Nirvana, Compassion & Meaning From an Existentialist View in Buddhism

 The question of meaning in Buddhism is something that is hardly discussed like its ignorance of free will as opposed to western philosophical traditions. One can argue that like the Buddhist quietism about free will, the question of meaning in Buddhism is not just absent or quiet but something needless given its ontological and epistemological presuppositions about the nature of reality/existence. Mark Siderits analyzes the state of meaning in Buddhism by asking the question whether there is any meaning at all in things in its strict sense in Buddhism. Because meaning is inextricably linked to existence and the Buddhist denial of existence of anything in its ultimate sense seems to necessarily entail nonexistence of meaning. Siderits employs the analogy of “fire” as lacking any inherent existence, i.e. fire is just a convenient designator for a causal series of flames and this means no statement using the word “fire” can be ultimately true or ultimately false. Any statement is devoid of meaning in its ultimate sense. Existence in its relative sense comes into being as mere conceptual fictions that is not ultimately meaningful (ultimately meaningless).

From a comparative perspective, this is interesting from an existentialist view of human condition and reality. Jean-Paul Sartre’s most celebrated phrase in his existentialism is a humanism is; “existence precedes essence”, which entails the meaninglessness of human condition and suggests that meaning or essence that we impose on us comes after existence. While Buddhist reductionism rejects existence of all phenomena except the dharmas or skhandas as the composite elements of existence and that existence of a whole is only real or true on the level of conventional truth. Existentialism may lack a deeper ontological doctrine like in Buddhism, but still, its position that meaning is a construct and an imposition upon a certain notion of existence resonates very clearly with Buddhism. Buddhism may have a better explanatory purchase here, and with regard to meaning in Buddhism, it also has to build the notion on the conventional level of reality for there is nothing that retains any meaning ultimately. Both existentialism and Buddhism posit the meaninglessness of existence in its ultimate sense and what we conventionally think of meaning as a mere conceptual construct.

Siderits asks the question whether there are any meaningful things to say about nirvana in light of the no-self doctrine and nirvana itself as extinction or “blowing out” of existence in its ultimate sense. Derek Parfit thinks that coming to realize the reductionist view of persons is “liberating” and made him care less about his life. Siderits warns that this might lead us into subscribing to what he calls punctualism, which holds that since there is no self and parts of the person are impermanent, there is no meaning in putting too much effort in planning for and worrying about the future. This entails a view of “living in the moment” perspective that is prevalent in certain Buddhist traditions. However, he thinks that punctualism is not the correct way of understanding Buddhist nirvana; a punctualist standpoint completely ignores the conventional truth of persons and existence. Even though it is true that there lacks any essence in its ultimate sense, conventionally, future experiences of pain and pleasure are dependent on present deeds as explained by the law of karmic causality. One has to brush and floss for health despite one’s present feeling of indifference, because it is a way to maximize or minimize one’s pleasure or pain in the future. The concept of present and future pain and pleasure entails a Buddhist concept of time and space, which might be interesting from a phenomenological standpoint, but I cannot develop much on it here. I hope to post more entries on phenomenology in the near future.

The second part of Parfit’s comment on the reductionism of persons is that it doesn’t only make him care less about himself, but it increases his “concern for others”. This is a crucial connection yet a difficult one to make between nirvana and compassion. In other words, it is to ask: how does nirvana retain compassion for others? For the Theravadic tradition, this is not a problem since arhatship is a state of self-liberation with compassion left at the shore as a raft. But in Mahayana, the relationship is not clear and one wonders if it is causal one. Part of the confusion lies in the notion of nirvana itself. In a conversation between the Buddha and Vaccha explains Buddha’s denial of the four logical possibilities of an arhat’s situation after death by saying that the situation is deep and immeasurable and the whole conversation portrays nirvana as something that transcends all rational discourse (Siderits, 72). This is the basis of the ineffability thesis of nirvana, i.e. the notion that nirvana is a state that cannot simply be described or understood, it can only be experienced. That is like Nagel’s “what it is like to be a bat?” kind of epistemic predicament.

However, as a consequence of no-self actualization in nirvana it necessarily begs the question of how compassion is accommodated into this ontology of empty persons and impermanent existence of parts of the wholes. Siderits asks some pressing questions like: What moral consequences might follow from the person’s being a mere conceptual fiction? Or, does enlightenment lead to a moral improvement? The Buddhist answer to this questions seem to be something in the vicinity of Parfit’s position. The enlightened being grasps the truth of no-self and sees there is no reason to treat other’s welfare anything less important than his, he acknowledges an “obligation” to promote welfare of others as a consequence. This presupposes the fact that Mahayana ethics is not instrumental in the sense that it serves as a means to something, like nirvana, but something intrinsically valuable or an end in itself. A rational framework seems to fail to describe where does that sense of obligation come from, but with the ineffability thesis of nirvana, a Buddhist would argue that nirvana is a state transcendental to conceptual descriptions, only experience do it. No wonder, it follows from the fact that Buddhists are empiricists.

Work Cited:

Siderits, Mark

Source

emptinez.me