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Ramsses II
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(11/6/05 12:33 pm)
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First Cause

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"From a Buddhist perspective, there are several reasons to question the necessity of a First Cause to existence. In many of the arguments presented in the atheist/theist debates, the Big Bang theory was at the center of the considerations. If the universe has a beginning, the argument runs, and if everything in the universe has a cause, then the universe itself must have a cause. The Big Bang event is seen as the limit point, the "beginning" of existence which has to be explained. In a Buddhist worldview, however, the Big Bang is not held to be the historical beginning of anything but our present cosmological order. Buddhist cosmology describes the ongoing creation and destruction of universes, not just of objects within this present universe. If our universe requires a "first cause," the "first cause" need not be a particular transcendent agent, but simply the "momentum" of previous universes. In the Buddhist Kalachakra teachings, "atoms of space" are the link between universes. This may sound far-fetched, but some physicists familiar with Buddhist teachings point to "chronons" and other mathematical objects as support for this Buddhist idea (which, incidentally, doesn't involve actual self-existent "points," just as atoms are not substantial things.)

The response to this argument that I anticipate is that positing previous universes simply postpones the problem -- that it doesn't explain what gives rise to "universes" in the first place. That is true. To answer this objection, I have to look in a different direction. Nagarjuna, one of the most prominent Middle Way (Madhyamika) philosophers, challenges the idea that we can ever actually find any such particular "thing" as a "universe." There is no such well-defined totality, he says; rather, despite the testimony of our senses, the "universe" is more like the flickering of a lamp, an ongoing, indeterminate, constantly shifting appearance, than an absolute, persistent "object" or collection of objects about which something can be significantly predicated. The Buddhist Middle Way teaches that, given the radical interdependence of all apparent phenomena, you can neither say phenomena exist (given that nothing "inheres" from its own side) nor that they don't exist (given the flow of experience in which we are all immersed). The most you can say is that what we "have" is a shifting field of open relationships, which we summarize conceptually with the word "universe," but which is not actually localizable as an entity in itself.

As I see it, this argument is a little different from the atheist objection that theists are committing the fallacy of composition when they insist that a universe of contingent objects must also necessarily be contingent. Buddhists agree that the "existence" of the universe is merely imputed existence, a conceptual construction, an abstraction that "summarizes" our apprehension of a series of events. But on the other hand, unlike the modern materialist/atheist position, which admits only a collection of contingent material objects, Buddhism does not deny the reality of the Absolute, which bears on the contingency of the universe. I'll talk about this in a minute.

Buddhist objections to "first cause" and creationist perspectives stem from a number of issues. As I've discussed before, Buddhism (along with Kant) criticizes conceptions of the universe which construe causality as a process of metaphysical production. Causality is not, and logically cannot be, a process of substantial production which gives rise to an intrinsic being out of another intrinsic being. The Buddhist solution is a little different than Kant's, in that it describes causality primarily in terms of the codependence of consecutive forms. Causality is itself empty, rather than being a "real" force giving rise to "unreal" appearances. It is a way of describing a radical relationality or relativity, in which the relata do not precede the relations. Neither relata nor relations are absolutized: they arise in co-dependence and hence are "empty." Creationist accounts which assume that relata are somehow "made," and which then possess an "existence" or essence that precedes relationship are therefore, from a Buddhist perspective, in error.

Along with causality, Buddhism holds that time itself is relative and therefore empty of inherent existence. In fact, causality is profoundly interrelated with time and therefore it does not make sense to conceive of a causality which substantially precedes the "existence" of time. Time and causality are relative "conditions" of the universe, appearances in the totality of existence, and from a Buddhist perspective it is an error to "absolutize" either by placing one of them "outside" of dependent origination. Thus, from this perspective, it is misguided to look for an "external" first cause, since causality implies temporality and cannot precede the "creation" of temporality.

Another reason Buddhism challenges conventional Creationist accounts has to do with the polyvalent (and ultimately radical) nature of relationality. Positing an absolute dualism between Creator and Creation is problematic to the extent that it posits a biunivocal relationship, since any such relationship would be instantaneous and of immediate dependency. A being defined by such a biunivocal relationship could not exist prior to the execution of its function. Further, putting a Creator at the "head" of a causal chain relativizes the Absolute and renders it one "thing" among many, even if it is the sublimest thing. With that said, Buddhism does accept the existence of an "Absolute" that provides the clearing or the space for relationship to manifest. Logically, this nondual "openness" could be seen as the necessary prerequisite for the dualistic relationships that unfold in mutual dependence upon each other. Here, however, the Absolute is not a Being or a Substance or a Prime Mover; it is, essentially, genitival relationality. Contingent phenomena subsist in polyvalent relationships, and thus no "single" phenomenon is exhausted by any one particular relationship, or even set of relationships. The openness is complete, and Buddhists acknowledge that relative phenomena not only mutually determine each other, they unfold in a radically open "field" or clearing that is the necessary open potential for their manifestation. While actively resisting the reification or substantialization of the Absolute, Buddhists nevertheless refer to it by various names: the Unborn, the Original Face, Buddhanature, the Dharmakaya, Rigpa, Big Mind, etc. As I mentioned in a previous letter, the Space which projects space into space is not an inert vacuum, or even a teeming sea of quantum impulses, but the radical union of Emptiness and Clarity, of Openness and Lucency, with the latter "light" metaphors referring primarily to consciousness-as-such.

By way of illustration, some Buddhist traditions (and Hindu ones as well) point to the difference between deep sleep and dreaming. For longtime meditators, the experience often arises of becoming lucid in one's dreams, and less often in deep sleep. (I've experienced both during long retreats.) Deep sleep is a form of consciousness, but for us it is "nothing," it is a timeless gap, because it lacks objects (and thus also the experience of being a particular subject). If one becomes lucid in deep sleep, one becomes aware of awareness as such, without objects; it is a primal wakefulness, without objects or forms. In this state, one can actually witness the arising of the dream state, and the formation of the subject-and-object poles out of the ineffable "space" of mind-as-such. Self and not-self are thus perceived as mutually determinative and mutually co-arising. The co-emergence of these poles makes experience as we know it possible, which of course in the dream state is seen to be a luminous, shifting texture of relationships; in waking life, the "partitions" between subject and object are much firmer --virtually inviolable, except for realized beings who can apparently reach beneath the surface of things and perform "miracles."

Whether or not you accept the above as an accurate reflection of the "real world" state of affairs, I think it does illustrate the metaphors that I have used above about the "Emptiness" which is both the open, utterly ineffable "field" that allows for the co-emergence of dualistic phenomena, and the "mark" of those phenomena themselves which are not other than radical relativity (emptiness).

And these considerations bring me to a question I raised earlier about the "Emptiness" of the Trinity. Raimundo Panikkar points out that Christian theologians have been at pains to resist substantializing the Trinity as either three Beings, which would be the extreme of Tritheism, or as one Being with three expressions, which would be the opposite extreme of modalism. Here in the Trinity you have therefore what seems to be a very Buddhist notion: a radical relativity that consists of no thing but is pure relationship, a multiplicity that in its openness is nevertheless "one," or better, nondual. What has not been much explored, but which bears exploring in my opinion, is the fact that the nonduality and perichoresis that are traditionally ascribed to the Trinity may also be observed in the "stuff" of samsara or Creation. Herein lies the mystic's realization of union with the Absolute -- a union which does not erase difference or reduce the absolute to "merely" the phenomenal level. In my opinion, in fact, the nondual Buddhist worldview avoids this better than the dualistic Christian one, which relativizes the Absolute by (subtly or not-so-subtly) substantializing it or objectifying it as a First Cause or Creator -- a Being which exists outside the cosmos in reciprocal relationship with it and its denizens."

Peace,

Balder

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