Well, I gave it a try. Today Google News, in its Picks For You section, presented me with a link to an Aeon article, "By the light of brahman: Ideas from classical Indian philosophy help illuminate the enigmas of selfhood, consciousness and the nature of reality."
I decided to read the article, albeit quickly, because I hoped it would live up to the title by illuminating those enigmas.
I did learn something: that classical Indian philosophy makes little sense to me. Of course, since this philosophy is the foundation of Hinduism, it isn't surprising that atheist me would find little to like in all the talk about Brahman and Atman (basically, God and soul).
However, since I resonate with Buddhism, another philosophy that originated in India, I thought that maybe, just maybe, Vedic Hinduism would have something interesting to say about our modern attempts to understand the nature of selfhood, consciousness, and the nature of reality.
Perhaps this article does a poor job at that goal, but my first somewhat superficial reading of it left me unimpressed. Again, though, I'm unimpressed with every religion. (For me, but not for many others, Buddhism is much more of a philosophy than a religion.)
The way I see it, Vedic Hinduism is inherently metaphysical and supernatural, while philosophical Buddhism is inherently psychological and natural. This makes it much easier for me to relate to Buddhism, since often I can recognize how my mind works in its teachings.
On the other hand, the whole Brahman and Atman thing is difficult for me to find any practical use for, or relevance to my everyday life. The article says:
Naciketas presses Yama for clarity about the nature of the relationship between brahman and the world of experienced reality. Yama says that the way to think of consciousness is that it is the thing that ‘illuminates’ and that allows for all mental phenomena. Consciousness, in turn, is itself illuminated by brahman – the one and only source of all illumination. Without brahman there would be no light of consciousness and therefore no experience, no knowledge, no perception. ‘Him alone, as he shines, do all things reflect; this whole world radiates with his light.’
There is only one reality, brahman, which takes myriad illusory forms, but like fire it is both an individual flame and a blaze. This one reality is both the transcendental brahman and the immanent ātman. Everything else is fleeting, illusory, sprung from ignorance. Consciousness is illumination. As the light of a blazing lamp brightens a dark room, so consciousness lights up life.
So while Buddhism, along with modern neuroscience, has a lot to say about the contents of consciousness, and to a lesser degree about the nature of consciousness itself, Vedic Hinduism considers that the consciousness we all experience flows from the universal consciousness of Brahman -- which makes the foundation of consciousness into something supernatural, even though the human brain sure seems to be why we're conscious, and the brain is physical.
I've read quite a few books that make a strong case for how philosophical Buddhism is compatible with modern neuroscience. It's difficult for me to imagine how this would be possible with Vedic Hinduism, as it is decidedly other-worldly.
In fact, this world is considered to be an illusion, for reasons that seem spurious.
For a flavour of the kind of things classical Indian philosophers thought about, we will begin with a bird’s eye view of a few notions from classical Indian philosophy, with the caveat that every idea described below has been hotly debated for hundreds of years.
Central to Indian philosophy is the idea of illusion. Here, there is a distinction between temporal and presentational notions of illusion. The first holds that whatever is not permanent in time, or else beyond time, is thereby an illusion. Of the various schools of Indian philosophy, Buddhism and Advaita Vedānta agree in accepting this account. The second notion holds that whatever is presented to a subject of experience as other than how it is, is an illusion. This notion derives from the school of Nyāya, its early proponents from the 1st millennium and the work of the 14th-century philosopher Gaṅgeśa, considered to be the founder of the New Nyāya movement.
With talk about illusion, of course, comes talk about reality. And here the classical Indian philosophers made a number of fine distinctions. For our purposes, three are of note: conventional reality, apparent reality, and ultimate reality. Conventional reality just means everyday reality, one that is based on the pragmatics of everyday life under societal conventions and laws. Think of money, or the game of chess. Apparent reality is the notion of a reality that depends on our sensory organs of perception and the machinations of the mind: what we see is a tree and not an aggregate of organic molecules. Finally, ultimate reality is the notion that there is an underlying or hidden substratum to the world. Advaita Vedānta, for example, holds that brahman is identical with this ultimate reality.
I don't agree that Buddhism views whatever is not permanent in time is an illusion. Quite the opposite, in fact. Emptiness is a key Buddhist concept, one I've written quite a bit about. In this post, I included quotes from a book about Buddhist emptiness.
We exist contingently, interdependently. We exist, but only in dependence on our ancestors, our body parts, our food, air, and water, and the other members of our society. We could not and do not exist otherwise. Devoid of any independent or substantial nature, our existence is possible only because it is far less rigid, less concrete, than what we imagine it to be.
...Rather than seeing things as they are, we superimpose upon ourselves -- and on things around us -- a false existence, a self-existence or essential reality that actually does not exist at all. In the Buddhist philosophy explained here, the ultimate truth is the sheer absence, the lack, of any such essence.
This is emptiness (stong pa nyid, shunyata). While this may sound bleak, disappointing, or frightening, it is the very nature of reality. And it is reality -- not fantasy -- that is our final hope and our refuge. The path to freedom from needless misery, for ourselves and others, is through profound realization of this fundamental reality.
...The Tibetan and Sanskrit words that we translate as "emptiness" do, in fact, literally mean "emptiness." They refer specifically to some sort of lack or absence in things. But it is not a lack of meaning or hope or existence.
It is the lack of the exaggerated and distorted kind of existence that we have projected onto things and onto ourselves. It is the absence of a false essential nature with which we have unconsciously invested everything. It can be quite frightening as we start to have doubts about this "heavy duty" kind of reality. We will feel that things cannot exist at all if they do not exist in the solid way we are accustomed to seeing them.
Vedic Hinduism has an opposite view of reality from Buddhism. It's much less scientific and much more supernatural. The notions of Brahman and Atman presuppose an essential nature to both the cosmos and ourselves. God and soul are viewed as self-sufficient, eternal, indestructible.
As the quotation above says, the "empty" view of Buddhism can be frightening to people who want to believe that they existed before they were born and will continue to exist after they die. But reality doesn't care how we humans feel about it, for it simply is what it is.
And I'm pretty sure that classical Indian philosophy doesn't reflect the nature of reality, but of the minds of ancient philosophers who fashioned some entertaining theology which, unfortunately, doesn't say much to scientifically-minded people today.
Recent Comments