ALL THINGS ARE NOT ONE

We often read or are told that all life and all things, including all people, are one. It’s a nice, comforting, New-Agey idea … but it’s not true. Not at all.

Now, look. Nothing in this world is simple. Whatever exists in this universe is complex and has internal differentiation, involving numerous differences and relations. Each thing is ‘a multum in parvo plurally related,’ to borrow a phrase from William James [pictured left]. ‘Things are with one another in many ways,’ wrote James, ‘but nothing includes everything, or dominates over everything.’ 

Not only that, whatever exists does, however, do so in situations. Those situations are themselves complex and are also in complex relationship to other complex situations, and all these complex situations exist in the one space-time, belong to the one order of being, and exist under certain invariably complex conditions. For example, a table consists of wood, nails, glue, etc, not to mention the carpenter with his tools who ‘made’ the table. The table sits on the floor of the room. The floor is supported by the foundations of the building, and so on. Yes, whatever exists does so in situations which are in complex relationship to other situations.

In realist philosophy this state of affairs is known as ‘situationality.’ Yes, everything that exists has some relation with some other thing that exists, but it is not true to say that everything is related to everything else nor is everything one in some overall monistic sense, and nothing in quantum physics proves otherwise. Co-existing situations often comprise or constitute a system, and some systems are very much connected to other such situations. However, while some situations have connections with other systems, not all systems are connected to all other systems. We know all this to be the case.

Traditional Buddhism, for the most part, is empirical and realist in its overall thrust and content (even though you will find in many places a considerable amount of superadded superstitious nonsense). A cardinal, perhaps the core, teaching of Buddhism---arguably the only thing that holds all Buddhist teachings together---is this: all phenomena are arising together in a mutually interdependent web of cause and effect. This is known as the teaching or principle of interdependent relations. 

Perhaps even more importantly, this teaching more accurately states that things arise dependent on conditions and cease when those same conditions cease. Buddhism sees causation as a complex phenomenon going far beyond mere constant conjunction in the nature of some ‘regularity’ theory. The emphasis is on causal connections, or the relationship, between two events that are separated in space-time. (Note. At the sub-atomic level phenomena such as quantum entanglement show that connections can at times survive even physical separation, but it remains the fact that those connections exist under certain conditions even if we don’t fully understand the nature, extent and scope of those conditions.)

Causation is never a simple thing. Invariably, multiple factors are necessary to produce any given effect. In light of this complexity and plurality, it is never as simple as selecting one such factor from a set of jointly and severally sufficient conditions and taking that factor to be the cause of the particular effect, for we are dealing with a complex system whose parts, as previously mentioned, are at least to some extent interdependent.

Buddhism goes further and seeks to distinguish causes and conditions In that regard, the English word ‘conditionality’ encapsulates essence of the Buddha’s teaching of (in Pāli) paţicca-samuppāda (in Sanskrit, pratītya-samutpāda), or ‘dependent arising’. Now, conditionality and causality are not the exact same thing. Conditionality is a much broader concept of causality. When we speak of the ‘cause’ of some event we are referring to something that is directly and immediately responsible for the occurrence of the event, whereas the word ‘condition’ is wide enough to embrace supporting and contributing factors as well. Buddha Shakyamuni is reported to have said on many occasions, ‘This being, that becomes.’ In other words, the most general quality or a thing is that it is the condition for another. More fully, the Buddha would say:

This being, that becomes; from the arising of this, that arises;

This not being, that does not become; from the ceasing of this, that ceases.

This conditionality---that is, all things are ‘conditioned things’---was said by the Buddha to be universal, underlying all of reality, irrespective and quite independently of anyone noticing it.

Now, there is a sense in which all life is one. I am not advocating monism or pantheism. When I say that life is one, I am trying to say a couple of things. First, a single logic applies to all things and how they are related. Secondly, all things exist in the same order or level of reality, and on the same ‘plane’ of observability. If these two things were not the case, it would be impossible for us to be attentive to, and otherwise aware of, what happens from one moment to the next, let alone speak meaningfully about things. Just think about that for a few seconds, and it should be obvious to you that such is indeed the case.

Call it the ‘interconnectedness of all life’ or, if you like, ‘InterBeing.’ The latter wonderful term comes from the Vietnamese Zen Buddhist monk and teacher Thich Nhat Hanh [pictured right]. I love that word ‘InterBeing.’

The bottom line is this. Although all things are not one, there nevertheless is only one life manifesting itself in all things and as all things. And if that be the case, we owe each other certain ethical duties. Those ethical duties (for example, the golden rule) do not depend for their existence on any religion---not even Buddhism, for which I have the greatest respect. They flow naturally and inevitably from the very nature of existence itself.

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InterBeing

YOU ARE AN AGGREGATE---YES, A HEAP!

Yes, you are an amalgam---a heap. Perhaps that doesn’t sound very flattering, but as the American comedian Jimmy Durante [pictured left] used to say, ‘Them is the conditions that prevails.’

The historical Buddha saw the human being as simply an amalgam of ever-changing phenomena of existence. It is written that Buddha had this to say about the matter:

The instructed disciple of the Noble Ones does not regard material shape as self, or self as having material shape, or material shape as being in the self, or the self as being in material shape. Nor does he regard feeling, perception, the impulses, or consciousness in any of these ways. He comprehends each of these aggregates as it really is, that it is impermanent, suffering, not-self, compounded, woeful. He does not approach them, grasp after them or determine 'Self for me' ['my self']--and this for a long time conduces to his welfare and happiness.

The instructed disciple of the Noble Ones beholds of material shape, feeling, perception, the impulses, or consciousness: 'This is not mine, this am I not, this is not my self.' So that when the material shape, feeling, perception, the impulses, or consciousness change and become otherwise there arise not from him grief, sorrow, suffering, lamentation, and despair. (Adapted from the Samyutta Nikaya.)

The Buddha thus makes it clear that the so-called ‘self’ is only an ‘aggregate’ or ‘heap’ of perceptions and sensations. It is, in the words of Manly Palmer Hall [pictured right], ‘a summary of what is known and what is not known’. We are not a ‘self’; we are persons among persons. However, when it came to attempting to explain the conventionally accepted concept of ‘person’, the Buddha referred to various psycho-physical ‘elements’ at work in a person---the ‘five aggregates’ (skandhas [Sanskrit], khandhas [Pāli], ‘aggregates’ in English)---which are said to serve as the basis (or rather ‘bases’) of what we ordinarily designate as a ‘person.’

These ‘five aggregates’---‘aggregates’ being ‘facts’---are said to be nothing more than ‘constantly changing conglomerates of moments of materiality, sensations, perceptions, mental formations, and consciousness’ (R C Lester, Theravada Buddhism in Southeast Asia, 1973: 26). The ‘five aggregates,’ which are also known as the ‘five hindrances,’ are as follows. 

First, there are the aggregates of corporeality or materiality, that is, matter or bodily form, and more specifically the physicality of the sentient being or person, being the gross physical body, gross form, together with the six sense organs (organs of sight, sound, touch, taste, smell---and the mind)---all objects regarded as being compounded entities.

Secondly, there are the aggregates of sensations and emotions (or feelings), and more specifically the physiological processes resulting from the contact of matter with matter, sense organs with objects of sense, including the five ordinary bodily senses as well as mental feeling with ‘feeling overtones.'

Thirdly, there are the aggregates of perceptions, more specifically, those of recognition and perception---being mental discriminations born of sensations, the recognition of objects and, more specifically, the capacity and power to perceive as well as recognise and distinguish between physical objects of all kinds, including the ability to comprehend the specific marks of phenomenal objects.

Fourthly, there are the aggregates of predispositions, more specifically, those of ‘dispensational’ or mental formations or factors (eg fixations and conclusions of the mind such as attitudes, beliefs and opinions), and more specifically volitions which are said to be primarily responsible for bringing forth future states of existence.

Fifthly, there are the aggregates of consciousness, that is, consciousness in the fullest sense of the word. The aggregates of consciousness are composed of moments of awareness as well as awareness of awareness (or mindfulness). Although not an ‘entity’ as such, the aggregates of consciousness binds the varied sense and feeling elements of the individual---physical awareness, bodily feeling-tone, and mental constructs---into a personalized unity, that is, the person among persons that each of us is. Moreover, these aggregates remain more-or-less continuous throughout unceasing change, until death comes with the disintegration of all the aggregates.

The Buddha, ever the empiricist and realist, acknowledged the important distinction between our perceptions or sensations of things and the things themselves, stating that ‘the senses meet the object and from their contact sensation is born’ (Paul Carus, The Gospel of Buddha, 2002[1894]: 54). Also worth noting are these words attributed to the Buddha and quoted above---‘when the material shape, feeling, perception, the impulses, or consciousness change and become otherwise.’ In other words, the same event or situation can bring about different effects, and it is also the case that different events or situations can bring about the same effect. It all depends on the ‘field’ of context (the so-called ‘causal field).

The spiritual philosopher J Krishnamurti [pictured left], although not a Buddhist, articulated a number of distinctive ideas that have much in common with Buddhist thought and teaching. For example, Krishnamurti wrote:

In uncovering what one actually is, one asks: Is the observer oneself, different from that which one observes---psychologically that is. I am angry, I am greedy, I am violent: is that I different from the thing observed, which is anger, greed, violence? Is one different? Obviously not. When I am angry there is no I that is angry, there is only anger. So anger is me; the observer is the observed. The division is eliminated altogether. The observer is the observed and therefore conflict ends. (J Krishnamurti, The Wholeness of Life, 1987[1978]: 142.)

Now, you may well ask, ‘What does all of this matter, assuming for the moment that it is true?’ Well, as I see it, it is very important. True, lasting, in-depth psychological transformation can only take place when there is, firstly, a realization that self cannot change self because self is ‘illusion,’ and secondly, there is a reliance upon a power-not-oneself. That power-not-oneself can take various forms, one of which is the personalized unity that is the person among persons that each of us is. The ‘self’ cannot change the ‘self,’ but the person can change---even if that person be little more than a heap, that is, an amalgam of ever-changing phenomena of existence.

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The Scottish-born Australian philosopher and controversialist John Anderson (pictured left, with a couple of superadded images [gasp!]) was Challis Professor of Philosophy at the University of Sydney from 1927 to 1958 (and thereafter Emeritus Professor of Philosophy until his death in 1962).

Anderson, regarded by many as the ‘patron saint’ of the Sydney Push, founded the school or branch of empirical philosophy known as ‘Sydney realism’ (and also known as ‘Andersonian realism’ as well as 'situational realism'). I embrace the central thrust and main ideas of Anderson's philosophical system, which I have set out and described elsewhere as well as in a number of my posts (see below).

Today I delivered an address to the Sydney Realist Group ['Sydney Realists'] on the topic ‘Andersonian Realism and Buddhist Empiricism.’ 

Now, it may come as a shock---not to mention downright heresy---to some (especially those who know that Anderson had no time for religion), but the two schools of thought have a number of important ideas in common. However, as I say in the paper, it would be wrong to conclude that the Buddha’s philosophical approach to life was ‘Andersonian’ in all or even most respects.

As I have said several times before in my posts, the empiricism in Buddhism---which, at least in its earliest, more uncluttered forms, was arguably not a religion at all---is to be found, not as some highly organized, systematic philosophical exposition, but as a praxis, a way of seeing the world, and a method of problem-solving. The Buddha taught people that the way to find out about life and themselves was by direct perceptive experience, and by trial and error. Anderson said much the same thing---but in different words.

Note. Since this post was uploaded I have presented a follow-on paper to the Sydney Realist Group entitled 'Self as Illusion and Mind as Feeling' [link here], in which I explore some of the similarities---as well as differences---between John Anderson's views on the mind and those expounded in Buddhist psychological teachings. IEJ.

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BUDDHISM AND THE PLURALITY OF ALL THINGS

Image of the Buddha in the garden at Asakusa Kannon Temple
(also called Sensoji), the oldest temple in Tokyo, Japan.
Photo taken by the author.

One of the reasons I embrace Buddhism is this---Buddhism, at least in its more early, uncluttered forms, espouses a realist view of ‘things as they really are.’ I like that, for I am at heart a realist, an empiricist, and a naturalist. I reject all supernaturalistic views of reality.

Buddhism, consistent with an empirical view of reality, affirms that whatever exists are ‘occurrences’---or ‘situations’---in one space-time. Things exist ‘in situations.’ This is known as situationality. Further, at any ‘point’---for want of a better word---in space-time there is always (yes, always) a plurality of space-time interacting situations or occurrences (‘complexes’). Indeed, there are literally countless such pluralities, and all these situations exhaust the whole of reality. There is nothing else ... or supposedly 'beyond' or 'above' all this. Things may be distinct---indeed, they are---but they also connected in space-time, and these connections are very real. The Buddha reportedly said:

Monks, we who look at the whole and not just the part, know that we too are systems of interdependence, of feelings, perceptions, thoughts, and consciousness all interconnected. Investigating in this way, we come to realize that there is no me or mine in any one part, just as a sound does not belong to any one part of the lute.

Situationality and plurality---such is the nature of reality. Never forget that!

The third Zen patriarch Seng-Tsan described situationality and plurality in this way:

One thing, all things:

Move along and intermingle,

Without distinction.

Truth---reality---is never static but always dynamic. The Buddha is also reported to have said that ‘things are different according to the forms which they assume under different impressions’. One could substitute the word ‘situations’ for ‘impressions’ without distorting meaning. Here is a typical saying attributed to the Buddha:

The thing and its quality are different in our thought, but not in reality. Heat is different from fire in our thought, but you cannot remove heat from fire in reality. You say that you can remove the qualities and leave the thing, but if you think your theory to the end, you will find that this is not so.

The author at Asakusa Kannon Temple (Sensoji).

People waft smoke over their bodies from the bronze incense burner
before worship. Some believe that the smoke can heal
or prevent illness. I'm skeptical---naturally.

 

Buddhism recognizes the existence, at any ‘point’ in space-time, of a plurality or multiplicity of interacting factors that can, at any time, produce a certain effect. We are talking about a complex, ever-changing, dynamic system whose parts are mutually dependent. In the ‘Fire Sermon’ (Aditta Sutta), the Buddha is recorded as having said:

The eye, O monks, is burning; visible things are burning; the mental impressions based on the eye are burning; the contact of the eye with visible things is burning; the sensation produced by the contact of the eye with visible things, be it pleasant, be it painful, be it neither pleasant nor painful, that also is burning. With what fire is it burning? I declare unto you that it is burning with the fire of greed, with the fire of anger, with the fire of ignorance; it is burning with the anxieties of birth, decay, death, grief, lamentation, suffering, dejection, and despair.

The ear is burning, sounds are burning, … The nose is burning, odors are burning, ... The tongue is burning, tastes are burning, ... The body is burning, objects of contact are burning, ... The mind is burning, thoughts are burning, all are burning with the fire of greed, of anger, and of ignorance.

The Fire Sermon presents, albeit in a highly lyrical way, a plurality of multiple situations that are in continuous process. That is causation---processes continuing into one another. Such is life ... wandering, wandering, waxing and waning. We live and die from moment to moment. 

The Vietnamese monk and Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh uses the expression ‘InterBeing’ to refer to this state and process of interdependence. It is important, however, to note that Buddhism is not monistic. No form of Buddhism affirms that all things are in reality one. Nevertheless, a single ‘logic’ applies to all things, for all things exist in the same ‘level’ or plane of existence and observability.

All of this is very profound---but also very simple. Delightfully so. Truth is like that, you know.

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Most thinking people---and even a lot of 'unthinking' people---want to know more about themselves and the human mind. Buddhism has a lot to say about the human mind. That should not come as a surprise, since Buddhism is more a system of psychology than a religion or a philosophy.

Consistent with an overall empiricism, the Buddha, and Buddhism generally, reject the idea that consciousness is an entity at all. Buddhist psychology recognises the following four functions (as opposed to ‘mental entities’, which they are not) of the mind: consciousness (viññāna), perception (sañña), feeling of body sensations (verdanā), and reaction (sankhāra). Now, the Buddha reportedly said:

Whatever suffering arises

Has a reaction as its cause.

If all reactions cease to be

Then there is no more suffering.

    [Sutta Nipata III, 12.]

We experience, for example, a ‘sensation’, which may be physical or mental. If we react to that sensation with ‘liking’ or ‘disliking’---that is, with craving, attachment or aversion---that is karma (kamma). The word karma means 'action'---in this case, mental action in the form of a mindless, involuntary reaction to some input. The result? Pain, suffering or distress. However, if, on the other hand, we simply allow ourselves to be dispassionately and choicelessly aware of the sensation---note, we should not try to ‘know’ (let alone judge or analyse) the sensation per se---then there is no ‘cause’ to produce any pain, suffering or distress. In other words, no reaction, no cause---and no effect. 'Like attracts like.' So, Buddhism takes the cause-and-effect process back one step earlier. In Western popular psychology, the primary emphasis is on avoiding negative thinking and the like, in the belief that as negative thoughts lead to negative results, so positive thoughts will inevitably lead to positive results---an obvious but debatable proposition. However, if we go back a step, and when something happens we simply do not allow a reaction (eg disliking) to arise in the first place---in other words, we simply let the sensation (input) be---then there will be no opportunity for any negative thought to arise at all.

Consistent with Buddhism's methodological and ontological emphasis on the need for direct observation, Buddhist psychology asserts that the ‘best’ way of obtaining psychological knowledge about oneself is by direct, objective observation of one’s thoughts, feelings and perceptions as well as one’s bodily sensations---without any identification of ‘I’, ‘me’ or ‘mine’. Thoughts, feelings, perceptions and sensations arise and pass away by natural laws of cause and effect. They wax and wane. They arise and vanish. In Buddhism, reality---what is---is that which comes and goes, waxes and wanes, arises and vanishes. However, with careful observation and choiceless (non-judgmental) awareness we are able to discern and understand those laws. Now, in order for there to be an immediacy and directness about our moment-to-moment experience of life, three events need to occur more-or-less simultaneously. Those three events are: touch (or sensation), awareness, and mindfulness. If those three events are not simultaneously experienced, what will be experienced will be nothing but the past, for the reality of the immediate experience will already have subsided. Indeed, any consciousness of it will be in the form of an after-thought or a memory, as we glance back to re-experience, and (sadly, yes) evaluate, a past experience. I am reminded of something the Scottish-born Australian philosopher John Anderson (pictured below) wrote in his landmark 1934 journal article ‘Mind as Feeling’:

Progress in psychology may therefore be made by the actual discovery of the emotional character of sentiments or motives, i.e., of what is in our minds, as contrasted with what is before our minds. [In Studies in Empirical Philosophy (Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1962), p 75.] 

Specifically, the Buddhist 'system of deliverance' treats what Buddhism often calls an 'illusory [or a 'false'] mind' (that is, a mind characterized and dominated by wandering, oppositional and discriminatory thoughts) with a view to bringing into manifestation a 'true [or 'pure'] mind' (being a mind which is not in opposition to itself). It has been said that, for the first time, the Buddha taught that not only was self-deliverance (or self-liberation) possible, it could be attained independently of an external agency. He said, ‘I have delivered you towards deliverance. The Dhamma, the Truth is to be self-realized.’

Buddhism has something distinctively unique and, I think, very meaningful to say about ‘disease of the mind’, and it is this: the root cause of our disorder, distress, sorrow, anxiety, stress, tension, insecurity, discontent, frustration, and general ‘unsatisfactoriness’ (dukkha) is attachment, craving, grasping and clinging of various kinds (collectively, upādāna), especially, clinging to ‘mind stuff’ in the form of, among other things, ideas, thoughts, feelings, beliefs, opinions and prejudices. All of this ‘mind stuff’ we then turn back on itself and on ourselves. That is tantamount to insanity but we are all very good at doing it---most of our waking hours (if not whilst asleep as well). Instead of living by reason and direct experience (sanity), we are driven by emotional compulsion. Worse, we cling to the ‘self’ as self, and we even manage to convince ourselves that we ‘belong’ to that self, and that we are those myriads of I’s and me’s that make up our waxing and waning consciousness (the latter simply being the function consisting of apprehending the bare phenomenal world, that is, cognition):

Whenever there is a functioning sense-organ (eye, ear, tongue, nose, body and mind), a sense-object (visual form, sound, taste, smell, touch and thought) entering into the field of the sense-organ then, with these brought together, there is the manifestation of the part of consciousness referring to the specific sense-organ. [Majjhimanikāya, i, 190.]

Now, when it came to attempting to explain the conventionally accepted concept of ‘person’, the Buddha referred to various ‘elements’ at work in a person---the ‘five aggregates’ (the skandhas [Sanskrit] or khandhas [Pāli, ‘aggregates’ in English], also known as the ‘five hindrances’), namely, the ‘illusions’ arising from matter or bodily form, emotion or feeling, recognition or perception, mental formations (eg fixations and conclusions of the mind such as attitudes, beliefs and opinions), and consciousness. (Consciousness is regarded as an ‘aggregate’ more because ‘it’ tends to intensify ego-fixation as opposed to its being a ‘thing’ in itself.) The ‘mental’ is anything but a unitary agent. Consistent with the overall pluralism, we are talking about a plurality of complex interacting forces, that is, distinct but connected, pluralistic complexes grounded in spacetime.

The Buddha, who saw a human being as simply an amalgam of ever-changing phenomena of existence, had this to say about the matter:

The instructed disciple of the Noble Ones does not regard material shape as self, or self as having material shape, or material shape as being in the self, or the self as being in material shape. Nor does he regard feeling, perception, the impulses, or consciousness in any of these ways. He comprehends each of these aggregates as it really is, that it is impermanent, suffering, not-self, compounded, woeful. He does not approach them, grasp after them or determine 'Self for me' ['my self']--and this for a long time conduces to his welfare and happiness.

The instructed disciple of the Noble Ones beholds of material shape, feeling, perception, the impulses, or consciousness: 'This is not mine, this am I not, this is not my self.' So that when the material shape, feeling, perception, the impulses, or consciousness change and become otherwise there arise not from him grief, sorrow, suffering, lamentation, and despair. [Adapted from the Samyutta Nikaya, trans L Feer, in J Kornfield with G Fronsdal (eds), Teachings of the Buddha (Boston and London: Shambhala, 1993), pp 23-24.]

The Buddha makes it clear that the so-called ‘self’ is only an ‘aggregate’ or ‘heap’ of perceptions and sensations. It is, in the words of Manly Palmer Hall, ‘a summary of what is known and what is not known’. We are not a ‘self’; we are persons among persons. The Buddha also acknowledged the important distinction between our perceptions or sensations of things (the fact that on certain occasions certain things are perceived by us) and the things themselves, stating that ‘the senses meet the object and from their contact sensation is born’.

Consistent with his rejection of any ‘unitary’ view of the human mind, Buddha refers to the ‘four establishments’ (cattāro satipaţţhānā), that is, one remains established in the observation of the feelings in the feelings, the observation of the mind in the mind, the observation of the objects of the mind in the objects of the mind, and the observation of the body in the body. For example, when one’s mind is desiring, the practitioner is aware, ‘My mind is desiring.’

There is a refreshing directness about the Buddha’s approach. You see, we never know ‘ideas’ or ‘feelings’ but rather independent things or states of affairs. In other words, what is ‘thought,’ ‘felt,’ ‘sensed,’ etc, are real-world objects or situations. Buddhist psychology ‘works’, not by calling upon people to retreat from the world or to treat the world as an illusion, but by pointing out that the solution to one’s problems is to be found in the directness, immediacy and actuality of ‘things’ themselves. Don’t retreat, but engage. Don’t fear, just look and see and come to understand.

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