Today I was planning to write a post about a central theme in a book I've been blogging about recently, Joan Tollifson's Nothing to Grasp. I was struck by how Tollifson has come around to viewing reality in simple terms, "as it is." Leaves falling. Birds flying. Pain happening. Dishes being washed.
She came to this outlook after a lengthy period of seeking the Truth of It All via meditation, Zen Buddhism, nondual teachings, therapy, and other means. I wanted to write about how weird and wonderful it is to have sought reality in esoteric teachings, then realize that, hey, it's been Here/Now all that time.
But that intention brought a long-forgotten term to mind: naive realism. I remembered that I'd written a paper on this subject in college. That led me to poke through a stack of folders in a rarely opened cabinet where I keep stuff that I'd written way back when. Amazingly I found it.
A paper I'd written at San Jose State College on December 20, 1968 for Phil. 111 ,a class about epistemology, the theory of knowledge. I titled it, "Psychology, Zen, and the Naive Realist." Reading it, I found that the 20 year old me who wrote that paper sounded quite a bit like the 75 year old me I am today.
Is that good or bad? Not for me to say. Probably neither. It just is what it is. I was a decent writer and thinker in 1968. I'm a decent writer and thinker now in 2024. What I found interesting was that views I hold today were foreshadowed in the views I had back in college. I adored Alan Watts and Hubert Benoit then. I still do.
Here's the portion of the paper where I talked about Zen and naive realism.
Naive realism is what the name implies: how reality appears to us is how it is, because we feel that we see the world objectively. Phenomenology is the notion that phenomena should be described as they appear to the subject. (I had to retype this part of the paper because back in 1968 I necessarily wrote with a typewriter and carbon paper on rather flimsy paper, which wouldn't make it easy to create a PDF file out of the paper.)
Let us speak of Zen Buddhism now. Zen recognizes that everyone carries within him the Knowledge of the Way. We possess realization even in the natural state in which most of us spend our lives. But this realization, although already present, must be recognized and the barriers which we have erected that prevent us from achieving true knowledge must be broken down.
This is not an easy process and requires one to exert the utmost concentration and awareness in order to realize what one already possesses. For the state of realization (Satori) is essentially a state of absolute naive realism, although in a different dimension from naive realism as we commonly experience it.
One must start from a solid belief in common experiential naive realism, but then should seriously question the premises of this assumed naive realism, for only when we experience a condition of doubt regarding the validity of the natural base of our existence can we move toward the attainment of the Way.
For the natural state of man is not his Absolute state; complacency and satisfaction with one's natural way of perceiving things will doom one to ignorance rather than knowledge, even though one does possess a certain knowledge of reality of the natural world.
Let me give an example in mixed epistemological and Zen Buddhist terms. The naive realist is correct in believing that he perceives the natural world directly, for he must, being a part of the world himself. He is correct in rejecting the phenomenalist's view that one is somehow separated from physical objects by a barrier of some sort; this is positing a dichotomy of man and the natural world which does not exist.
However, the unenlightened naive realist does not go far enough. He leaves himself directly perceiving the natural world and he rests contented. But he fails to consider the possibility that (in an anthropomorphic sense) the world is perceiving him at the same time, and that there is actually no process which he regards as "perceiving" going on in his nervous system at all.
Watts says, "There is not the external world, and then the state of nervous system, and then something which sees that state. The seeing is precisely that particular state of the nervous system, a state which for that moment is an integral part of the organism."
Watts further elaborates on this point:
Let us suppose, then, that the false reflex of "I seeing my sights" or "I feeling my feelings" is stopped by such methods as the ways of liberation employ. Will it not therefore become clear that all our perceptions of the external world are states of the organism? The division between "I" and "my sights" is projected outwardly into the sharp division between the organism and what it sees.
Just such a change of perception as this would explain the feeling, so usual at the moment of liberation (satori), that the external world is oneself and that external actions are one's own doing. Perception will then be known for what it is, a field relationship, as distinct from an encounter.
The natural man, as a naive realist, must question the foundations of his naive realism. He must continue living as he does in the world to which he is accustomed, but he must learn to perceive this world in a different manner. The world of the naive realist and the enlightened man are but a hairsbreadth apart; they are the same but for an undefinable, though very real, change in consciousness. This change is aided by one's constant awareness of his relationship with the natural world.
But first one must doubt the reality of his ordinary manner of awareness, and this is where the question of perception (among others) in regard to naive realism which epistemology raises is of value. It may help to jolt the natural man out of his inactive acceptance of illusion and cause him to seek something beyond his natural, unrealized existence.
It is the questions, the doubt, which the epistemologist raises in regard to naive realism which are of value, not the abstract answers which it tries to supply. The techniques of phenomenalism, the critical awareness of the nature of the physical world with which phenomenalism is concerned, may serve to help guide the unrealized naive realist onto the path which leads to the Way.
This process which leads to enlightenment may be thought of as consisting of three stages. The first corresponds to the state of the natural man, the pure unconcerned naive realist in epistemological terms. When one has left this natural state and has attained a partial awareness and perception of his true being, then he may be said to have entered the intermediate stage; he rejects naive realism and seeks to find the real Truth.
This seeking involves great effort and intense conflicts as one leaves the familiar state of illusory awareness for the "Great New ?". This intermediate stage at its height has been described as a "mental state of complete confusion without form (confusion so complete and so lacking in form that it is in no respect a state of chaos and resembles the transparent purity of an immense crystal behind which there would still be nothing.)" [Hubert Benoit, The Supreme Doctrine] This state of Great Doubt just precedes the attainment of Satori.
In the words of Benoit, "The idea of the three successive stages of which we are speaking is found also in this passage of Zen: 'Before a man studies Zen, for him the mountains are mountains and the waters are waters; when, thanks to the teaching of a good master, he has achieved a certain inner vision of the truth of Zen, for him the mountains are no longer mountains and the waters are no longer waters; but later, when he has really arrived at the asylum of rest, once more the mountains are mountains and the waters are waters.'"
The naive realist has come full circle: from naive realism, to a phenomenalistic state of mind, and back to naive realism. But this final state of naive realism is characterized by a change in consciousness which makes it ever so different from the natural state of naive realism, although it appears to be the same to the unenlightened.
I am using epistemological terms in a sense for which they are not exactly suited, however. The way of Zen considers of much, much more than the simplistic analogies I have drawn here. But then Zen is simple, although inexpressible, so epistemological parallels might be said to describe its nature as well as anything else. I have played an abstract intellectual game in fusing some domains of Zen and epistemology together, a game which may or may not be valid to others.
For myself, I have gained some insights into epistemology and Zen, and, more importantly, into my Self. I realize the fragility of the analogy which I have manufactured between such dissimilar areas as Zen and epistemology, but there is, I believe, some worth in it. All things are reconciled in the All, even these.
"Whoever understands the first truth
Should understand the ultimate truth.
The last and first,
Are they not the same?"
"Words cannot describe everything.
The heart's message cannot be delivered in words.
If one receives words literally, he will be last,
If he tries to explain with words, he will not
attain enlightenment in this life."
...Zen poems
Cool! That 20-year-old does write uncommonly well, and he does have uncommonly profound thoughts, on both counts way more so than when I was that age.
Posted by: Appreciative Reader | January 28, 2024 at 06:34 AM
"Words cannot describe everything"
So true, and in so many ways.
To cite one example, one that's been on my mind of late:
A nation steals the homes of millions of people, and forces the dispossessed into a slum that's almost totally controlled by the ruling apartheid state.
Every year for many years, the ruling apartheid state kills the dispossessed citizens at a rate of 5:1.
The dispossessed fight back, and in response the ruling apartheid state kills more of them at a rate of 30:1. Most of them innocent men, women, and children. And that state turns the region into a hellhole for the survivors.
In response to these crimes against humanity, some students at some universities dare to shout a political slogan that someday this apartheid region will one day be a free unified state.
That would seem to be a reasonable exercise of free speech in the U.S. of 2024? You'd think so, but oh, you'd be so wrong. According to the U.S. Congress, billionaire donors sharing the same ethnicity, and media pundits, calling for an end to Israel's genocide of Palestinians is actually calling for genocide against Israel.
Posted by: sant64 | January 28, 2024 at 07:45 AM