Dwelling in a spiritual womb...

Buddha statue, Sarnath (photo: Peter Bredeveld)

Unlike Platonism and Jainism, Buddhism, initially, didn’t believe in a self (ātman), a soul (jiva), a person (pudgala). Jainism and Buddhism believed in the existence of a demiurge (Brāhma) and gods (“daimons”), but these were, initially, not required for the liberation of the cycle of existence. Jainism and Buddhism, initially, didn’t believe in the existence of a “God” (Highest Reality, paramārtha, diversely defined). Their object was one of purification, and there was no final (re)unification or identification with the Highest Reality. Platonism (like Pythagorism), Jainism and Buddhism believed in metempsychosis and the cycle of becoming. All three shared the goal of freeing “themselves” from the body they were born into, or of stripping “themselves” of karma, kleśas and other defaults (s. mala), and thus chasing ignorance (avidyā, ajñāna) through knowledge (jñāna). Buddhism, initially, wasn’t clear about “what” exactly freed “itself” from the body and from the cycle of becoming. The Buddha would probably have said (like in the Phagguna Sutta), that to ask “what” is freed was not the proper question… For Platonism, Jainism and Buddhism “manliness” (g. andreia, s. pauruṣa), virtues (l. virtus), and ascesis (willpower) were essential associated “male” qualities required to free oneself. For Platonism, Jainism and Buddhism, the “liberated” (souls?) can be found in “heavenly realms”. In Jainism, liberated souls that have achieved mokṣa (liberation) from the cycle of becoming are called “siddhas” and dwell in the highest heavenly realms. Emancipation (mokṣa) is essentially achieved through knowledge (g. episteme, s. jñāna), and as such that knowledge can be called gnosis.

In Kashmir Śaivism, “Lack of knowledge” (s. a-jñāna) is knowledge (jñāna) covered by defaults (āṇava-mala), like the tathāgatagarbha is covered with veils (āvaraṇa). Lack of knowledge can be of two types: spiritual ignorance (pauruṣa-ajñāna) and intellectual lack of knowledge (bauddha-ajñāna). Intellectual lack of knowledge is remedied through acquiring intellectual knowledge. Lack of knowledge of the true Self (Pauruṣa-ajñāna) is remedied through knowledge of the true Self (Puruṣa-jñāna).

“The spiritual [pauruṣa] processes such as dīkṣā (initiation) and the like lead to the removal of the spiritual ignorance [pauruṣa-ajñāna]. In the presence of intellectual ignorance, the removal of spiritual ignorance is unable to produce jivanmukti or emancipation [of the soul] during life. True emancipation in this case takes place on the fall of the present body. If, however, in the meantime the intellectual ignorance has disappeared on account of the rise of intellectual enlightenment through yoga and other processes, the soul attains to a sense of its identity with the Supreme Reality and consequent emancipation in that very condition of embodied existence (i.e. jivanmukti).[1]

In Buddhism, there initially was no “emancipated soul” that continued to live in a body until the death of that body. The emancipation from the identification with the five aggregates of clinging (skandhas) was achieved through getting rid of ten fetters (saṃyojana) chaining sentient beings to becoming (saṃsāra). Such an individual, who can be seen as a jivanmukti was called an arhat. After death there would be no more becoming (parinirvāṇa) for an arhat.

For Kashmir Śaivism and other monist/theistic traditions, identification with the Highest Reality is the goal. Jivanmukti is a saint with a liberated (mukti) soul (jiva), a “disembodied” soul or “person”, capable of ascension to the “heavenly realms”. In Yogācāra, Tathāgatagarbha and Tantric Buddhism, the “Great Self” can fulfill everything for which a soul, a self, a person (pudgala), or puruṣa would be required. Tantric Buddhism gives access to initiations (abhiṣeka, dīkṣā etc.) and their progressive stages (krama) of deification or “siddhafication” through sādhana.

Bodhisattvayāna makes a distinction between the nirvāṇa with remainder (five skandhas, and vāsanā, sopadiśeṣa-nirvāṇa) and the final nirvāṇa without remainder (nir-upadhiśeṣa-nirvāṇa) of the arhats, and the non-established nirvāṇa (apratiṣṭhāna-nirvāṇa) of bodhisattvas[2], achieved through the bodhisattva practice of apratiṣṭhāna. Unlike the original dualistic nirvāṇa (as the emancipation from becoming, saṃsāra), this is a non-dualistic nirvāṇa, also called “mahānirvāṇa” obtained through non-dualistic practice.

Yet, the Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra[3] goes much farther than the practice of non-establishment (apratiṣṭhāna). It brings in a “Great Self”, which is far more than a non-dualist transcendence of both self and non-self. A Monist (“emptiness-certified”) Self, that remains dualistically “misogynistic”.

“The text first recites a screed of misogynist complaints against women: they are a cause for all things evil (chos ma yin pa, *adharma); their lust, especially, is insatiable; they “guzzle” (’thung bar byed pa) the wealth, desires, and vital fluids of men. Basing itself on an apparent equation between masculinity and tathāgatagarbha, the text then claims that a pious follower will reject womanhood and seek masculinity. The gender juggling of the resulting passage is especially mind-bending if we keep the primary meaning of garbha [womb] at the forefront of our minds:

“Thus, gentle sir, when you have heard this *Mahāparinirvāṇa, you should adopt a frame of mind that is not attached to womanhood; you should adopt a frame of mind [conducive to] transformation to masculinity (skyes pa’i rang bzhin, *pauruṣam). This is because this sūtra is a complete instruction in tathāgatagarbha-[cum-]masculinity (*pauruṣatathāgatagarbha-saṃdarśana). [??] is not to be taken as masculinity(??); it is tathāgatagarbha that is the “man” (*puruṣa). Any men (*puruṣa) that there are in the world, because they do not know that there is tathāgatagarbha in the/their self (bdag nyid la), are not [in fact] masculine. I [the Buddha, who is speaking] say that anyone who does not know tathāgatagarbha is a woman. Those who do know that there is tathāgatagarbha in the/their self, by contrast – they are to be counted among the supreme men (skyes pa’i mchog, *puruṣottama); even though they be women, they are to be counted among the supreme men.”

Thus, by the logic of the text, the ultimate man is one who knows that he has a “womb” or “embryo” in his body (a better kind of “womb”, of course). Not only that, but should a mere woman be lucky enough to win the same insight, she too will earn the honour of being considered an ultimate man!" (Michael Radich, 2015[4])

A “spiritual womb”, in which a Tathāgata dwells, is better than a “flesh womb”. The spiritual womb offers the possibility to free oneself from reincarnation in another flesh body, or a body in one of the realms of saṃsāra, and to eternally dwell in the highest “heavenly realms” in a luminous god-like body. The good news (evangelion) of the Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra is that the Buddha didn’t really die. He wasn’t even biologically conceived and born. All this (the twelve great deeds) was merely a show (see Fascicle IV, Blum 2013) put up for the sake of sentient beings. “Buddhas are not really as they appear” (Radich).

“Radich suggests that within this frame, tathāgatagarbha doctrine was articulated as just such a soteriologically-oriented positive substitute for one particularly troubling dimension of the Buddha’s ordinary human embodiment: the fact that he had a flesh-and-blood human mother, with all the distressing impurity and degradation which that fact implied.” (Michael Radich, 2015, Introduction by Michael Zimmermann)

Michael Radich, argues for a “docetic[5] Buddhology” and offers a perspective on how some early Mahāyāna Buddhists might have struggled with reconciling the human and divine aspects of the Buddha. The concept of Tathāgatagarbha was one of the bridges to an eternal divine Buddha. “The Tathāgata is permanently abiding and immutable” (Blum, 2013). A (future) Buddha is not born on earth, he manifests himself as such (Mahāvastu), it’s all a show, although the misogyny seems pretty real...

“I have also manifested myself in Jambudvīpa as someone who attained buddhahood in a woman’s body. The many people who saw this all spoke of how rare it was for a woman to be able to attain anuttarā samyaksaṃbodhi. Tathāgatas cannot accept a woman’s body in perpetuity but out of a desire to tame a great many living beings they do manifest themselves in female form. Out of empathy for all living beings I have also appeared in various colored forms.” (Blum, 2013)

PM Modi, "not biologically born"

The Buddha of Yogācāra Buddhism, is one that teaches in Sanskrit to a “gṛhapati” elite (“A Few Good Men”), such as in the Ugraparipṛcchā (t. ‘phags pa drag shul can gyis zhus pa chen po’i mdo). often brahmins and kṣatriyas, with a strong conscience of hierarchy, caste and purity, ready to receive teachings adapted to their status and conditioning. They’re not into that non-self and impermanence nonsense. They prefer a Buddha who is a divine avatar, merely appearing here as a manifestation, like Narendra Modi[6]… “not biological” and “sent by God”.

“I have also manifested such things as liquid and solid defecation, and inhaling and exhaling. Those around me expected me to have liquid and solid defecation and inhaling and exhaling; however, what has been attained in this body is a state entirely without such things as defecation or breathing. I was only displaying this behavior because it was in accordance with the ways of the world. I also showed myself accepting faithful donations [of food] from people, even though this body of mine has no hunger or thirst at all. I put on this display to conform to the world.” (Blum, 2013)

Instead of becoming arhats and attaining a nirvāṇa initially with remainder, and, after death, without remainder, and transcending even a non-dualist non-established nirvāṇa, followers of Yogācāra and Tathāgatagarbha etc. can themselves become like a “permanently abiding and immutable” divine Buddha, dwelling in "spiritual wombs", merely manifesting themselves in saṃsāra to save others and help them become divine Buddhas too, until nobody will be biologically conceived and born anymore.

Birth of Karmapa Thaye Dorje's son (photo: Karmapa.org)

What would be the real difference between this Buddhism and e.g. Platonism or other theistic traditions? I personally can’t see any, apart from Buddhist history, culture, jargon and iconography. Because “the ways of the world” are such, Buddhas will always "manifest" showing “the ways of the world”, such as hierarchy, inequality, misogyny, slavery, exploitation, tyrannie, capital punishment etc. etc., often associated with “manliness”, and they will go along, and manifest as anything it takes to influence those in power. Their compassion boils down to saving sentient beings from saṃsāra and from their impermanent mortal bodies, and offering them the opportunity to return to their “soul's original home and final destination [ ] among the gods in perpetual contemplation of intelligible reality”. How would we know this compassion genuinely bears fruit and is justified to put all its bets on the afterlife? I will end with a quote by the Buddha from the Aggaññasutta.

“Actually, Vāseṭṭha, the brahmins are forgetting their tradition when they say this to you. For brahmin women are seen menstruating, being pregnant, giving birth, and breast-feeding. Yet even though they’re born from a brahmin womb they say: ‘Only brahmins are the best class; other classes are inferior. Only brahmins are the light class; other classes are dark. Only brahmins are purified, not others. Only brahmins are Brahmā’s true-born sons, born from his mouth, born of Brahmā, created by Brahmā, heirs of Brahmā.’ They misrepresent the brahmins, speak falsely, and create much wickedness." (tr. Bhikkhu Sujato)

***

[1] “When the Supreme Reality by the free exercise of its own autonomous will elects to submerge its pervasion of identity and adopts differentiation of itself, its powers of will, and the like, though unrestricted, appear to be restricted and it appears in the role of an individuated self caught in the meshes of transmigration." The selfchosen diminution of will-power is the imperfection called aṇava-mala -the dirt inducing atomicity. Under its influence the unchecked freedom of will suffers attrition in scope and intensity and induces a sense of incompleteness and imperfection (apūrṇammanyata). When the infinite knowledge-power of the Supreme Reality likewise undergoes progressive contraction and diminution it loses the character of omniscience and deteriorates into a limited capacity for knowledge of limited objects, and the climax is reached when the knowledge-power is reduced to the status of the inner sense (the mind) and the external senses of cognition. The consequence of this stage is the appearance of objects as numerically different from the subject and this is called mayiya-mala.” From: Studies in Jaina Philosophy, Nathmal Tatia, Jain Cultural Research Society

[2] t. Mi gnas pa'i mya ngan las 'das pa. Also see Asanga's Mahāyānasaṃgraha.
There apparently is a fourth nirvāṇa called “natural nirvāṇa”.

[3] BDK English Tripiṭaka Series, THE NIRVANA SŪTRA (MAHĀPARINIRVĀṆA-SŪTRA) VOLUME I (Taishō Volume 12, Number 374) Translated from the Chinese by Mark L. Blum, BDK America, Inc. 2013

[4] Radich, M. (2015). The "Mahāparinirvāṇa-mahāsūtra" and the Emergence of "Tathāgatagarbha" Doctrine (Bde. 5). Hamburg University Press. https://hup.sub.uni-hamburg.de/oa-pub/catalog/book/221

[5] Docetic: Derived from the Greek word "dokein" meaning "to seem" or "to appear." Docetism is a general term used in religious studies to describe beliefs that a divine being didn't truly experience the limitations of the physical world.

[6] “Until my mother was alive, I used to think I was born biologically. After her demise, when I look at my experiences, I am convinced that I was sent by god. This strength is not from my body. It has been given to me by god. That's why god also gave me the ability, strength, pure heartedness, and also the inspiration to do this. I'm nothing but an instrument that god has sent.” The News Minute, 23 May 2024

Realist Revolution: "How the Occult Transformed Philosophy & Spirituality"

"The Great Chain of Being"

A recent video about a “Realist revolution” by Dr. Justin Sledge of Esoterica drew my attention. “How the Occult Transformed Philosophy & Spirituality”, in the West, we could add. One could argue that similar developments on smaller local scales may have taken place in the East, although the Platonic corpus had never disappeared from the East, nor the “ancient theology”, nor the Kabbalah, see below. I will only transcribe an edited form of the parts of Dr. Sledge’s video that I found most relevant for this blog. I am thinking in particular of the power transition in Indo-Tibetan Buddhism from Prajñāpāramitā and Madhyamaka, via Buddhist “scholasticism” to Yogācāra, Tantra to Mahāmudrā and Dzogchen. From “Nominalism” to “Metaphysical Realism”, and from a realm of becoming to a realm of being, with a Great chain of being, a chain of Light.

“Following centuries where Platonic Forms and Ideas were taken to be eternally real, the middle ages saw a dramatic shift. And, by the mid-14th century, metaphysical categories were taken to be mere words, names - hence, Nominalism. However, this philosophical triumph of Nominalism would be short lived. In the mid-15th century, discoveries and translations of ancient texts would give rise to a Realist Revolution led by Platonism, Hermeticism and Kabbalah. This episode explores how this Realism brought on occult philosophy transformed western philosophy and spirituality.

Perhaps all Western philosophical problems emerged, the positions of Plato and Aristotle, in this case, in what we call the problem of the universals, language and logic, especially categorical logics. [ ] To what degree the language that I use to perform that categorization has any metaphysical impact on either the particular or the universal. Plato famously answered that, at least some universals are, in fact, metaphysically real. Those of course, are the forms, the ideas of Platonic philosophy.

These forms were witnessed by our pre-carnate souls largely forgotten when we got incarnated, and they're remembered as we come to learn new things. Thus, you actually don't learn geometry, but your soul remembers it as you study it in this life. Mathematical entities, and especially conceptual entities like goodness, justice and beauty exist as general categories in a perfect eternal realm of being. We live in the realm of becoming in which human beings interact through the organ, as it were, of their souls, for Plato. The soul is an organ of perception. Specifically the perception of the forms. Aristotle thought that the platonic forms, the universal categories are simply conventional names for sets of things. These two positions set the typologies of how to deal with the problem of universals down to this day.

Plato's position is that some abstract objects have their own independent existence, and those categories are in fact real entities just as real as you and I. Perhaps even more real than you and I. This position is known as realism, and those entities are variably said to exist in their own realm, in the mind of God, or in what we might call “moderate realism”, as found in folks like Don Scotus, where they actually exist as sort of concepts within the human mind, but they're still in there and they're still real.

On the other hand Nominalism is a position that universal categories or abstract objects like numbers exist in name only. From the Latin nomen. Categories, universals and mathematical objects were simply conventions of language and logic (t. tha snyed bden pa), by which we communicate ideas or perform mathematical and logical functions. Both Aristotle and Plato were more or less conventionalists when it came to the philosophy of language, which is just to say that they held that language was basically of no intrinsic, metaphysical bearing on either the particulars or the universals. Plato does sometimes seem to suggest that the language has its origins in natural science, which means they're not totally arbitrary in the way.

By the early European Middle Ages, it was Platonism that appeared to be the front-runner for philosophical dominance: Saint Augustine, Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite and John Scotus Eriugena, not to be confused with the later Duns Scotus. We're all much more in the camp of Plato. And therefore, something of the Realist camp, typically thinking that the forms were literally thoughts and the perfect ideas of God's mind.

Further language itself is considered to be a kind of divine gift. Linking human beings, with God being part of that whole, we're created in the Divine image. However, that Platonic bend was not the last. Attacks, starting with Abelard, and the translation projects of Aristotle from Arabic, especially as those translations were shaded as we might say with the commentaries of Averroes. The 12th and 13th century saw a dramatic shift to Nominalism, and while there were many moderate Realist holdouts, scholastics like Thomas Aquinas and Dun Scotus did hold on to a moderate form of Realism. Again with those categories existing really, but as mental objects primarily.

William of Ockham would lead a full frontal assault on the last vestiges of Realism with Nominalism or Terminism, flowering. After the mid 14th century Platonic Realism had basically been crushed. Occult practice would have gone on through that period ignoring the scholastic debates. Occult practitioners were concerned with experimental results, and not with metaphysical arguments. Dozens of magical manuals proliferated through the Latin West during this period. An intellectually rich occult philosophy can’t flourish under Nominalism, but three factors would boost it.

Firstly, the rediscovery and publication at the very heart of Metaphysical Realism, the works of Plato and his intellectual and spiritual inheritors, including Plotinus, Porphyrus, Iamblichus etc. Through the mid-15th century Marsilio Ficino (1433-1499) would translate the Platonic corpus along with the works of Neoplatonists. The recent invention of the printing press would help spread these. Metaphysical Realism was back on the agenda.

Secondly, and indirectly thanks to Marsilio Ficino again, was the arrival of the Corpus Hermeticum. It was believed to be the recovery of profoundly primeval wisdom. The pervasive belief was that ancient wisdom was nearer to the Divine source of all knowledge and was therefore more pure and more true. The Corpus Hermeticum was thought to be the teachings of the ancient Egyptian Sage Hermes, Trismegistus, Hermes, the Thrice great, sometimes heralded as the teacher of Moses himself. The Prisca theologia ("ancient theology") proved decisive over and against scholastic philosophy. Because insofar as this ancient wisdom was simply nearer to the Divine truth. It could simply undermine the entire scholastic corpus, without any argument, because it was more ancient and pure.

Hermetic ideas such as the semi-divine nature of the human being, the macro-microcosm relation and an overall warming to theurgical and magical practices would also begin to transform European spiritual and intellectual life.

Abracadabra, I create as I speak (photo Dr. Justin Sledge)

Thirdly, Metaphysical Realism would get an unlikely boost from Kabbalah, that primarily developed in the 13th century in Spain and in France though inheriting important texts from late Antiquity Kabbalah. The indigenous Jewish Realism of the Kabbalah’s came about through Divine speech. The Hebrew language was no mere convention, it was a sacred language. The Torah had God speaking creation into being in texts like the Sefer Yetzirah, expounded upon and systematized into both a cosmogonic theory but also a magical practice. Thought and language are bound up with Divine activity in the mind of Kabbalah such that the human mind is said to commune with the Divine Mind through super-rational prophetic intercourse performed at some level in Hebrew and through Hebrew. For the first few centuries the development the Kabbalah was a highly esoteric literature and practice known only to a very tiny group of rabbinical elites. But at exactly this time period in the mid 15th century when Platonism and Hermeticism were also reemerging, Pico della Mirandola (1463-1494) would spearhead the introduction of Kabbalah into the wider European intellectual and spiritual landscape. He did this by employing several converted Jews. Pico would orchestrate translations of several key Kabbalistic texts arguing that the Kabbalah too contained primeval truths, necessary to restore the "proper dignity" to the human being (Oration on the Dignity of Man, 1486)  so much so that magic and Kabbalah were the best proofs of the truth of Christianity, over and against the dominant scholastic Paradigm and the scholastic philosophy. In fact Pico argued that through magic and Kabbalah was it possible for humans to become truly exalted, transforming themselves into something virtually angelic in character.

"The works of Christ could not be done either by the way of magic or by the way of the Kabbalah .

The miracles of Christ, not by reason of the thing done, but by reason of the manner of doing them, are the most certain proof of his divinity.

There is no science that certifies us more about the divinity of Christ: magic and Kabbalah."

Pico's argument (photo Dr. Justin Sledge)

In a sense, by the start of the 15th century some form of Nominalism was the dominant answer to the problem of universals, with a largely conventionalist theory of language. Then within the span of just about a generation, the Platonic Corpus including neoplatonism, the Prisca theologia in the form of the Corpus Hermeticum and the rise of Kabbalah in the form of Christian Kabbalah had united into what would become the foundations of modern Western esotericism, and a absolute spear against Nominalism which was triumphant only decades earlier. Nominalism was now facing a profound intellectual existential crisis and the effects were immediate. Ficino's magical practice adopted a Great chain of being model rather than the one in which the sublunar world was fundamentally distinct from the world of the celestial realm thus linking the human being with the Divine in a way that was almost blasphemous in the world of scholastic thinking which embraced a hardcore Aristotelian world. The Great chain of being broke that world.”

I recommend to watch the whole video, because Dr. Sledge makes some interesting connections with modern times. "Creating through speech" (Abracadabra) has the wind in the sails again... with Golems (chatbots) all over the place