Creationism, god, and Soyen Shaku

Barbara has more patience than I do, at least when it comes to reading the Huffington Post. They have become so woo-filled-for-the-purpose-of-executing-an-AOL-business-plan that I rarely read them anymore, even when they publish an insufferable creationist. But Barbara offers a pretty good reply here, so I don't have to, really. And I suspect you could go to my former posts about "intelligent" "design" to rebut the pseudo-scientific garbage Lurie is putting out regarding evolution. But I thought I'd get to the bit where the creationist, one Alan Lurie,invokes Soyen Shaku.  Barbara writes:

Rabbi Lurie supports his claim about Buddhism with a quotation from a Rinzai Zen teacher named Soyen Shaku -- "Let me state that Buddhism is not atheistic as the term is ordinarily understood. It has certainly a God, the highest reality and truth, through which and in which this universe exists."

So what about this? Soyen Shaku (1860-1919) became the first Zen teacher to set foot on North America when he traveled here to speak at the World Parliament of Religions in Chicago, 1893. He returned in 1905 to give some lectures. It appears he did not speak English and relied on translators, one of whom was D.T. Suzuki.

So it's possible something was lost in translation. It's also possible that Soyen Shaku believed he had to say something affirmative about God so that his audience didn't turn against him. Also, Soyen Shaku didn't say anything about a "guiding consciousness."

Now it turns out that one need not speculate too much about all of this, and Barbara's right that Soyen Shaku said nothing about a "guiding consciousness."  But in fact you can read then entire text of Soyen Shaku's Zen for Americans, in which the quote appears here, and it is pretty apparent from its style that D.T. Suzuki did in fact do the translation (or at least someone who was well versed with Suzuki's writing style did).  So I think the credit to Suzuki for translation is accurate, especially because it reveals the erudition of the scholar Suzuki was.  The chapter on "god" in Suzuki's book is here.  And this work went off-copyright decades ago, thankfully.  Suzuki translates Soyen Shaku as:

...Again, Buddhism is not pantheistic in the sense that it identifies the universe with God. On the other hand, the Buddhist God is absolute and transcendent; this world, being merely its manifestation, is necessarily fragmental and imperfect. To define more exactly the Buddhist notion of the highest being, it may be convenient to borrow the term very happily coined by a modern German scholar, "panentheism," according to which God is πᾶν καὶ ἕν (all and one) and more than the totality of existence.

One of the most fundamental beliefs of Buddhism is that all the multitudinous and multifarious phenomena in the universe start from, and have their being in, one reality which itself has "no fixed abode," being above spatial and temporal limitations. However different and separate and irreducible things may appear to the senses, the most profound law of the human mind declares that they are all one in their hidden nature. In this world of relativity, or nânâtva as Buddhists call it, subject and object, thought and nature, are separate and distinct, and as far as our sense-experience goes, there is an impassable chasm between the two which no amount of philosophizing can bridge. But the very constitution of the mind demands a unifying principle which is an indispensable hypothesis for our conception of phenomenality; and this hypothesis is called "the gate of sameness," samatâ, in contradistinction to "the gate of difference," nânâtva; and Buddhism declares that no philosophy or religion is satisfactory which does not recognize these two gates. In some measure the "gate of sameness" may be considered to correspond to "God" and the "gate of difference" to the world of individual existence.

Now, the question is, "How does Buddhism conceive the relation between these two entrances to the abode of Supreme Knowledge (sambodhi)?" And the answer to this decides the Buddhist attitude towards pantheism, theism, atheism, and what not.

To state it more comprehensively, Buddhism recognizes the coexistence and identity of the two principles, sameness and difference...

Thus, according to the proclamation of an enlightened mind, God or the principle of sameness is not transcendent, but immanent in the universe, and we sentient beings are manifesting the divine glory just as much as the lilies of the field. A God who, keeping aloof from his creations, sends down his words of command through specially favored personages, is rejected by Buddhists as against the constitution of human reason. God must be in us, who are made in his likeness. We cannot presume the duality of God and the world. Religion is not to go to God by forsaking the world, but to find him in it. Our faith is to believe in our essential oneness with him, and not in our sensual separateness. "God in us and we in him," must be made the most fundamental faith of all religion.

Suzuki/Soyen gets a bit too anthropomorphic in the succeeding text, and I am pretty certain that this is done to introduce Buddhism to an audience that "knows about" a western god.  Suzuki/Soyen's emphasis improves a bit here:

As I mentioned before, Buddhists do not make use of the term God, which characteristically belongs to Christian terminology. An equivalent most commonly used is Dharmakâya, which word has been explained in one of the sermons herein collected, and it will not be necessary to enter again upon the discussion of its signification. Let us only see what other equivalents have been adopted.

When the Dharmakâya is most concretely conceived it becomes the Buddha, or Tathâgata, or Vairochana, or Amitâbha. Buddha means "the enlightened," and this may be understood to correspond to "God is wisdom." Vairochana is "coming from the sun," and Amitâbha, "infinite light," which reminds us of the Christian notion, "God is light." As to the correct meaning of Tathâgata, Buddhists do not give any definite and satisfactory explanation, and it is usually considered to be the combination of tathâ = "thus" and gata = "gone," but it is difficult to find out how "Thus Gone" came to be an appellation of the supreme being. There are, some scholars, however, who understand gata in the sense of "being in" or "situated in." If this be correct, Tathâgata meaning "being thus," or "being such," can be interpreted in the same sense as Tathâtâ or Bhûtatathâtâ or Tattva, as explained below. But in this case Tathâgata will lose its personification and become a metaphysical term like the others, though it has been so persistently used by Buddhists in connection with the historical Buddha that it always awakens in their minds something more concrete and personal than a mere ontological abstraction.

 It should be understood that this concrete realization of the Dharmakâya only happens when difference and sameness are...um...co-aware, or co-realized to invent a term - but they are already, sort of.  But as Suzuki notes here, this ontological abstracting is distracting.  But read the whole of Suzuki/Soyen, it's well worth the time.  However, it should be clear that this "god" of Suzuki/Soyen is not a monotheistic creater deity: the identity of sameness/difference, is dependently originated.  The most problematic text in Soyen/Suzuki then is:

We must not, however, suppose that God is no more than the sum-total of individual existences. God exists even when all creations have been destroyed and reduced to a state of chaotic barrenness. God exists eternally, and he will create another universe out of the ruins of this one. To our limited intelligence there may be a beginning and an end of the worlds, but as God surveys them, being and becoming are one selfsame process. To him nothing changes, or, to state it rather paradoxically, he sees no change whatever in all the changes we have around us; all things are absolutely quiet in their eternal cycle of birth and death, growth and decay, combination and disintegration. This universe cannot exist outside of God, but God is more than the totality of individual existences; God is here as well as there, God is not only this but also that. As far as he is manifested in nature and mind, they glorify him, and we can have a glimpse of his image and feel, however imperfectly, his inner life. But it will be a grievous error, let us repeat, to think that he has exhausted his being in the manifestation of this universe, that he is absolutely identical with his creations, and that with the annihilation of the world he vanishes into eternal emptiness.

The best way I can reconcile this text with what I know about Buddhism, though is that Dharmakâya, being co-existent with the difference world, as it were, (or Absolute and Relative), have the relation that Relative disappearing with Absolute remaining is kind of like considering the number A, and dividing A by 0. That is, the concept of whatever the Absolute is without the Relative is pretty much outside the discourse of things in Buddhism, just as A/0 is not within the discourse of finite mathematics.  We can use identifiers to connote a sequence of numbers leading to "A/0" but the term "A/0" itself is not usefully defined in finite mathematics.

To put it another way, this is why I'm a largely atheist Buddhist: the notion of "god" in the sense that Suzuki/Soyen writes here just isn't useful for everyday operations - and within Buddhism the point is the realization and effective execution of the identity of Absolute and Relative for all beings right here.

And so Barbara's right: Suzuki/Soyen's notion of "god" isn't what theists call god.  I think in our day and age the term "god" is not very useful to apply to Buddhism, for at least the reason that using "god" here means that Buddhism can be extracted by theists for their own purposes (and I think Brad Warner's book is going to be similarly problematic, but I hope to enter things there.)

I think it is unfortunate that Suzuki/Soyen did not see that there would be people who would misuse his text here, but that happens.  One other quote from Zen for Americans I might throw in here, where Soyen/Suzuki is replying to a Christian critic, comparing the Christian Jesus Christ to the Buddha:

Nor has Jesus Christ attained to the calmness and dignity of Buddha, for the passion of anger overtook him in the temple, when he drove out with rope in hand those that bargained in the holy place.

How different would Buddha have behaved under similar conditions in the same place! Instead of whipping the evil-doers he would have converted them, for kind words strike deeper than the whip.

The same could be said for other monotheistic characters as well.

I have more useful things with which to blog, namely how the practice of Wing Chun really is developing, at least in myself, improved abilities for dealing with people that I didn't even know I needed. And how does that square with the NY Times discovering that mixed martial arts is the "Yoga for Young Men?" I hope to get to that stuff over the weekend.

The other side of fundamentalist religious oppression

As Barbara notes here, one component of it is a fear of losing one's self - but there is another component. And it's a type of hubris, greed, and narcissism, based on a denial of a fundamental self-evident observation of  human behavior in the human condition, as succinctly put by R. D. Laing:

I see you, and you see me. I experience you, and you experience me. I see your behaviour. You see my behaviour. But I do not and never have and never will see your experience of me. Just as you cannot "see" my experience of you. My experience of you is not "inside" me. It is simply you, as I experience you. And I do not experience you as inside me. Similarly, I take it that you do not experience me as inside you.
"My experience of you" is just another form of words for "you-as-l-experience-you", and "your experience of me" equals "me-as-you-experience-me". Your experience of me is not inside you and my experience of you is not inside me, but your experience of me is invisible to me and my experience of you is invisible to you.

And:

I cannot experience your experience. You cannot experience my experience. We are both invisible men. All men are invisible to one another. Experience used to be called The Soul. Experience as invisibility of man to man is at the same time more evident than anything. Only experience is evident. Experience is the only evidence.

We can take "experience"  for Buddhist purposes to mean one's own collection of the 5 aggregates and the various forms of consciousness.  When I declare that your experience invalid because of either my experience or some external to both of our experiences (such as somebody's opinion of "scripture" or  what someone was told "God's intention" or "God's words" were, this is a statement against your very being.  In the case where either of us are citing something external to invalidate both of our experiences, this is a statement directed against both of us.

Although we can "see areas light up in the brain" corresponding to all kinds of human thoughts, feelings, emotions, hallucinations, volitions and sensations, these can never be the equivalent if any person actually experiencing those thoughts, feelings, sensations, emotions, hallucinaitons, and volitions.

Despite what I have experienced in my life, I  really don't have a clue as to why Lindsay Lohan  is messed up, or what makes a fundamentalist tick,  what's in Eddie Long's brain, or any of a thousand other such questions.  Only the principals know what's in their hearts and minds. True, there is empathy and compassion, but this empathy and compassion is counterfeit if it does not take into account that what another is experiencing is really experienced..

It is this invalidation of others that is the beginning of all kinds of religious exploitation, and all the big religions have done it from time to time.  I practice Buddhism in part because by placing the issues with regard to the Way on the individual, at least in my school, much of this harm can be avoided.  And that's another reason, as I say, that such practices are the last best hope for religion. Maybe Taoism and Jainism are too.

The Faith of the non-Christian...and the Practice of a Buddhist

Simon Critchley, chair of philosophy at the New School for Social Research writes on Kierkegaard :

Kierkegaard insists — and one feels here the force of his polemic against the irreligious, essentially secular order of so-called Christendom, in his case what he saw as the pseudo-Christianity of the Danish National Church — that no pastor or priest has the right to say that one has faith or not according to doctrines like baptism and the like. To proclaim faith is to abandon such external or worldly guarantees. Faith has the character of a continuous “striving … in which you get occasion to be tried every day.” This is why faith and the commandment of love that it seeks to sustain is not law. It has no coercive, external force. As Rosenzweig writes, “The commandment of love can only proceed from the mouth of the lover.” He goes on to contrast this with law, “which reckons with times, with a future, with duration.” By contrast, the commandment of love “knows only the moment; it awaits the result in the very moment of its promulgation.” The commandment of love is mild and merciful, but, as Kierkegaard insists, “there is rigor in it.” We might say love is that disciplined act of absolute spiritual daring that eviscerates the old self of externality so something new and inward can come into being...

[I]n the penultimate paragraph of “Works of Love” Kierkegaard shifts to auditory imagery. God is a vast echo chamber where each sound, “the slightest sound,” is duplicated and resounds back loudly into the subject’s ears. God is nothing more than the name for the repetition of each word that the subject utters. But it is a repetition that resounds with “the intensification of infinity.” In what Kierkegaard calls “the urban confusion” of external life, it is nigh impossible to hear this repetitive echo of the infinite demand. This is why the bracketing out of externality is essential: “externality is too dense a body for resonance, and the sensual ear is too hard-of-hearing to catch the eternal’s repetition.” We need to cultivate the inner or inward ear that infinitizes the words and actions of the self. As Kierkegaard makes clear, what he is counseling is not “to sit in the anxiety of death, day in and day out, listening for the repetition of the eternal.” What is rather being called for is a rigorous and activist conception of faith that proclaims itself into being at each instant without guarantee or security and which abides with the infinite demand of love.

I usually say, when asked, that it was Existentialism that brought me to Zen Buddhism.  Kierkegaard's "God" here to me looks an awful lot like Mind, Buddha, &c., and looks so much more to be that than the anthropomorphic Christian deity that I have ceased calling myself a Christian and theist altogether.   It is understandable that he is not widely touted in Christian fundamentalist circles.

Fundamentalist proselytizing at the Clark County Washington Fair, August 8, 2010.

Don't get me wrong: my practice is not so much a reaction to the conservative hijacking of Christianity so much as it is an attempt, a project, to make sense of the existence into which I find myself.   Some days it's pure hell. Some days it's a riot of laughter, perhaps as a reaction to the pure hell. Some  (too few) days there is peace and tranquility.

Many days my practice is indeed difficult; and you can probably judge the difficulty with my practice by reading this blog; some days the practice flows like a river whose watersheds are themselves overflooded, and other days my practice is more parched than a desert.

But still...there is practice, because, what else would there to be done about the desert?

A "better way to believe in God?"

As a Buddhist, there is some overlap with what Jay Michaelson says on this post, and some Mahayana Buddhist notions.  But, - I'm reminded of a comment I made on Barbara's blog about religion and New atheists - I would say strongly that this god is not the god of monotheistic religions by any stretch of the imagination, and as somewhere in one of Kapleau's books said, it does a  nearly sacrilegious disservice to refer to Michaelson's idea of a deity as the same thing as the gods of these religions.

That's why, out of respect to them, and out of clarity I would say that this god is in no way the god of Christianity, Judaism or Islam.

There IS common ground with Buddhists and New Atheists and Buddhists and Christians... BUT

An article by one John Thatamanil titled, "Beyond the Theism/Atheism Divide: A Plea for Humility"  was recently published in the Huffington Post.    Prof. Thatamanil works in  "areas of research [which] include comparative theology and theologies of religious pluralism. Specifically, he writes on Hindu-Christian Dialogue and Buddhist-Christian Dialogue."  He's Episcopalian, and while his heart is surely in the right place, his post on atheism/theism is a cautionary tale. 

I do not wish to channel P. Z. Myers in this post, though I find his brand of blog blasphemy somewhat entertaining from time to time, having been on the receiving end of the conservative form of Catholicism in the early years of my life.

I'd like to get a bit more serious.

But Prof. Thatamanil's article begins with...

Too many atheists display the same aggression and smug self-satisfaction that they detest in their fundamentalist rivals. The tragedy is that the crossfire between these groups prevents robust alliances between modest liberal religious communities and humble non-dogmatic atheists on matters of real urgency.

What binds many atheists together is an unshakable conviction that they know everything there is to know about religion, namely that it is irrational bondage to immutable doctrine. No amount of counterevidence can convince such atheists otherwise. What irony! But where do they come by this knowledge about religion? Their expertise seems to be derived by virtue of sheer sentience alone.

By contrast, if a theologian were to broadcast her convictions about molecular or evolutionary biology without some years of careful reading and study, she would be met with jeering laughter and summarily dismissed. Why then are uninformed atheists who have never read in theology exempt from similar derision? Sadly, every pedant believes himself entitled to his unearned convictions about religion.

 I can cite specific members of specific religions with whom I have disagreements.  I don't need to attack  the "many" members of specific groups.  I don't need to attack unnamed straw-men.

Let me put this another way.  If Thatamanil were writting, "Too many black people display the same aggression and smug self-satisfaction that they detest in their white neighbors," that might be bad enough, but he ends his analogous sentence with the word rivals.  Now while it is true that fundamentalist theocrats in the US and the rest of us are in some sort of conflict, specifically a theocratic conflict, that conflict is with fundamentalist theocrats and the rest of us. It is Thatamanil that transmutes this in to the false choice of "insulting, bad, bad atheists versus fundamentalists."

Finally, (that is, my final comments on the first 3 paragraphs of this) I have read Tillich, medieval mystics, Kierkegaard, Kung, Nagarjuna, as well as Sartre.  It's damned patronizing to postulate that someone, especially someone who is already as educationally pedigreed as I am (or any number of others) might somehow find these authors' works beyond them without "professional intervention."

It is, from a Buddhist perspective, hardly "right speech."

Thatamanil writes, "A Christian who compares liberation theology with caste in Hinduism is making an invidious comparison. A similar constraint should apply in conversations between atheists and the religious. Atheists who tar the whole of religion by contrasting the insight of Einstein with the fulminations of fundamentalists are engaged in egregious dialogical malpractice."

Yet, from my understanding of the meaning of invidious, is not Thatamanil living in a glass house? Let me explain: By remaining silent against his fundamentalist theocratic brothers and sisters, and by singling out "Atheists" who contrast naturalist reverence (when accused of having an outlook that is indifferent to the human condition! Oh! He forgot to mention that!) with fundamentalist theocrats foaming at the mouth, what kind of comparison is he making?

We Buddhists do have common ground with pretty much every religion, although I have to take issue with Thatamanil: "Ground of Being" can't really cut it for us, I'm afraid.  Nonduality you see,- mindful nonduality, would require eventually that those things  whose existence is for all intents and purposes  irrelevant should be taken as such in practical affairs.

"Ground of Being" won't cut it for an atheist like Dawkins or Myers for reasons I'm sure he can explain to you, and I have to admit, Ground of Being used to work for me.   But as I have more deeply studied and practiced Buddhism, the more I lean towards an understanding here that while it isn't Dawkins or Myers type of hyper-realism,  it is more towards a phenomenological view (I am kind of a probability guy, after all, not a biologist).  You don't need, after all the mental gymnastics (even the ones I do on this blog) to have much thought about nonduality; otherwise it, too becomes another form of duality.  The world behaves kind of a certain way, as though a mutual apatheism exists between the transcendant and the existent.  And, as the author of the Lankavatara might add...it doesn't always appear that way as well.  But most of the time when you flip the coin it's either heads or tails.  They rarely land on their edge, and still rarer does a bird fly by and swoop up the coin.

Buddha nature pervades the whole universe.  That can be seen without recourse to mumbo-jumbo.
There is "Endless Dimension Universal Life," as far as we can tell; though it may be a slight verbal hyperbole. But not much  And there is also no possibility that a Deity will intervene to save us.


But all of this is ultimately unimportant.  What is important is for us to try to alleviate each others' sufferings and for all of us to transcend ours.  Sorry for the waste of time.