Andrew Kriete
5/9/11
Religious
Experience and Madhyamaka Philosophy
An Investigation of
Claims about Religious Experience from the Buddhist Madhymaka Framework
The
academic interest in religion can be traced back to the enlightenment era when
philosophy, moral thought, and art split decisively from an explicitly
religious framework. Philosophes began
to study religion with an objective focus, outside the regulatory structure of
an established church. Developments in the 19th century contributed
an awareness of naturalist religion, and the imperial aspirations of Europe
brought European cultures into contact with organized religions around the
world. Popular movements such as the theosophical society promoted a mystical
interpretation of the world’s religions, and eventually their claims were
investigated more seriously by academics. William James’ The Varieties of Religious Experience represents the first
systematized analysis of mystical experience.
In recent history
religious experiences have been understood in academic discussion primarily by
the perennialist and constructivist camps. Generally, perennialists assign a
degree of legitimacy to the mystic’s description of their experience. William
James attempted to investigate the claims of mystics on their own terms, taking
seriously the metaphysical and ontological assertions suggested in descriptive
accounts. Constructivism is a more recent development that privileges the
possibility of formative influences from socio-cultural and linguistic
suggestion. These general outlines have devolved into more concrete claims,
from both sides, which attempt to bring matters of religious experience into
clearer focus. While the descriptive accounts of mystics showcase some
similarities, the beliefs and ontologies their writings support are markedly
different between traditions. Viewed philosophically, the question of separate
ontologies relate back to a cohesive theory of epistemology.
The Buddhist and
Vedic traditions are interesting in that they developed their philosophical
thought concurrently. Both had similar cosmological frameworks but disagreed
heavily on matters of interpretation and ontology. Furthermore, being located
in the same area, they were rivals competing for patronage and political
support. As such, both developed precise epistemological frameworks intended to
challenge and refute the ontological claims of rival schools. One of these Buddhist
schools, known as Madhyamaka, deals
almost entirely with epistemology and views with great suspicion any claimed “ontology.”
The Madhyamaka view that evolved from this school went on to define the
interpretive framework of the Tibetan Buddhist tradition and influenced
Buddhism throughout China, Korea, Japan, and the Indian sub-continent. It is through the Madhayamikan epistemological
lense that I will investigate the claims made by both camps of modern religious
theorists. First, however, it might be helpful to outline more specifically
what constructivists and perennialists actually assert about the nature of
religious experience.
Perennialists
often concentrate their efforts in an attempt to differentiate religious
experience from the structures of thought and language. An explanatory language
that classifies such experience as “unmediated,” “direct,” or “pure”,
characterizes the attempt. There is also a tendency among perennialists to
conflate religious experience with emotional sentiment. William James seems to
say that mystical experience is a simple feeling that is independent of
concepts and belief.
James also wants to deny the hegemonic attempt of rationality and logic to be
the ultimate authority of religious life.
James’ famous four characterizations of religious experience as ineffable,
noetic, immanent, and transitory are drawn from an investigation of claims and
descriptions from people who have had experiences they deem mystical. These
four characterizations were not drawn from a single mystical tradition, but
derived from several in which James thinks he has observed certain similarities.
These similarities are thought by some religious theorists (Ninian Smart among
others) to suggest a common core to mystic traditions centered around personal
experience. This intimate and “felt” reality potentially transcends the creeds
and dogmas of institutionalized religions. A general view in the perennialist
camp might be one that acknowledges the possibility of experiences that are
trans-linguistic, trans-cultural, and unmediated.
The
constructivist camp approaches religious experience from an angle that
emphasizes the contextualization of experience in general. A basic observation
that supports this view is that beliefs which pervade a tradition in which a
mystic practices seems to have an influence on the content of the mystic’s experience.
For example, a Buddhist meditator does not have visions of Jesus or describe
his/her experience in the context of union of the lover and the beloved. These
are qualities found in another mystic tradition. Instead, the Buddhist
meditator speaks of emptiness, cessation and nirvana. Steven Katz classifies
these distinctions more concretely. He says,
We must recognize that a right
understanding of mysticism is not just a question of studying the reports of
the mystic after the experiential event but also of acknowledging that the
experience itself, as well as the form in which it is reported, is shaped by
the concepts which the mystic brings to, and which shape, his experience.
The idea, as Katz describes it, is
that the Hindu mystic does not have an experience of ‘x’ that he then describes
in the already familiar language of the Hindu tradition, but that his
experience is itself informed by the anticipated experience of “Brahman.” Constructivists
understand mystical experiences as a result of traversing a path, whatever path
that is. The path that is taken influences the content of the experience.
Katz finds further
evidence for the constructivist view in an analysis of the common notion that
mystics run against the strains of their established tradition. He notices that
mystics rarely view their experience as contradictory to the assertions of their
tradition. Mystics seldom dis-engage completely from orthodox belief. Religious
texts make a variety of ontological assertions and mystics describe their experience
in a way that conserves traditional claims, even if they are interpreted
differently. Mystics saw their own teaching, and others saw it likewise, as
either “(a) the older teachings in a new guise; (b) personal confirmation of
existing doctrine; (c) a legitimate extension of traditional teaching; or (d) a
new, but authoritative stage of tradition.”
It
seems, on Katz’s account, that when mystics proclaim innovations of doctrine or
practice, they intend to offer the traditional sources of authority legitimacy.
The character is more conservative than revolutionary. The ontological
assertions do, however, contradict each other across traditions, making it
difficult to say that a Christian experience of God is the same as the Hindu
experience of Atman.
There are several
other noteworthy players in the constructivist camp. Wayne Proudfoot focuses on
the role of emotion in religious experience. He says that emotions are
essentially physiological events. He derives his conclusions from a study done
by Stanley Schachter and Jerome Singer (1963), which found that interpretation
and judgment of physiological occurrences as particularized emotions are
derived largely from contextual cues and are relative to them. Emotions, and thus by implication religious
experiences, are bound up and inseparable from explanatory judgments that are
contextually relative. Therefore, physiological excitement produced in a
religious context, through a practice such as chanting, would be interpreted as
religious because of the setting in which it occurred. He develops this theory
further in a critique of Friedrich Schleiermacher. He finds that Schleiermacher
uses evocative and skillful language to awaken in his readers an experience of
religious consciousness that he himself believes underlies every moment of
existence. He asserts that Schleiermacher’s
“neutral” descriptions of religious consciousness, which he
Schleiermacher claims to be free from thought and prior to subject/object distinction,
might actually constitute a person’s religious experience by providing a
framework in which a person can identify certain unidentified feelings as
“religious.” He repeatedly refers to the religious nature of this experience by
referring to an intentional object. “God,” the “Infinite,” the “Whole,” or the
“Universe” all find their way into the description. Proudfoot finds
Schleiermacher in a logical dilemma since he claims that religious experience
is immediate and independent of thoughts, but can only specify it in reference
to a sophisticated set of beliefs and concepts. He further concludes that the
experience is inextricably linked with the descriptions of it, and that it does
not exist independently or prior to such concepts, but that they in some way
constitute the experience. He attempts to differentiate himself from Katz’s
thesis that the mystic’s prior beliefs are causally connected to his/her
experience. He thinks the antecedent beliefs do not form a causal connection
but a conceptual one.
This brief outline
explains some of the issues surrounding the investigation of religious
experience. There are others who have contributed to the debate such as Rudolf
Otto, Mircea Eliade, Huston Smith, etc. A recent analysis of these issues in
Religious Experience Reconsidered, by
Ann Taves, tries to provide space for integration of the two camps by offering
new interpretive frameworks that engage sources outside those traditionally
considered in religious study. Madhyamaka philosophy, while formulated in
response to a different set of concerns, offers an epistemological theory that
addresses some of the main problems in the investigation of religious
experience. It also has some similarities to the later Wittgensteinian theory
of language relativity that contributed to the constructivist argument.
Madhyamaka
philosophy is founded primarily on the refutation of the notion of svabhava. Svabhava loosely translated from Sanskrit implies essence or an
intrinsic nature. This essence is conceived in certain Vedic schools as
something that characterizes an object, but which exists on its own in an
ontological sense, independently of contributing factors. Due largely to the
emphasis on impermanence and interdependence within Buddhist dialectic, this
notion of svabhava engendered
conclusions that Buddhists considered deeply troubling philosophically and
ontologically. Much time and energy was spent refuting svabhava on the grounds in which it was presented in the Vedic
schools. Centuries later svabhava came
to represent what is a primary cause of “wrong view.” The false imposition of svabhava here contributes to the
unsatisfactory and problematic conditions within samsara. This was the case especially in the Tibetan philosophical
tradition of Tsongkhapa started in the 14th century, to which the
Dalai Lama belongs.
The Madhyamaka
framework may bring a new level of understanding to two views thought to be
incompatible by perennialists and constructivists; the constructivist view that
the mystic’s experience is a causally produced phenomenon influenced by the
tradition of the mystic among other causes, and the perrenialist view that a
mystics experience is non-conceptual and not classified by discursive thought.
We can start with an investigation into the Madhyamaka conception of the nature
of experience itself.
The Madhyamaka
view holds that there are no uncaused phenomena. Everything that arises does so
in connection with a supporting network of causes and conditions. This is very
much related to the negation of svabhava.
If one were to maintain that an object had its own svabhava, its own defining characteristic, and that it existed of
its own nature and derived no properties from other existents, then it could
not be causally connected to any other object. In the Madhyamaka view we can
only say anything about an object through the ascription of likeness and
difference to another object. This is a cognized process, where the mind
apprehends a characteristic of a phenomenon, and either differentiates it from,
or relates it to, another object that has previously been apprehended and which
can form a basis for relation. So, if any object were to exist on its own, with
its own essence, we would not be able to say or know anything about it because
our specification of a defining characteristic is finally relative to the
defining characteristics of other objects. A simple thought experiment could
make this idea a little less obtuse. Can one describe what the color red looks
like without reference to any other colors? What is it about “red” that makes
“red” red? Is it not finally the ascription of differences to colors that are
not red? Madhyamikas say that there is not some ultimate essence of “redness”
floating out there in the primordial ether that we then contact and compare a
red apple to. Rather redness exists as a relative construct, compared and
contrasted with other things that are red and not red based merely on
convention.
This lack of
absolute ontological status can be related to the constructivist assertion that
there is no “unmediated” experience. To have an experience that is uncaused by
any prior conditioning is not possible. There must always be some basis for
relation, otherwise nothing could be said about the experience, nothing could
be known about the experience, and no
ascription of meaning could ever be placed. It therefore makes sense that the
content of experiences are informed by other mediated conditions. This does not
mean, however, that all experiences have to be cognized or conceptual events,
they just have to be cognized and conceptual if one wants to talk about them or
ascribe meaning to them.
Despite the fact
that in Madhyamaka philosophy svabhava does not exist, the notion of
emptiness would presume that it does. Emptiness here has to be emptiness of
something. For Madhyamikas everything
is empty of svabhava. So in what way
then does svabhava exist? It exists
here as a deluded or mistaken imposition made by all unrealized beings. It is
the common condition of sentient beings to ascribe permanence and individuality
to things, oneself included. The ascription of characteristics is a groundless
practice, but it does not appear that way to ordinary beings. In a practical Madhyamaka understanding this causes suffering. Attachment to
systems of value that are groundless, easily corruptible, and subject to change
is illogical, yet we can notice that this occurs frequently in our experience
and appears to happen in the experience of others. These are disrupted when a
valued object is taken away, or when another being with different values changes
one’s relationship to valued objects. Not accounting for impermanence and
change, attachment can cause a multiplicity of unpleasant mental and emotional
states. This can be traced back to svabhava,
thinking that objects, be they conceptual or physical, exist on their own as ontological
entities, and will persist in a relatively permanent fashion over time. To make
the negation of svabhava more clear
dialectically Madhyamaka philosophy divides reality into two truths,
conventional truth and ultimate truth. Conventional truth is the set of loosely
assigned values designated through the force of convention by unrealized
beings. Ultimate truth is seeing that conventional truth is groundless.
Ultimate truth is non-deceptive as it apprehends the finally relative and interdependent
nature of existents, including that that realization itself is contingent upon
conventional truth for its existence.
In the Madhyamaka
view this realization cannot be a conceptual or cognitive realization. Remember
that any distinction or designation between phenomenological occurrences is
finally relative to other conventionally designated distinctions. A basis for
comparison is a conceptualized ground that privileges one set of
characteristics against another. Apprehending the dependent nature of arising
and dissolving occurrences is not dependent upon a cognitive analytic set. The
apprehension of emptiness is dependent upon the non-ascription of defining
characteristics. At the same time, the realization
is itself illusory, as it is dependent upon on a network of conditions to be
perceived as essence-less or as lacking svabhava.
This apprehension is non-deceptive because it does not posit a notion of
unchanging reality, but merely acknowledges interdependence and impermanence
including the interdependent nature of the apprehension itself. Nagarjuna
states that enlightenment is illusory but non-deceptive, and the Buddha is said
to have claimed that if there is anything beyond enlightenment, that too is
illusory. In this way, Madhyamaka allows for a notion of experience that is
non-conceptual. Whether or not this notion can be directly related to a
perennialist notion of non-cognitive experience is up for debate.
One distinction between
perennialists and Madhyamikas can be discerned from an assertion made by the
neo-perennialist William Barnard. He says it might be “at least
methodologically prudent to leave open the possibility that trans-linguistic,
unmediated experience is both possible and even reasonable.”
A
Madhyamika would not agree. A Madhyamika might want to leave open the possibility
of trans-linguistic experience, but not of an unmediated one. While it might be
possible to exhaust conceptual discriminations that are the root of a
comparative language theory, divorcing causality completely is not a
philosophical possibility. Maybe it is here that the Madhyamika could not
accommodate a perennialist view.
An incompatibility
with the constructivist view might be noted in relation to Proudfoot’s
assertions. There is a way in which he implies that social suggestion constitutes the interpretation of
experience, such that they are finally indistinguishable. For Madhyamikas evocative
language used with a definitive object in a specific context may be a
contributing condition of experience, but Madhyamikas generally identify a
multiplicity of other conditions that contribute to an experience outside of
linguistic and social designation (for instance the skhandas, pramanas, aggregrates, etc.) They would not say that all
experiences are finally indistinguishable from ascriptive meanings. The
apprehension of ultimate truth is a good example of an experience not reducible
to a linguistic framework. For Madhyamikas talking about ultimate truth is not
the same as apprehending the finally relative nature of phenomena.
Even with these
differences, Madhyamaka seems to offer a framework that allows for the
interpretation of two possibilities generally considered incompatible by
perennialists and constructivists. There is much that remains to be said about
Madhyamika, and this philosophical introduction would prove inadequate to those
better acquainted with the tradition. I have left out important aspects such as
the assertion of thesis-less-ness, specifics about epistemic instruments,
clarifications that distinguish Madhyamika from nihilism, and an analysis of
the Madhyamika theory of language. I have also not offered any theories about
how one might arrive at the apprehension of emptiness. Still Madhyamika offers
an interesting lense through which to view the perennialist-constructivist
debate. In the future a deeper and more
specified examination of Madhyamika in relation to religious experience might
prove interesting and possibly informative. Differences in the developmental
context of Madhyamika and religious theory might make an exacting comparison
difficult, but a comparison of general theory could bring greater focus and
clarity to issues on both sides.
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