The Holy Teaching of Vimalakirti

This translation of "A Mahayana Scripture" by Uma Thurman's more famous dad fits into the recent penchant I've had for exploring related spiritual traditions via things sitting on the shelf at the cat bookstore.  I believe it caught my eye because at one point I started the Michael Taft & M.C. Owens lecture series (before finding M.C. Owens intial overview a bit long-winded).  It's the first Mahayana scripture I've read other than the Heart Sutra.  And I guess it confirms me as 'Theravadan', at least for the moment, because I didn't find it particularly approachable or revelatory.

In fact, it leads me to reiterate the same question I asked in the case of Tantra Illuminated -- if the philosophy is so simple, why is its exposition so ... gaudy.  The basic idea is so profound and straightforward that it is almost totally summed up in the five short pages of Chapter 9, "The Dharma-Door of Nonduality".  ALL PHENOMENA ARE EMPTY.  Thank you for you attention to this matter.  And yet this scripture has an elaborate literary structure that spans multiple universes and involves uncountably large contingents of boddhisattvas doing various magic tricks.  On top of that, it rather condescendingly uses all the Buddha's 'Hinayana' disciples as whipping boys to illustrate the superiority of the Mahayana path.  I get that all this is supposed to expand our mind in trans-rational ways, and there is doubtless a profound teaching in that.  But I simply don't have the background to find this stuff helpful.  I think I better stick with the Early Buddhism I'm familiar with and that makes sense to me.

Tantra Illuminated

A couple of years ago I read Christoph Wallis' translation of and commentary on the Recognition Sutras.  It was an interesting glimpse to Kashmiri Shaivism, a nondual branch of what we now call hinduism.  So when I saw his earlier introduction to the broader scope of tantric teachings, of which Shaivism is a particular lineage, floating about my used bookstore, I figured I should expand my mind a little.  I found this book less well written and less interesting than the Recognition Sutras, but it was still worth getting a little fuller picture of this tradition.

The book's subtitle, "The Philosophy, History, and Practice of a Timeless Tradition" also turns out to be its organizational principle.  The first part contains a long discussion of nondual philosophy, including a set of lists to rival even the Buddhist list obsession -- 36 tattvas, 5 acts of God, 4 levels of the world, 5 states of Awareness, etc ...  This was all interesting enough, but ultimately feels to me like just another arbitrary metaphysical construct. Certainly, part of this response is simply because, right now, I find myself more interested in the marked contrast between this philosophical apparatus and the Buddha's refusal to even engage these metaphysical speculations.  But there's also a coherent intellectual objection here that I first formulated in the context of people talking about Dzogchen (a system which Wallis suggests is extremely similar to Kashmiri Shaivism).  If everything, including ourselves, is really just an emanation of a single divine energy, why are there so many different gods and practices and lists involved?  Compared to Theravadan practices and philosophy, the Tantric world is incredibly complex.  I understand that it's more of a lay tradition, not aimed mainly at monastics.  And I understand that this naturally means it is a less renunciate path, more open to the beauty and complexity of everyday life.  But one would naively think that the practices which fit with what Wallis calls a "nondual monism" would be more like shikantaza, and less like multi-part meditations with elaborate visualization of deities and channels.  To be clear, I think this objection is simply the beginning of conversation, not some sort of invalidation of these traditions.  I still find the contrast between core belief and philosophical articulation notable.

The second, more interesting, part of the book explains the history of Tantra.  Wallis is not merely a spiritual practitioner, but also an academic, so he does a great job of situating this tradition with the context of medieval India, distinguishing it's various flavors, and tracing some of its later influences.  For example, it's remarkable to learn that we can trace the origins of hatha-yoga back to a much corrupted version of tantric practices.  It was also kinda interesting to get such a succinct overview of the way various branches of the tradition can be organized into a left-right spectrum defined by how seriously they take the concept of nonduality.  I personally might have wished for more detail concerning the way that Buddhism clearly influenced these branches of Vedanta, as well as more insight into how their influence in turn percolated back into Vajrayana, and especially Tibetan, Buddhism.  But this was probably beyond what could be put into one volume. 

The final part contains a quick overview of tantric practices.  There's not really enough detail to start doing these practices on one's own, though this is clearly by design.  Wallis feels like anyone interested enough in this way of seeing the world should pursue a relationship with a qualified teacher.  So we really just get a flavor for some of the pranayama and visualization practices that were central to almost all the tantric lineages.  There's even a section regarding what you might call "insight" meditation -- looking at the world in ways that loosen our self-centered concepts and thus bring us into contact with some larger field, interpreted here as divine.  

On The Way To The Far Shore

I've found all of Leigh Brasington's books so straightforward and useful that at this point I'd probably read anything he wrote.  But I was actually particularly keen to go thorough his new commentary on the Pārāyanavagga because it is the other collection of suttas (alongside the Aṭṭhakavagga) that people think are the earliest writings in the Pali Cannon.  Since I just recently read Gil Fronsdal's commentary on the latter, along with a few Upanishads to set the context, it seemed like a good moment to continue in the same vein.

Like the "Book of Eights", the "Way to the Far Shore" also pears down the Buddha's teaching to its core message.  Be mindful and investigate the way that craving causes suffering, and the way that letting go of craving leads to the end of suffering.  Here, these observations are not ariticulated as a list of "Noble Truths", but the teaching is the same.  This core message is very simple. and repeated many times in these verses.  We have to investigate for ourselves how holding on prevents us from living peacefully.  Brasington of course has more expansive commentary, and some very interesting reflections on the translation of certain terms, but his short book is mostly aimed at helping us to see how simple and direct the pre-Theravadan path can be.   

Cosmos

Deleuze recommended Witold Gombrowicz's strange avant-garde novel in several places, so I decided to finally give it a shot.  It was actually fairly entertaining ... for an avant-garde novel.  But it is definitely not going to be everyone's cup of tea.  To wit, I think I remember seeing one Amazon review that classified it as "unreadable".  I didn't find it to be that exactly, though you will be sorely disappointed if you're looking for a page-turning story.  While the novel does have an identifiable plot of sorts, and isn't merely a series of language games or meta-references like some experimental novels, it can at times be a repetitive and frustrating experience.  So a lot like life in general, and in particular like being fully present inside our own everyday insanity.  Ultimately, that's what the novel is about -- the way we construct a 'meaningful' cosmos out of a thousand tiny and unrelated details by welding together correspondences that serve our desires.  In the end, it seems clear that Gombrowicz feels the cosmos lacks any innate meaning and is simply a chaos of constellations we squint into form.  Though, given that we are also part of the cosmos, perhaps this squinting already is an innate meaning.