Majesty and Meekness: A Comparative Study of Contrast and Harmony in the Concept of God
by John B. Carman
Before I start with the post, I'd like to put in a plug about the above book. It's a fascinating account of similarities and differences in the conception of God across cultures, in particular between the Srivaishna tradition in India (head proponent Ramanuja) and Christian thought, though with references to Judaism and Pure Land Buddhism as well (which, though Buddhism is officially atheistic, in practice appears rather theistic). It's out of print, but the link above gives a pretty good price for used copies.
It's come time for me to write about my thesis here, in the hope that my explaining it will stimulate the writing in the paper. I'll most likely be posting here first basic overviews of the topics, and then writing more scholarly bits (that is, interacting with the texts themselves) later. The first article will be on the Critical Buddhist movement.
Critical Buddhism (CB) is a movement in Japan which is saying that much of the "Buddhist" tradition has imported foreign ideas. For those of you unfamiliar with Buddhism, here's a quick primer: we don't really exist. Not in the sense that we are nothing, but in the sense that all we are, are aggregates of the things that came together at this precise moment (think David Hume, if you know philosophy). There are no enduring selves, only such causal regularities that are convenient to call selves. Later Buddhism expands this to all of reality, such that there are no enduring substances period, but only the ebb and flow of co-dependent arising; everything comes from something else and leads to something else without its own inherent existence (to the point where Nāgārjuna denies causation proper in favor of conditions, explanations with no metaphysical baggage).
At very least, the doctrine of anātman (or no-self) is supposed to be contrary to prevailing philosophies of the day among Vedantic Hinduism, as well as the the common sense conception of the self. The problem, the CBs claim, is that later Buddhism realigns itself with Vedantism in its claims. In particular, this has to do with the doctrines of buddha-nature and original enlightenment (and the tathāgata-garbha and ālayavijñāna, for those more familiar with the tradition). These supposedly give rise to the world of particulars around us, and make it so that everyone is already pre-enlightened, as it were; they just have to realize it (or so CB claims; the issue is rather complicated). The buddha-nature and original enlightenment have become substrata, subsistent natures which undergird reality and which are more real than the somewhat illusory manifestation around us.
Suzuki, himself a prominent target of CB (or at very least, his style of thought), compares the ālaya, the storehouse out of which everything else arises, to the water of the ocean. Manas, which is the discriminating mind and also the principle of particularization, would be the waves. The waves cannot be thought apart from the water which constitutes them, and in the end just are that water in its motion. Even beyond Suzuki, many proponents of the ideas in historical Buddhist thought have explicitly compared their ideas with the Vedantic Ātman (Self), saying that the Buddha did not reveal this doctrine in his time because it would have confused many and lead them in the wrong direction. Also, they tend to remark that the Buddhist version is dynamic and ever-changing, while the Hindu version is static, a stable spot beyond the world of impermanence.
However, as CB claims, this brings us back to a Vedantic notion of an Self behind each of our particular selves (the whole "atman is brahman," "tat tvam asi" thing; for those unacquainted with Vedanta, think very roughly "I myself am God"). This is what the Buddha was trying to avoid, and so is leading us back into error. We are to let go of such delusions, they state.
Tied to this is the reason why CBs are called critical Buddhists. They believe that to be Buddhist is to be critical. Buddhism, rather than being beyond truth claims and language, must engage language and logic and use them meaningfully. One illustration used concerning the view that language does not, in the end, capture truth, is that it is like a hand pointing to the moon; you need to look at the moon and stop looking at the hand. CB will say that this is all well and good, but the hand must actually point to the moon and not to the floor instead in order to be functional.
As such, there is no place in Buddhism for "topical" philosophy, such as Daoism, various forms of Shintō, or other forms of language-skeptical views (such as much Zen!) which claim that we need to "see" reality directly. Buddhism is all about analysis, rather than being its antithesis, and it is this analysis which leads the way to Buddhist salvation.
Which brings me to a final reflection: those who deny analysis and dualism in thinking, often posit a rather strict one between thinking and doing, such that thinking is a separate activity which leads to arid speculation. Those who live by analysis, though, seem to see the continuity, that understanding leads to right action, and so no reasoning, however abstract, is (at least necessarily) divorced from the concrete.
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