Thich Nhat Hanh

He was born in 1926 and became a monk at the age of 16. He later received a tertiary education in the West and taught at Columbia before returning to Vietnam. His tradition was a Vietnamese form of Zen that had adopted several Theravada meditation approaches.

During the Vietnam War between a Communist North and a Capitalist Christian South Vietnamese regime (allied with Western forces – note not West Vietnamese but Western in the global sense) he advocated Buddhism as a third way. He was again at Columbia in this period where he met Martin Luther King, Jr. He influenced King’s attitude to the war and King nominated him for a Nobel Peace Prize. He was also involved in non-violence movements in the US, generally.

He argued in these so-called ‘non-violence’ movements (that were often havens at the time for angry people) that peace was gotten at moment by moment by means of awareness and that angry actions lead to angry results. Therefore, he taught the angry people that they should always seek the place of compassion in their hearts if they truly sought peace. “Being peace” was the consistent somewhat mystical focus of his message and plans for the movements more so than “aiming for peace” without any internal thought for how that can come from an angry place. He talked of his philosophy of “Interbeing”. The basic idea was that the interconnectedness of all of us stressed in the Buddhist idea of dependent arising meant that we had (and were) a joint-being. So he advocated peace and compassion and said “to be is to interbe”. Non-violence naturally followed from interbeing. The link with Gandhi’s (and Buddhism’s) views of wisdom and compassion is also fairly clear.

The question arises whether the self-immolation practiced by several monks taught by Nhat Hanh as a result of the situation in Vietnam during the war is truly non-violent and/or righteous. Books of Buddhist Ethics usually provide extensive discussions of the issue of Buddhism’s approach to suicide in comparable circumstances. The monks were, of course, meditating and seated in the Lotus position. The Buddhist view of such things is not necessarily like the Western view, as I hope has become clear in the course of these posts. This is however at the extreme end of “Engaged Buddhism”.

There is a Mahayana tradition of self-immolation. See, for example, part 23 of the Lotus Sutra and there is also in some traditions a routine burning of parts of the body as an initiation rite for postulants to the vows of the religious life. The rationale for this latter rite at least is to signify the sincerity of the vow. Thich Nhat Hanh suggested that the self-immolation, too, was a sign of the sincerity of the monks who committed to it as a form of non-violent protest against the war and so was (and is) not comparable to either violence to other beings or mere suicide. The motive was regarded as the issue and the motivation here was the purest of compassion for the people of Vietnam. The monks had also first attempted other forms of action to address the issue including meditation and a letter-writing campaign so they further argued that the suicides and their publicisation were last resorts.

Many Buddhists do have a problem with it (as many Muslims and Christians reject suicide bombings and ‘abortion doctor’ killings for their own reasons). Part of the issue is the violence per se and part is that idea rejected so firmly by Gandhi that religion simply does not belong in politics or social policy to such a potentially revolutionary extent, Aung San Suu Kyi and the Dalai Lama notwithstanding. One may ask: did the ‘tactic’ of self-immolation achieve peace? It certainly produced an effect and that is perhaps more to the point for “Engaged Buddhism” as it was sincerely entered into. The issue may still remain: was that effect positive?

The next issue for Nhat Hanh may have been: is “Engaged Buddhism” what Siddhartha wanted his monks to do? The man himself spent 75 years as an enlightened being speaking mainly with Buddhist religious though, of course, we know he also gave advice to kings in that time. By comparing Buddhism with other religions, we may notice similar changes that may be attributable to modernity but also to the way of Siddhartha.

So any 'changes' may be doctrinally valid as well as modern but there is probably at least an element of modernity? The common theme of ‘modern’ religious observance (since the Christian Reformation at least) is that the rules of observance are to be understood personally rather than merely ‘handed down’ by scholars. So if a scholar says I can’t be a suicide bomber, ‘abortion doctor’ killer or self-immolator, my modern education tells me that I may also have an opinion on how I may observe my religion. I can read the religious texts for myself and in my own way. The Theravada tradition remains the most conservative tradition within Buddhism in this regard though even here this situation is not static. Buddhadasa Bhikkhu is a noted Theravadan activist, for example. Also, within India around the time of partition, quite apart from what Gandhi was doing, Buddhism achieved a large number of new converts as a protest by former Hindus at both the Hindu caste system and Islamic and Christian systems led by a leading ‘untouchable’ politician of the time. Other still earlier examples of modern “Engaged Buddhism” though they didn’t yet have that name were the 19^th Century Japanese lay movement and a 19^th Century movement inspired by a European convert. Not all of these movements are necessarily either right or wrong, however, from a 'true Buddhist' perspective.

So the locus of religious authority is the subject of a fraught debate within Buddhism just as it is in most religions today. Al Qaeda (much of the leadership is Western tertiary-educated) and “Engaged Buddhism” are perhaps the Calvinists and Lutherans of today in their religions dealing with an unprecedentedly educated mass audience. It can further be argued that, in the harsh environment which modernity can provide, it is virtually inevitable that a wide variety of solutions to problems might well urgently and sincerely be preached and earnestly and wholeheartedly be adopted by adherents to a wide variety of the consequent and inevitable sectarian divisions.

Nhat Hanh also met Thomas Merton, the Catholic writer, who apparently took an interest in the war (Merton, though sworn to silence as a Trappist monk, is a well-respected writer on spirituality and may have asked to meet Nhat Hanh - he was given permission from his superiors to meet him). He apparently greatly influenced Merton, who later wrote that monasticism may be a common ground and meeting point between religions. Incidentally, the Dalai Lama also met Merton and later planted a tree near his grave.

Today Thich Nhat Hanh lives in France where he runs an order and community that he founded called “the Order of Interbeing”. He was once expelled by the Communist government of Vietnam but was allowed to return to attend a conference recently to be a keynote speaker and has apparently returned since.

Bodhisattva Cults, Cosmology and Iconography

Perhaps not surprisingly, then, given how difficult the levels were to achieve (see the last post), those who attained the higher levels came to be viewed as great teachers and almost as gods. Level ten must have been virtual Buddha status and thus must have not been seen much. Much of this adoration ran in parallel with a similar trend in the Hindu Bhakti movement. Krsna was the prime Hindu example of a god on earth that came to be worshipped in a similar way.

A number of beliefs arose concerning the lives of various of the greatest Bodhisattvas and their current whereabouts and degree of contactibility. They were venerated and indeed contacted (allegedly). The realm of earth into which Siddhartha came is called Saha for these purposes. By its nature it only permitted Siddhartha to teach for about 50 years as he was a man on earth.

As I mentioned in a recent post, however, Mahayana Buddhists learn there are other better purer realms in which Buddhas and Bodhisattvas now live and sometimes they rule that entire realm and are able to teach for hundreds of years. Amitabha is the best known and apparently the greatest (as I mentioned in an earlier post). His name in Japanese is Amida (for those who were wondering - since in an earlier post I mentioned the alleged supernatural power of repeating his name in Japanese). He rules the Western pure Buddha-realm also called the ‘full of bliss’ realm (Sukhavati). The Pure Land scriptures that I’ve mentioned contain the most details of all of this.

The order of the development of cults is interesting. The first object of worship was the coming Buddha, Maitreya, but his cult has been overtaken by others. Next came the great Amitabha. His cult is still going strong. Avalokitesvara is a Buddha (or a Bodhisattva, depending on who you ask) and the 14^th Dalai Lama is believed by his followers to be a re-birth of Avalokitesvara (as are the 1^st to the 13^th). Avalokitesvara seems to be believed to have manifested himself in many forms (and again, depending on whom you ask, he may himself be a manifestation of Amitabha or Amitabha may be a manifestation of him).

There are thought to be five ‘families’ of Buddhas and Siddhartha is regarded as being of the "Lotus" family.

Also icons of various Bodhisattvas came to be standardised so you could tell (if you knew the iconography) who was being depicted and why. For example the fat Buddha we know isn’t Siddhartha (i.e. the historical Buddha). He hasn’t yet become a Buddha and will be known as Maitreya in about 8,000 years once he is born on earth. In earlier posts I’ve given images of the Buddas Manjusri and Amitabha. Manjusri is usually depicted with the sword as in the image I provided. Avalokitesvara is often depicted with many heads and many arms with eyes on them. In some cases, one of the heads is thought to be the head of Amitabha. Here is one e.g:

Avalokitesvara with many heads and arms (from Vietnam and Wikipedia)

Tara is a female Buddha (or, again, possibly a Bodhisattva). She, too, is said to have manifested herself many times incarnately as indeed we all have (around 21 or 22 known times at least in Tara's case). You will usually see her depicted with green skin as in the following image from Wikipedia. She is also usually depicted (as here) moving her foot down so she can get up from her lotus position and help people. She’s another Tibetan favourite:

If you see a red Buddha it’s likely to be Amida (the Japanese version of Amitabha) (see below) but the Tibetans also have a love affair with him as one can imagine given his relationship with Avalokitesvara:

Zen/Chan and Vajrayana/Tantra

I’m leaving the details of these ideas out of my series because they didn’t strictly have originating ideas in the first millennium of Indian Buddhist thought and practice. They are of course developments that have influenced Japanese/Chinese and Tibetan Buddhism especially.

In brief, though, if it helps, Zen and Chan Buddhism both consider the nature of the mind to be both something and nothing. They also both consider and attempt the realisation of our Buddha-natures.

As far as Vajrayana/Tantra is concerned it is informed by the Yogacara view of the three kayas. Asanga’s ‘turning around’, they also believe, is a beginning-point for the radical realisation of our Buddha-natures.

In the remaining posts I’m returning to discussion of some of the things that unite especially but no only Mahayana Buddhists (just as I considered in earlier posts what united Buddhists before the advent of Mahayana (and still unites Theravada Buddhists and Mahayana Buddhists to some extent today)).

Yogacara and Experience and Mind-Only

So as I’ve mentioned in an earlier post, Yogacara was more than a doctrinal position. It was about experience and meditation. The doctrine is clear however, there are three natures and that’s what Yogacarins are hoping to experience. The explanations of doctrinal matters are also methods for getting to this final result. Within the practice, practitioners gain an understanding that the appearance (abhasa) of things is clouded in their initial unenlightened condition by vijñana (literally “divided knowing”) and then clarified for the enlightened (that have correctly followed the practice) by buddhajñana. A Buddhist saying illustrating the course of this practice goes something like this: “at first, before I became a monk, I saw rivers and mountains. Then I became a monk and saw that there were no rivers and mountains. Then I became enlightened and I realised that there were rivers and mountains”. So, one goes progressively through two divided visions to one real realisation. Another saying goes something like “If you see a Buddha on the road, kill him!” The idea here is that we must realise the Buddha that is inside us rather than seek one outside us. In one of the Maitreya-Asanga treatises the author explains that sunyata is about the non-existence of the subject-object duality [it’s therefore in accord with Madhyamika teachings in this] but then adds that sunyata also means that this very non-existence has an existence.

It may be argued given its focus on how the enlightened mind can make non-existence existent that Yogacara is a Mind-Only teaching but is it and indeed what does this mean? It sounds solipsist or something of that kind. In fact that has been an argument against Yogacara – that its Mind-Only aspect is mere solipsism also tended to the eternalism that is also a Buddhist issue with Hinduism. Yogacarins argue that their teaching is rather a therapy than an actual view as such and so can’t be solipsist. The aim is merely to reveal to us that we are living in a world that we can’t understand and that realising both that we can’t understand and that we are living a life is to understand the world as it really is. So it’s a therapy all about the mind and our experience of the mind but that doesn’t mean there is nothing but mind. Mind is also just the same as everything around it: sunyata. One of the Sutras (I think possibly the Lankavatara) says that the world is only in our mind but that there is something outside that but that that something is outside our experience. What’s more, cittamatra (Mind-Only) is therefore naturally regarded as being about the experience of more than merely mind – so mind is clearly not the ultimate and only real thing for the Mind-Only view that is one feature of the Yogacara view.

Nevertheless, there is no distinction to be made between mind and object of mind (from the earliest Asanga writings this was made clear as an object of the teaching). Yogacara isn’t dualist.

It may be fair to say that some Chinese versions of Yogacara verge rather strangely even more closely to idealism of some kind (subject to their own caveats). It might also be fair to say that Descartes’ solipsist cogito ergo sum starting point is idealist but it was only a starting point for him however illogical his argument out of it may have been. Cittimatrata is the truth of cittimatra (which is a multitude of things depending on what stage of understanding you are at within the school).

The Yogacara Reaction (a Third Turning Exemplar)

Was it a reaction to problems with Madhyamika? Certainly, the problems it claims to address are that of negativity and the potential for nihilism of the Madhyamika way (how Middle Way can negation really be, it essentially argued?) This school also (as with Madhyamika) arose out of the practice of meditation more than as a purely scholastic divergence. Its name means “practice (cara) of (a) discipline (yoga)” and it rose to prominence in the 4^th and 5th Centuries CE – so it was the latest starter I’ve so far considered (though I’ve briefly mentioned later-developed schools such as Zen and the Tibetan Vajrayana schools and also modern day divisions).

The Mahayana view, generally, had begun to dominate India and Buddhist thought was experiencing one of its heydays. One of its greatest thinkers and the great Sarvastivadan scholastic abhidharma commentator Vasubandhu lived at this time and eventually converted to the less scholastic Yogacara Mahayana view himself after producing his great Sarvastivadan commentary (in which he noted with concern the Sarvastivadan school’s decline), though he remained a thinker and commentator, just with the reduced scholastic pressure inherent in this meditative school. He was apparently converted by his half-brother Asanga and clearly went on to become a key philosopher of the new school.

Asanga had been Sarvastivadan but become a devotee of the not-yet-Buddha, Maitreya, and was also the originator (with alleged assistance of Maitreya during meditation) of much of the Yogacara School’s ideology. According to a popular fable, Asanga’s complete conversion to Maitreya devotion had come about after much searching and prayer to Maitreya for guidance. Finally, when he had reached a point close to despair if not of actual despair, he saw a dog ridden with worms. Further, he realised in his then state that the only way to rid the extremely weakened dog of the worms without killing it was to lick the worms out of its body one by one and proceeded to do so (whereupon the dog revealed itself to be Maitreya and explained that his compassion and wisdom had finally allowed him to see the Maitreya, who had always been with him, in the dog). Besides the Sandinirmocana that I refer to below, Asanga was given five other Sutras by Maitreya (hence their author is usually cited as Maitreya-Asanga). There is a story of one of these Sutras being recited to Asanga by the alleged voice of Maitreya in front of an assembly that was unable to see Maitreya (could Asanga (or Maitreya) have been a great ventriloquist?)

The view’s major special claim to fame is its explicit emphasis on the idea that we all have a Buddha nature (remembering from an earlier post that there was a class of Sutras that had this emphasis – it is, generally, a Yogacara-specific class of Sutra). One of its pre-eminent ones is called the Sandinirmocana, which explicitly mentions that its teachings are a third turning of the wheel of dharma and discusses the limitations of the other turnings (without supplementation by the affirmation and negation of Yogacara that is the true Middle way).

The most completely Yogacara-only class of Mahayana scriptures is the Mind Only class (in terms of what different Mahayana Siddhantas view as useful Mahayana texts). As a rule, it has a more positive-sounding spin on things than Madhyamika. There is for this new view something in the sunyata of an excellent or even an ordinary mind that luminesces, radiates and possesses clarity (prabhasvara).

The difference between these schools is perhaps reminiscent of the difference between Plato and Aristotle later further developed in Western philosophy on the nature of mind and in fact this school may have been inspired by debate within the Hellenistic world that came to the attention of Buddhists.

The Avatamsaka Sutra uses an analogy that suggests all Buddhas are like jewels in an infinite cosmological net all reflecting off each other for us to experience in all their splendid co-reflected awesomeness. This became an especially important Sutra in China where it was seen by many as the highest explanation of what Siddhartha’s actual way of experiencing the universe was (once he became a Buddha). Many of the apparent paradoxes and confusions generally found in Zen and Chan commentaries and thought can be partly traced back to this particular idea of Siddhartha’s (and, by extension, enlightened ones') experiences. For instance, when asked what the ultimate principle of Buddhism is, a Zen master might answer “the oak tree in the garden” because the enlightened Zen monk is expected to see the luminescence, radiance and 'thusness' or 'suchness' (tathata) in all things where the ordinary person isn’t looking.

Being all about meditation, it was natural for its focus to be on the mind, perception and experience. It attempted to deal with so-called false appearances to the mind (pravrtti) by a turning about of this false reality (paravrtti) to get around the false appearances. The focus is on the teaching that it is realisable that there are no objects or subjects, which it calls graspable things (grahyas) and graspers (grahakas), in this state. The unique emphasis here (by the unique use of these specific terms and rejection of the more usual Mahayana terms subject and object and thereby their existence) is thus on undermining whatever it is that ‘causes’ grasping by denying any possible graspability of any actual object by any actual subject.