Approaching the numinous: Rudolf Otto and Tibetan tantra

by Donald S. Lopez, Jr.
Philosophy East and West 29, no.4(October, 1979)
(c) by The University Press of Hawaii.
p.467-476


. p.467 In Oriental art there may be no more evocative portrayal of what Rudolf Otto calls the mysterium tremendum than the wrathful deities of Tibetan Tantric Buddhism. Fearful in form, wreathed in flames. adorned with garlands of human heads, and brandishing dagger and skull-cup, their painted images conjure the feelings of dread and fascination which Otto describes in The Idea of the Holy. In this seminal work, he sets out to describe the central element of religious experience such that there is "no religion in which it does not live as the real innermost core, and without it no religion would be worthy of the name." (1) This article will be an inquiry into whether the holy, described as mysterium tremendum, does indeed stand as the core of the tantric path of Tibetan Buddhism and will be a comparison of the methods of approaching the holy or "numinous" as set forth by Otto and Tibetan scholars. The presentation of tantra given here will follow that of the Gelukba order of Tibetan Buddhism, relying especially on the writings of Tsong-ka-pa (1357-1419), its founder. In The Idea of the Holy Otto rejects the views held by many psychologists, historians of religion, philosophers, and anthropologists that religion "is a fact in nature and, to be understood, must be seen as a product of the same laws of nature that determine other natural phenomena."(2) Nor does he see religion, as does Clifford Geertz, as a system of conceptions formulated by man in response to ignorance, pain, and injustice.(3) Rather, Otto sees religion as a sui generis category, which stands above all natural processes and whose essence is irreducible and unevolvable. He writes that "if there is any single domain of human experience that presents us with something unmistakably specific and unique, peculiar to itself, assuredly it is that of religious life."(4) This essence he calls the "numinous," which is the object of religious experience, and which "we cannot but feel"(5) for "it eludes the conceptual way of thinking."(6) Throughout Otto draws sharp distinctions between the natural and the supernatural and between the rational and the nonrational. The "numinous" is not a natural phenomenon and our knowledge of it cannot be gained empirically; instead, "it issues from the deepest foundation of cognitive apprehension that the soul possesses, and though it of course comes into being in and amid sensory data and empirical material of the natural world and cannot anticipate or dispense with those, yet it does not arise out of them, but only hy their means."(7) Further, the numinous is nonrational and "completely eludes apprehension in terms of concepts" (8) and "can only be suggested by means of the special way in which it is reflected in the mind in terms of feeling."(9) _____________________________________________________ Donald S. Lopez, Jr. is a doctoral candidate in Buddhist studies and an instructor in the Department of Religious Studies, University of Virginia. p.468 It is Otto's view that religion cannot be fully understood through reason and rational thought. To support his claim, he looks not to scripture or theological treatise. but instead finds his affinity in the words of the mystics. Weber's "religious virtuosos," because they stress "the non-rational or suprarational elements in religion."(10) The numinous cannot be known through ratiocination; awareness of it comes only through the feelings it evokes. Consequently, Otto devotes a great part of The Idea of the Holy to a description of these feelings, the first of which centers in the subject's sense of creature-consciousness, "the emotion or a creature, submerged and overwhelmed by its own nothingness in contrast to that which is supreme above all creatures." (11) It is a recognition of one's insignificance in the face of the absolute, exemplified by Arjuna's response to the theophany in the eleventh chapter of the Bhagavad-giitaa. Next Otto considers the experience of the mysterium tremendum, which carries with it a complex of feelings, with mysterium denoting "that which is hidden and.esoteric, that which is beyond conception or understanding, extraordinary and unfamiliar."(12) Tremendum evokes a "peculiar dread" of something uncanny, aweful, weird, eerie, and absolutely unapproachable, causing the flesh to creep. Throughout his description, Otto stresses that although these feelings may have analogs among "natural" moments of consciousness, there is a qualitative difference between them. For example, he characterizes the dread of the tremendum as something other than natural fear, "a terror fraught with an inward shuddering such as not even the most menacing and overpowering created thing can instil."(13) As the object of these feelings, the numinous is endowed with might, power, transcendence, absolute overpoweringness, majesty, and a "plenitude of being" surpassing any created thing. It has urgency, energy, passion, and emotional temper. Because it is that "which is quite beyond the sphere of the usual, the intelligible, and the familiar,"(14) it is called "the wholly other" which brings forth feelings of wonder, amazement, and astonishment. The numinous produces a captivating attraction in one sensitive to it the element of fascination. Otto finds these feeling-responses to be common to all forms of mysticism. Not only does he enumerate these various reactions to the numinous, he also emphatically contends that these feelings are the only media through which the numinous, or reality, can be known. Words, concepts, reasoning, and rational thought are incapable of producing true experience of the wholly other, which can only be "firmly grasped, thoroughly understood, and profoundly appreciated, purely in, with, and from the feeling itself." (15) Otto traces these experiences of the numinous to the most primitive religious consciousness, where the feeling-response was one of "daemonic dread." This crude consciousness of the numinous evolved over the centuries to a more elevated and noble experience. Throughout this process of religious p.469 evolution, however. the object of these feelings remains the nonrational numinous, and the element of dread felt by the primitive savage, though superseded by other responses. "does not disappear on the highest level of all. where the worship of God is at its purest."(16) And although this process of evolution has occurred in all the great religions, it has reached its culmination in Christianity, which "stands out in complete superiority over its sister religions."(17) Thus. against all those who would see the rise of religion emanating from any number of "natural" factors, Otto holds the numinous to be "the basic factor and basic impulse underlying the entire process of religious evolution." (18) Although Otto discounts reason as having any relation to the numinous whatsoever, he discovers a close relationship between the feeling of the numinous and aesthetic experience. He finds the feelings of the sublime, the beautiful, and the experience of music to be nonconceptual, nonrational, and wholly other, much like that of the numinous. Weber also notes such a similarity between religion and art. However, Weber observes that for the mystic "the indubitable psychological affinity of profoundly shaking experience in art and religion can only be a symptom of the diabolical nature of art." (19) The mystic is seeking to transcend all form in order to achieve union with a reality that is beyond form. Weber perceives a contradiction between religion and art, with the result that "the more religion has emphasized either the supra-worldliness of its God or the otherworldliness of salvation, the more harshly has art been refuted."(20) Otto on the other hand, far from refuting art, suggests that aesthetic feelings reveal the transcendent reality, that "in great art the point is reached at which we may no longer speak of the 'magical, ' but rather are confronted with the numinous itself, with all its impelling power, transcending reason, expressed in sweeping lines and rhythm."(21) Nonetheless, the numinous is a purely a priori category, underivable and irreducible. It cannot be explained but only presupposed. This numinous undergoes a process of development whereby it becomes "moralized," gaining ethical meaning through being endowed with rational qualities of absoluteness, completeness, morality, purpose, justice, goodness, and love. The wholly other numinous, having become "completely permeated and saturated" by these rational qualities, becomes what Otto calls "the holy." He finds these rational qualifies also to be a priori and "not to be 'evolved' from any sort of sense perception."(22) Further, the connection of the numinous to these ethical qualities, the relation of the nonrational to the rational, is not to be derived from reasoning, but is also a priori.(23) Finally, our capacity for experience of the numinous is a priori as well. The object of religious experience is the numinous, of which we are aware through numinous feelings. Objectively, the numinous seems to act as a stimulus for these feelings. However, from the subject's side there exists an a priori p.470 potency which allows the numinous to be experienced. This Otto calls "a hidden, substantive source, from which the religious ideas and feelings are formed, which lies in the mind independently of sense-experience."(24) It is a "primal element of our psychical nature that needs to be grasped in its uniqueness and cannot itself be explained by anything else."(25) Despite philosophical problems that may inhere in such a wholesale attribution of the a priori category to all things religious,(26) it is important to consider Otto's purpose at this point. The Idea of the Holy is not intended as a philosophical treatise proving the existence of the numinous; rather it is an apology for the intuitive element of religious experience. Otto does not intend to persuade the unconvinced with his arguments. His words are offered only to kindred spirits, those whose innate capacity for the numinous has been awakened, for whom he eloquently verbalizes the experience of the holy, "the feeling which remains where the concept fails." (27) At the very outset, Otto invites the reader "to direct his mind to a moment of deeply-felt religious experience, as little as possible qualitied by other forms of consciousness. Whoever cannot do this, whoever knows no such moments in his experience, is requested to read no further."(28) It is his purpose then, to "suggest this unnamed Something to the reader as far as we may, so that he may himself feel it."(29) Thus, having stressed the intuitive aspect of religious experience, having presented numinous feeling for the sake of awakening that feeling, Otto in the end makes his appeal to feeling. The numinous is "something which the 'natural' man cannot, as such, know or even imagine, "(30) and no "intellectual, dialectical dissection or justification of such intuition is possible, nor indeed should any be attempted, for the essence most peculiar to it would be destroyed thereby."(31) Rather, the numinous must be directly experienced to be understood. Once experienced, there need not be doubt concerning the validity of these numinous feelings for they are a priori by which Otto means that "as soon as an assertion has been clearly expressed and understood, knowledge of its truth comes into the mind with the certitude of first-hand insight." (32) In short, religious experience is autonomous, self-validating, and infallible. When the numinous feelings that Otto describes are experienced, there is immediate certainty that this is a realization of the deepest truth; religious experience "represents a perception which provides its own evidence."(33) It is Otto's contention that the numinous and the feelings it evokes are common to all religions. To test this claim in the case of Tibetan tantra, it is first necessary to identify the numinous element in Buddhism. According to the Praasa^ngika-Maadhyamika school, the highest system of tenets in Tibet, every object of knowledge, permanent or impermanent, is a phenomenon (dharma). Even the highest nature of an object, its emptiness, is p.471 a phenomenon. Taking phenomena in this sense, there are no noumena apart from phenomena in Buddhism, and our inquiry is cut short. However, if we take the view found in Western metaphysics that phenomena refer to sense objects and that "behind the phenomena which present themselves in everyday experience, there lie realities whose existence and properties can be established only by the use of the intellect and which can hence be described as noumena,"(34) we then have a distinction between noumena and phenomena that can be applied to the Praasa^ngikaMaadhyamika view. That is, impermanent things or products (samsk.rta) , the appearing objects of direct perception (praryak.sa), are phenomena and those objects which initially must be known through relying on inference (anumaa.na) are noumena.(35) For the purpose of comparison with Otto, we may consider only the most important of such objects--emptinesses ('Suunyataa) --the ultimate truths (paramaarthasatya) of the Praasa^ngika-Maadhyamika system, the realization of which leads to liberation from cyclic existence (sa.msaara) . Otto identifies emptiness as the numinous element in Buddhism, writing that "the 'void' [emptiness] of the eastern, like the 'nothing' of the western, mystic is a numinous ideogram of the 'wholly other.' " (36) An emptiness, according to Praasa^ngika, is an object's lack of inherent existence (svabhaava-siddhi); and when it is realized "what appears to the mind is a clear vacuity accompanied by the mere thought,'These concrete things as they now appear to our minds do not exist at all.'"(37) In the direct realization of emptiness, the mind and emptiness are said to be mixed like fresh water poured into fresh water.(38) Since Buddhism is an atheistic religion in the sense that it denies the existence of a preexistent creator deity, the experience of the numinous does not carry with it the feeling of creature-consciousness which Otto describes, (39) Emptiness is a mere negative, a lack of a falsely conceived predicate of existence.(40) Reference is made in Praasa^ngika to a fear which arises in the practice of emptiness. it is said that a person with a slight understanding of emptiness becomes fearful because "the phenomenon suddenly appears to his mind as not existing at all,"(41) When emptiness is realized directly, however, all fear is dispelled because the source of fear--the conception of true existence--has disappeared. This fear bears little resemblance to the dread and terror that Otto describes which produces creeping flesh and which never disappears, even at the highest level of mystical experience. Emptiness is neither shrouded in mystery, nor is it a "numinous ideogram of the wholly other."(42) An emptiness is not other than the phenomenon it qualifies in that they are of the same entity. Through the practice of the path, emptiness can be realized in a direct, nonconceptual, nondualistic experience free of doubt and mystery.(43) p.472 Otto holds the mysterious to be an essential attribute of religious experience and for support points to a "mode of manifestation that in every religion occupies a foremost and extraordinary place,"(44) namely, miracle. Although the settings and circumstances of many Buddhist suutras, especially in the Mahaayaana, may be termed magical or miraculous, miracles are not a central teaching technique of Buddha. Buddhas neither wash sins away with water Nor remove beings' suffering with their hands Nor transfer their realizations to others; beings Are freed through the teaching of the truth, the nature of things.(45) Regarding miracles, it is noteworthy to compare the reactions of Christ and Buddha in a similar situation--being request to restore the life of a dead child. Christ resurrected Jairus' daughter,(46) while Buddha, in the Parable of the Mustard Seed,(47) used the opportunity to teach the mother of the child the all-pervasive nature of suffering. In both cases, it can be assumed that one result was that witnesses were inspired to follow the teaching, although the techniques of the two teachers were quite different. Weber notes a more general difference in the style of teaching of Buddha as compared to those of Jesus and Muhammad: Neither the short parable, the ironic dismissal, or the pathetic penitential sermon of the Galilean prophet, nor the address resting on visions of the Arabic holy leader find any sort of parallels to the lectures and conversations which seem to have constituted the true form of Buddha's activity. They address themselves purely to the intellect and affected the quiet, sober judgement detached from all internal excitement; their factual manner exhausts the topic always in systematic dialectical fashion.(48) The emphasis on reason and analysis which Weber observes in the Theravaada suuttas is also an essential element in the tantric path. In Tso^ngkha-pa's major work on tantra, The Great.Exposition of Secret Mantra, he explains that before beginning practice one must have firm conviction that the system one has chosen to follow is correct. A choice between two systems is not an act of partisanship but should be based on reasoned analysis. Specifically, "the scriptures of the two systems are what are to be analysed to find which does or does not bear the truth; thus, it would not be suitable to cite them as proof (of their own truth). Only reason distinguishes what is or is not true."(49) Citation of scripture, mere belief, or respect are not suitable bases for strong conviction in a system of practice, as is evident in this quotation from the Buddha: Monks and scholars should Well analyze my words, Like gold (to be tested) through melting, cutting, and polishing, And then adopt them, but not for the sake of showing me respect.(50) p.473 Reasoning is also essential to the practice of emptiness, through which the wisdom is generated which bestows liberation from suffering. According to Tso^ng-kha-pa's Ge-lug-pa order, it is a basic tenet of all three Buddhist vehicles--Hiinayaana, Perfection, and Mantra (or Tantra) -that direct realization of emptiness is gained through an initial acquaintance with an inferential realization of emptiness gained through reasoning, the basis of which is empirical. The fourteenth Dalai Lama, the current leader of the Gelukba order, states that the generation of a conceptual consciousness realizing emptiness "must depend solely on a correct reasoning. Fundamentally, therefore, the process traces back solely to a reasoning, which itself must fundamentally trace back to valid experiences common to ourselves and others."(51) Such reasonings are those set forth by Naagaarjuna in his Treatise on the Middle Way (Madhyamaka'saastra). According to Ge-lug-pa, the many reasonings presented by Naagaarjuna are explicitly intended for the purpose of destroying the conception of inherent existence, the root cause of suffering. As far as this false conception forms the basis of philosophical systems, it can be said that Naagaarjuna's arguments refute the positions of those systems. Nevertheless, the fundamental purpose of reasoning in Praasa^ngika-Maadhyamika is to generate the wisdom which eradicates suffering and its causes. Refutations of opposing tenet systems are subsidiary. A number of differences are thus evident between Otto and the Buddhist Ge-lug-pa position regarding the numinous element of religious experience. Otto's observations are astute when applied to the Abrahamic religions and theistic Hinduism. Yet the strength of his argument often relies on the existence of a creator deity endowed with the qualities of transcendence, majesty, and power, from whom man seeks atonement, which Otto sees as "a longing to transcend this sundering unworthiness, given with the self' s existence as 'creature' and profane natural being."(52) It is difficult to construe a parallel with Buddhism, which lacks such a creator god of whom we are creatures. The religious impulsion in Buddhism is not a priori, but a "natural" reaction to suffering and the practice of a prescribed set of teachings to escape that suffering, for the sake of oneself in Hiinayaana, for others in Mahayana.(53) The dharma is not an end in itself but, like a raft, is to be discarded upon reaching the further shore.(54) According to Malinowski's distinction between magic and religion, one is then forced to assign Buddhism to the category of magic, which he defines as "a practical art consisting of acts which are only means to a definite end expected to follow later on"(55) and which are not ends in themselves. This is not to suggest that Buddhism is indeed magic, but rather to point out the difficulty, also encountered in Otto, in making general statements which are intended to hold true for all religions. Returning to Otto, the more important point, however, is his contention p.474 that reasoning has no part in religious experience, where "coercion by proof and demonstration and the mistaken application of logical and juridical processes should be excluded."(56) For him, "the absolute exceeds our power to comprehend; the mysterious wholly eludes."(57) The nonconceptual, nonrational numinous cannot be approached with conceptuality and reason; "mysticism has nothing to do with 'reason' and 'rationality.'"(58) According to the Ge-lug-pa position the direct experience of emptiness, in both the suutra and tantra systems, is nonconceptual. Yet without relying on reasoning and analysis, such an experience is impossible. In answer to how analysis and thought can serve as a cause for nonconceptuality, the fifth Dalai Lama (1617-1682) cites the Kaa'syapa Chapter Suutra (Kaa'syapa-parivarta): : "Kaashyapa, it is thus: For example, fire arises when the wind rubs two branches together. Once the fire has arisen, the two branches are burned. Just so Kaashyapa, if you have the correct analytical intellect, a superior's faculty of wisdom is generated. Through its generation, the correct analytical intellect is consumed."(59) That is, conceptual thought can lead to experience of the nonconceptual, that which is beyond thought. Reasoning alone, however, is not sufficient; the process of insight is not merely an intellectual exercise. Reasoning is an essential element of wisdom, the third element in the triad of ethics ('siila), meditative stabilization (samaadhi), and wisdom (praj~naa), all of which are necessary for realization of emptiness, For example, a bodhisattva of the suutra system must engage in limitless forms of the six perfections (paaramitaa)--giving, ethics, patience, effort, concentration, and wisdom--over many aeons in order to accumulate the merit which wi11 empower his mind to penetrate emptiness and eventually overcome all obstructions.(60) In the tantra system, a special technique--deity yoga--is taught which allows this accumulation of merit to proceed more quickly.(61) Thus, the process of reasoning must be conjoined with ethical and meditative practices to yield realization of emptiness. Reasoning must be used because emptiness is a hidden phenomenon (parok.sa), unable to appear to direct perception without initially depending on reasoning.(62) For Otto too, the numinous is hidden in the sense that it is something "which has no place in our scheme of reality but belongs to an absolutely different one, and which at the same time arouses an irrepressible interest in the mind."(63) For him, reasoning cannot be the key to the experience of the numinous because "our knowledge has certain irremovable limits." (64) We find then, two different approaches to this hidden numinous, inaccessible to ordinary sense perception. For the Ge-lug-pas. the process of reasoning and analysis leads to the experience of reality. For Rudolf Otto, reasoning must be discarded, for reality--the holy--is only to be known through feeling. p.475 NOTES 1. Rudolf Otto. The Idea of the Holy, trans. John W. Harvey (London: Oxford University press, 1976), p. 6. 2. Anthony F. C. Wallace, Religion: An Anthropological View (New York: Random House, 1966), p.vi. 3. Clifford Geertz, "Religion as a Cultural System," in Reader in Comparative Religion: An Anthropological Approach, ed. William A. Lessa and Even Z. Vogt, 3d ed. (New York: Harper and Row, 1972) , pp. 171-174. 4. Otto, p.4. 5. Ibid., p.5. 6. Ibid., p.2. 7. Ibid., p.113. 8. Ibid., p.5. 9. Ibid., p.l2. 10. Ibid., p.22. 11. Ibid., p.10. 12. Ibid., p.13. 13. Ibid., p.14. 14. Ibid., p.26. 15. Ibid., p.34. 16. Ibid., p.l7. 17. Ibid., p.142. 18. Ibid., p.15. 19. Max Weber, "Religious Rejections of the World and their Directions," in From Max Weber. Essays in Sociology, ed. and trans. Hans H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976), p. 342. 20. Ibid., p. 343. 21. Otto, p.67. 22. Ibid., p. 112. 23. Wach notes that critics have found this to be the weakest element in Otto's presentation. See Joachim Wach, Types of Religious Experience Christian and Non-Christian (Chicago, Illinois: University of Chicago Press, 1951), p. 222. For an analysis of this relationship between the numinous and morality and of the process of "schematization" whereby the numinous becomes endowed with rational qualities see John P. Reeder, "The Relation of the Moral and the Numinous in Otto's Notion of the Holy," in Religion and Morality: A Collection of Essays, ed. Gene Outka and John P. Reeder, Jr. (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Books, 1973), pp. 255-292. 24. Ibid., p. 114. 25. Ibid., p. 124. 26. The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, s.v. "Otto, Rudolf," by William J. Wainwright. 27. Ibid., p. xxi. 28. Ibid., p. 8. 29. Ibid., p. 6. 30. Ibid., p. 51. 31. Ibid., p. 147. 32. Ibid., p. 137. 33. Joachim Wach, Understanding and Believing. Essays by Joachim Wach, edited with an Introduction by Joseph M. Kitagawa (Boston, Massachusetts: Harper and Row, 1968), p. 8. 34. The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, s.v. "Metaphysics, Nature of," by W. H. Walsh. 35. Geshe Lhundup Sopa and Jeffrey Hopkins, Practice and Theory of Tibetan Buddhism (Rider: London, 1976), p. 134. 36. Otto, p. 30. 37. Tenzin Gyatso, The Buddhism of Tibet and the Key to the Middle Way (New York: Harper and Row, 1975), p. 77. p.476 38. Tsong-ka-pa, Tantra in Tibet: The Great Exposition of Secret Mantra (London: Allen and Unwin, 1978), p. 191. 39. Ninian Smart criticizes Otto on this point using the example of Theravaada Buddhism. See Ninian Smart, Philosophers and Religious Truth (London: SCM Press Ltd.. ]969), p. 113. 40. Tenzin Gyatso, p. 77. 41. Ten-dar-hla-ram-pa (bsTan-dar-lha-ram-pa) , A Presentation of the Lack of One and Many. an Elimination of Error Collected from the 0cean of Good Explanations (Gcig du bral gyi rnam gzhag legs hshad rgya mtsho las btus pa'i 'khrul spong bdud rtsi'i gzegs ma) (Lhasa: Great Press at the base of the Potala, Fire Dog Male year of the sixteenth cycle), blockprint of 43 folios, pp. 3a-3b. 42. Otto, p. 30. 43. Tso^ng-kha-pa, pp. 191-192. 44. Otto, p.63. 45. Kensur Lekden, Meditations of a Tibetan Tantric Abbot, trans. and ed. Jeffrey Hopkins (Dharamsala, India: Library of Tibetan Works and Archives, 1974). p. 109. 46. Mark 5:21-43. 47. Sutta Nipaata, trans. V. Fausboll, in Sacred Books of the East (Oxford, 188 1), Vol. 10, pt. 2, pp. 11-15. 48. Max Weber, The Religion of lndia: The Sociology of Hinduism and Buddhism, trans. and ed. Hans H. Gerth and Don Martindale (New York: The Free Press, 1967), p. 225. 49. Tso^ng-kha-po, p. 87. 50. Tenzin Gyatso, p, 55. 51. Ibid., pp. 55-56. 52. Otto, p. 55. 53. Tenzin Gyatso, pp. 28-29. 54. Middle Length Sayings (Majjhima-Nikaaya), trans. I. B. Horner, Pali Text Society Translation Series, No. 29(London: The Pali Text Society, 1976), 1:173-74. 55. Bronislaw Malinowski, Magic, Science and Religion and Other Essays (New York: Anchor Books, 1954), p. 88. 56. Otto, p. 145. 57. Ibid,, p, 141. 58. Ibid., p, 4. 59. The Fifth Salai Lama, The Practice of Emptiness, trans. Jeffrey Hopkins (Dharamsala, India: Library of Tibetan Works and Archives, 1974), p. 21. 60. Na-wang-pel-den (Ngag-dbang-dpal-ldan) , Presentation of the Grounds and Paths of the Four Great Secret Tantra Sets (gSang chen rgyud sde bzhii sa lam gyi rnam gzhag rgyud gzhung gsal byed) (modern blockprint, rGyud smad par khang, date and place of publication not given), pp, 7a3-8al. 61. Tso^ng-kha-pa, p. 60. 62. Ibid., p. 32. 63. Otto, p. 29. 64. Ibid., p. 59.