This is the second short essay I wrote for Contemporary Approaches to the Study of Religion class (2nd semester of 2014). Dr. Imtiyaz Yusuf, the instructor of the class, graded this essay as ‘Excellent.’ It must be something interesting here.
When I read Karen Armstrong’s The Case for God, particularly on the point that God is dead, I did not feel anything problematic. That is because, perhaps, the book is not for Buddhists or other practitioners of non-theistic traditions, even though Armstrong’s God intentionally/implicitly covers all other names of the ultimate reality. According to my Buddhist background, whether God is dead is not a problem at all. It is true that we probably read Nirvana from God here, but when we consider the context it seems irrelevant. Since, for all Buddhist traditions, the notion of ultimate reality—so-called Nirvana or Suñyatā—has never been dead. In the history of Buddhism, as far as I know, no one has cried out that Nirvana is dead.
However, we do have problem, another problem. While Nirvana still has held the prestigious position among Buddhists, it has lost its appeal, especially in the modern time. By comparing to the monotheistic God, we have a different picture. God has lost his grip since the rise of atheism, as well as he has lost his prominent position. That is why atheism casts a significant impact onto monotheistic traditions, but not much for Eastern traditions. For Buddhism, atheism means nothing.
On the other side of the problem, another side of the same coin, fundamentalism is undermining its own tradition by distorting the message of its religion’s founder. This problem is heated in the Western world nowadays. However, I see no serious problem with Buddhist fundamentalism. One reason is it does not lead to external violence. (In the cases of violence related to Buddhism in Burma and Sri Lanka, I think it is a form of nationalism or racism not fundamentalism.) Buddhist fundamentalism can be a very peaceful movement, if the Five Precepts are observed strictly. But if it is done in a dogmatic way, it will reflect the internal ignorance of the practitioners instead.
In this essay, I will apply the method used by Karen Armstrong for treating the problem of God to the problem of Nirvana. I will describe the problems and address them with her perspective, and then I will assess possibility of her approach. So, this essay can be seen as a reflection on a contribution of Karen Armstrong’s method to Buddhism.
How does Nirvana lose its appeal?
Richard Gombrich, a famous scholar who studied Theravada Buddhism in Sri Lanka, observed that most Sinhalese villagers do not want Nirvana, at least yet. They want to be born in heaven, and some of them would even like to reborn in a favorable station on earth. The samsara is more appealing, so to speak. The reason is that to the Sinhalese Nirvana is more or less like extinction. They fear to be extinct, and feel that living in a good condition is more desirable.
The same thing happens in Burma/Myanmar as Melford Spiro sees it. Most Burmese also view Nirvana as extinction and want to be reborn as a wealthy human or as a deity in heaven. Some Burmese businessman said, “In nirvana there is no body, no soul, nothing. Who wants that?” Interestingly, some Burmese seem to use more subtle way than that. By the pressure of normative standard that good Buddhists should expect Nirvana, many Burmese accept Nirvana as their goal, not because they like extinction but they perceive it as a blissful state.
For Thailand, as I see it, the situation is not far from Myanmar and Sri Lanka. Most Thai Buddhist people accept that Nirvana is the ultimate goal of our being. Thai Buddhists usually make a wish after making merit as “May this merit takes me to Nirvana.” Some add “in the future” to the wish. They either perceive Nirvana as extinction or blissful state, and they think it is very difficult to attain this state. For religious persons, they postpone the ultimate goal and pay more attention to collecting merit by donating, doing charitable actions, and doing some meditation. They think these actions can help to attain Nirvana easier. For ordinary people, they think Nirvana is beyond their reach, so they just ignore it. They think “Okay, Nirvana may be wonderful, but it is not for me.”
As we have seen, Nirvana as the ideal of Theravāda Buddhism now loses its attraction. One cause can be an impact of scientific progress. Science and technology make our life more comfortable and more pleasurable at the cost of harder and longer work. Nirvana then turns irrelevant to the modern life. We must earn a living and get relaxed. There is no more time and energy for pursuing an unconceivable goal. Therefore, materialism, or more precisely consumerism, is undermining the significance of Nirvana. Unlike God in monotheistic traditions, the problem concerning Nirvana is not an ontological problem. It is a practical one. How can Armstrong’s method address this problem?
To bring Nirvana back is to make it incomprehensible
One of the major theses of Karen Armstrong’s methodology is that the ultimate reality of all religions is beyond our reason. What is beyond our reason is always open to interpretations. When we put the ultimate reality into words, reasoning is inevitably used, and what we get is not truth but just a small portion of reality. From this perspective, we can describe Nirvana simply by not describing it. Either extinction or blissful state is misleading. Or even holding it as an ultimate goal is mistaken, because when we set a goal we must desire it first, and once we have a desire we always get off the track. So, to bring Nirvana back to Buddhists’ concern, we must reframe the concept of Nirvana by putting it out of frame or making it incomprehensible. Is it paradoxical? Yes, it must be paradoxical to get out of the grip of reasoning. To bring Nirvana back, we must understand it as an unintelligible and leave it as such. Words can be used to describe it only by means of negation (apophatic), describing by something else that it is not, or it is far better to keep silent.
Practice is the only thing we must be concerned
If we put Nirvana out of our attention, how does Buddhism go then? To this point, Karen Armstrong has a message. She says “Religion … was not primarily something that people thought but something they did. Its truth was acquired by practical action.” We will go nowhere, if we only think about Nirvana. We must act upon it by following the path, the Noble Eightfold Path. And we must have ‘faith’ first before we start any action. But ‘faith’ does not mean belief in everything we have been told by our tradition. For Karen Armstrong, ‘faith’ is “purely a matter of commitment and practical living.” Faith is not a kind of belief that is based on our thought and reasoning. Faith is our responsibility to our tradition.
What is it meant to be a Buddhist? By seeing religion as a practice, the real Buddhist is not one who can explain Buddhist philosophy comprehensively, but one who follows the path wholeheartedly, one who just keeps practicing inexorably by not concerning the goal. If we shift our attention from Nirvana to practice, what is its appeal? Because sometimes practice is tough and troublesome. To answer this point, we must go deeper into the word ‘practice.’ Practice does not mean just doing something. It means “to do or perform (something) repeatedly in order to acquire or polish a skill.” Religious skill is a kind of ability that needs to be developed. It can be difficult at first, but when we practice bit by bit, we can master the skill eventually. Then the goal is reached no matter we want it or not. At the end, Nirvana will be experienced by the practitioners anyway.
Conclusion
Does Karen Armstrong’s method really work? To my understanding, it does, but there is a precondition to be fulfiled. We must forsake our ‘modern’ way of thinking first and adopt ‘postmodern’ way instead. In modern way of thought, we hold that there is only one absolute truth. By this thinking, there will be the right tradition apart from wrong traditions, the right path apart from wrong paths. This will make religion a game of power that will never bring us peace. To adopt postmodern thinking is to admit that there is no absolute truth—only interpretation. That is because, as mentioned above, the ultimate reality cannot be understood by our reason. Once we use reason to describe it, we will get just one version of interpretation.
The real problem is that most Buddhists in Thailand are still trapped in ‘modern’ reasoning. Many of them believe their definition of truth is the only truth, and they practice in ritualistic and dogmatic way. By such practice, the sense of self cannot be eliminated, but it is aggrandized instead. Once the sense of self is beefed up, no Nirvana can be brought back. Therefore, Karen Armstrong’s method possibly works, but many things have to be done first.
Recent reflections
After I read this essay again years later, I find some of my ideas have changed. So, I should put some notes here.
- Making Nirvana incomprehensible sounds really absurd. It makes sense when we see through Karen Armstrong’s method. But for me now, making anything incomprehensible is likely to be dangerous, because vaugeness can become an effective tool for manipulation. It is better to reject anything incomprehensible to us first. Therefore, my current treatment on the notion of Nirvana is elimination. For practitioners, it is better to completely remove this word and the like from your vocabulary.
- To my understanding now, there is no such thing as ‘postmodern’ way of thinking or reasoning. At the end, I tend to rely more on scientific reasoning—the ‘modern’ mode of reasoning in ‘postmodern’ view.
- I think the main reason Dr. Imtiyaz Yusuf gave ‘Excellent’ to this essay is that the application of The Case for God to the notion of Nirvana looks promising. The essay therefore can be a good example for a classroom assignment.
- My last words, I disclaim any idea concerning God and Nirvana in this essay. However, I still accept the notion of practice described here.
Notes