Steve Hagen:
Chapter 34 from 'Buddhism Is Not What You Think' (great
book!)
How Do We Know?
When we first approach Buddhist teachings, they often seem very
complicated. To many people, they may also seem arcane, foreign,
and confusing.
But what the Buddha taught is actually quite simple and
immediate if we stick to the original teachings. It's just that
we are complicated. We think too much.
The essential point of the Buddhadharma is simply to wake up to
reality.
I've been told that Buddhism teaches three ways by which we can
know Truth: one, from authority; two, by logical
deduction; and three, through direct experience. I've never,
however, seen such a statement in any Buddhist text. And whether
this is a Buddhist teaching or not, it's fundamentally flawed.
If we look carefully, we'll notice that the first two approaches
will quickly unravel and crumble into dust. Direct experience also
unravels, but instead of crumbling to dust, it completely
disappears, leaving no trace whatsoever.
If this seems complicated, arcane, foreign, or confusing, please
keep reading. Soon you'll see the simplicity in it.
Let's first look at the idea of arriving at Knowledge by way of
authority. This approach is easily dismantled. In fact, the British
philosopher Bertrand Russell dismissed it in a single sentence when
he noted that the problem with authority is that you can always
find another authority to oppose it.
The foremost authority in Buddhism is supposedly the Buddha
himself. Yet the Buddha explicitly encouraged people not
to rely on the authority of others, including him. The Buddha often
made remarks like, "Don't believe me just because others do or
because you see me as your teacher." He continually admonished
people to look carefully in order to see and
know for themselves. This means neither blindly accepting
the words of some external authority nor rejecting them out of hand
but listening to them and testing them against actual
experience.
As the Dalai Lama once put it, "There are many things we
Buddhists should learn from the latest scientific findings. And
scientists can learn from Buddhist explanations. We must conduct
research and then accept the results. If they don't stand up to
experimentation, Buddha's own words must be rejected."
This is very much in keeping with what the Buddha taught as well
as with the modern scientific method.
We sometimes have the mistaken notion that enlightened people,
once they see Reality, are able to speak of the Absolute
with words that are Absolute as well. Then we can write down their
utterances and preserve, study, and revere them for all time. But
we humans - enlightened or not - never experience absolutes. We
experience change. This is what the Buddha taught, and it applies
to his teaching as well.
This is why some Buddhist groups get together periodically to
examine what they're doing, what works, what still fits, and what
does not. Because times change, what might have been appropriate in
a different time and place may no longer work here and
now. We need not - and should not - lock ourselves in a
frame that made sense twenty-five hundred years ago in some foreign
culture (or even twenty years ago here). Some of it might not apply
to us today or might even be downright harmful.
We must continuously reexamine what we teach. We need to ask,
"Is this effective? Is this conducive to helping people open their
eyes?"
In short, as the Buddha taught, while everything is to be viewed
and handled with utmost respect, nothing is - or can be - sacred.
This is why the Buddha likened his teaching to a raft, which should
be left behind once the river has been crossed.
One other point about authority: no human being or institution
ever has more authority than that granted by other human beings.
This means that you are the final authority in terms of
when you give credence to and how you live your life.
Turning over this authority to anyone else is a kind of
spiritual laziness. You'll be disinclined to pay careful and
critical attention to what's actually going on, and you'll be left
wide open to being manipulated, misled, and scammed.
The Buddha recognized this and warned against it. For instance,
he told people not to make any images of him. (And people didn't at
first.)
You need to realize that you are Buddha. Yet the more
we glorify and deify the man we call the Buddha, the more difficult
it is for us to wake up. After all, if you make your teachers into
gods, how can you realize the Truth that you are fundamentally no
different from them?
In the end, it comes down to this: authority, which is yours
already, rests only with direct experience. Ultimately, there is no
other place for you to look.
The second means by which we can supposedly know Truth
is through logical deduction. Certainly this is a more valuable and
useful tool than blind obedience. It can keep us on tract so that
we don't come to conclusions that don't follow from our original
assumptions. But logical deduction can tell us nothing about the
validity of our original premises. Thus, in and of itself, logical
deduction can't be relied upon to bring us to Truth.
Here's an example of a perfectly legitimate logical form called
a syllogism:
All birds are green.
The King of Spain is a bird.
Therefore, the King of Spain is green.
The logic here is flawless. Since, however, both of the initial
premises are false (not to mention absurd), we arrive at a
conclusion that's perfectly consistent with the premises but false
(not to mention ridiculous). The tool of logic functioned
perfectly, but we need something else to ensure that the basic
premises are valid.
Actually, in Buddhist teachings we do use logic. We use it to
show that our commonly accepted premises about Reality are false or
flawed. Buddhist logic, such as the logic employed by Nagarjuna,
brings us to a point of seeing that all our concepts leave
us dangling in space at the end of ropes, we see that when
we rely on our thoughts and concepts, all we'll ever be led to are
freefloating tethers. We see that this method will never
get us to Truth.
Let's pause for a moment and take stock of where we are. We
can't rely on authority, and we can't rely on merely logical
deduction. Neither is sufficient to direct us to Truth. Thus we can
only rely on direct experience.
After authority and logic have both unravelled and crumbled to
dust, and even after all our concepts - of self, of other, of
wisdom, of Emptiness, of Buddhism - have all faded and blown away,
direct experience is still operating. it doesn't go away. And
careful observation of actual experience reveals something else:
direct experience does not supply an experiencer.
Hui-Neng, the sixth ancestor of Zen, asked another monk,
Huai-jang, "Where do you come from?"
"I come from Tung-shan," said Huai-jang.
"What is it that thus comes?" asked Hui Neng.
Huai-jang was speechless. For eight long years he pondered the
question; then one day it dawned upon him, and he exclaimed, "Even
to say it is something doesn't hit the mark."
We need to see this for ourselves, directly. On close
examination, whatever we claim as our self immediately
disintegrates. And yet direct experience keeps rolling on.
We never actually experience things "out there." And we never
actually experience an experiencer "in here." We only
think we do.
We're all born into this world naked and innocent. We have
nothing to go on but what's happening - direct experience. Just
this.
The problem is that most of us don't really know how to attend
to actual experience very well. The reason is simple: we think too
much.
Yet attending to actual experience is simple. We only need to
start looking and note how what we see differs from what
we think. We need to confront paradox and confusion.
I'm not talking about vague, mystical notions here. Start
looking carefully at trees, rocks, birds, people, mind, thought,
feeling, even imaginary things like angels and hungry ghosts. Look
at them all as experience rather than as substantive things "out
there," removed from "you." Calmly and quietly (that is, with no
mental dialogue), just watch what's going on. This is a simple,
straightforward activity. It's not arcane, foreign, complicated, or
confusing.
Continuously examine what you're doing, what you're thinking,
what you're saying. Observe what you believe, what you say. Do this
over and over again, without supposing that a time will ever come
when this activity will stop. Let logic and authority drop away
under their own weight.
What remains is what has been right here all along:
Reality, before we try to make something of it.
