Contemplative Science, page 18
Equanimity, the fourth of the immeasurables, actually suffuses the other three, as the practitioner breaks down the self-centered divisions that are superimposed on other people. With equanimity, loving and compassionate concern for others extends out evenly, with no bias for friends or against enemies. Such equanimity is based upon empathy, recognizing that all beings, like oneself, are equally worthy of happiness. This meditative practice begins by focusing on a neutral person, then a dear person, and finally a hostile person, in each case resting in a state of equanimity free of attachment and aversion. The false facsimile of the equanimity to be cultivated here is stupid indifference, wherein one does not care about the well-being of anyone else. The opposite of equanimity is attachment to loved ones and aversion to enemies, and its proximate cause is said to be taking responsibility for one’s own conduct. One succeeds in this practice when it produces equanimity that is a fertile, level ground for the growth of loving-kindness and compassion, and fails when it produces aloof indifference.
THE FOUR IMMEASURABLES
In the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, the cultivation of loving-kindness and compassion is combined in a classic practice known in Tibetan as tonglen, meaning “giving and taking.”21 The enactment of loving-kindness is the “giving” component of the practice, and the enactment of compassion is the “taking” component. The latter begins by bringing vividly to mind a loved one or a community of people or other beings who are either suffering or sowing the seeds of suffering by means of harmful conduct. First, through empathy, one enters into the suffering and the sources of suffering of this person, then generates the wish, “May you be relieved of this burden and may this adversity ripen upon me.” Whatever the affliction or adversity, physical or mental, one imagines taking it upon oneself in the form of a black cloud being removed from the other’s body and mind and drawn into one’s heart. Simultaneously, one imagines that the other person is gradually relieved of the burden. As soon as this dark cloud enters the heart, one imagines that it meets with the sense of self-centeredness, visualized as an orb of darkness. And in an instant, that cloud of misery and the darkness of one’s self-centeredness extinguish each other, leaving not a trace of either behind.
In the “giving” component of this practice, one imagines all the prosperity, happiness, and goodness in one’s life as a powerful wellspring of brilliant white light emanating from one’s heart, reaching out and suffusing the other person as one wishes, “All that is good in my life, my possessions, my happiness, my good health, my virtues, I offer to you. May you be well and happy.” One imagines the light of this virtue and happiness suffusing the person who has been brought to mind, and imagines his or her most meaningful desires and aspirations being fulfilled. Yet as this light from the heart flows forth unimpeded, it is not depleted, for it is imagined as arising from an inexhaustible source.
As familiarity is acquired with this meditative practice, one may expand the scope of awareness finally to include all sentient beings, taking in all suffering and mental afflictions and sending forth all one’s virtue and goodness. This practice may then be conjoined with the breath: during each inhalation, one imagines taking in the burden of suffering and the sources of suffering, and with each exhalation rays of white light emerge from the heart, bringing happiness and the causes of happiness to all the world.
Śāntideva, on whose writings this practice is based, summed up the rationale behind it: “I should eliminate the suffering of others because it is suffering, just like my own suffering. I should take care of others because they are sentient beings, just as I am a sentient being.”22 This is a pure expression of an “I–you” relationship with all sentient beings. The “I–thou” relationship as it is cultivated in Buddhist practice will be discussed in the next section.
DREAM YOGA
The word “buddha” means “one who is awake,” and the implication is that everyone who is not a buddha is asleep, most of us leading lives very much akin to a nonlucid dream. According to the Middle Way view, mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, waking experience has a dreamlike quality because of the disparity between the way things appear and the way they exist. All phenomena—oneself, others, and everything else in the perceived environment—appear as if they bear their own inherent existence, independently of the conceptual frameworks within which they are apprehended. But in terms of the way they exist, all conditioned phenomena are dependent upon the causes and conditions that gave rise to them, their own parts and attributes, and the conceptual designations by which they are demarcated from other phenomena and by which they bear their own components and qualities. In short, oneself, other beings, and all other phenomena appear to exist in and of themselves, but nothing has such an independent existence. According to the Middle Way view, that very absence of an inherent identity of any phenomenon is called “emptiness.”23
Tsongkhapa asserts, “Although the objects of perception have forever utterly lacked a final self-nature or objective existence, nonetheless they indisputably appear with the nature of having real, inherent existence.... These things function conventionally on the basis of the laws of interdependence and causality.”24 According to this view, the objects of perception—colors, sounds, smells, and so forth—do not exist in the objective world, independently of the sense modalities by which they are perceived. But, for example, do trees exist apart from our perception of them? The Middle Way answer is that trees and the many other objects in the natural world do indeed exist independently of our perceptions. Flowers continue to grow and bloom when no one is looking, and trees fall to the forest floor, sending out ripples in the atmosphere and over the ground, and then begin to decay, whether or not anyone is there to witness these events.
One may then ask, “Do flowers, trees, and other natural phenomena exist independently of any conceptual designations of them?” The answer is that the words “flowers,” “trees,” and so on have no meaning apart from the definitions we have attributed to them. Thus, the question has no meaning.25 But we may then push this point and ask, “Does anything exist independently of human language and thought?” The question implies that the word “exist” is somehow self-defining, that it stands on its own, independent of any consensually accepted definition. But all terms such as “subject,” “object,” “existence,” “reference,” “meaning,” “reason,” “knowledge,” “observation,” and “experience” have a multitude of different uses, and none has a single absolute meaning to which priority must be granted. Since these terms are not self-defining, we employ their definitions according to the conceptual schemes of our choice. That is, we choose our definitions; they are not determined by objective reality. So, once again, proponents of the Middle Way view conclude that the question is meaningless: if the word “exist” has no meaning independent of all conceptual frameworks, then it makes no sense to ask whether anything exists independent of all conceptual frameworks.
For this reason the Middle Way view rejects metaphysical realism, which has been defined as the view that the world consists of mind-independent objects; there is exactly one true and complete description of the way the world is; and truth involves some sort of correspondence between an independently existent world and a description of it.26 Scientists question nature with measuring devices created in collaboration with engineers. But the data collected arise in dependence upon both the objective phenomenon being studied and the measuring devices themselves. The data are thus produced as dependently related events, much as we hear sounds that are produced through the interaction of vibrations in some objective medium and our auditory faculties. But the sounds we hear do not exist independently in the objective world, nor do any of the other data collected by the instruments of technology.
Proponents of metaphysical realism might well grant this point but then counter that the conceptual world of physics exists, based upon objective magnitudes, and corresponds to the real, objective world, existing independent of language and thought. However, as scientists interpret the data gathered from their measuring devices, they must distinguish between significant data and “noise.” Moreover, the theory they are using plays an instrumental role in such choices, just as it does in determining what types of measuring devices to create and how to interpret the data gathered from them. In all cases, what is finally “observed” is deeply theory-laden.
Thus, the perceptual objects detected with the senses or with the instruments of technology do not exist independent of those modes of detection, and they do not exist independent of the conceptual frameworks through which such measurements are filtered. Moreover, the theoretical entities conceived of by physicists are comprised of related events arising in dependence upon both observational data and the conceptual faculties of the scientists who interpret and make sense of those data. This implies the intersubjective nature of perceptual as well as conceptual experience, especially when we consider the consensual nature of conceptual frameworks.
While the Middle Way view has certain similarities with the thought of some of the founders of quantum theory, among contemporary philosophies it is perhaps most akin to the pragmatic realism of Hilary Putnam. In a statement closely in accord with the writings of Nāgārjuna, Putnam declares, “Elements of what we call ‘language’ or ‘mind’ penetrate so deeply into what we call ‘reality’ that the very project of representing ourselves as being ‘mappers’ of something ‘language-independent’ is fatally compromised from the very start.”27 If there were no language users, there would not be anything true or anything with sense or reference. Thus, the rich and ever-growing collection of truths about the world is the product of experience intertwined with language users, who play a creative role in producing our knowledge of the world.
According to the views of both the Middle Way and pragmatic realism, once we have chosen a conceptual scheme, there are facts to be discovered, not merely legislated by our language or concepts. Our conceptual scheme restricts the range of descriptions available to us, but it does not predetermine the answers to our questions. In accordance with the Middle Way view, Putnam writes, “The stars are indeed independent of our minds in the sense of being causally independent; we did not make the stars.... The fact that there is no one metaphysically privileged description of the universe does not mean that the universe depends on our minds.”28
While the Middle Way view rejects the philosophical extreme of metaphysical realism, it equally rejects the cultural relativist or postmodernist view that no truth claims can be made in ways that transcend the culture in which they are embedded. For example, the assertion that all phenomena are empty of inherent existence is regarded as a universal truth, not contingent upon the beliefs of any one person or society. The Buddhist laws of karma are also presented as truths that are independent of any specific culture, time, or place. The Middle Way view also rejects materialism and philosophical idealism as two metaphysical extremes, each reifying the phenomenon of its choice—matter or mind—as being inherently real, independent of conceptual designation.
The Middle Way view provides the philosophical framework for the contemplative practice of dream yoga. In a nonlucid dream—in which there is no recognition that one is dreaming—all objective phenomena seem to exist in and of themselves. They, like one’s own persona in the dream, seem to be real. But upon waking, one recognizes that neither one’s own mind nor any person or situation encountered in the dream had any such independent existence. This is equally true during the waking state, and in the daytime practice of dream yoga, one maintains this awareness as constantly as possible. Everything experienced throughout the day—contrary to appearances—arises in relation to one’s own perceptions and conceptions. Every person encountered is perceived and conceived in relation to one’s own sensory and conceptual faculties. Never does one encounter the radically and absolutely “other,” for apprehension of the other is always dependent upon one’s own subjective perspective. Thus, upon fathoming the emptiness of inherent existence of all waking phenomena, one maintains throughout the day a sense of the dreamlike quality of all events, recognizing the profoundly intersubjective nature of all relationships with other beings and the environment.29
As in modern techniques for inducing lucid dreaming, the daytime practice of dream yoga is complemented with nighttime practices.30 Although many specific methods are taught, one common to the modern techniques and to dream yoga is to fall asleep with the strong resolution to apprehend the dream state as such while actually dreaming. It can be difficult to recognize the dream for what it is and difficult to maintain that awareness without either waking up immediately or fading back into a nonlucid dream, but when success in this practice is achieved, it often comes with a sense of great freedom and exhilaration. One now knows that one’s own body and everything else in the dream are manifestations of one’s own substrate consciousness, and even with no sensory experience of the body lying in bed, one inferentially knows it is there, outside the context of the dream. In a nonlucid dream one has a very definite sense of one’s own locality: other people in the dream are apprehended as being really “over there.” But in a lucid dream, one is aware that everyone is an individual expression of some facet of the substrate consciousness.
To clarify this point: other people and objects in my dream are not manifestations of my mind as one more character in the dream; rather, they, like myself in the dream, are manifestations of my substrate consciousness, while I am asleep outside the dream. The dreamed self’s mind still seems to be local, but in a lucid dream the dreamer is aware that his or her mind pervades all people, things, and events. So the lucid dreamer is, so to speak, localized as the dreamed persona, but nonlocalized in the knowledge of the self as being the dreamer. Another way of saying this is that as a dreamed persona, one engages in intersubjective relations with others in the dream, but with the recognition of oneself as the dreamer, one knows all these encounters to be intrasubjective. A lucid dreamer is aware of both these perspectives, and in the awareness that transcends the duality of self and others in the dream, enters into an “I–thou” relationship with the other, who is none other than the self.
This insight into nonduality enables one to see the fallacy of viewing others in the dream as being independently worthy of either hatred or attachment. If someone else in the dream has done something reprehensible, the agent of that act is not absolutely different from oneself and has no independent existence whatsoever. Likewise, if there is someone very attractive in the dream, out of habit, one may still experience desire, but know that the object of craving is a creation of one’s own substrate consciousness. To overcome that habitual craving, one must thoroughly familiarize oneself with the insight that the object has no independent, objective existence.31 When this insight penetrates waking experience as well, this opens up the possibility of cultivating an “I–thou” relationship with others throughout the course of one’s life.
Particularly in a lucid dream, one has the sense of perceiving events in the “private theater” of the mind, but Buddhism nevertheless maintains that this theater is pervious to external, spatially and temporally nonlocal influences. For example, this tradition accepts the possibility of precognition and remote viewing occurring in a dream, as well as during the waking state. Given the possibility of outside influences impinging, the dreamscape may be likened to an open-air theater, in which one may not only perceive what is taking place on stage but also hear crickets from the surrounding fields and jets flying overhead. Likewise, during the waking state, the field of mental perception—that domain in which one experiences mental imagery while awake and dreams while asleep—is equally open to outside influences. This raises the fascinating question as to the whereabouts of the borders of the mind and how porous those borders are, if any can be found.
In the practice of dream yoga there are further techniques to be applied after one has apprehended the dream state for what it is, but here I shall focus on the practice of cultivating lucid dreamless sleep. Padmasambhava writes:32 When you are fast asleep, if the vivid, indivisibly clear and empty light of deep sleep is recognized, the clear light is apprehended. One who remains without losing the experience of meditation all the time while asleep, without the advent of dreams or latent predispositions, is one who dwells in the nature of the clear light of sleep.
What he is describing is the nature of primordial consciousness when it is perceived devoid of content and conceptual structuring. This is called the “clear light” of awareness, about which Padmasambhava writes, “The nature of the clear light, even after the stream of thoughts has ceased and you have gone asleep, is a clear and empty phenomenon of the dream-state, which is like the center of limpid space, remaining nakedly, without an object.”33
While the cultivation of meditative quiescence alone may withdraw the mind into the relative ground state of awareness, known as the substrate consciousness or ground of becoming, that does not ensure that one will actually ascertain the clear, empty, luminous nature of primordial consciousness. That is one of the goals of dream yoga, which is practiced while sleeping, and it is also the goal of the Great Perfection, which is primarily practiced while in the waking state.
THE GREAT PERFECTION
The theory and practice of the Great Perfection is based upon and perfectly compatible with the Middle Way view discussed earlier. The Great Perfection is considered by many Tibetans as the pinnacle of Buddhist insight, and it challenges the view that the human mind exists inherently independent of all conceptual frameworks. Cutting to the core of our very identity, the practice of the Great Perfection probes into the deeply held assumption that there is such a thing as an inherently real, localized, ego-centered mind.
