Imbolc (Candlemas) and the Pagan Path to Buddhism

February 2nd is Imbolc, Christianized as Candlemas

Here's an updated version of a post from a couple of years ago on the upcoming Pagan festival of Imbolc (Candlemas), dedicated to the feminine spirituality of Brigid, with a discussion of its transcultural convergence with Buddhism:


The Growth of Paganism

In the past, most new Buddhists in the West have come to the Dharma from a Judeo-Christian, or secularized Judeo-Christian background.   But there now seems to be an increasing number of younger people coming into Buddhism via Paganism, often melding pagan festivals, rituals and art-forms with Buddhist philosophy.   The Buddhist celebration of the enlightened feminine (especially Tara) is particularly popular.

The rapid modern growth of paganism is part of the 'Spiritual but not Religious' movement, where young people are trying to escape the bleak mechanistic materialist worldview of scientism, but can find no spirituality in the samsaric religions, which are increasingly dominated by hatred, bigotry, extremism and idiocy.   

This process of disintegration is a vicious downward spiral. As the formerly mainstream religions decline, so they become vulnerable to being taken over by cliques of extremists, which makes them even less appealing to liberal-minded youth. Paganism, with its ancient numinous festivals and evocative symbolism, offers an escape from the soulless, stressed-out, dehumanised, over-regulated and proceduralised existence which is modern urban life.

Paganism particularly venerates the feminine aspects of spirituality. In contrast, there is little or no place for the divine feminine in standard Abrahamic monotheism.  

However, paganism lacks the philosophical background needed to challenge materialism, and this may be why many pagans are eventually drawn to Buddhist teachings.



 

Candlemas Pagan Origins

Christianization
When Christianity came to the Celtic lands, it took over many of the Pagan festivals and Christianized them. This was far more acceptable to the people than banning them, as the Puritans were to do to all pagan-origin festivals many centuries later.

Its always easier for new religions to work with the existing culture than against it, a policy also pursued by Buddhism in its spread throughout Asia.

Festival of Lights

Buddhist interpretations
Now that Buddhism is establishing itself in Western Europe, there is a movement to reinterpret some of these numinous Pagan festivals from a Buddhist perspective.

The FWBO has a program of honoring the Five female Buddhas, on the day and time of the year associated with each of them. The cycle begins with the Summer Solstice and female Buddha Mamaki.

The Turning of the Year

The Autumn Equinox, is a ceremony dedicated to Pandaravasini, the female Buddha of the Western direction associated with dusk and the wisdom of uniqueness.

Light of Wisdom in the Dusk

Later in the year it is the turn of Samayatara, the female Buddha of the Northern direction associated with midnight and the wisdom of action (Halloween/Samhain); and Akasadhatesvari, the female Buddha at the centre of the Mandala beyond time and space. She is associated with the ineffable wisdom of the Transcendental. Her ceremony takes place at the time of the Winter Solstice.





 

Candlemas - Festival of Offering Lights to the Goddess
The next festival is Candlemas, also known as Imbolc, which in pagan times was an offering of Lights to the Goddess in the aspect of Brigit or Bride. This ancient festival takes place on February 2nd and marks the mid point of winter, half way between the winter solstice (shortest day) and the spring equinox.

Brigid as Christian Saint and Pagan Goddess

 

Of course the idea of a Goddess was anathema to the patriarchal, misogynistic ancient church, and Brigid, who was too popular to get rid of, was demoted from Goddess to Saint. The idea of honoring the feminine was turned on its head, and the festival became the Purification of the Virgin, to remind women of their ritual uncleanness.

Brigit as Celtic Trinity

 
However, if we return to the original pagan intention, we can see that Candlemas, although now almost abandoned by the Christian churches, has potential for adaptation by Buddhists.

Buddhists honor many female Buddhas, for example Tara and Guan Yin, and the lighting of a candle or an oil lamp represents the light of wisdom illuminating the darkness of ignorance.

Light offerings to Tara

With lights brightly shining
Abolishing this gloom
I adore the Enlightened One,
The Light of the three worlds.
- Wiki

 
Offerings of lights are said to have many beneficial effects.

And so Candlemas, already resonant with ancient evocative associations with divine light, is easily adaptable to Buddhist practice.






 
Western holidays from a Buddhist perspective.
On this blog I have also suggested how Halloween, Christmas, Summer Solstice and New Year can be given Buddhist interpretations.



No danger of 'mixing'
Such adoptions of pagan festivals do not involve 'mixing' of the dharma with other doctrines, because there is no impact on the philosophical foundations of Buddhism such as the Four Seals. Nor is there any impact on the form of practice. The celebration of these occasions is simply performing Buddhist rituals in the context of Celtic cultural traditions.

Buddhism is not itself a culture. It is transcultural - valid for all sentient beings, in all places, at all times. 




Spiritual But Not Religious
If Buddhism wishes to attract young people, it needs to engage more with the 'Spiritual but not Religious' zeitgeist, of which paganism, the New Age movement and the various feminine spiritualities are manifestations.

Light of the World

Read more at Buddhist Philosophy


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Purifying the Past with Vajrasattva, the New Year Buddha

The night before

followed by...


...the morning after

NEVER AGAIN!
That's what many of us say on the first of January - and it isn't just about the after effects of New Year's Eve.

Never, ever, again!

New Year is the traditional time for kicking old harmful habits, and resolving to stop causing further hurt to ourselves and others.

A fresh start

Purification
The Vajrasattva visualisation and meditation gives us a fresh start by purifying harmful, negative tendencies and states of mind.

The practice consists of visualising Buddha Vajrasattva (small - about 6 inches tall - not full-sized like a human) above the crown of our heads. He doesn't come from anywhere in particular, he just appears. We believe he is there but don't need detailed visualisations.

Vajrasattva purification relies upon the four opponent powers, which are...

1) Reliance
2) Regret
3) Opponent force
4) Promise

Vajrasattva is the Buddha of Purification.

Reliance
Reliance helps pacify and weaken negative karma, it involves going for refuge and developing a mind of boddhichitta .

Any negative actions we have committed in the past were either towards objects of refuge, or towards sentient beings.

Negative actions against objects of refuge are purified by going for refuge. We go for refuge to Vajrasattva, regarding him as the synthesis of all objects of refuge.

Negative actions against sentient beings are purified by developing bodhicitta. We think of all living beings as precious and dedicate ourselves to their welfare, and to abandoning causing them suffering. We may wish to visualise that we are surrounded by all living beings and they are also purifying by relying on Vajrasattva.

Caring for all living beings

Regret
We develop a sincere regret for all the harmful actions that we have performed against sentient beings. Regret is not the same as guilt. Guilt is a negative state of mind that increases confusion and self-hatred. It leads nowhere and functions only to weaken our will.

Regret, on the other hand, is an admission of our mistakes coupled with a positive intention to learn from them by not repeating them. In other words, we are performing a tantric transmutation by transforming our negative history into our future spiritual path.


Opponent force
The mantra is the opponent force that purifies the actual negativities. We can mentally or audibly recite the long or short mantras. When we are reciting we are requesting Vajrasattva to purify us.

We visualise a moon cushion at Vajrasattva's heart on which is the white letter HUM. Standing around this are the letters of the mantra. From the mantra white light rays and white nectar pour down and purify us from top to bottom, pushing out negativities. All dirty substances leave by lower orifices.

Negative karma leaves as dirty liquid. Mental and physical sicknesses leave as pus, blood, worms and other creepy-crawlies.

Then we feel completely clean, our body is just pure white light.

If we have a particular problem, we visualise that problem being expelled.


Promise
The fourth opponent power is the power of promise to gradually abandon harmful actions. We can't purify without making a promise to refrain. Promise purifies the tendency to repeat bad habits which harm ourselves and others. Promise plants the seeds of new tendencies which destroy old tendencies.

At this point we make a realistic promise to avoid negative actions. We don't make promises we can't keep, but make a determination to overcome all negative actions eventually.


Dedication
Finally, Vajrasattva dissolves into us, and our body, speech and mind become inseparable from Vajrasattva.

We then dedicate the merit we have accumulated by practising the Vajrasattva purification to the happiness of all sentient beings.



12 steps
Although we may joke about the after-effects of New Year's Parties, for some people alcohol is a year-long nightmare. The Alcoholics Anonymous 12 step program requires alcoholics to acknowledge they are helpless against their addiction until they go for refuge to a Higher Power.

For Buddhists, Vajrasattva is such a Higher Power who can help to break addicitions to alcohol, drugs, food etc

Wishing all sentient beings

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Buddhism Subject Index

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Can Buddhists Celebrate Christmas?

Buddhist Christmas

Bah Humbug!

Other non-Christian religions can get a bit uptight about Christmas, but Buddhism is fairly laid back.
 
A few years ago the city of Birmingham renamed Christmas to 'Winterval' as a result of protests by non-Christian faith communities, but as far as I'm aware it wasn't the Buddhists who were complaining. 

Of course, there are aspects of Christmas which a Buddhist might have reservations about - rampant consumerism and so on, but these are the same excesses that are often denounced by Christians who complain that in recent years the spiritual aspects of Christmas have been replaced by a credit card frenzy.

But in general Buddhists are quite happy with Christmas and have no hangups about hanging up Christmas decorations and enlightening Christmas trees.



Presents under the Bodhi Tree

In the Simpsons episode She of Little Faith , where Lisa converts to Buddhism, Reverend Lovejoy tries to dissuade her by saying that she can't celebrate Christmas because "Santa doesn't leave presents under the Bodhi tree". Richard Gere puts things right by explaining that Buddhists believe that those religions that are founded on Love and Compassion are valid spiritual paths.




So you can eat your Christmas cake and still be a Buddhist, though of course you can never finally have the cake whether you eat it or not (all cakes are compound phenomena and thus subject to impermanence).
Excessive consumption of Christmas cake may also promote the realisation that there is no inherent difference between an object of attachment and an object of aversion. ("Can't you manage just one more slice? Look here's a nice piece with extra thick icing... What's the matter, aren't you feeling well?")





Was Jesus a Buddhist?
Many Buddhists believe that Jesus was a High Bodhisatva or manifestation of Enlightened Mind. There is also some evidence that in the 'lost years' Jesus travelled to the East and studied Buddhism - certainly you can't get any more Buddhist than the traditional Christmas message of 'Peace on Earth - Goodwill to All'. And who exactly were the Wise Men and where did they originate? Were they Buddhists?



A Buddhist Christmas Carol
Dickens' well-loved story A Christmas Carol sometimes upsets the more fundamentalist Christian evangelicals with its 'ghosts' (to an evangelical all such spirits are apparitions of Satan). But from a Buddhist perspective the story makes perfect sense:

Chains of attachment to money-boxes

Marley's miserliness has resulted in him becoming a Preta (ghost) after death. His attachment in life was to money, and in the Preta realm his attachment manifests as fetters to chains of money-boxes, keys, ledgers and heavy purses. 

In order to help purify his karma, Marley sets out to warn Scrooge that the same destiny awaits him. Marley is assisted in his task by two peaceful Buddhas (Christmas Past and Christmas Present - Buddhas can manifest in any form that is beneficial to sentient beings), and one wrathful Buddha ('Ghost of the Future!' I fear you more than any spectre I have seen'). 

Buddhas can appear in any beneficial form

The Buddhas take Scrooge through a sort of mini-Bardo experience, where he reviews his life from the perspective of what he has done to others, or not done for others, rather than what he has done for himself. He awakens into a state of mind transformed by compassion and generosity.



Ho Ho Ho ... Hotei! The Buddhist Santa Claus

I'm a mince pie junkie, so when it comes to the the annual Christmas Battle of the Bulge, I've long ago taken Langri Tangpa's advice and adopted the practice of 'accepting defeat and offering the victory'.

Unfortunately, this does have a slight problem with the self-generation visualisations. Most of the Buddhas are portrayed as young, slender and sitting upright, which means that those of us with a more Homeric appearance (in the Simpsonian sense) need rather vivid imaginations to 'bring the result into the path'.

So I was quite pleased when I discovered a Buddha with whom I could easily identify - Buddha Hotei - a manifestation of Buddha Maitreya with an amply proportioned physique (The Wikipedia article rather unkindly calls him 'fat').

Buddha Hotei is very popular in China and Japan. He's often portrayed sitting in a semi-reclining posture and laughing uproariously, while distributing presents to children out of an inexhaustible sack. The similarities with Santa are quite intriguing, see Hotei_1, Hotei_2, Hotei 3





The winter solstice

Of course the origins of Christmas long pre-date Christianity. The majority of the world's religions originated in relatively low latitudes (around 30°N) where the difference in day length between Summer and Winter is not particularly noticeable. However, for us folks who live further from the equator, the long dark nights and short dull days of midwinter are definitely a big psychological issue. That is why the Winter solstice has always been of such importance to Northern Europeans. It symbolises, if not the rebirth, at least the conception of the new year. In the Celtic calendar Imbolc (Candlemas) was the actual birth of the New Year, with the appearance of the first lambs and green shoots.

The early church failed to suppress the solstice celebrations and instead adopted them (much as they planted churches on pagan sacred sites), overlaying the scarcely concealed Druidic symbolism with Christian attributes. There is actually no historical evidence that Jesus was born on the 25th December.

The Celtic annual cycle of Imbolc, Halloween and Winter Solstice offers a rich source of symbolism and analogy for the process of rebirth, life, death, bardo and conception that would not be as apparent in traditional Buddhist countries, which are mostly at lower latitudes. So it is likely that as Buddhism continues to spread in the Anglo-Celtic cultural areas, it will adopt some of the Winter Solstice customs. There is no reason for in not to do so, for it is often remarked that unlike most other religions, Buddhism is not tied to a particular culture. 

Because of its strong philosophical foundations, Buddhism is universal.   It is effective for any sentient being, anywhere, any time.

In Praise of Jesus - a Buddhist Perspective
 

Christmas Eve at Vajralama Center Seattle

Photo by Dean Forbes (some rights reserved)

- Sean Robsville



Read more at Buddhist Philosophy




 


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Recipe - Winter Warmer Kale Soup with Optional Turmeric, suitable for vegetarians and vegans.

500g kale in 3 liter pan

Kale is one of the most nutritious vegetables, being a good source of vitamins, minerals, anti-oxidants and substances that protect eyesight, especially as we get older.  It is also a good source of calcium for vegans.

Unfortunately kale isn't the most exciting or appetizing vegetable in its own right, it needs to be combined with something else to make it more tasty and digestible. This is a recipe for a delicious and nutritious thick soup which is ideal as a winter warmer. In this recipe olive oil is used to solubilize the lutein and other lipophilic nutrients so that they can be taken up by the digestive system.


INGREDIENTS
- 500g fresh kale as whole leaves (avoid the ready-chopped kale stocked by some supermarkets as this is full of stalk and of uncertain freshness).

- Two medium onions

- Three cloves of garlic

- 350 g peeled chopped potatoes

- Extra virgin olive oil.

- Ground black pepper

- Stock cubes or bouillon powder sufficient for 1500ml of stock (typically seven vegetable Oxo cubes or five level teaspoons of Marigold vegetarian or vegan bouillon. Check the instructions on the packaging).

- Turmeric powder (optional)


UTENSILS
One 3 liter capacity pan
One 2 liter capacity pan
Frying pan
Spatula or wooden spoon
Hand-held blender

METHOD
Wash the kale leaves, then strip leaf portions from the central stalk, which should be discarded. Also discard any damaged or yellow patches of leaf.

Put 300ml of water and 40ml (2 tablespoons) of extra virgin olive oil into the 3 liter pan, then add the leaf portions. These are quite springy when uncooked and will need a lid on top to press them down (see picture above) until they wilt and soften in the rising steam.   When the pan begins to boil, press the kale down with the spatula and stir occasionally to ensure thorough cooking and contact with the oil/water. Simmer for 15 minutes.

Meanwhile...
Simmer the 350g chopped potatoes in 1 liter water till soft.

Chop two medium onions and three cloves of garlic and fry gently in 40ml (2 tablespoons) extra virgin oil till soft.

When all ingredients are cooked...
Add the crumbled stock cubes or bouillon powder to the simmering potatoes, remove from heat and stir well. 

Add 1/4 teaspoon black pepper. 

Add the fried onion and any remaining oil from the frying pan and liquidize.

Add the kale gradually (in five or six batches) and liquidize. Adding the kale in small portions avoids clogging the liquidizer.

Add and mix the oil/water that the kale has been cooked in as this contains nutrients.

Finally check for taste and add more pepper or stock if necessary.

The soup can be frozen as portions in suitable microwaveable containers and reheated as required.

 
THE TURMERIC OPTION
You can supercharge this soup with anti-oxidants by adding two level tablespoons of turmeric  and mixing well just before adding the stock powder to the potatoes.  This will give the recommended daily dose of 1 teaspoon of turmeric per 250ml  portion of soup.  However, be aware that some people need to be cautious about taking turmeric, and it does affect the taste of the soup in a way that may not  be to everyone's liking. So turmeric is probably best left out if you're preparing the soup as part of a meal for guests.

SEE ALSO Secondary Metabolites

Why are our minds repeatedly trapped in the bodies of animals and humans?

Sow a thought, reap an action
Sow an action, reap a habit
Sow a habit, reap a character
Sow a character, reap a destiny

 

Why are the minds of samsaric beings repeatedly drawn into the bodies of animals and humans?  If the mind is capable of existing independently of the body, then why doesn't it do so?   What drives it to biological rebirth? 

Why can't we debiologize ourselves once and for all?
 
If there is a path to enlightenment which leads out of this continual cycle of birth, aging, sickness and death, why doesn't everybody take it?   If we all have Buddha nature, why do we always end up in such a mess? Why do we seem to take a perverse delight in spiritual self-harm?

The reason for this endless cycle of suffering is that we always have 'something on our mind'; and that something is karma.  The true nature of our mind is clarity, but that clarity is obscured, distorted and weighed down by the imprints of millions of nasty, brutish and usually violently short lifetimes. 

Our minds are deluded into thinking that happiness can be found in samsara, and though it has never worked in the past, this time we'll finally get it right. So after death we are drawn into another rebirth in the biological realms.

Fortunately, we can accomplish a karmic detox of all this accumulated delusional crap, and bring about long-term mental peace and clarity, leading to release from samsaric rebirth for ourselves and others.


More at Buddhist Philosophy

Buddhism and Science

SEE ALSO  Buddhist Philosophy

The truth about the situation in Myanmar

The OIC-financed dhimmi MSM are full of jihadist taqiyya and kuffarophobic agitprop about the situation in Myanmar.
Learn the truth here and here

See also No Future for Buddhism

Understanding Terrorism

Understanding the minds and motivations of the Jihadist bombers

'I have been made victorious with terror!'

UPDATE HALLOWEEN 2017.
ANOTHER ATTACK, THIS TIME VEHICULAR JIHAD RATHER THAN A BOMBING,  WITH A TRUCK AIMED AT A SCHOOL BUS, BUT THE SAME ARGUMENTS APPLY...


I wrote this original analysis of terrorism as a contagious mental illness  four years ago.   The situation has continued to deteriorate since then, with the attacks becoming ever more frequent, and the latest one specifically targeting children, leaving little girls killed, maimed, mutilated and disfigured for life, with faces ripped apart by shrapnel deliberately added to the bomb for that purpose.  Ever since the Beslan attack, the jihadists have been particularly keen to murder and maim infidel children. with more attacks planned for the future.   (For an explanation of the jihadist attitude to child murder/abuse/rape read this)

 

Saffie Roussos, youngest victim of Jihadist human sacrifice

The well-intentioned but dangerous delusion of the 'Religion of Peace'
It is dangerous and deluded wishful thinking, no matter how well-intentioned,  to claim that every major world religion, including Jihadism,  advocates peace, love and compassion at the heart of its teachings, and that all violent manifestations are a corruption of the original faith. 

- It is wishful thinking, because we 'kuffars', as they call us, are vainly wishing that all the jihadists, and their supporters and enablers, are mistaken about the true nature of their faith. 

- It is deluded, because half-an-hour's investigation of the teachings of Jihadism, the character of its founder, and the history of its expansion, will demonstrate that the jihadists are correct. The ideology is indeed powered by hatred, intolerance, ignorance and aggression  Jihadism is an arrogant, expansionist, totalitarian and supremacist faith, commanded to world domination. It always has been and always will be.

- And it is dangerous wishful thinking, similar to the well-intentioned 1930's propaganda that the Nazis wanted 'Peace in our time', which lulled the civilised world into complacency, and allowed the forces of evil to gather strength. Hitler could have been stopped much earlier, and with far less bloodshed, if the appeasers had not deluded themselves, and most of the gullible public, about the true nature of his ideology.  

Malware of the Mind
Perhaps if we were to reclassify jihadism from being a religion, to being a contagious form of insanity, we might find better ways of dealing with it.  Maybe if we regarded jihadism as a public health problem, we could use some of the epidemiological approaches to eradicating it that have been so successful against other contagious scourges of humanity, such as smallpox and polio. 

Using the public health analogy, we could employ immunization. We could deliberately spread the metameme (a meme about memes) to give immunity to more pernicious supremacist memes by stimulating critical thinking in would-be jihadists, much like the harmless cowpox virus can block out the lethal smallpox virus by stimulating the immune system.

The mental infection of jihadism is transmitted by a collection of memes (mind-viruses), which when they come together in an organized, mutually-reinforcing system such as religious supremacism are known as a memeplex.  A malignant memeplex takes over the normal mental processes of its host, just like a virus takes over the normal biochemical processes of the body to ensure its own reproduction and spread, even if it means destroying its host in the process.

As Nobel-prize winning author V.S. Naipaul pointed out, hatred of kuffars is the pivot of supremacist existence, and this is the central meme around which all the other components of the jihadist memeplex revolve.   The hatred is so psychopathically intense that the host will destroy himself in order to further the purposes of the memes.  

Jihadism, like Nazism, is what political scientists classify as an 'otherising' ideology. Both Nazism and Jihadism derive their energy from dividing the world into them versus us. For Nazism this conflict is Untermenschen versus Ubermenschen, for Jihadism it is Kuffars versus Ummah. Despite the differences in terminology, the results are very much the same.  This divisiveness leads to the classical liberal dilemma of tolerance of the intolerant, or how do you avoid otherising people who insist on otherising you from themselves?

This isn't to say that all supremacists (and especially heretics such as Ahmadiyyas and Sufis) automatically hate us. It's just that 'Kill the unbelievers wherever you find them' is the pivotal commandment of the Koran, with the phrase 'wherever you find them' presumably including children's concerts.   The jihadist hostility towards kuffars is obsessive, about one third of the Koran consists of fulminations against unbelievers!

So the devout supremacist will always have this genocidal commandment ticking away at the back of his mind, ready to explode into Sudden Jihad Syndrome as soon as he becomes mentally unstable.   

For mentally unstable people who have been brought up in Christian, Jewish, Buddhist or Hindu cultures, the internalized commandment 'Thou shalt not kill' may have a restraining influence.    But for the mentally disturbed supremacist, the commandment 'Thou shalt kill!' has the opposite effect. 

This seething hatred of all infidels, whether men, women or children, provides much of the motivation and justification for the jihadist rape gangs and pedophile networks who harass women and girls in Europe's cities. As with the caliphate, the relevant verses in the Koran and hadiths are quoted to justify their sadisticly depraved and perverted lusts, but that's another story.

From the Buddhist point of view, jihadists such as the Manchester bombers deserve compassion just as much as their victims, for their lives are also being ruined by this contagious viral memeplex of self-reinforcing delusions. A rabid dog suffers from the rabies virus just as much as the people he bites. 

And perhaps Buddhism might offer some hope of treatment for potential jihadists. It may be possible to use Buddhist meditation techniques to cut through delusions and weed out malignant memes even after they have become established ( more here)

And finally, another intellectual weapon against the ideology of jihadism is the theory of evolution itself (from which memetics and the metameme derive).  Jihadism is incompatible with evolution. If evolution is true then the Koran is false, and consequently all its incitements to violence are revealed as nothing but the rantings and ravings of a psychopath, rather than the commandments of God.   

Of course evolution is no threat to Buddhism, though Darwinism does raise some interesting questions about what experiences our body censors from our mind. 

See also Malignant memes, memeplexes and the metameme.
and   TERRORISM AND BUDDHISM 

 

The Two Enlightenments - Buddha and Voltaire

Enlightenment Values  (Not applicable in Scotland)

From The Public Domain Review     
by Donald S. Lopez, Jr.
 
"...It would not be until well into the nineteenth century that European scholars, all sons of the Enlightenment, sought to turn the founders of religions from gods into men, to separate their precepts from church doctrine. For Jesus and the Buddha, this transformation entailed not debasement but exaltation... Over the course of the nineteenth century, the European portrayal of Buddhism underwent a profound metamorphosis: from a form of idolatry practiced by pagans, to a religion, and a world religion, finally to something beyond the category of religion...

Read it all

See also  The Rational Basis of Buddhism 

Nagarjuna, Gödel’s Theorem and Russell’s Paradox

Unconventional knowledge

by Kenichi Morita

from East-West paths to unconventional computing

Distinguishing between “conventional computing” and “unconventional computing” is not so easy, since the notion of unconventional computing is rather vague. Some scientist may want to give a rigorous definition of it. But, if he or she does so, then unconventional computing will become less attractive. The very vagueness of the concept stimulates one's imagination, and thus is a source of creation.

In this short essay, related to such a problem, we consider thinking styles of the West and the East. We examine several possibilities of ways by which we can recognize various concepts in the world, and acquire enlightenment from the nature. At first, we begin with the two categories of knowledge in Buddhism. They are “discriminative knowledge” and “non-discriminative knowledge” (however, as we shall see below, discrimination between “discriminative knowledge” and “non-discriminative knowledge” itself is not important at all in Buddhism). Although it is very difficult to explain them, in particular  non-discriminative knowledge, by words, here we dare to give some considerations on them.

Discriminative knowledge is just the set-theoretic one. Namely, it is a knowledge acquired by classifying things existing in the world.  For example, the discriminative knowledge on “cat” is obtained by distinguishing the objects that are cats from the objects that are not cats. Therefore, what we can argue based on discriminative knowledge is a relation among the sets corresponding to various concepts, e.g., the set of cats is contained in the sets of animals, and so on. Knowledge described by an ordinary language (or a mathematical language like a logic formula) is of this kind, since “words” basically have a function to distinguish certain things from others.

Non-discriminative knowledge, on the other hand, is regarded as the true wisdom in Buddhism. But, it is very difficult to explain it in words, since words can be used for describing discriminative knowledge. Therefore, the only method by which we can express it is using a negative sentence like “Non-discriminative knowledge is not a knowledge that is obtained by distinguishing certain things from others.”

Actually, non-discriminative knowledge is recognized neither by words, nor by thinking, nor by act. Moreover, it is not even recognizable. This is because all acts such as recognizing, thinking, and explaining some objects necessarily accompany discrimination between the self (i.e., actor) and the object. In Buddhism, everything is empty, i.e., it has no reality in the world in its essence. Hence, there is nothing to be discriminated, and there is a truth that can be gotten without discriminating things. Furthermore, such a truth (non-discriminative knowledge) itself is also empty, and thus does not exist. It may sound contradictory, but this is caused by explaining it by ordinary words.

There is no doubt that discriminative knowledge brings practical convenience to our daily life. Today's science also relies on discriminative knowledge. There, objects to be studied are clearly identified, and their properties are described precisely. By this, science brought us a great success. However, discrimination is considered as a kind of “biased view” in Buddhism. Thus, we should note that such a knowledge is a “relative” one. Namely, when we state a scientific truth, we can only say like “If we assume a certain thing is distinguishable from others based on some (biased) viewpoint, then we can conclude so-and-so on it.” We should thus be careful not to overestimate the descriptive power of languages.

It is well known that from the end of 19th century the foundation of mathematics has been formalized rigorously with the utmost precision. It is, of course, based on discriminative knowledge. However, at the same time, problems and limitations of such a methodology were also disclosed. A paradox by Bertrand Russell on the set theory is the most famous one, which first appeared in Nachwort of the Frege's book (Frege, 1903). Russell's paradox is as follows:

Let R be the set of all sets each of which does not contain itself as a member.

Is R a member of itself or not? In either case, it contradicts the definition of R.

Due to this paradox, the naive set theory had to be replaced by some sophisticated ones such as the type theory. The incompleteness theorem by Kurt Gödel (1931) also shows a limitation of a formal mathematical system. He proved that in every formal system in which natural numbers can be dealt with, there exists a “true” formula that cannot be proved in this system. He showed it by composing a formula having the meaning  “This formula is unprovable.”

Nagarjuna is a Buddhist priest and philosopher who lived in India around 150 - 250 AD. He is the founder of Madhyamaka school of Buddhism, where he developed the theory of emptiness. In his book Vigrahavyavartani (The Dispeller of Disputes) (Westerhoff, 2010), he pointed out “very logically” that false thinking will be caused by relying only on discriminative knowledge. This book is written in the following form. First, philosophers of other schools who believe every concept has a substance (here, we call them philosophical realists) present objections against those of Madhyamaka school. Then, Nagarjuna refutes all of them.

While philosophers of Madhyamaka school assert every concept has no substance (but they assert “nothing” as we shall see below), the opponents (philosophical realists) say as follows (Westerhoff, 2010):

If the substance of all things is not to be found anywhere, your assertion which is devoid of substance is not able to refute substance. (Verse 1)

Moreover, if that statement exists substantially, your earlier thesis is refuted. There is an inequality to be explained, and the specific reason for this should be given. (Verse2)

Nagarjuna says:

If I had any thesis, that fault would apply to me. But I do not have any thesis, so there is indeed no fault for me. (Verse 29)

To that extent, while all things are empty, completely pacified, and by nature free from substance, from where could a thesis come? (Commentary by Nagarjuna on Verse 29)

That is, without saying “all things are empty,”all things are empty by nature, and hence the Nagarjuna's assertion itself is also empty.

We can see that the observation “If all things are empty, then the assertion ‘all things are empty’ cannot exist” resembles the second incompleteness theorem:

“If a formal system in which natural numbers can be dealt with is consistent, then consistency of the system cannot be proved in the system” by Gödel (1931).

However, methodologies for obtaining the above observations are quite different. In the former case, non-discriminative knowledge played the crucial role, and thus the observation itself is again empty.

Nagarjuna launches a counterattack against philosophical realists, who claim “all things have substances", by the following objection:

The name “non-existent” what is this, something existent or again non-existent? For if it is existent or if it is nonexistent, either way your position is deficient. (Verse 58)

It is clear that the above argument is analogous to Russell's paradox. By this, Nagarjuna pointed out that philosophical realists who rely only on discriminative knowledge have a logical fault. However, as stated in Verse 29, Nagarjuna asserts nothing in his book.

It will be reasonable to regard discriminative knowledge as conventional knowledge. Then, how is non-discriminative knowledge? Although this kind of knowledge has been argued by philosophers and Buddhists for a very long time, we can say neither conventional nor unconventional. Probably, it is meaningless to make such a distinction. Instead, we consider a question: Can we use non-discriminative knowledge for finding a new way of scientific thinking, and for giving a new methodology of unconventional computing? Since current scientific knowledge is very far from non-discriminative knowledge, it looks quite difficult to do so. However, it will really stimulate our imagination, and may help us to widen the vista of unconventional computing.

I have been studying reversible computing and cellular automata (Morita, 2008) for more than 30 years. Through the research onthese topics, I tried to find novel ways of computing, and thus I think they may be in the category of unconventional computing. Besides the scientific research, I was interested in Buddhism philosophy. In 1970's and 80's, I read Japanese translations of several sutras and old texts of Buddhism. They are, for example, Prajnaparamita Sutra (Sutra of Perfection of Transcendent Wisdom), and Vimalakirti-nirdesa Sutra (Vimalakirti Sutra), as well as Vigrahavyavartani (The Dispeller of Disputes). All of them discuss emptiness of various concepts and things in the world, but assert nothing. I was greatly impressed by these arguments, which themselves are empty. Although my research results are, of course, given in the form of discriminative knowledge, and thus in the purely Western style, I think such a thought somehow influenced me on my research when exploring new ways for unconventional computing.

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See also

Liberation: jumping out of the loop, stepping out of the system and transcendence    

and

Beyond True and False by Graham Priest