After I was in grad college, a giant tutorial trend was to heap scorn on the concept that mystical expertise might be one thing cross-cultural: every little thing was reducible to social context, and the similarities of expertise didn’t actually matter, as I had as soon as argued myself. However the roots of that concept have been usually extra asserted than argued: the well-known article by Steven Katz, which inaugurated the strategy, didn’t hassle to justify its assumption that “There are NO pure (unmediated) experiences“, assuming maybe that italics and capital letters have been the one help needed.
A short while in the past I famous how Robert Forman’s assortment of essays illustrate “cool” mystical experiences, the place distinctions of senses and self drop away and the thoughts ceases to fluctuate, in sources as diverse because the Indian Yoga Sūtras, the Ukrainian Hasidic Dov Baer and the German mystic Meister Eckhart. One thing related appears to be happening within the Sri Lankan systematizer Buddhaghosa and the medieval English Cloud of Unknowing, which each contain, in Ninan Good’s phrases, a “systematic effort to blot out sense notion, reminiscences, and imaginings of the world of our sensory atmosphere and of corresponding inside states.” And it seems that when your thoughts is now not prejudged to disclaim any cross-cultural similarity, you begin noticing it in a variety of different locations.
Eckhart and Baer are comparatively marginal figures throughout the histories of Christianity and Judaism. The identical is in no way true of the Zhuangzi, one of many two texts which might be all the time known as core to philosophical Daoism. It’s all the time arduous to say something with confidence concerning the Zhuangzi, composite textual content that it’s. However when you’ve observed what number of different contexts cool mystical expertise exhibits up in, then it’s arduous to not be struck by this passage from chapter 6:
“I’m making progress,” mentioned Yen Hui.
“What do you imply?” requested Confucius.
“I’ve forgotten rites and music.”
“Not dangerous, however you continue to haven’t bought it.”
Yen Hui noticed Confucius once more on one other day and mentioned, “I’m making progress.”
“What do you imply?”
“I’ve forgotten humaneness and righteousness.”
“Not dangerous, however you continue to haven’t bought it.”
Yen Hui noticed Confucius once more on one other day and mentioned, “I’m making progress.”
“What do you imply?”
“I sit and neglect.”
“What do you imply, ‘sit and neglect’?” Confucius requested with shock.
“I slough off my limbs and trunk,” mentioned Yen Hui, “dim my intelligence, depart from my type, depart data behind, and change into an identical with the Transformational Thoroughfare. That is what I imply by ‘sit and neglect’.”
“If you’re an identical,” mentioned Confucius, “then you don’t have any preferences. If you’re remodeled, then you don’t have any extra constants. It’s you who is absolutely the worthy one! Please allow me to observe after you.”
This translation is by Victor Mair, a Penn professor identified for his cranky rants about well-liked misunderstandings of Chinese language characters, so I really feel assured that it is a severe scholarly translation, not just a few random woolly hippie translating on vibes. And the mind-set described on this translated passage, the place one sits and forgets (zuòwàng 坐忘) to be able to “dim my intelligence, depart my type, depart data behind”: that positive seems rather a lot like Dov Baer saying one ought to “neglect oneself completely”, like Eckhart saying “a person ought to flee his senses, flip his powers inward and sink into an oblivion of all issues and himself” – just like the “systematic effort to blot out sense notion, reminiscences, and imaginings of the world of our sensory atmosphere and of corresponding inside states” in Buddhaghosa and the Cloud of Unknowing.
However the place I used to be much more startled to note this sort of mystical forgetting is in Śāntideva. In spite of everything, I did my dissertation on the man! But with my grad-school anti-mystical blinkers on, for an excellent 20 years I had managed to neglect the importance of Bodhicaryāvatāra verse IX.34:
When neither existents nor nonexistents stand earlier than the thoughts, then, as a result of it has no different vacation spot, then the thoughts, with out objects, turns into tranquil.
The Tibetan historians Butön and Tāranātha had no such neglect. They inform the story of Śāntideva’s first reciting the textual content, and say that when he bought to this particular verse, he floated into the air and his physique disappeared, the remaining traces recited by a disembodied voice. I don’t consider that description as a historic account, but it surely’s a robust indicator that the Tibetans considered this verse as a very highly effective non secular realization.
And the content material of that verse, what constitutes the conclusion, is hanging. It’s a few thoughts emptying itself of content material, the place neither existents nor nonexistents stand earlier than it – one would possibly say “leaving data behind”, or “sinking into an oblivion of all issues and himself”. There isn’t a bodily follow of sitting, the way in which there may be in Zhuangzi; the verse is a part of a metaphysical argument, responding to a hypothetical Yogācāra objector. However what seems right here is an deliberately tranquil, objectless mind-set, forsaking distinctions, that positive sounds rather a lot like these described by revered sages in very totally different instances and locations – whether or not it’s Eckhart’s “oblivion of all issues and himself” or the Yoga Sūtras’ “cessation of the fluctuations of consciousness”.
The comparability right here remains to be in comparatively broad strokes; we shouldn’t soar to the conclusion that these experiences are all precisely the identical. Nonetheless, I’m having a more durable and more durable time accepting the conclusion that it’s social development all the way in which down. Individuals in several cultures put totally different cultural meanings and values on rainfall and the way in which it makes crops develop, however all internationally they nonetheless know what rain is and the truth that it makes crops develop. And it does appear that in lots of unconnected components of a minimum of the Outdated World, revered sages see {that a} follow of forgetting issues and self – by no matter means – can lead one to a spiritually helpful mind-set.
