estraint2.1 Data Acquisition in an Open Universe (Bauddha Metaphysical Methodologies)
The work of the philosopher consists in assembling reminders for a particular purpose (Wittgenstein 1953: no. 127).
In the developmental processes of Bauddha[2] historicization there arise three generic, quasi self-referential classifications. These are Theravāda, Mahāyāna, and Tantrayāna. Viewed primarily as research models, each has its own characteristic relationary approach to gaining favor, i.e. data, from an a priori "open" universe. In this way 'Jaino-Bauddhic' Theravāda watches it; faith-driven Mahāyāna travels to it; and Tantrayāna yogically becomes it.
The school of the theras or five-hundred "elders"[3] accepts a rather dry, spectatorial tact and aims to objectify the greatly analyticised facets of its perceived emotional impinging universe. But with the dawning of the bhakti-driven Mahāyāna, we see the "Great Vehicle" has inherited an expanded, new and boldly unfastened universe that ignites and 'explodes in all dimensions' (Gombrich 1996: 38). Here Mahāyānic science turns phenomenological and launches deep probes in the purity and faith through the essentialized and redescribed vastness of its expanse. Tantrayāna yogically becomes its own alterity[4] through the hyperthetic reach of a corporeal-perceptive instrumentation. Such extensive retoolings compel its researchers to dilate the ontologic vein of eclipse and don, as it were, the body of the universe.
Despite the sustained attempts in its primitive texts to stratify the heavens, and to specify and catalogue everything knowable, there remains 'a gaping vagueness at the top – in fact, there is no top at all' (38) – but a vast expansiveness, immeasurable and ineffable. Thus the Bauddha universe is plainly open-ended, in very marked contrast to its cousinly Jaina conception, which likes to represent the cosmos by closed-in diagrams (38). But more than unbounded by 'all spatial dimensions' (38), the Bauddha universe is unrestrained by 'time.' And so in vivid contrast to the Shemitic sense of temporal eternity, Bauddha apperception of its spatial dimension is rather one of timelessness and infinity.
Can deeper implications be brought to light through sustained transcultural examination of our growing catalogue of ontological archetypes? Transculturally mapping ontological archetypes ought to be an essential project of comparative religious and philosophical studies. This could well hold answers to the cultural formulation of variant conceptions of being-in-the-universal, their influence on social manipulation and formation.
2.2 Primmediate Principles and the Scientific method
We cannot close our eyes to the foundational primacy of the scientific method, per se, where the observer/scientist may only gather data that is freely given, that is, freely received. The extent to which a data is freely exchanged is a marker of the data's relative immediacy, hence purity. This is data as a totem: no strings attached.
Yet due to its primmediacy, the imagination may well be the purest form of accessible data. One could also argue that when gathered unrushed and in the absents of exertion and momentum of the mind, the flow of creative imagination is the output of revelatory (epi)phenomena. Yet are we researchers permitted to collect them? Capture and encage them, assuming this was even possible? Or to foster the conditions for their manifest destiny, letting them speak and act for themselves as it were?[5]
Study and praxis seem inseparable here in attempt to lay bare the primmediacy of principles. But ultimately ones study is ones self as praxis, which defines by default ones methodological persuasion; the method is self-evident, ones natural bent.
So one need not be concerned with other(s) methodologies. However, if one is, one needs to understand that one is likely making a cult of methodology. This is data as fetish. It is the choice and application of methodology for the sake of some sort of self-aggrandizement. Exposing a procedure as cult gives it value.
2.3 The Fetishism of Human Choice
This critical turn, this defocus of the discourse relates to a range of abstract constraints; not merely to the seminarist's 'sense of language centered on the sign of God,'[6] and whose relationary logics – the many toward the One – would certainly necessitate inherent constraint (vis-à-vis Roberts 2004: 161). No. We hone in(stead) – constrain via foci – on a corollary wrong headed ethics of choice; we isolate and fasten on the claims of the impulse emposturing its specious metaphysics of vagrancy. And heedless to constraint, we run chasing after (her), trying to keep up with the tempting datum that is always "in excess of any foresight, any comprehensive structure" (Williams 2000: xv, cited in Roberts: 161, n). The fetishism of human choice is the methodological impasse of a paradox. It reaches one no further than the standard, the norm, which is more or less nowhere (new).
2.4 Radically Restringing the Polarized Dichotomy
It is the tasking of the mind, in any dimension, that inevitably 'subverts ones research strategy'[7]. And so subversion it is. Now all singularity, all particularized "datum" become in an instance radically revalorized, as well as upsetting to the normative discourse. From now any point, any iterated focus gets immediately invested with a sense of transcendence, and likewise to some irreducible degree, gains a certain situatedness beyond the scope of human apprehension. This is not without its Shemetic relevance. For in analogous mode to "the monotheisms derived from the Hebrew Bible" (Roberts' frame), our datum is rendered "in some sense unknowable" while "all our words and arguments" concerning it remain as "finite and fallible" as we are (160). This radical restringing of the polarized dichotomy produces a trangressive shift in tensions greatly effecting the epistemological and transcendental buttressing of the social, theological, and philosophical disciplines as we know them.
2.5 A Certain Docility, an Authoritative "laying down"
There is a certain docility[8] lulling one calmly towards the dialogic interstice of limnos and reflection; a brash, interrogative invocation quelled by a sequenced pace of particulars. And one senses an authoritative "laying down here,"[9] the first measured stroke towards the treatment of the theme; the extended expounding of a nuanced position to be proved over time (can it be). Nor to ever overlook the balance of arsis, the step unaccounted for, the sound of the undropped second shoe.
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I have let my easeful sails be filled with the gracious winds of three recent contributions to the Journal of the American Academy of Religion, whose essays – the downloaded copies of which literally dropped in my arms – are aesthetic, instructive, and literarily packed with performance-enhancing phraseology and reference – an unchosen boon of data indeed. The essayists are American Tyler Roberts (2004), Englishman Gavin Hyman (2004), and Norwegian Ursula King (2002). The theological, philosophical, and religious studies concerns of these texts, provide a rich array of structures and terms, and to some degree a stimulating context to explore the metamethodological scopes and disciplinary sanctums that are bound to avail themselves in the course of my own philosophical study.
2.6 The Historicization of Bauddha Interiority (as microcosm)
Taking the historicization of Bauddha interiority as microcosm, we witness a vigorous protectionist enterprise accomplished largely though a process of cultural shedding; it was a reargued shredding of vestments and visages of the seriously implicating paper trails exposing its conformity, affinity, or complete identity with its greater (S)ind(h)o-Brāhmanical field. It was the rigorous and thoroughgoing de-vedicization of its social image, its projected self, its Janus-face of theory and praxis. It was meticulously aimed to establish and perpetuate a solely unique and inviolable situatedness beyond the grasp of enfolding, protean-horde religiosity on the one hand, and the ascendant structures, strictures, and scriptures that traded on a sense of remote and authoritative transcendence on the other. Thus the early Bauddha exhaustively strove to portray itself in exacting, clear-cut contradistinction to any antecedent or contemporaneous research or soteriological methodology. Thus in its sustained millennia-long campaign to embank itself off from the rising seas of homologic (s)ind(h)ic culture, we see the emergence of a radical asceto-empirical institution of subjecting itself to these serial viscerectomies, purging itself of the faintest traces of "transcendent authority," or any other tīrthaka-esque functions for that mater. Why? To re-caste itself as immanently blameless and pure[10]. Yet when nothing could be done to extract or obliterate its sly little reification complex-strain – or conversely, simply found to conducive to the cause – Bauddha reverted to its original birth pang mode of subsuming data via redefinition and re-explanation. For it is after all true, indeed, patently true, that no religious leader would ever stand in front of his faithful congregation and proclaim that "the other teacher is better – go follow him."
2.7 Indra and his Weapon: The Episteme Sati-Vipassanā
So where is the god(head) or "transcendent authority" to be found in Bauddha interiority? It is found in the concept of sati. Doctrinal Bauddha, as Tambiah remarks (1984: 181), imbues "all humans with intentionality." "Intentionality" is the Bauddha re-definition of Sanskrit karman (Pāli kamma), i.e. from "sacrificial ritualistic action" in the earliest sense, followed then by 'ritual prescriptions,' general 'action' in the social sense of 'work,' and then finally to what Gombrich (51-6) explains as 'intentionality.' "I posit that 'intention' leads to kamma, 'involvement,' is Gautama's answer to Brahmin ritualism' (51)[11]. But we should not be diverted from our microcosmic concern here of "human interiority" and Bauddha sati, which modern English 'Buddhism' institutionalized as "mindfulness." However sati has no intention of itself, nor can one intend (to) sati, it (is not a verb it) would seem. Does sati really exist? Can we label it a fetish? Sati is portrayed as an element, as an impulse, as a function that "sees." It is said to be "mindful," as of objects. Yet sati is not the mind itself. Why? Because it sees, "barely notices" (Tambiah 42) the mind itself. Therefore sati is not the "self," nor the person, the ego, nor the 'you,' nor the 'I.' Why? Because Bauddha dogma rules these out, vis-à-vis anatta. We shall come to this later.
As elaborated out of the vipassanā doctrine, sati is said to be something "promoted by restricting attention" (Tambiah 42); and so sati is not "attention" either. So what does sati do? It mindfulnesses, one might awkwardly presume; that is, if sati can be said to do anything. Problem is, this cannot be said. Sati is nonetheless situated, that is in the course of vipassanā, which is troublingly rendered as either 'insight' or 'meditation,' or worse as "insight meditation." Sati as paired and combined with vipassanā is very much the basis of early Bauddha data acquisition and formulation. Or if not the actual data 'gathering,' then data 'analysis' to be sure. Sati-vipassanā (or satipatthāna) is described as "noticing...attending to the facts of perception as they arise," as physical senses "or in the mind" (42). Sati then is situated independent, autonomous, and transcendent of the body and the mind, not to mention the Bauddhic non-existent "you" in accord with Bauddha doctrine. Still professor Tambiah faithfully rehearses Buddhagosh's Path of Purification (Vishuddimagga),
In due course, the normal illusions of continuity and rationality that sustain cognitive and perceptual processes give way to a correct apprehension of the random discrete units out of which reality is continually being structured. With emergence the true realization of these processes, mindfulness matures into insight (42, emphasis added).
Until finally,
Contemplating mind and its object, previously separate, are now nondualistially conjoined, and in unbroken succession occurs a chain of insights of mind knowing itself, culmination in the state of nibbāna (43).
This is quite a tidy strategy; indeed, nothing short of a veritable Bauddhic revolutionary manifesto of soteriological interiority; classically modern in its grand monolithic systematization and its universal embrace of all mankind and the entire cosmos. Yet try to notice the glib discontinuity when at some non-point sati transfers its perceptive load-function and the ball gets passed to vipassanā ('insight'). It is a tricky maneuver, a sleight of foot that has far too long gone unnoticed, ignored and thus uninterrupted. But with a flash of hermeneutical suspicion-cum-insight this fundamental sati-vipassanā strategy, which has always seemed dour is rather now disclosed as counterintuitive, the only way to render its sub-plot plausible. Otherwise how on earth else to interpret the invincible duo? – but as the metaphor for Indra and his lightening bolt. If sati is Indra the king of the gods, then vipassanā is Indra's holy weapon: to wit, his adamantine research tool.
Indra's favorite weapon is commonly understood to be the vajra, usually rendered as thunderbolt. But this heaven-hurled weapon is elsewhere said to be composed of metal or stone. In any case, Indra's jihādic arsenal certainly comprised a number of delivery systems, including slings. What is more, his sky-borne projectiles were not the only vajra, but included, as mentioned above, strokes of lightening, together with meteors, comets, and rocks. "Although Indra's weapon is usually explicitly designated by the term vajra," writes Gonda, "and vajra is generally described as metallic (ayasa), it is incidentally spoken of as a rock (parvata) or 'stone of, or: from, the heavens' (divo asmanam)" (1959: 63). In the very early Rg Veda verse the missile-welding Indra is described as such: "He hurlest forth from heaven iron missiles..., he hurleth his bolt, his dart of death." Concerning this verse, Griffith (1889) notes that Indra stands for a 'terrible God who sends affliction'[12].
As a corporal function, Indra analogues the heavens as the universal backdrop; a role metaphorically equivalent to sati; i.e., an independent, transcendent, autonomous, situatedness – an isolated witness appertaining to the data below, as it were[13]. And the diamond-like lance of his brandished vajra? It is a piercing, lance-like, surgical-strike weapon of data penetration vis-à-vis vipassanā – 'meditation!
2.8 Mythic Discourse in a Globalized world
I have put forth the following simple case: If Bauddha sati is equated to Indra the king of the gods, then vipassanā, or so-called "insight (meditation)," is the godly weapon that Indra welds. In Bauddha doctrine Gautama teaches the ancient path of "insight" (vipassanā) that tears asunder the veil of ignorance, brings knowledge, and liberates people from the cycle of birth and death. It may be worth mentioning that, more specifically, Indra is known in Bauddha tradition as Śakra (Pāli Sakkra). Well then, if it actually bears truth that sati is Indra the king of the gods, and if vipassanā is the god's holy weapon, then I have just used this weapon to tell a new story. Why? That we may finally move beyond. I have demonstrated how to plumb an old myth and retell in a way that subverts the dead meaning. I have demonstrated how to bury but one of a bewildering number of the counter-hermeneutical snares and red herrings with which this path is insidiously laden, that it loosen its cultish grip on you, and you distance yourselves from rash identities, and open yourselves to the sequenced pace of the things that are now, that you may finally understand that "Buddha-ism" is historically and culturally derived form Brāhmanism, and that the entirety of its ethical, religious, and philosophical outlook is but a grand unmitigated plagiarism of earlier, largely Vedic conceptions and sources.
I return again, if only briefly, to the limnological thoughts of Roberts and Hyman – as well as to Fiorenza (1993), McCutcheon (2001), Santner (1998), and Winquist (1995), as cited in Roberts; and to Bell (1998), as cited in Hyman. I am also using Jean-Paul Sartre (1949) and Ludwig Wittgenstein (1953) as unassuming garnish to my text.
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WE SPEAK OF THE UNIVERSE as "data, " as "object," as "other," as "she," as śakti. We speak of the it in terms of "transcendence," naturally. Now there is definitely a rhetorical propensity in this; but then rhetoric imbues almost any kind writing, descriptive, discursive, normative, what ever – so long as it utilizes terms and concepts "while simultaneously problematizing them." And in this way, rhetorical texuality as a discipline is bound to have "an ambivalent and uneasy relationship with its tools" (Hyman 207). "We are [afterall] entering an era," writes Bell,
in which what we want to learn cannot be learned if our terminology over determines the theater of engagement. It is after all an era in which our terms are best used as a minimalist set of props with which we can begin to engage ideas and inquire into practice that may well modify the surroundings (220-221).
Still whenever we study religious scripture that belongs to a particular narrative tradition, and indeed world-view (e.g. Vishuddimagga), we are dealing with text whose heritage invests in it an absolute authority, the basis of which, in McCutcheon's view, is a "kind of inspiration from beyond history" (107). We are after all living in a globalized world where human products correspond to a worldwide sense of standardization and quasi-political correctness, and where packaging and labeling are key defining factors that confer on each its certified identity. This underlying market-driven push toward sameness is destined both to rid and rob the religious traditions of their pre-postmodern claims to inalienable, and indeed inviolable uniqueness. Thus in the academic climate we live it becomes highly untenable to confer such authority on any set of religious texts or sources (Fiorenza 35). For this would only make our study another "mythic discourse," which according to McCutcheon (101) ought to be "excluded from the academic study of religion." Unless, I would add with measured agreement, these myths stay myths and are not passed off as factual accounts. This is how the "Buddha myth" ought to be studied. But it is also here an incumbent obligation that I clearly differentiate the "Buddha myth" from the philosophical narrative that designates the Bauddha.
2.9 Data as a Moment of Perceptive Choice
I am broaching the notion of "singularity" here as a moment of perceptive choice where there will always be reflexive and resonant arsis – a lightened measure of poetic foot down lanes with 'sully-bare walls of anonymity' (Sartre), as it were – reechoing sounds of plastic sandals plunging through the silence of gravity's fault-line. So one needs to be attuned to the overlooked marvel, to the points (or regions) of infinite mass where space and time find sweet distortion through the languid feints of self-reproof, through the pulls of her breath as she sighs the world, through the ecstasies resultant from entering whole.
This becoming attuned to a "singularity" — described by Roberts as a "critical practice" — is "the tension with which deconstruction works as a practice of memory [whereby] its task is to remember singularity over and against its inevitable forgetting" (162).
This theological narrative has borrowing power too. For its descriptions – even if confessionally placed – of precise phenomenological rediscriptions, amalgamate well to our current direction. These furthermore reflect an appropriate concern for an apparent lack of a metamethodology. And such logical progression is hugely desirable, if not inevitable, even if distinction would need to be made in contouring the scopes and periscopes of the metamethodological primmediacy, as this naturally cuts across disciplinary sanctums and spawns fresh flows of revealing phenomena, returning one again to questions of restraint in particular regard to the scientific method and whether we "philosophers" are permitted to form them. But we are surely speaking of a kind of "revelation" here, in particular regard to the purity of data, which, properly speaking, must be given "freely" or "primmediately." And yet by delicate contrast (via Wittgenstein's rāga), the question comes to this: What can be revealed that is not concealed?[14]
Through commitment to a non-confessional approach to the acquisition of revelatory data, this theology – specifically: a discourse of singularity – is "an intervention into the very syntax" of experience, writes Santner (118), who leans, in spite of everything, on the "absolute empiricism" and radical confessionalism that defines and refines Rosenzweig's vision of "attunement to the surplus of the real within reality" (118). Winquist, for his own part, views singularities as "points of resistance within the interpretive meaning of experience." These are facets of life that (redolent again of Wittgenstein) go unnoticed through the heedlessness of "homogenization, abstraction, or universalization" (48-50).
2.10 Singularity of Datum, Revelation of Data
As a finalizing gesture to this early gambit, I would only reconfess that I am moving towards a process of primmediatization. It is the reiteration, refocus, and abstraction of singularity as datum, as through presently attending to the singularized moment of perceptive choice. This may also find resonance in the "discontinuities of experience" put forth by Winquist (29); and yet whose "task," at least in Roberts' view, is
not to explain or decipher, but first of all to open discourse to them, to interrupt or disturb ordinary ways of communicating and interacting with others and ways of "being ourselves" in order to attend to the disturbances caused by that which is ordinarily, and necessarily, excluded from consciousness or occluded by various discursive strategies (162).
And this once again hints of Wittgenstein, correct or not? And yet to what extent are we really in need of an interpretative methodology to explain these revelations as data, and to render meaning to our 'sentences around them'? Does the truly revealed require explanation? "How do sentences do it?" asks Wittgenstein rhetorically; and answering rhetorically: "Don't you know? For nothing is hidden" (no. 435).
Philosophy simply puts everything before us, and neither explains nor deduces anything. – Since everything lies open to view there is nothing to explain. For what is hidden, for example, is of no interest to us. One might also give the name 'philosophy' to what is possible before all new discoveries and inventions. The work of the philosopher consists in assembling reminders for a particular purpose (nos. 126, 127).
And yet is Wittgenstein's "assembling" a matter of choice?[15] And what are we to make in regard to his "purpose"?
We may return to these questions later.
