Besides External Criticism, the most common problems in understanding
Pali-Canon Buddhism stem from three facets of the way the Pali Canon describes
Nibbana.
- First, the predominant descriptions of Nibbana are negative
-- Nibbana consists in the absence of Tanha/Upadana, the absence of Dukkha, etc.
It is obvious there are ways of being free from Upadana and Dukkha which do not
make a person admirable.
- Secondly, the impression frequently given in the Pali Canon
is that Nibbana is an all-or-nothing affair. It gives very few descriptions of
the ways that small steps toward reducing Tanha, Upadana, and Dukkha would
improve a persons' life and make her a more admirable person, even if she never
reaches the full cessation of Upadana and Dukkha which is complete Nibbana. This
seems to make Nibbana a very exotic and fascinating concept, but one that has no
relevance to anyone who does not want to make reaching Nibbana the number one
priority in her life and sacrifice everything else to try to reach it.
- Finally, although those persons reaching full Nibbana are
pictured as, in a real sense, Supreme Beings, higher than all other beings in
the universe (included gods and goddesses of popular Hindu religion), no
argument is given to support this belief. Nibbana is said to be so transcendent
that it is "indescribable," able to be understood and appreciated only by those
who have actually experienced it. But why would a person being striving toward
Nibbana if she had no idea what it is or why it can plausibly deserve to be
considered the supreme good in human life? How would a person know whether some given
experience she had is actually the experience of "true" Nibbana? How could she
intelligently practice, or intelligently assess her progress toward Nibbana, if
she doesn't have a clear idea of what it is?
******
A Platonist view of things addresses these problems by
treating Nibbana as something like a Platonic Form. Platonic Forms are also
"transcendent," but in the critical reconstruction of Platonism developed in
previous chapters, the word "transcendent" just means "perfect in its goodness."
Because they are perfect in their goodness, Platonic
virtue-Forms are also very difficult to grasp. Diotima asserts in the
Symposium that the Platonic Form of Beauty cannot be expressed in words, and
in the Seventh Letter Plato gives this as the reason why he would
never write an essay presenting his idea of Perfect Goodness to the general
public "because is not something that can be conveyed in words like other
subjects."
Nevertheless, the image of the Ladder in Plato's Symposium
(see Appendix II),
the basis for the Principle of Analogy and Participation, asserts a
continuity and similarity between the hard-to-formulate and hard-to-grasp
perfect Goodness represented by the Forms, and imperfect examples of goodness
perceived in everyday life. The Platonic Form of Perfect Beauty, for example is
not completely different from the imperfect beauty familiar to people in
their ordinary everyday experience. It is the same beauty with its imperfections
removed. And although the goal of a Platonist is to approximate the Perfect Form
of Beauty in her being as closely as she can, every small step toward this goal
constitutes greater "participation in" the Form of Beauty, rendering her a more
admirable person even if she never manages to become perfectly Beautiful.
(Platonic Forms are perfect models to model oneself on, not all-or-nothing goals
to be achieved.)
******
What all this means for the critical interpretation of
Buddhism, is that Platonism need not take Buddhist assertions that Nibbana is
the Supreme Good in human life, as something Buddhists believe by blind faith.
Neither should we simply take descriptions of Nibbana at face value and ask for
rational arguments supporting Buddhist belief that these statements already very
clearly describe something validly regarded as the Supreme Good in human life.
Our task is rather to creatively construct an interpretation
of Nibbana-descriptions in the Pali Canon under which it can rationally be shown
to be something perfect in its positive goodness (not just an absence of certain
problems or weaknesses).
- A Platonic Form can partly be defined as a virtue-concept
that can withstand Socratic questioning by counterexample. A particular
interpretation of Nibbana that leads to fundamental attitudes and behavior that
are obviously not admirable -- therefore vulnerable to Socratic criticism by
counterexample -- should be regarded as a bad interpretation.
- According the Principle of Analogy, if Nibbana is indeed
something perfect in its goodness, it is the perfection of some particular kind
of positive goodness easily understandable when it manifests itself in less
perfect ways in concrete everyday life. If Nibbana were completely unlike
anything familiar in the experience of those who have not reached it, beginners
on the Buddhist path would have no understanding or perception of its goodness
at all, and therefore no motive for starting on the path toward Nibbana. They
would not be able to think intelligently about Buddhist practice --
distinguishing those meditation practices which make a person more admirable
from those that do not -- unless they have an understanding of the specific
admirable human goodness that these practices aim to achieve.
- According to the Principle of Participation, if Nibbana is
the perfection of some kind of goodness, every small step toward achieving
Nibbana would increase that individual's degree of "participation in" Nibbana's
goodness, rendering that person more admirable and good. Nibbana is not an
all-or-nothing affair. No effort effectively bringing about gradual progress
toward achieving the perfect goodness which is Nibbana will be wasted effort,
since every small step toward this achievement amounts to a greater degree of
participation in this perfect goodness, and makes a person a more admirable
person. Although Buddhists generally claim that full Nibbana is possible (though
exceedingly rare), from a rational Platonist point of view, it does not
crucially matter whether anyone has actually achieved it or not.
A related mistake is to think of Nibbana as a "goal to be achieved,"
comparable to a destination of a journey. If I'm driving from Boston to
San Francisco, "getting to San Francisco" is my goal, and the journey there is
"just a means" to get to San Francisco. There's no particular value in
being in Indiana or Missouri, except that these states are closer to San
Francisco than Boston is. If my only aim is to be in San Francisco, rather
than to enjoy my trip, getting stuck in Nevada and unable to proceed completely
ruins my trip and frustrates its whole purpose As explained in the
previous essay, Nibbana is not a "goal to be achieved" of this kind.
Making a small step toward Nibbana represents a "participation" in Nibbana's
goodness, making an improvement in one's life that is valuable in itself,
whether or not one reaches the fullness of Nibbana.
*****
Pluralist Platonism would also place great emphasis on the
particularity of Nibbana's goodness. For pluralist Platonism, all goodness
and all virtue is particular. "Goodness" and "Virtue" are general umbrella
concepts like "vegetable." One can only eat particular vegetables -- onions,
carrots, tomatoes, etc. Eating a vegetable-in-general, instead of
eating particular vegetables like onions, carrots, or tomatoes, is not a
realistically available choice. Being good-in-general, instead of
having some particular virtues like love, courage, fairness, honesty, etc.is not
a realistically available option.
For the application of the Platonic Principle of Analogy and
Participation, it is important that Nibbana not be thought of as
goodness-in-general, or the sum of all virtues. In trying to find analogies in
ordinary experience to serve as starting points for understanding transcendent
Nibbana, it is important to find the right particular starting points.
Despite Pali Canon emphasis on the virtue of compassion, for example, perceiving
the goodness of ordinary compassion is not a great help to understanding the
very specific and particular goodness of Nibbana. For purposes of understanding
Nibbana as a particular ideal, one must say that Nibbana is not the perfection
of love, or of courage, or of fairness, or of honesty -- even though these
virtues are important for householder-Buddhism, and the Pali Canon assumes that
the person who reaches Nibbana will also exhibit these virtues. As argued
in other essays here, it is rather the perfection of other ordinary virtues such
as self-confidence, flexible adaptability, resilience, and composure.
Avoiding Absolute claims about goodness and virtue, and
emphasizing particularity instead, also avoids evaluating Buddhism in the light
of supposed "universal" virtue-concepts that a person could easily come to know
without studying Buddhist teachings, and that one could easily internalize
without practicing specific Buddhist meditation techniques such as Vipassana.
Pluralist Platonism, by placing no limits on the number of admirable virtues
that might exist, requires recognition that the study of writings like the Pali
Canon might require stretching one's imagination to try to understand particular
virtues that are as yet unfamiliar, and that might at first appear to be not
admirable or virtuous at all.
This requires, in effect, greatly expanding the meaning of
the word "virtue." Associations with this word in modern English are generally
limited by its connection to traditional lists of virtues, most of which stem
ultimately from Aristotle's list of virtues (partly inherited from Plato), with
a few additions and reworkings at the hands of medieval European philosophers
and theologians.
I have found the word "admirable" to be both sufficiently
specific and sufficiently broad to serve as a basis for expanding the concept of
virtue in a way that is critical, but doesn't limit it to personal qualities
admired in traditional European thought. To show that some personality trait is
a virtue, one has to be able to make up stories of people illustrating this
trait who are obviously admirable. "Counterexamples," stories about individuals
who appear to be exemplifying some particular virtue-concept, but who are
obviously not admirable, show a weakness in the particular virtue-concept in
question. "Admirable" thus provides a critical criteria specific enough to show
that some things a person or group might claim to be virtues are not virtues at
all.
At the same time, "admirable," applied to characters in
stories, offers a criterion that does not limit the number of virtues to some
specific list already familiar in European or in any other culture. There are an
indefinite number of stories that can be told illustrating an indefinite number
of ways in which persons can exhibit traits that are obviously admirable or
obviously not admirable.
Critical reconstruction of Buddhism along Platonist lines involves treating Nibbana as a kind of "goodness," or a "cluster of virtues." One thing that might make this approach questionable for some is the narrowly "moral" conceptions of goodness and virtue that prevails in Western discourse.
For example, although moral decency is one necessary element in the path toward Nibbana, it cannot be said that one approaches more closely to Nibbana through becoming more moral, or even having more "virtues" in the normal sense of these words "moral" and "virtue." The Pali Canon encourages the development of many virtues, but it does not treat Nibbana itself as a "virtue."
The virtue-pluralism argued in previous chapters provides a basis for dealing with this question, by rejecting the idea that any single notion of goodness can claim to be the only valid notion, or that the idea of "virtue" can be limited to a single traditional list of admirable personality traits.
There is a passage in the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein's 1929 "Lecture on Ethics" that is helpful in this context (available in full at http://www.mv.helsinki.fi/home/tkannist/E-texts/Wittgenstein/LectureOnEthics.html)
Wittgenstein says that his purpose in this lecture is to redefine the word "ethics," giving it its broadest possible extension, so that it includes also, for example, "the essential part of what is generally called aesthetics," i.e. the meaningfulness and life-enrichment capacities of music and art:
My subject... is Ethics and I will adopt the explanation of that term which Professor Moore has given in his book Principia Ethica. He says: "Ethics is the general enquiry into what is good."
Now I am going to use the term Ethics in a slightly wider sense, in a sense in fact which includes what I believe to be the most essential part of what is generally called Aesthetics. And to make you see as clearly as possible what I take to be the subject matter of Ethics I will put before you a number of more or less synonymous expressions each of which could be substituted for the above definition, and by enumerating them I want to produce the same sort of effect which Galton produced when he took a number of photos of different faces on the same photographic plate in order to get the picture of the typical features they all had in common. And, as by showing to you such a collective photo I could make you see what is the typical - - say, Chinese - - face; so if you look through the row of synonyms which I will put before you, you will, I hope, be able to see the characteristic features they all have in common and these are the characteristic features of Ethics.
Now instead of saying "Ethics is the enquiry into what is good," I could have said Ethics is the enquiry into
what is valuable... or
what is really important; or...
the meaning of life; or...
what makes life worth living, or...
the right way of living.
I believe if you look at all these phrases you will get a rough idea as to what it is that Ethics is concerned with.
This extends the notion of "ethics" far beyond the normal limitation to binding rules concerning right and wrong. It extends it to include such broad topics as ultimate meaning, "the meaning of life," "what makes life worth living," and so on.
Later in the essay, Wittgenstein gives two interesting examples of experiences he says that he personally has in mind when he thinks of this subject of "ethics." Neither has to do with "ethics" or "morality" in the more usual, limited senses of these words.
In my case, [when I think about "ethics"] it always happens that the idea of one particular experience presents itself to me.... I will use this as my first and foremost example... I will describe this experience in order, if possible, to make you recall the same or similar experiences, so that we may have a common ground for our investigation.
I believe the best way of describing it is to say that when I have it I wonder at the existence of the world. And I am then inclined to use such phrases as "how extraordinary that anything should exist" or "how extraordinary that this world should exist."
I will mention an other experience straightway which I also know and which others of you might he acquainted with: it is, what one might call, the experience of feeling absolutely safe. I mean the state of mind in which one is inclined to say "I am safe, nothing can injure me what ever happens."
Wittgenstein's two experiences are not important in the present context because they resemble the "goodness" of Buddhist Nibbana (although the experience of being "absolutely safe" bears some resemblance). They are important because they help illustrate the breadth of possible kinds of things besides moral goodness we need to consider in a critical discussion of Nibbana as something that deserves to be taken as an "ultimate good," something that for some people deserves to be taken as "what is really important," "what makes life worth living," "what finally matters."
The opening chapters of Charles Taylor's Sources of the Self (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Pr.) offer many observations along the same lines -- the necessity of broadening our concepts of "the good" beyond those associations usually connected with terms like "morality," "ethics," etc.
[This passage applies the Principle of Analogy and Participation to the concept of Beauty, which Plato considers here a "virtue." 'A person who wants to understand the perfect Platonic Form of Beauty needs to begin her acquaintance with beauty by falling in love with one beautiful body, which represents beauty in a less perfect but more accessible form. Applying this to Buddhist Nibbana: If Nibbana is like a perfect Platonic Form, it is something whose admirable goodness is difficult to grasp immediately in itself, just be reading Buddhist descriptions of it. To begin understanding its goodness, we need to begin by trying to find analogies, concrete examples exhibiting this same kind of goodness, in less perfect but more accessible form.
Note, applied to Buddhism, the image of the Ladder here does not represent practical steps one takes to reach Nibbana (this would be meditation practices such as Vipassana). It represents rather intellectual steps needed to understand Nibbana as the perfection of some particular kind of goodness. Many examples of such analogies are given in the essay Using Analogies to Understand Nibbana as Transcendent Good. ML]
[To learn about beauty, a person should] start when young by pursuing beautiful bodies. First... he will love one beautiful body... then he must realize that the beauty attached to one body is kin to [the beauty] attached to another body, so if it is necessary to pursue beauty in Form, it is great folly not to regard as one the Beauty found in all bodies. Realizing this he must make himself a lover of all beautiful bodies...
After this he must realize that the beauty in souls is of much more value than the beauty in the body, [so that] if there is a soul with a little bloom [of beauty] beginning in it, he will love and care for it...
Contemplating [many specific] beautiful things rightly and in due order... he will suddenly have revealed to him something wonderful...
This [the Form of Beauty] is something always-being, not coming into being and perishing, not increasing and decreasing... It is not partly beautiful and partly shameful, nor now [beautiful] now-not [beautiful], nor in some respects beautiful and in some respects shameful... Nor will the beautiful appear to him as a face, or hands, nor any other part of the body... nor something existing in something else... but always being something single-formed having its own being with itself in itself... All other beautiful things participate in this, in such a manner that, while these other things come into being and perish, this thing becomes neither greater nor lesser...
Beginning from those beautiful things, always ascending upward for the sake of The Beautiful, like someone using the steps of a ladder, from one to two, and from two to all beautiful bodies, and from beautiful bodies to beautiful institutions, and from institutions to beautiful learnings, and from beautiful learnings... to that learning which is none other than the learning concerning The Beautiful...
What would you think if it happened to someone to see The Beautiful, exact, pure, unmixed... [What if] he were able to see unique Divine Beauty? Does it seem to you a trifling life for a man to lead, looking ‘over there,' contemplating it the way it should be [contemplated]?...
Seeing The [invisible] Beautiful through what is visible, [he will] bring forth not images of virtue [aręte], since he is in touch not with images [of virtue] but with true [virtue]... When he has brought forth and reared true virtue he is destined to become God-pleasing.