This is the last short essay I wrote for Contemporary Approaches to the Study of Religion in 2014 under the guidance of Dr. Milos Hubina. The essay has overlapping materials used in “Is Vipassanā a Mystical Experience?,” but the both have different focuses. This one is a little easier to read.
Generally, the ways we understand religion scientifically is divided into two camps. The first is reductionism, an attempt to explain religion in the term of a more fundamental element that is not directly related to religion. The most prevalent form of reductionism is functionalism—a thing can be reduced to its function, as we see in classic theorists of religion, such as Marx, Durkheim and Freud who reduced religion to economic, social, and psychological function respectively. And more recently, cognitive scientists try to reduce religion to biological or brain functions.
By this way of thinking, experiences that we deem as religious are nothing but functional phenomena serving to certain purposes, such as alleviating our anxiety of economic status (for Marx), unifying the society (for Durkheim), fulfilling our wish (for Freud), and surviving our genes (for cognitive scientists). In this line of approach, the so-called ‘mystical experience’ in religious milieu is not mystic at all and has no intrinsic meaning.
Another camp has a dubious attitude to the idea that a thing can be reduced to other things else. Those who believe so think that a thing must be ‘thing’ in its own right. We usually call this approach non-reductionism, but I think it is more appropriate to call it essentialism, an attempt to explain a thing by its essence. It is more or less a reduction to the essence of it, but the fundamental entity is not further reducible. This camp has an assumption that religion has an irreducible element that makes religion ‘religion.’ And this element is rooted in our experience towards something significant or meaningful in some way. By this way of thinking, ‘mystical experience’ is at heart the essence of religion. We can call this approach phenomenology (of religion).
The most prominent figures of this camp, in the study of religion, are Rudolf Otto and Mircea Eliade. Otto calls this kind of experience mysterium tremendum characterized by five elements: awfulness, overpoweringness, energy, wholly other, and fascination. And Eliade asserts that this experience towards something sacred is the heart of all religion. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, an Indian philosopher and statesman, says the same thing, “experience is the soul of religion.” We can say here that by this idea religion is more or less a certain kind of subjective experience, an unusual and mystical one.
How do Buddhists think about this? In present essay I will deal with this issue: Is it true to claim that mystical experience is the heart of Buddhism?
What is mystical experience?
In the Varieties of Religious Experience, William James (1842–1910), an American psychologist and philosopher, describes mystical experience with these four characteristics:
- Ineffability—we experience it in direct way, and it cannot be transferred to others. It more likes states of feeling than states of intellect. “One must have musical ears to know the value of a symphony; one must have been in love one’s self to understand a lover’s state of mind.”
- Noetic quality—they are states of insight into depths of truth unintelligible by the discursive intellect.
- Transiency—mystical states cannot be sustained for long.
- Passivity—the mystic feels as if his own will were in suspension, and indeed sometimes as if he were grasped and held by a superior power. The states cannot be controlled by one’s own will.
Robert Gimello, a modern scholar, made a list of six characteristics: a feeling of oneness, a strong confidence in objectivity of the experience, a sense of ineffability, a cessation of normal intellectual operations, a sense of the coincidence of opposites, and an extraordinarily strong affective tone. We can find three of James’ list in Gimello’s, transiency is not mentioned by the latter. I think Gimello believes that the effect of this kind of experience can last for a long time. However we can get the key idea here. Mystical experience is a direct experience that one who feels it cannot describe in any way, like we cannot describe the taste of salt. This experience cannot be controlled at will, and it has a strong sense of reality, nothing can be real than that.
Mystical experience and Buddhism
Is there any kind of experience in Buddhism counted as mystical? Generally, Buddhism is understood as a way found by the Buddha to liberate ourselves from suffering. By tracing back to the canonical text, two kinds of liberation are defined. We can liberate mind from lust by serenity (samatha) and we can liberate ourselves from ignorance by wisdom or insight (vipassanā). Lust and ignorance, as well as ill-will which does not mentioned here, are the very causes of our suffering. To overcome suffering is to get rid of these causes; this is the basic principle of Buddhism.
In Visuddhimagga by Buddhaghosa (ca. 5th century AD), serenity is associated with jhāna that can make one calm or absorbed, and insight is associated with contemplation of all phenomena in three characteristics, i.e., ever-changing, painful, and non-self, that makes one see things as they are. For the Buddha, only serenity is not enough. Obtaining the higher wisdom of insight into phenomena is counted as the completion of Buddhist practice.
Can we count the experience from serenity mystical? In the fully absorbed state of jhāna, only one-pointed concentration fixed on a single object remains. At this stage, physical body and changing phenomena are not experienced. The mind is fully absorbed with concentration, and the will is suspended. We can find the feeling of oneness (in Gimello’s list) here, as well as the suspension of the will, and undoubtedly the state cannot be explained in any word. But for the sense of reality, or James’s noetic quality, it is questionable, because in such state we simply know nothing, even though we are fully conscious in this state.
Some contend that in this state consciousness just knows itself nothing more, but this kind of knowing is not counted as knowledge in Buddhism, because it is not in accordance with reality. Regarding this state of absorption as nirvana is mistaken, according to Visuddhimagga we must withdraw from that state and proceed to insight development. Therefore, we can say that in Buddhist practice serenity development to its final state is not a mystical experience by the lack of a noetic quality.
How about insight development or vipassanā? As mentioned above, insight can be developed by investigating all phenomena that come into our consciousness. By looking closely, the phenomena will turn out as ever-changing, painful, and non-self. We can count this knowledge as a noetic quality, the sense of reality of all things. Mystical or not? It seems to be, but considering the way we investigate the phenomena, I found some problem. Impermanence and painfulness are undoubtedly a kind of direct experience that does not depend on one’s will, like a feeling of pain or a vision of colors. But for non-self it is a kind of conceptual imposition to the phenomena, i.e., it is an intellectual action that must be operated with one’s will. That is because the sense of self is itself conceptual mistaken. To see things as non-self is a double conceptual imposition. We can also twist the process a bit such as investigating the true self in the phenomena instead of non-self. This can be done by another conceptual framework; still it is an intellectual action. By doing this, the result might be similar or different from the contemplation on non-self, but it is not counted as Buddhist practice. Since for Buddhism non-self is reality not true self. If insight development involves intellectual control by will as such, it cannot be a mystical experience in both James’s and Gimello’s definition by the lack of the suspension of the will.
Conclusion
I have done something very subtle and liable to controversy even in Buddhist circles. However, as I have shown so far, I assert that at its heart Buddhism has nothing to do with mystical experience, at least in the way understood by the Westerners. At the beginning, I differentiated two approaches that help us understand religion, namely functionalism and phenomenology. I think these two poles are equally problematic. Reductionism or functionalism does not provide us the sense of meaningfulness of our life. We just happen by chance and survive by our strength. On the other hand, phenomenology does not provide us a firm ground to stand on, because subjective experiences are notoriously vague. The essence is easily, if not always, mistaken. So, we need to go beyond these two.
In fact the two approaches have the same fundamental idea. Phenomenology indeed reduces religion to something, i.e., subjective experience, likewise reductionism stops reducing religion at somewhere fundamental. Both seek an underlying principle in the same way. But Buddhism is not concerned such a principle at all. However, interestingly, Buddhism is reductionistic by its nature. Buddhism reduces everything to experiences. What Buddhists call a ‘person’ is just a bundle of experiences: the physical part that we can sense, feelings, perceptions, mental formations, and consciousness. They are not subjective experiences, because of the absence of subject. They are just bare experiences from which Buddhists read ‘non-self’ as the reality. Since Buddhism perceives this ‘non-self’ as a truth, so there is no underlying principle whatsoever. We can say that Buddhism reduces all phenomena to Emptiness. Therefore mystical experience is meant nothing. Yet many Buddhists live their life with high moral standard and meditate all the time they can. When the world is perceived as empty, anything goes. But for the well-trained Buddhists, they choose to do beneficial things simply because it is good to do so. Nothing mystic about this; and this is the way I understand Buddhism.
Notes