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Episode, Season
Eastern Traditions: What is World? What is Reality?
How do Buddhism, Chinese traditions, Hinduism, and Shintoism address causality, consciousness, energies, God, ultimate reality? What is non- dualism? How is the world interconnected? How are metaphysics and morality related?
- Robert Lawrence Kuhn
- For almost 25 years Closer to Truth has pursued cosmos, consciousness, and meaning. Meaning has focused on philosophy of religion – and I approach theism, atheism, and agnosticism with equal parts, passion and skepticism. While Closer to Truth has explored big questions of meaning in depth — questions of existence, God, human nature, purpose if any — Closer to Truth viewers would not be mistaken if they have detected a bias favoring philosophers of the Christian religion. Let’s be charitable & call this Christian philosophy bias an “overweighting” – the product of my unchosen geography and, my analytical proclivities. We have tried to include Buddhist and Hindu philosophy, but we have not tried hard enough. And we have not at all considered Chinese philosophy — Confucianism and Daoism. I am excited to expand the scope of our search — explore big questions from the perspective of Buddhism, Hinduism, Confucianism, and Daoism. This is the first episode of Closer to Truth’s season dedicated to “Eastern Traditions and the Big Questions.” In Eastern traditions, what is world? What is reality? I’m Robert Lawrence Kuhn. And Closer to Truth is my journey to find out. Take the big questions of the existence of the world and the nature of human beings? What is ultimate reality? Is there a creator God? What is the human person? Why is there evil and suffering? Is there life after death, and if so, what kind of life? What is the world to come? I approach the philosophies of diverse religions in two ways – this may sound contradictory – please hear me out. Both… seeking insights, depth of thought, flow of argument; and applying tough-minded critical thinking. Here’s my plan for “eastern traditions and the big questions.” I explore the big questions, from the perspective of each major tradition. To begin, the fundamentals of the world, the foundations of reality. I start with a devout Buddhist practitioner and philosopher — a Buddhist nun with a Master’s in Comparative Philosophy, and a Doctorate in Religious Studies from Yale. Venerable Yifa.
- Dr. Yifa
- From my appearance, everybody can tell I’m a Buddhist nun and religion – people would say it would be my faith, but grow up in Taiwan – we were already taught Confucianism and Taoism from elementary school to high school. And my family faith, it believes in so-called the Ma June. It’s kind of – more like a – a folk religion. The first one, Confucianism focus on – on this life and say, okay, [speaking foreign language]. You respect all the ghosts and deity, but not worship them. And Taoism uses so-called the Dao. The Dao many people translate it the way or the path, but I think it’s beyond that. It means the way of the nature or function.
- Robert Lawrence Kuhn
- Ineffable. Ineffable. Ineffable, like you, cannot say it, isn’t it, or inconceivable? And very interesting, when Buddhism came to China and when Buddhism talks about the [speaking foreign language], the ultimate reality is also inconceivable. And so, that kind of let Buddhism and Taoism kind of working together much better. But Buddhism has what’s called two truths. One is called ultimate truth, so that might be, you know, get along with Taoism better, but it also talks about conventional truth. In Buddhism, what are the fundamental precepts that drive the religious thinking?
- Dr. Yifa
- I think it’s about the causality. So, if people come to ask what is the difference of like Buddhism. Then, the Buddhism will say, causality: Cause, conditions, result, and retribution. So, the things always have a cause and condition, then they come to be that is where also the karma comes in, the cause and condition.
- Robert Lawrence Kuhn
- If “cause and conditions” are fundamental principles of Buddhism, what are its philosophical foundations? I ask a philosopher of mind and metaphysics who specializes in Buddhist studies – Jay Garfield.
- Jay Garfield
- As I answer that question, I’m going to be answering firmly within the Mahayana tradition.
So, the three ideas one is impermanence, one is interdependence, and the third one is emptiness of any intrinsic nature. When we say that things are impermanent, we mean that from moment to moment, everything is constantly changing. And so, impermanence literally means that we have a new world every moment, that drives Buddhist thought. When we talk about dependent origination, or interdependence, that is typically explained as having three principal dimensions. One is causal interdependence, the second is mereological interdependence. When we say mereological, we mean that any whole depends for existence on its parts. But the Buddhist twist is that every part also depends for its identity on the whole. So, this is reciprocal. On the Buddhist view, everything arises depending on causes and conditions, and goes out of existence when those causes and conditions are no longer present. It connects momentarist because it means that for something to remain or to change, there’s got to be a cause for its remaining or for its changing. But it also means that when we try to explain what something is, we need to explain it as the effect of other things, and the thing that causes other things. That it is identity is partly constituted by causal relations. The third that that’s following from that, emptiness of intrinsic identity. And in the Madhyamaka school, when we say that things are empty, we say they’re empty of intrinsic identity. We could also think of that as essence, something that makes the thing that it is, a kind of central core. When we recognize those things are constantly changing, impermanence, and when we recognize that they only have those properties in virtues of causes and conditions, we see those properties aren’t intrinsic to those things. And it makes us see them differently. Emptiness is not non-existence. It’s therefore identical with interdependence in this way. - Robert Lawrence Kuhn
- Buddhism arose in India. How did spread across Asia? I ask a Japanese-Australian-British-American philosopher of mind & religion – The Leader of the Global Philosophy of Religion Project – Yujin Nagasawa.
- Yujin Nagasawa
- Each tradition offers an interesting fundamental metaphysical view. Coming from Japan I am quite interested in Buddhism and Shintoism and compare them. In Buddhism, you have a very dynamic view of reality. So Buddha, Buddhists claim that there are three marks of existence: So, suffering, non-self, and impermanence. And this is quite distinct from the Western concept, because in the Western theistic tradition, there is God who is eternal and necessarily existent, and there’s the permanent self, the eternal soul, and so on. But in Buddhism, everything is constantly changing. If there are gods and angels, they are impermanent as well. And in Shinto, there is also a dynamic view of reality. But the focus is not necessarily on impermanence, but it’s more on this vital energy that is imminent in the world. Shintoism is an indigenous religion in Japan. So, it has been existent for a much longer time than Buddhism in Japan. But Buddhism came from, from India via China to Japan. Some philosophers, they tried to figure out how we can understand these distinct religious traditions which appear to be incompatible. But what’s interesting is people try to accept the both of them at the same time, there is a theory called Honji Suijaku theory, which basically says that these Buddhas, or Buddhist deities, they came to Japan, but when they came to Japan, they manifested themselves as Shinto gods, so that the Japanese people can easily accept the teaching of Buddhism. And some other people had the opposite theory, saying that actually, Shinto gods, they manifested themselves as Buddhist deities. So, some people think that Shinto gods, or Shinto kami, they are more fundamental or more prior to Buddhist deities, but some people think of it the other way around. And you can also find kami everywhere.
- Robert Lawrence Kuhn
- Kami is the gods, yeah.
- Yujin Nagasawa
- There are gods of rivers, and mountains, and trees, and rocks, and even gods of artificial objects.
- Robert Lawrence Kuhn
- And these gods are real, supernatural things, are they kind of metaphors?
- Yujin Nagasawa
- That’s, that’s a tricky issue, because sometimes real people, when they die, they can be kind of promoted to kami. But also there are more kind of non-human kami as well.
- Robert Lawrence Kuhn
- But are they concrete objects, even though they’re non-physical?
- Yujin Nagasawa
- That’s another difficult question. I mean, they’re not meant to be conscious beings, like humans or animals, they’re kind of meant to be somewhat abstract.
- Robert Lawrence Kuhn
- Whereas Buddhism, the world’s fourth largest religion, arose on the Indian subcontinent some 2500 years ago, Hinduism, the world’s third largest religion, arose there well earlier. I meet a Hindu monk who is head of the Vedanta Society of New York – Swami Sarvapriyananda.
- Swami Sarvapriyananda
- I’ll talk about the school I’m most familiar with, my home tradition, which is non-dual Vedanta, and Advaita Vedanta. The answer is pretty elegant and simple: Ultimate reality, consciousness, God – one word is enough, Brahman. Brahman literally means, the vast, the limitless, the vast in the sense in the limitless. If you dig a little deeper, you will find it described as existence, consciousness, bliss. Sut, Chit, Ananda. Limitless existence, limitless consciousness, limitless bliss. One easy way of understanding this is when we look at he broad divisions of philosophy. Metaphysics or ontology would be one where we ask, what is real? Then we ask, how do we know? Epistemology. And then, we ask what’s good? What’s valuable? Beautiful. So, that now, we have a new term for that, axiology. If you look at the characterization of ultimate reality, this is a direct answer to each of these three questions. What is real? And the answer is Sut, pure being. Being itself is real. Existence itself is real. How do we know anything at all? How do we experience anything at all? The answer is consciousness. Chit. Chit means pure consciousness. Then, what’s the point of it all? What’s good? What’s valuable? What is – is there anything meaningful here? And the answer is Ananda which means bliss. When we think about existence, we think about existing things, tables, and chairs, and people, and sky, and the earth, maybe even, in some sense, Harry Potter and the number one, or something like that. What Vedanta does, is it reverses this. It says, think of existing things like waves in an ocean, and think of existence as the water. So, we are surrounded by an ocean of existence, and you encounter it is existing. And just as existence itself is not an existing thing, but all existing things are existence. Similarly, consciousness itself, is not a thought, or a feeling, or an emotion, or an idea, or a pain, or a pleasure. Rather, it is that which enables us to have these experiences of thoughts, and feelings, and emotions, and all. Similarly, bliss, is not a happy feeling, or a nice emotion, rather, it is that which is in all of this, as one commented to say, they are the spray from the ocean of bliss, which is on, which is you, yourself. If we wanted to summarize the teaching of Advaita Vedanta, it’s very simple, one sentence. [Speaking Hindi] That thou art, you are that. That is pure being, existence, consciousness, bliss. And when we investigate ourselves. We come to see that we are this unlimited existence, consciousness, bliss.
- Robert Lawrence Kuhn
- “Non-Dualism” — Brahman — from Advaita Vedanta, means that all is interconnected and all is pure being and pure consciousness. For another perspective, I meet a Hindu monk who is a philosopher with a doctorate in German Idealism from Berkeley – Swami Medhananda.
- Swami Medhananda
- There are many traditions within Hinduism which are devotional in nature which means that they conceive the ultimate reality as personal in nature, the personal God with omni attributes, who responds to our prayers, who creates, preserves, and destroys the universe. There’s another school of Hinduism, called, Advaita Vedanta, the school of non-dualism within Vedanta, which was codified by the great eighth-century philosopher, Shankaracharya. His view is almost the diametrical opposite and he conceives ultimate reality as non-dual and impersonal pure consciousness and he says that that’s our true nature. And then the question is, well, what about this world, and what about us as individual souls, what about the personal God? He says they’re all true, but from the provisional or empirical standpoint. But the moment that you realize the highest truth, which is non-dual pure consciousness, all of – all of those things, the world, individual souls, and the personal God turn out to be illusory. The tradition of Hinduism that I follow can be traced to the nineteenth century Bengali mystic, Sri Ramakrishna, taught that God is infinite and can – and actually manifests in different forms to different spiritual aspirants. And so, the – the spiritual tradition I adhere to is one that follows what I would call a both-and approach rather what I would consider the either-or approach favored by most of the traditional schools of Hinduism. And why not both-and, why not say that the ultimate reality in one aspect is non-dual pure consciousness and, in another aspect, the personal God, which can manifest in different forms?
- Robert Lawrence Kuhn
- But is one more fundamental than the other? I don’t think you can have it both ways.
- Swami Medhananda
- I think it’s coherent to say that the one infinite divine reality can be impersonal in one aspect and personal in another aspect, but without saying that one is more fundamental than the other.
- Robert Lawrence Kuhn
- But if – if it’s at all personal, then it is personal.
- Swami Medhananda
- Absolutely.
- Robert Lawrence Kuhn
- – if the ultimate reality and there’s nothing more fundamental is personal, then even if some think it’s not personal, but that it really is personal.
- Swami Medhananda
- The precise relationship between non-dual pure consciousness and the personal God would be to say that what’s absolutely bedrock fundamental is non-dual pure consciousness and that the different forms of the personal God are grounded in that – that non-dual sub – [overlapping voices].
- Robert Lawrence Kuhn
- That, to me, is more coherent. It – whether it’s right or not, you know, that’s another question – [overlapping voices]. But I’m looking for what is – what is – is absolutely coherent. [overlapping voices]
- Swami Medhananda
- Absolutely or what the afterlife looks like. “Ramakrishna” distinguishes between two paradigms of eschatology. One is eating sugar and the other is becoming sugar. So, what he means is devotees of the personal God, for them, the goal is to dwell in an eternal heaven with a loving relationship with the personal God in the form that they love and – and that’s not going to be sublated or abolished at some later stage in eschatology. But that an equally valuable form of salvation is becoming sugar by which he means the goal of Advaita Vedanta, which is there’s no coming and going. There are no heavens that you dwell in. It’s all sort of too dualistic for the school of nondualism. So, what they say is all you do is rest in your true nature, which is non-dual pure consciousness.
- Robert Lawrence Kuhn
- I embrace love the fundamental tension in Indian non-dualism – without a personal God, or with. And its resonance in the afterlife – either “being sugar” with Only Consciousness, there is no God or “eating sugar” God and consciousness. I know that Chinese traditions are quite different. The practical worldliness of indigenous Chinese philosophy – Confucianism and Daoism – is clear. But how to distinguish the two? I speak with an expert in ancient Chinese philosophy – editor of the Journal “Philosophy East and West”.
- Franklyn Perkins
- The quickest way to get the picture of what’s going on with early Chinese philosophy, at least, is just to point out how this worldly, it is. So, no one proposed that this world was an illusion. No one thought there was some eternal reality that was different from this world, that one could try to seek. They don’t even think that there’s a being, a God, separate from the world that would create the world. So, everything is focused on this world. So, the religious aspects, the kind of reverence, it’s always going to be towards things that are either a being in this world, or an aspect of this world, or maybe the whole world itself. The meaning of life is going to come from nature. So, for the early period, you know, there were hundreds of different philosophers. It’s a little hand to make sense of it. In the Han Dynasty, looking back, Sumachend [ph] grew into six schools. So, of those, the ones that we know of Confucianism and Daoism, they’re still around.
- Robert Lawrence Kuhn
- What are the core characteristics between those two?
- Franklyn Perkins
- The core of Confucianism is social roles…, how we can take our natural desires and emotions and reconcile that with all the demands that social life places on us. So, the question really is like what kind of self should you become, and what kind of world do you want to make? How do you end up with a fulfilling happy life that still lets you do all the things you should do for other people? Daoism is almost the opposite direction of that. [Laughing] Daoism is much more aligning with nature. Based on an idea that nature itself is not that bad, right? So, they don’t have a very idealized view of nature, but they do think it tends to be harmonious, sustainable, moderate, balanced. And so, a human life that fits in with nature will have those qualities. There’s lots of different ways to do that. The more radical way is to try to accept whatever happens, and just go along with whatever happens, freeing yourself from desires, from emotions, that you find in Dao De Jing. The Dao De Jing, what’s most interesting about it to me really is how it produces so much meaning.
- Robert Lawrence Kuhn
- What big questions are important?
- Franklyn Perkins
- I think it’s in the shadow of an idea that nature is not supporting our normal human ethics, right? So, one way to relate to that would be to say we should transcend our normal ethical categories, go along with the way things are, that’s the Dao De Jing, the Daoist text, that’s the direction it takes. Mumza, who is maybe my favorite, thinks that we follow the nature that’s in us, which leads us to be good, even though nature itself isn’t good. So, what’s natural for us is to want peace, to not want innocent people to die. What’s natural for nature doesn’t necessarily involve those things, right? But he says, you follow the internal drives of yourself.
You start to get a new idea late in the Warring States period, that becomes really dominant in the Han period, that’s looking more at the patterns of nature, and then making analogies between those patterns, and the patterns of human society. It’s often called correlative cosmology. Because there’s all these correlations between them. - Robert Lawrence Kuhn
- From Buddhism’s impermanence and emptiness to Hinduism’s Non-Dualism and consciousness to Chinese philosophy’s practical worldliness and ethics – are there integrative principles that characterize eastern traditions? I ask a philosopher of cognitive science and of religion, who studies how humans form abstract beliefs Helen De Cruz.
- Helen De Cruz
- So, in Neo-Confucianism, you have the idea that humans do have a self, but the self is part of a bigger picture. And the metaphor that they take from Buddhism is a metaphor of Indra’s net, where you have the world is just like a net, and each individual object in the world, you know, like say this piano or you are like individual like intersections or jewels in the net. And so, the idea is that if you think about the world then you have to think about how we are situated within that world and how our perceptions influence the world. And you see this particularly in most strands of Buddhism. Westerners will then often sort of go like yeah, but what’s real? What’s really behind this all? And like oh, this is a scary thought. But in Eastern religious traditions and philosophies seems like people are more comfortable with that. Like the idea that the world is not what it seems. That, that it’s limited by our perceptions. For example, in Neo-Confucianism, you have the idea that there is sort of physical stuff that is also mindful, namely qi, and then you have like the pattern of the world or the li, and those two things interrelate with each other. And then they use that metaphysical picture to think about concretely about how we should act. Because the universe is not a morally neutral place. The universe has certain moral properties too. Westerners will often say like this is, this is the cosmology and then this is ethics, and they’re two different things. But in many Eastern traditions, these two hang together. If you know what the pattern of the universe looks like, then you also know that there are is a fact of the matter about how you can act. So, for example, one of the things that, particularly Buddhism has, is the idea that selfish desires sort of cloud our judgments. They cloud our thinking, and they cloud our realization that we are all interconnected.
- Robert Lawrence Kuhn
- Eastern traditions broadly have a world that is interconnected, where metaphysics and morality are deeply related. In Buddhism, causality is crucial – conditions, results, consequences. Likewise, impermanence, interdependence, and emptiness of intrinsic nature. In Shintoism, vital energy is imminent in the world and hard-to-describe “gods”, called “kami,” are everywhere. In Hinduism, the one word “brahman” is ultimate reality – limitless existence, cosmic consciousness, God. Whether pure non-dualism, where only consciousness is real, and all else is illusion. Or non-dualism with a personal god who creates, preserves, & destroys the universe, or a mystical “both-and” approach. In Confucianism, what counts is what happens in this world – self, family, society, state – ethics and morality. In Daoism, what counts is alignment with nature – harmony, sustainability, balance. The down-to-earth practicality of Chinese philosophy contrasts with the abstract metaphysics of Hinduism, even of Buddhism, and, of course, within each tradition there are great variations. This Closer to Truth miniseries – Eastern Traditions and the Big Questions – widens our perspective, of existence, consciousness, meaning which we need, to hope… to get… Closer to Truth.