Why I am a Buddhist (even though I'm not)

Sakya Mahakala

Although I discussed some important general points about Buddhism in my last essay, I think it's good to go over some of it before addressing the main point I want to make now. First of all, I need to say that, unlike what I did before, this time I will prioritize terms from the Sanskrit language, which is the basis of the terminology and canon of Mahayana Buddhism, which, despite being the least ancient branch of Buddhism historically speaking, has more followers around the world. I will not use a lot of terms in Pali, the liturgical language of the Theravada canon, which is related to Sanskrit, even though this canon is the oldest. I see no problem doing this here, because they are closely related languages. In the last text, I talked about how Theravada (doctrine of the elders) and Mahayana (great vehicle) are the two major branches of Buddhism that have survived from antiquity to the present day. As before, I am counting Vajrayana Buddhism (Diamond Vehicle), Tibetan Buddhism, as part of Mahayana Buddhism. I do this because, despite the differences, Vajrayana Buddhism incorporates the same canon and the same general soteriological aims as Mahayana Buddhism. By this, that Vajrayana Buddhism accepts the Mahayana sutras and the bodhisattva ideal.

But let's go back in history, to the beginning of the religion, to understand what is common in Buddhism today, regardless of the branch. Buddhism begins around the 5th century BC, with Siddhartha Gautama, also known as Shakyamuni (the sage of the Shakya clan) and Tathagata (the one who was thus). He was a prince who lived in opulence, protected by his father. One day, Siddhartha went out to explore the surroundings where he lived and observed suffering, illness, old age, and death. He also saw the practice of asceticism. There, he decided to study asceticism and seek a way to achieve enlightenment, or moksha, to escape the cycle of death and rebirth. Buddhism begins, then, with the figure of a sage who leaves his worldly life behind to find a way out of the cycle of birth, death, and rebirth; samsara. This was already a recurring theme in Brahmanism and Jainism, a religion that began shortly before Buddhism. The goal in all these religions is to achieve moksha (enlightenment) and escape the endless cycle of becoming. They are called Dharmic religions: dharma is a polysemous term that can mean cosmic law, moral duty, teaching, or phenomenon. Ultimately, all the major branches and sub-branches of Buddhism that have survived to this day teach important things in common, although perhaps not in exactly the same way. They all teach, for example, the Four Noble Truths and the Three Marks of Existence.

The first truth is duhkha, the truth that sentient existence in the world of becoming, samsara, is inevitably filled with suffering, dissatisfaction, and unease. The second is samudaya, i.e., there is a cause or origin for the suffering we experience in samsara. This cause is called trishna (tanha in Pali), which are the desires or cravings that make us attached to the impermanent things of becoming and that produce successive rebirths in one of the realms of samsara depending on our karma, be it the divine, human, animal, ghostly, or hellish realm. In Buddhist cosmology, all these realms are part of becoming, of samsara. They are not eternal, although they can last a long time. The third truth is nirodha, which means that the extinction of suffering comes after the elimination of desires, cravings, and attachments to the impermanent things of samsara. The fourth truth is marga: the path to the end of suffering. In the Theravada tradition, this is the Noble Eightfold Path, but there are other paths taught by different Mahayana Buddhist traditions, mainly the six paramitas (perfections) and the ten bhumis (grounds or levels) of the bodhisattva. The details of all these paths involve the practice of certain moral and intellectual virtues, as well as the practice of meditation on the ultimate nature of reality.

All Buddhist traditions teach, in one way or another, the three marks of existence: anitya, i.e., all conditioned things are impermanent; duhkha, i.e., all conditioned things are unsatisfactory; and anatman, i.e., all phenomena, whether conditioned or unconditioned as in the case of nirvana, are non-self. There is also a fourth mark taught by Mahayana Buddhism: nirvana, the unconditioned, is peace. The Theravada tradition is historically older and, according to many scholars, closer to what the historical Buddha would have taught. However, Mahayana Buddhism is not a pure invention of millennia later. Its concepts also have roots that can be traced back to the historical Buddha, according to many other scholars and practitioners.

In Theravada Buddhism, the ideal to be followed is that of the arhat (listener). The arhat is one who attains nirvana as a disciple of a Buddha, never returning to samsara, the cycle of death and rebirth. There is a great ontological difference between samsara and nirvana for Theravada Buddhists. Nirvana is a state of permanent and unceasing bliss from which one never departs. It is the extinction of afflictions. Therefore, the Theravada view considers that all Buddhas and arhats who have died do not return to samsara. Both Siddhartha Gautama, the historical Buddha, and the other Buddhas who preceded him and the arhats are viewed with great reverence, but they are no longer in samsara. Nirvana is transcendent. In the Samyutta Nikaya, or Connected Discourses of the Pali canon, the Buddha says the following regarding his enlightenment to the bhikkhus (monks in Pali):

The knowledge and vision arose in me: 'Unshakable is the liberation of my mind. This is my last birth. Now there is no more renewed existence'.

These teachings, as presented in the Pali Canon, are also recognized by Mahayana Buddhism, but are considered provisional. Even in this tiny excerpt from the Pali Canon, we can see that nirvana, according to the Theravada tradition, means not returning to samsara. In Mahayana Buddhism, however, this is not the whole story. The ideal in Mahayana Buddhism is that of the bodhisattva (enlightened being). A bodhisattva vows to reach the gates of nirvana, but instead of entering, he returns and helps other sentient beings on their journey through samsara until they too attain enlightenment. Another interpretation is that bodhisattvas do not postpone nirvana, but attaining nirvana does not prevent them from returning to samsara to help others who have been left behind, because, in reality, nirvana and samsara are not truly separate, except for the ignorance, illusion, and afflictions of those who have not yet attained enlightenment.

In the Sutra of the Lotus Flower of the Wonderful Dharma, an important text of the Mahayana canon, the Buddha reinterprets previous teachings that aimed solely at individual nirvana, for example, saying that they were skillful means to reach people. It states that, in reality, nirvana and samsara are not ontologically distinct; the distinction is soteriological: after enlightenment, samsara ceases to be suffering and becomes nirvana. Nirvana is metaphysical, but it is immanent and not transcendent; that is, nirvana is not a reality totally disconnected from becoming or samsara. This is why bodhisattvas and Buddhas never truly leave samsara. However, despite this difference and despite being able to act within samsara, advanced Buddhas and bodhisattvas do not suffer as ignorant beings within the Mahayana conception. When they are physically present in samsara, their bodies are nirmanakaya (emanation bodies), their citta (mind) is liberated from afflictions and is preserved as sambhogakaya in the case of advanced bodhisattvas and dharmakaya in the case of Buddhas. Sambhogakaya is the body of bliss, which remains in a wondrous reality between becoming and nirvana. Dharmakaya is the body of ultimate truth, of nirvana, which is beyond all suffering of samsara, although not separate from it.

The Mahayana Madhyamaka (Middle Way) school of philosophy, taught by the monk Nagarjuna in the 2nd century, teaches that there are two truths: a conventional one, of me and you, of samsara and nirvana, of things as they appear to subjects, and an ultimate one, in which every phenomenon is shunyata, or empty of its own essence. Everything depends on everything else, nothing exists by itself, nothing has an origin that is not conditioned by something else, all phenomena are interdependent. Although conventional truth is useful for the teaching of Buddhadharma, ultimate realization is only possible when we rise above ignorance and understand that everything is empty, even emptiness, and that nothing is truly born, ages, or dies. Since everything is empty of substance, in an ultimate sense there is no self now, nor was there a self in the past, nor will there be in the future, except for the fact that we are deluded about our own durability. Samsara is a persistent illusion, yes, but it is an illusion. Behind the illusion, behind the Veil of Maya, there is only the unconditioned, nirvana. Various Mahayana and Varjrayana schools interpret Nagarjuna's teachings differently, but all more or less agree with this rough summary of mine.

So, why am I saying this time that I am a Buddhist, even though I am not? In the last essay, I said that I was not a Buddhist, even though I am, because I consider the concepts of anatman, anitya, duhkha, and shunyata to be correct, even though I am extremely skeptical about the teachings regarding karma, the literal rebirth of a person after death, and the literal existence of metaphysical realms such as hellish realms, realms of hungry ghosts, etc. And although it went unnoticed by the vast majority of people who read or heard the recorded essay, I said something that, as incredibly as it may seem, is in accordance with Buddhism in general. What I said was this: if whatever animates this body of mine is metaphysical and if that thing will animate another body after my death, that thing is completely impersonal. This is in total agreement with the doctrine of anatman. And even if I said it is possible for some people to remember past lives, the fact is that those are not really their lives. In Buddhism, these new lives arise from ignorance, which is the cause of attachment to the self, and these new lives are affected by karma. The idea of ​​an impersonal self, Brahman, also appears in Vedanta schools, such as Advaita (non-dualism) promulgated by the Hindu sage Adi Shankara in the 8th century. The difference is that Buddhism affirms that even nirvana, the unconditioned state, is non-self, while Advaita Vedanta says that Brahman is the true self.

That's why I said that reincarnation is more of a metaphor than something normally understood as reincarnation. That which animates us is reborn after we die, but it's not a soul, a caricatured and immutable ghost that leaves our bodies and enters a developing fetus. Buddhism teaches that there are 5 skandhas (aggregates) that form an individual: form, sensations, perceptions, mental formations, and consciousness. Meditation teaches that none of this is "I." Meditation serves to help us detach from these constructs, since they all cease to exist at our death. What supposedly is reborn is the citta-samtana (mental stream) or, according to the Yogacara school, alayavijnana (storehouse-consciousness), which contains the karmic seeds that give rise to a new being. But both citta-samtana and alayavijnana are not a continuous and immutable self like the atman of Hinduism or the soul of Abrahamic religions, because in Buddhism these things are discrete phenomena that appear and disappear at every moment. What occurs is more like a flame lighting another candle and then going out than the same water being transferred from an old glass to a new one. And most importantly: cetana (volition, intention, mental impulse) is almost synonymous with karma, because karma is intrinsically linked to the intention of our actions in Buddhism. The sum of our intentions conditions the composition of a new being after our death. But this being, although conditioned, is not the same as us — which, in my view, increases the need for compassion, since our actions affect even another who will be born in some way harmed or helped because of our bad or good intentions and actions in this life.

Buddhadasa Bhikkhu, a Thai Theravada monk who died in 1993, went even further with the idea of ​​the impersonality of rebirth. Considered a great master even by the Dalai Lama, who is of the Vajrayana tradition, Buddhadasa's ideas are not well regarded, especially by Western Theravada monks such as Bhikkhu Bodhi and Ajahn Brahm, an American and an Englishman, respectively. For Buddhadasa, the Buddha did not actually teach rebirth in other lives, but rebirth in every moment of this very life. Dependent origination and anatman mean that our self is born and dies all the time, and at every moment conditions the illusion of a permanent self, which generates attachment, dissatisfaction, and suffering. Nirvana is liberation from this. Even the infernal, animal, or ghostly realms are simply mental representations in the here and now, according to Buddhadasa. What is important is the here and now, liberation from ignorance, and helping others in their difficulties. That's what counts, and not using karma as a spiritual bargaining chip for a privileged future rebirth that won't even truly be yours.

Since I came to Buddhism largely due to the academic study of Schopenhauer, and since, in my own way, I subscribe to Schopenhauer's pessimistic philosophy about the world of becoming, I can't help but see parallels, even if "pure" Buddhist practitioners might disregard them. The world of becoming, the empirical reality that is subject to the principle of sufficient reason, samsara, is representation, it is phenomenon, and not thing-in-itself. What is not representation is blind yearning for manifestation, it is Will, unique and infinite, because it is not subject to the individuation of the phenomenal world, but is immanent to it. The Will functions as trishna (or tanha) and as cetana, but it is blind and universal. It is the eternal thirst and hunger for manifestation. Nirvana is the negation of Will, it is when the will objectified in a phenomenon turns against itself and negates itself. This explains Schopenhauer's admiration for ascetics of all religions, even those of Christianity, although he preferred ascetics of Dharmic religions because they recognized the reality that what animates us is completely impersonal and metaphysically indivisible. The being in the samsaric state, the being that is in the world of becoming, upon freeing itself from ignorance and completely rejecting its own will, attains nirvana, which means complete peace and complete compassion, since it perceives that there is no difference or separation whatsoever between their suffering and that of other sentient beings.

Although what animates us and underlies everything in the empirical world may be a thing-in-itself, it is in no way personal. The empirical world of becoming behaves like a stubborn and eternally unsatisfying mirage. The intuitive recognition that whatever animates us is undifferentiated, that we are merely individuated phenomena wandering through a world that has no stable ground, a world where pain and lack move all sentient beings, should fill us with indulgence towards all others who suffer. In the end, we are brothers and sisters in suffering, whether we like it or not. The message of the end of ignorance and compassion in Buddhism is what draws me closer to it than anything else, regardless of whether or not there is any validity to the magical and mythological claims of the religion. In the same way, the ascetic ideal of Christ, who denies his own will to the point of death for the good of others, draws me closer to Christianity. The myths and magical stories surrounding the philosophical core of the religion aren't the most important thing to me. These myths are good stories to tell at best — and vile and violent forms of control at worst.

To avoid needlessly extending myself, I believe that a passage from the Visuddhimagga, or Path of Purification, a treatise written by Buddhaghosa, a 5th-century Theravada sage, aptly summarizes my philosophically pessimistic view of the world of becoming and the root cause of all suffering within it. The following quote is found in Chapter XVI, Faculties and Truths, The Truth of Suffering, in the section on birth:

The horrible torment a being feels on coming out, when he has spent long months shut up inside the mother's womb — a hellish tomb of excrement — would never come about without rebirth: that birth is pain there is no room for doubt. But why elaborate? At any time or anywhere can there exist a painful state if birth do not precede? Indeed this Sage [the Buddha] so great, when he expounded pain, took care first to declare rebirth as pain, the condition needed there.

by Fernando Olszewski