer of culture lies in the fact that it does the essentially human part of the work.” It is clear, therefore, that Buddhist economics must be very different from the economics of modern materialism, since the Buddhist sees the essence of civilisation not in a multiplication of wants but in the purification of human character. Character, at the same time, is formed primarily by a man’s work. And work, properly conducted in conditions of human dignity and freedom, blesses those who do it and equally their products. The Indian philosopher and economist J. C. Kumarappa sums the matter up as follows:

If the nature of the work is properly appreciated and applied, it will stand in the same relation to the higher faculties as food is to the physical body. It nourishes and enlivens the higher man and urges him to produce the best he is capable of. It directs his free will along the proper course and disciplines the animal in him into progressive channels. It furnishes an excellent background for man to display his scale of values and develop his personality.

If a man has no chance of obtaining work he is in a desperate position, not simply because he lacks an income but because he lacks this nourishing and enlivening factor of disciplined work which nothing can replace. A modern economist may engage in highly sophisticated calculations on whether full employment “pays” or whether it might be more “economic” to run an economy at less than full employment so as to insure a greater mobility of labour, a better stability of wages, and so forth. His fundamental criterion of success is simply the total quantity of goods produced during a given period of time. “If the marginal urgency of goods is low,” says Professor Galbraith in The Affluent Society, “then so is the urgency of employing the last man or the last million men in the labour force.” And again: “If . . . we can afford some unemployment in the interest of stability—a proposition, incidentally, of impeccably conservative antecedents—then we can afford to give those who are unemployed the goods that enable them to sustain their accustomed standard of living.”

From a Buddhist point of view, this is standing the truth on its head by considering goods as more important than people and consumption as more important than creative activity. It means shifting the emphasis from the worker to the product of work, that is, from the human to the subhuman, a surrender to the forces of evil. The very start of Buddhist economic planning would be a planning for full employment, and the primary purpose of this would in fact be employment for everyone who needs an “outside” job: it would not be the maximisation of employment nor the maximisation of production. Women, on the whole, do not need an “outside” job, and the large-scale employment of women in offices or factories would be considered a sign of serious economic failure. In particular, to let mothers of young children work in factories while the children run wild would be as uneconomic in the eyes of a Buddhist economist as the employment of a skilled worker as a soldier in the eyes of a modern economist.

While the materialist is mainly interested in goods, the Buddhist is mainly interested in liberation. But Buddhism is “The Middle Way” and therefore in no way antagonistic to physical well-being. It is not wealth that stands in the way of liberation but the attachment to wealth; not the enjoyment of pleasurable things but the craving for them. The keynote of Buddhist economics, therefore, is simplicity and non-violence. From an economist’s point of view, the marvel of the Buddhist way of life is the utter rationality of its pattern—amazingly small means leading to extraordinarily satisfactory results.

For the modern economist this is very difficult to understand. He is used to measuring the “standard of living” by the amount of annual consumption, assuming all the time that a man who consumes more is “better off” than a man who consumes less. A Buddhist economist would consider this approach excessively irrational: since consumption is merely a means to human well-being, the aim should be to obtain the maximum of well-being with the minimum of consumption. Thus, if the purpose of clothing is a certain amount of temperature comfort and an attractive appearance, the task is to attain this purpose with the smallest possible effort, that is, with the smallest annual destruction of cloth and with the help of designs that involve the smallest possible input of toil. The less toil there is, the more time and strength is left for artistic creativity. It would be highly uneconomic, for instance, to go in for complicated tailoring, like the modern West, when a much more beautiful effect can be achieved by the skillful draping of uncut material. It would be the height of folly to make material so that it should wear out quickly and the height of barbarity to make anything ugly, shabby, or mean. What has just been said about clothing applies equally to all other human requirements. The ownership and the consumption of goods is a means to an end, and Buddhist economics is the systematic study of how to attain given ends with the minimum means.

Modern economics, on the other hand, considers consumption to be the sole end and purpose of all economic activity, taking the factors of production—land, labour, and capital—as the means. The former, in short, tries to maximise human satisfactions by the optimal pattern of consumption, while the latter tries to maximise consumption by the optimal pattern of productive effort. It is easy to see that the effort needed to sustain a way of life which seeks to attain the optimal pattern of consumption is likely to be much smaller than the effort needed to sustain a drive for maximum consumption. We need not be surprised, therefore, that the pressure and strain of living is very much less in say, Burma, than it is in the United States, in spite of the fact that the amount of labour-saving machinery used in the former country is only a minute fraction of the amount used in the latter.

Simplicity and non-violence are obviously closely related. The optimal pattern of consumption, producing a high degree of human satisfaction by means of a relatively low rate of consumption, allows people to live without great pressure and strain and to fulfill the primary injunction of Buddhist teaching: “Cease to do evil; try to do good.” As physical resources are everywhere limited, people satisfying their needs by means of a modest use of resources are obviously less likely to be at each other’s throats than people depending upon a high rate of use. Equally, people who live in highly self-sufficient local communities are less likely to get involved in large-scale violence than people whose existence depends on world-wide systems of trade.

From the point of view of Buddhist economics, therefore, production from local resources for local needs is the most rational way of economic life, while dependence on imports from afar and the consequent need to produce for export to unknown and distant peoples is highly uneconomic and justifiable only in exceptional cases and on a small scale. Just as the modern economist would admit that a high rate of consumption of transport services between a man’s home and his place of work signifies a misfortune and not a high standard of life, so the Buddhist would hold that to satisfy human wants from faraway sources rather than from sources nearby signifies failure rather than success. The former tends to take statistics showing an increase in the number of ton/miles per head of the population carried by a country’s transport system as proof of economic progress, while to the latter—the Buddhist economist—the same statistics would indicate a highly undesirable deterioration in the pattern of consumption.

Another striking difference between modern economics and Buddhist economics arises over the use of natural resources. Bertrand de Jouvenel, the eminent French political philosopher, has characterised “Western man” in words which may be taken as a fair description of the modern economist:

He tends to count nothing as an expenditure, other than human effort; he does not seem to mind how much mineral matter he wastes and, far worse, how much living matter he destroys. He does not seem to realize at all that human life is a dependent part of an ecosystem of many different forms of life. As the world is ruled from towns where men are cut off from any form of life other than human, the feeling of belonging to an ecosystem is not revived. This results in a harsh and improvident treatment of things upon which we ultimately depend, such as water and trees.

The teaching of the Buddha, on the other hand, enjoins a reverent and non-violent attitude not only to all sentient beings but also, with great emphasis, to trees. Every follower of the Buddha ought to plant a tree every few years and look after it until it is safely established, and the Buddhist economist can demonstrate without difficulty that the universal observation of this rule would result in a high rate of genuine economic development independent of any foreign aid. Much of the economic decay of southeast Asia (as of many other parts of the world) is undoubtedly due to a heedless and shameful neglect of trees.

Modern economics does not distinguish between renewable and non-renewable materials, as its very method is to equalise and quantify everything by means of a money price. Thus, taking various alternative fuels, like coal, oil, wood, or water-power: the only difference between them recognised by modern economics is relative cost per equivalent unit. The cheapest is automatically the one to be preferred, as to do otherwise would be irrational and “uneconomic.” From a Buddhist point of view, of course, this will not do; the essential difference between nonrenewable fuels like coal and oil on the one hand and renewable fuels like wood and water-power on the other cannot be simply overlooked. Non-renewable goods must be used only if they are indispensable, and then only with the greatest care and the most meticulous concern for conservation. To use them heedlessly or extravagantly is an act of violence, and while complete non-violence may not be attainable on this earth, there is nonetheless an ineluctable duty on man to aim at the ideal of non-violence in all he does.

Just as a modern European economist would not consider it a great achievement if all European art treasures were sold to America at attractive prices, so the Buddhist economist would insist that a population basing its economic life on non-renewable fuels is living parasitically, on capital instead of income. Such a way of life could have no permanence and could therefore be justified only as a purely temporary expedient. As the world’s resources of non-renewable fuels—coal, oil, and natural gas—are exceedingly unevenly distributed over the globe and undoubtedly limited in quantity, it is clear that their exploitation at an ever-increasing rate is an act of violence against nature which must almost inevitably lead to violence between men.

This fact alone might give food for thought even to those people in Buddhist countries who care nothing for the religious and spiritual values of their heritage and ardently desire to embrace the materialism of modern economics at the fastest possible speed. Before they dismiss Buddhist economics as nothing better than a nostalgic dream, they might wish to consider whether the path of economic development outlined by modern economics is likely to lead them to places where they really want to be. Towards the end of his courageous book The Challenge of Man’s Future, Professor Harrison Brown of the California Institute of Technology gives the following appraisal:

Thus we see that, just as industrial society is fundamentally unstable and subject to reversion to agrarian existence, so within it the conditions which offer individual freedom are unstable in their ability to avoid the conditions which impose rigid organisation and totalitarian control. Indeed, when we examine all the foreseeable difficulties which threaten the survival of industrial civilisation, it is difficult to see how the achievement of stability and the maintenance of individual liberty can be made compatible.

Even if this were dismissed as a long-term view there is the immediate question of whether “modernisation,” as currently practised without regard to religious and spiritual values, is actually producing agreeable results. As far as the masses are concerned, the results appear to be disastrous—a collapse of the rural economy, a rising tide of unemployment in town and country, and the growth of a city proletariat without nourishment for either body or soul.

It is in the light of both immediate experience and long term prospects that the study of Buddhist economics could be recommended even to those who believe that economic growth is more important than any spiritual or religious values. For it is not a question of choosing between “modern growth” and “traditional stagnation.” It is a question of finding the right path of development, the Middle Way between materialist heedlessness and traditionalist immobility, in short, of finding “Right Livelihood.”

Sunday, July 11, 2010

Buddhism vs. Christianity

In an era pregnant with tolerance for everything, some Christians have embraced Buddhism while numerous attempts have been made to “unify” Buddhism and Christianity by ecumenically minded members of both faiths. Friendly Buddhist and Christian encounters are the vogue on some university campuses. Through no fault of its own, however, “Christianity” is frequently the loser in such encounters. Thus, mainline Christians, who have no real comprehension of biblical Christianity but are fascinated by the alluring or mystical nature of Buddhist metaphysics, may leave their “faith” and become Buddhists. Or, they may maintain a rather odd mixture of both religions, one that is ultimately unfaithful to both. On the other hand, Buddhists who “accept” Christianity merely redefine it into their own Buddhism. Professor of Buddhism and Japanese Studies at Tokyo and Harvard Universities respectively, Masaharu Anesaki illustrates this by his assimilation of Jesus with the Buddha:

In short, we Buddhists are ready to accept Christianity; nay, more, our faith in Buddha is faith in Christ. We see Christ because we see Buddha.... We can hope not in vain for the second advent of Christ [that is] the appearance of the [prophesied] future Buddha Metteya. 16 (italics in original)

Nevertheless, rather than seeking a “unity” among these religions, the truth is much closer to the gut feeling of Zen Buddhist D.T. Suzuki, who states, as he undoubtedly reflects upon the Buddhist concept of suffering: “Whenever I see a crucified figure of Christ, I cannot help thinking of the gap that lies deep between Christianity and Buddhism.” 17

The truth is that purported similarities between Buddhism and Christianity are only apparent or surface. For example, many have claimed a similarity between Jesus Christ’s saving role in Christianity and the Bodhisattva’s savior role as given in later Buddhism. But these roles are entirely contradictory. In Christianity, “Christ died for our sins” (1 Cor. 15:3). This means He saves us from the penalty of our sins by taking God’s judgment of sin in His own Person. Jesus paid the penalty of sin (death) for sinners by dying in their place. Thus, He offers a free gift of salvation to anyone simply for believing and accepting what He has done on their behalf (Jn. 3:16). The central ideas involved in Christ’s saving role—God’s holiness, propitiatory atonement, forgiveness of sin, salvation as a free gift of God’s grace through faith in Christ, etc., are all foreign to Buddhism.

The Bodhisattva’s role of savior is thus entirely different than that of Christ’s. The Bodhisattva has no concern with sin in an ultimate sense, only with the end of suffering. He has no concept of God’s wrath against sin or the need for a propitiatory atonement. He has no belief in an infinite personal God who created men and women in His image. He has no belief in a loving God who freely forgives sinners. His only sacrifice is his postponement of entering nirvana so that he can help others find Buddhist enlightenment. Having achieved self-perfection, the Bodhisattva could freely enter nirvana at death. Instead, he chooses to reincarnate again to help others attain their own self-perfection and nirvana more quickly.

Thus, those who argue there is an essential similarity between Buddhist and Christian concepts of savior are wrong. In fact, at their core, Buddhism and Christianity are irreconcilable, as far removed as the East and West. Indeed, virtually every major Christian doctrine is denied in Buddhism and vice versa. We would therefore suggest that a merging of the two traditions results in a disservice to both.

For their part, Buddhists have long recognized the differences between the two faiths. The knowledgeable Buddhist is aware that the doctrines and teachings of biblical Christianity are an enemy rather than a friend, for Christian faith openly teaches those things which Buddhists reject as mere ignorance and/or as spiritual hindrances; further Christianity openly opposes those things which Buddhism endorses an essential for genuine enlightenment.

For example, Christianity is interwoven with the monotheistic grandeur of an infinite, personal God (Jn. 17:3; Isa. 43:10-11, 44:6); Buddhism is agnostic and practically speaking, atheistic (or in later form, polytheistic).

In Christianity, its central teaching involves the absolute necessity for belief in Jesus Christ as personal Savior from sin (Jn. 14:6; Acts 4:12; I Tim. 2:5-6); Buddhism has no Savior from sin and even in the Mahayana tradition, as we have seen, the savior concepts are quite dissimilar.

Christianity stresses salvation by grace through faith alone (Jn. 3:16; Eph. 2:8-9); Buddhism stresses enlightenment by works through meditative practices that seek the alleviation of “ignorance” and desire.

Christianity promises forgiveness of all sin now (Col. 2:13; Eph. 1:7) and the eventual elimination of sin and suffering for all eternity (Rev. 21:3-4). On the other hand, Buddhism, since it holds there is no God to offend, promises not the forgiveness and eradication of sin, but rather the elimination of suffering (eventually) and the ultimate eradication of the individual.

Wherever we look philosophically, we see the contrasts between these faiths. Christianity stresses salvation from sin, not from life itself (1 Jn. 2:2). Christianity exalts personal existence as innately good, since man was created in God’s image, and promises eternal life and fellowship with a personal God (Gen. 1:26, 31; Rev. 21:3-4). Christianity has a distinctly defined teaching in the afterlife (heaven or hell, e.g., Mt. 25:46; Rev. 20:10-15). It promises eternal immortality for man as man—but perfected in every way (Rev. 21:3-4).

On the other hand, Buddhism teaches reincarnation, and has only a mercurial nirvana wherein man no longer remains man or, where, in Mahayana, there exists temporary heavens or hells and the final “deification” of “man” through a merging with the ultimate pantheistic- cosmic Buddha nature. But Christianity denies that reincarnation is a valid belief, based on the fact of Christ’s propitiatory atonement for sin. In other words, if Christ died to forgive all sin, there is no reason for a person to pay the penalty for their own sin (“karma”) over many lifetimes (Col. 2:13; Heb. 9:27; 10:10, 14; Eph. 1:7).

Consider further contrasts. Biblical Christianity rejects pagan mysticism and all occultism (e.g., Deut. 18:9-12); Buddhism accepts or actively endorses them.

In Christianity life itself is good and given honor and meaning; in Buddhism one finds it difficult to deny that life is ultimately not worth living—for life and suffering are inseparable. Thus, in Christianity, Jesus Christ came that men “might have life and have it more abundantly” (Jn. 10:10); in Buddhism, Buddha came that men might simply rid themselves of personal existence.

In Christianity, God will either glorify or punish the spirit of man (Jn. 5:28-29); in Buddhism no spirit exists to be glorified or punished. In Christianity, absolute morality is a central theme (Eph. 1:4), in Buddhism it is secondary or peripheral.

Buddhism is essentially humanistic, stressing man’s self-achievement. Christianity is essentially theistic, stressing God’s self-revelation and gracious initiative on behalf of man’s helpless moral and spiritual condition. Thus, in Buddhism man alone is the author of salvation; Christianity sees this as an absolute impossibility because innately, man has no power to save himself (Eph. 2:8-9; Titus 3:5).

We could go on, but suffice it to say the form of romantic humanism that inspires liberal religionists to see basic similarities in the two faiths is no more than wishful thinking. It is not utterly surprising, however, that Western religious humanists would promote Buddhism, for in both systems man is the measure of all things (a god of sorts), even if in the latter the end result is a form of personal self-annihilation. But to the extent both are humanistic, they compass the antithesis of Christianity, whose goal is to glorify God and not man (Jer. 17:5; Jude 24-25).

As far as knowing and glorifying God is concerned, this is unimportant and irrelevant to Buddhists. But biblically, to the extent God is ignored or opposed, to that extent man must correspondingly suffer. Here we see the ultimate irony of Buddhism: in ignoring God, Buddhists feel they can escape suffering; in fact this will only perpetuate it forever. This is the real tragedy of Buddhism, especially of so-called Christian Buddhism. The very means to escape suffering (true faith in the biblical Christ) is rejected in favor of a self-salvation which can only result in eternal suffering (Mt. 25:46; Rev. 20:10-15).

Footnotes:

16. Masaharu Anesaki, “How Christianity Appeals to a Japanese Buddhist,” in David W. McKain (ed.), Christianity: Some Non-Christian Appraisals, (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1976), pp. 102-103. 17. D.T. Suzuki, “Mysticism: Christian and Buddhist,” in McKain (ed.), p. 111.

Saturday, July 3, 2010

INTEGRAL SPIRITUALITY

When it comes to the nature of enlightenment or realization, this means that a complete, full, or nondual realization has two components: absolute (emptiness) and relative (form). The “nonconceptual mind” gives us the former, and the “conceptual mind” gives us the latter. Put it this way: when you come out of nonconceptual meditation, what conceptual forms will you embrace? If you are going to enter the manifest realm if you are going to embrace not just nonconceptual nirvana but also conceptual samsarathen what conceptual forms will you use? By definition, a nondual realization demands both “no views” in emptiness and “views” in the world of form. Meditation in particular is designed to plunge us into the world of emptiness; and what is designed to give us “correct form”? That is, what conceptual view or framework does nondual Buddhism recommend?

Traleg Kyabgon Rinpoche, one of the Tibetan masters who is as at home in the Western tradition as he is in the Eastern, is uniquely situated to comment on this (all following quotes are from Mind at Ease: Self‐liberation through Mahamudra Meditation; emphasis added). He starts by pointing out that correct views are just as important as correct meditation; indeed, the two are inseparable:

Buddhist meditation practices and experiences are always discussed from a particular viewpoint that is always taken to be validand true—this cannot be otherwise. Correct views have the ability to lead us to liberation, while incorrect views increase the delusions of our mind. …

That is why we need a proper orientation or correct view when we embark on the path. Correct view is in fact our spiritual vehicle, the transport we use to journey from the bondage of samsara to the liberation of nirvana. Conversely, incorrect views have the potential to lead us off course and, like a poorly constructed raft, will cast us adrift and deposit us on the shores of misery. There is no separation between the vehicle that transports us to our spiritual destination and the views that we hold in our mnd.

Unfortunately, Boomeritis (“nobody tells me what to do!”) Buddhism was used in the whole spirit of “Dharma bums,” where preconventional license was confused with postconventional liberation. Hence Buddhism was thought to be all about nothing but cultivating “no views,” which is true only on the emptiness or Hinayana side of the street, but not true on the Mahayana side, which demands the union of emptiness and views, not the trashing of one of them. But this “no view at all” notion was uniquely suited to “nobody tells me what to do!” Traleg comments on this strange Westernized Buddhism:

Buddhism states that our normal views inhibit us and chain us to the limited condition of samsara, whereas the correct view can lead us to our ultimate spiritual destination. We should not conclude from this—although modern Western Buddhists often do—that meditation is all about getting rid of views, or that all views hinder us from attaining our spiritual goal. This assumption is based on the legitimate premise that Buddhist teachings emphatically identify the need to develop a nonconcptual wisdom mind in order to attain liberation and enlightenment. However, many people mistakenly think that this implies that we do not need to believe in anything [Nobody tells me what to do!] and that all forms of conceptuality must be dispensed with right from the beginning. It is only incorrect views that we need to overcome. The correct and noble view is to be cultivated with great diligence.

What is this “correct and noble view”? It is simply the Buddhist view itself, or the central ideas, concepts, and framework that is Buddhism, counting its basic philosophy and psychology—including the Four Noble Truths, the Eightfold Path, the Twelvefold Chain of Dependent Origination, the central recognition of Emptiness, the Nonduality of absolute Emptiness and relative Form, the luminous identity of unqualifiable or empty Spirit and all of its manifest Forms in a radiant, natural, spontaneously present display, and the central linkage of: right ethics and right views > leading to right meditation (dhyana) > leading to right awareness (prajna) > leading to right compassion (karuna) > leading to right action and skillful means (upaya) on behalf of all sentient beings.

Buddhist training does many things, but it is particularly a state‐training that deconstructs one’s identity from mere gross ego, to subtle soul (or the root of the self‐contraction), and finally to no‐self Self. But as Traleg emphasizes, those experiences depend, at every point, on a correct interpretation or Right View in order to make sense of them. After all, many of those experiences are completely formless, and when you come out of them, you could just as well interpret them as an experience of Godhead, or Shiva, or nirguna Brahman, or Ayin, or Tao, or the Holy Spirit.

This was Daniel P. Brown's point, so badly misunderstood at the time, but brilliant and right on the money, as Traleg independently agrees. Brown said that there were the same basic stages on the spiritual paths of the sophisticated contemplative traditions, but these same stages were experienced differently depending on the interpretation they were given. Hindus and Buddhists and Christians follow the same general stages (gross to subtle to causal), but one of them experiences these stages as “absolute Self,” one as “noself,” and one as “Godhead,” depending on the different texts, culture, and interpretations given the experiences. In other words, depending on the Framework, the View.

Those individuals who assume otherwise are simply assuming a premodernist epistemology, that there is a single pregiven reality that I can know, and that meditation will show me this independently existing reality, which therefore must be the same for everybody who discovers it; instead of realizing that the subject of knowing co‐creates the reality it knows, and that therefore some aspects of reality will literally be created by the subject and the interpretation it gives to that relity. American Buddhists at the time were particularly upset with Brown because his work showed similar stages for Christians, Buddhists, and Hindus (gross, subtle, causal, nondual)—even though they experienced them quite differently—and this implied that Buddhism wasn’t the only real way. But time and experience have vindicated Brown’s extraordinary work.

And Brown’s work is an example of what we are talking about here, namely, there isn’t just meditative experience per se—that simply does not exist. There is meditative experience plus the interpretations you give it. And this means, among other things, that we should choose our interpretations, view, and framework very carefully. Traleg Rinpoche:

In the Buddha's early discourses on the Four Noble Truths, the Noble Eightfold Path begins with the cultivation of the correct view. … Without a conceptual framework, meditative experiences would be totally incomprehensible. What we experience in meditation has to be properly interpreted, and its significance—or lack thereof has to be understood. This interpretive act requires appropriate conceptual categories and the correct use of those categories. …

While we are often told that meditation is about emptying the mind, that it is the discursive, agitated thoughts of our mind that keeps us trapped in false appearances, meditative experiences are in fact impossible without the use of conceptual formulations. …

As the Kagyu master Jamgön Kongtrül Lodrö Thaye sang:

The one who meditates without the view Is like a blind man wandering the plains. There is no reference point for where the true path is. The one who does not meditate, but merely holds the view Is like a rich man tethered by stinginess.

He is unable to bring appropriate fruition to himself and others.

Joining the view and meditation is the holy tradition.

As for the typical modern Western Buddhist that Traleg is criticizing, who so often sees Buddhism as a “no concepts” and “no intellect” stance, it is unfortunately true that, among other things, this anti‐intellectualism has often turned Buddhism into a type of “feelings only” school. Cognition is the great dirty word for these individuals. “That’s too cognitive” means “that is not spiritual.” In reality, it’s almost exactly the opposite, as Traleg is indicating. In that regard, notice that “cognition” is actually derived from the root gni (co‐gni‐tion), and this gni is the same as gno, which is the same root as gno‐sis, or gnosis. Thus, cognition is really co‐gnosis, or that which is the co‐element of gnosis and nondual awareness. This is why Traleg is saying that cognition or co‐gnosis is indeed the vehicle of our spiritual path. (Incidentally, this is why, as we saw, developmentalists repeatedly have found that the cognitive line is necessary but not sufficient for ALL of the other developmetal lines, including feelings, emotions, art, and spiritual intelligence—exactly the opposite you would expect if the anti‐intellectualist and anti‐cognitive stance were right.)

In Sanskrit, this gno appears as jna, which we find in both prajna and jnana. Prajna is supreme discriminating awareness necessary for full awakening of gnosis (pra‐jna = pro‐gnosis), and jnana is pure gnosis itself. Once again, cognition as co‐gnosis is the root of the development that is necessary for the full awakening of gnosis, of jnana, of nondual liberating awareness. So the next time you hear the word “cognitive,” you might hesitate before labeling it anti‐spiritual.

As a short sidebar, it particularly helps when we realize that developmentalists view cognition as the capacity to take perspectives. Role taking, or taking the view of another person, is something you can only do mentally or cognitively. You can feel only your own feelings, but you can cognitively take the role of others or mentally put yourself in their shoes (and then you can feel their feelings or empathize with their point of view). So cognitive development is defined as an increase in the number of others with whom you can identify and an increase in the nmber of perspectives you can take.

Thus, for example, preoperational cognition means you can take a 1st‐person perspective (egocentric); concrete operational cognition means you can take a 2nd‐person perspective (ethnocentric); formal operational cognition means you can also take a 3rd‐person perspective (worldcentric); early vision‐logic means you can also take a 4th‐person perspective (beginning Kosmocentric); mature vision‐logic mean you can also take a 5th‐person perspective (mature Kosmocentric). That is why research shows that your feelings, your art, your ethics, and your emotions, all will follow behind the cognitive line, because in order to feel something, you have to be able to see it.

Traleg Rinpoche finishes by skillfully pointing out that what is particularly needed is not just any view, but a truly integral or comprehensive view.

In the Mahamudra tradition, we have to acquire a correct conceptual understanding of emptiness, or the nature of the mind. We cannot simply practice meditation and hope for the best; we need a conceptual framework that is based on a correct view. …

If we are going to practice Buddhist meditation we need to have a comprehensive view of our human nature, our place in the scheme of things, and our relationship to the world in which we live and to our fellow sentient beings. Instead of thinking that all concepts are defiling in their nature and thus need to be overcome, we have to realize that it is only by developing an understanding of certain truths that we can gain insight. All of these considerations have to be taken into account when we do meditation, and our practice has to be informed by them. Otherwise, our worldview may become increasingly fragmented and incommensurate with our own experience; developing “nonconceptuality” then becomes an additional conceptual burden that leads inevitably to confusion.

Which brings us back to where we began: there is emptiness (and the formless mind), and then there is the manifest world (and the conceptual mind), and so the question is: what form in the mind will help both realize and express emptiness? Some form of view is there, like it or not, and so correct view has always been maintained as absolutely necessary for enlightenment. As Traleg says, it is the vehicle of realization, without which even meditation is blind.

But, as Traleg indicates, it’s even more than that. The deepest Buddhist teachings—Mahamudra and Dzogchen—maintain that the nature of the mind is not in any way different from the forms arising in it. It is not just that there is Emptiness and View, but that Emptiness and View are not‐two—exactly as The Heart Sutra maintained, when Form now means Forms in the mind, or View: That which is Emptiness is not other than View; that which is View is not other than Emptiness.

Therefore, choose your View carefully. And make your View or Framework as comprehensive or integral as possible, because your View—your cognitive system, your co‐gnosis, your conceptual understanding, your implicit or explicit Framework—will help determine the very form of your enlightenment.

by Ken Wilber