Vajra Previews, ‘What Happened to Buddhism?’ Thich Nhất Hạnh and Revisionism at Plum Village (‘Syncretism’ Excerpt)

Perhaps the first syncretic religious figure I became aware of, but never thought of him as such, was Thomas Merton. He himself was critical of a relativistic, syncretic naiveté, that “accepts everything by thinking of nothing.” Merton was a Catholic Trappist monastic, Vietnam war resister, a fan of Thich Nhất Hạnh and also an ardent student of both Zen and Vajrayana Buddhism. He had corresponded with of one of my root Tibetan teachers, Chobgye Trichen Rinpoche, the Sakya sub-sect Tsar-pa lineage holder and Merton’s editors later placed the letter by Rinpoche on the center pages of his Asian Journals. Published, in 1973, Edward Rice, of the New York Times, had this to say: “The journals contain not only Merton's daily observations and comments, but metaphysical passages, poems, newspaper stories, dreams, definitions of Eastern terms, dialogue from comic strips and numerous (but often condensed) quotations from sources [in which] he was interested.” These writings record the last six months of his life as tragically he was killed in Bangkok when a high voltage fan fell into his bath. 

Thich Nhất Hạnh, in his first trip to America, visited Merton in his Gethsemane Abbey in 1966, giving him firsthand reports of the devastation in Vietnam. Merton later wrote about him, saying they were both poets and existentialists, in an article for Jubilee, August 1966, entitled, ‘Nhất Hạnh Is My Brother’: "I have far more in common with Nhất Hạnh than I have with many Americans, and I do not hesitate to say it. It is vitally important that such bonds be admitted. They are the bonds of a new solidarity which is beginning to be evident on all five continents and which cuts across all political, religious and cultural lines to unite young men and women in every country in something that is more concrete than an ideal and more alive than a program.” 

Thich Nhất Hạnh promoted Buddhism that was ‘engaged’ (fr., engagé; thus Merton’s remark about existentialism), coining the phrase Engaged Buddhism. It’s a philosophical position that demands action. Proactively is also supported by Mahayana Bodhisattva Vows. His influence is linked to at least one monastic’s self-immolation, his explanation to Westerners about such acts by Thích Quảng Đức and other less know Vietnamese Buddhist monastics, is that their aim was "at moving the hearts of the oppressors, and at calling the attention of the world to the suffering endured then by the Vietnamese." (http://www.oprah.com/spirit/Oprah-Talks-to-Thich-Nhat-Hanh) 

Establishing the Order of Interbeing for monastics and lay people to practice together was a key factor leading to his decades long expulsion from Vietnam for antiwar activism. Interbeing later became a teaching innovation which is now linked to the the popular idea of interconnectedness within the Mindfulness Movement. Interbeing practice, I’ve read, involves contemplating the Doctrine of Interdependent Origination, the Four Foundations of Mindfulness, and significantly for the West, practicing mindfulness for health. The latter is a practice originally supported in The Madhyama-āgama version of the Satipaṭṭhāna: “The fact that dependent origination can be contemplated through mindfulness of feelings is supported…in early discourses [which] also state that practicing mindfulness of feeling can be a way of dealing with physical pain and disease. (Anālayo (2013), pp. 123–127.) 

Considered the ‘Father of Mindfulness’, he is credited with ‘bringing Buddhism to the West’ by reinventing that Buddhist term. The major teaching on mindfulness of course comes from Satipaṭṭhāna sutta and its presentation on the four foundations of mindfulness. Briefly: 1. mindfulness of the body, 2. mindfulness of feelings, 3. mindfulness of the mind, 4. mindfulness of principles or phenomena. Nhất Hạnh’s presentation of Ānāpānasati, along with assorted Theravada teachers’, mindfulness of breath is now universally taught in Buddhism as Vipasana, and is sometimes mixed with ideas from Western psychology. 

The latter may well be Thich Nhất Hạnh’s crowning innovation. This distinguished him as ‘offering a modern perspective on meditation practice.’ Further, in addition to practicing Vipasana, he prompted the union of outer and inner phenomena to be seen as a projection of one’s own mind. This comes from his Abhidhamma studies of the Yogācāran school. A prolific poet, and the author of one hundred books, Yogacāra, also known as the ‘Mind Only’ school of Buddhist Philosophy, is an area of his concern; one which he then blended into analytical meditations on emptiness. Initially a Zen Buddhist, he is the 42nd heir of the Linji School, as well as other lineages, and is likely steeped in the Chinese Huayan school which stresses viewing the ordinary world in its Dharmakaya (truth body) nature. In many ways a realized Master of Buddha’s Dharma, Nhất Hạnh has retranslated The Heart Sutra pith instruction, a redaction out of the lengthy Prajnaparamita literature, to correct what he and his adherents consider a wrong view according to Buddha’s deep vision in the Kātyāyana sutra: “Thay [Nhất Hạnh] has changed the way of using words in both the original Sanskrit and the Chinese translation by Huyen Trang (Xuan-Zang). Thay translates as follows: ‘That is why in emptiness, body, feelings, perceptions, mental formations, and consciousness are not separate self entities.’ All phenomena are products of dependent arising: that is the main point of the prajñāpāramitā teaching.” The Kātyāyana Sutra parallels the Samyutta Nikaya 12.61. For example, “9. That is: this being, that becomes; with the arising of this, that arises.” (which I quote more fully later concerning Buddha’s Doctrine of Interdependent Origination.) 

The Plum Village apology further states: “‘Even insight and attainment do not exist as separate self entities.’ This sentence is as important as the sentence ‘form is emptiness….Thay also has added ‘no being, no non-being’ into the text. No being, no non-being is the deep vision of the Buddha stated in the Kātyāyana sutra, when he offered a definition on right view.” 

Yes, this certainly was the expedient answer to the faithful Kātyāyana’s inquiry into the understanding of  prajñapayamāna. What then follows this apology for Thay’s revision is the “famous gatha ascribed to the sixth patriarch Hue Nang (Hui-neng), in which he presented his insight to the fifth patriarch Hoang Nhan (Hung-jen)”: Originally, there is no Bodhi tree/ The bright mirror does not exist either/ From the non-beginning of time nothing has ever existed/ So where can the dust settle? This very cause of the Fifth lineage holder ascending to the Sixth, like flame passed from one candle to the next, is then extinguished by labeling the Sixth’s sacred insight as a wrong view. What’s offered as a right view is this: A white cloud passes by and hides the mouth of the cave/ Causing so many birds to lose their way home.

Reading the above determinations, it feels like Hui-neng has now been unseated and the promotion of a view, advocating non-fear and a mystical coolness, is established. This new position is fully explained in the open letter to Plum Village students below:

“The insight of prajñāpāramitā is the most liberating insight that helps us overcome all pairs of opposites such as birth and death, being and non-being, defilement and immaculacy, increasing and decreasing, subject and object, and so on, and helps us to get in touch with the true nature of no birth/no death, no being/no non-being etc… which is the true nature of all phenomena. This is a state of coolness, peace, and non-fear that can be experienced in this very life, in your own body and in your own five skandhas. It is nirvana. Just as the birds enjoy the sky, and the deer enjoy the meadow, so do the wise enjoy dwelling in nirvana. This is a very beautiful sentence in the Nirvana Chapter of the Chinese Dharmapada.”

That being said, I would offer this quote from the Nagarjuna inspired, Mahayana logician, Candrakīrti, as a sobering tonic to the above idyllic setting and view: “One who strives to understand Emptiness will surely cross the ocean of existence by means of the great vessel of Emptiness. Those who fear Emptiness are not able to avoid falling into the two alternatives of origination and destruction with respect to Interdependent Origination.” (Peter Della Santino, Causation and Emptiness: the Wisdom of Nagarjuna, 108.) While Plum Village in general seems a wonderful notion, its promotion of Thay’s rewrite on the Heart Sutra had me saying aloud, “why isn’t this right?”  Is the addition, “Even insight and attainment do not exist as separate self entities” and the judgment “Whoever can see this [principle of no separate self entities] no longer needs anything to attain” any different than ‘no path, no attainment’? Is this revision, and the apology for it, somehow lowering a glass ceiling on our samadhi and the above mentioned striving to understand Emptiness? Are  things being spelled out too much? Then it came clear when I read this: “Whatever paragraph in the Tripitaka, even in the most impressive of the Prajñāpāramitā collections, if it so contradicts this, it is still caught in conventional truth. Unfortunately, in the Heart Sutra we find such a paragraph, and it is quite long.” One heuristic was being replaced by another. Context is so important concerning both the traditional Heart Sutra and Hui-neng’s emboldening gata. The latter speaks from a personal revelatory experience within a process of lineal ascension. In testifying there’s no Bodhi Tree nor a bright mirror, he essentially agrees with this Heart Sutra passage: “So, too, there is no suffering, no origin, no cessation, no path, no wisdom, no attainment, no non-attainment.” (Trans. by Venerable Khenpo Pema Wangdak and James Sarzotti, supervised by Douglas Rhoton, 1983, at the Jetsun Sakya Center of New York City. For complete text:  (mnsakyacenter.org) Hui-neng validates, out of the former illusion of his Chan practice, a vision the same as the Buddha’s while teaching Emptiness on Vulture Peak. 

Then there’s also this from the Plum Village apology: “Therefore, the sentence ‘in emptiness there is no form, feelings…’ is obviously still caught in the view of non-being. That is why this sentence does not correspond to the Ultimate Truth.” (plumvillage.org)

Buddha's teaching evolved in a progressive order to meet his disciples’ development. It was taught for those ready to hear it, their understanding having  progressed beyond the provisional, ‘origination’ and ‘destruction’ based explanations of five aggregates, eighteen ayatanas, and so forth. The Heart Sutra speaks well to this point as it characterizes the nature of phenomena as understood by his formerly Hearer disciples who were ‘still caught in the view’ of phenomena as inherently real. Buddha probably recognized that if a disciple is not cognizant of Emptiness, pronouncements such as “no feeling, no perception, no impulses, no consciousness, no eye, no ear, no nose, no tongue, no body, no mind, no form, no sound, no smell, no taste, no touch, no dharmas,” effectively make the point that, like all appearances in a dream, when compared to one’s waking realty, it isn’t real. Which effectively says, it has a non-being. It’s a functional demonstration of the Buddha advancing his teachings on the Wisdom of Emptiness compatible, but not subservient, to his Doctrine of Interdependent Origination. 

This wisdom was further elucidated by Nagarjuna, the second Buddha, who logically proved in his Mulamadhyamakakarika, the spine of Madhyamaka Philosophy, ‘being’ has no inherent reality and truthfully understood is ‘vacuous.’ He also designated all entities as ‘anonymous vacuities.’ One, having not yet experienced Nagarjuna’s conclusions, might understandably take them as mere epistemological ‘statements’, though in truth they have no substantive position. Indeed, they are non-statements, aimed at those with yogic experience and superior intelligence who can grasp what may seem to others as absurd or nihilistic. But here too, as in the Heart Sutra and Hui-neng’s gata, it’s the Guru giving pith instruction of the highest Wisdom to ripened disciples. 

If one’s Guru is other than these “Holy Personages” (Candrakīrti’s designation) discussed above, then you may well embrace a ‘revision’ of their teachings. But revising the Buddhavacana, that is, the Buddha’s words, is no light undertaking, requiring the heaviness or gravitas of a real ‘Guru’ (Sanskrit: heavy). Traditionally, this is who can revise and make additions to those holy words and how it’s done:

“A number of different beings such as Buddhas, disciples of the Buddha, rishis and devas were considered capable to transmitting buddhavacana. The content of such a discourse was then to be collated with the sutras, compared with the Vinaya, and evaluated against the nature of the Dharma. These texts may then be certified as true buddhavacana by a buddha, a sangha, a small group of elders, or one knowledgeable elder.” (https://en.m.wikipedia.org)

The above tradition was considerably challenged by the advent of  Mahayana Buddhism, with its brain trust of super Dharma philosophers and logicians starting with Nagarjuna, then Vasubandhu, Asangha, Dharmakirti, Chandrakirti, and others who pioneered and established the most advance perspective on Buddha’s teachings. Relevant to Thay’s revision of the Heart Sutra is this: 

“The Middle Way (Madhyamaka) philosophy pioneered by the Indian Buddhist philosopher Nagarjuna (2nd–3rd century CE) uses reason to negate our mistaken concepts about reality. Take a pair of opposites, such as real and unreal. Madhyamaka logic looks at four possibilities—that things are either real, unreal, both, or neither—and refutes them in turn.” (lionsroar.com) 

If ‘no being, no non-being’ is inserted into the text, then phenomena is both real and not real at the same time. We understand the Buddhist doctrine is always in danger of what Chandrakirti calls the ‘two precipices,’ or extreme views, of Nihilism and Eternalism, and that the above assertion is conveniently used. 

However, in light of Madhyamaka logic’s Four Point Negation: not real, not unreal, not both real and unreal, and not neither both real and unreal, Thay’s revision, adding ‘no being, no non-being’, suggests the Third position: not both real and unreal. This is true because the first two have already been logically negated. If we must drag the venerable floor sweeper’s famous gata through the dirt of logical analysis, instead of leaving it as a testament to an experience of Enlightened realization—one connected with primordial wisdom and not mere conceptualization—what’s then needed is an “uncategorized absolute (Skt. aparyāyaparamārtha; Tib. རྣམ་གྲངས་མ་ཡིན་པའི་དོན་དམ་) [which] is described as the actual absolute truth, free from all conceptual elaboration, such as ‘existence’, ‘non-existence’, 'arising', 'non-arising' and so on.” (rigpawiki.org) 

This also applies to positing an “Ultimate Truth” concerning being or non-being. Indeed, all that’s acceptable according to the highest right view of the Buddha’s epistemological truth is a non-affirmative negation, such as Nagarjuna’s, with absolutely no affirmative implications. An elucidation through the Prasangika logical approach which “emphasizes the ultimate in itself, beyond all assertions.” (Berzin Archives)

Further, the Sixth Patriarch’s testimony that “From the non-beginning of time nothing has ever existed” is properly defined as a direct experience in An Explanation of Reasoning: The Sixty Stanzas Based on Candrakirti's Commentary: “In the state of cessation, there does not exist even the minutest particle of an entity which is the cessation of suffering. Despite this, how can there be an object of direct perception?Therefore, it is said that the knowledge of the non-origination of suffering is direct experience.” Originally, there is no Bodhi tree/ The bright mirror does not exist either…/ So where can the dust settle? In other words, no path, no result, no defilements: “the knowledge of the non-origination of suffering is direct experience.” The Sixth Patriarch’s gata is not a wrong view, but rather, a direct experience, and far from wrong, it’s ultimately true. 

Chandrakirti uses the Buddha’s words from a parable to further his point concerning direct experience: “The following parable may be used to explain the case. Suppose a traveler sees in the distance a river. He wants to cross the river, but he does not know how to do so, and he is moreover afraid of being unable to do so. Therefore, he asks a farmer who belongs to that country, how deep the water is? The farmer answers that there is no water at all. Although it may appear to be a river, it is in fact a mirage. If you do not believe what I say, says the farmer, go and see for yourself. Then my words will turn into direct experience. In this way, the farmer demonstrates the non-existence of the water to the traveler. Similarly, my words also turn into direct experience. Likewise, non-existence and non-perception in the conventions of the world turn into direct experience.” 

Further, we can acknowledge the following and become Enlightened even in the ‘apparent’ through its direct experience: “Therefore, in the apparent truth of the world, the cognition of non-apprehension or non-perception may be called direct experience without fear of contradiction. When the meaning of the entity which produces cognition has been penetrated, it is called direct experience. This parable from the Discourses of the Buddha is to the point.” (Peter Dells Santino, Causation and Emptiness: the Wisdom of Nagarjuna, VIII, 94.)

The unrevised Heart Sutra, The Sixth Patriarch’s gata, and Chandrakirti’s direct experience (later to be known as Mahamudra Meditation), all point to the same thing—and that can’t be revised.