History and Dharma (3)

I explained simply in the previous post how Buddhist rationality was of limited use, as was all rationality in that period everywhere (that also goes for Buddhist vision-logic, universal interpenetration concepts, tantric energetics, shingon semantics etc.). It is not a pseudo-rationality, but a limited one nevertheless: not in level, but in scope. (Level here refers to the developmental line of cogniton, while scope refers to life-spheres or simply quadrants - pics here and here - i.e. you never see premodern rationality applied to religious institutions or society or gender, or even cosmology.) Just as a reminder, rationality has seriously emerged at least in the time of the Buddha, when we see the first known grammar writen in India by Panini, and shortly after we have a mature linguistic theory. But something happened in Europe during 1700s, that changed this world forever, namely, the differentiation of the great spheres of subjecitvity, objectivity and mutuality. That differentiation marks the emergence of mature Reason on a wide scale, something that forever changed the way we understand ourselves, our world and each other.

Common to all premodern (not necessarily prerational) modes of discourse is the predifferentiation of self, culture and social environment. In short, 1st person experience was not differentiated from natural science and politics-morality. This differentiation, so typical for a collective shift from conop to formop, must take place in lower quadrants. Without it, a spiritual tradition can develop rationality forever and never become modern.

That is why KW has suggested three steps in Appendix 1 of Integral Spirituality: (1) recognize that matter has a spectrum of exterior complexity that runs parallel with the spectrum of interior complexity, i.e. matter is not just the first skandha (remember how awkward it is to put together your felt body and the whole physical universe, while not doing the same in other four skandhas? mahayana simply found all skandhas empty of inherent existence, while vajrayana never developer its own abhidharma and, consequently, never applied its view of the body or environment to reformulate this basic Buddhist doctrine, namely that matter is just the lowest level in the spectrum, thus leaving exteriority and interiority much in the same predifferentiated con-fusion; hence we have Pure Lands and Deva-chen still being taught as nice, flat places in "objective" space, somewhere out there, and well-intended educated postmoderns doing their best to wrap their green altitude thinking around it, or else we simply stop teaching and studying these conceptions); that move, naturally, liberates the natural sciences to pursue their own methodologies, and revolutionizes the cosmology and ontology of various states and experiences; incidentally, this is the modern dignity found in Western Enlightenment; (2) recognize that interiority is to a large extent culturally molded, so that many "given truths" are socio-cultural creations and not eternal, nor cosmic facts; incidentally, this is the postmodern dignity found in structuralism and poststructuralism; (3) integrate the three spheres (I, We, It - or subjectivity, culture and objectivity) in a meaningful manner that allows each to pursue its own methodologies, without mutually imposing their quadrant-absolutism, by recognizing that evolution in each quadrant may facilitate evolution in every other quadrant: there is increasing complexity in awareness, increasing complexity in form/matter, and increasing complexity in energy. Naturally, there is increasing complexity in their differentiation and integration. These three steps are necessary for a post-metaphysical spirituality, a truly contemporary spirituality not caught in the predifferentiated, premodern subjectivity, but equally aware of self, culture and social environment, with their respective developments, terms and methodologies. Thus, timeless Freedom and temporal Fullness become the two faces of meaningful nonduality in a truly integrative embrace (map here).

Being originally a premodern tradition, and having developed in the East, where modernity had no time to exhibit its dignity and disaster (and often is reduced to disaster, not to mention the disaster of postmodernity being inflicted on Japan and India), Buddhist doctrines and practices are just beginning to be modernized, slowly and timidly, while in Western Buddhism we find many futile attempts to postmodernize traditional Buddhist psychology and phenomenology by skipping the naughty modern-phase altogether and by handpicking the teachings and interpretations and wordings which best support such a strategy.

Now, let us return to states and structures.

Just for amuzement, read this bizarre story. It has something to do with the three steps mentioned above.

(to be continued)