bell - a verbalization of consciousness

Words from My Teacher

“What we read in books, the written word,
is an echo of the original sound. IDEAS are living things
and must be transmitted, person to person,
and planted like seeds in the fertile soil
of a receptive mind.

We can read to prepare our minds, to focus
and tune them like an instrument,
and that is good and necessary.

But the real learning begins at the hands of a teacher
where the line of transmission is continued in
the one who seeks to know.”

~Nancy Chappell

White Rag Fellowship

Hogan Hayes, an old camp friend, helped establish a virtual world for all Raggers to come together…

Check it out: The White Rag Fellowship

… I will look up, and Laugh. and Love. and Lift. …

Grandma Alene Kuchler

Alene Kuchler (born “Alene Koehn”), my mother’s mother…
Born: April 16, 1917
Died: Dec. 30th, 1999, at age: 82

Grandma’s College Senior Photo…. at Marquette University in Milwaukee, WI

Class Photo, 1938… (top row, middle)

Class Vice President… (zoomed in: bottom row, middle-left)

Sorority Photo… (bottom row, second from left)

Grandma’s class details…

Fits in Self-Discipline.

I can’t help it; I’m lost in my own shadows.
My Desperation lingers in the back of my throat,
And as I choke, the Darkness grows.

There’s an utter incommunicability to it all.
Suddenly I’m all alone with my thoughts and feelings,
And now I lay bleeding, after a stumble and fall.

The choices I’ve made, the past I’ve survived-
Does it matter, should it be considered, is it part of me now?
Yet somehow, I’m to move forward with this twisted Self I’ve contrived.

I’m afraid of myself and of what I can do.
I can love. I can hate. I can harm. I can give.
But “How shall I live?,” is my question for you.

Yesterday or tomorrow, who cares of my deeds or what I achieve.
I’m a slave on my knees, trying to build my Essence…
It’s nonsense to some, but who I become is all Life can mean.

It’s work and it’s hard, and progress is rare.
I feel so alone in my project; I need to let go.
The path is slow, but outcomes considered all things are fair.

…unfinished

If Only I Could Cry. (Diatribe V)

If only I could cry. I would finally, once and for all, settle the uneasiness that grows inside me. Everything is so buried, to the point that I don’t even know what tries to get out. I have these fleeting moments where urges swell up inside me, for what, I do not know. They’re like minature convulsions, tiny fits of angst—Right below my throat, above my heart in the center of my chest. It’s really all very indescribable, and the whole sensation is very vague. It creeps up on my now & again, and feels much like the beginnings of the vomit reflex. It’s all very proprioceptive. It is such a feeling of bitter emptiness, of helplessness, not hopelessness. I hate it. From my observations, it emerges at times when I’m being spoken to, or when I’m watching a show/movie. It’s as if I’m at odds with what is being said, or the way its being said, as if I want to change the words, or the meaning, or the delivery… but I have no control to do so— either it’s not polite to interrupt or it’s television and I simply have no influence. But worst of all, if I acknowledge this feeling inside me in the moment, I realize that I have no real alternative to offer. Either I don’t understand, or I know I won’t be understood, or I know not what really to say; next thing I realize, I’m not paying attention, and my curiosity to hear what’s being spoken to me overrides the burden of my discomfort. But lately, this feeling just arises, and it settles into my awareness, almost inescapably so. I’ve chosen to confront it nearly everytime, and what’s more, it lingers. I’m calling it my Desperation. Today it just won’t go away. What could this be? It sucks me in, like a black hole. If I don’t resist and burn it away, it pulls in those around me as well, without me saying a word. I don’t want to get others involved in it, but I don’t know how else to understand it. Taking it upon myself only hurts more. I don’t want to run from it. That’s too easy. It is a tricky thing how I choose the people with whom I surround myself. Often, the right people just appear…

I wonder… do I believe in omens?

Big Mind

by: Eric Hoffman

Big Mind is Big
And utterly without border,
Whereas in in the Relative World
Creation and Destruction are the order.

However,
In the place where the Ultimate and the Relative converge,
There is an opportunity for man’s penetrating insight to emerge.

To penetrate Big Mind,
Man exerts strength and rests in relaxation.

To penetrate the Relative World,
Man unleashes the power of discrimination.

In Big Mind,
Nothing happening is the norm.

But in the Relative World,
There is a constant, spontaneous arising of form.

If a man truly sees Big Mind,
He will see nothing, clearly.

And if he truly sees the Relative World,
He will see that oil has peaked, or nearly.

Great is a man who can see the two worlds with clarity,
For he who has developed Peak Mind is indeed a rarity.

PS:

-How miraculous it is that nothing has emerged into something, and yet has remained
nothing all along!
-How phenomenal is the human being, who can find that place in himself where
nothingness and somethingness endure forever!
-How weird it is that souls deviated from their heart of hearts and decided to have
a dance with form, only to undergo the process of dancing all the way home!
-How crazy it is that there are an infinite number of finite things, whose nature
under analysis appears to be more like “no-things” thinging!
-How excellent it is that both theism and non-theism are metaphors for the ultimate
Ism that is beyond schism!
-How unbelievable is the awakening of an individual, where the eruption of laughter
and tears are the natural expression of a heart freed of existential tension!
-How excellent are friends who will help you without you even knowing that you are
being helped!

Nagarjuna (Final)

—the emptiness of causation—

This term, I have been so fortunate as to have paired my Nagarjuna course with another experience which allowed me more access to his book, “The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way.” I began reading a manuscript, titled Emerson and the Light of India, for a professor who has been helping me gather momentum for the writing of my MA thesis.[1] Emerson was easily the first American philosopher to really wrestle with Indian philosophy, and reading about his encounters and responses to Buddhism and Hinduism really helped me understand the tradition to which Nagarjuna was responding.

Emerson and the Light of India was not just a regurgitation of various formulaic catuskoti, but rather an interrogation into the theological and philosophical maturation of Ralph Waldo Emerson. It was a very tangible read, and I saw how Emerson’s faith and understanding were challenged by many different groups of religious practitioners and famous philosophers alike. I could see the questions he was facing, the answers he was finding, and what’s more, I very much like the place where Emerson arrived philosophically at the end of his life. His ideas were very progressive, humanistic, and all wrapped up into the term, “Transcendental Pragmatism.” This is the idea that truth, love, compassion, faith is all organic, and open-ended. All extends from one Cosmic Will (Nature) that grows in melioration as more and more souls ‘awake’ and practice living in perfect harmony with the natural course.

Whether Nagarjuna is specifically doing philosophy or not, it is clear to me that he is involved in an ongoing metaphysical conversation that spans many philosophical, religious and psychological commitments. As a species, we are at desperate odds with our understanding and experience of the world. But for me, the battle has subsided. The foundation for my belief system is laid, and I have Nagarjuna and Emerson to thank. Like these thinkers, I approach my understanding of the world as a non-dualist, and in so doing, I think we will easily see why Nagarjuna repudiates the idea of ‘causation,’ justifies all phenomena as ‘conditions’, and ultimately, absolves his notions of conditions as well. In this essay, I will address all three concerns, and contextualize them within an Emersonian tradition.

Aside from Nagarjuna’s Dedicatory Verses, there is one catuskoti that I’d like to reference before we begin:

Without a foundation in the conventional truth,
The significance of the ultimate cannot be taught.
Without understanding the significance of the ultimate,
Liberation is not achieved. [2]

I believe this stanza to undeniably affirm that Nagarjuna writes his book to first provide a foundation in conventional truth. His tradition of thought explains that there is one world, to borrow from Emerson, there is one ‘Nature’—but both thinkers agree that it can be experienced in two ways: conventional reality and ultimate reality:

The Buddha’s teachings of the Dharma
Is based on two truths:
A truth of worldly convention
And an ultimate truth. [3]

The basic idea is a rather mystical one, where beyond our conventional experience of individual persons, places and things in the world (illusory and dualistic), there is an ultimate reality where all things, spirit and matter alike, are one (actual and non-dualistic). In ultimate reality, there is no differentiation between objects; all is of the same Cosmic Will, where things like suffering, identity and perspective have no place. It is possible to awaken to this natural order, but as Nagarjuna notes in the catuskoti above, having a foundation in conventional truth, is the gateway to such ‘Liberation.’ “It is, in fact, this sophisticated development of the doctrine of the two truths as a vehicle for understanding Buddhist metaphysics and epistemology that is Nagarjuna’s greatest philosophical contribution.”[4] The best part is that Nagarjuna does a good job laying the foundation for our understanding of conventional reality and we shall in this essay take extra care in extracting his descriptions of his more demanding concepts, specifically: essence, causation and conditions.

Nagarjuna’s distinction between conventional and ultimate reality is an age old one, which is often discussed as the ‘one & the many’ debate. Quite simply, ‘ultimate truth’ claims that all is one, but when we test this statement with our own experience of the world, we are overwhelmed with many individual objects, emotions, and ideas. We are left wondering, ‘how can this all be one?’ The ‘one & the many’ conversation has many practical examples, such as a tree. Can we say that the tree is one thing? Consider how it is composed of limbs, roots, leaves and a trunk—with so many individual parts, how can we ascribe it a single identity? The same goes for people. I appear to be a single person, with a single consciousness and identity, but was I the same person 20 years ago? How about 20 minutes ago? Like the tree, I too have distinct parts, mental and physical ‘aggregates,’ so what do we decide—are things one or many? Can they be both?

We have questions, Nagarjuna has answers. Garfield, a western translator and commentator, speaks on his behalf, “the boundaries of a tree, both spatial and temporal (consider the junctures between root and soil, or leaf and air; between live and dead wood; between seed, shoot, and tree); it’s identity over time (each year it sheds its leaves and grows new ones; some limbs break; new limbs grow); its existence as a unitary object, as opposed to a collection of cells; etc., are all conventional.”[5] This conventional reality is dualistic. It appears to have things that stand alone as singular and permanent objects: ‘tree A’ versus ‘tree B’; Aaron versus Margaret; this toothbrush versus that toothbrush, etc. But within conventional reality, objects appear to not only have many parts and properties, but they also appear to go through stages of development, like a caterpillar becomes a moth, or a seed becomes a flower. All of this suggests impermanence, and now we are stuck, in a dual world, with things that seem to be one or many or both, and things that seem to be permanent or impermanent or both.

Two large issues arise from the realization that the conventional world is dualistic: a) if something is one, but goes through many stages, is there an inherent essence that lies at the core of that object and remains despite all transitions?; and b) how are we to understand the mechanism at work in objects as they go through change over time… by way of causation? To understand the foundation of conventional reality, the question of essence and causation go hand-in-hand. As Nagarjuna attempts to outline this foundation for us, he purposefully confronts and replaces these two terms with the notion of “conditioning.”

Nagarjuna begins by denying the very existence of inherent essence. He insists that everything is empty, including emptiness itself. This is a very clear tenet throughout Nagarjuna’s work:

Those who see essence and essential difference
And entities and nonentities,
They do not see
The truth taught by the Buddha. [6]

Here we see Nagarjuna explain that people misunderstand the Buddha’s teachings if they seek truth in essence. And, among other places, we find Nagarjuna further laboring on the same point:

Those who develop mental fabrications with regard to the Buddha,
Who has gone beyond all fabrications,
As a consequence of those cognitive fabrications,
Fail to see the Tathāgata (note: Buddha refers to himself as ‘Tathāgata’).

Whatever is the essence of the Tathāgata,
That is the essence of the world.
The Tathāgata has no essence.
The world is without essence. [7]

In this sequence of catuskoti, we hear Nagarjuna not only denounce the existence of essence, but he properly places the very thinking of essence in the category of conventional reality, as he refers to this kind of mental development as a ‘fabrication’. We will return to this idea that conventional reality is a fabrication shortly. For now, it’s important to take home the message that in either reality, there is no place for individual essence. All is ultimately without essence. Garfield agrees with this point, “to regard something as without essence … is to regard it as merely conventionally existent.” [8]

This being said, Nagarjuna takes to addressing causation in much the same way. Buddhists before and since Nagarjuna have always had a special and practical interest in causation. They hope to better understand that mechanism that allows for the arising and ceasing of suffering (often thought of as a disease—conflicts, set-backs, disappointments, etc), and many have looked to ‘cause and effect’ for the answer. Like Garfield, however, I read Nagarjuna as insisting that thinking in terms of ‘cause’ is misleading, and detracts one from full comprehension of the conventional world.

For one thing, the Buddhists are looking for a consistent term, where ‘cause’ is supposed to mean “necessitate,” but things don’t always happen as they “should.” An example we discussed in class of this phenomenon is the lighting of a match. If we approach it causally, the striking of the match is the cause of the flame, but as we know, the match doesn’t always light. Considering this much, we should be suspicious of the role causation plays within any philosophy. Nagarjuna takes up causation at the onset of his book:

Neither from itself nor from another,
Nor from both,
Nor without a cause,
Does anything whatever, anywhere arise.

Before encountering Nagarjuna, my Emerson readings had familiarized me with the two realities (Māyā vs. Cosmic Will), and the import of causality. Initially, I asked the question, “For Nagarjuna, is causation entirely conventional?” After re-reading this passage, I began to wonder if causation even had a place in Nagarjuna’s philosophy. “Perhaps this catuskoti is from the perspective of ultimate reality,” I thought to myself, “and that Nagarjuna still leaves room for a conventional interpretation of cause.” However, if I hear Garfield correctly (and I do support his interpretation), the question of ‘whether causation is conventional’ is not one we can begin to answer. Why? Because Nagarjuna writes to erase ‘causation’ from our vocabulary, and from the framework of the conventional world.

He thinks that ‘causation’ implies the idea of power at rest within an object, a power that has the ability to bring about change, or to exert influence on other things. If this were the case, Nagarjuna would have to admit that certain things are distinctly and essentially different from others, so much so that they have certain causal powers which other things do not. “When Nagarjuna uses the word ‘cause’, he has in mind an event or state that has in it a power to bring about its effect and has that power as part of its essence or nature.”[9] We must remember that it is crucially important for Nagarjuna that his readers understand that all of conventional reality has no inherent existence. Our general definitions of causation definitely blur this distinction. “In Chapter 1, Nagarjuna, we shall see, argues against the existence of causes and for the existence of a variety of kinds of conditions.” [10]

In place of causation, we are afforded a more helpful definition: condition. At the end of the day, we learn that, yes, conditions are entirely conventional, but make no mistake, they imply nothing of inherent existence. “When he uses the term ‘condition’ on the other hand, he has in mind an event, state, or process that can be appealed to in explaining another event, state, or process without any metaphysical commitment to any occult connection between explanandum and explanans.” [11]

There are four conditions: efficient condition;
Percept-object condition; immediate condition;
Dominant condition, just so.
There is no fifth condition. [12]

Generally speaking, we condition everything in to existence. This happens in four distinct kinds of ways, all mentioned above and later described. An example that helped me was when someone in class asked the question, “What caused the lights to go on?” Well, how does one answer that question? Was it the person who flicked the switch (efficient condition)? Was it the wire-work in the bulb and the electricity (percept-object condition)? What about the light that emitted from photons allowing us to see (immediate condition)? Or perhaps the lights went on so we could see (dominant condition)? All of these are plausible reasons for ‘what caused the light to go on’, but the term ‘cause’ does not seem to help us figure out a specific causal relationship.

The concept of ‘causation’ is an acceptable criteria for Western philosophy, but here Garfield tells us that even such criteria as causation ends up purely conventional for Nagarjuna. “If one views phenomena as having and as emerging from causal powers, one views them as having essences and as being connected to the essences of other phenomena.”[13] Instead, we understand that certain and necessary conditions that must be met for certain things to happen, and we construct our conventional world accordingly—all the while never submitting to the idea of inherent existence or causal power.[14] In this way, we learn that all three modes of action, arising and abiding and ceasing alike, can be explained by condition. It is fair to say that all phenomena and their subsequent activity are essence-less conditions in a conventional world.[15] On this, I insist to my friends that: there can be no cause because things are one; everything rises and rescinds from the same, to the same, as the same.

Again, the truth of the matter is in the distinction between conventional reality and ultimate reality. Nagarjuna’s efforts with helping disclose conventional reality (as void of essence and causal power, but filled with condition) are all to bring us closer to the wisdom of ultimate truth. Gordon explains in his manuscript that Emerson says, “it was necessary of the human mind to press causal explanations further and further back, ‘self assured that it shall arrive at an absolute and sufficient one, —a one that shall be all.’”[16] Once we interrogate conventional experience from the proper framework, we can make better sense of the idea that ultimate reality is non-dualist and transcends all talk of conditioning; it is beyond the apparent processes of change (arising, abiding, ceasing, etc.):

Like a dream, like an illusion,
Like a city of Gandharvas,
So have arising, abiding,
And ceasing been explained. [17]

This catuskoti shows how the nature of the ‘many’ can only be explained within the context of illusion. To think otherwise is a mental fabrication, or our “root delusion.” The idea of essence or a permanent self is nothing but a projection onto an ‘interdependent flux of experience.’[18] To try to grasp some part of conventional reality, to hold on to its fleeting moments of consciousness, is said to be the main cause of suffering itself. Emerson agrees, saying: “it is the problem of thought to separate and reconcile the ‘strictly-blended elements’ of the ‘one’ and the ‘many’.”[19] Emerson believed that the problem of the one and many was capable of solution, and Nagarjuna tells us that this solution lies on the path from conventional to ultimate reality.

To understand ultimate truth, one has to participate in conventional reality, often over several lifetimes (this is the idea of transmigration/reincarnation) until they can understand the illusory framework of conventional reality. [20] By learning to recognize the ignorance that constitutes the conventional world, one can slowly, through wisdom and meditation combined [21], awaken his/her soul to path to Enlightenment. Nagarjuna describes how such enlightened wisdom naturally plays out when we engage in worldly activities:

Self-restraint and benefiting others
With a compassionate mind is the Dharma.
This is the seed for
Fruits in this and future lives. [22]

We have now arrived at a place in Nagarjuna’s philosophy where he has: a) repudiated the idea of ‘causation’; b) replaced causation with the idea that all phenomena are conditions in the conventional world; c) explained that all of conventional reality is an illusion, and must be transcended in order to be free from suffering, to act compassionately, and to know ultimate truth. I suspect any good reader would wonder, “if everything in conventional reality is illusory, why go through so much trouble to distinguish between cause and condition?”

Well, Nagarjuna and Emerson both will tell us that true Liberation comes from giving up the delusion of conventional reality, and this involves internalizing the fact that phenomena do not have inherent existence. Understanding the framework of conventional reality through the concept of ‘conditions’ does not allow us to make this mistake, whereas the idea of causation does. In short, I believe Nagarjuna wants to properly inform is audience of the illusion so that it will be easier to stay on the path. The only true essence of things it that all is of one substance: emptiness. Matter and spirit are one. Ultimate reality is non-dualistic, and we will come to learn this by paying careful attention to our experience of the conventional. I would like to close this conversation with a series of catuskoti the Nagarjuna writes that seems to summarize the relationship of essence, to condition, to emptiness once and for all:

If you perceive the existence of all things
In terms of their [ultimate] essence,
Then this perception of all things
Will be without the perception of causes and conditions.

Effects and causes
And agents and action
And conditions and arising and ceasing
And effects will be rendered impossible.

Whatever is dependently co-arisen [ie., conditional]
That is explained to be emptiness.
That, being a dependent designation,
Is itself the middle way. [23]

FOOTNOTES:

[1] I’m doing my best not to draw TOO much attention to my thesis. It’s very much in the works, and if there’s one think I hate, it’s having to explain it to people in a 2 minute conversation. There’s no justice in that! But for you, I’ll share some of the secret. I’m very much concerned with ‘self-hood’ and ‘self-culture’. I see the Self as a struggle to hold two separate halves under one identity—the personal (one’s individual identity/ego) and the impersonal (one’s relationship to the one, all-encompassing Cosmic Will). I’m writing a dialectic between Emerson and P.D. Ouspensky (my favorite Russian philosopher!). The two reference ancient Indian Thought often, and it is important for me to have a background in this kind of thinking.

[2] Nagarjuna , 24: 10. (p. 68)
[3] Nagarjuna, 24:8. (p. 68)
[4] (Garfield, p. 88)
[5] (Garfield, 90)
[6] Nagarjuna, 15:6 (p. 40)
[7] Nagarjuna, 22: 15-16 (p. 62)
[8] (Garfield, 119)
[9] (Garfield, 102)
[10] (Garfield, 103)
[11] (Garfield, 103)
[12] Nagarjuna, 1:1-2 (p. 3)
[13] (Garfield, 118)
[14] “It will be of paramount importance to Nagarjuna the analysis of the relation of conditions to the conditioned involves ascribing neither inherent existence nor causal power to the conditions.” (Garfield, 107-108).
[15] “Phenomena come into existence when the conditions upon which they demand obtain, and they cease to exist when the conditions for their continued existence no longer obtain …Nor can we find any essence they themselves have that determines their identity. The criteria for identity we posit will end up being purely conventional” (Garfield, p. 101).
[16] (Gordon, 149)
[17] Nagarjuna, 7: 34 (p.22)
[18] Abhidharma Buddhism, p. 48 (class handout)
[19] (Gordon, 150)
[20] On this, Nagarjuna (26:1-2) says the following:

Wrapped in the darkness of ignorance,
One performs the three kinds of actions
Which as dispositions impel one
To continue to future existences.

Having dispositions as its conditions,
Consciousness enters transmigration.
Once consciousness has entered transmigration,
Name and form come to be.

[21] Here are the catuskoti that Nagarjuna (26:10-11) uses to tell us that meditation and wisdom are needed to stop the experience of suffering:

With the cessation of ignorance
Action will not arise.
The cessation of ignorance occurs through
Meditation and wisdom.

Through the cessation of this and that
This and that will not be manifest.
The entire mass of suffering
Indeed thereby completely ceases.

[22] Nagarjuna, 17:1 (p. 43)
[23] Nagarjuna, 24:16-18 (p. 69)