Sutra and Tantra in Buddhism

Tara

Sutra and Tantra

It's sometimes thought that Sutra and Tantra are two completely separate Buddhist paths, with Sutra being philosophical and tantra being 'mystical', 'esoteric' and 'devotional'. But in fact Tantra follows logically from Sutra.


Arising and reborn out of emptiness
The discussion on emptiness showed that all functioning phenomena are free from inherent existence, that is they are not definable in terms of themselves, but are dependently related to other phenomena. The same line of reasoning can be applied to our own identities, for if we search hard enough for our Self or Ego - we find it isn't there!

This may sound a bit scary to anyone unfamiliar with Buddhist philosophy, because we normally regard our sense of selfhood as something absolutely basic to our security and continued existence. Even scarier and weirder is the fact that Buddhist meditators deliberately cultivate the realisation that there is no basis for the Self or Ego. Why on earth should anyone want to deny their own identity?

Well, it isn't quite like that. The meditators are trying to clarify the basis of imputation of the Self by clearing away all the socially-conditioned and biologically-contingent accretions. Their intention is to become aware of the clear emptiness, the formless mind at the centre of the individual's existence. This realisation leads to liberation from the round of rebirth and suffering, and is the basis for embarking on the Tantric path.

Existential angst

Of course some Western philosophers, such as the 1950's existentialists, have also come to the conclusion that the individual's identity is unfindable, but they have tended to regard this as a cause of depression and angst rather than as a source of celebration. This culture of 'Existential Angst' probably occurred because the philosophers had discovered the emptiness of the self, but at that time they lacked the meditational tools to build upon it.

To Buddhists, the realisation of the emptiness of the self is a cause for celebration rather than depression, because a meditator whose mind has no unchangeable essence also has no constraints, and may choose to change the basis of imputation of the self in order to realise her ultimate potential . In other words, a Tantric practitioner who has realised her emptiness can change the basis of imputation of her Self from the biological realm to the Buddha realm. (We all have biological nature, but also Buddha seed)

Guan Yin

Meditation on the emptiness of the self
The meditation on emptiness of the Ego takes various forms, but most involve the gradual stripping away of everything and every relationship that makes us who we are.

We may start with the intellectual realisation that there is no permanent basis for our identity, by considering how the physical, mental, emotional and social bases of imputation of the Self changed as we passed through kindergarten, elementary school, adolescence, college, first job, parenthood, etc.

We then meditate by stripping everything away that determines our identity:

• My job isn't me, if they fired me tomorrow my existence wouldn't be diminished (though my bank balance might)

• My name isn't me. I've already changed it three times to avoid the attentions of the Inland Revenue.

• My academic qualifications aren't me. I had forgotten half of what I'd learned within two weeks of taking the final examination.

• My genes aren't me. I share 95% of them with chimpanzees.

• My physical and chemical composition aren't me. The atoms that make up my body are constantly being lost and replaced (more than replaced judging by the bathroom scales). In any case they're supposed to turn over completely every 7 years.

• My family relationships aren't me, they're constantly changing. When I was younger I had neither a spouse nor children.

• My car isn't me. I know they say a man/woman is what he/she drives, but my car is going to end up as a pile of rust in the junkyard, hopefully before I reach the same state.

And so we continue along the via negativa - examining everything that could possibly be the root cause of what we are, including our beliefs, expectations, attachments, memes, mental processes, habits, evolutionary history, instincts, memories, childhood traumas and so on - and discarding each in turn. Eventually, when all things and all relationships have been exhausted, we become aware of the emptiness of our Self. It isn't nothingness that we become aware of, it is pure formless mind, which is empty of any defining or determining essence.

Tantra
The basic principle of Tantra is that once we have realised that we are ultimately empty of fixed existence, we should also realise that we are free from any constraints to our potential.

Tantric meditators start from where meditation on Emptiness left off. Having learned that we aren't obliged to use a biological body and evolutionary-detemined instincts as the basis of imputation of the self, we can use something else, for example a Buddha.

In Tantric practice we visualise our self as an Enlightened Being. (This is a meditational practice known as 'bringing the result into the path'. It has recently been adopted by some of the more 'New Age' schools of personal development where the practitioner visualises herself actually going through the process of achieving her goal).

Green Tara

We employ rich symbolically-charged visualisations to experience ourselves arising from the state of emptiness as a Meditation Buddha, such as Tara. Meditational Buddhas are known as Yidams in Tibetan practice.

The practice of Tantric visualisations is said to hasten us along the path to enlightenment, and decrease our attachment to being reborn in the biological realms and other states of craving and suffering.



The Kadampa understanding of tantra
"...The way all four tantras work is the same:  we observe an object that would otherwise normally give rise to attachment.  When that occurs, we usually generate some sort of pleasant feeling in our mind.  We then consider how the pleasant feeling does not come from the object, but rather comes from inside our mind.  We then try to dissolve the object which gave rise to our attachment into emptiness while preserving the pleasant feeling.  When we do this, the pleasant feeling transforms into a pure feeling that is a similitude of the mind of great bliss (pure inner peace).  We then hold that mind for as long as we can, trying to stabilize it.  Once stabilized, we can then turn our attention to meditating on the emptiness of this mind of great bliss.

In all tantras, we first generate ourselves as the deity we are going to practice.  It is inappropriate to maintain our ordinary body and mind when engaging in Tantric practice, so we do so as the self-generated deity.  In action tantra, we imagine we look upon a beautiful deity.  In performance tantra, we imagine that she is looking at us in an enticing, seductive way.  In yoga tantra, we touch, kiss, etc., the deity.  And in highest yoga tantra, we engage in union with the deity.  Each of these is a higher level of attachment, and so therefore a stronger feeling of bliss, which we then realize the emptiness of in the way just described.  We cannot engage in qualified highest yoga tantra without first being able to do qualified yoga tantra.  We cannot do qualified yoga tantra without first being able to do qualified performance tantra, and so forth.  But we can’t do any of these without first being able to generate ourselves as the deity in a qualified way.  Our ability to generate ourselves in a qualified way depends upon (1) a motivation of bodhichitta, in other words a solid practice of Lamrim, (2) a solid foundation of moral discipline, in other words training in all of our vows and commitments, and (3) a clear understanding of emptiness.  So our focus at this stage should not be on trying different methods for generating bliss, rather our focus should be on Lamrim, moral discipline, the wisdom realizing emptiness, and self-generation practice."  Read it all.



MORE ON TANTRA





For full detailed information on Sutra and Tantra, download this eBook (in three volumes Vol 1 Sutra, Vol 2 Tantra): 

Modern Buddhism:  free eBook downloadable for Windows, Mac, Kindle, Sony Reader, Nook and Android

Read more at Buddhist Philosophy
 

- Sean Robsville

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Consciousness and mind are not emergent phenomena or emergent properties of the brain.

Summary: The mind cannot be an emergent property of the brain or any other physical system, since emergent properties and emergent phenomena are psychological in origin, and require the pre-existence of an observer's mind in order to become manifest.

Is the bunch of cherries an emergent property 

of the 13x15 pixel array,  or does it emerge

from the mind of the observer?

Emergent properties and emergent phenomena

A frequently used materialist argument against the existence of the mind as a non-physical continuum is to claim that it is an 'emergent property' or 'emergent phenomenon' of the brain.

The definition of emergence given in the Dictionary of Philosophy of Mind is

'Emergence - Properties of a complex physical system are emergent just in case they are neither (i) properties had by any parts of the system taken in isolation nor (ii) resultant of a mere summation of properties of parts of the system.

Thus a boat which drifts northwestwards in response to a southerly wind and a current flowing from the east is not exhibiting emergent behavior, whereas the products of chemical reactions could be considered emergent. To quote the Dictionary of Philosophy of Mind:

"Consider the following chemical process: CH4 + 2O2 --> CO2 + 2H2O (Methane + oxygen produces carbon dioxide + water). For Mill, the products of such chemical reactions are not, in any sense, the sum of the effects of each reactant. 

While the mechanics underlying chemical reactions are understood well enough today to render Mill's point dubious, we can see why the above chemical reaction would impress Mill and his contemporaries as significantly different in kind from the Composition of Forces for moving bodies. In the case of the chemical reaction, the resulting compounds exhibit properties significantly different from those of the reactants. For instance, methane is violently combustible, whereas carbon dioxide and water are not. 

This contrasts sharply against the case of a north-westerly moving object being propelled by two forces--one towards the north, the other towards the west--insofar as the subsequent motion is so obviously decomposable into the effects of the conjoint causes. A very live possibility to consider in connection with these examples is that an enhanced understanding of the processes that underlie some observed property of a system may show that system not to be an example of emergence. 

That is, an increase of knowledge about the way certain effects are obtained may reveal that certain effects are decomposable into the effects contributed by subcomponents of that system. Mill's chemical examples fail as properly emergent for just this reason. With the development of quantum mechanical explanation, we have been able to see how chemical reactions are composed of additive properties of individual electrons (McLaughlin, 1992, p.89)."

Note that in the case of a chemical reaction, the attribution of emergence differs according to the extent of knowledge of the observers (19th century bucket chemists versus 20th century quantum physicists).

Nevertheless, it is still commonplace to think of certain phenomena, such as biological systems, as as showing complex behavior which somehow emerges uncreated out of far simpler behaviors such as the chemistry of carbon compounds.

The Game of Life as an emergent phenomenon.

One of the most familiar examples of emergent behavior is exhibited by cellular automata, such John Conway's Game of Life and its variants (eg Brian's Brain). These are available as animations on the web:

http://www.math.com/students/wonders/life/life.html

http://www.bitstorm.org/gameoflife/

http://www.argilo.net/funjava.html?lng=en

The Game is what a computer programmer would nowadays define as an object, which consists of a datastructure (the two dimensional pixel array) and associated algorithms (the rules which determine whether pixels switch on or off according to the state of their neighbors).

The algorithms are extremely simple:

• A dead cell with exactly three live neighbors becomes a live cell (birth).
• A live cell with two or three live neighbors stays alive (survival).
• In all other cases, a cell dies or remains dead (overcrowding or loneliness).

Amazingly, out of these simple rules operating on a simple datastructure, a complex system of gliders, oscillators etc appears.

But is this really an emergent phenomenon? If the gliders were to emerge out of the screen and glide around the top of our desk (as distinct from being pixel patterns gliding around our PC desktop), then we should have to concede that something had emerged. But all we can say is that an appearance has emerged. 

So, from where has the appearance emerged?

If we search carefully, we come to the conclusion that we cannot find the complex behavior within the object. The movements of the pixel-structures are algorithmically compressible, with no remainder, back into the rules that generated them. There is no mysterious addition of procedural complexity.

The two-dimensional pixel array remains an array of pixels in two dimensions - it hasn't suddenly changed its nature and become a cube or magically sprouted chess-pieces.

Yet we can't deny that we have observed a phenomenon which has properties which 'look different' and 'feel different' from its constituents.

But if the phenomenon hasn't emerged from the object, then the only other place from which it could have emerged is the mind of the observer. We are therefore left with the conclusion that emergence is a psychological, not a physical phenomenon. The pixel array is 'nothing but' sequentially illuminated squares on the computer screen. All else is imputed by mind.

David Chalmers makes a similar point in his notes on emergence, quote:

"The notion of reduction is intimately tied to the ease of understanding one level in terms of another. Emergent properties are usually properties that are more easily understood in their own right than in terms of properties at a lower level. This suggests an important observation: Emergence is a psychological property. It is not a metaphysical absolute. Properties are classed as "emergent" based at least in part on (1) the interestingness to a given observer of the high-level property at hand; and (2) the difficulty of an observer's deducing the high-level property from low-level properties"

Similarly...
"The properties of complexity and organization of any system are considered by Crutchfield to be subjective qualities determined by the observer.

"Defining structure and detecting the emergence of complexity in nature are inherently subjective, though essential, scientific activities. Despite the difficulties, these problems can be analysed in terms of how model-building observers infer from measurements the computational capabilities embedded in non-linear processes. An observer’s notion of what is ordered, what is random, and what is complex in its environment depends directly on its computational resources: the amount of raw measurement data, of memory, and of time available for estimation and inference. The discovery of structure in an environment depends more critically and subtly, though, on how those resources are organized. The descriptive power of the observer’s chosen (or implicit) computational model class, for example, can be an overwhelming determinant in finding regularity in data."(Crutchfield 1994) "  from Wiki

So we can dismiss all claims that consciousness, mind and awareness are emergent properties of matter or brains, because we need the presence of a mind for emergent properties and phenomena to appear in the first place. The subjective activity of the mind of the observer, together with the 'objective' procedures and the structures upon which they operate, is an irreducible component of emergent phenomena.

The behavior of cellular automata gives a vivid illustration of the three levels of dependent relationship, as discussed in the article on Buddhist teachings on sunyata :

(1) Gross dependent relationship - the dependence of phenomena on their causes (the algorithms or rules of production).

(2) Subtle dependent relationship - the dependence of phenomena on their perceived parts (the pixels which go to make up the emergent structures).

(3) Very subtle dependent relationship - the dependence of phenomena on imputation by mind.

Emergent all the way up and all the way down?

In addition, the article on sunyata demonstrates that instead of viewing the world in terms of 'things', we should understand all phenomena in terms of three types of relationships - causal, organisational and imputational.

The universe consists of relationships and only relationships. To ask what the participants in these relationships are in themselves only leads to paradox.

One interesting aspect of emergent phenomena is the different causal and organisational relationships which appear at different levels of investigation.

For example, ecology emerges out of biology, which emerges out of chemistry, which emerges out of physics, which emerges out of mathematics, which emerges out of the mind contemplating the empty set.

Each level of investigation has its own explanatory relationships, yet if we check carefully there is no 'added extra' coming from the side of the objects. (Everything is algorithmically compressible without remainder, there are no mysterious ingredients added as we progress from lower levels to higher levels).

The only place from which these relationships/phenomena can emerge is the mind. Hence we are again forced to conclude that these emergent phenomena are psychological phenomena.

So, even the relationships themselves are imputed by mind and have the nature of mind.


TIP - If some aspects of Buddhist beliefs seem unfamiliar, obscure, or confusing, then bear in mind that Buddhism is a process philosophy.   Difficult aspects of Buddhism often become much clearer when viewed from a process perspective.

 

- Sean Robsville

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Sunyata - the emptiness of all things

The teachings on emptiness (Sanskrit sunyata or shunyata) find their most articulate development in the Kadampa branch of Mahayana Buddhism (Madhyamika Prasangika philosophy). To the Kadampas nothing exists 'inherently' or 'from its own side'. All functioning phenomena exist in dependence on three factors -


(i) their causes,

(ii) their parts or relations with other objects, and

(iii) their imputation by the mind of a sentient being.


And the sentient mind is NOT a physical construct or epiphenomenon of matter. The mind is clear and formless and has the power to know phenomena in a qualitative way [KELSANG GYATSO 1992], and hence give meaning to them.


To Kadampa Buddhists all things are totally empty of any defining essence. Consequently all things have no fixed identity ('inherent existence') and are are in a state of impermanence - change and flux - constantly becoming and decaying. Not only are all things constantly changing, but if we analyse any phenomenon in enough detail we come to the conclusion that it is ultimately unfindable, and exists purely by definitions in terms of other things - and one of those other things is always the mind which generates those definitions.


Buddhists regard the persistent delusion of 'inherent existence' as a major obstacle to spiritual development, and the root of many other damaging delusions. One of these delusions is the materialist belief in an objective reality existing independently of mind. By asserting that the universe exists inherently as a brute fact, materialism denies that subjective experience has any relevance to or influence on the universe, or indeed any existence at all.


The delusion of inherent existence is deeply ingrained our our culture. It was embedded into western philosophy by the Greek philosopher Plato, who was born about sixty years after Buddha's death. Plato's view of reality is that for any class of objects there is a defining ideal form which is fixed, permanent and unchanging. All physical instances of objects tend to be imperfect. For example the wilting, mildewed roses in my garden are imperfect instances of an ideal rose which exists in a perfect realm of eternal forms. It is only by reference to this authoritative 'specification' that my mind is able to identify and name the transient physical phenomena, which 'participate' in the ideal form's attributes.


Buddha died in 483 BC. Plato was born in 428 BC. Yet it is most unlikely that Plato was aware of his predecessor's teachings. In those days there was little contact between Greek and Indian philosophy. This had to await the eastward advance of Alexander the Great around 328 BC. The first recorded contact between Greek civilisation and Buddhism is the conversation between the Greek King Milinda of Bactria, and Nagasena, a Buddhist chariot dismantler [CONZE 1959].



Empty vehicles

King Milinda was a Greek and an experienced soldier who thought he knew a chariot when he saw one. But Nagasena demonstrated that if Milinda's chariot were gradually dismantled - knock a spoke out of a wheel here, a plank off there, then a bit of the frame and so on, there was no way for Milinda to decide at exactly what step in the procedure he should stop imputing 'vehicle' and start imputing 'heap of firewood'.


Nagasena said this was because the chariot had no power to define itself from its own side. Nor was there any ideal chariot form 'in the sky' which engaged and disengaged with the timber at definite stages of assembly and disassembly.


Milinda's mind was the only thing that could make the distinction between vehicle and firewood. And there were no logical rules, stepwise procedures or decision trees for Milinda to decide when to cease imputing one thing and impute another.


As with chariots, so with cars. Everyone knows what a car is. A car is an assembly of parts. But what makes those parts into a car is surprisingly difficult to pin down. At what stage on the production line do the components finally become a car?


Does it temporarily cease to be a car when it's in for repairs and the transmission is several yards away from the rest of the vehicle? Is my car still a car when I wake up one morning to find it supported on bricks with the wheels missing?


Or, could I say that the essential feature of a car is that it performs the functions of a car? So does it cease to be a car when it won't start? And does it return to the state of being a car when I cure the problem by spraying the electrics with moisture repellent? Does the true 'essence' of a car therefore reside in an aerosol can?




Emptiness of natural things.

Maybe we can rescue Plato's ideas of the inherent existence of perfect forms if we assume there is a strict demarcation between man-made and natural objects, with the former existing in dependence upon the 'judgement' of the observer, but the latter existing 'from their own side'. For having come to accept that man-made things such as chariots and cars owe some of their existence to dependence on our mind, we may suspect that this is somehow because they are originally products of the human mind - as first conceived by the designer.


We find it more difficult to accept the natural things in the world, such as flowers and trees are dependent upon our minds. A rose would smell as sweet by any other name. A rose bush is a rose bush is a rose bush, and is different in its inherent nature from a plum or a cherry tree. There is no continuum between these three species and thus no necessity for our mind to make a judgment of the borderline. But is this really the case?


From a long term evolutionary perspective, there is (or was) a continuum of form between all living things. If we were to examine the fossil records of the ancestors of cherry trees and plum trees we would find that they diverged from one common ancestor. Looking back through the fossils we would seen a continuous gradation of characteristics from the ancestors of the cherry to to the ancestors of the plum, leading back to a time when they were indistinguishable. But the decision as to where ancestor ended and plum or cherry began would be totally arbitrary. And if we were to trace the common ancestor of the cherry and plum we would find convergence with the ancestors of the rose, strawberry, raspberry etc.


What Darwin did for creationism he also did for biological Platonism - the biological species concept does not encapsulate any underlying truth [BROOKES 1999], and each individual species is unfindable. The 'species' being a snapshot of a population at a particular time in its evolution.


The ultimate unfindability of the real nature of all phenomena - their lack inherent existence, is usually referred to by English-speaking Buddhists as 'emptiness', which is a translation of the Sanskrit word Sunyata (sometimes spelled Shunyata). According to David Loy the English word emptiness has a more nihilistic connotation than the original Sanskrit. The Sanskrit root su also conveys the concept of being swollen with possibility [LOY 1996]. It is therefore most important not to confuse emptiness with total nothingness. Emptiness implies the potential for existence and change. The mathematical analogy of emptiness is not zero, but the empty set.


The conclusion that all things are empty of inherent existence and appear only in dependence on our minds is not an obvious truth. So deeply ingrained is the idea of inherent existence and authority in Western culture that even when we have analysed all things as dependent on causes, and dependent on parts, we still hold back from the most subtle truth of dependence on mind. We think there ought to be 'something out there', or someone 'authoritative' who prevents the real world from being so much dependent upon our judgement.

On first meeting teachings on emptiness the western mind often suspects it is the victim logical trickery or mere playing with words. Fortunately it is possible to demonstrate the true and all-pervasive nature of emptiness by examining the mode of existence of fundamental particles, the building blocks of all things in the material universe.



The participation of the observer.

According to the Kadampa school of Buddhist philosophy all functioning phenomena exist by dependence on other phenomena, which are themselves dependently related to other phenomena and so on. No matter how deeply or far back we search, no functioning phenomenon can ever be found which is fundamental or a 'thing-in-itself'. Neither the observer nor any observed phenomenon exist independently, but are inextricably intertwined. This viewpoint is known as dependent relationship.


Geshe Kelsang Gyatso [KELSANG GYATSO 1995] states that there are three levels of dependent relationship:


(1) Gross dependent relationship - causality.

(2) Subtle dependent relationship - structure and spatial interrelationships.

(3) Very subtle dependent relationship - the dependence of phenomena on imputation or designation by mind, sometimes known as 'intentionality' or 'aboutness'.


All functioning things exist in these three ways. The very subtle dependent relationship - existence by the mind's designation - is the most difficult one to understand, especially since for most ordinary phenomena this view of existence is masked by the two grosser levels of existence. This subtle mode of existence is always present, but only becomes apparent in those circumstances where the grosser levels do not dominate.


If we have problems with the terminology of gross and subtle, we may think of this as the degree of apparent objectivity of dependent relationship . The most gross is the most objective and the very subtle is the most subjective (or participatory) type of dependent relationship.


The existence of a thing in dependence of its causes (except in the special case where we were involved in making it ) appears totally objective and does not require our participation. The causes of a car are the geological processes which produced coal, iron and copper ores. Then the miners, metalworkers, designers, component manufacturers and assembly line workers who transformed the raw material into the finished product. Unless we happen to work in one of these industries, the causal mode of existence does not depend on our participation.

Existence in dependence on structure is more subjective. We may view a car as composed of a chassis, an engine and four wheels. Or we may take a more detailed view with the engine being seen as pistons, cylinder-head, carburettor etc. These too can be analysed into subcomponents, all the way down through atoms of iron and carbon, to the fundamental particles such as protons, electrons and the photons which shine from the headlamps.


Our perception of dependence upon structure is very much determined by how we choose to subdivide the whole. The mind has to participate by applying analytical effort to generate the view of existence in dependence upon parts and assemblies. A spark-plug is only a spark plug because we know what it does and where it fits. If you were to show a spark plug to Isaac Newton, he would not be able to give it a meaningful name.




Quantum sunyata

It's when we get to the final stage of perception of dependence in terms of the fundamental building blocks of matter that the very subtle (most participatory) level of dependent relationship,  designation by mind, becomes  most evident.  Experiments in quantum physics seem to demonstrate the need for the participation of an observer to make potentialities become real.  The observer is part of the system.

The mathematical equations of quantum physics do not describe actual existence - they describe potential for existence. Working out the equations of quantum mechanics for a system composed of fundamental particles produces a range of potential locations, values and attributes of the particles which evolve and change with time. But for any system only one of these potential states can become real, and - this is the revolutionary finding of quantum physics - what forces the range of the potentials to assume one value is the act of observation. Matter and energy are not in themselves phenomena, and do not become phenomena until they interact with the mind.

Read more at Buddhist Philosophy

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REFERENCES:


[KELSANG GYATSO 1992] The First Panchen Lama, cited by Geshe Kelsang Gyatso in Clear Light of Bliss, 2nd Edition page 146 (London:Tharpa Publications, 1992, ISBN 0 948006 21 8).


[CONZE 1959] Conze, Edward (tr) Buddhist Scriptures p 146 ff; (Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin Books Ltd , 1959)


[BROOKES 1999] Brookes, Martin, Live and Let Live , New Scientist p 32 -36, 3rd July 1999.


[LOY 1996] Loy, David in the afterword to Swedenborg, Buddha of the North , page 104, (Swedenborg Foundation, West Chester Pennsylvania, 1996, ISBN 0-87785-184-0)


[KELSANG GYATSO 1995] Gyatso, Geshe Kelsang, Joyful Path of Good Fortune, 2nd Edition - page 349, (London: Tharpa Publications, 1995, ISBN 0948006 46 3)




My old btclick scimah Buddhist Philosophy site manifested the impermanence of all compound phenomena some years ago. Fortunately it had been archived before its demise.

However, as the original articles are no longer editable, this blog is my attempt to update some of them and present them in a more modern format, together with occasional new articles which may or may not have any relevance to the original site.