Buddhism and human flourishing seth zuiho segall

Buddhism and Human Flourishing Seth Zuih■ Segall

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Buddhism and Human Flourishing

Seth Zuihō Segall

Buddhism and Human Flourishing

“Buddhism and Human Flourishing is an admirably thoughtful work of comparative practical philosophy and psychology. It is one of the few books from a modern Buddhist perspective that grapples with the realities of historical and cultural context and with what it means to take up ideas and practices from a very different time and place with nuance and complexity. A rare fusion of erudition and accessibility, it will be of interest to scholars and practitioners alike.”

—David L. McMahan, Charles A. Dana Professor of Religious Studies, Franklin & Marshall College, USA

“Seth Zuiho Segall is one of a kind: a Zen Buddhist priest, a hospital chaplain associate, psychotherapist, existentialist, peace activist, and as fluent in recent philosophical debates about the nature of self and consciousness as in the history and philosophy of Buddhism. In this timely, crystal clear book, Segall defends a version of Buddhist modernism attuned to the sensibilities of secular and scientifically minded people. How can people in the lineage of Plato and Aristotle and the Abrahamic traditions adapt and adopt Buddhist beliefs and sensibilities? In this terrific book, Seth Segall shows a way.”

—Owen

Flanagan, James B. Duke Professor of Philosophy, Duke University, USA

“Challenging traditional understandings of rebirth and karma is a hallmark of all emerging modernist Buddhisms. If they’re right, then one question burns: what is enlightenment? Seth Zuiho Segall, Zen priest and psychologist, explores how Aristotle’s eudaimonia may prove the key to a modernist Buddhist path of awakening. This is a compelling book, challenging but also inviting. It’s an important contribution to a growing modernist Buddhist literature. I recommend it to anyone wrestling with the great questions of who are we and how can we live lives of value and meaning.”

—James Ishmael Ford, Roshi; Author of Introduction to Zen Koans: Learning the Language of Dragons and If You’re Lucky, Your Heart Will Break: Field Notes from a Zen Life

“Contemporary Western Buddhism has become a process, not of the extinction of the self and desire, but of their transformation in the service of human flourishing. Seth Zuiho Segall, with a creative synthesis of contemporary psychology and Aristotelean virtue ethics, has formulated a new ‘eudaemonic Buddhism’ that is both relevant to our times, while preserving the essential teachings of traditional Buddhism.”

—Barry Magid, MD Psychoanalyst and Founding Teacher, Ordinary Mind Zendo

Seth Zuiho Segall

Buddhism and Human Flourishing

A Modern Western Perspective

Seth Zuiho Segall White Plains, NY, USA

ISBN 978-3-030-37026-8

ISBN 978-3-030-37027-5 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-37027-5

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020

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The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

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This book is dedicated to the memories of Ruth Denison, Ferris Urbanowski, and Toni Packer—three remarkable women who introduced me to Vipassana, mindfulness, and meditative inquiry. May their memories be an inspiration and a blessing.

Preface

If we modern Westerners are to make Buddhism our own, we must find ways to accommodate traditional Buddhist ideas to the preexisting understandings—both tacit and explicit—that constitute our modern way of being-in-the-world. To do anything less puts us at risk for an inner dividedness in which we half-believe in any number of contrasting and incompatible ideas. This is not a good place to end up.

The central thesis of this book is that the tensions between traditional Buddhist understandings of enlightenment and prevailing Western notions of human flourishing are significant contributing factors in the evolution of Western Buddhism. I intend to show how this underlying tension strongly affects the way many, if not most, contemporary Western Buddhist teachers and practitioners interpret the Dharma.

There are, by now, many excellent works of scholarship that explain how and why Western Buddhist modernism came to be as it is. The works of Donald Lopez Jr., David McMahan, Thanissaro Bhikkhu, and Ann Gleig come readily to mind. Their work has traced the general influences of Western science, psychology, economics, literature, and technological innovation and the specific influences of Western individualism, romanticism, transcendentalism, perennialism, humanistic psychology, and social liberation movements on Western Buddhist modernism. Meanwhile, the influence of prevailing Western notions of human flourishing, derived from the Aristotelian tradition, has gone practically unnoticed, hiding in plain sight. This book is an attempt to remedy that relative neglect.

The idea for this book came to me two years ago during a weeklong Zen sesshin (silent Buddhist meditation retreat). One isn’t supposed to

nurture thoughts during sesshin—if thoughts like these occur, one is just supposed to let them go. I was helpless in the face of this particular onslaught, however. The least I could do was to turn it into a book.

Although the idea came sudden, unbidden, and whole, its seeds had been planted long before. In February 2006 I heard Tibetan Buddhist scholar-practitioner B. Alan Wallace suggest that Aristotle and the Buddha shared parallel conceptions of the unity of happiness, wisdom, and morality. Five years later I heard philosopher Damien Keown argue that traditional Buddhist ethics was a form of Aristotelian virtue ethics. In 2011 I read philosopher Owen Flanagan’s discussion of Buddhist and Aristotelian subtypes of happiness in his book The Bodhisattva’s Brain. Between 2012 and 2017 I taught an undergraduate psychology course examining wellbeing in Aristotle, Western psychology, and Buddhism, and sometime early in those years re-read Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics with a philosophy study group based in my local library. These are the influences that prepared the groundwork for the ideas that animate this book.

I’ve written this book to make it accessible to general readers as well as to be of interest to philosophers, psychologists, and Buddhist scholars, teachers, and practitioners. It’s intended to be both descriptive and prescriptive. I hope to both enhance our understanding of how and why Western Buddhism assumes its current aspect and help inform the future development of Western Buddhism.

I view you, the reader, as my partner in this endeavor. We are the latest participants in a two-and-a-half millennia conversation about the nature of awakening and flourishing. Together, we contribute in some small way to determining how Buddhism will be practiced and understood in the future. I invite you to join me in this dialogue—whether you agree with my conclusions or not—and help carry the conversation forward.

May all beings awaken, flourish, and aspire to superior levels of well-being!

White Plains, NY, USA

October, 2019

Seth Zuiho Segall

acknowledgments

This book would not appear in its current form were it not for considerable help. Most of all, I am grateful to my wife, Susan Mirialakis, who patiently read and re-read this book in various iterations and improved it immeasurably with her suggestions. I am also blessed that she goodnaturedly tolerates my irritability whenever my shortcomings as a writer are duly pointed out. I am also indebted to Tricycle editor Andrew Cooper, who read an early version of this manuscript and made invaluable suggestions for improving it.

There are a number of friends who read early drafts and gave me the benefit of their encouragement and suggestions, among them Zen teacher Sensei Carl Chimon Viggiani; psychologist, Gendlin scholar, and Zen compatriot Dr. Robert Parker; philosophy reading group co-member Steve Pantani; and my dear high-school friend and humanist celebrant Barry Klassel. I would also like to thank Bob Brantl for organizing and facilitating the philosophy reading group at the Greenburgh Public Library and for his familiarity with ancient Greek. A good deal of my thinking about ethics evolved out of readings and discussions in his group.

I would be remiss if I failed to express my gratitude and appreciation to many of the wonderful Buddhist teachers, meditation teachers, and Buddhist scholars whom I’ve practiced with, studied with, or conversed with over the years. Among them, let me mention (in no particular order) Toni Packer, Larry Rosenberg, Ferris Urbanowski, Ruth Denison, Jon Kabat-Zinn, Joseph Goldstein, Sharon Salzberg, Myoshin Kelly, Tsoknyi Rinpoche, Jan Willis, Peter Harvey, Andrew Olendzki, Taigen Dan Leighton, Robert Jinsen Kennedy Roshi, Grover Genro Gaunt Roshi,

Joan Jiko Halifax Roshi, Robert Chodo Campbell Sensei, Koshin Ellison

Paley Sensei, Michael Koryu Holleran Sensei, Paul Schubert Sensei, Carl Chimon Viggiani Sensei, and Dharma holder Russ Kaishin Michel. I owe a very special debt of gratitude to Daiken Nelson Sensei, who has nurtured and mentored me through lay and clerical ordination, and with whom I continue to study.

Finally, I am grateful to Palgrave Macmillan Religion and Philosophy Editor Philip Getz for believing in this book, and Assistant Religion and Philosophy Editor Amy Invernizzi for graciously holding my hand throughout the stages of publication.

about the author

Seth Zuiho Segall, Ph.D. is a Zen priest ordained in the White Plum Asanga and Zen Peacemaker Order lineages. He is a retired clinical psychologist who served for nearly three decades as an assistant clinical professor at the Yale School of Medicine. He also taught on the faculties of Southeast Missouri State University, Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, and the State University of New York at Purchase. He is a former Director of Psychology at Waterbury Hospital and a former President of the New England Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation.

Dr. Segall has engaged in Buddhist practice for nearly a quarter century. He began his practice by attending retreats at the Insight Meditation Society, the IMS Forest Refuge, and the Cambridge Insight Meditation Center, and at retreats led by Toni Packer at the Springwater Center for Meditative Inquiry. Since 2011, he has practiced in the White Plum Asanga Zen Buddhist lineage founded by Taizan Maezumi Roshi. He received shukke tokudo (clerical ordination) in 2016 under the preceptorship of Daiken Nelson Sensei.

Dr. Segall has studied Tibetan Buddhism, Theravada Buddhism, Buddhist Psychology, and the writings of Eihei Dogen with scholars Jan Willis, Peter Harvey, Andrew Olendzki, and Taigen Dan Leighton. In 1996 he completed an internship at Jon Kabat-Zinn’s Center for Mindfulness. In 2003 he cofounded the Connecticut Chapter of the Buddhist Peace Fellowship. In 2017 he completed the New York Zen Center for Contemplative Care’s Foundations in Contemplative Care program.

Dr. Segall’s publications include Encountering Buddhism: Western Psychology and Buddhist Teachings (2003) as well as articles in Tricycle, Turning Wheel, the Journal of Humanistic Psychology, and the Journal of Transpersonal Psychology. He is the science writer for the Mindfulness Research Monthly and a chaplain associate at White Plains Hospital. Since 2010, Dr. Segall’s blog, The Existential Buddhist (www.existentialbuddhist.com), has provided insights on Buddhist philosophy, practice, ethics, history, art, and social engagement.

The Changing Nature of Buddhism

IntroductIon

In its broadest sense, this book is about the tension between Buddhist and Western conceptions of what it means to live the best possible kind of life one can aspire to. It’s a book about what aspects of traditional Buddhist teachings are possible for us, as modern Westerners, to truly accept and make good use of, and what aspects conflict so deeply with our cultural heritage that genuine belief becomes impossible. By genuine belief, I mean the kind of belief we feel deeply in our bones in the same way we believe gravity will keep us rooted to the ground and that we will not, someday, wake up to find ourselves floating mysteriously in midair. Lastly, this is a book about how Buddhism is changing in the course of its transmission to the West, and how it will continue to evolve if it’s to remain relevant to how we—as modern people—understand and construct our lives.

As such, this is a deeply personal book based on my experience as a long-term Buddhist practitioner, an ordained Zen Buddhist priest, a clinical psychologist interested in Asian and Western philosophy, and a person living within a specific cultural, historical, and socio-economic context. Over the years, I have found Buddhist practice to be extraordinarily beneficial. It has helped strengthen and enrich my capacities to be intimately present, to be at home in my body, to accept life’s circumstances with equanimity, and to focus on the well-being of others. At the same time, I am aware of Buddhist teachings I’ve had to modify, alter, or simply

© The Author(s) 2020

S. Z. Segall, Buddhism and Human Flourishing, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-37027-5_1

disregard in order for Buddhism to make sense for me. I am also aware of the ways that many contemporary Western Buddhist teachers often alter, ignore, selectively emphasize, or unwittingly misunderstand traditional Buddhist teachings, and how their modifications and elisions echo my own difficulties with making modern sense of the tradition. The things I find a need to alter—and which these teachers seem to have made parallel conscious or unconscious compromises on—are not random but conform to a pattern. That pattern—why it occurs and why it ought to occur—is the subject of this book.

All of us inescapably dwell in and are confined to a specific culture and time—the one we were reared in and the one we presently inhabit—the way fish dwell in and are confined to the sea. Even the most ardent iconoclast struggles against a comparatively small component of his or her cultural inheritance, the vast majority of which operates at the level of tacit assumption and common sense. The way we think about selfhood, identity, gender, family, community, morality, justice, progress, truth, beauty, time, space, cosmology, and divinity is bound together and deeply intertwined with other shared basic assumptions of our culture forming our zeitgeist, or common ecosystem of meanings.

When one finds oneself dissatisfied with aspects of one’s own time and culture and seeks answers for it in the practices and beliefs of another time and culture, some of the borrowed practices and beliefs fit easily into the meaning ecosystem of one’s root culture, some are misunderstood through the prism of available memes in one’s root culture, and some irreconcilably clash. The product of one time and culture cannot be completely assimilated as is by the dweller in another time and culture. It must be—to some extent—reshaped and reconfigured to make sense if one is to believe it genuinely and completely. In the act of assimilating borrowed practices and beliefs and making them one’s own, something is gained and something lost. What emerges from that process has one foot in its culture of origin and one foot in its adopted one. It is both a continuation of the culture borrowed from and a betrayal of it.1 It also—if it takes hold— colonizes its adopted culture like a virus invades a host, subtly shifting older meanings and understandings as its adopting culture accommodates to and reorganizes around it.

Many Buddhist accommodations to Western culture have already taken place, but the fact that they are accommodations often goes unacknowledged.

1 As the Italians say, “traduttore, traditore,” “to translate is to betray.”

They’re often clothed in the fiction that they’re, in fact, the Buddha’s “original” teachings, and their inconsistencies with other older-strata Buddhist teachings may go uncommented on as if they didn’t exist.

There’s nothing new about the pretense that novel teachings are original teachings. As we shall see, this pretense has been employed and reemployed throughout history whenever Buddhism has journeyed to a new shore or made contact with competing religions and philosophies. Many of the suggestions I will make in this book about how to best modify traditional Buddhist teachings have already been made by others. Some are already commonly held tenets in many contemporary Western Zen, Vajrayana, and Vipassana communities. My intention is to integrate these modified teachings within a single meaningful framework that I hope will prove helpful to practitioners—beginners and old hands alike.

As an aside, my critique is specifically directed at Buddhist concepts as found in classic Pali, Sanskrit, and Chinese texts, as regularly encountered in Western English-language Dharma talks, and as generally understood within Western “convert” Buddhist communities. It is not directed at the ways traditional Buddhist practice—lay and clerical—is instantiated by non-convert Buddhists in diverse Asian cultures.

Western Buddhist practitioners who value the “authenticity” of their practice above all else—that is, the degree to which their practice conforms to the Buddha’s “original” teachings—are often disconcerted to discover how little we know about the historical Buddha, how much our understanding of the earliest strands of Buddhist teachings is a matter of conjecture and guesswork, and how much of what often passes for the historical Buddha’s authentic teachings is the result of a lengthy historical process of revision and reinvention. It’s sometimes best not to think of Buddhism as being a single coherent tradition, but to think of it as twoand-a-half millennia-long conversation about what it means to live the best kind of existence, one that has many different tributaries, branches, and side-streams.

Buddhism is not alone in having undergone this kind of historical transformation. Religions thrive, wither, or die according to their ability to address the existential concerns of particular times and places, and to harmoniously coexist within the wider ecosystem of a culture’s deeply held beliefs. As they evolve, traditionalists strive to maintain ideas and practices that have lost their resonance, while innovators strive to reconfigure them to meet the needs of the moment. Religions that survive over millennia manage to skillfully thread the needle between these extremes.

History provides us with many examples of once vibrant religions that are now, for all practical purposes, extinct. Very few people, if any, continue to worship the Greek, Roman, Norse, or Egyptian gods. The tales of these gods, demigods, fates, and furies retain an enduring cultural value in their roles as metaphors, but not as objects of worship and belief. The idea that human-like deities control nature from atop Mount Olympus, or that a horse-drawn chariot draws the sun across the sky, or that three Norns weave our fates is too inconsistent with our other beliefs about the fundamental nature of reality for us to take them seriously as literal truth.

The religions that survive have undergone continuous revision over long periods of time. Judaism, for example, evolved from henotheism2 to monotheism, and from a priestly religion of animal sacrifice to a rabbinical religion of prayer, repentance, charity, and adherence to a set of commandments. Today, competing visions of what it means to be Jewish are transmitted by a multiplicity of Hassidic, Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, Reconstructionist, and secular voices.

The evolving, pleomorphic, multi-vocal nature of both historical and contemporary Judaism is typical of all religions. The histories of Christianity, Islam, or Hinduism demonstrate a similar course of evolution and multiple forms of contemporary expression. In just the last two centuries, for example, American Christianity has, in an extraordinary burst of creativity, witnessed the birth of new forms of worship and belief, including Mormonism, Seventh-Day Adventism, Christian Science, the Jehovah’s Witnesses, the Catholic Workers, Pentecostalism, fundamentalism, revivalism, and liberation theology. These new movements are the collective results of many individuals responding to the spirit of their times.

The history of Chán in China and Zen in Japan reveals a similar course of endless revision, reinvention, and reinterpretation. Alan Cole3 has documented the Chinese Song dynasty (960–1157 CE) reinvention and mythologization of the Tang dynasty (618–907 CE) Chán masters; Jiang Wu4 has documented the reinvention of the Huángbò lineage within the Línjì school of Chinese Chán in the mid-seventeenth century; Peter

2 Henotheism is the exclusive worship of a single deity that acknowledges the existence of the gods of other tribes.

3 Alan Cole, Patriarchs on Paper: A Critical History of Medieval Chan Literature (Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2016).

4 Jiang Wu, Orthodoxy, Controversy and the Transformation of Chan Buddhism in Seventeenth-Century China (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 2002).

Haskell5 and David Riggs6 have documented the Japanese resurrection and reinvention of Dogen-style Zen during the Tokugawa shogunate (1600–1868 CE), and Jiryu Mark Rutschman-Byler7 has documented the radical transformation of Japanese Zen in the Meiji era (1868–1912 CE). The Zen we practice now is not the timeless practice of our ancestors, but something continuously modified over the centuries. It’s also of historical interest to note that the Buddhism that came to America in the twentieth century was a Buddhism already transformed through contact with the West. As David McMahan notes:

[O]ne of the major ways in which Buddhism around the world has modernized is through its re-articulation in the languages of science and secular thought. This began during the colonial period in Asia, in the nineteenth century, when Buddhists who were either colonized, as in Ceylon and Burma, or concerned about the economic and military hegemony of the West, as in China and Japan, began reinterpreting and representing Buddhism as a system of thought and ethics more attuned to the emerging scientific worldview than the religion of the colonizers.8

In other words, nineteenth-century Asian Buddhist modernists constructed “rational” versions of Buddhism that were in better accord with Western secular and scientific trends as a response to Western colonialism, imperialism, and proselytizing. These modernized forms of Buddhism were then transmitted to the West in the twentieth century, where Westerners continued the process of reform and reinterpretation. This applies not only to the radical Japanese revision of Zen in the wake of the Meiji Restoration, but also to the rise of the modern Vipassana movement in Southeast Asia9 and to the influence of the American Theosophist Colonel Henry Steel Olcott on the Sinhalese Buddhist revival.10

5 Peter Haskel, Letting Go: The Story of Zen Master To sui (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2001).

6 David Riggs, “The Life of Menzan Zuiho, Founder of Dogen Zen,” Japan Review 16 (2004): 67–100.

7 Jiryu Mark Rutschman-Byler, So to Zen in Meiji Japan: The Life and Times of Nishiari Bokusan (Master’s thesis, University of California at Berkeley, 2014).

8 David McMahan, “Buddhism and Global Secularisms,” Journal of Global Buddhism 18 (2017): 112–128.

9 Erik Braun, The Birth of Insight: Meditation, Modern Buddhism, and the Burmese Monk Ledi Sayadaw (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013).

10 Donald Lopez, Jr., A Modern Buddhist Bible: Essential Readings from East and West (Boston: Beacon Press, 2002).

BuddhIsm and Western modernIsm

The great challenge for us as Western practitioners is how to make Buddhist practice our own—how to make it something we can fully endorse without inner division or pretense, and without cutting off or eliding what we, as modern people, sense deeply and irrevocably in our bones. The modern Western ecosystem of meanings presents several significant barriers to the unmodified assimilation of traditional Buddhist teachings. Chief among these are Western beliefs concerning life after death, Western scientific naturalism and materialism, and the Aristotelian ideal of human flourishing—Westerners’ implicit understanding of what it means to live the best possible kind of life a human being can aspire to.

Western Beliefs Regarding Life After Death

The Buddhist doctrine of rebirth has a central place in Buddhist teachings concerning nirvana, dependent origination, karma, and ethics. Westerners, however, have other ideas about what happens after death—ideas inherited from the Judeo-Christian and European Enlightenment traditions as well as from what might be termed “folk spiritualism.” These ideas include (1) the Judeo-Christian belief in heaven and hell, (2) the naturalist belief that consciousness ceases upon death, and (3) less articulated folk beliefs about ghosts, rejoining one’s deceased loved ones, and communication and assistance from beyond the grave.

While there are Western adherents of Theosophy, Anthroposophy, Rosicrucianism, and various New Age-associated spiritual systems who profess a belief in reincarnation, their beliefs are only rarely accompanied by a genuine sense of existential urgency about ending future transmigrations. Many view reincarnation as a beneficial educative process in which we are rewarded or punished for our karma in lifetime after lifetime until we learn the lessons life is trying to teach us. This formulation differs from the Buddhist conception of rebirth in two ways. First, it assumes a single continuous personality that transmigrates from incarnation to incarnation. Second, it assumes a beneficial educational purpose to the process. Buddhism, on the other hand, teaches rebirth11 rather than reincarnation,

11 Buddhism doesn’t believe in a transmigrating eternal soul. It has a more abstract notion about how karmic tendencies, inherited from past lives and incurred in present lives, are transmitted to newly developing embryos.

viewing the endless round of rebirths—what it terms samsara—as a senseless, purposeless wandering, and therefore a source of suffering.

Modern Westerners who are interested in Buddhism typically deal with the dissonance between their preexisting beliefs concerning the afterlife and traditional Buddhist teachings by choosing to understand rebirth as a metaphor for how our current thoughts and actions condition our future thoughts and actions. According to the metaphoric interpretation of rebirth, we’re reborn anew in each and every moment, our past and current thoughts and actions determining who we become in the next moment.

While some Buddhist traditionalists argue that you can’t be a genuine Buddhist if you don’t believe in literal rebirth, this doesn’t deter modernists from interpreting rebirth metaphorically while still identifying as Buddhists. I suspect that most Western convert Buddhists already belong to the modernist camp in this regard, and that the traditionalist argument is a futile one. Please note that my argument is not that rebirth is untrue, but only that most Westerners don’t find it compelling due to their preexisting prior beliefs.

The clash between the Buddhist doctrine of rebirth and preexisting cultural beliefs about life after death is not a new problem for Buddhism. When Buddhism was transmitted from India to East Asia it encountered preexisting Chinese, Korean, and Japanese beliefs and practices regarding ancestor veneration and ghosts. Many East Asian Buddhists resolve this conflict by engaging in what, to us in the West, seems like a kind of Orwellian doublethink. While they profess a belief in rebirth, they simultaneously venerate their ancestors as if their ancestors continued to exist on some otherworldly plane.

East Asians tend to regard Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism, and Shinto not so much as “religions” the way we tend to think about them in the West, but as aspects of their cultural heritage. To engage in ancestor veneration is to engage in what East Asians have engaged in since time immemorial. It’s what makes you Chinese, Korean, or Japanese, rather than what makes you Buddhist, Confucian, Taoist, or Shinto. In understanding this, it may be helpful to think of what Christmas has become for many atheists and agnostics in America—not so much a Christian holiday, as a national holiday involving time off from work, gift giving, family gatherings, Santa Claus, and ornamental trees. For such people, the holiday doesn’t so much mark a celebration of the birth of the Son of God, as a time of peace on earth and goodwill toward men.

Western Beliefs Regarding Naturalism and Materialism

Western ontological naturalism and materialism also serve as significant obstacles to the intact transmission of traditional Buddhist ideas to the West. Naturalism is the belief that everything arises from natural (as opposed to supernatural) causes. Materialism is the belief that nothing exists except the material world.

Western science could manage quite well without committing to an ontological materialism—the belief that the physical world is all that there is. Science could, for example, restrict itself to statements about regularities and relationships in the observable, quantifiable, and intersubjectively verifiable world without making proclamations about things that are neither observable nor measurable. Science requires a methodological materialism, “science concerns itself with what’s intersubjectively observable,” rather than an ontological materialism, “material reality is all that there is.” Nevertheless, the practical success of methodological materialism has led many Westerners—including many Western scientists—to take the validity of ontological materialism for granted. This continues to be the case even though ontological materialism makes it very difficult to understand the role of consciousness, intention, and choice in the natural world. It’s interesting to note that while ontological materialism is incompatible with a belief in the Divine, half of American scientists believe in a “higher power” and a third specifically believe in an Abrahamic notion of God.12 Somehow they manage to square their faith in science with their belief that there is more to the world than what is observable.

Buddhism contains a number of beliefs that lie outside the range of propositions that are scientifically testable. The belief in rebirth is one of them, since it assumes that non-material karmic patterns can be transmitted to a newly developing embryo. The belief in spiritual realms such as Pure Lands, Buddha Fields, Buddhist heavens and hells, bardo realms, and formless meditative realms is another. So are beliefs in cosmological buddhas and bodhisattvas, and the supernatural beings who dwell in different realms of rebirth such as hungry ghosts, devas, and brahmas. So is the belief that it’s possible for mental activity to occur without a physical basis, for example, the persistence of consciousness in the bardo realms between

12 David Masci, “Scientists and Belief,” Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion and Public Life, 2009, http://www.pewforum.org/2009/11/05/scientists-and-belief/

death and rebirth. So is the doctrine that nirvana is beyond the reach of cause and effect.

Buddhist modernists often deal with these conflicts by treating these Buddhist beliefs as either (1) superstitions best discarded or (2) metaphors which, like the Greek and Roman myths, can be useful even when untrue. One variant of (2) is the belief that while not “ultimately real,” cosmological buddhas and bodhisattvas have a phenomenological reality as archetypal energies that can be harnessed to spur spiritual development or wellness. This is not unlike the belief that one does not have to believe in God in order to believe in the efficacy of prayer. The act of praying itself can mobilize psychological energies that restore hope and promote resilience and recovery from illness and disaster.

A fairly widespread belief that Buddhism is a “scientific religion” persists despite the fact that many traditional Buddhist beliefs are scientifically untestable, incompatible with science’s commitment to naturalism, or inconsistent with many scientists’ philosophical commitment to some form of ontological materialism. This belief originated in the efforts of nineteenth-century Asian Buddhist modernists to present Buddhism to the West as a religion that was more compatible with science than the Western Abrahamic faiths.13 The fact that Buddhism lacked a belief in (1) an all-powerful, omniscient God who was (2) the creator of the universe, who (3) miraculously intervened in the natural order, and (4) who was the administrator of justice on earth and in the afterlife lent credibility to that assertion.

The belief that Buddhism is compatible with science also gains credibility from the Dalai Lama’s statement that, “If scientific analysis were conclusively to demonstrate certain claims in Buddhism to be false, then we must accept the findings of science and abandon those claims.”14 The Dalai Lama regularly holds dialogues with Western scientists at his Mind and Life Institutes, and partly as a consequence, there has been an explosion of interest in psychological, neuropsychological, and medical research

13 Donald Lopez, Jr., Buddhism and Science: A Guide for the Perplexed (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008).

14 The Dalai Lama, The Universe in a Single Atom: The Convergence of Science and Spirituality (New York: Morgan Road Books, 2005), 2–3. Notice the Dalai Lama’s careful qualification that this only applies to “certain” claims in Buddhism. The Dalai Lama exempts the Buddhist teachings on karma, rebirth, and the non-material nature of consciousness from his declaration of the primacy of science.

involving Buddhist meditation. This research also lends credibility to the belief that Buddhism is scientific.15

Proponents of the belief that Buddhism is scientific often cite the ancient Buddhist text called the Kalama Sutta in support of their argument. In the Kalama Sutta, the Buddha emphasizes the essential testability of his teachings in a way that makes Buddhism seem like an empirical enterprise. The Kalama villagers had been approached by a variety of itinerant teachers who taught opposing doctrines. The Buddha told them they were right to be confused by these conflicting assertions, but gave them a formula for sorting claims out:

Do not go upon what has been acquired by repeated hearing; nor upon tradition; nor upon rumor; nor upon what is in a scripture; nor upon surmise; nor upon an axiom; nor upon specious reasoning; nor upon a bias towards a notion that has been pondered over; nor upon another’s seeming ability; nor upon the consideration, “The monk is our teacher.” Kalamas, when you yourselves know: “These things are good; these things are not blamable; these things are praised by the wise; undertaken and observed, these things lead to benefit and happiness,” enter on and abide in them.16

To Western ears, accustomed to the never-ending skirmishes between religion and science from the time of Galileo onward, these words serve to differentiate Buddhism from the Abrahamic faiths, making it seem like an “empirical religion.” The fact is, however, that this is only one sutta among many thousands, a great many of which do assert supernatural beliefs (although Buddhism doesn’t believe in a creator God, it does believe in a multiplicity of supernatural entities) and to stress this sutta out of context gives an erroneous impression of Buddhism as a whole. One consequence of the widespread belief that Buddhism is “scientific” is that one continues to hear statements like “the Buddhist doctrine of emptiness is concordant with quantum mechanics” or that “the Buddhist doctrine of no-self is concordant with findings in neuropsychology.” While there are some intriguing parallels between some Buddhist doctrines and

15 For an example, see Robert Wright, Why Buddhism is True: The Science and Philosophy of Meditation and Enlightenment (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2018). Wright finds resonances between Buddhist philosophy and insights drawn from evolutionary psychology and the modular theory of mind.

16 Kalama Sutta: The Buddha’s Charter of Free Inquiry, translated by Soma Thera, 1994, https://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/an/an03/an03.065.soma.html

some modern scientific findings, we should remain cognizant that there are also fundamental incompatibilities between many traditional Buddhist teachings and the doctrines of naturalism and ontological materialism. Is a deeper reconciliation between science and Buddhism possible? Philosopher Owen Flanagan17 has explored a naturalized version of Buddhism—one with all the supernatural bits removed—to discover whether it would remain interesting and deep as a philosophy of wellbeing. He believes it does, and his work has significantly influenced those who identify as Secular Buddhists (see Chap. 4) as well as psychologists and neuropsychologists interested in researching ideas generated from Buddhist insights. It has also drawn criticism from traditionalist Buddhists who worry a naturalized Buddhism is too thin to be as deeply transformative as they believe Buddhism ought to be.

Western Beliefs Regarding Human Flourishing

The phrase “human flourishing” is a creative translation of the ancient Greek word eudaimonia, which literally means “having a good indwelling spirit.” Eudaimonia refers to both having a deep abiding sense of inner well-being and living an objectively good life. Aristotle developed the concept in his Nichomachean Ethics, a foundational text of Western moral philosophy, written around 350 BCE, roughly within a century or so of the Buddha’s lifetime. In it, Aristotle lays out his beliefs regarding what comprises the best possible kind of life human beings can aspire to. I will deal with the specifics in Chap. 3, but for now, let us just note that it involves developing a set of intellectual and character strengths, the contemplation of fundamental truths, and being an active participant in the civic life of one’s community. Aristotle’s eudaimonic ideal found its way into Islamic, Jewish, and Catholic thought, and continues to be a major influence in contemporary Western psychology and philosophy. Its penetration into Western culture is complete so that even people who have never heard of Aristotle have absorbed its teachings though cultural osmosis. When US Army recruiters urge us to “be all we can be,” they are echoing one popular modern variant of eudaimonia.

The main thesis of this book is that the traditional endpoint of Buddhist practice—variously called “enlightenment,” “awakening,” or “nirvana”—

17 Owen Flanagan, The Bodhisattva’s Brain: Buddhism Naturalized (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2011).

is dissonant with modern Westerners’ implicit understanding of what it means to live the best possible kind of life, an understanding that is deeply informed by the Aristotelian tradition and its descendants. The tension between these two ideals—enlightenment and eudaimonia—affects Buddhist modernism even more profoundly than the West’s beliefs about the afterlife or its commitments to naturalism and ontological materialism. This is the thesis I will develop and explore in the chapters that follow.

references

Braun, Erik. The Birth of Insight: Meditation, Modern Buddhism, and the Burmese Monk Ledi Sayadaw. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013.

Cole, Alan. Patriarchs on Paper: A Critical History of Medieval Chan Literature. Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2016.

Dalai Lama, The Universe in a Single Atom: The Convergence of Science and Spirituality. New York: Morgan Road Books, 2005.

Flanagan, Owen. The Bodhisattva’s Brain: Buddhism Naturalized. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2011.

Haskel, Peter. Letting Go: The Story of Zen Master Tosui. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2001.

Kalama Sutta: The Buddha’s Charter of Free Inquiry, trans. Soma Thera, 1994. https://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/an/an03/an03.065.soma.html

Lopez, Donald Jr. A Modern Buddhist Bible: Essential Readings from East and West, Boston: Beacon Press, 2002.

Lopez, Donald Jr. Buddhism and Science: A Guide for the Perplexed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008.

Masci, David. “Scientists and Belief.” Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion and Public Life, 2009. http://www.pewforum.org/2009/11/05/scientistsand-belief/

McMahon, David. “Buddhism and Global Secularisms,” Journal of Global Buddhism 18 (2017): 112–128.

Riggs, David. The Life of Menzan Zuiho, Founder of Dogen Zen Japan Review 16 (2004): 67–100.

Rutschman-Byler, Mark Jiryu. So to Zen in Meiji Japan: The Life and Times of Nishiari Bokusan. Master’s thesis, University of California at Berkeley, 2014.

Wright, Robert. Why Buddhism is True: The Science and Philosophy of Meditation and Enlightenment. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2018.

Wu, Jiang. Orthodoxy, Controversy and the Transformation of Chan Buddhism in Seventeenth-Century China, Doctoral thesis, Harvard University, 2002.

What Is Enlightenment?

IntroductIon

In order to understand the tensions between enlightenment and eudaimonia, we must first have an adequate understanding of exactly what it is these terms actually refer to. In this chapter, I introduce the idea of enlightenment as defined by the Theravada and Mahayana Buddhist traditions and then critique it from a Western perspective grounded in modern psychology and the Aristotelian eudaimonic tradition.

If you’ve never seen the color blue, how could I explain it to you in a way that made you feel you understood what blue was? If you and I were both blind to the experience of seeing blue, how could we talk to each other about it at all? We’d be in the position of only knowing what others had said about “blue,” and we’d have a good deal of difficulty in understanding exactly what it was, except that it was in some way like other colors we knew, and in some way different. If we were born totally blind, we wouldn’t even have that to go on.

Since I’m not a fully realized enlightened being—and since I assume you’re not either—we find ourselves in a similar predicament when discussing ideas about enlightenment. What can I possibly have to say to you about it? If discretion is the better part of valor, it might be wisest to say nothing at all. Nevertheless, while inherently dualistic language may never adequately convey the full meaning of “enlightenment,” as curious human beings we’re obligated to try to make some kind of sense—however vague and preliminary—of what it is the word points to. As an unenlightened

© The Author(s) 2020

S. Z. Segall, Buddhism and Human Flourishing, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-37027-5_2

person, while I may not be an authority on enlightenment per se, I can honestly claim to be an authority on wrestling with the idea and trying to make sense of it.

Let’s begin by noting that the word “enlightenment” is an Englishlanguage term popularized by Max Müeller (1823–1900), the Germanborn philologist, Orientalist, and editor of the 50-volume set of English-language translations of Sanskrit, Pali, Chinese, Zoroastrian, and Islamic texts called The Sacred Books of the East published by Oxford University Press from 1879 to 1910. “Enlightenment” was intended to correspond to the Sanskrit and Pali word bodhi, which is better translated as “awakening.” The words bodhi and Buddha both derive from the root word “budh,” meaning “to wake up” or “become aware.” The term “Buddha,” meaning “Awakened One,” is an honorific referring to (1) the historical Siddhartha Gautama after his awakening, (2) his awakened predecessors and future successors, and (3) a multiplicity of cosmological beings who dwell in various metaphysical realms including the sambkogakaya realm, Pure Lands, Buddha Fields, and Tusita heaven. Many contemporary translators prefer using the term “awakening” to “enlightenment,” perhaps because the word “enlightenment” has connotations (e.g., the role of rationality in the European Enlightenment) that could be misleading.

EnlIghtEnmEnt: A tAlE of two trAdItIons

What does the Buddhist tradition say about the Buddha’s enlightenment? Different strands of the Buddhist tradition describe the Buddha’s enlightenment in different ways. How can one sort out and make sense of these differences? One approach might be to consider the dates when various Buddhist texts were written and assume that those written closest to the Buddha’s lifetime are in some ways more trustworthy. While it’s tempting to think this way, there are reasons not to.

First, the earliest known transcribed accounts of the Buddha’s enlightenment, written in the Pali language, date from centuries after his death. While Theravada Buddhists claim these to be the actual words of the Buddha as memorized by his disciples and orally transmitted across the centuries, there are reasons not to fully accept this claim. Scholars believe the Buddha taught in the vernacular Prakrit languages of Greater Magahda during his lifetime. He almost certainly didn’t teach in Pali—a sanskritized

hybrid of several related Prakrits—because Pali didn’t come into use until after he had passed away.1

Second, these orally transmitted Pali teachings weren’t put into written form until the first century BCE. There’s considerable scholarly dispute as to when the Buddha passed away, but—depending on which chronology one follows—it may have been anywhere from 543 BCE to 370 BCE. This means that—at the very least—approximately three centuries intervened between the Buddha’s last teachings and the first written accounts of it. While it’s possible that some of the over 10,000 alleged discourses of the Buddha transcribed into Pali were (1) accurately translated and (2) orally transmitted without change over 300 years, it’s also quite possible that some underwent a process of revision, while others were composed at a later date. Some of the Pali texts probably accurately reflect the Buddha’s words; some might not. Imagine if Lincoln’s Gettysburg address had been delivered before the advent of written language. How accurate would orally transmitted versions of it be three centuries later? How accurate would they be if they were finally transcribed, not into English, but in some related tongue—perhaps Dutch or German? How accurate would they be if they were one among a collection of over 10,000 alleged Lincoln speeches?

We have examples of Pali texts that are deemed to be the word of the Buddha, but almost certainly aren’t. The Lakkhana Sutta, 2 for example, describes the physical characteristics of the Buddha in highly unrealistic terms. The Sutta states the soles of the feet of the Buddha are “wheels with one thousand spokes,” that his hands and feet are “netlike,” that the front of his body is “like a lion’s,” and that he has 40 teeth. Even given leeway for poetic license, this almost certainly wasn’t written by the Buddha or someone who’d actually seen him—it’s almost certainly a mythologization. Similarly, the first 74 pages of my copy of an English-language translation of the Samyutta Nikaya3 (The Connected Discourses of the Buddha) consists mostly of verses recited to the Buddha by devas. Devas are

1 Chipamong Chowdhury, “Did the Buddha speak Pali? An investigation of The BuddhaVacana and origins of Pali,” The Dhaka University Journal of Linguistics 2, No. 4 (2009): 43–58.

2 “Lakkhana Sutta (The Marks of a Great Man),” The Long Discourses of the Buddha, translated by Maurice Walsh (Boston: Wisdom, 1995), 441–460.

3 The Connected Discourses of the Buddha: A New Translation of the Samyutta Nikaya, translated by Bhikkhu Bodhi (Boston: Wisdom, 2005).

benevolent non-human beings who—having been reborn into a realm higher than our own but lower than that of the gods (brahmas)—possess angelic-like qualities. Other sections of the Samyutta Nikaya relate accounts of the Buddha’s conversations with Mara (the Lord of Death) and with various gods (brahmas) and nature spirits (yakkhas). While these Buddhist texts are quite charming and reinforce Buddhist teachings appearing elsewhere in the canon, they’re literary embellishments on Buddhist themes and almost certainly not the Buddha’s words themselves.

My main point is that not everything in the Pali canon ought to be taken at face value. The Pali account of the Buddha’s enlightenment is almost certainly not a historically accurate retelling, but a pedagogic tool that reiterates and vivifies core early Buddhist teachings.

The Mahayana sutras—composed mostly in the literary language of Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit or in Chinese—are primarily later inventions. The earliest Mahayana sutras probably date from about the first century BCE, approximately the same time the Pali canon was committed to writing. Newer Mahayana sutras continued to make their appearance over the ensuing millennium. The Mahayana tradition also claims that its texts are the actual words of the Buddha, although most fair-minded historians would have to conclude that they’re not. It’s much more reasonable to view them as literary creations, and their claims to being lost, hidden, or secret teachings of the historical Buddha as attempts to lend newer teachings an air of legitimacy. In any case, when the Mahayana tradition relates its version of the Buddha’s enlightenment, we can be even surer than we were in the case of the Pali version that it’s not relating historical truth, but making a pedagogical statement.

The Theravada Tradition

With this preliminary discussion out of the way, let’s examine the enlightenment accounts themselves. What does the Theravada tradition say about the Buddha’s enlightenment? The main Pali Nikaya account of the Buddha’s enlightenment can be found in the Mahasaccaka Sutta. In that account, the Buddha’s enlightenment is described as occurring over the three watches of the night. During the first watch, he recalls his past lives with perfect omniscience:

When my concentrated mind was thus purified, bright, unblemished, rid of imperfection, malleable, wieldy, steady, and attained to imperturbability, I

directed it to the knowledge of recollection of past lives. I recollected my manifold past lives, that is, one birth, two births, three births, four births, five births, ten births, twenty births … a hundred thousand births, many aeons of world-contraction, many aeons of world-expansion, many aeons of world-contraction and expansion. ‘There I was so named, of such a clan, of such an appearance, such was my nutriment, such my experience of pleasure and pain, such my life-term; and passing away from there, I reappeared elsewhere.’ Thus with their aspects and particulars I recollected my manifold past lives.

This was the first true knowledge attained by me in the first watch of the night. Ignorance was banished and true knowledge arose; darkness was banished and true light arose, as happens in one who abides diligent, ardent, and resolute. But such pleasant feeling that arose in me did not invade my mind and remain.4

During the second watch, he saw the chains of karma governing the lives and rebirths of all beings:

When my concentrated mind was thus purified, bright, unblemished, rid of imperfection, malleable, wieldy, steady, and attained to imperturbability, I directed it to knowledge of the passing away and reappearance of beings. With a divine eye which is purified and surpassed the human, I saw beings passing away and reappearing, inferior and superior, fair and ugly, fortunate and unfortunate. I understood how beings pass on according to their actions thus: ‘These worthy beings who were ill-conducted in body, speech and mind, revilers of noble ones, wrong in their views, giving effect to wrong view in their actions, on the dissolution of the body, after death, have reappeared in a state of deprivation, in a bad destination, in perdition, even in hell; but these worthy beings who were well-conducted in body, speech, and mind, not revilers of noble ones, right in their views, giving effect to right view in their actions, on the dissolution of the body, after death, have reappeared in a good destination, even in a heavenly world.’ Thus with the divine eye which is purified and surpasses the human, I saw beings passing away, inferior and superior, fair and ugly, fortunate and unfortunate, and I understood how beings pass according to their actions.

During the third watch, the Buddha discovered the Four Noble Truths:

4 Mahasaccaka Sutta (The Greater Discourse to Saccaka), The Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha: A New Translation of the Majjhima Nikaya, translated by Bhikkhu Nanamoli and Bhikkhu Bodhi (Boston: Wisdom, 1995), 341–343. All subsequent quotations from this sutta in this section are from the same source.

When my concentrated mind was thus purified, bright, unblemished, rid of imperfection, malleable, wieldy, steady, and attained to imperturbability, I directed it to knowledge of the destruction of the taints [that is, craving, aversion and ignorance]. I directly knew it as it actually is: ‘This is suffering’; … ‘This is the origin of suffering’; … ‘This is the cessation of suffering’; … ‘This is the way leading to the cessation of suffering’; … ‘These are the taints’; … ‘This is the origin of the taints’; … ‘This is the cessation of the taints’; … ‘This is the way leading to the cessation of the taints.’

When I knew and saw thus, my mind was liberated from the taint of sensual desire, from the taint of being, and from the taint of ignorance. When it was liberated, there came the knowledge, ‘It is liberated.’ I directly knew: ‘Birth is destroyed, the holy life has been lived, what had to be done has been done, there is no more coming to any state of being.’

This account provides a picture of the Buddha’s enlightenment as including (1) the development of transcendent powers that enable him to see his past lives and discern the law of karma governing the rebirth of all beings, and (2) the development of cognitive insight into the Four Noble Truths. This account is also notable for what it does not contain: (1) a mystical experience of oneness-with-the-universe, (2) a transcendence of subject-object duality, and (3) a mental state free from all discursive thought processes. The description is thoroughly in line with core Pali canon teachings emphasizing ending suffering through the ending of craving and attachment, and accomplishing this through the development of insight and discerning wisdom.

The Theravada tradition makes additional claims about the enlightened state. First it refers to that state as nibbana (nirvana in Sanskrit), which essentially means “blown out”—like a fire that has blown out. What has “blown out” are craving, ignorance, aversion, and attachment—they have completely ceased, never to arise again. Enlightenment is also permanent. Once one has realized nibbana, there is no possibility of slipping back into an unenlightened state. When enlightened persons finally pass away, they become “fully blown out” in the sense that they won’t be reborn. This is referred to as “nibbana without remainder.” The Buddha refused to answer questions about the ontological status of beings who had attained nibbana without remainder—did they still exist in some meaningful sense, or were they non-existent? Nibbana is also referred to as “the unconditioned,” meaning unlike everything else, it’s the only thing that’s not dependent on causes and conditions and therefore free from impermanence.

The Mahayana Tradition

How does this compare with the Mahayana tradition’s description of the Buddha’s enlightenment? Interestingly, I’m unaware of any Mahayana sutras that describe Siddhartha Gautama’s personal, historical enlightenment experience. On the other hand, the Buddha of the Mahayana sutras has an awful lot to say about enlightenment. The Mahayana sutras don’t dispute the core Pali canon account, but build upon it. They agree that enlightenment means both an end to rebirth and an end to ignorance, attachment, aversion, and craving, but they add to it and shift its emphasis. They focus on the newer Mahayana teachings of emptiness, interdependence, and non-duality.

These newer teachings stress the all-togetherness of things. Our everyday view of the phenomenal world is one in which we see relatively stable, discrete “things” separated from each other in time and space. Each of these “things” appears to have its own essence—the inner being that makes it what it is. Mahayana Buddhism considered this separateness of “things” to be illusory and denied that “things” had essences that made them what they were. Instead, “things” were what they were only as a result of their inter-relationship with everything else. They were said to be “empty of self-existence” and dependent on a multitude of causes and conditions. This “emptiness of self-existence” is what is being referred to when Buddhists use the word “emptiness” (sunyata). According to this way of thinking, “things” aren’t really “things” at all, but fluid “processes” in the midst of transition from one state to another as the result of their interactions with all the other ongoing processes of the world. Mahayana Buddhism also denied the existence of fundamental dualities such as the subject-object duality and viewed the world as a single ongoing process. From the enlightened point of view, dualities are illusory.

The Sutra of Perfect Enlightenment, an eighth-century Chinese text, exemplifies the Mahayana emphases on illusionism, emptiness, and nonduality. In it, the Buddha explains enlightenment this way:

“… It is called ‘Perfect Enlightenment.’ From it is manifested all purity, suchness, bodhi [Awakening], nirvana and the paramitas [virtues] which teach bodhisattvas. All tathagatas [Buddhas] … rely on the perfect illumination of the attributes of pure enlightenment to permanently sever ignorance and directly accomplish the Buddha-Way.”

What is ignorance? Good sons, all sentient beings fall into various inverted views without beginning. Just like a disoriented person who confuses the four directions [of the compass], they mistakenly take the Four Elements [earth, wind, fire, water] as the attributes of their bodies and the conditioned shadows of the Six Objects [sensations, thoughts, and emotions] as the attributes of their mind. It is just like when our eyes are diseased and we see flowers in the sky, or a second moon. Good sons, the sky actually has no flowers—they are the false attachment of the diseased person. And because of this false attachment, not only are we confused about the selfnature of the sky; we are also mixed up about the place where real flowers come from. From this there is the falsely existent transmigration through life and death. Therefore it is called “ignorance.”

“Good sons, this ‘ignorance’ actually lacks substance. It is like a man who is dreaming. At the time of the dream, there is no non-existence. But when he awakens he finds that there is nothing for him to hold on to. Similarly, when the sky-flowers disappear from the sky, you cannot say that there is a definite point of their disappearance. Why? Because there is no point from which they arose. All sentient beings falsely perceive arising and ceasing within the un-arisen. Therefore they say that there is ‘transmigration through life-and-death.’”

“Good sons, in the practice of Perfect Enlightenment … one understands these ‘sky-flowers,’ thus there is no transmigration, nor body/mind to undergo life-and-death. But they are not caused to be non-existent. It is because they lack original nature. Now, this [prior] awareness is in itself void, like empty space. Yet since this awareness that perceives it to be like empty space is none other than the appearance of sky-flowers, you also cannot say that there is no nature of awareness. Existence and non-existence both being dispelled is called ‘according with pure enlightenment.’”

“Why? Because its nature is completely empty; because it is eternally changeless; because there is neither arising nor ceasing within the matrix of the Tathagata, and because there are no fixed points of view. Like the nature of the reality-realm it is totally complete and perfect, pervading the ten directions …”5

The emphasis in this account is on seeing beyond one’s deluded view of self and world. When we wake up from delusion, we see that the true nature of everything is emptiness. Even karma and rebirth—the Buddha’s key insight during the second watch of the night according to the Pali

5 The Sutra of Perfect Enlightenment, translated by Charles Muller, 2003, http://www. acmuller.net/bud-canon/sutra_of_perfect_enlightenment.html. All quotes from this sutra are from the same source.