The ‘Priming’ of the West for ‘Engaged Buddhism’ – Indian Beginnings

Having now examined the history of Indian Buddhism (especially in its first millenium - c. 400 BCE to c. 600 CE) over the last thirty odd posts, the next several posts including this one will outline how the West came to know Buddhist history and philosophy and what Western thinkers (influenced by a Western history of thought as they have been and are) have made and continue to make of them.

The interest in Buddhism in the West begins with the economic, military, social and political invasion of India by the British in the 17^th Century but the route was somewhat circuitous. As so often, the ideas of the invader are often as influenced by the very indigenous ideas the invaders imagine themselves to be influencing. It’s about what ideas work and information is somewhat inevitably a two-way process. Let’s take a tour of that route.

The English had no knowledge at all of Buddhism at first. They formally wrested power from the Mughal Empire in 1765 and initially roughly the area of Bengal was the main area of British control and interest. This area extended from the Mughal capital Delhi to the east coast at Calcutta (now Kolkata) and was essentially the lower Ganges Valley and surrounds. As they sought to rule this area, they sought to understand its laws and customs and for this purpose in part they employed translators of Sanskrit. Indians generally had up until this time considered the language too sacred to translate for European interlopers so naturally British and other European linguists were employed for the purpose, principally the brilliant linguist, and competent lawyer, William Jones.

Jones had become a lawyer for the sole purpose of seeing service in India and learning its languages. He appears to have had a good knowledge of virtually all European languages and some Classical and ancient languages as well as at least Arabic and Persian and to have also started to learn the Chinese writing system at an early age.

Jones was the first European to learn Sanskrit (at first officially, so that he could read the Hindu law books). As a pioneer linguist, an expert in comparative linguistics and (by virtue of his work in India) the father of philology, he was quick to form a view of Sanskrit as related to many European languages and as belonging to a family of ‘Indo-European’ languages all with a common antecedent language relatively close to Sanskrit. He is also regarded today as a pioneer in the study of religion and comparative religion and culture. He set up the Asiatic Society of Bengal for the study of more Indian texts and is thereby also known today as the father of Indology. The Victorian German Indologist (and Oxford don of Sanskrit) Max Müller may arguable share some of these distinctions (especially with regard to paternity of the academic disciplines of comparative religion and Indology).

Jones famously regarded Sanskrit as a superior language in various ways to both of the then-revered languages of Classical Greek and Latin (“more perfect than Greek” and “more copious than Latin”, he said) and this idea proved quite revolutionary for many. The usual awe felt concerning the idealised Classical underpinnings of Western culture and even concerning ideas of European ‘exceptionalism’ and superiority were significantly diminished by Jones's work.

Schopenhauer, for one, certainly thought the discovery of Indian texts would be as influential in the West as the rediscovery of Classical texts there had been. He predicted a new Renaissance would be provoked (the old one had been essentially provoked firstly in Florence in the 14^th and 15^th Centuries by the rediscovery by Europeans of the works of Plato and Aristotle, of Classical literature more generally and of hermetic Egyptian works that themselves drew on Classical learning (partly due to the fall of Byzantium to the Ottomans and partly due to Moorish sharing in (and their progressive withdrawal from) what is now Spain and Portugal)). It may be yet still to get underway even today.

Jones’s revelations, in particular, did spark serious European intellectual interest in Asia beyond mere interest in language but only later in Buddhism. His 18^th Century work revealing the religious thought of India, which in fact paid scant regard to Buddhism, is regarded in part as having inspired the 19^th Century Romantic movements that would be re-inspired by later interest in Buddhism. Romanticism as a fully formed viewpoint based on Indian ideas can be seen as derived from the philosophy of the brothers Schlegel from Germany, both earnest students of Sanskrit (the word for the movement was actually also coined by one of the brothers). They saw India as a great originator and a more spiritual and less empirical civilisation than the West’s. Despite their great interest in and idealisation of India, neither of the Schlegels ever visited it, however. Had they done so, they may have developed a perhaps more realistic view of it.

The Romantics loved India and held it up to Europe as a paragon. Their problems with the European way included its scientific method, its materialist philosophy and its Industrial Revolution (recall the “dark satanic mills” of Blake, an English Romantic poet) and they saw India as a nation living closer to their ideal. Other notable Romantics include Beethoven, Coleridge, Keats and Wordsworth. They saw progress as a more complex animal that the mere utilitarian advancement of science, technology and material prosperity and their opponents as the Liberal and Enlightenment thinking that had recently come into fashion.

Romantics questioned both European empiricism and rationality (read Greek logic) as reliable bedrock and unalienable principles of any truly sane civilisation. Expressions like “the white man’s burden” and “mission civilisatrice” and colonialism generally are imbued with their urgency from those ‘progressive’ ideals that Romantics sought to question. In today's post-colonial, 'post modern' and warming world these ideas are beginning to gather more converts than they may have even among the formerly ‘enlightened’ thinkers of the 19th Century. One can certainly see Romantic ideas in the roots of later non-violence and environmental movements.

What remained after the removal of empiricism and logic (and which they valued more) was imagination, ‘intuition’ and the ‘divine’ within as also expressed in nature in its ‘wild’ state. These ideas inspired Freud’s idea of accessing the sub-conscious via psychoanalysis. The US ‘wilderness appreciation’ and ‘national parks’ movements of the late 19^th Century were early expressions of Romantic ideas that have ongoing effects today as the seeds of modern environmentalism.

Religion (and the psyche for Freudians) was to be experienced in the here-and-now rather than studied to within an inch of its life (albeit that Jones, while inspiring Romantics, had also instigated this study). 'Nature' became an idol of a sort. This ideal of inner searching corresponded almost exactly with the Indian way that I’ve been exploring throughout these posts including the earliest Buddhist way.

Friedrich Schleiermacher, a noted 18^th Century and early 19^th Century Protestant thinker (considered the father of holistic hermeneutics) wrote the engaging On Religion: Speeches to its Cultured Despisers in an attempt to explain the meaning of this Romantic idea of the eternal moment derived partly, as I’ve said, from Jones’s 18^th Century work. Schleiermacher wrote: “it is to have a sense and taste for the infinite, to lie in the bosom of the universe and feel its boundless life and creative power within your own.” And Blake wrote, in Auguries of Innocence, “To see a world in a grain of sand, And a heaven in a wild flower, Hold infinity in the palm of your hand, And eternity in an hour” and, in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, “If the door of perception were cleansed, every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite.” And how about this from William Wordsworth: “... a sense sublime, Of something far more deeply interfused, Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, And the round ocean and the living air, And the blue sky, and in the mind of man” from Composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey, on revisiting the Banks of the Wye (published in 1798).

Imagination and internal searching were required both for the creation of and apprehension of this infinity. Less condescension to other ‘races’ than the other main strand of European thought, that of the Enlightenment, was inherent in this way of thinking concerning the paramountcy of thought itself over revealed doctrine (whether religious or scientific).

Truth was now an infinite subjectivity and not about control, for Romantics (as for Buddhists, I might argue, though Romantics did not yet know it). Mother Nature was thus not like a woman who, in the patriarchal and sexist way of Enlightenment thought, was seen as slowly yielding her secrets under the pressure of men of science (pressing in order that they might control her - Edward Said suggested that the Orient and ‘Orientals’ were viewed in the same way).

Only science and logic were limited and finite and therefore unable to comprehend, much less control, this infinity. Romanticism thus prefigures the ideas of Gandhi, Thich Nhat Hanh and others that control cannot be hoped to be achieved if it is even possible at all without first giving up control (in the limited rational and logical sense).

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:

The Mahayana Bodhisattva Path

This typically begins with a vow to enter on the path upon becoming a novice monk or nun and some special spiritual exercises (in addition to the usual ones) aimed at producing a compassionate and enlightened heart and mind (bodhicitta) are entered into.

The idea is to go beyond the outer behaviour required by the vinaya and focus on developing more perfect inner behaviours which derive from more enlightened inner attitudes. This path began to be encouraged with the second turning and was, of course, strengthened with the humanism/everythingism of the third turning.

Meditation on the equality of everything was one method employed in this cultivation of compassion. This was, of course, aided by the idea that everything had a Buddha Nature and at the same time that ‘everything’ was ‘no thing’.

Meditating upon selfishness (perhaps the opposite of the intense compassion sought) and its results was (and is) also used or (perhaps ironically) on the teachings of the self-happiness that altruism brings (now borne out by Western science).

Equanimity can also be meditated upon (labels like ‘the other’, ‘friend’ and ‘stranger’ might be turned over in the mind, their usefulness questioned and the labels mentally discarded). ‘Self’ interest might thus be questioned and discarded as a useful attitude in the very real problematic nature of ‘self’ itself thus established. It may be noted in the meditation that at some time in a past life every single being may have been both the mother and the child (and perhaps also both friend and enemy) of every other single being (in extreme cases both sentient and non-sentient beings are included in this in some mystical sense). This was all expected to break down excessively self-cherishing attitudes as compared with attitudes to others.

You can guess that a lot of this was also done by pre-Mahayana monks and nuns seeking to be Arhats but this was clearly now more of a necessity as even more extreme unselfishness had to be cultivated in order to now go beyond mere (inherently relatively selfish) Arhat-thinking.

Only after this programme had proved successful would the ten bhumis I mentioned in an earlier post actually be entered into. Even to be considered to have attained the first of these is considered a great achievement within Buddhism. The formal attainment of each level gives a rank within the religious community and teaching rights with regard to ranks attained. The attainment of rank six is indicated by the honorific Aryabodhisattva (advanced Bodhisattva).

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).