excerpt from the upcoming new addition of Dependent Coarising
The experience produced by our cognitive architecture is primarily of a world “out there,” an “objective reality” that appears to us to transcend experience, in the sense that it would be there even if we were not here to experience it. In this objective reality all the objects exist that we desire, fear, own or obsess over, and existential, ontological and other views seem reasonable. As part of our experience we almost always take at face value that most of what we experience simply reflects such an objective reality directly. Not only that, but immediate access to this objective outer world is simply there, effortlessly; all we have to do is show up.
There it is: your plush arm chair, the cat on your lap, the pipe in your mouth, a cup of tea, a snifter of cognac and a dog-eared copy of Buddhist Life/Buddhist Path on your side table.
Simple reflection on the science of this scenario shows that it cannot be so simple. As you sit in your arm chair, your brain sits in your skull in total darkness and total silence, communicating with whatever is “out there” through raw neural impulses originating in your retina, your eardrum, etc. If the brain in your fathom-long body is the source of your experience, then anything beyond neural sense impulses must be fabricated by the brain (or the emergent mental processes running on your brain architecture). A lot of mental activity goes on between the impingement of neural impulses and your cozy experience, no matter how vivid and immediate your experience seems.
In fact, we have no direct access to such a reality independent of the filter of human cognition which produces our experience. A fundamental principle to keep in mind is,
Experiencing things as real is not the same as experiencing real things.
For all we know, we live in a the computer-generated Matrix®, or in a dream. Maybe what is really right side up is systematically converted to up side down before we experience it.
The Buddha was perhaps the ultimate skeptic about our ability to know what is really going on “out there.” This would explain the Buddha’s reluctance to answer questions of existence. The Buddha also persistently reminds us of the unreliability of what we experience as reality “out there” when he points out the worldling’s vexing habit of seeing permanence in the impermanent, pleasure in suffering, beauty in the ugly, and self where there is none, a habit that leads to a life of broken promises and pain when things turn out otherwise. It also explains the Buddha’s routine refusal to endorse views. For the Buddha, we have no basis for ever knowing if any view is really true or false in an objective sense:
There are five things, Bhāradvāja, that may turn out in two different ways here and now. What five? Faith, approval, oral tradition, reasoned cogitation, and reflective acceptance of a view. These five things may turn out in two different ways here and now.
Now something may be fully accepted out of faith, yet it may be empty, hollow, and false; but something else may not be fully accepted out of faith, yet it may be factual, true, and unmistaken. [as for faith, so for approval, oral tradition, reasoned cogitation, and reflective acceptance of a view] (MN 95 ii170)
Views, by their very nature are presumptive (maññita), and for the Buddha,
Presumption is a disease, presumption is a tumor, presumption is a dart. By overcoming all presumptions, bhikkhu, one is called a sage at peace. And the sage at peace is not born, does not age, does not die; he is not shaken and does not yearn. For there is nothing present in him by which he might be born. (MN 140 iii246)
Nonetheless, what we presume are parts our experiential world, and eliminated only by the sage at peace, who has learned to experience otherwise.
In his wisdom teachings, the Buddha explicitly limits the word ‘world’ (loka) to refer to the world of experience,
In this fathom-long living body, along with its perceptions and thoughts, lies the world, the arising of the world, and the cessation of the world. (AN 4.45)
Right at the beginning of the Dhammapada we find,
Mind precedes all phenomena. Mind is their chief; they are all mind-made. (Dhp 1)
Phenomenology is a field in modern philosophy that began similarly with the primacy of experience, as a challenge to the metaphysical premise of science that there is a real, objective world, that transcends human awareness, but that humans have special access to. Accordingly, the Buddha has been described as a phenomenologist by some modern Buddhist thinkers. Loka seems to refer precisely to the phenomenal world, what the early modern phenomenologists call the life world (Lebenswelt). It is our world of experience.
In any case, what goes on in some reality that transcends experience is not particularly relevant to practice. Practice occurs squarely in the world as we experience it, or as it appears to us. It is in this world that suffering arises, that our incentive for practice arises, that the factors arise that inform our kammic decisions (of which our practice is made), that we experience the fruits of practice, that we are able to track our progress, that we gain confidence in the Dhamma, and it is in this world that we awaken.
Unfortunately, Dhamma is rarely taught or understood from this phenomenological perspective. I would caution that without this perspective the Dhamma is commonly misinterpreted, often trivialized, often left obscure.
The Buddha taught suffering and the ending of suffering. His teachings were stringently parsimonious and practical. It made sense that he would teach us about craving the origin of suffering, because understanding those factors and internalizing their understanding through practice makes a difference in how we deal with these factors in everyday experience: we see the dangers in craving, we become dispassionate about craving, experience revulsion with regard to craving, abandon craving, and suffering ends. These are factors of phenomenal experience that we can learn to respond to directly as they arise, in more skillful ways. Such phenomena are the stuff of dhammānupassanā, examining phenomena as they arise in our experiential world through the lens of the Dhamma.
