Empty Vision

Metaphor and Visionary Imagery in Mahayana Buddhism

David McMahan

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781138862609
• eBook ISBN: 9781136857263
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Buddhism

Visual metaphors in a number of Mahayana sutras construct a discourse in which visual perception serves as a model for knowledge and enlightenment. In the Perfection of Wisdom (Prajnaparamita) and other Mahayana literature, immediate access to reality is symbolized by vision and set in opposition to language and conceptual thinking, which are construed as obscuring reality. In addition to its philosophical manifestations, the tension between vision and language also functioned as a strategy of legitimation in the struggle of the early heterodox Mahayana movement for authority and legitimacy. This emphasis on vision also served as a resource for the abundant mythical imagery in Mahayana sutras, imagery that is ritualized in Vajrayana visualization practices. McMahan brings a wide range of literature to bear on this issue, Including a rare analysis of the lavish imagery of the Gandavyuha Sutra in its Indian context. He concludes with a discussion of Indian approaches to visuality in the light of some recent discussions of "ocularcentrism" in the west, inviting scholars to expand the current discussion of vision and its roles in constructing epistemic systems and cultural practices beyond its exclusively European and American focus.

CHAPTER ONE

The Devaluation of Language and the Privileging of Perception

Subhūti said: It is wonderful, Blessed One, that the Tathāgata, the arhat possessed of perfect enlightenment, has shown the nature of all dharmas, yet this nature of all dharmas cannot be spoken of. If I understand the meaning of the Blessed One’s teaching, then all dharmas are inexpressible.

The Blessed One said: So it is, Subhūti, so it is. And why is this? Because the emptiness of all dharmas cannot be expressed in words.¹

Among the many stories and theories that arose in Buddhist literature on the nature of the Buddha – his immanence or transcendence, the meaning and significance of his words, his experience of life in the world as an enlightened being – there exist a number suggesting that he existed in a strange, almost unimaginable state while here in the Sahajiya realm. Donald Lopez nicely illustrates this view in his summation of a passage in the Tathāgatācintyaguhyanirdeśasūtra (Sūtra Explaining the Inconceivable Secrets of the Tathāgata) whose dramatic speaker is the bodhisattva Vajrapāṇi:

The … sūtra compares the word of the Buddha to the sound of a wind chime, which without being played by anyone, produces music when stirred by the wind. So does the word of the Buddha arise when stirred by the minds of sentient beings, although he has not thought: it is due to his fulfillment of the bodhisattva deeds in the past that his speech conforms to the diverse needs of all sentient beings. … Vajrapāṇi explains that the Buddha was actually silent throughout his life, remaining constantly absorbed in samādhi, without speech, without thought, without breath. The Tathāgata is thus like a prism; perfect, impassive, with no color of its own, it is touched by the faith, the development, the questions, the intentions of sentient beings and refracts the teaching that is appropriate to each.²

The Buddha’s teachings are presented in this Mahāyāna text as arising spontaneously in response to the needs of individuals, rather than as a result of the ordinary activities of judgment, reflection, and evaluation. The words of the Buddha (buddhavacana), to which Buddhist scholastics gave considerable attention in their efforts to determine which teachings were authentic, actually were mirages. The Buddha, the text asserts, was silent throughout his tenure in this world, in a state of refined concentration even while he appeared to be conversing and teaching. The assertion that the Buddha never uttered a word is echoed in a number of Mahāyāna texts, and it is indeed an odd claim for a man to whom perhaps more words are attributed than any other historical figure. Here we glimpse a theme present in a number of Mahāyāna texts: the idea that it would in some way compromise the Buddha’s pure awakened state to engage in the common cognitive-linguistic activities of ordinary beings. Though virtually all the sūtras present him as speaking, this one and others say that this speech was just an illusion, an expedient means by which the Buddha teaches people.

This passage brings to the fore the Buddhist suspicion of language through the image of an awakened being absorbed in silent meditative concentration. This is a figure that draws on a common theme in yogic traditions in India – that of the silent sage or pure witness who has transcended the ordinary, confused cognitive functioning of the mind and perceives, without mediation, the world as it is. The image of a witness, in turn, evokes some of the images already mentioned in the Buddhist metaphors for awakening – the Buddha or bodhisattva seated on a terrace looking out at the world as it is, the stūpas with disembodied eyes and no mouth, the Buddha having limitless vision. Throughout Buddhist literature, there exists an implicit tension between this supernal “seeing” and the entanglement of the mind in words and concepts. The Samyutta Nikāya declares: “Name soils everything; beyond name nothing is known. Everything is subject to this one thing: name,”³ while repeatedly praising the “knowledge and vision of the Buddha.” A Perfection of Wisdom texts declares: “Insofar as all names proclaimed in the world are left behind, [all] arisen things are transcended,” while such a transcendence is often referred to as a “vision of the dharma.”⁴ From the sūtras to later Tantric texts, this tension displays itself: “What is the use of so much talk? The knower of Truth by means of true yoga will see everything there is to perceive.”⁵ To further clarify the abundant use of visual metaphor in the Buddhist vocabulary of awakening, it is helpful to explore just what this metaphor is contrasted with; i.e., what does this “seeing” that is supreme knowing see beyond? The answer in many Mahāyāna Buddhist texts, especially the Perfection of Wisdom literature, is: awakening sees beyond language, concepts and conventions.

This tension between language, concepts, conventions, and cognition, on the one hand, and perception and visual symbolism, on the other, has a long history in Buddhist thought. Reviewing some examples of the devaluation of language and concepts, as well as the implicit and explicit roles of perception and vision, will help contextualize the predominance of visual metaphor in Buddhist discourse. We begin with a brief overview of early Buddhist views on the roles and limitations of language, then explore some of the specific ways in which the Mahāyāna approached the problem of language and concepts, and finally examine how the primacy of perception and the symbolic privileging of vision is present in Mahāyāna philosophical reflection.⁶

Language and Concepts in Early Buddhism

The early Buddhist understanding of the role of language stood in sharp contrast to the prevalent view of Brahmanical India. The dominant conception of language during the time of the Buddha, that put forth by the Vedas, was that words had an intrinsic relation to the things they signified.⁷ The Pūrva Mīmāṃsā school claims that there is an inherent relationship between words and their objects. In the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad, each thing has a specific name (nāma), form (rūpa), and function (karma) intrinsically its own that was given it by Brahmā when he created the world. Even if named things pass away, this eternally established name remains.⁸ Furthermore, the words of Vedas themselves were understood to be revealed and absolutely authoritative.

Early Buddhist reflection on language, however, allowed a much smaller scope to the power of words, and this represented a significant break with what we know of the dominant ideas on language in ancient South Asia. Even though early Buddhist culture relied to a great extent on the spoken word of the sūtra, its philosophical reflection sought to limit the functions of words and language. Although early Buddhists certainly considered their sūtras true in that they were records of the wisdom of the Awakened One, they did not consider these scriptures to be divine and eternal revelations as the Brahmanical tradition considered the Vedas. Early Buddhist literature categorically rejects authoritative words (śabda, usually construed in this context to mean the authority of the Vedas, but also of any religious teacher or tradition) as a valid means of knowledge (pramāṇa), and recommended that even the words of the Buddha must be verified by the hearer him- or herself.

Further, the early Buddhist valuation of the function of language in human life was largely negative, insofar as words and concepts were considered to be among the primary factors in creating fundamental ignorance (avidyā Pāli, avijjā) of the nature of things. This ignorance was understood to be the cause of baseless craving (taṇhā), which in turn leads to suffering and frustration (duḥkha). Moreover, Buddhist doctrine at this stage had no explicit notions of the inherent power of language to effect things in the world aside from its conventional efficacy in human life. It was critical of the idea, for instance, that the actual spoken words of the Vedas had inherent power and ritual efficacy whether they were cognitively understood or not. According to the Brahmanical tradition, the Vedic sacrifice depended not on conceptual understanding of ritual utterances but on the intrinsic power of the vocalized sounds themselves. For early Buddhists, language had no such function but was only efficacious insofar as it was understood cognitively. Thus the limitations placed on language in Buddhist reflection are homologous with the limitations of conceptual thinking. Indeed, the terminology translatable as “language” and “concepts” often seems to blur the distinction between the two.⁹

Buddhist ideas of language and conceptual thought are in part based on the fundamental Buddhist doctrines of impermanence (anitya) and of the interdependent and composite or conditioned nature of things. In this view, nothing permanent and stable is found in the world; everything is subject to decay and passing away. Yet name and form (nāma-rūpa) make things appear fixed and stable, thus serving as the basis for clinging and frustration. Giving names to things also creates the illusion of independent entities, even though all entities in the world are composite and dependent on other entities. According to early Buddhist texts, the things that words name are not self-existent entities, but rather, collections of fundamental elements or events called dharmas. All things, including the apparent self, are nothing in and of themselves, but rather are collocations of smaller components, which are reducible to their constituent dharmas.¹⁰ Thus, the identities of what people take to be independent beings are actually constructs constituted by language, concepts and conventions, which impose an artificial unity and stability on what is really plural and evanescent.

Orthodox Buddhist doctrine asserts, further, that words are attached to things only through tacit agreement rather than through some intrinsic basis for the connection between words and their referents. The Sautrāntikas and Sarvāstivādins called this conventional designation (prajñapti), as opposed to the truth in the highest sense (paramārthasatya). The Pāli literature makes frequent reference to conceptual proliferation (prapañca; Pāli, papañca) as one of the fundamental aspects of bondage and delusion. Naming things and forming fixed concepts about them can reify them in such a way that they seem permanent and stable. In the Buddhist view this is a problem because, being composite and conditioned, these things are nothing in and of themselves and are bound to perish and change, creating frustration for those attached to them.

In addition to pointing out the delusory effects of discursive thinking in general, early Buddhist discourses attempted to curtail some forms of purely speculative inquiry and the development of definite views (dṛṣṭi; Pāli, diṭṭhi) on certain metaphysical matters, further limiting the scope of language and conceptual activity. This dissuasion from certain forms of metaphysical speculation had a number of purposes involving psychological, social, pragmatic, and epistemological concerns. In the Paramaṭṭhaka-sutta of the Sutta Nipāta, for example, the Buddha discourages his disciples from holding unnecessary opinions on every issue because it disturbs peace of mind and narrows one’s thinking such that one is trapped in dogmatism, which leads to disharmony and strife with others.¹¹ One reason, then, for refraining from making judgments and holding views about every debatable issue is to promote and preserve personal peace and social and harmony.

Another reason for limiting the scope of speculative questioning was the pragmatic emphasis of the Buddha’s teachings. In the Cuḷamālunkya Sutta the Buddha declares that having views on certain doctrinal questions that were commonly used to define one school of thought over against others does not aid one in achieving liberation. Here the Buddha enumerates the often-discussed “unanswered (avyākṛta) questions,” points upon which the Buddha refused to express an opinion: whether the world is eternal or not; whether it is finite or infinite; whether the soul is identical or different from the body; and whether the Tathāgata exists after death, does not exist after death, both exists and does not exist after death, or neither exists nor does not exist after death.¹² The Buddha likens engaging in this kind of speculation to a man shot by an arrow who feels compelled to know everything about the composition of the arrow – what kind of wood the shaft is made from, what kind of material the arrowhead is, etc. – and about the man who shot the arrow – whether he was short or tall, which clan he is from, etc. – before having the arrow taken out. The fundamental issues that one should be concerned with, the Buddha indicates, are not metaphysical but existential, that is, the suffering and dissatisfaction inherent in human existence and the overcoming of these through certain prescribed ways of living that the Buddha had elucidated.

Also in the Buddha’s treatment of the unanswered questions are epistemological issues and problems relating to the limitations placed on language and speculative reasoning. In the Brahmajāla Sutta, the Buddha mentions some of the same questions he refuses to answer in the Cūḷamālunkya Sutta, and says that to hold to fixed opinions on these matters is like being caught in a fine mesh net.¹³ This seems to indicate the position that holding definite views on certain metaphysical matters is a conceptual trap that holds thinking in a certain pattern, thus preventing a broader, more encompassing view. Additionally, the Buddha’s refusal to answer these questions reflects a general suspicion in Buddhist thought of “either/or” questions regarding the ultimate nature of things. This will become more significant in certain Mahāyāna texts which attempt to avoid all positions based on such binary oppositions.

Some modern scholars have interpreted the Buddha’s refusal to answer these kinds of questions as a specific indication of his understanding of the limitations of language.¹⁴ T. R. V. Murti likens these questions to the Kantian antinomies and the Buddha’s silence on these questions as a critique of speculative metaphysics along the lines of the Kantian critique. In this view, the Buddha’s response suggests the limits of reason and a caution against a priori reasoning.¹⁵ K. N. Jayatilleke argues that the rejection of these questions often indicates that the question itself is “meaningless” in sense similar to that used by contemporary analytic philosophers. In this reading, not only are any of the possible answers to these questions inadequate but the questions themselves assume a misunderstanding from the outset.¹⁶ The Aggivacchagotta Sutta indicates that these kinds of questions involve a misapprehension of language usage such as that involved in nonsensical questions like “Where does a flame go when it goes out?”¹⁷ Indeed, one of the common ways in which the Buddha refuses to answer certain questions was to say that the question itself did not apply to the case. Such passages lend support Jayatilleke’s interpretation that these questions are rejected because they are in some sense logically meaningless or they entail a misunderstanding due to the misleading structures of language.

Some of the modern interpretations of the unanswered questions, while perhaps too quick to assimilate these questions to both later Mahāyāna and modern Western philosophy, rightly point out the general notion of the limitations placed on language and discursive thinking even in early strands of Buddhist discourse. While the passages on the unanswered questions do not put forth any explicit theory of ineffability or inexpressibility, they do indicate the Buddha’s refusal to engage certain issues because they either lead to needless disputation, are not conducive to enlightenment, or involve a misconception from the outset. It would be mistaken, though, to assume that this refusal amounts to a categorical rejection of anything that we would today call “metaphysics.” In fact, the suttas do not remain silent on all issues of a “metaphysical” nature: for example, the Buddha does give doctrines in the Nikāyas on the interdependence of phenomena and on the nature of karma and rebirth, issues that are not merely “empirical,” unless the definition of the term is stretched considerably.¹⁸ Thus, part of the reason for refusing to answer the unanswered questions is not necessarily that all speculative questions on the ultimate n...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Technical Note on Terms
• Introduction
• 1 The Devaluation of Language and the Privileging of Perception
• 2 Buddhist Visuality in History and Metaphor
• 3 Orality, Writing, and Authority: Visionary Literature and the Struggle for Legitimacy in the Mahāyāna
• 4 Realms of the Senses: Buddha Fields and Fields of Vision in the Gandavyūha Sūtra
• 5 The Optics of Buddhist Meditation and Devotion
• 6 Conclusions and Occlusions
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index