Category: Dharma

Uposatha Day, Full Moon, February 18, 2011

Monks, suppose that a large glob of foam were floating down this Ganges River, and a man with good eyesight were to see it, observe it, & appropriately examine it. To him — seeing it, observing it, & appropriately examining it — it would appear empty, void, without substance: for what substance would there be in a glob of foam? In the same way, a monk sees, observes, & appropriately examines any form that is past, future, or present; internal or external; blatant or subtle; common or sublime; far or near. To him — seeing it, observing it, & appropriately examining it — it would appear empty, void, without substance: for what substance would there be in form? Phena (Foam) Sutta, SN 22.95

The things we think are substantial, including the self, are not, they are like foam. They are called Formations or Fabrications or Compounded Things. The Pali word is sankhara. Behind them is Suchness, also called Things as They Are, and sometimes Emptiness. Suchness is a vast and fluid, thick and ineffable network of cause and effect, all in relentless rippling flux, much like a raging storm at sea.

Formations arise always dependent at least partly on mind, they are the mind‘s attempt to make sense of Suchness. Formations are conceptual in nature and bound to language. Formations have three properties and insight into these three properties constitutes the basis of Buddhist Wisdom: Impermanence, Suffering and Non-Self, what the Buddha called the Three Marks of Existence.

Impermanence. Formations are impermanent because they also arise dependent on the wiles of the fluid mass of Suchness in constant flux. Things arise, they linger and they pass away. Living things are born, they live and then they die. Formations are the things that change; Formations are the mind’s pinpointers, whereby the fluid flux has no coordinates prior to Formations against which change could be measured. Even dependency and arising and therefore Dependent Co-arising can only be described in terms of Formations. Emptiness itself is a Formation. Our language and concepts simply do not fully reach Suchness, only our Insight can.

Suffering. We live our lives in a world of Formations, that is of our own Fabrication. But since those Fabrications have a basis in the fluid flux of Suchness as well as on Mind they are undependable, they are born only to decay then die. Suffering measures that gap between Formations and suchness, it rests in the minds inability to keep pace with Things as They Are. Having fabricated formations, they are still subject to the wiles of Suchness. They disappoint us over and over. We will look at Suffering in more detail next week.

Non-Self. speaks of the fabricated nature of Formations. Often the Buddha is thought to have taught that nothing exists, that there is really nothing there. The word emptiness or void (sunyata), used by the Buddha alongside ‘non-self’ tends to imply this. Rather he claimed nothing can be pinpointed on close examination that is a self, that things do not exist on their own. Their thingness, their status as objects, leans on the capacity of the mind for fabrication. While they may be grounded more or less in Suchness their full nature is made up. Formations arise dependent on mind. The cloud exists not because temperature, vapor and all the environmental factors make it exist, but because the mind also perceives it as existing, it exists not on its own side but as a fabrication.

In sum, it is Formations that are impermanent, it is Formations that are not self, it is also Formations that suffer! There are no Formations without mind, there is no impermanence, nor birth, nor death, nor suffering without Formations. So Formations are a kind of problem for humans, but luckily a problem dependent our own minds.

I should point out, lest things become too clear, that mind is not something apart from Suchness either. This point is prominent in Dogen’s thought in his subversion of the Zen tradition “Apart from Words and Letters.” Since mind is a part of the flux of Suchness, Formations arise entirely from the Suchness, they are in effect Suchness trying to comprehend itself. Suchness itself is just a Formation as soon as we think there is such a “thing,” or as Nagarjuna said, Emptiness itself is empty. For convenience of exposition, however, I will pretend that Mind and Suchness are distinct.

Why Formations? From a Buddhist perspective the tendency of the mind for fabrication is unskillful, it is a defilement, at root a delusion, that brings woe beyond measure. I want for a time, however, to write about this not as the present Buddhist monk but as the former cognitive scientist, to reveal the positive side of Formations, not as an unfortunate accidental defect of human cognition but as a necessary and integral part of it. I think this might help the reader make sense of all of this.

Formations are anticipated by the existence of certain statistical patterns, consistencies and relative stabilities in the fluid flux of suchness. For instance in a rushing river eddies can be perceived. Water molecules under the force of gravity tend to seek the lowest point in a terrain and pool into rivers or ponds, and those are perceived. Moreover initially chaotic systems tend to organize themselves into communities of elements interrelated as functional systems sometimes with the capacity to maintain certain behaviors or relations over time, such as two objects initially flying through space might come to orbit around each other to form a kind of localized system. Sometimes these communities develop complex adaptive and self-regulating behaviors as in the case of living cells. Clusters of such systems then organize themselves into larger systems, and these larger systems exhibit characteristic behaviors and functions. The mind comes along, recognizing such patterns and consistencies and Formations are born. It sounds a bit in my description like the Formations exist prior to the mind, but that is because I already need to invoke Formations like “communities” and “systems of elements” to describe what happens prior to the mind; language requires it.

Why do minds do this? Well, minds are themselves parts of such complex self-regulating systems. In particular, humans are systems adapted evolutionarily to sustain a certain system dynamics under a wide variety of environmental circumstances, and to replicate themselves. They require a high degree of self-regulation and adaptability in very fragile complex systems functioning in a very hostile environment. If somewhere internal to the system predictions can arise concerning what the environment will throw at it next, the system is in a better position to adapt, but this requires tracking a very complex fluid reality with its rich network of ineffable interdependencies to arrive at some understanding of reality. This understanding will always be a simplification, a crude model of what are in fact vast complexities of Suchness. This understanding develops first by fixing pointers to the most predictable, consistent, stable parts of that reality, first by recognizing patterns as things then by building up the relationships, properties and structures of these things. The recognition part is Perception, the building up part is Formation, two of the five skandhas/khandhas or aggregates of the personality in Buddhism.

So, instead of blissfully enjoying a low-pitched audio impression of increasing volume, several glints of white, the movement of orange and the whiff of dead meat, all in the flux of interdependent Suchness, we quickly perceive and build up a Formation of a Tiger and this enables us to respond, taking spear quickly in hand, to an impending attack that would otherwise compromise the integrity of this superbly self-regulating system. Pretty cool.

Are Formations in Here or Out There?

Question: “So, let me get this straight, Swami What’s-Your-Name, you are saying that the tiger is a Formation fabricated in dependence on my own mind, so that I can make the tiger disappear just by thinking differently?” Yes, that is exactly right. … But don’t try it. You will get eaten anyway.

The question is, Do Formations ever exist from their own side? Granted that we as reasoning creatures require mental representations of things, aren’t there also things that exist in Suchness, that is not dependent on mind, such as these superbly self-regulating systems? The various thought experiments we have conducted during the last few weeks are a means of helping get out minds around this question. I consider four basic reasons for saying things Formations always depend on mind:

First, what we think exists or does not exist changes radically upon reflection. A Formation is a kind of story but stories can have alternative plots. Our thought experiments with clouds and shadows are illustrative of this; we easily waffle as to their existential status. Cumulus clouds tend to exist more consistently than cirrus, for instance and shadows produced by a single well-defined light source exist more certainly than those produced from multiple light sources. Recall that each of the thought experiments involves a shift in existential commitment. The tendency for objects to shift or to appear or disappear depending on what the mind adds is reminiscent of the Necker’s Cube, in which one alternatively sees a box from above or from below as the mind shifts its interpretation. Sometimes the mind locks into one interpretation making the alternative difficult to recover, just as we lock into certainty about the existence of some thing.

In the adventure of two weeks ago Captain Kirk and Scotty came into conflict over their differing interpretations of the captain‘s existence, tracing it through alternative branching continuities: As far as Scotty was concerned the physical Captain he zapped with the paralyzer ray was a mere remnant, something like a ghost, of the real captain that had been successfully beamed to continue his existence on the Planet Flubobo. As far as the captain was concerned he was the captain himself continuing to live his life, without a clear idea of who that guy was walking around on Flubobo. It is revealing that we often trace an object through its pragmatic role, rather than concrete physical existence, while other traceable objects come and go to fill that role. Philosophers of language have pointed out some examples thay call intensional objects. For instance, we can say things like, “Three years ago the President was a Republican but now he is a Democrat,” or “The age of the President has fluctuated from the forties to the seventies,” treating Bush and Obama as different stages of one continuity, of one Formation, allowing a certain function to define a rather long-lived object.

Second, as we examine suchness more closely, in particular to consider how things are dependently co–arisen, the Formations are harder and harder to recognize. We have seen that when we examine clouds, shadows, reflections, even cars and people, as dependently co-arisen, they lose their substantiality. In Suchness the interdependencies are so extensive it does not entirely make sense to try to carve it into discrete objects. Such objects turn out to be much more porous than we expect of our Formations. Nagarjuna, the Second Century Buddhist philosopher, stated that “Emptiness is Dependent Co-Arising!” In short, as we approach Emptiness, Formations disappear, as we recede from Emptiness they assert themselves.

Third, formations depend on mind, but do not always seem to depend strongly on Suchness. Consider the second variation of the Necker’s Cube pictured here, which is really just an arrangement of pie slices. Actually it is really just an arrangement of pixels, dots of black or white on your computer screen or printed page from which we fabricate pie slices from which we fabricate the lines of the Necker’s Cube. Notice that the lines even seem to continue between the pies, until you blink a couple of times. The mind is doing a lot of fabricating on the basis of little suchness. Humans have been very creative in fabricating very abstract objects out of nothing discernable and then even agreeing among themselves that they are there. Money, for instance, the kind you think is in the bank and belongs to you, is an example. God is another.

Fourth, formations out there in Suchness are never experienced separately from Formations in here, in mind. We often think our mental formations, our thoughts, or feelings, exist in a different realm then what we think of objective reality. Sometimes we even picture the former realm as located in the space between out ears, or picture ourselves with our thoughts in a fortress Self with an often hostile, sometimes alluring, world outside. But we never experience things that way. Rather the mind seems expansive and encompasses all things. In our experience some pattern in the suchness, such as a combination of colors and an odor, appears and begins to acrete features, first perception or recognition as familiar, then objecthood, then it grows like a crystal to acquire properties like beauty, and relationships to other objects like kinship, and even longings or aversions, a degree of tension, a role in some grand plan, and so on. The object crystallizes in dependence on both suchness and mind. Sometimes we try to sort out what is out there and what it in here, for instance reminding ourselves that “beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” but the fact that we find such reminders profound is precisely because that is not we experience things.

We live in a world of our own fabrication. The Formations arise dependent on mind, then the details that might be perceived in suchness tend to recede, and as they do so the Formations become even more tangible and convincing. The world thereby becomes easier to track (as Ronald Reagan once said, “If you’ve seen one tree you’ve seen them all”), but also much more frozen and brittle. The wondrous richness and variety of Emptiness is replaced a hidden danger to our very mortal Formations. Next week we will consider the suffering and harm Formations, and particularly our Selves, bring with them. The following week we will learn of the various Buddhist practices that work with loosening the grip of the Self.

Uposatha Day, First Quarter Moon, February 11, 2011

In the past four weeks we have conducted some thought experiments that raise questions about what exists or does not exist, or in what way things exist. We considered various kinds o things:

• Holes, for which there really is nothing to observe outside of the context in which we talk about them as if they existed;
• Clouds, shadows and reflections, whose observable manifestations are all accounted for entirely as dependently arisen other phenomena that are not clouds, shadows or reflections;
• Cars and other compounded things, whose existence is independent of each of its parts, yet contains nothing that is not one of its parts.

These various considerations are intended to lead up to the question, In what sense do I, or You, exist? Last week I touched on this question by means of an existential dilemma raised in the way Scotty’s transporter messed with the identity of Captain Kirk in a life-and-death kind of way. This question of Non-Self or Emptiness, appears either academic or nonsensical to many beginning students of Buddhism, but it lies at the very heart of the Buddha’s teachings, it is the foundation of the entire Dharma. It is actually a question all of us have dealt with throughout our lives, though we seldom articulate it as well as the Buddha did; consider how we go through existential crises, and identity crises, how we wonder who we really are and how we feel like nobody but want to become somebody. According to the Buddha virtually all of us have come to the wrong answer to the question, including DesCartes, and that is the root of the human dilemma. In this post we will continue to try to develop an intellectual understanding of this question. In subsequent weeks we will look at non-intellectual ways to approach non-self.

The Questions of King Milinda is delightful ancient text (which can be googled on the Web and downloaded) that reports in dialectical form an early encounter of East meets West. King Milinda (aka Menander) was the historical King of the Greek kingdom of Bactria, soon to be established as an early Buddhist kingdom, around about what is now Afghanistan, about 400 years after the Buddha. Milinda’s questions are remarkably much the same as many Westerners pose today, and he is about as scrappy about them as many of today’s Westerners. He poses these to a Buddhist monk, Ven. Nagasena, and the ensuing debate is quite lively as they match wits. This excerpt is the very first encounter between Milinda and Nagasena, and deals with the very issue of Non-Self. The translation here is by Bhikkhu Pesala:

King Milinda went up to Nàgasena, exchanged polite and friendly greetings, and took his seat respectfully to one side. Then Milinda began by asking:

“How is your reverence known, and what sir, is your name?”

“O king, I am known as Nàgasena but that is only a designation in common use, for no permanent individual can be found.”

Then Milinda called upon the Bactrian Greeks and the monks to bear witness: “This Nàgasena says that no permanent individual is implied in his name. Is it possible to approve of that?” Then he turned to Nàgasena and said, “If, most venerable Nàgasena, that is true, who is it who gives you robes, food and shelter? Who lives the righteous life? Or again, who kills living beings, steals, commits adultery, tells lies or takes strong drink? If what you say is true then there is neither merit nor demerit, nor is there any doer of good or evil deeds and no result of kamma. If, venerable sir, a man were to kill you there would be no murder, and it follows that there are no masters or teachers

in your Order. You say that you are called Nàgasena; now what is that Nàgasena? Is it the hair?”

“I don’t say that, great king.”

“Is it then the nails, teeth, skin or other parts of the body?”

“Certainly not.”

“Or is it the body, or feelings, or perceptions, or formations, or consciousness? Is it all of these combined? Or is it something outside of them that is Nàgasena?”

Still Nàgasena answered: “It is none of these.”

“Then, ask as I may, I can discover no Nàgasena. Nàgasena is an empty sound. Who is it we see before us? It is a falsehood that your reverence has spoken.”

“You, sir, have been reared in great luxury as becomes your noble birth. How did you come here, by foot or in a chariot?”

“In a chariot, venerable sir.”

“Then, explain sir, what that is. Is it the axle? Or the wheels, or the chassis, or reins, or yoke that is the chariot? Is it all of these combined, or is it something apart from them?”

“It is none of these things, venerable sir.”

“Then, sir, this chariot is an empty sound. You spoke falsely when you said that you came here in a chariot. You are a great king of India. Who are you afraid of that you don’t speak the truth?” Then he called upon the Bactrian Greeks and the monks to bear witness: “This King Milinda has said that he came here in a chariot but when asked what it is, he is unable to show it. Is it possible to approve of that?”

Then the five hundred Bactrian Greeks shouted their approval and said to the king, “Get out of that if you can!”

“Venerable sir, I have spoken the truth. It is because it has all these parts that it comes under the term chariot.”

“Very good, sir, your majesty has rightly grasped the meaning. Even so it is because of the thirty-two kinds of organic matter in a human body and the five aggregates of being that I come under the term ‘Nàgasena’. As it was said by Sister Vajãra in the presence of the Blessed One, ‘Just as

it is by the existence of the various parts that the word “Chariot” is used, just so is it that when the aggregates of being are there we talk of a being’.”

“Most wonderful, Nàgasena, most extraordinary that you have solved this puzzle, difficult though it was. If the Buddha himself were here he would approve of your reply.”

The exposition here is much like that of our thought experiment a couple weeks ago concerning the car — a modern chariot — in which over time each part is replaced, and yet it is conventionally, but only loosely, still called the same car. It is also similar to the Buddha’s best-known explanation of non-self, which relates to “… the thirty-two kinds of organic matter in a human body and the five aggregates of being …,” mentioned here. The thirty-two kinds of organic matter break the human body into lungs, liver, heart, sweat, urine, etc. The five aggregates (skandas or khandas) break the human personality into five parts, one of which is the body (or form), the other four of which constitute mind (feelings, perceptions, formations and consciousness).

The argument is that when you search for the essence of you, it cannot be identified with any one of these various components, nor can it be identified as a part of any of these components, nor can it be identified as something that has any of these components. It is just not there! Yet you sure feel that there is a constant you that sees, that makes decisions, that has these experiences, at least with the aid or through the mediation of these various components, a ghost within the machine, something that is the real you. By reduction, no such you can be found outside of the stubborn sense that such a you must exist.

The teaching of non-self or emptiness seems to most at first rather bitter medicine to swallow. We spend our lives dreading death; it is hardly comforting to learn that we have never been here in the first place! However recognition of our true nature releases us from the bonds that come with having a self. For one thing, death becomes no longer a problem.

Next week I would like to discuss why it is we think there is a self, and how the mind fabricates most of the world that we then live in, and how this causes problems for us. Then I will turn to Buddhist practice, how ethics, meditation and ultimately insight help release us from the bonds that come with having a self.

Uposatha Day, New Moon, February 3, 2011

“O.K., Scotty, we’re ready to beam up now.”

“Energizing, sir.”

Bzzzzz Wrrrrrrrr … Fwup Fwup.

Captain Kirk and Spock materialized in the transporter on board the Starship Enterprise, hair mussed and looking a bit ragged from their latest, uh, enterprise, and at that moment in the midst of conversation. Captain Kirk was speaking: “… then our material remnants still?… oh, Scotty, ..”

“Aye, sir.”

“Please show me the ‘dematerializer ash-pan’. Spock was just filling me in on the technical details of the transporter. I want to see for myself.”

“There’s not much to see, if you don’t mind my saying so, sir, but you can have a look.” Scotty pulled out a shallow metal drawer under the control panel, in which rested a blackened pan about four feet square, in which stood two little piles of dark ash. Indeed, as Spock had explained, the Captain could recognize aspects of their former identities, a bit of blue uniform, a bit of tan uniform, some fragments of bone. The tops of the heads had best retained their original shapes as the ashy remains had collapsed in on themselves; Spock’s pointy-up ears and pointy-down eyebrows were clearly recognizable in the black ash.

“So, Spock, if I understand this correctly, the transporter doesn’t actually beam us anywhere. It beams data. Our material bodies stay here, where we are dematerialized. A kind of blueprint is beamed to where new material is reconstituted in our image.”

“That would appear, in rough outline, to be accurate, sir.”

“But doesn’t that concern you a bit that that is not really us that arrives at the other side, that we give up our lives here in order for this thing to work there?”

“I see no reason for concern, sir. Our tasks and the functional capability to perform our tasks are preserved in the process.”

“But it’s not us that comes out the other side.”

“That is not logical, sir. We do not exist in any enduring sense in any case. Our functionality continues at another place. That is all that matters.”

Kirk rolled his eyes; there is no arguing with a Vulcan. But in the days following that conversation the captain felt apprehensive and hesitated a moment every time an infestation of Tribbles or a run-in with Klingons called for his use of the transporter. With time, though, he relaxed back into its routine deployment. He certainly seemed to move smoothly and effortlessly from the Enterprise to the surface of whatever planet he was to visit and back again each time with no adverse effect.

Then, one bright and sunny day, the Enterprise was hovering over the planet Flubobo, where Captain Kirk was required to present several complaints about reports of alien abductions on his home planet to the the Director of the Earthling Research Institute, the esteemed Professor Flubub-ub, with Spock and Dr. McCoy acting as technical advisors. Captain Kirk, Spock and Dr. McCoy stepped onto the transporter. “Ready to beam, Scotty.”

“Energizing, sir.” Wrrrrrrrrr bzzzzzzz … Bloop Bloop. Hearing only two Bloops, Scotty looked up from the console. Spock and Dr. McCoy had dematerialized and were presumably now walking happily on the surface of Planet Flubobo, but Captain Kirk was still standing in the teletransporter looking around, at first perplexed, but finally ascertaining his location. “There appears to be a glitch sir. One moment while I check it out.” Captain Kirk stepped over to Scotty at the console. “Ah, I see that all three of you have been successfully transported to the surface, sir. The glitch seems to be confined to the dematerialization unit. One moment while I make an adjustment.” Voop voop voop wibble wibble. “OK, sir, you can step back onto the transporter.”

Captain Kirk took a step toward the transporter then turned on his heels. “Wait. You just said I am already on Flubobo with McCoy and Spock. Where is it you intend to transport me to now?’

“Why, nowhere sir, I just intend to complete the process that was interrupted when the dematerializer went out.”

“Which means you intend to just dematerialize me?”

“Precisely that, sir.”

“Over my dead, … uh, body.”

“But sir, it is in the rulebook. If we ended up with a new crew member every time the transporter had a little glitch, we would have enough crew for three Enterprises.”

“Forget it, Scotty, that is an order.”

“Sir, my commander is on Flubobo.” ZZZAPPO!

Scotty had produced and fired a paralyzer gun that rendered Captain Kirk immobile where he stood. As Scotty grabbed the captain around the waist from behind and began dragging him on his heals toward the transporter, Kirk tried to speak, “Don’t do it; this is murder, … and mutiny,” but no word was heard. Kirk tried to reach for his own weapon, but the movement of no muscle was felt. Presently with the dismayed and helpless captain in place Scotty returned to the console and, with a Bzzzzzzz Bloop, Captain Kirk was gone.

A few hours later, Scotty, at his console, heard his commander, “O.K., Scottie, we’re ready to beam up now.”

“Energizing, sir.”

Bzzzzz Wrrrrrrrr … Fwup Fwup Fwup.

Captain Kirk, Spock and Dr. McCoy materialized in the transporter on board the Starship Enterprise, hair in place but looking a bit haggard from the runaround they had gotten from the Flubobians, and at that moment in the midst of conversation. Spock was speaking: “You see, sir, you cannot find ‘you’ in your material body any more than you can find the sound of a flute in a flute. In fact, the atoms in your body are being replaced constantly.” Spock then assumed that distant gaze that advertised calculation. “Considering your rate of respiration, perspiration, defecation, urination, caloric intake, … I would say you replace 99 percent of the material in your body every … 7.2 years. The transporter, in effect, simply speeds up the process.”

Captain Kirk assumed an aspect of contemplation, “I see your point, Spock.”

With uplifted brow, Spock noticed the scuff marks nearing the transporter. “And besides, the material that remains here from your body is reused to reconstitute incoming troopers. You now have some of my previously dematerialzied matter, and Dr. McCoy’s, as well as some of your own, some of Chekov’s, some of Scotty’s …”

A startled Scotty interjected, “Oh, you’ll not catch me being teletransported anywhere, sir.”

Spock continued, “After all, I believe your Earthling Buddha once [MN 109] said,

‘There is the case, monk, where an uninstructed, run-of-the-mill person — who has no regard for noble ones, is not well-versed or disciplined in their Dhamma; who has no regard for men of integrity, is not well-versed or disciplined in their Dhamma — assumes form to be the self, or the self as possessing form, or form as in the self, or the self as in form.

‘He assumes feeling to be the self, or the self as possessing feeling, or feeling as in the self, or the self as in feeling. He assumes perception to be the self, or the self as possessing perception, or perception as in the self, or the self as in perception. He assumes fabrications to be the self, or the self as possessing fabrications, or fabrications as in the self, or the self as in fabrications. He assumes consciousness to be the self, or the self as possessing consciousness, or consciousness as in the self, or the self as in consciousness.

‘This, monk, is how self-identity view comes about.’“

By this time Captain Kirk had assumed a glassy stare. Spock added, “And believe me, you don’t want to suffer with Self-Identity View. You cannot obtain even Stream Entry with the Fetter of Self-Identity View, much less realize the Deathless.”

Uposatha Day, Last Quarter Moon, January 27, 2011

Thus shall ye think of all this fleeting world:
A star at dawn, a bubble in a stream;
A flash of lightning in a summer cloud,
A flickering lamp, a phantom, a dream.
The Diamond Sutra.

Are clouds objects? Do they exist? Two answers suggest themselves immediately: yes and no. Let’s try to rationalize each.

But first, consider that a number of causal factors are involved when you see a cloud:

• Air. A cloud is something air does.
• Humidity. This is water vapor, that is, water molecules suspended in gas. Air tends to pick up water vapor at warmer temperatures, and to precipitate it at lower temperatures.
• Crystallization. If the temperature of the air is low enough water molecules suspended in the air will freeze to form ice crystals.
• Optics. If water vapor is still liquid, light will pass right through it, invisibly. If it hits a water crystal, on the other hand, light will be dispersed. This is what gives the area of the sky the white appearance that we perceive as a cloud.
• Pressure. The temperature of the air depends a number of factors, but all things being equal, lower pressure means lower temperature means increased likelihood of freezing.
• Altitude. Higher altitude generally correlates with lower pressure, and so also becomes a causal factor in a cloud.
• History. Water vapor that crystallizes in the air was probably picked up as warm air passed over a warm body of water, then carried to a higher altitude or longitude, perhaps as the air passed over a mountain.
• Geography. Mountains, bodies of water, latitude, etc. influence history, pressure, temperature, water vapor content, and so on, and so are also causative properties of clouds.

In short a cloud clearly illustrates the principle of dependent co-arising, this is the notion that everything arises from causes and conditions; because this arises that arises, seen more globally as the network of contingency that could be said to form the basis of Buddhist metaphysics. For instance, because the parameters of temperature, pressure, humidity, and so forth vary, clouds are predicted to appear and disappear accordingly, and the do. So, do clouds exist, are they objects?

• Of course not, silly. We can easily recognize that there is no cloud separate from the circumstances that seem to give rise to “the cloud.” The cloud is not found in any one condition, not in the water vapor alone, nor in the geographic formations, nor in temperature, nor in the optical properties of water crystals. Neither is it found anywhere else: It doesn’t enjoy a separate existence; it cannot go home at the end of the day to take a break from causes and conditions.
• Of course they exist, you unrepentant fool. What gives us rain, and ends drought, allowing animals, plants and human economies to survive, carving out the landscape to give us rivers and valleys and even the Grand Canyon, which also exist, by the way? What is it that has has the shadow, which also exists, that brings gloom to us worldlings. How can it have a shape? None of humidity, pressure, air and the rest has a shape. I don’t know where it goes at the end of the workday but it is certainly on the job in the meantime.
• Ah, but clouds don’t give us rain, my esteemed feeble-minded dweeb. Rain drops form when larger ice crystals form at low temperatures and fall from the sky. They don’t need clouds to do this. Hah! Try to get out of that one.
• Hey look! There’s a cloud that looks like a bunny riding a unicycle.
• What? Where? Oh yeah, wow, it does!

A cloud straddles the edge of form and emptiness. For instance, a cirrus cloud seems to be more a kind of texture than an actual object, while a cumulus cloud seems to be more of a full-fledged object. What comes between these two poles, waffles. The view of the network of contingency in constant flux, challenges commonsense notions of existence. According to Second Century Buddhist philosopher-monk Nagarjuna, emptiness is dependent co-arising. A cloud is no more that a very simple summary of what is actually a complex set of circumstances and relationships among diverse intersecting causal factors. Alternatively, it is nothing more than the mind’s attempt to track a bit of intractable reality. Clouds seem to lay bare something fundamental not only about the nature of reality but also about the nature of mind. Although clouds are a good starting point for this investigation, almost everything we can say about clouds generalizes to all phenomena. Even YOU!

How about your car. Is it an object? Does it exist? If we remove a part, say, the horn, does your car still exist, is it the same car? Suppose over a span of five years, after many breakdowns and fender benders, you replace one part after another each with a new factory  part, until no original part remains. Is it still the same car? Suppose every time you replace a part you give your kids the old part that you have replaced. Your video-weary kids decide to knock the dents out, regrind or otherwise refurbish the parts that they receive, just for fun. Delighted to find they have enough parts obtained in this way, they then decide to make their own car from the parts. Pretty soon there are two very similar cars in the driveway. Which is the original car? You are like the original car, or rather you used to be. Even if you have yet to experience an organ transplant, at a lower level every molecule in your body has been replaced. Are you the same you? If your kids saved the molecules you lost and made a new person from the material, are you now the other guy?

When asked whether there is a self or is no self, the Buddha refused to answer. It is a meaningless debate. But what is surprising is how many aspects of things are not-self. As an object we expect something to be fixed, identifiable, independent and long-lived, but we are hard-pressed to find anything or any particular aspect of anything that has those properties. An object, or a self, is difficult to pinpoint. Among the various interdependent constituents that an object has, just what exactly is the object?

Uposatha Day, January 19, Full Moon

Are shadows objects? Do they exist? Two answers suggest themselves immediately: yes and no. Let’s try to rationalize each.

But first, consider, where does a shadow come from? Well, as shadow arises with the presence of all of the following:

• A light source.
• A screen, or more or less flat surface illuminated by the light source.
• An opaque object between the light source and the screen.

Some photons emitted by the light source will strike the opaque object and fail to reach the screen. Others will miss the opaque object and illuminate the screen. The result is that a region of the screen will be dark, a region suspiciously shaped like the opaque object, but maybe elongated or twisted.

This simple account of shadows illustrates probably the most important metaphysical assumption the Buddha ever made: conditionality, or Dependent Coarising (paticcasamuppada): things arise or happen because other things arise or happen, things cease because other things cease. In other words, things have causes and conditions. So, turn on the light source and the shadow arises, but only if the opaque object and the screen are present and correctly placed. Take away the opaque object and the shadow vanishes, as if into thin air. This is just like last week’s donut hole: Take away the donut and the hole is gone without a trace! Take away Arizona and the Grand Canyon is gone! This explains dependent arising, but not yet dependent co-arising. The importance of the “co-” (which is the “sam” in “paticcasamuppada”) will become clear as we understand emptiness better. This is also what Ven. Thich Nhat Hanh calls “Interbeing,” which is a very clever turn of a phrase.

So, does the shadow exist? Is it an object?

• Don’t be silly, of course it doesn’t exist. We know, given the explanation above, why part of the screen is dark, and why the dark portion has a certain shape. This will be true whether or not there is an object “shadow.” Occam’s Razor tells us not to add more than we need to explain the observables. What observable would be the independent evidence that such an object exists? My worthy counterpart thinks that aside from the light source (and light), the opaque object, and the screen there is another object, the shadow. So, when you take away the first three, something should be left. Where is it? The phenomenon that makes my badly misled friend think there is a shadow is in fact dependently arisen, that is, it is completely explainable in terms of the things we do know exist.
• Of course shadows exist. You can see them, you can measure their size. How can you have a sundial without a shadow? Or an eclipse of the moon? And shadows can cause other things to happen. The shadow in the sundial can cause me to know what time it is and the shadow of a tree can increase the comfort level of even my distinguished albeit foolishly misguided colleague, on a hot and sunny day. The explanation above just tells us why the object has to exist, not that it doesn’t exist. (Besides, Peter Pan lost his shadow and had to go back to get it. How would he explain that?)

So, it seems your shadow exists in a different way than you do. Or do you?

How about a reflection in a mirror? Is your reflection an object? Does it exist? Two answers suggest themselves, the same to answers that suggest themselves in the case of your shadow, for similar reasons, which I leave it to the reader to identify.

Your reflection looks a lot more like you than your shadow; it it appropriate to see you as so much more substantial than your reflection? Chinese Zen Master Dong Shan is said in his youth to have had an enlightenment experience upon seeing his reflection in a pool of water. Later he wrote a poem, The Song of the Jewell Mirror Samadhi, which includes the lines:

It is like facing a jewel mirror.
form and image behold each other
You are not it
It actually is you

The interesting thing about asking whether something is an object, whether it exists or not, at least in the simple cases of holes, canyons, shadows and reflections, is that the answer has nothing to do with our grasp of the suchness of the situation at hand. We might see directly, intuitively. exactly and perfectly what is going on, and yet still feel the need to add something extra which we, as silly humans, seem quite capable of arguing about endlessly, as if there were something substantial at stake. I imagine that this is what made the Buddha a phenomenologist, and made him critical of philosophical speculation as useless and worse, as leading to delusion. It is seldom noticed that the Kalama Sutta, often considered the license to free thinking in Buddhism, actually warns against excessive application of the intellect:

“Now, Kalamas, don’t go by reports, by legends, by traditions, by scripture, by logical conjecture, by inference, by analogies, by agreement through pondering views, by probability, or by the thought, ‘This contemplative is our teacher.’ When you know for yourselves that, ‘These qualities are skillful; these qualities are blameless; these qualities are praised by the wise; these qualities, when adopted and carried out, lead to welfare and to happiness’ — then you should enter and remain in them.” AN 3.65 (underlining mine)

Grasping at one answer or the other we might miss the critical value of shadows or holes in our daily planning on the one hand, or we might begin, on the other, to lament that one’s reflection has disappeared, or to worry that the hole is about to fall out of one’s bagel (and that there would then be a hole in the floor). People actually begin to think like this when the “objects” involved get just a bit more complex than holes and shadows. The message of Kalama quote above is, I think, echoed in wide-eyed Bodhidhama’s phrase,

“A teaching beyond words and letters, pointing directly to the human Mind”

Yet we cannot dispense with the intellect either; sometimes, when adopted and carried out, it may actually lead to welfare and to happiness. I‘m putting what words and letters I can muster into this blog post, for instance, in the hopes that it will lead to your welfare and happiness.

The very first of the fetters which tie us to the wheel of samsara is personality view (sakkaya ditthi), the view that we exist in a very substantial form, as beings with constant identities, distinguishable frrom the rest of the universe, beings that own these bodies and these experiences, beings that think these thoughts and make these decisions, beings that own all these heaps of stuff. This is the delusion that gives rise to greed and aversion as we seek personal advantage and eternal existence for our distinguished selves, thereby giving rise to all that ails us.

Uposatha Day, January 12, First Quarter Moon

Are donut holes objects? Do they exist? Two answers suggest themselves immediately: yes and no. Let’s try to rationalize each.

• Don’t be silly, holes don’t really exist. There is nothing there! Donuts happen to have a particular shape, they are hollow in the middle. But the donut is all that is really there. The donut exits; the “hole” is just a consequence of the donut.
• Of course holes exist. How can donuts have holes if holes don’t exist? You can see them, they have a location in space, they have a size. Why, they are what makes a donut a donut! What more do you want?

It would seem that donuts exist in one way and donut holes exist in another way. Donuts seem to exist by themselves, but holes depend on something else being there which is not a hole, namely the donut. In which way do YOU exist? The Buddha’s answer surprises most people.

How about the Grand Canyon? Is the Grand Canyon and object? Does it exist? Two answers also suggest themselves, similar to those above. Isn’t the Grand Canyon just a big hole? However the answer seems to be more important than that for the donut whole. If the Grand Canyon doesn’t exist then a lot of tourists are going to be very disappointed and the Arizona economy is in big trouble. What are the tourists going to look at? If it does exist, shouldn’t it be possible for Utah send a humongous crane and a gigantic flat-bed truck to steal the Grand Canyon (well, theoretically)? It seems the Grand Canyon, like the donut whole, does not exist by itself, it depends on something else, the land mass of Arizona. But then how is it that the economy of the Arizona can depend on the Grand Canyon?

And does any of this matter? It matters because most of us have already answered similar questions for ourselves mistakenly, and it has gotten us into trouble.

A fundamental teaching of the Buddha is Not-self, anattā in Pāli. Closely related to this is the more general concept of Emptiness, suññatā in Pāli. Not-self is one of the Three Marks of Existence, tilakkhaṇa. Full comprehension of the Three Marks of Existence constitutes liberating insight, the highest Wisdom, in Buddhism. It is what we try to realize in our meditation. The Three Marks of Existence are:

• Impermanence (anicca).
• Suffering (dukkha).
• Not-Self (anattā).

Whether Perfect Ones appear in the world, or whether Perfect Ones do not appear in the world, it still remains a firm condition, an immutable fact and fixed law: that all formations are impermanent, that all formations are subject to suffering, that everything is without a self. AN 3.134

Impermanence is the essential condition of the universe, the universe is in a state of flux, change is relentless, and as change happens in one part, it propagates as change to other parts, because of the radical interdependence of all the parts. However, we misunderstand this, we understand things as more fixed than the universe actually allows, we fabricate things that are not actually fully there the way we think they are. In particular we fabricate our selves. Once fabricated these things cannot keep pace with the unending flux of the universe and suffering fills the gap.

Now, full comprehension of the Three Marks of Existence is more than mere intellectual understanding, though that can be part of the process of gaining liberating insight. The problem is that we can gain an intellectual understanding of something and still not let it change our world view, our values, our behavior, and still not let it shake the earth underneath our feet. For instance, a quantum physicist has a deep intellectual understanding of the stuff of the universe that makes no common sense to the average fellow, but generally never fully inhabits that universe, but rather remains as a contented fellow-traveler firmly in the same universe with that naïve average fellow, with gravity underneath his feet, a car that goes fast when you step on the gas, a dog that slobbers all over his face. We might conceive of a day when suddenly he realizes where he really is, and it will frighten him. Likewise on the basis of a solid intellectual understanding of the Three Marks of Existence we might continue to inhabit in our quiet desperation the same universe as that average fellow, until one day we might realize where we really are, the car and the dog and our very selves disappearing into the flux of the universe. It probably will frighten us at first, but it will be worth it, because the quiet desperation will fade.

I thought that for a few weeks I might post every Uposatha Day a thought experiment that might serve to facilitate a deeper intellectual understanding of Non-Self or Emptiness in Buddhism. We will explore the ways in which things like clouds and shadows exist, then chairs and cars, and even discover what being “beamed” by Scottie in Star Trek tells us about our own existence. Each week I intend to supplement the thought experiment with some short study notes about the role of Not-Self in Buddhist practice and understanding. OK?