Robert Sharf on buddhist Real

From: https://posttraditionalbuddhism.com/2019/06/24/55-ibp-daniel-ingram-down-the-rabbit-hole/

I have listened with interest to the three-part conversation between Matthew O’Connell and Daniel Ingram, devoted in part to a discussion of Speculative Non-Buddhism. I am new to these discussions, but a number of issues caught my attention, including: (1) the role, if any, of “unconstructed” or “direct” experience in Buddhist practice (and a related issue: is the ultimate goal of practice a non-conceptual state?); (2) the epistemic warrants for truth claims in the Buddhist tradition, including questions about the authority of experiences gained through meditative practice; note that important questions about authority extend to the authority of the Buddha, the authority of scripture, the authority of living teachers, and so on; and (3) how one can square the contemporary notion of “social construction” with the notion of “freedom” (whether understood as liberation, detachment, transcendence, etc.) supposedly gained through Buddhist practice. Note that all three issues ultimately bear on what (if anything) is meant by “the Real.”

I may be mistaken, but it seems to me that at least some the parties engaged in these contemporary discussions are unaware that these same issues were topics of intense debates within the Buddhist tradition over many centuries. The question as to whether the goal of practice is a non-conceptual or unconstructed (nirvikalpa) state was at the heart of debates between the so-called Northern and Southern schools of Chan, as well as the Samye debates between the Indian master Kamalaśīla and the Chinese master Moheyan in Tibet, both of which took place in the eighth century. (The Chinese debates over the buddha-nature of insentient objects—whether a tree or a roof-tile, for example, can attain buddhahood and preach the dharma—revolved around the same issue: is the goal of practice non-thinking and is non-thinking tantamount to a kind of insentience?) But the topics raised in these medieval debates can be traced back to earlier discussions among the different sub-schools of Sarvāstivāda abhidharma: Vaibhāṣikas and Sautrāntikas, for example, disagreed over how to make sense of the notion of “direct sense perception” (that is to say, do we ever make immediate contact with the world as such). The question as to whether it makes sense to speak of direct or unmediated perception also figured into debates between Madhyamaka and Yogācāra. And even within the Yogācāra camp, different masters held different views on the topic; witness the disagreements between Dignāga and Dharmapāla over whether conscious awareness is inherently “self- reflexive.” (I.e., can awareness be aware of itself?) The question as to what is a legitimate warrant for truth claims—including truth claims based on direct perception, reflection and inference, and “meditative experience” (yogi-pratyakṣa)—is one of the core issues motivating Pramāṇavāda philosophy that emerged in India in the sixth century. (Chan would raise similar issues about the authority of the Buddha, the authority of the scriptures, and even the authority of the Chan master.) And the place of “social construction” is an important epistemological issue discussed in Yogācāra texts. Given the Yogācāra claim that we live in a mind-generated or “virtual” world, they had to account for intra-subjective regularity and coherence. The Yogācāra analysis of the sattvaloka (the intra-subjective domain of sentient beings), bhājanaloka (“container realm”—the “material world” that seems to surround us), and the ālayavijñāna (“storehouse consciousness”—the subdoxastic mental reservoir that gives rise to both the sattva and bhājana realms) are directly relevant to their understanding of what we call “social construction.” Note that all of these debates were motivated by the conviction that these issues bear directly on one’s approach to Buddhist practice. Proper practice is predicated, in part, on understanding what it is that you are supposed to be doing! (In the interests of full disclosure, I should mention that I have spent much of my scholarly career focused and writing on these very issues.)

Buddhist modernists come in many shapes and sizes, but on the whole they continue to believe that Buddhist practice, properly construed, consists of “meditation,” and that meditation is a sort of empirical technique(s) that leads to non-discursive (nirvikalpa) states of consciousness (whether states of dhyāna or the āryamārga). But historically, Buddhist practice (bhāvanā) entailed much more than the cultivation of mental states— non-discursive or otherwise. It entailed the cultivation of morality (sīla) and the cultivation of understanding or wisdom (prajñā) as well, and morality and wisdom were not held to emerge naturally or seamlessly from yogic states. Rather, morality and wisdom were to be cultivated in their own right, and the cultivation of wisdom entailed engaging the Buddhist teachings. And this meant coming to appreciate issues of debate, critique, and conflict, as they disclose precisely what is at stake in practice.

There are many disagreements between the Speculative Non-Buddhists, Post-traditional Buddhists, contemporary teachers such as Daniel Ingram, and so on, and I find the conversations fascinating but also disheartening. There is still a striking ignorance of Buddhist history and thought among contemporary Western Buddhist teachers and practitioners, and I believe that a better appreciation of the tradition would enrich and deepen the conversations going on today. If one’s interests lie in grappling with the claims made on behalf of Buddhism, why not look first at what the tradition itself has to say on these issues, before jumping to critical theory and French philosophy? (Not that critical theory and French philosophy have nothing to contribute, but isn’t it appropriate to mine the Buddhist materials first? My own novice familiarity with “Speculative Non-Buddhism” leads me to wonder what, exactly, is “non-Buddhist” about it.)

Perhaps the reason some people avoid plunging seriously into Buddhist thought (other than the fact that it is hard, but what practice isn’t) is a residual and misplaced prejudice— perhaps due to the lingering influence of Western Protestantism—that serious engagement with Buddhist teachings is somehow ancillary if not antithetical to practice. I would contend that, of all the tenets of Buddhist modernism, this odd bifurcation of “thought” and “practice” is the one that would have most perplexed many premodern Buddhist masters.

— Robert Sharf