How mystical is Buddhism?

by Roger R. Jackson

Asian Philosophy

Vol. 6 No. 2 Jul.1996

Pp.147-153

Copyright by Asian Philosophy


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.