Religious Experience and Madhyamaka Philosophy

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 19^th 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. [1] James also wants to deny the hegemonic attempt of rationality and logic to be the ultimate authority of religious life.[2] 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. [3]

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.”[4] 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.[5]

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 14^th 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.”[6] 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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[1] Wayne Proudfoot, Religious Experience. Berkeley: The University of California Press, 1985. p. 153

[2] William Barnard, “Explaining the Unexplainable: Wayne Proudfoots Religious Experience.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 60 (2) p. 248.

[3] Steven Katz, “The Conservative Character of Mystical Experience.” Mysticism and Religious Traditions, edited by Steven Katz. New York: Oxford University Press, 1983. p. 4

[4] Katz, p. 22

[5] Ann Taves, Religious Experience Reconsidered: A Building Block Approach to the Study of Religion and Other Special Things. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009. p. 89

[6] Barnard, p. 242