.
P.3
In its history, the scholarly study of meditation
has been the preserve of orientalists, historians
and phenomenologists of religion, and, more
recently, psychologists of consciousness. These
investigators have, on the whole, been mindful of
philological, textual, and descriptive matters.
Little attention has been given to philosophical,
theoretical, or sociological aspects of meditation.
In particular, the many possible connections between
characteristics of meditational practice and
institutionalized theories of knowledge, brought to
light in other areas by the sociology of knowledge,
have been ignored.
By way of innovation, I want to see how
epistemological perspectives might illuminate the
shape of Buddhist attitudes toward the gradual or
sudden attainment of enlightenment. Using a modified
and rather informal structuralism, I want to compare
the structures of institutionalized theories of
knowledge with the structures of meditational
practices and beliefs to see whether one might
understand the characteristics of these practices
and beliefs in terms of their underlying
epistemological structure. I want to argue that one
can plot the salient characteristics of meditational
practices--here, whether enlightenment occurs
gradually or suddenly--as symptoms of the
presupposed structure of their institutionalized
theory of knowledge.
But before embarking on the critical study of
meditational practices we ought to first clarify
just what the Buddhists themselves thought about
gradual and sudden enlightenment, and how they
conceived the relation of these aspects of
meditational practice to their beliefs about the
acquisition of knowledge.
I. APPROACHES TO THE PROBLEM OF GRADUAL AND SUDDEN
ENLIGHTENMENT:
NATURALISM AND PHENOMENOLOGY
It is commonplace to read that Theravaada Buddhism
teaches that nirvaa.na is attained gradually and
that Chan or Zen Buddhism teaches 'sudden'
enlightenment. Little is said about the bases for
studying what such meditational claims mean, and
less is said about the logical grammar of words as
peculiar as 'gradual'. Typically, it is facilely
assumed that this problem is merely a factual matter
about temporal duration. On this view, to say
enlightenment is 'gradual' usually means that it
takes a long time for this quasi-mental state to
occur. Such a claim does not seem logically
different than saying that it took a person a long
time to get 'dizzy' or 'drunk,' and so on. Now, to
put a factual stress on this matter should
immediately strike anyone familiar with the
pragmatic attitude of (early) Buddhism as odd.
Surely, it must have
¢w¢w¢w¢w¢w¢w¢w¢w¢w¢w¢w¢w¢w¢w¢w¢w¢w¢w¢w
NOTE: This article was first read in another version
at the International History of Religious Congress,
August, 1975 at the University of Lancaster,
Lancaster, England.
All references to the Pali Canon are given in
standard form and are quoted from the translations
of I.B.Horner, Middle Length Sayings, 3 volumes
(London: Luzac, 1959, 1957, 1954).
P.4
been unedifying for an early Buddhist to be
concerned with rather speculative matters of fact.
Is this just an example of 'corruption' in early
Buddhism, analogous to the storied medieval
Christian scholastic problem of angels on the head
of a pin? What could be the practical salvific value
of talk of gradualism in various Buddhist contexts?
What could have been the possible interest for an
early Buddhist in saying that enlightenment was to
be attained gradually?
Despite such considerations, scholars of
meditation have persisted in treating meditational
discourses as mere descriptive matters of fact. This
is true, even though these scholars disagree
implicitly about what counts as a 'fact', or,
perhaps more accurately, stress different views
about what counts as a fact. Basically, two such
emphases seem current. As applied to my earlier
example of dizziness, one may take the fact of
dizziness to be an experience in which case one
might term such an approach 'phenomenological.'
However, one might feel required to seek facts in
some supposedly underlying neurophysiological
process, in which case one might term such an
approach 'naturalist.' Although both naturalist and
phenomenologist would agree that temporal duration
was crucial to the meaning of 'gradual', they would
not agree about the nature of what endured in time.
I am convinced both these approaches emphasize
the wrong things about Buddhist gradualism--for
whatever different reasons. Not only does the Pali
Canon tell a more complete story, but another order
of analysis of the texts is required. Basically I
believe those tempted by either of these two
approaches mistake a norm for a matter of fact, and
that where a fact may be indicated, it tends more
often to be a spatial fact, rather than a temporal
one. Although the temporal and the factual question
may not be without interest, it does not seem to be
the chief concern of the Pali Suttas. Here, the
Buddha recommends a particular mode of life--an
issue which reads far beyond any such unedifying
factual matter of the speed of the attainment of
nirvaa.na.
Taking the temporal point first, it would seem
important to note that the term 'gradual' is
ordinarily used in two quite different ways: Insofar
as 'gradual' is used factually, it may indeed mean
something temporal, like 'slow.' But, it may also
mean 'graded.' It may be a temporal word just as
easily as it may be a spatial one. The same is true
of the Pall term anupubba, as I shall show in the
discussion of the Pall Canon's view of "gradual"
enlightenment. Thus, 'gradual' is like other words
that play across the temporal and spatial conditions
of experience. Does a 'dashing' man need to be fleet
of foot? Does a 'snappy' dresser need to be quick
with buttons and zippers? Although spatial and
temporal uses of 'gradual' often coincide, they need
not do so. Doing something gradually--by degrees, in
stages--may take less time than trying to do the
same task at one go. Gradual methods are, indeed,
often devised to save time---say, in building a
house, taming a horse, writing a book, or attaining
nirvaa.na-especially when contrasted to available
alternatives in achieving the same sophisticated
result. Perhaps, part of the reason this spatial
sense of
P.5
'gradual' escapes our attention may have something
to do with the fact that the ordinary English
contrast word, 'sudden,' does not seem to have a
spatial sense at all. It only seems to have temporal
uses, and thus by analogy, we think of 'gradual' in
the same way. Attention to the contexts of the
discourses on gradualism tells another story.
As one might emphasize either temporal or
spatial aspects of gradualism so also have scholars
of meditation emphasized different senses in which
meditational forces are facts. Through their
reliance on neurological research, the psychologists
of consciousness exemplify a naturalistic approach.
The question of gradual attainment of enlightenment
would become a question to be settled by measuring
the duration of 'extent' of certain neurological
processes. Now, the psychologists of consciousness
have not, to my knowledge, dealt with our particular
problem. Yet, it would seem important--at least in
passing--to represent their increasingly popular
work in this context--even if I am forced to
extrapolate from their more general work on
meditation. They seem to exemplify an extreme
contrast to the kind of epistemological approach I
advocate, since they seem to avoid the whole issue
of the theory-ladenness of meditational 'facts.'
A characteristic of this loosely related group
of writers is their reliance on quantitative
neurological investigation of meditation. Typical of
this view is the work of Dan Goleman. Here, EEGs
supposedly get the investigator behind "abstract
concept"---'the realm of discourse' (the beliefs and
reports of meditators) to the "raw data."(1)
Conveniently, this move (if possible) liberates the
investigator from the need to deal with troublesome
institutions, beliefs, theories, and critics! Thanks
to the EEG one reaches the promised land of
value-free inquiry. Consistent with this
supralinguistic approach, no arguments will be found
supporting such claims that a conceptually neutral
realm has been reached. In their stead one finds
pronouncements and decrees--poor surrogates for
solutions to our awkward epistemological position,
But, instead of evading epistemological issues, I
believe we ought to face them squarely: What
presuppositions, theories, beliefs, and institutions
condition mystical or meditative experience? What
sense can one make of truth claims made under such
conditions?
It is to the phenomenologists of religion, like
Winston King, however, that one must look for the
most direct discussion of our problem. In a
comparison of Theravaada and Zen meditation, King
concludes that there is really no difference between
sudden and gradual attainments of enlightenment. As
one might expect from a phenomenologist, King
believes that there is in fact no difference,
because there is no experiential difference between
sudden and gradual attainment of enlightenment.
"suddenness" or "gradualness" of enlightenment...
appears to depend primarily upon emphasis and/or
point of specification. One may choose to emphasize
the prior preparation... and call it "gradual"; or
one may stress
P.6
the experiential breakthrough and call it "sudden."
But in both Theravaada and Zen, there are
development and pinpointed breakthrough.(2)
For King, this virtually closes the case. If,
however, one takes seriously the theory-ladenness of
meditational experiences, the hard questions just
begin. Why, indeed, the differences in "stress," as
King himself is compelled to ask? Why the canonical,
commentarial, and modern norm among Theravaadins
that nirvaa.na comes gradually? King's reply to his
own question is couched in terms of "the Indian
penchant for classification and analysis" versus the
"Sino-Japanese impatience with metaphysical
speculation and a fundamental reliance upon
intuitional apprehension of existential truth."(3)
One wonders what the Buddha would say to the
implication that he was not impatient with
metaphysical speculation. Or what the Hua-Yen
philosophers would say to the implication that they
were not among the most supreme speculative
metaphysicians of all time. But, like many cultural
generalizations, King's also contains an unexpected
germ of truth.
Surprisingly, King drops the matter at this
point. Yet, one should not be altogether puzzled,
since King's approach will not let him push beyond
the reports of experiences to levels of structuring
which may give rise to these experiences. I want to
suggest that an appreciation of fundamental
attitudes toward knowledge may help stimulate
understanding of these divergent views of what may
or may not be identical processes or experiences. In
part, I aim to reinforce Jayatilleke's views about
early Buddhist empiricism by arguing that its
underlying structural pervasiveness accounts for
much of the character of early Buddhist belief in
the gradual attainment of nirvaa.na.(4) Contrary to
what Buddhist empiricists themselves might believe,
I believe that their empiricist epistemology is
symptomatic of a deep yet compromised empiricist
structure.
II. THE PALI CANON ON GRADUALISM
The classical and principal discussions of
gradualism occur in four places in the Majjhima
Nikaaya (MN). In two condensed analogies, the Buddha
teaches what has become known crudely as "gradual
enlightenment." Both these analogies--taming a
thoroughbred colt (MN I.445-446; MN III.1-6) and
mastering complex skills (calculating and archery:
MN III.1-6)--indicate much of the character of
gradualism, which I shall explain shortly. In MN
I(480-481), the Buddha deals directly with gradual
attainment of pa~n~naa. Contrary to popular
misconception, this shows that the distinction
between gradual and sudden enlightenment differs
from the distinction between those who attain
nirvaa.na by pa~n~naa and the jhaanas, respectively.
As the Buddha implies in MN I(478ff) , the
pa~n~naavimutta seems to achieve nirvaa.na
immediately (in both spatial and temporal senses),
because he has previously achieved those stages of
sanctity which others may only now be set to
achieve.
P.7
The compounds of the Pali anupubba (Skt.,
anu-puurva) "gradual" are numerous, and occupy
nearly three columns in Trenckner's Critical Pali
Dictionary.(5) For the purposes of this article, I
shall treat only the relevant compounds and deal
with the pertinent aspects of their logical grammar.
This pragmatic approach may leave the linguistic
survey of these compounds incomplete, but I believe
I have covered all pertinent issues from the
philosophical point of view. The compounds of
anupubba have both broad and narrow references: they
may refer to the entire effort of attaining
enlightenment as well as to the stages of
meditational attainment and pedagogical practice.
Thus, terms like anupubba-kaarana, "gradual
training, " anupubba-kiriyaa, "gradual working, "
anupubba-patipadaa, "gradual progress, "
anupubba-samaaptaai, "gradual attainment, " and
anupubba-sikkhaa, "gradual training" refer broadly
to the systematic or successive character of the
whole Buddhist way of life, from first silas to
final release. Considering the narrower context of
the jhaanas, one completes a gradual cessation of
consciousness (anupubba-nirodha), or one is said to
come to dwell in certain graded levels of
meditational abodes (anupubba-vihaara). Finally, one
may speak about pedagogical matters, in what seems a
prescriptive epistemological way, about the Buddha's
normative gradual method of instruction
(anupubba-kathaa) and its correlative, the student's
gradual method of study or training
(anupubba-sikkhaa).(6)
Some of these notions need explaining. The early
Buddhists held definite beliefs about the details
and reality of the mental landscape. The meditator
was thought to ascend a graded trail of real, though
impermanent, mental steps (jhaanas) , one after
another, until the summit of nirvaa.na was won. It
is true that nirvaa.na is not itself another jhaana
and, that, strictly speaking, is not necessarily
'won' by meditation: it is not the causal product of
the process of meditation. Yet, there is some
relation between meditation and nirvaa.na, although
the precise nature of it is often difficult to make
out. More on this matter shortly. Moreover, the
progress of the meditator through the jhaanas was
also thought to be open to precise location in terms
of a psychological map of the real, though
impermanent, mind. To follow the Buddha meant, in
part, to accept his map of the mind--at least
provisionally for the purpose of testing its
accuracy and its utility for attaining release. In
meditation, these directions were, in turn, tested
for their truth--although, of course, the question
of vicious circularity is conveniently passed over
by the Buddhists. One might also add that as the
route to nirvaa.na by meditation was graded, so was
the goal itself, in some sense, graded. Early
Buddhist notions of levels of accomplishment, like
"Streamwinner," "Once-returner," and so on, seem to
point in the same direction of
gradual--graded--attainment.
Apart from these descriptive uses of the grades
of attainment, two aspects of the early Buddhist
attitude to saving knowledge are also termed
"gradual" although in a different sense than we have
seen thus far. The context of this new sense of
"gradual" is the classical Buddhist milieu of
learning and teaching
P.8
Gradual teaching or instruction (anupubba-kathaa)
refers to the Buddha's normative analytical and
graded pedagogy.(7) This method of instruction
exemplifies the Buddha's use of skill-in-means
(upaaya-kosalla) (8) which, as Jayatilleke has
argued, encompasses a kind of openness to
falsification and corresponding obligation for
verification.(9) Because of his compassionate care
and sympathy for humanity and its physical and
intellectual suffering, the Buddha prescribed
teaching the dhamma in orderly and logical ways,
tailored to the needs and capacities of his
listeners, and open, in large measure, to dispute
and verification.(10) Although, at times he speaks
in the didactic mode, the Buddha eschewed an abrupt,
paradoxical, or esoteric mode, typical of the
thwacks and slaps of some Zen Buddhist pedagogy and
the later Mahaayaana uses of upaaya, respectively.
From the perspective of the student, gradualism
requires a correspondingly earnest methodical and
analytic study of the dhamma. A student is
responsible for testing and verifying the dhamma
experientially. If one follows Jayatilleke here,
epistemological gradualism--this attitude of
experiential scrutiny--applies to all aspects of the
dhamma--both to preliminary matters as well as to
those which arise at rarified meditational
levels.(11)
One cannot then conclude that the gradual
attainment of enlightenment primarily meant that
nirvaa.na came slowly, or that it was the norm of
the slow-witted. This, at any rate, is not the view
of the Pali Canon. For the early Buddhists,
gradualism was a complex notion, involving both the
description of a graded model of the meditational
and cognitive landscape, along with certain values
or prescriptions about the proper epistemological
attitude of scrutiny and experiential testing needed
at all levels of the teaching and learning process
of attaining release.
In another discussion on Theravaada meditation,
Winston King underscores this opposition of
description and prescription by repeating it inb
terms of the contrast between jhaanic and
vipaassanic aspects of meditation.(12) Although
these two aspects are "set in tension with each
other,"(13) they also complement each other.(14)
Vipaassana (insight) supplies "critical
awareness"(15) of the jhaanic attainments, a
"reviewing of the path."(16) The jhaanic route thus
describes a journey through a series of gradually
ascending stages, while vipaassana censors and
scrutinizes the quality of those achievements.
For King, the central question still remains why
these two disciplines are combined at all. What is
achieved by their combination in the trance of
cessation (nirodha-sampaatti), or in the Theravaada
tradition as a whole? Once again King couches his
explanation in experiential or phenomenological
terms:
The jhaanic discipline contributes meditational
expertise, which may strengthen the concentration of
the vipassanic meditator... and very importantly
gives a quality of depth and lastingness of
experiential attainment.... On the reverse sides,
vipaassana keeps the whole jhaanic progression
within Buddhist bounds so that none of its utterly
peaceful states will be construed as the final goal
of meditation.(17)
P.9
Now, I do not wish to quibble with these
admirable conclusions. They strike me as sensitive
and germane. Indeed, I should like to confirm them,
and also take them a step further beyond the
phenomenological level which they occupy. I am urging
the reader to consider that there are deeper reasons
behind this felicitous conjunction of meditational
modes, which I, first of all, identify as
epistemological in nature. My `hunch' is that the
connection between the jhaanic description of
cognitive growth with the vipaasanic epistemological
scrutiny suggests a fundamental connection with a
comprised empiricist syndrome recently spelled out by
Ernest Gellner.(18) There are parallels to the
specific conjunction of the jhaanic and vipaassanic
modes of meditation in similar conjunctions in the
general development of empiricist approaches to the
growth of knowledge. Jhaanic and vipaassanic modes of
meditation are joined for the same reason similar
aspects of the general empiricist theory of knowledge
are joined.
III. THE "GHOST" MEETS THE "MACHINE"
One can speak of an `empiricist syndrome' today
largely because it has been the subject of intense
debate by modern epistemologists. This is perhaps
especially true of north Atlantic analytic
philosophy, although the ferment on the continent in
Marxist and structuralist circles seems to focus on
similar issues from the opposite philosophical shore.
Among philosophers of science, Ernest Gellner has
been particularly active in recent years in this
area. Gellner believes one ought to distinguish two
moments i1 the life of empiricism as it has developed
in certain favored contexts: empiricism is both a
description of how knowledge works and a prescription
about what ought to count as knowledge. As a
description, empiricism offers a mere "toddler's toy"
model,(19) far too crude and simple to reflect the
complexity of cognition; but, as a prescription, it
provides a useful "touchstone,"(20) admirably stating
a clear normative attitude toward the limits of
cognition. In this latter sense, empiricism acts as a
"censor" or "selector, "(21) laying down two
imperatives: "Be sensitive to whether or not
assertions are testable (in the specified approved
manner)! Spurn those which are not! "(22) Gellner
realizes that an empiricist would not typically
recognize that empiricism itself rests of
prescriptions. Indeed, part of what being an
empiricist has meant in the past, has been bound up
with the conviction that our cognitive situation is
grounded in unbiased observations. But, for Gellner
and any one of the numerous critics of empiricism
today, this is just not so.
As for the empiricist "toddler's toy" model, it
can be summarized along the lines of an acquistive
enterprise. Beginning with an active external world
and a passive internal one, the inner world of
`concepts' or `knowledge' is built up by accumulating
sense-data. But, since all one `knows' consists of
sense-data, the existence of a world behind
sense-data becomes theoretically problematic, and
unless something intervenes, one is led down the
primrose path to
p. 10
phenomenalism and nominalism. In this condition one
can still `generalize,' by assembling sense-data into
complex `beliefs' or `ideas' by `induction.' The
truth of these beliefs is tested or verified by
`correspondence' with the facts of sense experience.
This comparison of simple and complex is achieved
through the process of `analyzing' complex `beliefs'
into their constituent sense-data. Normative
statements analyzed in this fashion reveal no world
of `good' or `bad,' but mere pleasures, pains, or
emotions. Science, especially in its reductionist and
impersonalist moods, represents the kind of model
explanation of the world of experience to which all
other cognitive enterprises should aspire.
For Gellner, empiricism tends toward solipsism
and eventually idealism--as long as it remains pure.
After all, experience is just my experience. My
experience is composed of private sense-data, and the
existence of the external world is necessarily left
in doubt. Yet, historically and, in Gellner's view,
happily, empiricism did not in every case actually
retain its purity and develop into idealism and
soliphism; Bishop Berkeley was not the sole heir to
the empiricist tradition. The Utilitarians, Locke,
Russell, and others, claim this birthright as well.
Their thought embodies a salutary convergence of
empiricism and materialism--the "ghost" and the
"machine," in Gellner's words. These thinkers sought
a "stable, recognisable structure that could somehow
be reached through the qualitative sense-data
available to the ghost."(23) Because of their
confidence in knowing the world, they also believed
that the world was improvable, and that analysis and
scrutiny were both worthwhile and appropriate
activities for human beings.
IV. EARLY BUDDHIST EMPIRICISM AND MEDITATION
Gellner's myth about this compromised empiricism fits
remarkably well with K. N. Jayatilleke's account of
early Buddhist theory of knowledge-especially in the
way it resists idealism (as later Buddhist thought
does not) and allies itself with materialism.(24)
Early Buddhism populates the vacuum between
experience and the otherwise noumenal world with
real, though impermanent and causally conditioned,
causally agent, material sense-data. These
sense-data, in turn, activate the causally passive
(initially, at any rate) and material mind, producing
`knowledge' of the world. For both Gellner and early
Buddhism this convergence of "ghost" and "machine"
reinforces the characteristic empiricist
epistemological attitude of analysis.(25) This
analytic spirit--like perhaps the "spirit" of
Protestantism or capitalism in Weber--fits with the
spirit of the development of traditional empiricism
and early Buddhism. Both take the world seriously,
because it is not illusory; both exhibit a "salutary
censoriousness" which "seems only to come when
cognitive hope and confidence have already been
raised high."(26) This is why both Gellner's
compromised empiricism and early Buddhism
(surprisingly and in different ways to be sure) lead
to "puritanical orderly world-reform and cognitive
explora-
p. 11
tion, " rather than to Schopenhaurian pessimism,
aestheticism, and mysticism, on the one hand, or to
indulgent hippie grooviness, on the other.(27)
To those who imagine Buddhism to be
Schopenhaurian, pessimistic, mystical, and so on,
this claim will come as a shock. And, it is true that
much of the Buddhist tradition has been all these
things. Yet, Jayatilleke's research, for one, has
done much to rectify this image of Buddhism--at least
as it seems to have taken shape in the Pali Canon.
The Utilitarians, for example, "took the world
seriously." But, this meant attention to political
reform, technological development, and cognitive
exploration in the natural sciences. With the early
Buddhists, this earnest spirit took the form of
individual ethical and psychological reform, the
establishment of an alternative model society--the
Buddhist monastic community, the Sangha--cognitive
exploration and therapy aimed at seeking the
psychological roots of suffering more in the style of
Freud and the psychotherapists.(28)
This is not to deny the differences between
Gellner's compromised empiricism and early Buddhist
empiricism; it is only to show that they are not
differences of "spirit." Moreover, in some ways,
early Buddhism is even more optimistic than its
counterparts in European empiricism. It stands for
the possibility of the radical development of human
cognitive potentials: Men can know the real nature of
the world and nirvaa.na. This enlarges the range of
experiential knowledge, taking in meditational
states, kinds of ESP, and states transcendental to
the ordinary man.(29)
The cognitive optimism of early Buddhism rests,
in turn, on the presuppositions underlying the theory
of meditation outlined earlier. The Buddhists thought
they knew how the mind worked and what techniques
would best serve to enable it to work for human
happiness. Insofar as early Buddhist meditation
methods are concerned, they are specific to the
compromised empiricist theory of knowledge spelled
out by Gellner. One can, in fact, generate the model
of early Buddhist meditation merely by reversing the
order of the empiricist model of critical
accumulation of sense-data. As one had gradually
accumulated sense-data and passed them before the
inner censor, the "ghost, " before risking
knowledge-claims, so also in meditation one gradually
surpasses classes of sense-data experience and
knowledge. Urged on by vipaassana criticism, the
meditator presses along the jhaanic route to higher
meditational levels, completely stripped of
sense-data information.
Thus, reliable ordinary knowledge as well as
nirvaa.na require gradual, diligent, and critical
attention--analytic care in sifting our perceptions
and beliefs. In meditation, this becomes even more
severe as the meditator empties the mind of these
data, noting their content and form as they are
transcended until nirvaa.na itself is attained. One
is not typically encouraged to leap to conclusions
(or nirvaa.na) in early Buddhism. One is invited to
analyze and verify the dhamma experientially and
ultimately in meditation. The meditator initiates a
relentless and deliberate selection process, which
seeks to liberate the per-
p. 12
ceiver from the bondage of the inward flow of
causally agent sensations. In meditation, a Buddhist
tries to understand sense-data, and therefore
knowledge, in their own terms, and declare them for
what they are.
All this makes for a measured and certain
optimism about man's potential for salvation unaided
by occult power or cosmic fate. In the context of
this analytic, trial-and-error cognitive quest, one
is advised not to expect rapid results, although
these could, of course, occur. The early Buddhists
encouraged persistence. Effort brought results. The
point was to keep at it, to form the habits of mind
and action which would surely (but not automatically)
bring results.
V. GRADUAL AND SUDDEN ENLIGHTENMENT: HISTORIC DEBATES
I: CHINA
Thus far, I have tried to illuminate the nature of
early Buddhist meditation and the belief in gradual
enlightenment by appealing to the notion of early
Buddhist empiricism. In a nutshell, I have argued
that early Buddhist meditation theory is imbedded in
a compromised empiricist epistemology and, as such,
will reflect salient characteristics of this
epistemological syndrome. Even though ordinary
knowledge requires accumulating sense-data, both
processes occur by `gradual' means--in both the
descriptive and prescriptive senses of that term. As
a structuralist, I have shown that Gellner's
compromised version of empiricism is homologous to
early Buddhist empiricism in both descriptive and
prescriptive dimensions. Meditation in early Buddhism
constitutes a counterpoint variant of this common
theme, seeming for the most part a structural
inversion of the empiricist statement about ordinary
acquisition of knowledge.
The critical reader will want some test of this
thesis. And, if structuralism is not to become just
another occasion for clever dialectical shenanigans,
structuralists must offer some check on their own
method. The perfect test of this thesis would be a
debate between a proponent of early Buddhist
empiricism who held the gradualist position, and
another kind of Buddhist who held the sudden
position--typically a Rinzai Zen Buddhist. The nature
of the test would be to see if one could correlate
opposed beliefs about the attainment of enlightenment
with opposed epistemological beliefs-understanding
all the while that both kinds of epistemologies may
operate in these contexts in compromised forms.
In the history of Buddhism, the issue of gradual
and sudden enlightenment has arisen on two
conspicuous occasions: the eighth-century
controversies between the Northern and Southern
schools of Ch'an Buddhism in China, and between the
Indian and Chinese parties at the Council of bSam Yas
(792-794) (the so-called Council of Lhasa) in
Tibet.(30) Of the two, the Chinese controversy gives
fullest treatment to the sudden position. Indeed, the
locus classicus of the sudden view remains the
Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch, attributed to
the `victor' of the debate and founder of the
Southern school of
p. 13
Ch'an, Hui-Neng (638-713). Thanks to Yampolsky's
recent research of this text and its historical
context, (31) much has become clear. For one,
Yampolsky argues that one should attribute the
authorship of the suutra to Shen-hui, one of
Hui-Neng's disciples, rather than to the sixth
patriarch himself. Together with Dumoulin's work in
this area, one can be reasonably certain in
correlating Hui-Neng's sudden theory of enlightenment
with a certain epistemological-cum-ontological
position opposed to that of early Buddhism.
We know that Hui-Neng (Shen-hui)(32) taught the
"sudden'' attainment of enlightenment against the
celebrated Ch'an teacher, and sixth patriarch
according to the Northern school, Shen-hsiu. But,
what did be mean? Dumoulin claims that Hui-Neng even
makes it the sole criterion for orthodoxy!(33) What
can be contained in this cryptic claim to merit such
importance? And what can explain the fierce attacks
Hui-Neng aimed at Shen-hsiu? Well, Hui-Neng most
certainly did not mean enlightenment was "easily
obtainable" or even quickly won,(34) although these
were not ruled out. Like the early Buddhists,
Hui-Neng had higher purposes in mind. Both were
concerned to make certain points about human
psychology and knowledge, using the idioms of
temporal duration and spatial levels when these
suited their purposes. Both seem to insist, quite
often without apparent purpose, that enlightenment
occurred in a way harmonious with their practices and
basic views.
Dumoulin(35) and Yampolsky agree that the belief
in sudden enlightenment has two sides. Negatively, it
denies that the goal, praj~naa, can be produced by a
"step-by-step process of meditation, "(36)
dhyaana--odd, one would have thought, for the Dhyaana
school (Ch'an) to assert. Positively, it was a way of
asserting the truth of a priori nonduality--that
praj~naa is "something possessed from the outset by
everyone."(37) The point is to realize the imminent a
priori nature of enlightenment and to let it shine
through. Meditation cannot effect enlightenment
because, strictly speaking, meditation and the
passions it seeks to purge are ontologically empty
and illusory.
Thus, at bottom, the doctrine of sudden
enlightenment is a way of denying the jhanaas and of
asserting the a priori nature of enlightenment in the
idiom of meditational practice. As the early
Buddhists set out to operationalize early Buddhist
empiricism with the descriptive and prescriptive
senses of gradualism, so also does Hui-Neng seem
intent on operationalizing his own philosophical
position in the sudden view of the attainment of
enlightenment: there are no real--even
impermanent--grades of enlightenment; thus there is
no need to test for a priori enlightenment, since all
beings are enlightened by nature.
One will recall that the Pall Canon would
certainly tell another kind of story. Although
meditational progress through the jhaanas does not
causally produce nirvaa.na on the early Buddhist
view, in conjunction with vipaasana, it is one
important way to attain it. However impermanent they
may be, one seeks to transcend the constraints of
real (though impermanent) mind and world.
Impermanence itself signals that progress can be
made. But, early Buddhist
p. 14
soteriological optimism could not lead to the
seemingly exaggerated optimism embodied in the belief
in a priori enlightenment--that the battle was
already won, or that virtually no battle needed to be
fought. Nirvaa.na, on the other hand, transcends
experience without being prior to experience. It is
not, strictly speaking, posterior to experience
either, since it is not, as it were, an inductive,
empirical generalization, or caused by meditation. If
I may be permitted a neologism, the word
'transposterior' (to experience) may capture the
flavor of the relationship of nirvaa.na to ordinary
experience. By this I mean that nirvaa.na is not a
priori, and only can be said to be a posteriori if
one stipulates that it is held to transcend
experience.(38) Historically, this position may have
arisen from conflict with brahminical rationalists,
if we follow Jayatilleke's(39) suggestion. What
remains important is the early Buddhist aversion to
apriorism--even if it meant constructing an
empiricism which finally may have (to put it
charitably) transcended itself in the special case of
the nature of nivaa.na. Hui-Neng and the Southern
school of Ch'an Buddhism felt no such aversion for
the a priori. In fact, they celebrated it, and
consequently thought that it merely had to be seen
beneath the surface of an already illusory world.
Enlightenment was 'sudden' because it was a priori
and without even ontological competition from an
impermanent world.
VI. GRADUAL AND SUDDEN ENLIGHTENMENT: HISTORIC
DEBATES II: TIBET
The second classic locus of this debate is the late
eighth-century controversy which occasioned the
Council of bSam Yas (so-called Council of Lhasa).
Here, the Indian Maadhyamika logician, Kamala`siila
(742-804) argued a gradualist position against a
Chinese Ch'an teacher, Hva San, and his Tibetan
allies the rDzogs-chen. Far more importance is
attached to this debate than may seem warranted. Yet,
the issue was clearly thought to have been central to
the subsequent development of Buddhism in Tibet. Our
accounts of the debate records the point of view of
the victor, in this case Kamalasiila in his own
Bhaavanaakrama. We learn little of the views of
Hva-San and his company from this text and are thus
led to speculate about their fuller form and the
possible relationship with the earlier teachings of
Hui-Neng and his school. Although the connections
between these two are not certain, many similarities
of points of view can be established, which in
themselves may point in the direction of
relationship.
The interesting thing about Kamala`siila is that
he seems to argue a gradualism similar to what we
have discovered in early Buddhist meditation but, at
first sight, without sufficient theoretical basis to
do so. His philosophical position, as best one can
make out from the often conflicting accounts of it,
is exceedingly rich and complex. He seems at once a
Svataantrika Maadhyamakin,(40) `Suunyavaadin, as well
as logician and pragmatist in the tradition of
Dharmakiirti.(41) Historians of Indian philosophy
have also identified him as a critic of the
Yogaacaarins.(42) Kamala`siila, himself,(43) seems to
recognize that these philo-
p. 15
sophical positions produce in him a certain amount of
intellectual and practical tension. This is so
especially in connection with his desire both to
acknowledge the transcendent primacy of `Suunyavaada
monism, along with the rather mumdane, though
nonetheless wholehearted, devotion to the bodhisattva
ideal of compassion and meditation. What makes
Kamala`siila interesting then, is his conviction that
enlightenment comes gradually and that one should
press on with dhyaana and karunaa, despite the
awkward higher truth of the `Suunyataa.(44)
This cannot have been a concern original to
Kamala`siila. Other Maadhyamikas must have shared it.
But, it must have been especially acute in the face
of Hva-San's idealist monistic teachings which
reflected no such qualms about pressing on with the
worldly exercises of dhyaana and karuu.na. Hva-San,
like Hui-Neng, taught sudden enlightenment in the
sense that meditation in the progressive manner was
unnecessary.(45) Perhaps reflecting the supposed
Yogaacaara background of Ch'an, Hva-San teaches the
idealist view that thought is at the root of all
suffering. One need merely stop thinking to stop
suffering. And thinking could be stopped
suddenly--without progress through the jhaanas or
bodhisattvabhuumis.(46) In this way a priori
enlightenment simply shines through. Hva-San sounds
very much the Yogacaarin or close relative of
Hui-Neng's Ch'an Buddhism in this passage:
[We] ourselves [are] coessential with the Buddha, and
all representations which constitute the world being
illusory or a magic play of the Absolute.... What we
need is only to jump... from the plane of
representations into that Buddhahood, our true
nature, by sudden elimination of those mental
representations. We must arrest the play of their
emanation, stop our mind, and see into our own
nature.(47)
But, what is it about having the Buddha-nature
within us that requires a sudden interpretation of
the attainment of enlightenment, along with the
rejection of the jhaanas, analysis, and the
compassion of the bodhisattva? Except for the
doctrine of a priori enlightenment, grounded in the
possession of the Buddha-nature, Kamala`siila and
Hva-San would seem to share at least the
transcendental monism, characteristic of both
`Suunyavaada and Yogaacaara, respectively. One will,
of course, want to make appropriate qualifications
for differences in these characteristics of the
Absolute. Yet, in spite of that, one wonders how and
why Kamala`siila can commit himself so thoroughly to
the worldly practices of dhyaana and karuu.na,
knowing full well that these are ontologically
insubstantial? Has not Hva-San really drawn the
natural consequences of transcendental monism? Is not
Kamala`siila quixotically supporting some venerable,
but outmoded, tradition of the suutras, which by some
kind of intellectual inertia, now soldiers on without
adequate theoretical basis?
Tucci is one of the few scholars to have
appreciated the awkwardness and poignancy of
Kamala`siila's position.(48) But, his rather oblique
solution to Kamala`siila quandry only precipitates a
puzzle of his own. Speaking first of Hva-San, Tucci
claims the sudden enlightenment doctrine follows from
the
p. 16
simultaneous granting of ontological status to both
abhuutaparikalpita ("power of subjective
representation") and `Suunyataa. By contrast,
Kamala`siila then would be said to hold gradualism
because he maintains loyalty to `Suunyavaada monism
by refusing to grant ontological status to anything
but the Absolute.
Yet, it seems incoherent of Tucci to say that it
is Hva-San's simultaneous admission of ontological
status to both these principles which breaks "the
monism of Mahaayaana, "(49) causing meditation to
recede into the background and dictating a subitist
view of the attainment of enlightenment. If anything,
the opposite should occur: If one breaks the monism
of the Mahaayaana into such a dualism, how then can
either of these realities pass away suddenly? If the
abhuutaparikalpita is empowered to project the world
of representation, how does it also pass away in the
face of suunyataa, which Tucci implies is
ontologically distinct? It seems that either the
"monism of Mahaayaana" is not really broken, in which
case Tucci's solution does not even get started, or
that it is broken, in which case one is not yet
enlightened, because one has not yet penetrated into
suunyataa. Either way, Tucci does not seem to have
succeeded in his aim. Moreover, in the fact of his
own supposed monism Kamala`siila's gradualism becomes
all the more mysterious, and not less so.
I would merely point out that the text of the
Bhaavanaakrama gives no indication that Hva-San is
any kind critic of monism. And, if he were, he would
probably prefer gradual enlightenment over the sudden
view. Kamala`siila, on the other hand, does give
indications of having watered down the transcendental
monism one might expect him to have observed.
This stems from Kamala`siila's philosophical
indebtedness to Bhaavaviveka and Dharmakiirti through
his teacher, Saantarak.sita. Potter(50) and
Warder(51) argue independently that Kamala`siila's
thought represents a partial synthesis of the
epistemological traditions of the Pramaanavarttika^m
of Dharmakiirti and the Svataantrika Maadhayamaka of
Bhaavaviveka. Taken together, these influences seem
to confirm Kamala`siila's belief in the worth of
logic and analysis,(52) against what Potter believes
to have been the Yogaacaarin attempt to downgrade
them.(53) Bhaavaviveka is said to have made this kind
of point by advancing the unique view of graded
levels of truth within suunyataa--as well as within
the empirical realm.(54) If this be monism, it is
certainly highly modified. To admit grades of being
is virtually to admit kinds of being, which is really
to break the purer forms of the monism of Mahaayaana.
For Dharmakiirti, the ontological basis of his
positive attitude toward reason seems to be a certain
materialist or physicalist--tending convictions:
Against the Yogaacaarins, Dharmakiirti argued the
"relative independent reality of objects,"(55) and
that reality has "arthakryaatra, the character of
doing something... of making a difference."(56)
Empirical perception (pratyak.sa) is therefore a
pramaa.na (a means of knowledge), and "'effect of
reality"' and not an illusion.(57) In this way
Dharmakiirti undercuts any attempt to empower thought
alone to make real changes in the status of a person
seeking enlightenment.
p. 17
The views of Bhaavaviveka and Dharmakiirti, then,
seem remarkably similar to Kamala`siila's conviction,
throughout the Bhaavanaakrama, that the world and
ordinary knowledge could not merely be thought away,
but had to be Undermined by serious meditative and
analytic praxis. Dharmakiirti even explicitly holds
this view. In Potter's words, "one obtains yogic
insight... by sharpening one's understanding or
insight by meditation and dialectic."(58)
For both Dharmakiirti and Kamala`siila this
seemed also to mean that testing and a spirit of
censoriousness (Gellner) become important. In classic
empiricist style, Dharmakiirti believed a theory of
knowledge ought to stand the test of experience" and
"practice."(59) Quite probably reflecting this
influence while quoting the suutras in his
Nyaayabindupuurvapak.sasank.sipiti, Kamala`siila
reports the Buddha saying:
O Brethern!... never do accept my words from sheer
reverential feelings! Let learned scholars test
them....(60)
In the Bhaavanaakrama, Kamala`siila himself
brings meditation into play with experiential
testing:
Having thus ascertained reality by means of gnosis
consisting in investigation, in order to make this
evident, one should have recourse to the gnosis
consisting in contemplation....(61)
Kamala`siila even seems to share the view of King
about the complementary roles of the jhaanas and
vipaassana in Theravaada Buddhism. Here speaking of
the jhaanas in terms of samaadhi, Kamala`siila seems
to repeat the division of labor between these two
branches of meditation which I also linked with
Gellner's claims about the descriptive and
prescriptive aspects of empiricism:
... when his mind has been taken hold of by the hand,
as it were, of samaadhi, the yogin, by using the
sharper weapon of gnosis should root out the seeds of
false imagination....(62)
In these ways, Kamala`siila seems to conform to
much of the empiricist-cum-materialist spirit of
early Buddhism through the influence of Bhaavaviveka
and Dharmakiirti. To the extent that these empiricist
and materialist tendencies inform Kamala`siila's
thinking about meditation one would explain
Kamala`siila's teaching of the doctrine of gradual
attainment of enlightenment on the same grounds as I
have tried to do with the early Buddhists.
VII. CONCLUSION: BELIEF, PRACTICE, AND STRUCTURE
To gain a unifying structural insight into
Kamala`siila's situation I want to conclude this
discussion by pushing beyond the rather
straightforward discussion of the history and content
of Kamala`siila's thought. Granted that Kamala`siila
was influenced by both Bhaavaviveka and Dharmakiirti,
one might go on to ask what conditions of
Kamala`siila's practical situation reinforced his
adherence to an empiricist and materialist-tending
tradition? Here, I want to suggest that
Kamala`siila's practical discipline of analysis and
compassion
p. 18
may have `fit' better with the world-view he
inherited from Bhaavaviveka and Dharmakiirti, and
thus that, in consequence, it was 'favored'.
Kamala`siila could not have been a pure `Suunyavaadin
Absolutist without suffering substantial disharmonies
in his overall approach to the world. Kamala`siila
may have thought and taught more like an
empiricist-cum-materialist early Buddhist, partly
because he also acted like one. In taking the world
of thought and being as at least provisionally real
in meditation, analysis, and compassionate behavior,
Kamala`siila may very well have come to think about
the appropriate means of release as gradual--much as
did the early Buddhists.
I am suggesting that Kamala`siila's belief in
gradual enlightenment may have been connected to his
practice in somewhat the same way some beliefs might
be said to be induced by certain practices. In the
Buddhist tradition one thinks of the belief in the
transcendental Buddha as having possibly been induced
by the practice of buddhapuujaa, which does not in
itself require such a transcendental object of
worship. Although buddhapuujaa is, strictly speaking,
an act of remembrance, such practices tend, quite
often, to induce a belief in the existence of their
object. Gombrich suggests that in modern Theravaadin
countries one can observe this movement from mere
recollection of the exemplary earthly life of the
long-deceased historical Buddha to the belief in the
transcendental existence of the Buddha, now thought
to be available to human entreaties.(63)
I do not believe these processes happen
mechanically or through causal connections, as
typically conceived. Human culture seems too
intricate and human beings too subtle for the
mechanistic process to be the strongest candidate
explanation here. A likelier model might be one which
takes its rise from Levi-Strauss(64): to the degree
one finds structural affinities between practices and
beliefs, perhaps one should consider such affinities
either a working out of certain deep common
structures, or perhaps related by a sort of formal or
structural causality. Men often do things for
structural reasons--whether the structures lie behind
the things in question or whether they operate on the
same level. In Kamala`siila's case, he may have
advocated the belief in gradual release and the
practice of meditation, analysis, and compassion
because of some deep common structure, or because
either belief or practice were causally prior, and
same in form.
This speculation suggests that a kind of formal
causality may be at work in the passage from deeper
levels of culture to other more accessible to common
sense, or between things on the same level of
culture. In the context of Buddhist meditation and
theories of release, I offer that one does not
practice analytic methods of meditation and
painstaking human compassion for lengths of time
without having something of those activities 'rub
off' on other levels of life--in our case the
gradualist theory of the attainment of release. (The
same also goes for the effect of beliefs on
practices.) Among the things which 'rub off', I want
to identify the notion of form or structure. Critical
analytic meditational methods and serious concern for
ordinary human well-being,
p. 19
conform to the gradual kind of enlightenment, at once
described as a graded route and prescribed as a
critical, analytic censoriousness about claims to
knowledge.
NOTES
1. D. Goleman, "Perspectives on Psychology, Reality,
and the Study of Consciousness, " Journal of
Transpersonal Psychology 4 (1974): 4.
2. W. King, "A Comparison of Theravaada and Zen
Meditation," History of Religions, (1969): 310.
3. Ibid., p. 311.
4. K. N. Jayatilleke, Early Buddhist Theory of
Knowledge (London: George Alien and Unwin, 1963).
See also D. Kalupahana, "A Buddhist Tract on
Empiricism," Philosophy East and West 19, No. 1
(1969), and Causality: The Central Philosophy of
Buddhism (Honolulu: University of Hawaii, 1975)
and Buddhist Philosophy (Honolulu: University of
Hawaii, 1976).
5. V. Trenckner, A Criticial Pali Dictionary, Volume
1 (Copenhagen: Royal Danish Academy of Sciences
and Letters, 1924-1948): 201-202.
6. T. Rhys-Davids and W. Stede, eds., Pali Text
Society's Pali English Dictionary, (London: Luzac,
1966): 39.
7. Ibid., pp. 39, 101. Nyanatiloka, Buddhist
Dictionary (Colombo, Sri Lanka: Frewin, 1972): 17.
8. Jayatilleke, Early Buddhist Theory of Knowledge,
p. 40.
9. Ibid., chap. 8.
10. Ibid., p. 277.
11. Ibid., p. 466.
12. W. King, "The Structure and Function of the
Trance of Cessation in Theravaada Meditation,"
manuscript read at Annual Meeting of the American
Academy of Religion, Chicago, November, 1975.
13. Ibid.,p.4.
14. Ibid., p.11.
15. Ibid., p. 7.
16. Ibid.,p.8.
17. Ibid., pp. 14f.
18. E. Gellner, Legitimation of Belief (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1974).
19. Ibid., p. 36.
20. Ibid.
21. Ibid., pp. 32f.
22. Ibid., p. 38.
23. Ibid., p. 115.
24. Ibid., chaps. 5, 6.
25. Ibid., p. 124.
26. A. K. Warder, "Early Buddhism and Other
Contemporary Systems," Bulletin of the School of
Oriental and African Studies, 17 (1956): 43-63.
27. Gellner, Legitimation, p. 120.
28. P. De Silva, Buddhist and Freudian Psychology
(Colombo: Lake House, 1974).
29. R. Johanssen, The Psychology of Nirvana, (London:
Allen and Unwin, 1969).
30. P. Demieville, Le Concile du Lhasa (Paris:
Imprimerie Nationale, 1952). E. Obermiller, "A
Sanskrit Ms. from Tibet--Kamalasila's
Bhavana-krama," Journal of the Greater India
Society 2(1935): 1-11. G. Tucci, trans., Minor
Buddhist Texts, Part II. The First Bhavana-Krama
of Kamalasila, Serie Orientale 9 (2) (Rome: Institute
Italiano per il Medio ed Estremo Oriente, 1958).
31. P. Yampolsky, trans., The Platform Suutra of the
Sixth Patriarch (New York: Columbia University
Press, 1967).
p. 20
32. For "Hui-Neng" one may therefore read "Shen-hui,"
the historical proponent and/or source of the
teaching attributed to Hui-neng.
33. H. Dumoulin, History of Zen Buddhism, P. Peachev,
trans, (new York:Pantheon, 1963), 87.
34. Yampolsky, Platform Suutra, p.116.
35. Dumoulin, History of Zen, p.95.
36. Yampolsky, Platform Suutra, p. 116.
37. Ibid., p.115.
38. G. dharmasiri, A Buddhist Critique of the
Christian Concept of God (Colombo, Sri Lanka:
Lake House, 1975), pp. 199ff.
39. Jayatilleke, Early Buddhist Theory of Knowledge,
chap. 5.
40. Obermiller, "A Sanskrit Ms.," p. 5.
41. A.K. Warder, Indian Buddhism(Delhi: Motilal
Banarsidass, 1970), p. 467f.
42. Ibid., pp. 477ff.
43. Tucci, Minor Buddist Texts, pp. 173-175.
44. Ibid., pp. 175f.
45. Ibid., p. 60.
46. Ibid., p. 105.
47. Ibid., pp. 64, 103, 104-111.
48. Ibid., pp. 104-111.
49. Ibid., p. 105.
50. K. Potter, Presuppositions of India's
Philosophies (Englewood Cliffs, new Jersey:
Prentice-Hall, 1963), pp. 239f.
51. Warder, Indian Buddhism, pp. 476f.
52. Tucci, Minor Buddhist Texts, p. 160.
53. Potter, Presuppositions, p. 233.
54. Ibid., p.240.
55. Ibid., p. 233.
56. Ibid., p. 141.
57. Warder, Indian Buddhism, p. 468.
58. Potter, Presuppositions, p. 194. Also Kalupahana,
Buddhist Philosophy, pp. 138f., that Kamalasiila
held the principle of causality to be central to
Buddhist conceptions of reality.
59. Warder, Indian Buddhism. p. 468.
60. T. Stcherbatsky, Buddhist Logic, 2 volumes (New
York: Dover, 1962 of original 1930), 1:76f.
61. Tucci, Minor Buddhist Texts, p.477.
62. Ibid., p. 170.
63. R. Gombrich, Precept and Practice, (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1971), pp. 121f.
64. C. Levi-Strauss, Structural Anthropology (New
York: Doubleday, 1967), chaps. 1-4, 11, 15, 16.