Beyond Language and Reason: Mysticism in Indian Buddhism
ILKKA PYYSIAIEN, 1993
Annales Academiae Scientiarum Fennicae Dissertationes Humanarum
Litterarum 66 Helsiniki, Sumolainen Tiedeakatemia

It long has been a commonplace among Western (and Western-trained)
philosophers and scholars of religion that most Asian traditions have about
them something 'mystical', and that Buddhism is perhaps the most mystical
of all. Whether motivated by the desire to criticise Buddhism for its
'irrationality', exalt it for the profundity of its 'intuitions', or
'simply' to know and classify it, such characterisations of the tradition
originated in the colonial ethos of the 19th century West, and today, in a
post-colonial era, remain nearly as widespread as ever. The persistence of
these stereotypes may simply demonstrate the ineradicability of Orientalism
(or its evil twin, 'Occidentalism'), but it also may result from the fact
that, despite the enormous growth in recent decades in the quality and
quantity of scholarship about both mysticism and Buddhism, very few
scholars have set as their major task the attempt to determine whether
characterising Buddhism as 'mystical' actually makes any sense. In Beyond
Language and Reason, the Finnish historian of religions, Ilkka Pyysiainen,
has set himself precisely this task, and has produced a sophisticated,
erudite and provocative analysis of the problem.

Pyysiainen takes as his starting point a passage not from a generalist or
populariser, but from a respected scholar of Buddhism, Andre Bareau, who
wrote in 1951 that 'The Buddhist philosophy rests essentially on its
mysticism . . . . Buddhism represents a unique case in the history of
religions and in the history of philosophy in the sense that it is based on
pure mysticism and its fundamental absolute is a purely mystical absolute'.
(cited, p. 14) To analyse the claim that Buddhism is essentially mystical,
Pyysiainen realises that he will have to carefully define and delimit the
terms of the statement, and clarify the conditions under which such a claim
might be verified. He recognises that the term 'Buddhism' is a Western
invention that belies a tremendous diversity of thought and practice, and
admits that there is not, and never could be, an 'essence' of Buddhism that
could be identified, whether as 'mystical' or by some other designation. He
does believe, however, that it is possible to identify certain features as
being 'central' to Buddhist traditions, and that for any feature to be
central, it must 'explain the Buddha's religious experience as well as the
nature and meaning of his person to Buddhism', (p. 15) for sacred biography
'becomes the model for the experiences and interpretations of followers'.
(p. 15) Indeed, 'Buddhism is not only from the Buddha, but also about the
Buddha . . . . All central doctrines . . . [have] their ultimate basis in
Buddhology' (pp. 15-16). Thus, 'Buddhism is essentially mystical if
mysticism penetrates its doctrine and related practice, that are central in
the above described sense'. (p. 16) The doctrines and practices in which
Pyysiainen will search for mysticism, then, are primarily those that he
believes can be traced most clearly (if not directly) back to the founder
and his experience, those of what he calls 'earLy Indian Buddhism'. whose
textual corpus includes the Pill canon and a variety of early Mahiyina
sutras and sastras. As for mysticism, in line with what he calls a
'religion-phenomenological approach', Pyysiainen defines it generally as
'special kinds of subjective experiences with various interpretations in
various religious traditions' (p. 25) that are a subcategory of religious
experience, i.e. 'the religiously interpreted totality of feelings,
thoughts, intentional attitudes and other possible forms of conscious life,
through which a person realises his or her position in the world.' (p. 26)

Pyysiainen elaborates on this definition by addressing a number of the
philosophical questions that have bedevilled the study of mysticism in
recent decades, e.g.:

     (1) Is mystical experience incommunicable, either within or across
     cultures?

     (2) Is mystical experience amenable to psychological description?

     (3) What are the characteristics of a 'mystical' state that set it
     apart from other extraordinary subjective religious experiences?

     (4) Do pure consciousness events actually occur, and are they
     everywhere the same?

     (1) After examining the positions of such discourse-theorists as
     Gadamer, Heidegger, Wittgenstein and Rorty, Pyysiainen concludes that,
     either within or across cultures, mysticism, like experience in
     general, is communicable, though we must always remain aware of the
     complex nature of the relation between experience and expression, and
     of the special problems raised by mystical experience's frequently
     alleged ineffability.

     (2) Though he is suspicious of behaviourist attempts to reduce
     mysticism to psycho-physiological states, Pyysiainen is sympathetic to
     the attempts of other psychologists to describe mysticism, citing with
     approval William James' fourfold delineation of mysticism as
     ineffable, noetic, transient and non-conative; Arthur Deikman's
     characterisation of it as a 'deautomatisation', an 'undoing of
     automatic perceptual and cognitive structures [that] permits a gain in
     sensory intensity and richness at the expense of abstract
     categorisation and differentiation' (cited, p. 27); and Roland
     Fischer's 'cartography' of ecstatic and meditative states, wherein
     ecstatic and enstatic processes follow very different routes to a
     single experience, of unity.

     (3) Pyysiainen draws his specific characterisation of mysticism from
     Paul Griffiths, whom he reads as proposing three partially-overlapping
     types of mystical 'experiences': a pure consciousness event, which is
     bereft of phenomenological attributes or content; an unmediated
     experience, in which content may be present, but cultural constructs
     have ceased to play an active role; and nondualistic experience, which
     '[does] not include any structural opposition between subject and
     object' (p. 46).

     (4) An experience is, for Pyysiainen, mystical if any of these
     characteristics are present, but it is the 'pure consciousness event'
     (PCE) that attracts his most detailed attention. He argues, with W. T.
     Stace and Robert Forman, and against Steven Katz and other
     'constructivists', that such events do occur, that their primary
     characteristic is ' vacuous state of emptiness, a non-responsiveness
     to the external world . . . a massive forgetting' (Forman, cited, p.
     47), and that because what is forgotten includes the religious
     doctrines known to the experiencer, 'there remains nothing that could
     phenomenologically separate one PCE from another, and, consequently,
     these kinds of mystical experiences are alike in all cultures'. (p.
     47)

Having defined mysticism primarily in terms of pure, deautomatised,
enstatic, experiences that everywhere are the same, Pyysiainen proceeds to
examine the ways in which mysticism might be found in early Indian
Buddhism. He briefly surveys some of the historical and textual problems
posed by early Buddhist literature, then analyses in turn Hinayana
doctrines, Mahayana doctrines and the general problem of 'the Buddha and
the absolute'.

The major sources for Pyysiainen's examination of Hinayana are the Vinaya
and Sutta pitakas of the Pali canon, the Mahavastu, the Asokavadana and the
Abhidharmakosa of Vasubandhu. He summarizes the basic constituents of the
Hinayana world-view, in terms of the 4 noble truths, 12 links of dependent
origination, 5 aggregates and 18 sensory spheres, analysing the ways in
which these categories are used to build up a description of the way that
'the sensory process leads to suffering, grief and death, [and] its
reversal leads to the disappearance of suffering, grief and death'. (p. 82)
He analyses passages from the Pali canon in which the existence of the self
(atman) is discussed, and finds that while the canon as a whole reveals no
unambiguous stance on the question, the earliest tradition, e.g. the
Atthakavagga of the Sutta Nipata, was most concerned with the elimination
of views, opinions and conceptual thought, and thus 'seems to have remained
totally indifferent toward interpreting the nature of self . . . it has
been beyond self and not-self'. (p. 90) He discusses the basic distinction
between the compounded and uncompounded realities, maintaining that the
latter, most consistently identified as nibbana, is 'the eternal Absolute
behind the phenomenal world [which] can be taken to be a metaphorical
attempt to describe verbally the mystical experience of unification with
the external world'. (p. 94) Nibbana, says Pyysiainen, may be approached
via either rational discernment of dharmas 'as they really are'
(yathabhutam) or 'meditative concentration (samadhi) and gradual
suppression of all ideas'; (p. 96) the latter reaches its culmination in
the 'mystical experience of cessation', which is characterised variously,
but appears to be akin to a pure consciousness experience, in which 'the
subject's consciousness is empty (no mental representations) although he or
she is not unconscious (not without mental representations)'. (p. 101) As
for the Buddha's experience, which ought to be normative for the tradition,
Pyysiainen concedes that 'the compilers of the sacred biography have
emphasised its rational aspect . . . and focused their attention on the
knowledge gained by the Buddha', (p. 103) but that other sources, which
emphasise the Buddha's attainment of various jhanas and cessations,
indicate that 'the mystical aspect must have also been present in some
form'. (p. 103)

The major sources for Pyysiainen's examination of Mahayana are, from among
sutras, various recensions of the Prajnaparamita, and the Samdhinirmocana,
Lotus and Lankavatara; and, from among sastras, Nagarjuna's
Madhyarnakakarika, Vasubandhu's Trisvabhavanirdesa, Asanga's
Mahayanasamgraha and the Ratnagotravibhaga. He examines Prajnaparamita and
Madhyamika discourse about emptiness, concluding that it entails a-two-fold
atrack on the Hinayanistic dualism of an individual as a constructor and
the world as constructed'; (p. 106) and offering the counter-claim that in
Mahayana all compounded dharmas are seen to be unreal, because they are
relative to each other and to our mental construction of them. The
uncompounded absolute, on the other hand, is real: it is the 'ultimate
truth' (parmartha satya) described by Nagarjuna, the Tathagatagarbha
propounded by the Ratnagotravibhaga, the Dharma-kaya of Mahayana
Buddhology. At the same time, however, 'we do not have to form the idea or
concept of an absolute uncompounded dharma either . . . . [R]eality is not
uncompounded in contradistinction to compounded, but rather something
transcending this duality'. (p. 110) This, says Pyysiainen, is why so many
Mahayana texts deny the distinction between samsara and nirvana: not to
imply that enlightenment is to be found in worldliness, but to use paradox
to point to the inability of language and concepts 'truly' to describe the
world as it is experienced by the mystic. (p. 116) Thus, Mahayana
discourse, like that of the Hinayana, is seen finally to rest upon the
attempt to make sense of mystical experience; in the case of Hinayana, of
jhana and/or cessation, in the case of Mahayana, of the 'fundamental
unconstructed awareness' (mulanirvikalpajnana) described so frequently in
Yogacara literature, and taken by Pyysiainen as 'an experience of empty or
contentless consciousness' that can, with some caution, be identified as a
pure consciousness event. (p. 119) In short, whether one examines
Prajnaparamita and Madhyamika rhetoric about emptiness and the two truths
or Yogacara accounts of unconstructed awareness, mind-only or the three
aspects of existence, the real referent 'turns out to be ineffable and
within the realm of mystical experience only'. (p. 124)

In his consideration of 'the Buddha and the Absolute', Pyysiainen explores
the ways in which the uniqueness of buddhas rests in the fact that they
alone 'can establish a connection between the compounded and uncompounded
realities', (p. 128) and establish a bridge between human beings and the
Dharma, which is 'an independently existing reality, the original Absolute
of Buddhism embodying nirvana'. (p. 128) The growing identification of the
Buddha with the Dharma-as-Absolute leads naturally to the development of
the idea that what a buddha most essentially is, is the 'Dharma-body'
(Dharmakaya), which sometimes--as in the late Theravadin text, the
Dhamma-kayassa Atthavannana--refers to the Buddha's physical body as a
symbolic key to the Dharma, but more often--especially in such Mahayana
texts as the Ratnagotravibhaga and Mahayanasamgraha--denotes the pervasive
'absolute reality' (p. 134) of buddha-hood. The Dharmakaya is, in its own
nature (svabhavaikakaya), unmanifest, inexpressible and inconceivable, i.e.
absolutely transcendent (lokottara) but, 'out of mere conformity with the
world', it naturally emits its apparent forms (rapakaya), the Sambhogakaya
and Nirmanakaya, which employ skillful pedagogical means (upayakausalya) to
bring suffering beings closer to the absolute reality that has been their
nature all along. For much of the tradition, then, the Buddha's physical
body is a docetic appearance, less 'real' than his pure, non-dual, eternal,
inconceivable own-nature, yet still useful as a cipher pointing to the
Dharma and the absolute, and as 'a symbol that bridges the two spheres of
reality, creating a unity that the mystics in their own way seek to
attain'. (p. 145)

Pyysiainen ends his discussion by stating his major conclusions:

     (1) Though it seems clear that it was crucial to the formation of the
     tradition, we can know little historically of the Buddha's
     'revolutionising experience'; it may have centred on his experience of
     the cessation of outflows, but of this we cannot be certain.

     (2) In the earliest Hinayana traditions, which may well represent the
     Buddha's standpoint, there was an emphasis on one or another form of
     cessation, 'a mystical experience of complete unity in which suffering
     has ceased as the barricades between "self" and the external world
     have broken down'; (p. 150) in later Hinayana traditions, this focus
     on cessation was obscured by the rise of intellectual traditions, 'in
     which a special "language of salvation" was elaborated at the cost of
     the claim that the ultimate goal is ineffable'. (p. 150)

     (3) In Mahayana traditions, which are motivated by a spirit that is
     egalitarian both socially and metaphysically, there arose 'a monistic
     metaphysics essentially based upon the idea that the ultimate reality
     behind all appearances and illusions was a kind of buddha-nature',
     (pp. 152-153) which can be experienced as an unconstructed awareness,
     but not, finally, expressed, except through provisional conventions
     and concepts.

     (4) Finally, then, 'the Buddhism of the texts here analysed is
     essentially mysticism in the sense that its central doctrines and
     practice are penetrated by mysticism. We may also say that here we are
     dealing with "pure mysticism", as the sources are unwilling to present
     any absolute interpretation that would objectively embody an absolute
     meaning that could be grasped on faith alone. All conceptual
     interpretations are only a skillful means to point to the experience
     or mystical knowledge that ultimately can be grasped through
     subjective intuition only'. (p. 155)

There is much that is very impressive in Beyond Language and Reason. It is
well organised and written, displays considerable methodological
self-consciousness, and draws on some of the very best scholarship
available in the fields of both mysticism and Buddhist studies. It presents
a clearly articulated definition of mysticism as an experience of pure,
unmediated, non-dual awareness, and proceeds to demonstrate convincingly
that mysticism thus understood may be present in a wide range of early
Indian Buddhist texts, both Hinayana and Mahayana. This last, of course,
represents a considerably weakened form of the basic claim Pyysiainen wants
to make, namely, that early Indian Buddhism is 'essentially mystical'. For
a variety of reasons related to his interpretations of both mysticism and
believe that he fails to prove this strong form of his thesis, and in what
follows, I will try briefly to explain why.

In analysing mysticism, Pyysiainen relies heavily on psychological and
philosophical descriptions that insist on a 'lowest common denominator'
mystical experience that, whether described as 'deautomatisation', the
'experience of unity' or a 'pure consciousness event', is essentially
empty. He gives little scope to definitions of mysticism that would
include, e.g. visionary experience, and thus leaves himself open--like
scholars from Huxley to Stace to Forman--to charges that his definition of
mysticism is weighted heavily toward 'monistic' epistemology and
metaphysics, hence prone to exclude important elements in major traditions
(such as Christian kataphasis) that are regarded by their interpreters as
'mystical'. Having restricted 'mysticism' to a selected band of
experiences, Pyysiainen goes on to argue quite confidently not only that
such experiences definitely occur, but that they really are as devoid of
cultural and/or linguistic construction as their experiencers generally
claim. Granted, there is a certain logic to the argument that an 'empty'
experience is bereft of any identifiable construction or content, but if
the experience is utterly empty, then how can any valuation at all be
assigned to it, e.g. even as 'transcendental' or 'absolute', let alone as
'Buddhist' or 'Christian'? Katz and other 'constructivists' may have little
justification for assuming a priori that pure consciousness is an
impossibility, but their analyses of the complex ways in which language,
culture and experiences (even 'empty' experiences) interact, as well as
their caveats about the plurality of cultural contexts in which mysticism
occurs, deserve closer scrutiny than Pyysiainen accords them. A further
shortcoming to his analysis of mysticism is his failure to differentiate
clearly among the different types of texts from which we might draw data
about mystical experience; overlooking the careful distinctions made by
such scholars as Peter Moore and Carl Keller, Pyysiainen treats all types
of mystical literature, from autobiographical accounts to metaphysical
treatises, as having equal evidentiary value. He seems to consider any text
that describes ultimate reality to be, finally, an attempt to explain
mystical experience; it may well be, though, that the motives both within
and among the various genres of mystical literature are more various, and
less easily reduced, than he admits.

Because he fails to distinguish among genres of mystical literature,
Pyysiainen is free to draw on virtually any Buddhist text that comes to
hand. Thus, although he himself argues that whatever is 'central' to
Buddhist tradition must be related to sacred narratives about the Buddha's
enlightenment, (p. 15) he does not examine biographical or autobiographical
materials (or the countless meditation manuals that might be seen as an
attempt to codify the replication of the enlightenment) in any greater
detail than, say, didactic sutras, dialectical treatises or metaphysical
digests; indeed, all of the texts he includes in his appendixes--selections
from the Madhyarnakakarika, Lotus Sutra, Ratnagotravibhaga and
Samdhinirmocana Sutra--are drawn from philosophical and speculative
literature, rather than first- or third-person narratives. Pyysiainen is
intent on mining his texts for traces of ultimate experience, so it is
surprising that he includes so little literature on meditation. Had he
examined it in greater detail, he would have recognised that Buddhist
tradition long has identified two distinct styles of meditation: (1) mental
fixation leading to tranquillity (samatha) or concentration (samadhi) and
(2) detached observation of phenomena, leading to insight (vipasyana) or
wisdom (prajna). The former, which may include jhanas and cessations, is
quite close to what Pyysiainen means by 'mysticism'; the latter, however,
cannot simply be dismissed as mere 'intellectual understanding', for the
insight involved is more than merely conceptual. Indeed (though Pyysiainen
tries to explain it away), that insight is a crucial element of many early
and virtually all later narratives about the Buddha's enlightenment, and in
literature on meditation often serves as a platform from which the
'dead-end' mysticism of the cessations is criticised. I would argue that
when a religious tradition makes claims for the mystical efficacy of a
procedure like insight meditation for as long as Buddhism has, then, rather
than categorising it as a merely 'intellectual' experience, unworthy to be
classed as mysticism, we ought perhaps to consider broadening what we mean
by 'mysticism'.

There are a number of elements of Pyysiainen's specific analyses of
Hinayana and Mahayana texts with which I might quarrel, e.g. his claim that
Hinayana nirvana is 'an eternal Absolute behind the phenomenal world' [p.
94] (which manages to make early Buddhism sound remarkably Vedantin); or
his characterisation of the experience of nirvana as 'unification with the
external world' (p. 94) (it is difficult to see what this could mean if
nirvana is an absolute beyond the world); or his contention that Mahayana
was initially motivated by a spirit of anti-clerical egalitarianism (which
is belied by the recent research of such scholars as Gregory Schopen and
Paul Harrison, who have demonstrated that most Mahayana texts originated
among a monastic elite); or his tendency to read all the Mahayana sutras
and sastras he has selected in the same way, as utilising paradoxical
discourse in an attempt to point the mind beyond reason, to an ineffable
experience of a transcendent absolute (a reading that underplays the
significant generic and doctrinal differences among the texts, and
overlooks the fact that the 'absolute' of Mahayana is not always or only
transcendent). Rather than detailing these, however, I want to pass on to a
final point: even if Pyysiainen is right to define mysticism as an
experience of unmediated, nondual, pure consciousness, and right to read
all the various Buddhist texts he employs as referring in the end to such
an experience, he has not necessarily proved that mysticism, thus defined
and located, is 'central' to Buddhism, for the simple reason that, for all
the texts and ideas that he has considered, there are countless aspects of
the tradition that he has ignored. He touches hardly at all on issues of
monastic (or lay) conduct and ritual, or the immense popularity of Jatakas
 and other edifying tales, or the great amount of devotion that has,
virtually from the beginning, been invested in the figure of the Buddha.
Any of these could be considered 'central' to Buddhism--for all meet
Pyysiainen's requirement that a 'central' element be connected to the
narrative of the Buddha's life--yet none is particularly 'mystical', even
in a broader sense of the word. This does not mean that 'mysticism',
however defined, is not, in fact, crucial to some very important traditions
within Buddhism (I think that it is); it does mean that we ought to be as
wary of attempts to identify the 'central' elements in religious traditions
as we already are of claims about their 'essence'.

In closing, let me reiterate that I think Ilkka Pyysiainen is to be
commended for tackling so complex and important a topic in religious and
Buddhist studies. Beyond Language and Reason is erudite, methodologically
interesting, well structured, and clearly and forcefully argued. Although I
do have reservations about some of its interpretations of both mysticism
and Buddhism, I think that it is an important book, which will help to set
the agenda for future discussions of the relation between mysticism and
Buddhism, and ought to be read and pondered by anyone who is interested in
the study of mysticism, Buddhism, or the intersection of the two.