Zen Buddhism vs Advaita Vedanta

[abaddon]

... In the Western tradition it's less about coming to terms with reality, and more about understanding reality...

And controlling nature. Western thought is pessimistic because it views nature as a dangerous mess that needs to be domesticated to maximize human comforts. The eastern spiritualities we're talking about tend to be much more optimistic, in suggesting that if humans will trust nature better rather than force everything to suit their delusional desires, then things work out more serendipitously.

... Zen and Advaita are great but you're missing a whole side of it if you don't understand the actual mechanics of the world as well.

I don't know. I think whatever the mechanics of nature, it doesn't matter from the POV of the phenomenology of experience. So long as I'm aware and experiencing "the world" (whatever it is), then I can enjoy that, or not, according to the quality of my awareness.

The one thing we know, that's true regardless of whatever the material causes, is our subjective experience. If "the world" is atoms, a simulation, or whatever, the experience of it is what it is. Getting deeply and compassionately acquainted with that... in love with it even... is key to have a high-quality subjective experience (and thus an improved world, since the inner-outer split is an illusion).

I'm going to expand on this mainly to draw out my own thoughts.

If philosophies like Zen and Vedanta are going to have any real utility I think a person needs to have an analytic understanding of them on some level. That seems counter-intuitive because stopping the analytic mind is the point, but I don't think you can get to that state without the analytic realization of the point.

This is why for so many people religious philosophies and doctrines never reach beyond an intellectual exercise. They think and think about it but never really get it, so are never able to move beyond the initial analytic mindset. Which explains why I believe the understanding part of the equation is essential.

I'm not sure what the difference is between "analytic understanding" and unhelpful intellectualizing.

Maybe what you're getting at is the need for greater clarity? People easily get the wrong impression of Zen because there's a lot of jargon and hyperbole in it.

Anything pre-21st century will have some problems of clarity. The increased clarity has happened among the 2nd and 3rd generations of writers explicating them to a western mindset.

I also have lost interest in the belief-systems. I looked for a "baby in the bathwater" of religions and think I found it. And it's basically the same that Sam Harris found in his studies of Dzogchen (a school within Tibetan Buddhism). My interest now is more to do with the phenomenology of consciousness. It feels to me like a natural progression after studying Zen for a while. It feels like going deeper into the heart of what "the point" is in these eastern spiritualities.

 

[steve_bank]

Asians (aka eastern) are no more or less optimistic than western thought. History shows a very long history of bloody conflct an conflict and consumption. The idea that people in the east are walking around in a superior state possessing a special wisdom is myth and a false narrative. The history of India and China. The Indian caste system based on a tradition still exists.

If you are born low caste it is because f bad karma in a previous incarnation. The same kind of Christian nonsense.

 

[abaddon]

Asians (aka eastern) are no more or less optimistic than western thought....

Your post doesn't relate to anything I said. I wasn't comparing "asians" or "people in the east" against the west.

 

[rousseau]

And controlling nature. Western thought is pessimistic because it views nature as a dangerous mess that needs to be domesticated to maximize human comforts. The eastern spiritualities we're talking about tend to be much more optimistic, in suggesting that if humans will trust nature better rather than force everything to suit their delusional desires, then things work out more serendipitously.


I don't know. I think whatever the mechanics of nature, it doesn't matter from the POV of the phenomenology of experience. So long as I'm aware and experiencing "the world" (whatever it is), then I can enjoy that, or not, according to the quality of my awareness.

The one thing we know, that's true regardless of whatever the material causes, is our subjective experience. If "the world" is atoms, a simulation, or whatever, the ex Getting deeply and compassionately acquainted with it... in love with it even... is key to have a high-quality subjective experience (and thus an improved world, since the inner-outer split is an illusion).

I'm going to expand on this mainly to draw out my own thoughts.

If philosophies like Zen and Vedanta are going to have any real utility I think a person needs to have an analytic understanding of them on some level. That seems counter-intuitive because stopping the analytic mind is the point, but I don't think you can get to that state without the analytic realization of the point.

This is why for so many people religious philosophies and doctrines never reach beyond an intellectual exercise. They think and think about it but never really get it, so are never able to move beyond the initial analytic mindset. Which explains why I believe the understanding part of the equation is essential.

I'm not sure what the difference is between "analytic understanding" and unhelpful intellectualizing.

Maybe what you're getting at is the need for greater clarity? People easily get the wrong impression of Zen because there's a lot of jargon and hyperbole in it.

Anything pre-21st century will have some problems of clarity. The increased clarity has happened among the 2nd and 3rd generations of writers explicating them to a western mindset.

I also have lost interest in the belief-systems. I looked for a "baby in the bathwater" of religions and think I found it. And it's basically the same that Sam Harris found in his studies of Dzogchen (a school within Tibetan Buddhism). My interest now is more to do with the phenomenology of consciousness. It feels to me like a natural progression after studying Zen for a while. It feels like going deeper into the heart of what "the point" is in these eastern spiritualities.

That sounds about right. When I read D.T. Suzuki for a time there was a big emphasis on moving beyond intellectualizing, but to me this is a bit misleading. Yes, the goal is to move beyond, but I don't see any vehicle other than the intellect that will get you there.

But more than that I think there is something interesting and meaningful about understanding the actual mechanics of the world, or at least having an awareness that our relationship with reality is contingent on what we know. For one, it leads to greater harmony with those around us. If I know, on a fundamental level, how to contribute good feelings to my friends and family in the way I behave, then my life is intrinsically more positive overall. Contrast this to living under a number of illusions and stumbling through circumstances and situations.

Secondly, it's important not to forget that survival is a real and serious concern in our lives. To live happy and healthy lives we actually have to make good decisions based on wisdom and know-how. As positive as some religious thought can be, I think there is a risk in letting it be a crutch and forgetting to take pains to actually understand, learn, and improve ourselves. I often see people land on comforting ontologies in a way that is actually avoidant, and which distracts from solving real problems in their lives.

So to me a knowledge-based approach is about living effectively, building better relationships, being healthier, more secure. Where the more mental / psychological approach is a kind of round-about way of achieving the same goal. Each have a synergistic effect on the other: if we're physically healthy we'll be more mentally healthy, and vice versa.

 

[abaddon]

rousseau,

Sometimes I'm in a wordless state of mind, nearly pure sensing. The whole world's like "one great pearl" (as a Zen koan puts it) ... it's unified so there's no "this tree, that bush, those flowers" ... No this-and-that as a motley collection of things piled up in the scenery around a "me" who also is a separate and distinct thing that's peering out through eyeballs at those assorted "things" that are "out there" in the "external world".

But then, inevitably, I will think "that's a beautiful tree", and the unity is instantly shattered. It's all still a very pleasant experience, everything's lovely (and an assortment of other such judgments by "the intellect"). But it's not quite the same as before. There's that pervasive sense of lack (duhkha) again, that's inescapably present in a mind that feels separate and thus a little antagonized by that world "out there". Even in the most pleasant, but "dualistic", experiences it's there.

Slicing and dicing reality with intellect is useful and necessary, but it sure as fuck isn't the whole story. Nor could that intellectualizing ever realize the whole story since it's inherently a reductive process. The (conceptual) map can't ever compare with the (wordless) reality.

IOW, the intellect is not the one way to know things.

Is the understanding I get from a oneness experience something I can quantify and describe in full and share with others? No, and why should that be expected? The third-person, objective "viewpoint from nowhere" that science strives for is an occasionally useful thing, whereas how my subjective experience goes is how my life goes.

IMV, Zen and Advaita are all about such states of connection. Mindfulness practice opens the door. The unitary experience is the antithesis of the alienation and dissatisfaction ("duhkha") that's the necessary consequence of our typical "little me in here peering at the world out there" viewpoint. It sounds like a highly exotic state, but it's not. It's a fairly big shift in perspective about what a "self" is, but it's not an altered state of consciousness. The potential for it is right there "at the tip of the nose" for everyone, all day every day. That's why Zennists say it's "nothing special". According to Bankei, it's the one thing you were born with that's still there. So it's not your brain cells, body's cells, beliefs, thoughts, emotions, or any other contents of consciousness. Those all come and go. But in what do they come and go?

It's by self-inquiry that the answer is SEEN. No talk about brain activity can answer the question, because it's a question of the phenomenological firsthand experience that's as real as real gets. But probably the temptation for most folk would be to abstract away into the (avoidant) intellect for a pre-fab answer.

 

[rousseau]

I get what you're saying and am with you on the state of connection achieved by Zen and Advaita. My view is, and maybe I should have tacked this on to my earlier post, only that it doesn't have to be either / or, or one versus the other. I think you can get to the oneness, unity, and harmony via both routes. That's partly what I've been saying all along, both methods of inquiry have spiritual value.

But I would add that the intellectual avenue is a bit airless without the Eastern perspective (as I believe I said earlier). I think without the realization of philosophies like Zen and Advaita, the intellectual view doesn't really lead anywhere. It just continuously objectifies and dominates. But when it's informed by philosophies like Zen and Advaita it complements the unitary view with knowledge and understanding, making both frameworks even richer than they would be without the other.

In my personal, subjective experience the feeling of unity pretty much dominates my life; I'm in a constant state of feeling like I'm part of a web and I am always conscious that what I do to the web I do to myself. If I do good things to it, good things come back to me. I think this is largely what you're discussing. But at the same time I am also fascinated by knowledge and understanding how this world actually works. And in my subjective experience this real understanding of the world in which I'm a part has only made that unity richer, gotten me closer to it.

That's not to denigrate the importance of the Eastern approach, but rather to highlight that the intellect is an amoral tool and doesn't need to be thought of negatively. It's there for a reason, it's a part of us for a reason. And I think you could also flip what I mentioned above and find that with too little intellectual understanding of the world philosophies like Zen and Advaita can't really be grasped. Beyond a certain point, without correct knowledge, we largely live in ignorance and fear.

The short version is that I think both perspectives can be held simultaneously, and complement each other. One can reap the benefits of the Advaita view and still grant the intellect it's utility at the same time.

 

[fromderinside]

Thanks guys.

 

[Marvin Edwards]

Fascinating read. Religion and psychology both deal in spiritual/emotional health. There is a Christian saying on a bumper-sticker, "Let Go and Let God". That would free the mind from its worries, by turning the problems over to a higher being. Faith, too, can be a source of peace. I've often thought that Confucius is the Old Testament with its rules, and that Buddha is the New Testament with its spiritual salvation.

 

[steve_bank]

Wiliam James' Verities Of Religious Experience

The Varieties of Religious Experience - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature is a book by Harvard University psychologist and philosopher William James. It comprises his edited Gifford Lectures on natural theology, which were delivered at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland between 1901 and 1902. The lectures concerned the psychological study of individual private religious experiences

The book is in the public domain.

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/621/621-pdf.pdf

That's the yin and yang of it....

 

[rousseau]

I'd done some reading about similarities and differences between the two recently, and found a good summation here. It compares Advaita and Mahayana Buddhism, not Zen specifically, but a lot of it applies. Some of the ideas read a little like early Western philosophy.

For the most part there's a jumble of concepts that aren't clearly delineated between Buddhism and Non-Dual Hinduism, but there is one difference I found interesting, on the 'Soul' or 'Atman':

The Advaita Vedānta tradition has historically rejected accusations of crypto-Buddhism highlighting their respective views on Atman, Anatta and Brahman.[7]

Advaita Vedānta holds the premise, "Soul exists, and Soul (or self, Atman) is a self evident truth". Buddhism, in contrast, holds the premise, "Atman does not exist, and An-atman (or Anatta, non-self)[49] is self evident".[50][51] Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad gives a more nuanced view, stating that the Advaitins "assert a stable subjectivity, or a unity of consciousness through all the specific states of indivuated consciousness, but not an individual subject of consciousness [...] the Advaitins split immanent reflexivity from 'mineness'."[52]

In Buddhism, Anatta (Pali, Sanskrit cognate An-atman) is the concept that in human beings and living creatures, there is no "eternal, essential and absolute something called a soul, self or atman".[53] Buddhist philosophy rejects the concept and all doctrines associated with atman, call atman as illusion (maya), asserting instead the theory of "no-self" and "no-soul."[50][54] Most schools of Buddhism, from its earliest days, have denied the existence of the "self, soul" in its core philosophical and ontological texts. In contrast to Advaita, which describes knowing one's own soul as identical with Brahman as the path to nirvana, in its soteriological themes Buddhism has defined nirvana as the state of a person who knows that he or she has "no self, no soul".[53][55]

The Upanishadic inquiry fails to find an empirical correlate of the assumed Atman, but nevertheless assumes its existence,[56] and Advaitins "reify consciousness as an eternal self."[57] In contrast, the Buddhist inquiry "is satisfied with the empirical investigation which shows that no such Atman exists because there is no evidence" states Jayatilleke.[56]

Yet, some Buddhist texts chronologically placed in the 1st millennium of common era, such as the Mahayana tradition's Tathāgatagarbha sūtras suggest self-like concepts, variously called Tathagatagarbha or Buddha nature.[58][59] In modern era studies, scholars such as Wayman and Wayman state that these "self-like" concepts are neither self nor sentient being, nor soul, nor personality.[60][61] Some scholars posit that the Tathagatagarbha Sutras were written to promote Buddhism to non-Buddhists.

This line stood out to me:

Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad gives a more nuanced view, stating that the Advaitins "assert a stable subjectivity, or a unity of consciousness through all the specific states of individuated consciousness, but not an individual subject of consciousness

Which I tend to agree with. I don't think you can just write off a conscious being as being non-distinct from something that's non-conscious.

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

Then we have the Stoics. The Greek Skeptics. The Cynics. The Epicureans. Aristotle's Eudamonia. And more. Take your pick.