Category Archives: Philosophy and phenomenology

Trees

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Sometimes I feel that Western philosophy, especially since the Enlightenment, has too often come to resemble the conifer plantations common to commercial forestry: useful, yes, and in their way productive, but almost barren, sterile. On the other hand, the philosophies surrounding Taoism – including Chan Buddhism and its Japanese descendant Zen – seem more like old growth forests, rich in natural diversity, fluid, resilient, fertile.

Of course it would be easy to romanticise such a distinction, as often seemed to happen during the early days of Zen’s growth in the West, and its influence on the Beat movement – Jack Kerouac’s The Dharma Bums being the obvious example. But the partitioning of Western academic philosophy into e.g. metaphysics, philosophy of mind, phenomenology and so on contrasts powerfully with more organic, experiential approaches.

I am no philosopher, needless to say, so in a sense I shouldn’t say such things; but I am someone most of whose intentional (c.f. Daniel Dennett’s idea of the intentional stance!) life has been given to a sort or sorts of contemplative practice, and so in a sense to the attempt at living out of some kind of philosophy or another. Over the years it has become clearer to me that “the Tao as an ontological ground… the One, which is natural, spontaneous, eternal, nameless, and indescribable… at once the beginning of all things and the way in which all things pursue their course” (Wikipedia) is just the simplest, least superstitious way to understand what is to be found in just sitting, apophatic meditation, or what you will. (The Sōtō Zen expression shikantaza, untranslatable as it is, is probably the closest I can get!)

So, sitting still, we can see that the self is not a thing but a pattern, not an object but a movement among the leaves, not other than the way things come and go. Just as sitting still is an entirely pointless thing to do, so too the Tao has no purpose. You couldn’t use it for anything, and yet it is before all that is, and holds the source of the farthest stars. Empty, all it is is inexhaustible.

Where all things return

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The river, the Tao, the open ground, the source. These are all words, but no thing. Only things have beginnings, or ends. All things (and that includes cats, and people, and impossibly tiny bugs of all kinds) that exist, are. They have being; if they seem to share nothing else, they share that.

The Tao is no thing. It is not a substance. It is without dimensions, without duration, for you can only measure things; but it is. Isness, in fact, is what it is. It can’t have come from anywhere; there is nowhere it could lead. But it is where all things return, even you and I.

The way is empty,
used, but not used up.
Deep, yes! ancestral
to the ten thousand things.

Blunting edge,
loosing bond,
dimming light,
the way is the dust of the way.

Quiet,
yes, and likely to endure…

Tao te Ching, tr. Ursula le Guin

Patterns in the stream

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Is it not, then, a strange inconsistency and an unnatural paradox that “I” resists change in “me” and in the surrounding universe? For change is not merely a force of destruction. Every form is really a pattern of movement, and every living thing is like the river, which, if it did not flow out, would never have been able to flow in. Life and death are not two opposed forces; they are simply two ways of looking at the same force, for the movement of change is as much the builder as the destroyer. The human body lives because it is a complex of motions, of circulation, respiration, and digestion. To resist change, to try to cling to life, is therefore like holding your breath: if you persist you kill yourself.

Alan Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity

We are, in fact, no thing – in the sense of a static object – at all. We are processes, except that that sounds too sterile, too conceptually fixed; we are swirls, eddies in what happens, in change itself. In that sense the idea of life and death makes no real sense of who or what we are, for we do not begin at birth, or end in death.

Where do I begin and end in space? I have relations to the sun and air which are just as vital parts of my existence as my heart. The movement in which I am a pattern or convolution began incalculable ages before the (conventionally isolated) event called birth, and will continue long after the event called death. Only words and conventions can isolate us from the entirely undefinable something which is everything.

Watts, ibid.

In fact the idea of a fixed and static I (or me, come to that) is entirely an illusion in any case. It is more like a function of memory than an identity. Watts again (ibid.):

In thinking of ourselves as divided into “I” and “me,” we easily forget that consciousness also lives because it is moving. It is as much a part and product of the stream of change as the body and the whole natural world. If you look at it carefully, you will see that consciousness—the thing you call “I”—is really a stream of experiences, of sensations, thoughts, and feelings in constant motion. But because these experiences include memories, we have the impression that “I” is something solid and still, like a tablet upon which life is writing a record.

Yet the “tablet” moves with the writing finger as the river flows along with the ripples, so that memory is like a record written on water—a record, not of graven characters, but of waves stirred into motion by other waves which are called sensations and facts. The difference between “I” and “me” is largely an illusion of memory. In truth, “I” is of the same nature as “me.” It is part of our whole being, just as the head is part of the body. But if this is not realized, “I” and “me,” the head and the body, will feel at odds with each other. “I,” not understanding that it too is part of the stream of change, will try to make sense of the world and experience by attempting to fix it.

It is to this paradox that the whole project of the contemplative life is addressed. To understand the “self” not as a thing but as a pattern in the flow of change is not something that is accessible to the thinking mind; and the only thing to do with the thinking mind is to bring it to an end of itself in practice. Just sitting is the most pointless endeavour: that is the whole point of it. In that stillness, the fractured self (I/me) can begin to heal, and the lovely, fleeting swirl can reveal itself as just the movement of the stream it always was.

Einzelgänger und Einzelgängerin

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Einzelgänger (f. Einzelgängerin) is one of my favourite German compound nouns. It’s usually translated as “loner”, though Google Translate also offers “maverick, rogue, nonconformist”. Literally of course it means “single walker” – and that comes closer to the way I always think of it. There’s almost an eremitical flavour to it…

By nature I seem to be an Einzelgänger myself, though it has taken me a while to develop the courage of my convictions on the matter. In spiritual matters, of course, there is always the strong, and conventionally approved, temptation to declare oneself a member of some religion or other, and of some tradition within that religion. Worse, one may become – especially in most Buddhist traditions – someone’s disciple. I’m not at all certain the guru/disciple (teacher/follower, etc.) relationship is always a healthy one, hallowed though it is by long use. Sam Harris writes:

One of the first obstacles encountered along any contemplative path is the basic uncertainty about the nature of spiritual authority. If there are important truths to be discovered through introspection, there must be better and worse ways to do this—and one should expect to meet a range of experts, novices, fools, and frauds along the way. Of course, charlatans haunt every walk of life. But on spiritual matters, foolishness and fraudulence can be especially difficult to detect. Unfortunately, this is a natural consequence of the subject matter. When learning to play a sport like golf, you can immediately establish the abilities of the teacher, and the teacher can, in turn, evaluate your progress without leaving anything to the imagination. All the relevant facts are in plain view. If you can’t consistently hit the little white ball where you want it to go, you have something to learn from anybody who can. The difference between an expert and a novice is no less stark when it comes to recognizing the illusion of the self. But the qualifications of a teacher and the progress of a student are more difficult to assess.

It may well be that for some people there are those, further along their own chosen path, who can wisely and compassionately provide the most helpful and literally enlightening instruction. Perhaps it depends to some extent on how closely that path happens to conform to one already mapped out – Vajrayana, perhaps, or traditional Advaita Vedanta. But more to the point, I honestly think, is simple temperament.

We are used by now to the way people may be broadly divided into introverts and extroverts, more precisely perhaps into the 16 personalities of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. We may even have stumbled across Elaine Aron and her concept of the highly sensitive person. I think perhaps we should recognise the Einzelgänger or Einzelgängerin as a distinct personality type in themselves. I don’t mean by this a literal loner, nor a hermit in either the religious or the colloquial sense; but a contemplative who finds that they are temperamentally unsuited either for formal membership of some church or meeting, or for the particular relationship of personal discipleship.

I truly believe that I have discovered more, about myself and about the way things are, in the last few years outside of any formal commitment than I had in decades inside. Of course I am getting old, and some might say – with at least a grain of truth perhaps – that this is all a function of age. But it doesn’t feel as though it is just that. It actually feels as though I have finally found the path I should have been treading all along. I only wish – in a manner of speaking, outside the constraints of cause and effect! – that I had had someone to explain this to me long ago: which may be the whole point of writing a blog like this.

Secular or supernatural?

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As I’ve mentioned before on this blog, the word “spirituality” can seem a slippery one. For some, spirituality necessarily implies the supernatural, and our imagined relations with that realm, for good or ill. For others (myself included) it “centers on the ‘deepest values and meanings by which people live'”. (Wikipedia: Spirituality)

Secular spirituality is the adherence to a spiritual philosophy without adherence to a religion. Secular spirituality emphasizes the inner peace of the individual, rather than a relationship with the divine. Secular spirituality is made up of the search for meaning outside of a religious institution; it considers one’s relationship with the self, others, nature, and whatever else one considers to be the ultimate. Often, the goal of secular spirituality is living happily and/or helping others.

According to the American philosopher Robert C. Solomon, “spirituality is coextensive with religion and it is not incompatible with or opposed to science or the scientific outlook. Naturalized spirituality is spirituality without any need for the ‘other‐worldly’. Spirituality is one of the goals, perhaps the ultimate goal, of philosophy.” [Spirituality for the Skeptic: The Thoughtful Love of Life]

(Wikipedia: Secular Spirituality)

So what is the supernatural, and what is wrong with seeking to establish – or recognise – relations with it? The supernatural is generally taken to imply a realm or system transcending material nature, the locale of some kind or kinds of divine, magical, or ghostly entities; revealing, or thought to reveal, some power beyond scientific or natural comprehension. There is, it seems to me, little or no evidence for such a sphere. (Susan Blackmore discusses this at length in Seeing Myself : What Out-of-body Experiences Tell Us About Life, Death and the Mind, chapters 2 and 15 especially.) But spirituality is another matter. The search for meaning, and, in contemplative practice, the direct experience of that meaning, is perhaps the most important thing I have encountered. For the umpteenth time here, I think I need to quote Sam Harris’ brilliant summary:

Spirituality begins with a reverence for the ordinary that can lead us to insights and experiences that are anything but ordinary. And the conventional opposition between humility and hubris has no place here. Yes, the cosmos is vast and appears indifferent to our mortal schemes, but every present moment of consciousness is profound. In subjective terms, each of us is identical to the very principle that brings value to the universe. Experiencing this directly—not merely thinking about it—is the true beginning of spiritual life.

The eagle-eyed among my readers will have already spotted the slightly edited strapline to this blog’s title: “Secular contemplative spirituality…” It just seemed time to make that clear.

Amor fati

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The literal translation of the Latin phrase amor fati is “love of fate”; the Wikipedia article states simply, “It is used to describe an attitude in which one sees everything that happens in one’s life, including suffering and loss, as good or, at the very least, necessary.” Though the phrase has come for many to be associated with the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche, it has its roots in the writings of Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius.

For most of my adult life, I have had the obscure sense that there was a grain in the way things come to be, a natural falling into place that, if yielded to, would ultimately lead to the right end. At times, I have had no words for it, hardly dared to trust my own intuition; at other times I have sought, or been taught, to characterise it as the will of God, and my own role as that of surrender to that will. This, perhaps, is getting closer, as the Christian contemplative tradition has for many years understood, most clearly in the hesychast teachings of the Eastern church.

Over time, though, it has become clearer that – for me, at any rate – its most poignant expression is in the philosophy of the Tao. “The Tao is that from which one cannot deviate; that from which one can deviate is not the Tao.” (The Doctrine of the Mean, as quoted by Alan Watts) He goes on:

However, it must be clear from the start that Tao cannot be understood as “God” in the sense of the ruler, monarch, commander, architect, and maker of the universe. The image of the military and political overlord, or of a creator external to nature, has no place in the idea of Tao.

The great Tao flows… everywhere,

to the left and to the right,

All things depend upon it to exist,

and it does not abandon them.

To its accomplishments it lays no claim.

It loves and nourishes all things,

but does not lord it over them.

[Lao Tzu 34, tr. Watts]

Yet the Tao is most certainly the ultimate reality and energy of the universe, the Ground of being and nonbeing.

The Tao has reality and evidence, but no action and no form. It may be transmitted but cannot be received. It may be attained but cannot be seen. It exists by and through itself. It existed before heaven and earth, and indeed for all eternity. It causes the gods to be divine and the world to be produced. It is above the zenith, but is not high. It is beneath the nadir, but is not low. Though prior to heaven and earth, it is not ancient. Though older than the most ancient, it is not old.

[Chuang Tzu 6, tr. Fung Yu-Lan]

To “accord with the Tao,” then, is to drop back, sit still, pay attention. Cause and effect are the way things happen. They are one thing, really. The separation of the two words is quite artificial. There is a deep peace in knowing this, and more than a peace. Truly to embrace the coming-to-be of what comes to be is to love the way itself; and yet it is not something to be attained, not an achievement or an accomplishment. The path opens of itself. All one can do is be still.

I am a humanist because…

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I am a #HumanistBecause I put human beings and other living things at the centre of my moral outlook, and see the world as a natural place, illuminated by science, reason and human spirituality. The term “atheism” describes an absence of belief in god/s, while humanism describes positively held beliefs on morality, human rights, and the power of humanity to make real, lasting changes for a better society.

Humanists UK have been running a tweeting campaign with the hashtag #HumanistBecause; now, I don’t use the platform formerly known as Twitter, nor Facebook (because I don’t think they are an especially good thing for so many reasons) but I did think this was a good campaign. For what it’s worth, I thought I would post a link here: #HumanistBecause.

A window on what is

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I find the study of phenomenology in my amateur way endlessly fascinating; it is all too easy to follow it down philosophical rabbit-holes, as I have done in several posts recently. But the contemplative life, related though it is to the practice of philosophy (as seen so clearly in some Buddhist schools like Yogācāra) deals in itself not with discursive thought but with direct experience; which is one of the reasons I have for so long been drawn to the Eastern Orthodox Christian tradition of hesychasm, or to the Pure Land Buddhist practice of the Nembutsu – not primarily because of the nature of these practices themselves (repetitive prayer) but because of their extreme simplicity.

Now, phenomenal experience is sometimes characterised as a tunnel (Metzinger), a “benign user illusion” (Dennett, glossed so brilliantly by Susan Blackmore) or a mindstream (Yogācāra). The idea generally seems to be that what we experience from moment to moment is a transparent, essentially functional but ultimately illusory interface that the mind provides between reality and our (equally illusory) experience of a permanent self. Reality itself is far richer and stranger, and the self is “but one of the countless manifestations of the Tao” (Ho (PDF)). To say these things can of course provoke in the reader a myriad of misunderstandings, and to realise them oneself can cause a temporary existential disruption that is horribly like a classical bad trip. Misleading though many of its Perennialist assumptions may be, one of the best accounts of what is at stake must be Aldous Huxley’s The Doors of Perception. Donald Hoffman finds the same position in Erwin Schrödinger:

[Schrödinger’s] position boils down to this: what we call the physical world is the result of a process that Schrödinger called “objectivation”, i.e. the transformation of the one self-world (Atman=Brahman) into something that can be readily conceptualized and studied objectively, hence something that is fully void of subjective qualities. In the theory of conscious agents this amounts to the creation of “interfaces”. Such interfaces simplify what is going on in order to allow you to act efficiently. Good interfaces hide complexity. They do not let you see reality as it is but only as it is useful to you. What you call the “physical world” is merely a highly-simplified representation of non-dual consciousness.

Donald Hoffman, Schrödinger and the Conscious Universe (IAI News)

Last year I attempted, as I periodically do, to explain to myself how this paradoxical relationship between overthinking and contemplative practice could possibly work. I concluded:

I have written elsewhere of the profound stillness I experienced recovering from childhood meningitis; in many ways, my contemplative practice over the last 40-odd years has been an attempt, scattered as it has at times been, to recover that stillness.

These things are nothing new. The Taoist tradition beginning between the 6th and 4th centuries BCE, and the Chan Buddhist writings in the early centuries of the present era, are full of wanderings “cloud hidden, whereabouts unknown” (Chia Tao). And the central tradition of (at least Zen) Buddhist meditation consists of “just sitting” (shikantaza).

The falling away of purposeful action, in itself the very simplest thing, seems one of the hardest to achieve – perhaps because it isn’t an achievement at all. An achievement would be the result of purposeful action. This appears to me to be the snag with so many programmes of practice involving concentration, visualisation, ritual and so on.

The paradox inherent in practice, any practice, only begins to thin out in sheer pointlessness, either the pointlessness of a repeated phrase such as the Jesus Prayer, or the Nembutsu, or of merely sitting still. The power of shikantaza is simply powerlessness, giving up, complete acceptance of what is without looking for anything. When you cease to try to open the doors, they open by themselves, quite quietly. Not looking, the path opens.

Humanism and spirituality

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It is all too easy to find arguments that spirituality is too compromised a word to be used in the context of any discussion of humanism, or indeed atheism. As Marilyn Mason writes,

To sum up, “spiritual” and “spirituality” almost always require explanation if they are to communicate clearly, and so I think that it would be better to abandon them altogether, and leave them to the religious. If we are really talking about emotions or emotional development or emotional literacy, or aesthetic awareness or experiences, or love of nature or humanity, or love and goodness, or hope, why just not say so?

On the other hand, many would argue that spirituality is far too useful a word to be discarded merely because it has uncomfortable associations for some people. Jeremy Rodell:

Even if we accept that Humanists have a “spiritual dimension”, it can still be argued that we shouldn’t use the word “spiritual” because of its religious connotations and lack of clear definition.

The snag is that no other word will do as well if we want to communicate what we mean. Terms such as emotion, aesthetic awareness, love of nature, or simply love, goodness or hope simply don’t do the job. Just because it’s used for everything from the experiences of Catholic nuns to New Age gurus, doesn’t mean it’s off-limits to us. In fact atheists are uniquely positioned to understand that all of these people are really talking about the same thing, but they interpret it through the filter of their (to us irrational) beliefs. We shouldn’t allow the religious to ban a useful word from our vocabulary.

André Comte-Sponville believes that it is vital to reclaim the word:

Spirituality is far too important a matter to be left to fundamentalists. Tolerance is far too precious a possession to be confused with indifference or laxity. Nothing could be worse than letting ourselves be deadlocked into a confrontation between the fanaticism of some – no matter what religion they lay claim to – and the nihilism of others. Far better to combat both, without either conflating them or falling into their respective traps. The name of this combat is the separation of church and state. It remains for atheists to invent the spirituality that goes with it…

Atheists have as much spirit as everyone else; why would they be less interested in spiritual life?

The purpose of this blog is, as its subtitle suggests, to discuss contemplative spirituality and practice, so you would expect me to come down on the side of retaining such a useful word. But there is a more important reason to be writing this post, I think.

Sam Harris, in a passage I’ve quoted here often before, writes:

I share the concern, expressed by many atheists, that the terms spiritual and mystical are often used to make claims not merely about the quality of certain experiences but about reality at large. Far too often, these words are invoked in support of religious beliefs that are morally and intellectually grotesque. Consequently, many of my fellow atheists consider all talk of spirituality to be a sign of mental illness, conscious imposture, or self-deception. This is a problem, because millions of people have had experiences for which spiritual and mystical seem the only terms available. Many of the beliefs people form on the basis of these experiences are false. But the fact [is] that… [t]he human mind does, in fact, contain vast expanses that few of us ever discover.

Later in the same book, he continues:

Spirituality begins with a reverence for the ordinary that can lead us to insights and experiences that are anything but ordinary. And the conventional opposition between humility and hubris has no place here. Yes, the cosmos is vast and appears indifferent to our mortal schemes, but every present moment of consciousness is profound. In subjective terms, each of us is identical to the very principle that brings value to the universe. Experiencing this directly—not merely thinking about it—is the true beginning of spiritual life.

Susan Blackmore (an atheist and patron of Humanists UK) has written an excellent little book, Consciousness, A Very Short Introduction, where she puts her finger on precisely the point at issue here:

What is consciousness? This may sound like a simple question but it is not. Consciousness is at once the most obvious and the most difficult thing we can investigate. We seem either to have to use consciousness to investigate itself, which is a slightly weird idea, or to have to extricate ourselves from the very thing we want to study. No wonder philosophers have struggled for millennia with the concept; and for long periods scientists refused even to study it. The good news is that, in the 21st century, ‘consciousness studies’ is thriving. Psychology, biology, and neuroscience have reached the point where they are ready to confront some tricky questions: What does consciousness do? Could we have evolved without it? Is consciousness an illusion? What do we mean by consciousness, anyway?

This does not mean that the mystery has gone away. Indeed, it is as deep as ever. The difference now is that we know enough about the brain to confront the problem head on. How on earth can the electrical firing of millions of tiny brain cells produce this—my private, subjective, conscious experience?

This is the question which underlies all my own searching, and while I am delighted to leave the neuroscience to the professionals – like Blackmore and Harris – those of us who have devoted a large part of our lives to contemplative practice need to offer our small contributions, from the inside, as it were. It is not only relevant, I think, to contribute our moments of vastness and wonder, but to bear witness to the daily process of insight that our steady work entails.

Earlier this year I wrote,

Sitting quietly – just noticing whatever appears in the field of consciousness, without having to label it or evaluate it, without having to either focus one’s attention on it or wrench one’s attention away from it – is perhaps the freshest, most peaceful thing one can do. There is no technique to adhere to, no doctrine to conform to: what is, is, and there’s nothing that needs to be done about it…

The practice of choiceless awareness… that I have been describing is not a kind of daydream, or an unusual state of consciousness even: it is a quiet but exceptionally alert quality of mind, without straining after attention either…

This quality of stillness, of just noticing, is such a simple thing that it would be easy to dismiss it as inconsequential. It is not. It seems important, somehow… that someone is prepared to do this, and perhaps to ‘fess up to doing it on a regular basis. Maybe someone has to…

Atheism and metaphysics

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Metaphysics can seem to be a rather slippery term. On the one hand it can be taken to be “the study of the most general features of reality, including existence, objects and their properties, possibility and necessity, space and time, change, causation, and the relation between matter and mind” (Wikipedia) but on the other, being the study of, in one sense, how things come to be, it is too easily conflated with religious creation myths, or with cosmologies intricately involved with religious doctrines of causality and phenomenology.

But “according to modern scientific knowledge, mental events and processes presuppose the existence and reality of material things. Thinking, for example, implies the existence of a bird or a mammal with a brain. Or a momentary event, such as the proverbial cat sitting on the mat, presupposes the real existence of the cat, the mat, the earth under the mat, as well as a real human observer of the event.” (Morris)

But for me, that which is intended by using the term “ground of being” (Tillich) is precisely that which can be known directly as “no-thing” in contemplation. I am not talking here of an idea, a common factor in a Huxley-like perennial philosophy, but of a repeated and very direct experience of what Quakers have referred to as “the light”, as described for instance by Emilia Fogelklou (she writes in the third person): “Without visions or the sound of speech or human mediation, in exceptionally wide-awake consciousness, she experienced the great releasing inward wonder. It was as if the ’empty shell’ burst. All the weight and agony, all the feeling of unreality dropped away. She perceived living goodness, joy, light like a clear, irradiating, uplifting, enfolding, unequivocal reality from deep inside.”

This kind of experience can of course not be described terribly clearly, nor can it be communicated directly, and any attempt is likely to fall into superlatives such as Fogelklou’s. But the experience is as real and direct as any sensory experience, perhaps more so, and it has a curious undeniable quality, a great lifting and healing of the heart. I use Tillich’s term for it not because I have any particular attraction for that as an idea, but because it seems to get closer than anything else I have read to the encounter itself. There is a visual analogue that sometimes occurs in meditation – and which can lead to the experience I am trying to describe – of the visual field itself, seen through closed eyes, extending suddenly through and beneath what ought to have been the observing mind, but which is no longer there.

Now, I have long enough experience in contemplative practice to know that experiences are not things to hang onto, still less to seek after, and I would not be happy if any words of mine sent anyone on a quest for experiential chimeras. Yet the experience itself, with all its indelible affect, has occurred so often over the years, since childhood, that I find myself referring to it over and over again, and it remains for me a kind of lodestone.

Are these metaphysical experiences, insights? Are they therefore somehow at variance with the fundamental insight of atheism that the idea of another, supernatural, layer to existence, within which the human self can somehow transcend, or survive, the electrochemical apparatus of the central nervous system, is illusory? I don’t think so. Daniel Dennett’s insight into human phenomenology as a “benign user illusion” coincides well with the Buddhist conception of things as empty of intrinsic existence (śūnyatā) – all of which seems to me to be a formal expression of what I have come to experience as “no-thing.” Andreas Müller:

All there is is oneness. The unknown. No-thing appearing as it appears. It is already whole. It is already complete. That which seems to be missing – wholeness – is not lost…

What remains is indescribable. It is indescribable simply because there is no one left who can describe it. There is no one left who experiences oneness (which, by the way, would then not be oneness anymore) and could possibly know how that is. Yes, there is no one left who knows how it is. That is freedom.