Revisionist Buddhism
Some Thoughts About Reinterpreting Karma and Rebirth
“All things are empty:
Nothing is born, nothing dies,
nothing is pure, nothing is stained,
nothing increases and nothing decreases.So, in emptiness, there is no body,
no feeling, no thought,
no will, no consciousness.
There are no eyes, no ears,
no nose, no tongue,
no body, no mind.
There is no seeing, no hearing,
no smelling, no tasting,
no touching, no imagining.
There is nothing seen, nor heard,
nor smelled, nor tasted,
nor touched, nor imagined.There is no ignorance,
and no end to ignorance.
There is no old age and death,
and no end to old age and death.
There is no suffering, no cause of suffering,
no end to suffering, no path to follow.
There is no attainment of wisdom,
and no wisdom to attain.” — The Heart Sutra
I often describe myself as a “secular Buddhist,” because that captures what I believe to some extent because I don’t believe in a lot of the religious and dogmatic aspects of traditional Buddhism. Nevertheless, I dislike the term because it carries the connotation of believing in a “Buddhism” that is divorced from mysticism, ritual, and scripture — a “Buddhism” that is worldly and non-spiritual. And that sort of “Buddhism” is certainly not what I practice. I practice meditation roughly in the manner of Soto Zen, I chant the Heart Sutra, and read the Buddhist scriptures. I don’t just believe in some specific psychological theories of Buddhism but adhere to the dharma as a way of life. I read the Pali Canon, Nagarjuna, Shantideva, Buddhaghosa, Dogen Zenji, Chandrakirti, etc. In many respects, my so-called “secular” Buddhism is very traditional.
There are some aspects of traditional Buddhism that I don’t really believe in. For instance, I don’t believe that the ancient Indian gods and mythological figures are real. I also don’t believe in rebirth in the traditional sense. (I do, however, believe in some form of generic subjective continuity or existential passage, a sort of naturalist version of reincarnation.) I also believe that people can, in altered states of consciousness, encounter thoughtforms of gods and buddhas and other things that do exist (as real experiential things in the minds of individuals) but which, nevertheless, lack any independent existence apart from those experiences. In other words, I may concede that so-and-so had a vision of such-and-such a god without conceding that the god in question is really real as a thing-in-itself independent of that experience. Furthermore, I believe that people can and do experience “memories” of past lives as a result of things like past life regression hypnosis. As a result, I can read Buddhist texts where accounts of gods and past lives are given and regard the stories more as unwitting parables than as lies. If the person speaking did see a god or did “remember” a past life, I can take that as a communication coming from their subconscious mind as a sort of parable. There may be something valuable to learn from such experiences even if they aren’t really real. Furthermore, I think that having such experiences can be valuable.
The claim that gods like Sakra (or buddhas like Amitabha) are not really real should not be too surprising to hear from a Buddhist. After all, a core Buddhist idea within the Madhyamaka tradition is that nothing is really real because everything is ultimately empty. To say that the gods and mythological figures of Buddhism are not really real is nothing more than to reaffirm the teachings of Buddhism as espoused by Nagarjuna and countless other Buddhist thinkers. If everything is really empty in the Buddhist sense, then nothing is really real and so it also should not be problematic to say that rebirth is also not really real.
My worldview is naturalistic insofar as I do not believe in the possibility of anything that can be called supernatural. As I’ve written elsewhere, “I’ve long been interested in prebiology and chemical evolution and was recently watching a video where a scientist said ‘life is the most interesting natural phenomenon.’ This got me to thinking about how life being a natural phenomenon is basically axiomatically true. It can’t not be a natural phenomenon. The idea that life is just absolutely different from non-life and that there is a clear division between living and non-living is almost absurd if you really think about it. Even upon theistic religious presuppositions, it doesn’t really make any sense.” Things that we would ordinarily call “supernatural” are either unreal or else they are simply lesser known natural phenomena. If the “supernatural” is real, then it is natural. Naturalism is inevitable because supernaturalism is inherently incomprehensible.
The intuition that consciousness cannot be explained as simply an epiphenomenon of physics, an emergent phenomena resulting from material processes, is rooted in our forgetfulness of the magicalness of physics. Applying Nagarjuna’s “two truths” doctrine (though, perhaps, in a different sense than Nagarjuna did), we can say that science does very well at explaining reality in terms of conventional truth but not in terms of explaining ultimate truth. Conventional reality can be comprehended and analyzed directly while ultimate reality remains a mystery that can only ever be intuited via mystical experience. Properly speaking, science is descriptive rather than ultimately explanatory. It tells us what things do and not why they do them. It describes the world but doesn’t explain why it is the way that it is in any ultimate sense. It may explain the “why” of certain natural phenomena in terms of more basic or axiomatic natural laws but it can’t, with the tools available to it, ever explain the why of the most basic and axiomatic natural laws.
The scientist may espouse the “law of gravity” but that is merely descriptive. Why does the apple fall when I let go of it? “Because of gravity.” What is gravity? “It’s the general rule that things fall when there isn’t something holding them up.” But why do things fall when nothing is holding them up? Ah, now we’ve come full circle. The scientist may tell us that “these two chemicals, when mixed, cause a chemical reaction that produces fire.” The chemistry behind this doesn’t really explain the phenomena ultimately speaking but merely describes what does actually happen. Ultimately, the why of all of this is mysterious and might as well be magical. There will never be, because there cannot be, an explanation of it. Why two particles interact in such-and-such a way is really just because the magic of the universe works like that.
Now, getting back to consciousness, we think it can’t be a byproduct or mere emergent phenomena that results from physical and chemical processes — we assume that it must be altogether supernatural or separate from physical things. But why? We have no clue, ultimately speaking, why various material particles really behave in the ways that they do, why they interact in certain ways, why the universe behaves the way it does. We can’t explain the natural emergence of consciousness and that makes us think that it must be different…but we’ve forgotten that we can’t ultimately explain anything else either. Scientists won’t ever be able to give a full account of why consciousness emerges from physics for the same reason that they can’t explain why gravity is a thing or magnetism is a thing or why energy sometimes becomes matter. Of course, they can get better and better at understanding and describing the conditions that give rise to these things. But ultimate truths are always beyond knowing. Here we’re talking about the “presuppositions” or “axioms” of the universe (the laws of nature), which aren’t legalistic laws in the sense of a dictatorial decree that such-and-such must do so-and-so but rather merely descriptive rules of what such-and-such does, in fact, actually do. (Positing the existence of some intelligent Creator behind all of this gets us no closer to an answer because that just poses the question of ‘why God?’. Appealing to an intelligent Creator to explain the axioms of nature really gets us no closer to ultimate truth because then we have just moved ultimacy back a little further before we introduce the mysterious, magical, and unknowable.)
Consciousness is very much like magnetism or gravity. It is very much a natural phenomenon. And while we can certainly increase our conventional knowledge of it, we will never actually completely understand its ultimate nature — just as we will never really grasp the ultimate nature of anything. As products of evolution (species that were designed by natural selection for the purpose of survival), we weren’t endowed with the capacity to truly and completely grasp ultimate reality. Perhaps, through mystical experience, we can get some sort of inkling of ultimate truth by “seeing in a mirror dimly” but we will never have true face-to-face knowledge of reality “in itself,” of things as they really are independent of how we perceive things. There are limitations of human knowledge. But what we do know is that consciousness arises and will, presumably, continue after we die.
Buddhism, the way I interpret it, seems to be continuous with (and to logically follow from) the dharma as espoused by Siddhartha Gautama, Nagarjuna, Dogen Zenji, et al., yet it is revisionist insofar as it reinterprets certain Buddhist ideas in a non-traditional manner. For instance, the reinterpretation of rebirth through the lens of generic subjective continuity significantly alters the way I think about the afterlife and karma. We end up with a new idea of karma that is much less magical and much more scientific. Karma is a law of cause and effect. If I allow myself to get angry and resort to violence, I’m allowing myself to set a precedence for future behavior that will likely lead to such a reaction becoming habitual and automatic. I’m also increasing the probability of other people reacting in a similar manner. I’m putting bad karma out into the world. I myself and others will, as a result, on future occasions be reborn into the mode of existence I’m putting out into the world — tomorrow I will wake up, reborn into the habits I formed today. If, instead of responding to a conflict with violence, I talk it out and make amends, then I am putting good karma out into the world. My interlocutor is likely to feed off of my energy and react in a similar manner. Now they are putting back good (or bad) energy into the world as a result of my actions because their interaction with me has become a conditioning factor in the causal chain of events that determines their future behaviors. It’s not necessarily the case, in my opinion, that bad things will happen to me because of the bad things that I’ve done, but rather that badness increases as a result of my bad behavior —by behaving badly, I blaze the trail for a future with more badness in it than would otherwise be the case. Conversely, I can blaze the trail for a better future by doing good things now. My karmic energy doesn’t end when I die because it lives on in the ways that other people behave as a result of ways that I have behaved. Through my karmic energy, I live on in the people who I have influenced by my actions.
Generic subjective continuity is a concept that has recently been popularized by Thomas W. Clark and by Sam Harris, but which originally was put forth by Alan Watts at least in seminal form. The related concept of existential passage, as espoused by Wayne Stewart is also worth checking out. I believe that the thought experiments of Watts, Clark, and Stewart and their implications give us a nice way to think about rebirth that doesn’t involve any sort of magical or dogmatic thinking.
The idea of generic subjective continuity in my own revisionist Buddhism naturally draws me toward the Mahayana. The bodhisattva path appears to be the only path because personal nirvana separate from universal nirvana becomes dubious within a framework in which there is a generic continuity of all consciousness. How can I focus exclusively on my own salvation and leave all other entities to be forever damned in the wheel of samsara if we are essentially the same — the identity of I as something other than thou is illusory since we essentially share the same nature as conscious entities. Thus, I cannot seek my own well-being independently of the well-being of others. All enlightened beings must be boddhisattvas because there can be no real ultimate nirvana for any unless we achieve the impossible task of universal enlightenment. But, at the same time, the non-difference between the I and the thou means that universal salvation is, in some sense, entailed in my own salvation. If I can obtain enlightenment, well-being, and nirvana, then so I can redeem all conscious entities by virtue of our essential identity. We can free ourselves and the entire conscious world from the cycle of samsara with every moment of mindfulness, insight, and joy that we experience. We break free from the cycle of samsara not by transcending it but by recognizing its illusory nature. If whatever mystical insight we have is only fleeting, it’s nevertheless eternal insofar as time is itself illusory and consciousness is an eternal process that transcends time as a relative (conventional but not ultimate) phenomena.
“At first one should meditate intently on the equality of oneself and others as follows: ‘All equally experience suffering and happiness. I should look after them as I do myself.’… I should dispel the suffering of others because it is suffering like my own suffering. I should help others too because of their nature as beings, which is like my own being. When happiness is liked by me and others equally, what is so special about me that I strive after happiness only for myself? When fear and suffering are disliked by me and others equally, what is so special about me that I protect myself and not the other? If I give them no protection because their suffering does not afflict me, why do I protect my body against future suffering when it does not afflict me? The notion ‘it is the same me even then’ is a false construction, since it is one person who dies, quite another who is born. If you think that it is for the person who has the pain to guard against it, a pain in the foot is not of the hand, so why is the one protected by the other?… The continuum of consciousness, like a queue, and the combination of constituents, like an army, are not real. The person who experiences suffering does not exist. To whom will that suffering belong? Without exception, no sufferings belong to anyone. They must be warded off simply because they are suffering.” — Śāntideva (The Bodhicaryāvatāra, Chapter 8)
If I reinterpret rebirth through the lens of Clark’s generic subjective continuity, then I am certainly interpreting it in a way that conflicts with the traditional Buddhist interpretation. The 14th Dalai Lama cannot uniquely claim to be the 13th Dalai Lama returning to this world in a new body insofar as the subjective continuity is generic rather than a genuine personal subjective continuity. Insofar as there is any continuity between the two individuals, that same subjective continuity is present with all future individuals born after the departure of the 13th Dalai Lama. We can turn to Stewart’s concept of existential passage and make the case that subjective continuity entails an existential passage from the departing individual to the very next person born after him (rather than a general passage to all individuals waking after him). Stewart’s conception gives us a subjective continuity that links one specific lifetime with a specific following lifetime, where there is a genuine “transmigration” of sorts. The problem here is that even this perspective represents a revision of the original doctrine. Within Stewart’s framework, personal identity is bound up with memory and corporeal existence (since memories are stored in the brain), and it’s impossible to pass from one life to the next without “drinking the waters of forgetfulness from the river Lethe.” There is no possibility of remembering past lives. And this means that we must discount traditional stories, like the Jataka tales, which recount memories from the past lives of the Buddha or other figures. We can still value these stories as meaningful parables but we cannot regard them as genuine memories of former lives. We may even concede that people who claim to remember past lives are accurately describing their experience (they do actually have these “memories”) but they cannot really be remembering a past life because the existential passage is still a sort of generic subjective continuity and not a personal subjective continuity.
I believe this reinterpretation is logically more consistent, in the context of the Buddhist doctrine of anatman, than the traditional interpretation. Nevertheless, I do think that what the Buddha himself believed was probably closer to the traditional view. The traditional view holds that while there is no atman (soul or self) to transmigrate between bodies, consciousness and karma do move into another body after death. While the memories from previous lives are erased from the consciousness of those that are reborn, there are ways for one to regain their lost memories of past lives. It is possible, in the traditional view, to have genuine memories of past lives. This supposition is one that my own modern revisionist Buddhism rejects. (Since all knowledge is conjectural and, therefore, I could be wrong, I will admit the possibility that perhaps past lives can somehow be truly remembered under certain circumstances, yet my working hypothesis is that no such thing is possible.)
In defense of my revisionist Buddhism, I can give a simple argument: if everything lacks essence, then how can the couple doctrines that I reinterpret essentially alter my Buddhism so as to make it something else? You can say that it is not Buddhism and, in some sense, you are correct. Buddhism itself is empty (open-ended) and therefore capable of change. This new revised Buddhism may not actually be real Buddhism but neither was the old Buddhism.
But also we should remember that the Buddha advised us not to simply take things on faith.
“It is proper for you, Kalamas, to doubt, to be uncertain; uncertainty has arisen in you about what is doubtful. Come, Kalamas. Do not go upon what has been acquired by repeated hearing; nor upon tradition; nor upon rumor; nor upon what is in a scripture; nor upon surmise; nor upon an axiom; nor upon specious reasoning; nor upon a bias towards a notion that has been pondered over; nor upon another’s seeming ability; nor upon the consideration, ‘The monk is our teacher.’ Kalamas, when you yourselves know: ‘These things are bad; these things are blamable; these things are censured by the wise; undertaken and observed, these things lead to harm and ill,’ abandon them.” — Kalama Sutta
