Mysticism
without transcendence
Most writers on mysticism would agree that transcendence is
crucial for mystical experience, and that there cannot be, in
principle, mysticism without transcendence. In my opinion, this
view tends both to blur distinctions among kinds of mysticism and
to deepen an already rather deep confusion about the nature of
mystical experience. What I wish to do in this article is to
clarify the concept of transcendence by seriously entertaining the
(somewhat provocative) possibility that it is both meaningful and
useful to speak of mysticism without transcendence. If this is
indeed possible, then we need to reexamine, in a thoroughgoing way,
what we mean by mystical experience.
The perspective adopted is, broadly speaking, Buddhist; in
particular, I am concerned with showing the implications of the
Buddhist concept (or experience) of emptiness (.suunyata) for an
understanding of the meaning of transcendence and mystical
experience. What I wish to maintain is that the concept of
emptiness requires a mysticism without transcendence and that this
kind of mysticism is exemplified in Zen Buddhism. Furthermore, I
wish to claim that what liberation or enlightenment means in the
Zen Buddhist tradition is essentially the insight into the
emptiness of transcendence, and that it is this insight which
distinguishes Buddhist mysticism from other kinds of mystical
experience.
Candor requires that I indicate at the outset that the locution
"mysticism without transcendence" is ambiguous and misleading. It
does not mean the literal absence of transcendence; rather it
refers to the normative thesis, characteristic of the Zen
tradition, that what might be termed true transcendence is the
transcendence of transcendence, which implies in turn that where
transcendence has not been transcended, there is no real
transcendence at all. To use a typical Zen locution: mysticism
without transcendence is no-transcendence, where the hyphenated
form implies, once again, not that there is literally no
transcendence, but rather that true transcendence is
self-transcending. To paraphrase from the Mahaayaana classic The
Heart Suutra: to have gone thoroughly beyond is to have gone beyond
beyond. The point is that true transcendence leaves no conceptual
(or conceptualizable) trace-no trace of what has been transcended,
what it has been transcended toward, nor any trace of the
experience itself. True transcendence can neither be understood in
terms of anything else nor in terms of itself: the former because
it cannot contain any trace of the relative, the latter because it
is, like all things, empty or devoid of self-nature.
From a Zen point of view, transcendence, as the term is usually
used, would refer to something relative; but the Zen insistence is
on the radically absolute character of transcendence. And it is
this insistence which requires that one say that true transcendence
is in effect self-emptying, or transcendence-without-transcendence.
This hyphenated locution indicates the way in which the absolute
and the relative perspectives interpenetrate in such a way as
almost to cancel each other, so that true transcendence may justly
be said to leave no trace whatsoever.
The truly radical Zen move at this point is to insist that such
true transcendence is already revealed and realized in the
emptiness and suchness of things as they are. What this means is
that there is really no need for transcendence at all, since true
transcendence is, as it were, built into the nature of things. What
one needs liberation from, in effect, is the very impulse to
transcend, an impulse necessarily based on an inability to see
things as they are as self-transcending. Seeing through the deluded
nature of transcendence (in the relative sense) is true
transcendence-a transcendence of the very impulse to transcend. It
is this insight which is behind the Zen emphasis on liberation as
nothing special and on the profoundly mystical character of
so-called ordinary mind.
To explain what is meant by the "self-transcending" character of
things as they are, I shall have to explain what I consider to be
the essential meaning of the Buddhist concept of emptiness.
It seems to me that to say that everything that exists is empty
in the sense of being devoid of self-nature actually entails the
thesis that everything exists under no description whatsoever, in a
condition of, if you will, original namelessness. Nothing that
exists has its appropriate descriptions built into it. All talk of
nature, being, substance, or essence is to be consigned to the
level of conceptualization or conventional truth. The error which
the concept of emptiness seeks to expose is that of reification,
which attributes a misplaced concreteness to the conceptual,
actually confusing the conceptual with the actual. So the concept
of emptiness refers to the way in which we would experience the
world if such experiences were free from all traces of
conceptualization. The point is that what is behind the impulse to
transcend is precisely the error of reification, for if one does
not commit this error, there is quite literally nothing to
transcend.
To put the point slightly differently: the very fact that
everything exists under no description whatsoever means that there
is a transcendence of all description and interpretation built into
things as they are. Things in their suchness (the positive content
of the concept of emptiness) transcend their own characteristics;
to use a traditional term from mystical literature, things as they
are ineffable. Because, in this sense, things as they are
self-transcending, there is no need for transcendence; suchness
itself becomes true transcendence. This is just a step away from
saying that true transcendence is radical immanence! If everything
exists under no description whatsoever, then every experience of
the world is a mystical experience; this is what is meant by the
profoundly mystical character of the so-called ordinary mind. For
ordinary mind refers to a mind free from all trace of
conceptualization; for such a mind, there is nothing but mystical
experience, except that the term "mystical" no longer carries any
connotation of the special or the exotic. To liberate one's mind
from all trace of conceptualization is to transcend transcendence,
for there is a need to transcend only so long as one continues to
confuse conceptualization with actuality. True transcendence, then,
is the removal of this confusion which simultaneously eliminates
the very need for transcendence. Even the notion of the beyond
becomes devoid of significance, unless one radically reconstructs
the notion in such a way that beyondness is built into the suchness
of things by virtue of their emptiness.
By now it should be obvious that what the concept of emptiness
entails is that transcendence is devoid of ontological content. One
of the dramatic ways in which this is indicated in the Zen
tradition is by transferring terminology usually used to describe
some separate, ontologically distinct reality to this namelessly
ordinary reality whose emptiness makes it perpetually
self-transcending. We have already seen that ineffability is so
transferred. Another term transferred in this way would be the idea
of union. Instead of applying this notion to some superior,
separate reality, in the Zen tradition one speaks of union with
things as they are in their suchness. Once the emptiness of things
as they are has been seen into, sa^msaara becomes nirvaa.na, and
conversely; and there remains no other relation to the world as it
is than that of union. (Strictly speaking, "union" does not refer
to a relation at all, but to that curious kind of nonrelation that
ensures existential relatedness.) Inability to unite with the world
in its suchness is what fuels the impulse to transcend the world.
In turn, this inability derives from the error of reification, for
it is this error which deludes us into thinking that the world is
an object of knowledge from which we are necessarily estranged-as
necessarily as a subject is estranged from an object. Once we
deeply realize the fundamental unknowability of things as they are,
we realize that it is their unknowability which makes union with
them possible. But such union cannot be intellectual or cognitive
in character; it can only be achieved through the process of
meditation, in which the distorted primacy of intellect is
overcome.
So, instead of referring to a kind of transcendence, the term
"union" in the Zen tradition refers rather to the transcendence of
transcendence. In other words, we would not need to transcend the
world if we were capable of remaining united with it. Implicit in
this is the idea that transcendence is a function of alienation,
and if mysticism be identified with transcendence, so is it also
identified with alienation. The consequence of this would be that
mysticism should ideally "wither away" (to borrow a Marxist term)
with the overcoming of the alienation that requires it. In this
regard, the so-called ordinary mind is the preeminently unalienated
mind, in whose very ordinariness is concealed the extraordinary
fact of continuous ecstatic union with the world.
In recent philosophical literature on mysticism much has been
made of the importance of the distinction between experience and
interpretation.(1) This distinction is treated almost exclusively
in methodological terms. But in the Zen tradition it would have a
radically substantive force, since the very concept of emptiness
can be construed as enforcing this distinction in such a way that
the world is a world of pure experience from which interpretation
and conceptualization have been excluded altogether. The point is
that, as far as Zen is concerned, what is held to be true of the
so-called mystical experience is just true of experience as such-it
is nameless and exists under no description. For Zen, experience is
itself mystical in nature; through this insistence the integrity of
experience itself is restored, which may indeed be seen as the
purposeless purpose of Zen practice. Such integrity is lost when
one deals exclusively with conceptualized experience, which is the
necessary consequence, again, of the error of reification. If
meditation does nothing else, it makes the difference between
actual and conceptualized experience vividly clear. Instead, then,
of the distinction between experience and interpretation being a
mere methodological starting-point for an understanding of
mysticism, in Zen it is the substantive last word.
What I have been maintaining thus far can be related at this
point to a well-known logical problem found in mystical literature.
The problem is that mystics have a way of asserting both the
ineffability of their experience of transcendence and at the same
time invariably proceeding to "eff" the ineffable anyway. This
confusion can be seen as being built into the very concept of
transcendence. For on the one hand, transcendence is meaningful
only if it can be conceptualized, but on the other hand, such
conceptualization seems to be intuitively incompatible with the
very force of the notion of transcendence. In effect, for
transcendence to have cognitive content, what is transcended must
be a certain conceptualization or interpretation of experience, and
what this is transcended toward must also be a conceptualization of
the experience of transcendence itself. But if one never breaks out
of conceptualization and interpretation, there would seem to be no
real breakthrough involved in transcendence; and yet if
transcendence is not conceptualized, it runs the risk of being
devoid of cognitive content.
Now what I have been saying applies to this problem in the
following way. The concept of emptiness would make all experience
devoid of cognitive content, since such content requires the error
of reification; in turn, this would undermine the whole notion of
mysticism as knowledge or gnosis. Once we are no longer talking
about the cognitive content of transcendence, however, it is not at
all clear that we can continue talking about transcendence at
all-at least not in the usual sense of the term.
Another way of putting my point about the relationship between
emptiness and transcendence would be to say simply that
transcendence is devoid of cognitive content, and that when this is
perceived, transcendence has in fact been transcended. One might
look at the notion of union in Zen as a reconstruction of the
concept of transcendence in such a way that union means
transcendence without cognitive content. To employ a Zen metaphor:
one can unite with the world in its suchness when the bottom of the
bucket has fallen out of the notion of transcendence as having
cognitive content. When the bottom thus falls out, all experience
becomes a "zero experience," devoid of cognitive content.(2) I
submit that it does not make any sense to speak of transcending
what is devoid of cognitive content to begin with; nor does it make
sense to speak of transcendence if it itself has no such content.
But at the same time, I see no reason why mysticism must be tied to
knowledge and gnosis; for in Zen, to qualify as a mystic it is
sufficient for one to engage in the discipline of continuous
nonseparation from the world, the result of which is the overcoming
of alienation from the world even though there is no sense in which
the world is "known" by virtue of being united with it through
meditation.
Paradoxically enough, then, it would seem that the breakthrough
aspect of transcendence can be preserved best by denying the
cognitive content of transcendence. To repeat: such denial is what
the concept of emptiness necessarily entails. But what is thus
broken through is the entire enterprise of reification, which
conceals the emptiness of all experience, including that of
transcendence.
From the point of view of the truth of emptiness, one needs to
transcend one's conceptual scheme only as long as one sees it as
something more than merely conventional in nature, only as long as
one considers it part of the very fabric of what is. Similarly, if
one drives a final wedge between what is and any conceptualization
of what is, then no conceptual scheme can present any obstacle
whatsoever to a direct encounter with reality. Moreover, there
would be no need for any special kind of experience to drive this
wedge. Mystical experience has the kind of privileged status it has
mostly because we assume that only such experience reveals the
truth of this wedge, as it were. But if the radical separation of
what is from any conceptualization of what is, is not something
uniquely effected by mystical experience, but is rather the simple
consequence of the realization of the truth of emptiness, then
mystical experience loses its privileged status. To the extent that
the truth of emptiness itself does the job traditionally done by
mystical experience, to that extent I submit there is no need for
transcendence. It is only if we assume that our experience of the
world must be indissolubly linked to conceptualization-which is our
post-Kantian philosophical legacy, after all that mysticism
requires some sense of special transcendence. By cutting the
Gordian knot connecting experience and conceptualization, the truth
of emptiness radically normalizes mystical experience by making all
experience in its emptiness mystical experience.
I have been arguing that transcendence is meaningful in the
sense of having cognitive content, only if one presupposes the
acceptability of reifying one's conceptual scheme, an enterprise
which is not acceptable from the point of view of the concept of
emptiness. It is the reification of one's conceptual scheme that
renders our experience of the world opaque and thereby precludes
the possibility of direct encounter with what is. Once such
reification has been removed, everything is returned to its
original transparent condition. Through meditation practice in the
Zen tradition, one learns to see through the error of reification,
and thereby transcends that which makes transcendence both
necessary and possible. So it would seem that the point of
meditation practice is the transcendence of transcendence.
Once one has seen deeply into the nameless character of all
ordinary experience, the importance of a special mystical
experience of transcendence, in Zen, becomes almost scandalous.
This can be seen in the famous Zen story of the two monks climbing
a mountain, the younger one having a mystical experience on the way
which he exultantly announces to the older monk, only to have the
senior student respond, "Yes, but what a pity to say so!" The
experience of transcendence-the sense of attainment-is a source of
boundless joy to the younger monk, but a source of embarrassment to
the older, not because mystical experience is ineffable in some
special sense, and therefore should not be announced in this callow
way, but rather because the experience of transcendence reveals
nothing but the deeply deluded condition that makes such experience
necessary in the first place. What is that deluded condition?
Precisely the assumption that one must go beyond one's conceptual
scheme to have a direct encounter with reality. What is scandalous
about transcendence is this link to delusion; it is, in a sense,
like airing one's dirty laundry. But what is the alternative, you
may ask?
Implicit in the older monk's response, I think, is the view that
if one simply and unostentatiously remained faithful to one's
original mind-through meditation practice-a mind which is from the
beginning free from conceptualization and hence free from any need
to transcend such conceptualization, there would be no need for
anything like special mystical experience. Moreover, I think it can
be maintained that what the younger monk experiences as a
breakthrough-to some separate reality transcending ordinary
experience-is, in fact, for the older monk the breaking down of the
younger monk's attachment to his conceptualization of such an
experience. The younger monk feels that he has attained some
mystical vision in which he has ascended to the ultimate reality,
whereas, in fact, the bottom of the bucket has simply fallen out.
So the older monk is saying, in effect, that the experience of
transcendence should not be spoken of because it is essentially as
deluded as that to which it is a response. For in fact, there is
nothing: to transcend at all, given the original emptiness of all
dharmas. This is Original Mind.
In Zen, the quasi-comic nature of the experience of
transcendence, when viewed as a breakthrough into a superior and
higher form of reality, is put vividly and with characteristically
wry humor by saying that a person who has a mystical experience and
thinks it involves some ontological transcendence is as deluded as
a thief breaking into his own house! Instead of breaking into one's
own house, one should simply live in one's house, and when hungry,
eat, when sleepy, sleep. It seems to me that the Zen move in all
matters mystical is always one of radical deflation.
Such deflation can be found in innumerable examples from Zen
literature. One of the best anecdotes in this regard is about the
great Zen master Dogen, who, upon being asked by a student to state
what he had attained as a result of his sojourn in China, replied,
"I now know that the eyes are horizontal, the nose is vertical." He
also spoke of having returned from China empty-handed, a wonderful
metaphor for the sense in which no-attainment is the best
attainment. The mystical union so often inflatedly described in
mystical literature is deflated in Zen on the ground that there is
really no need for one big transcendent union at all; rather, what
is needed is simply to unite with whatever is happening, completely
to remove any trace of separation from the content of one's
experience. To do so one must see through the merely apparent
opacity of one's conceptual scheme which tends, existentially
speaking, to result in a condition of extreme separation and
alienation from what is experienced. In Zen any experience
qualifies as mystical so long as it is an experience of
non-separation and union with what is. The eloquent irony of Zen
consists, therefore, in the fact that our nonconceptual experience
of the world is so thoroughly mystical in character that there is
nothing at all really mystical about it.
THE END
