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John Cobb on Vedanta
Vedanta insisted that ultimately all reality was one and that all plurality was mere appearance. This applied, of course, to the outer world. The variety of sense experience was only the variety of ways in which the one metaphysical reality, Brahman, presented itself superficially to men. But much more important, the true self of every man, Atman, was also one with Brahman. We must pause briefly to consider what this meant -- that Brahman and Atman were one.
Atman was not the conscious ego of axial man nor the teeming unconscious experience out of which this arose. In the Vedanta analysis, both conscious and unconscious were phenomenal and transitory expressions of an underlying subject, the ultimate self. But this ultimate self turned out upon analysis not in fact to be characterized by the variegated experience of the psyche. It was the subject of all that experience, but in its own nature it was unaffected by it. The subject of change did not itself change. Thus, like the life monads of Sankhya, it was qualitatively undifferentiated. But Vedanta went farther. The ultimate undifferentiated subject of a man’s experience, that is, his self, could not be other than the ultimate undifferentiated subject of any other man’s experience or, indeed, Brahman itself, the one unchanging subject of all change. Thus man s true self, in distinction from his apparent self, was that one unchanging reality that expressed itself in all the appearance of change. The religious implications of Vedantist monism were not very different from those of Sankhya pluralism. For Vedanta, like Sankhya, the problem was not real contamination or separateness or evil, but the misleading appearance from which true knowledge could free men. To gain this true knowledge could not be merely a matter of rational assent to the doctrine that Atman is Brahman. It must be, also, progressive experiential realization of this unity. - John B. Cobb, Jr. Buddhist Existence (Chapter 6 of the Structure of Christian Existence) |
John Cobb on BuddhismBuddhism, in contrast, insisted on a much more drastic departure from the past. Any conceptuality by which man tried to understand ultimate reality was, it was convinced, tainted and distorting. (So that distinctions may be clearly seen, the Buddhist view is presented in its opposition to the Hindu schools. Gautama himself did not teach in this way.) The very idea of a "reality" in contradistinction to the appearance of things represented for it a false conceptuality. Brahman was not "real" and Atman was not "real." "Reality" as such was a null class; it was a part of that mythical mentality that was only partly rationalized in the metaphysical schools. The whole speculative thrust of these schools was, from the Buddhist point of view, misguided or unenlightened, for the very good reason that its questions were meaningless. When one was truly enlightened, one turned one’s attention away from the mythical-metaphysical to the practical. Conversely, the safest path to enlightenment was also to be found in the practical.
The denial of Atman, therefore, on the part of Buddhism was not some strange metaphysical doctrine to the effect that the flow of experience did not occur or that there was no seat of existence in human experiences. It was, rather, the denial that there was some other dimension of reality in comparison with which this one was mere appearance or illusion. - John B. Cobb, Jr. Buddhist Existence (Chapter 6 of the Structure of Christian Existence) |
In all philosophic theory there is an ultimate which is actual in virtue of its accidents. It is only then capable of characterization through its accidental embodiments, and apart from these accidents is devoid of actuality. In the philosophy of organism this ultimate is termed ‘creativity’; and God is its primordial, non-temporal accident. In monistic philosophies, Spinoza's or absolute idealism, this ultimate is God, who is also equivalently termed ‘The Absolute.’ In such monistic schemes, the ultimate is illegitimately allowed a final, ‘eminent’ reality, beyond that ascribed to any of its accidents. In this general position the philosophy of organism seems to approximate more to some strains of Indian, or Chinese, thought, than to western Asiatic, or European, thought. One side makes process ultimate; the other side makes fact ultimate.
‘Creativity’ is another rendering of the Aristotelian ‘matter,’ and of the modern ‘neutral stuff.’ But it is divested of the notion of passive receptivity, either of ‘form,’ or of external relations; it is the pure notion of the activity conditioned by the objective immortality of the actual world— a world which is never the same twice, though always with the stable element of divine ordering. Creativity is without a character of its own in exactly the same sense in which the Aristotelian ‘matter’ is without a character of its own. It is that ultimate notion of the highest generality at* the base of actuality.
What then has been shown? First of all, not only that Whitehead’s conceptuality can be used to analyze the processes of yogic meditation but that also it can make sense of Aurobindo’s experiences of Nirvana and transcendent consciousness. It was shown that through the separation of the two pure modes of perception by the stilling of symbolic reference, Aurobindo’s experience of Nirvana could be explained. The pure perception in the mode of presentational immediacy without reference to causal efficacy could result in the experience of the objective world as illusion. Perception in the mode of causal efficacy understood as the interrelatedness of the universe as it impinges upon the individual without the specificity and clarity of presentational immediacy could yield an experience of an unqualifiable unity at the base of all existence as one perceived the actuality of concrescence. Secondly, it was indicated that the experience of an all-pervading consciousness could be understood in Whiteheadian terms as the self-awareness of every becoming moment as an instance of creativity understood as universal subjectivity. In each case consciousness and subjectivity is manifested in the individual and is the pure awareness of the individual’s existence. Creativity could be experienced through the individual’s own instantiation of it, but it can also be realized through the primordial instantiation in God. In the latter case, creativity could be experienced as qualified by the divine existence, consciousness, and satisfaction in an analogous way to Sachchidananda. This indicates that reflection founded in exoteric experience can be useful in illuminating at least certain forms of esoteric experience. This may not be a "meeting of the twain," but at least it may be an acknowledgement that the twain exists.
What do we mean when we say God? According to Vedanta, God is infinite existence, infinite consciousness, and infinite bliss. The term for this impersonal, transcendent reality is Brahman, the divine ground of being. Yet Vedanta also maintains that God can be personal as well, assuming human form in every age. Most importantly, God dwells within our own hearts as the divine Self or Atman. The Atman is never born nor will it ever die. Neither stained by our failings nor affected by the fluctuations of the body or mind, the Atman is not subject to our grief or despair or disease or ignorance. Pure, perfect, free from limitations, the Atman, Vedanta declares, is one with Brahman. The greatest temple of God lies within the human heart.
Vedanta asserts that the goal of life is to realize and to manifest our own divinity. This divinity is our real nature, and the realization of it is our birthright. We are moving towards this goal as we grow with knowledge and life experiences. It is inevitable that we will eventually, either in this or in future lives, discover that the greatest truth of our existence is our own divine nature.
- The Vedanta Society of Southern California