Sunday, October 14, 2007
Divine Immediacy as Determined by the Believer (or: Joining the Quantum Speculation Bandwagon)
I have long been a critic of those involved in some spiritual or esoteric tradition, who try to establish a degree of validation for their practices by connecting them (with specious claims to accuracy at best) to modern scientific research -- especially to quantum physics. (Right off I'd like to note the admirable exception of Dr. Paul Fleischman, whose essay "Karma and Chaos" (in the book of the same title), on chaos theory and its relation to Buddhist beliefs, is really quite good. He wrote it with his son, whose name I think is Forrest.) But the other day I had a thought while meditating that seems a)interesting enough to post about and b)unfortunately similar to doze otha fools i'm always bangin' on. So this is the disclaimer -- yes, I am now one of Them. I retain my right to make fun of Us, even so.
Anyway.
Lately I have been studying both Buddhist and Yogic philosophy (some might call it theology). Tantric Yoga is essentially dualist, for the most part (Kashmir Shaivism being one notable half-exception). You often hear/read sentiments in Bhakti and Tantra Yoga along the lines of "practice is important, but you will never reach the final goal of ultimate liberation without being the recipient of God's Grace." I get this a lot at my yoga school, as well.
In Buddhism, however, I can't find an obvious (or even not-so-obvious) corrolary. Buddha is always saying, "It's up to you, on the strength of your own meritorious actions, to achieve final realization. And in fact there is no God to help you!" So what gives? Both systems have produced enlightened beings, it seems. And there is also strong indication that the highest state of enlightened existence is one and the same across all spiritual paths. The writings of Christian saints, Sufi mystics, Daoist monks -- all end up describing essentially the same thing (sometimes in eerily similar language).
So Tantra Yoga works, and it believes you need God to validate your parking ticket. Buddhism works, and it believes you balance your own checkbook. (Just to keep up the tradition of mixed metaphors.) They both get you to the same place, ultimately. But they actively contradict each other. (God vs. not-God) So this necessarily indicates that they are talking about the same thing, but one of these traditions is using a metaphor to describe the truth of the other. Or does it?
For instance, you could say, well when the Yogis talk about "the Grace of God" allowing for your ultimate enlightment, perhaps they're really just talking fancifully about your stock of karmas finally getting down to zero. And seeing as you can never be fully sure as to exactly when this will happen, when it does happen, it seems spontaneous and the likely explanation seems to point towards intervention by some divine Grace. So then the Buddhists would be closer to metaphrand, and the Yogis would be using a metaphier (to steal Julian Jayne's terminology).
But perhaps God is a bit deeper than this semantic wordplay? I had this thought the other day -- that it seems we are discovering (I use "we" loosely here!) more and more fundamentals of the physical universe that have an essential nature of dual-potential. Light is both a particle and a wave, and it only is one or the other when we look at it in a certain way. Pairs of particles spin plus and minus but they aren't either until we measure them. Thus this whole frenzy over quantum uncertainty that pops up like a Whack-a-Mole hopped up on adderall in spirituality today.
So I thought, well, what if God is like this too? Seems kind of fitting. Maybe God is unfathomable in the same way -- perhaps He (for lack of a certain pronoun) is both Personal (white beard, blue throat, bestower of Grace) AND Impersonal (shunyata, emptiness, cosmic consciousness) at once, perhaps that is His very nature. And He becomes one or the other for each individual who so casts his or her belief -- same as the role of the observer in quantum mechanics. For the Buddhist, God IS emptiness. He is Mind. There is no inherent anything, other than suchness, which is emptiness, yadda yadda yadda. That manifesting as such for the Buddhist, however, doesn't change the equally valid truth of a personal God. For the Tantrika, God IS Shiva, immersed in his Lila, aware and loving and connected to the spiritual aspirant. And there is no contradiction.
Who knows, why stop at two possibilities? Maybe God manifests -- not just in metaphor, but in ultimate reality -- in as may different ways as one can imagine Him, all perfectly true and (seemingly) at odds with one another. Voodoo, Wicca, even Jonathan Edwards (God help us) -- God IS as they perceive Him to be.
So I am going to perform an experiment. God IS Ben&Jerry's Phish Food. Oh, sweet Enlightenment! I'll catch all ya'll Buddhas somewhere around Burlington. I'll be the one with the caramel-fudge halo.
I have long been a critic of those involved in some spiritual or esoteric tradition, who try to establish a degree of validation for their practices by connecting them (with specious claims to accuracy at best) to modern scientific research -- especially to quantum physics. (Right off I'd like to note the admirable exception of Dr. Paul Fleischman, whose essay "Karma and Chaos" (in the book of the same title), on chaos theory and its relation to Buddhist beliefs, is really quite good. He wrote it with his son, whose name I think is Forrest.) But the other day I had a thought while meditating that seems a)interesting enough to post about and b)unfortunately similar to doze otha fools i'm always bangin' on. So this is the disclaimer -- yes, I am now one of Them. I retain my right to make fun of Us, even so.
Anyway.
Lately I have been studying both Buddhist and Yogic philosophy (some might call it theology). Tantric Yoga is essentially dualist, for the most part (Kashmir Shaivism being one notable half-exception). You often hear/read sentiments in Bhakti and Tantra Yoga along the lines of "practice is important, but you will never reach the final goal of ultimate liberation without being the recipient of God's Grace." I get this a lot at my yoga school, as well.
In Buddhism, however, I can't find an obvious (or even not-so-obvious) corrolary. Buddha is always saying, "It's up to you, on the strength of your own meritorious actions, to achieve final realization. And in fact there is no God to help you!" So what gives? Both systems have produced enlightened beings, it seems. And there is also strong indication that the highest state of enlightened existence is one and the same across all spiritual paths. The writings of Christian saints, Sufi mystics, Daoist monks -- all end up describing essentially the same thing (sometimes in eerily similar language).
So Tantra Yoga works, and it believes you need God to validate your parking ticket. Buddhism works, and it believes you balance your own checkbook. (Just to keep up the tradition of mixed metaphors.) They both get you to the same place, ultimately. But they actively contradict each other. (God vs. not-God) So this necessarily indicates that they are talking about the same thing, but one of these traditions is using a metaphor to describe the truth of the other. Or does it?
For instance, you could say, well when the Yogis talk about "the Grace of God" allowing for your ultimate enlightment, perhaps they're really just talking fancifully about your stock of karmas finally getting down to zero. And seeing as you can never be fully sure as to exactly when this will happen, when it does happen, it seems spontaneous and the likely explanation seems to point towards intervention by some divine Grace. So then the Buddhists would be closer to metaphrand, and the Yogis would be using a metaphier (to steal Julian Jayne's terminology).
But perhaps God is a bit deeper than this semantic wordplay? I had this thought the other day -- that it seems we are discovering (I use "we" loosely here!) more and more fundamentals of the physical universe that have an essential nature of dual-potential. Light is both a particle and a wave, and it only is one or the other when we look at it in a certain way. Pairs of particles spin plus and minus but they aren't either until we measure them. Thus this whole frenzy over quantum uncertainty that pops up like a Whack-a-Mole hopped up on adderall in spirituality today.
So I thought, well, what if God is like this too? Seems kind of fitting. Maybe God is unfathomable in the same way -- perhaps He (for lack of a certain pronoun) is both Personal (white beard, blue throat, bestower of Grace) AND Impersonal (shunyata, emptiness, cosmic consciousness) at once, perhaps that is His very nature. And He becomes one or the other for each individual who so casts his or her belief -- same as the role of the observer in quantum mechanics. For the Buddhist, God IS emptiness. He is Mind. There is no inherent anything, other than suchness, which is emptiness, yadda yadda yadda. That manifesting as such for the Buddhist, however, doesn't change the equally valid truth of a personal God. For the Tantrika, God IS Shiva, immersed in his Lila, aware and loving and connected to the spiritual aspirant. And there is no contradiction.
Who knows, why stop at two possibilities? Maybe God manifests -- not just in metaphor, but in ultimate reality -- in as may different ways as one can imagine Him, all perfectly true and (seemingly) at odds with one another. Voodoo, Wicca, even Jonathan Edwards (God help us) -- God IS as they perceive Him to be.
So I am going to perform an experiment. God IS Ben&Jerry's Phish Food. Oh, sweet Enlightenment! I'll catch all ya'll Buddhas somewhere around Burlington. I'll be the one with the caramel-fudge halo.
