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Believing and Seeing: The Roles of Faith, Reason, and Experience in Theravada Buddhism
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 September 2014
Abstract
In early Buddhism, “seeing” means the direct apprehension of reality, when the senses operate undistorted by the mediating, corruptible influences of preconceived notions or cognitive analysis. To see in this way is to be wise, to be a buddha. Yet one reaches this ultimate achievement by cultivating analysis of one's sense perceptions, guided by preconceived notions accepted on the basis of faith. By looking at several Pāli texts that teach the fundamentals of the Buddhist path, one can see how the Theravāda Buddhists resolve this congruity between their goal (direct, unmediated seeing) and the means to reach it (faith and reason): they treat both faith and reason as useful tools to be discarded when one has outgrown the need for them.
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1 This may constitute the most significant point of divergence between Buddhism and the Western philosophical tradition. Most Western philosophical thinkers, at least since Kant, have held that no unmediated perception of reality is ever possible. They argue that all perception of reality comes through the mind, which can never be a tabula rasa; thus, all perceptions are affected by the preconceived notions and categories of the mind. This is simply not the case in Buddhism. The minds of ordinary beings are certainly full and cluttered, preventing such beings from directly perceiving reality as it really is. But that this situation can be reversed, the board erased, and ordinary beings become buddhas, is one of the most fundamental teachings of Buddhism.
2 The Sanskrit term, probably more familiar to Western readers, is dharma. The Theravāda texts are written in Pāli, a language closely related to Sanskrit.
3 The notion that even the Buddha could never accurately describe reality, due to the limited nature of language and conceptual thought, reflects the claims of many mystics—East and West—that their experiences are ineffable and even their own descriptions of such experiences are but poor indications of a rich and deep reality. What singles out the Buddhist treatment of this issue is the emphasis on impermanence as the basis for the ineffability of a direct experience of reality.
4 This is my translation from the Pāli, v. 781:
Sakaṃ hi diṭṭhiṃ katham accayeyya
chandānunīto ruciyā niviṭṭho
sayaṃ samatt¯ni pakubbamāno
yath¯ hi jāneyya tathā vadeyya.
5 This is my translation from the Pāli, v. 796:
Paraman ti diṭṭhīsu paribbasāno
yad uttariṃkurute jantu loke
hīnā ti aññe tato sabba-m-āha
tasm¯ vivādāni avītivatto.
6 Again, the Sanskrit form may be more familiar: nirvāna.
7 I have adapted this translation of the Pāli from Thera, Nyanaponika, The Heart of Buddhist Meditation (York Beach, ME: Weiser, 1965), 117.Google Scholar
8 This translation of the Pāli is from Thera, Nyanaponika, The Heart of Buddhist Meditation, 119.Google Scholar