By Jens Schlieter
Imagine you were an ascetic in India, almost 2300 years ago. Imagine you live in an open forest and your environment is full of various dangerous animals: Vipers and tigers, leopards, elephants, and cobras … and imagine you are a Buddhist mendicant, a nun or a monk, deeply moved and motivated by the maxim to do no one harm, not even taking the lives of sentient beings down to the smallest animal. You simply do not kill animals at all.
After reading this sentence, take a short break. Close your eyes. Imagine you are meditating in a cave in the jungle. Your eyes are closed. You are fully absorbed in a mental task. You are trying to empty your mind from specific thoughts and are only paying attention to breathing in and breathing out.
Buddhist monk in Khao Luang-Sukhothai
Suddenly you feel something unsettling. You immediately feel uncomfortable, distracted from your task. You hear a familiar, distinct hissing sound that king cobras make before they attack. You open your eyes and see the cobra very close to you, the front part of its body raised, its hood spread to appear more intimidating. The cobra stares into your eyes, mesmerizing. It slowly comes closer, energized, and in full control of its swift powers. Its mouth is wide open, and yes, you can see drops of venom hanging from its large teeth … Now close your eyes, imagine the situation as vividly as possible, your feelings, emotions and thoughts, and think about what you are going to do.
All right, ready? Okay, let us take a closer look together at how a Buddhist solution of this dilemma might have looked like, based on pre-modern texts. From this we will continue to some broader questions on the relation of esoteric assumptions in meditative practice to their background in philosophical theory, which are of a more systematic nature.
Imagine the early Buddhist ascetic practitioners facing a cobra. Given that they shall not defend themselves actively (I will not discuss here whether this makes any sense at all), taking the rule and cultivation practice of non-violence seriously, they were advised to use the only legitimate force one possesses, the power of the mind. But they have a chance. These powers, based on certain philosophical conceptions of consciousness, were considered capable of actually reaching the other, even beyond visible distance—be this a snake, a wild elephant, or an ill-poised, aggressive human. In our situation, the meditating practitioner generates “loving-kindness” and channels it towards the other mind: in this case that of a dangerous snake. It was believed that the snakes’ intentions were transformed when they became aware of the practitioner’s loving and kind benevolence. The corresponding practice is said to belong to the oldest stratum of Buddhism. It is called the “four heavenly abiding states” or the “four immeasurables.” They consist of the meditative cultivation of “loving-kindness/friendship” (Pāli mettā), “compassion” (karuṇā), “joy” (muditā), and “equanimity/composure” (upeksā). However, since ancient India, Buddhist practitioners have seen the necessary prerequisite for this to work in a focused and structured cultivation training of one’s own mind – in the absence of any concrete dangers. How did and does this training work? And, also of interest, how is this specific view of actually reaching the other mind with “good vibes” considered possible from the point of view of Buddhist philosophy?
Indian Cobra Naja naja
For modern Europeans, this belief in the “telepathic power” of thoughts and emotions expressed in Buddhist texts may be rather “esoteric.” Interestingly, the pioneer of the translation of Pāli texts, Caroline A.F. Rhys Davids, already wrote about the generation of “loving-kindness”: “The profession of amity, according to Buddhist doctrine, was no mere matter of pretty speech. It was to accompany and express a psychic suffusion of the hostile man or beast or spirit with benign, fraternal emotion – with mettā.” And she goes on to say that the early Buddhists believed that “‘thoughts are things,’ that psychical action, emotional or intellectual, is capable of working like a force among forces” (Rhys Davids 1921: 185-186). But how did Buddhist scholar-practitioners conceptualize this “force”? Did they really ontologically reckon with a psychological power of “traveling” thoughts? Or was it rather an underlying, principal connection between all minds, a shared, transindividual consciousness, just as the shared inherent quality of being “benevolent” as it is expressed in Buddhist ethical discourse?
A second example of mainstream Buddhist meditation, in which one becomes aware of supranormal underpinnings, is the practice of “meditative absorption” or “contemplative mediation” (Sanskrit dhyāna, Pāli jhāna). In some respects, it is related to the aforementioned practice. The aim of this meditation is usually characterized by two moments: the cultivation of a calm state (Sanskrit śamatha) and deep concentration (samādhi). Deep concentration is in turn the basis for the exercise of extraordinary mental powers. Already in early Buddhist texts, dhyāna is described as the practice in which the Buddhas are said to have reached “awakening” (bodhi). The becoming Buddha redirects his “divine eye” towards the cycle of birth and rebirth of sentient beings and can even see their individual karmic dispositions. Moreover, in this state they are said to have been able to recall their own previous lives. This assumed cognitive ability of the awakened mind has fascinated Western philosophers, psychologists, and esotericists alike. As early as 1884, in The Theosophist,the editors—none other than Helena Blavatsky and Henry Steel Olcott—refer to this ability, arguing that the dhyāna meditation of becoming Buddha’s highlights a hidden quality of the mind that can also become available at the moment of death: “the ‘Ego’ cannot review all his past experiences before it obtains the state of a Buddha. At the point of death, however, a man may see all of his past life as in a panoramic view” (quoted in Schlieter 2018, 124).
Bhavachakra Samsara, Buddhist Wheel of Life
The phenomenon described by modern people of reviewing one’s own life at the moment of death has been recognized by Western psychology. The study of pre-birth memories—the so-called “reincarnation research” (Ian Stevenson)—as well as research into alleged remote effects of the mind, or any other supranormal powers, on the other hand, is assigned to parapsychology, which as an academic discipline has lost its place at most Western universities. But can we conclude from this that these views and practices — esoteric from the point of view of Western epistemic culture—are considered exoteric by many Buddhist traditions?
These and other questions are not so easy to answer. While there are certainly prominent texts that describe supranormal powers of the mind (Pāli abhijñā), including the ability to “read distant minds,” there are almost no texts that describe in detail how this extraordinary memory phenomenon, or any intentional distant influence on other minds can be explained. Moreover, Buddhologists have not unanimously subscribed to the view that this meditative practice implies magical notions of supranormal mental powers (see e.g. Maithrimurthi 1999), which many texts reserve for Buddhas or at least some very rare, advanced practitioners. I think a more promising path to follow is to turn to Buddhist philosophical ideas in the Abhidharma and other treatises—which refer to this world as created by the mind, as without ontological substance, or as “emptiness” (Skt. śūnyatā)—and to search for systematic explanations there. Against this background, the naturalistic, or, probably better: “protectivist” explanation of the necessity to spread loving-kindness may find its complement by more philosophical explanations.
References
- Maithrimurthi, Mudagamuwe. 1999. Wohlwollen, Mitleid, Freude und Gleichmut. Eine ideengeschichtliche Untersuchung der vier apramānas in der buddhistischen Ethik und Spiritualität von den Anfängen bis hin zum frühen Yogācāra. Stuttgart, Franz Steiner.
- Rhys Davids, T.W. and C. A. F. (eds., trl.). 1921. Dialogues of the Buddha. Translated from the Pali from the Dīgha Nikāya. Part III (Sacred Books of the Buddhists). London, Humphrey Milford, Oxford University Press.
- Schlieter, Jens. 2018. What is it like to be Dead? Ner-Death Experiences, Christianity, and the Occult. New York: Oxford University Press.
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Jens Schlieter, PhD in philosophy, habilitation in Science of Religion, since 08/2009 professor for the systematic study of religion, University of Bern. Co-director of the Institute for the Science of Religion. Research foci on Theory of Religion, Buddhist Ethics, and the History of Extraordinary Experiences.
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Image 1: Bhavachakra Samsara, Buddhist Wheel of Life (From Wikimedia Commons)
Image 2: Indian Cobra Naja naja (From Wikimedia Commons)
Image 3: Buddhist monk in Khao Luang-Sukhothai (From Wikimedia Commons)
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