Consciousness is one of the Five Aggregates, and the Cessation of the Aggregates is final nirvana: consciousness, at least in this sense, cannot exist in nirvana.
[...] But for Buddhism, ‘does not exist’ is one of the four possibilities for the state of an enlightened person after his or her nirvanizing that are explicitly rejected. On the conceptual level there is an impasse, at least in the articulation of systematic thought: nirvana is the cessation of the consciousness Aggregate, but that is not equivalent to becoming non-existent: it is beyond designation.
[...] One might be tempted to say, as has indeed sometimes been said, in quasi-Buddhist terms, that apropos the Enlightened person ‘in’ nirvana, existence and non-existence here are two extremes, between which Buddhism proposes the Middle Way. But for a scholar to say only that would do no more than reproduce a cliche, putting on a Buddhist disguise and pretending to say something illuminating from a scholarly perspective. A better interpretive strategy, I suggest, is to see this as an example of the way silences within discourse are themselves part of the production of meaning.
[...] One can say that it is not non-existence, and it is a timeless bliss; to say more would be to rush in where Buddhas fear to tread.
Happiness
Since final nirvana is the cessation of the Aggregates, it is clear that just as there can be no consciousness in that sense, so there can be no Feeling, and no determinate Perception or Ideation, and so no happiness in any ordinary sense. At the same time, however, it is said to be a form of happiness, one of the standard list of three: those of mankind, of the gods, and of nirvana. Nirvana is repeatedly said to be the highest happiness. A passage repeated (with some variations) in a number of commentaries cites different canonical phrases to show that sukha can be used variously: inter alia, it denotes
(i) pleasurable feeling(s);
(ii) the ‘roots of happiness’, as in the phrase ‘happy is the arising of Buddhas’, or the ‘cause of happiness’, as in the phrase ‘the accumulation of merit is [i.e., brings] happiness’; and
(iii) nirvana, as in the phrase ‘nirvana is the highest happiness’.
[...] Commentaries explain:
“Here from the fourth Level onwards the feeling of neither suffering nor happiness (that occurs) is also said to be happiness in the sense that it is peaceful and sublime. Cessation [the ninth level] occurs as happiness in that it is the kind of happiness which is not a matter of feeling. For happiness that is a matter of feeling (occurs) through the five strands of sense-pleasure and through the eight (Meditation Level) attainments [i.e., as a feeling of happiness in nos. 1-3 and as the peaceful and sublime feeling of neither suffering nor happiness in nos. 4-8]. Cessation is (an example of) happiness that is not a matter of feeling. Whether the happiness be a matter of feeling or not, it is all happiness in that it is taken to be a state of non-suffering … [The phrase in the texts] ‘happiness exists’ means that there exists either the happiness that is a matter of feeling or that which is not a matter of feeling. [The phrase] ‘the Tathagata (the Buddha) assigns this or that to (The category of “happiness”’ means that he assigns to happiness everything which is non-suffering.”
But for Buddhism, ‘does not exist’ is one of the four possibilities for the state of an enlightened person after his or her nirvanizing that are explicitly rejected. On the conceptual level there is an impasse, at least in the articulation of systematic thought: nirvana is the cessation of the consciousness Aggregate, but that is not equivalent to becoming non-existent: it is beyond designation.
This section seems to say it well, highlighted bits in bold for easier reading.
There is nothing pro-”nonexistence” in Buddhism. There is nothing pro-”ending or annihilating life.” These takes are explicitly rejected in the Pali canon.
It is very easy to misunderstand what Buddhism is saying, and the inferential gap is larger than I think most people imagine. The words / phrases do not have direct translations into common English.
When someone claims something to be “beyond designation” or “beyond categorization” or any such thing, it’s a sure bet that they’re trying to slip one by you; in fact, the given thing belongs to a category which, if you recognized that membership, would lead you to reject it—and rightly.
I think this is not true in full generality—I think meditation does give people insights that are hard to verbalize, and does make some common verbal distinctions feel less joint-carving, so it makes sense for a tradition of meditators to say a lot in favor of ‘things that are hard to verbalize’ and ‘things that can’t be neatly carved up in the normal intuitive ways’.
I do think that once you have those insights, there’s a strong temptation to lapse into sophistry or doublethink to defend whatever silly thing you feel like defending that day—if someone doubts your claim that the Buddha lives on like a god or ghost after death, you can say that the Buddha’s existence-status after death transcends concepts and verbalization.
When in fact the honest thing to say if you believed in immaterial souls would be ‘I don’t know what happened to the Buddha when he died’, and the honest thing to say if you’re an educated modern person is ‘the Buddha was totally annihilated when he died, the exact same as anyone else who dies.’
I think meditation does give people insights that are hard to verbalize
What would the world look like if meditation only made people feel like they had insights that were hard to verbalize, without actually giving them any new insights?
(But also, “thing X is beyond designation” and “some fact(s) about thing X are hard to verbalize” are not the same thing.)
If the world was one where meditation only made people feel like they had insights that were hard to verbalize, then I probably wouldn’t have figured out ways to verbalize some of them (mostly due to having knowledge of neuroscience etc. stuff that most historical Buddhists haven’t had).
I admire koan practice in Zen as an attempt to make sure people are reaching genuine insights without being able to fully capture them in explicit words.
Koans are “riddles” that are supposed to only be understandable by “insight,” a non-cognitive form of knowledge attained by entering “don’t know mind.” Meditating on koans “confuses the rational mind” so that it is easier to enter “don’t know mind.” Koan training consists of being given a koan by a master (the first one I ever received was “what is the meaning of [smacks hand into ground]?”), letting the koan confuse you and relaxing into that feeling, letting go of all the thoughts that try to explain, and then one day having the answer pop into your awareness (some schools have people concentrate on the koan, others say to just create the conditions for insight and it will come). If you explain your insight to a master and they think you’ve figured it out (they often say “used up”) that koan, they give you a new one that’s even further from everyday thinking. And so it continues until you’ve gone through enough of the hundreds of koans in that lineage.
It’s a cool system because “getting” your koan is an objectively observable indicator of progress at meditation, which is otherwise quite difficult to assess.
Ok, but how exactly does “make sure people are reaching genuine insights”? Are there canonical correct answers to koans? (But that would seem to violate the “without being able to fully capture them in explicit words” clause…)
In other words, how do you know when you’ve correctly understood a koan? (When an answer pops into your awareness, how do you know it’s the right one?) And, what does it mean to correctly understand a koan? (What’s the difference between correctly understanding a koan and incorrectly understanding it?)
It’s a cool system because “getting” your koan is an objectively observable indicator of progress at meditation, which is otherwise quite difficult to assess.
Could you elaborate on this? I am confused by this point.
Masters have an oral tradition of assessing the answers to koans and whether they reflect genuine insight. They use the answers people give to guide their future training.
Having used up a few koans, I’d say the answers come to you pretty clearly. You get to a certain point in meditation and the koan suddenly makes sense in light of that.
By what means do the masters assess whether the answers reflect “genuine insight”?
Is there a way for a non-master to evaluate whether a given answer to a koan is correct, or to show that the ostensibly-correct answer is correct? (Analogously to P vs. NP—if the correct answer is difficult to determine, is it nonetheless straightforward to verify?)
If the answer to the previous question is “no”, then how is one to know whether the ostensibly-correct answer is, in fact, actually correct?
It’s not really a question of factually correct. The koan is designed to make sense on a non-cognitive, non-rational level. My experience was that I would have a certain insight on my own when I was meditating and then I would realize that that’s what the koan was talking about. What makes a good koan is that you’re totally stumped when you first hear it, but when it clicks you know that’s the right answer. That’s why one English translation is “riddle.” Some riddles have correct answers according to the terms they lay out, but really what makes a riddle is the recognition of a lateral thinking move, even if it’s as simple as a pun. Koans are “riddles” that require don’t-know mind.
The koan is designed to make sense on a non-cognitive, non-rational level.
What is the content of whatever “insight” or “sense” it is that’s gained when you “get the right answer” to a koan? I do not see what it could mean to say that one has gained such an insight…
Some questions:
Does it ever happen that someone “gets” a koan—it “clicks” for them, and they “know” that the answer they’ve got is “the right answer”—but actually, their differs from the canonically “correct” answer?
Alternatively: does it ever happen that two different people both “get” a koan—it “clicks” for them both—but their answers differ?
Do Zen teachers/masters ever disagree on what the “right” answer to a koan is? If so—how do they resolve this disagreement?
Suppose I were to say to a Zen teacher: you say the answer to this koan is X, but I think it is actually Y. Please demonstrate to me that it is as you say, and not as I say. How might they do this?
The awareness belonging to Buddha, then, is free from construction. But what, positively, could such awareness be like?
The digests are concerned to eliminate a number of possible errors in thinking about awareness without construction. The first of these is the error of judging such awareness to be identical with simple unconsciousness, a simple absence of mental activity. If it were, such absence would be easy to attain: a sharp blow to the head produces unconsciousness; and there are various meditational practices that dispose of many kinds of mental activity at an early stage of the practice of the path. But it is obvious that the absence of constructive activity that characterizes Buddha’s awareness is not so easily attained. Neither is it the case, according to the digests, that Buddha’s awareness is epistemically, phenomenally, or soteriologically as uninteresting as deep sleep or a drunken stupor.
More interestingly, the digests also negate the idea that unconstructed awareness is to be identified with a much more exalted meditative state called the ‘attainment of cessation’ (nirodhasamapatti) or the ‘cessation of sensation and conceptualization’ (samjnaveditanirodha). This is a condition attained by complex and difficult meditational practice, a condition wherein there are no mental events of any kind. It is not death; but it is not distinguishable from death by any phenomenal properties. The only difference between the two is that the attainment of cessation can be emerged from, while death cannot (not, at least, without various complications caused by the need to take on a new body and the like, complications that need not detain us here).
Buddha’s construction-free awareness is distinct even from this exalted condition, and the digests put this in formal terms by denying that Buddha’s awareness could be identified with the attainment of cessation, because if it were it would not be an instance of awareness (jnana) at all, which its name requires it to be, for awareness cannot occur where there are no mental events of any kind. The point here is the simple logical one that awareness is a species of mental event, from which it follows that no instance of awareness can be identified with a condition in which there are no mental events.
[… The digests negate] the claim that this awareness comprises any volitional turning of the mind toward its objects (alambanabhisamskara). This is not the same as denying that Buddha’s awareness has content, or consists of events with phenomenal properties; it is simply a denial that the phenomenal properties of its apparent objects are, or can be, things with which it can be involved in a sustained and intentional way. In so far as what appears in the mind does so with phenomenal properties, those properties do not lead the Buddha-mind to fasten upon them, to follow after them, or to make judgments that a particular thing with particular properties is now being experienced.
For example, suppose Buddha sees a blue pot. One way of reading the negation described in the preceding paragraph is to say that Buddha has a spontaneous (that is, effortless, nonvolitional) moment of awareness (jnana) consisting of a mental object or image (alambana, nimitta) whose phenomenal properties (akara) consist of a complex list of things such as ‘transient-blue-pot-here-now’; in English such an occurrence is best described adverbially by saying that Buddha is appeared to transient-blue-pot-here-now-ly.
[… T]he important distinction between Buddha’s blue-pot awareness and mine is that Buddha neither does nor can judge that it is being appeared to blue-pot-ly, whereas I, other things being equal, inevitably do. Buddha, moreover, does not engage in the constructive activity of manipulating and massaging its mental images; it has no affective response to them, and, above all, no concern for their endurance, cessation, or repetition. The digests sometimes express this by saying that Buddha does not behave like an artist toward the objects of its awareness.[.]
[...] If, in order to have phenomenal properties or modes of appearance, awareness must be characterized by effortful acts of attention toward specific objects (as it certainly must in most instances of ordinary awareness), then it is proper to say that Buddha’s awareness is nirakara, ‘free from modes of appearance.’ But if possessing modes of appearance can be understood through the simile of reflections on the surface of a mirror, then it is reasonable to say that Buddha’s awareness does have them—for a mirror, like Buddha’s awareness, does not engage itself with or focus upon specific ‘reflectables’; it simply reflects, spontaneously, perfectly, and without distortion, everything that passes before it.
[...] The thrust of the digests toward presenting the Buddha as maximally great requires the scope of Buddha’s awareness to be maximized: if it is good to have unconstructed awareness, then the temporal and spatial range of this awareness cannot be restricted or limited in Buddha’s case: it must be, as the digests claim it to be, strictly universal in scope. Buddha must therefore be, in some important sense, omniscient[.]
[...] The digests generally agree that Buddha’s universal awareness is not brought about by causes, since this would entail its contingency: if the proper causes had not obtained, its universal awareness would not have obtained. And this cannot be correct: Buddha’s awareness has always (sada) and necessarily (avasyam) existed.
[… Many similar passages link] Buddha’s permanence closely with its salvific actions. The limitless and perfect salvific efficacy that Buddha, understood as maximally great, must necessarily possess, requires that Buddha be present and active everywhere and at all times. Hence, Buddha must be permanent, without beginning or end in time.
The digests thus refuse to predicate any temporal properties of Buddha considered in se. Buddha is not earlier or later than anything, not temporally related to anything in any way. All Buddha’s temporal properties are of the kind described in chapters four and five: seems to S to be P at t. Correlated with this refusal is a denial to Buddha of causal properties: Buddha is not caused to do anything, nor does Buddha cause any non-Buddha to do anything. Buddha is, metaphysically speaking, simply identical with all atemporal states of affairs.
Some good (mainstream, scholarly) books on nirvana and historical Buddhism:
Steven Collins, Nirvana: Concept, Imagery, Narrative
Excerpt (starting p. 69):
This section seems to say it well, highlighted bits in bold for easier reading.
There is nothing pro-”nonexistence” in Buddhism. There is nothing pro-”ending or annihilating life.” These takes are explicitly rejected in the Pali canon.
It is very easy to misunderstand what Buddhism is saying, and the inferential gap is larger than I think most people imagine. The words / phrases do not have direct translations into common English.
When someone claims something to be “beyond designation” or “beyond categorization” or any such thing, it’s a sure bet that they’re trying to slip one by you; in fact, the given thing belongs to a category which, if you recognized that membership, would lead you to reject it—and rightly.
I think this is not true in full generality—I think meditation does give people insights that are hard to verbalize, and does make some common verbal distinctions feel less joint-carving, so it makes sense for a tradition of meditators to say a lot in favor of ‘things that are hard to verbalize’ and ‘things that can’t be neatly carved up in the normal intuitive ways’.
I do think that once you have those insights, there’s a strong temptation to lapse into sophistry or doublethink to defend whatever silly thing you feel like defending that day—if someone doubts your claim that the Buddha lives on like a god or ghost after death, you can say that the Buddha’s existence-status after death transcends concepts and verbalization.
When in fact the honest thing to say if you believed in immaterial souls would be ‘I don’t know what happened to the Buddha when he died’, and the honest thing to say if you’re an educated modern person is ‘the Buddha was totally annihilated when he died, the exact same as anyone else who dies.’
What would the world look like if meditation only made people feel like they had insights that were hard to verbalize, without actually giving them any new insights?
(But also, “thing X is beyond designation” and “some fact(s) about thing X are hard to verbalize” are not the same thing.)
If the world was one where meditation only made people feel like they had insights that were hard to verbalize, then I probably wouldn’t have figured out ways to verbalize some of them (mostly due to having knowledge of neuroscience etc. stuff that most historical Buddhists haven’t had).
I admire koan practice in Zen as an attempt to make sure people are reaching genuine insights without being able to fully capture them in explicit words.
Can you say more about this? I don’t think I quite follow.
Koans are “riddles” that are supposed to only be understandable by “insight,” a non-cognitive form of knowledge attained by entering “don’t know mind.” Meditating on koans “confuses the rational mind” so that it is easier to enter “don’t know mind.” Koan training consists of being given a koan by a master (the first one I ever received was “what is the meaning of [smacks hand into ground]?”), letting the koan confuse you and relaxing into that feeling, letting go of all the thoughts that try to explain, and then one day having the answer pop into your awareness (some schools have people concentrate on the koan, others say to just create the conditions for insight and it will come). If you explain your insight to a master and they think you’ve figured it out (they often say “used up”) that koan, they give you a new one that’s even further from everyday thinking. And so it continues until you’ve gone through enough of the hundreds of koans in that lineage.
It’s a cool system because “getting” your koan is an objectively observable indicator of progress at meditation, which is otherwise quite difficult to assess.
Ok, but how exactly does “make sure people are reaching genuine insights”? Are there canonical correct answers to koans? (But that would seem to violate the “without being able to fully capture them in explicit words” clause…)
In other words, how do you know when you’ve correctly understood a koan? (When an answer pops into your awareness, how do you know it’s the right one?) And, what does it mean to correctly understand a koan? (What’s the difference between correctly understanding a koan and incorrectly understanding it?)
Could you elaborate on this? I am confused by this point.
“The Sound of One Hand: 281 Zen Koans with Answers”
Masters have an oral tradition of assessing the answers to koans and whether they reflect genuine insight. They use the answers people give to guide their future training.
Having used up a few koans, I’d say the answers come to you pretty clearly. You get to a certain point in meditation and the koan suddenly makes sense in light of that.
By what means do the masters assess whether the answers reflect “genuine insight”?
Is there a way for a non-master to evaluate whether a given answer to a koan is correct, or to show that the ostensibly-correct answer is correct? (Analogously to P vs. NP—if the correct answer is difficult to determine, is it nonetheless straightforward to verify?)
If the answer to the previous question is “no”, then how is one to know whether the ostensibly-correct answer is, in fact, actually correct?
It’s not really a question of factually correct. The koan is designed to make sense on a non-cognitive, non-rational level. My experience was that I would have a certain insight on my own when I was meditating and then I would realize that that’s what the koan was talking about. What makes a good koan is that you’re totally stumped when you first hear it, but when it clicks you know that’s the right answer. That’s why one English translation is “riddle.” Some riddles have correct answers according to the terms they lay out, but really what makes a riddle is the recognition of a lateral thinking move, even if it’s as simple as a pun. Koans are “riddles” that require don’t-know mind.
What is the content of whatever “insight” or “sense” it is that’s gained when you “get the right answer” to a koan? I do not see what it could mean to say that one has gained such an insight…
Some questions:
Does it ever happen that someone “gets” a koan—it “clicks” for them, and they “know” that the answer they’ve got is “the right answer”—but actually, their differs from the canonically “correct” answer?
Alternatively: does it ever happen that two different people both “get” a koan—it “clicks” for them both—but their answers differ?
Do Zen teachers/masters ever disagree on what the “right” answer to a koan is? If so—how do they resolve this disagreement?
Suppose I were to say to a Zen teacher: you say the answer to this koan is X, but I think it is actually Y. Please demonstrate to me that it is as you say, and not as I say. How might they do this?
Paul J. Griffiths, On Being Buddha: The Classical Doctrine of Buddhahood
Excerpt (starting p. 155):