I ask you, can you put your hand in the same river twice? Raja Rao
Does a waterfall ever change? Raja Rao
It is with rash insolence that we belittle the great to our own measure, as when talking of God. Blaise Pascal
Neither doeth anyone know the Father, but the son, and he to whom it shall please the son to reveal him. Matthew 11-27
As stated previously, I am not a scholar which does not mean I won't enter into some conjecture about the religious or philosophical schools of India, the world. Here I am primarily concerned with Nagarjuna's philosophy. I've written about Yoga, the Mandukya Upanishad also. A cursory reading by anyone reveals all those involved in the development, establishment, furtherance, of these systems were well versed in the work of their coevals, predecessors. A common style, common thread is discernible. They contend with one another, vie for attention, compete, use one another's work as part of the learning process, as talking points. It has ever been so. Taken together the various formulations, structures, make a kind of dialectic. One leads to the next and is developed further and another plateau is established as ground for even more developed systems. Centuries, millennia are involved, yet these people, enlightened beings, talk to each other like you and I might, so, like contemporaries. They must have had a sense of time not common to most people. Buddha makes his mark and Jesus, a close study would reveal, counters with another. And, this writer, at least, finds it interesting that Jesus and Buddha walked the earth so near one another in time and that their teaching had in common an emphasis on compassion or love. Great teachers, Lords, appear and are followed immediately by those who would explain or amplify the insights. The author of the Mandukya Upanishad, Guadapada gives way to Sankara for amplification. In later times Desani puts it all in order for a new generation. It is like a celestial orchestration of self realization, actualization. And, to be sure, the bloom is ever on that rose. For any who have developed an appreciation, these expositions are exquisitely beautiful. The proponents were dedicated to and loved their work. One is joined in their joy of having found the precious gems and delighted in sharing them with anyone who might benefit. True, its said, some authors would sign well known names to their work in order to get attention; for instance, the Bhagavad Gita was a later work than the parent to which it is attributed - it is said.
The commonalities abound in Judeo Christian and Indian philosophies. and are centered around self realization, actualization, understanding the Truth. At University Raja Rao taught a course on Mahayana Buddhism. The text book was the one in the title of this post. An internet search reveals this work is still in print.
So, from the Vedas of the Indian sub-continent, to the contributions of Rabbinic Judaism of the Middle East, to the Upanishads, back in India, to Tibet, to China, Japan, its a long road from antiquity to modern times. Nagarjuna, who likely lived about a century after Christ, five centuries after the Gautama Buddha, takes up the task of setting to right what he considers to be the straying teachings of those who came after the Buddha. It might be said he was to the Buddha as Jesus' disciples were to him, though, of course, the disciples were contemporaries of Jesus.
Ramanan was a fellow at Harvard's Yenching Institute and this work was published with their assistance. Nagarjuna's Prajnaparamita, which means the way of the perfection of wisdom wasn't available in India at that time. Dr. Ramanan, traveling in China, found a copy translated by one Kumarajiva. It is also noted that Kumarajiva translated some texts on dhyana (meditation) and that his disciple, Tao-Sheng has been credited with founding the precursor to Ch'an (or Zen) Buddhism .
Buddha, Nagarjuna were proponents of the so called Middle Way (Madhyamika) which in turn came under the heading of Mahayana Buddhism, the highest truth of which is known, realizable in the state reached through contemplation, meditation, trance (dharna, dhyana, samadhi) as Nirvana.
Nirvana is not the Judeo-Christian heaven and, for that matter Buddha was never proclaimed as God. The family unit used in Judeo-Christianity as a metaphor to make easily understood the basic principles of the ultimate reality is not used at all in Buddhism. For that matter it isn't used in any of the systems with which this writer is familiar except the Abrahamic religions. Buddha was considered Lord and no doubt it could be claimed, as I do, that he enjoyed a hypostatic union with the divine creative spirit, the ultimately real substratum from which mundane, relative existence comes to be. Relative existence, mundane things, are said to have conditioned reality and really are nothing in themselves. Having originated in the undifferentiated, changeless, unutterable ground of reality they reflect the ultimate even while having no separate existence. As ever changing entities they owe their essence to that from which they emanate, from which they spring and return to on expiring. The manifest has no self being and the purpose of the created is only to fulfill the potentialities of the substratum.
Buddha's core teaching was to make accessible a path out of the suffering, pain of existence in this world. To this end a great edifice of categories, causes, effects, a virtual world of sometimes very intricate formulae was built up and taught in a great variety of ways to his followers. Many other schools of thought on these matters existed before and clearly Buddhism takes these into account. After all, the Vedas date back perhaps four or five thousand years. They are the basis of Hinduism and the Upanishads are considered late or post Vedic writings.
It doesn't take a scholar to see the common threads running through these ancient texts. The Prajnaparamita lays them out in a concise, easily understood manner. As already mentioned a basic tenet is that the conditioned reality has no meaning other than that borrowed from the unconditioned, ultimately real. Things of dependent origination are sunya, empty. What is Real is the conditioned in the eternal aspect. What is common in all philosophy, in all religion is the thirst for the Real. All that differs is the Way to that end. Jesus said "I am the Way, the Truth, the Life. No man cometh to the father except by me." Buddha said the same thing substituting the ultimate reality for father. He said he actually was the unconditioned reality apart from that conditioned form with which he was embodied, made apparent. Made apparent. What is made apparent? Well, it is obfuscated by clinging. Clinging to illusion, to passion, to false knowledge, all kinds of things. Only proper understanding cultivated over a long time, with compassion, without hatred, anger, greed, in short, with clean living, can lead to a full self-realization; but mostly, avoiding the error of misplaced absolutes leads one to the truth of the undivided nature of ultimate reality, birthlessness, unaffected by time.
Nagarjuna set himself to the exposition of the teachings of the Prajnaparamita-sutras which "...embody the central teaching that the ultimate nature of the determinate is itself the unconditioned reality - that in the ultimate truth, the undivided being, there is no division of conditioned and unconditioned.." The wise do not cling to the determinate as indeterminate. The wise do not cling at all. What is speakable is determinate. Only silence, for the wise, pertains to the highest truth. Thus it is that the tendency to seize is the root of conflict and suffering.
The indeterminate is not a separate reality from the determinate, something to be realized transcendentally, because determinate entities are dependent on the indeterminate as their ground. The ultimate truth cannot be taught, says Nagarjuna except in the context of the mundane. The ultimate truth can, however, be comprehended and only then can Nirvana be attained. I would add that its unlikely that it would be granted by a higher being though I believe that one who sets himself to the task gains assistance in some way from beings greater than ourselves. This I was taught. It has to be an achievement of one's own efforts to have a full meaning. No specific view can be had of that. Being a specific view connotes divided being. Thus it is said that silence is the ultimate truth for the wise.
This makes me reflect again on Rabbinic Judaism. YHWH is supposed to be God's name. But it has no vowels, is unpronounceable. Seems to me that the same understanding of the ultimate reality is at play here as for the Buddhists. The ultimate reality cannot be known, named, owned. Only the conditioned can and this is owning an illusion since the conditioned has no reality, essence, unique to itself as a seemingly separate entity. To name God is to bind the ultimate reality to the world of named objects. I suppose that, also, is why Soren Kierkegaard made his well known statement that God doesn't exist, he is eternal. Well. Simple people need something to carry them over life's troubles and I've no quarrel if they want to name the unnameable. It gives comfort to have a personal savior and it is good that it aids some in their efforts to surrender to God. But, really, one doesn't need a named deity for surrender. To realize the true nature of the ultimate reality in relation to mundane existence leads to a kind of evenmindedness which is the same as resignation to a God concept.
To reiterate. "Mundane existence itself becomes possible, conceivable, only on the ground of the unconditioned reality." And, "That which is of the nature of coming and going, arising and perishing, in its conditioned (mundane) nature is itself Nirvana in its unconditioned (ultimate) nature...the unconditioned reality is the ground of the conditioned, contingent entities." Therefore it can be said the world of becoming (Samsara) is Nirvana.
But those are just words to be made real, given the universal, cosmic, import they vainly attempt to embody. It is a pretty statement but living it is a different matter altogether. One has to see it with the eye of the Buddha.
There are claimed to be five eyes which this writer finds corresponds with the five Yogic levels of Samadhi. Based on that the Dharma-Megha-Samadhi of the Yoga practice would correspond to the "eye" of the Buddha, the fifth eye. In Yoga that would be at the level of the ultimate reality characterized as Kaivalya, silence. For Buddhism that would correspond to Nirvana. It is a state in which silence prevails, in which the mind falls away and consciousness alone shines forth. The true nature of all is established in its own right. Determinate reality would no longer be seized as ultimate. The one who goes this way is entirely free from becoming. The ground of the conditioned is understood as the unconditioned reality. The basic elements of existence are comprehended as not ultimate.
Such an achievement cannot be put into words. Words can be used to point the way, like a finger pointing at the moon, but clinging to the finger prevents actually seeing the moon as clinging to the teaching actually prevents, inhibits, seeing the Real. The best that can be hoped for is to follow the words, the teaching, till a point is reached where it is realized that beyond here is uncharted territory and a leap of faith is needed. That leap is into understanding, or comprehension. A potentiality is realized, created anew, and that latency manifested renewal, becoming, continues in a new light. Life is continuous renewal which means, basically, that it is the freedom to create. It is taught that the mind, and consciousness, operating through various vehicles operate to satisfy the so called thirst for the Real. As one progresses on this path the vehicles become more and more subtle till only the main instrumentality of consciousness, the mind remains. When that too, by meditation, is compelled to dispel itself, then the last veil covering consciousness itself falls away and the "seer is established in his own right."
To be illuminated in or by consciousness is to borrow, take loan of a conditioned reality and it is mind that operates here. Existence is an attribute for that relative entity, the mind.
Process and simultaneity.
Fire. Each moment of a flame's death is simultaneous with the birth of the next moment of the fire in the continuing process of burning. Fire is a constant renewal involving extinction and rebirth. That is a good metaphor for life. Subsets of simultaneous processes continuously work together to produce the phenomenon. The fire as process rests on top of multitudes of supporting conditions right down through molecular action to the sub-atomic participants of neutrons, protons, electrons and below these the quarks, muons, leptons, neutrinos, the pi-mesons, the higgs boson. The complexity is astonishing and needs to be appreciated when a claim is put forth that something is known or even knowable, or, for that matter even there at all except as an essentially empty shell. Some say, particle physicists, for instance, that without the higgs boson nothing at all of the phenomenal world would have mass. Therefore it is called the God Particle.
One breath, dieing, gives birth to the next. One instance of flame, dieing, gives birth to the next. For fire it happens so quickly that the separate parts are not discernible. Breathing, while following the same principle, is so much slower that the parts are easily discernible. Where does this principle take us? One star, dieing, gives birth to the next. One Universe, dieing, gives birth to the next. How about one God, dieing, gives birth to the next? Or put a bit differently, one Reality (dharma), dieing, gives birth to the next? Becoming is, it seems, simultaneous birth and death. The way of the ever new follows this principle. For Buddhism this principle conflates into becoming, the elements of which do not really exist as discrete entities. The process has a stronger claim on the Real. Ancient Greek philosopher Parmenides, in opposition to Heraclitus, asserted something similar when stating reality is one, not many. The "many" therefore cannot be seized, held, owned, defined, bounded. In themselves they are not actual, real. They have no svabhava, self being, you see. Therefore phenomenal reality is illusory and the manifold being empty carries over to the ultimate reality which is itself likewise sunya, empty. Yet the manifested world has relative reality and finds its meaning and purpose in pointing to the substratum from which it, so to speak, borrows its reality as it ever and anon springs forth anew.
In this emanation we find, or try to find, or confirm, or manifest, or realize, ourselves. We have potentialities unknown but we do know the urge to actuate these, to fulfill, to make alive, to realize. If there is a meaning, purpose to this can it be known or understood? Many have tried and failed. Many have tried and had partial success. The philosophies of the world must be appreciated in this light. Accordingly, a kind of evenmindedness is the most efficacious approach to life to be had. For those who fare the middle way, the way of the Madyamika this is known as non-clinging.
Notable, to this writer at least, one does not find in Buddhism, Hinduism, Yoga the ideas of the ultimate reality conferring on the manifest, particularly sentient life forms, universality, or conversely, embodied beings conferring on the ultimate reality individuality, enabling thereby the substratum, whatever it is in itself, if it is anything at all in itself, the gift of self awareness. Not directly at least is this taught or appreciated in the East, or for that matter in the West, either. My mentor, G.V. Desani, did teach this saying that the person is the instrumentality of "God's" self knowing. So, we are the means by which the ultimately real has self knowledge, enjoys, experiences itself. And, yes, by the methods of the East you can realize the ultimate but does that make you co-creator? Are we in partnership with the Divine Creative Spirit? Is eternality conferred on man in what would be a hypostatic union? Does, conversely, this relationship confer on the ultimate, individuality? I think it is implied but not specified in all the spiritual practices if one goes deep enough into the esoterica. For it seems to me that, clearly, in it's ultimate nature, any and all manifestation is essentially identical with the substratum. Therefore a fully self realized individual, Jesus, Buddha, "spark of the divine" is a wholly manifest instance of the ultimate reality. The Word incarnate. Put differently, the ultimate reality, whatever it might be in itself is totally, completely exhausted in the mundane, nothing at all being held back, reserved. So, and the Mahayana of Nagarjuna agree on this point when they express that the world of becoming, Samsara, is when seen from the right perspective, Nirvana. As Edward Conze puts it in his paper The Ontology of the Prajnaparamita "Nirvana and I are absolutely different. I cannot get it, and it cannot get me. I can never find it, because I am no longer there when it is found. It cannot find me, because I am not there to be found. But Nirvana, the everlasting, is there all the time. 'Such-ness is everywhere the same, since all dharmas have already attained Nirvana.'" The ultimate reality is that all of conditioned nature, all of the mundane and/or manifest is illusory. There's no division at all in the ultimate reality. Clinging to anything at all introduces division.
Yet Professor Irwin Lieb's saying that the only true individual is the entire universe, taken all as one, is easy. Not so much realizing it, acting on it, living it. Jesus and Buddha and others having done so show us the way but we must nevertheless walk that path for ourselves alone. The flame, dieing, gives birth to another. Setting one's self up to be that other is a lovely dream to be realized by extremely rare individuals.
And by emptiness fullness is known, understood. So Samsara, the world of becoming, is not in itself Nirvana, the ultimate reality.Yet neither is it different from that. For to cling to either is to fall into error, what Nagarjuna would name eternalism. The philosophy of Prajnaparamita, the path of the perfection of wisdom, teaches that the tendency to cling, to "reduce the great to our own measure" is a most difficult error to root out. So, from the standpoint of the ultimate reality Samsara might be Nirvana, but only if one realizes it, in a sense, owns what is impossible to own. In other words, without the direct input of a Tathagata, one who goes the way of Buddhahood, it is not actualized, remains potential. So for Samsara to be Nirvana requires input, so to speak, of a sentient life form. One who has this attainment might be said worthy of having co-creator status.
This is a stretch, but thinking outside the box, one might go so far as to say God has gone astray and it is our duty to bring him back to reality. That might be, in part, what it means to be a co-creator. A notion from Rabbinic Judaism is that God having created the world withdrew so as to make room for man. Well, another take on that is that he didn't withdraw at all. He just became so involved in his creation, shall we say, lost in his work? that he forgot his true nature. So, as embodied beings we are tasked with helping him realize same, come back to himself. From another perspective one might say God descends into matter, sleeps there in order to, on awakening, reascend a fully self realized being (Jesus, Buddha) to his own nature as a kind of renewal while at the same time benefiting the people of his creation, reviving their interest in realizing as much as possible their own true nature, this done out of love or compassion. This too gives a sense of what it is for Samsara to be Nirvana; as a means of refreshing a self realized being. What is a sentient life form other than the instrumentality of this renewal?
Involved in matter. This absorption amounts to the loss of true nature. Absorption in an endeavor frees abilities, might be a way of realizing hidden capabilities. Working from the bottom up created man makes of the sacred individuals whereas the sacred makes man immortal and in hand with that it goes without saying that the variety of individuals is endless.
We would know God, the ultimate reality, as a final Thing. It would give us great comfort to have that. But ipso facto this reduces these to mundane reality. These are not like other things we own, have direct access to. Essentially they are unknowable. How can one know that which constantly changes? "Can you put your hand in the same river twice?" I know, it is said by some that God is the same today, yesterday, and forever. But that is defining "him" by man's measure, putting him in a package we can take along with us. In reality he is certainly not different than that but at the same time he is not limited by that either. Finally, one must give up trying to understand and just be resigned to that; in other words one must, in order to be on the right path, simply surrender to God. Silence. Be still. Accept without any imposition at all. If you would be full first become empty.
It is by the manifest that we first apprehend the ultimate reality though when focused on the manifest understanding of the ultimate reality is inhibited to the extent of the clinging thereto. We might be walking down a path and see a snake there but on closer examination realize it is only a rope that our mind mistook for a creature. The snake imagined still is real in a sense, but not in itself. Only the substratum, the rope, the ultimate reality, is real and the imagined snake has borrowed its reality from that rope and must relinquish it when realized to be an illusion.
Consummation
The Ultimate Reality is the whole Universe as the ground or substratum of all mundane manifestation, of all divided entities. It is the only true individual on which all else depends. It is the conditio sine qua non, if you will. Its easy and natural to combine, conflate, all that is into one reality completely empty whatsoever. All the divisions of the Universe as a whole are of dependent origination no different, in principle, than the snake in the rope. There is only one thing here and it is that on which all "things" depend for their borrowed existence.
Venkata Ramanan, citing Nagarjuna, writes that when the Bodhisattva attains Buddhahood "light emerges from the top of his head." Interesting, I think, to compare that to the Christian Pentecost.
The disciples went into the "upper room", which I think is a metaphor for meditation where one focuses consciousness in the region of the top of the head. There "appeared to them tongues as of fire, which parted and came to rest on each one of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit..."
Ramanan also writes that the Bodhisattva "...realizes the ability to understand the different languages of different kinds of beings and gains also the ability to teach every one in one's own language."
At the Christian Pentecost when the tongues of fire came to rest on the disciples they "...began to speak in different tongues, as the Spirit enabled them to proclaim. And "...there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven staying in Jerusalem. At this sound, they gathered in a large crowd,
but they were confused because each one heard them speaking in his own language."
I cite these items because, easily discerned, my purpose is to harmonize the various modes of self realization mankind has practiced.
The final word goes to a scholar, Edward Conze, which is congruent with the thought expressed herein of another scholar, my professor, Irwin Lieb. I am of the opinion that Nagarjuna and the Buddha himself would agree with Conze's statement that "The ontology of the Prajnaparamita is a description of the world as it appears to those whose self is extinct."
