Response to J Brown Yoga Podcast

​The most recent addition to the sporadically on-going conversation J Brown and I have been engaged in since 2019 just dropped this week and I am taking this opportunity to respond to a point he makes in his outro to our conversation. He invites and sounds like he expects an email response, but I thought it might be more fruitful if I respond here and invite J to comment if he would like.
In particular, it is the following passage from his outro that this piece is a response to and once again I find myself in debt and gratitude to J for being a factor (a cause and condition) in creating this opportunity to share my perspective from a Zen Religious Naturalist perspective.

“You know, it’s a pretty big distinction between whether or not things are just arising, you know, whether awakening just arises. I never got a really clear answer about that from him and I’m sure he’s going to hear me say that and he’s going to email me which, go for it, Frank. I love your emails. Keep ‘em coming.

But the idea that the Buddha sat in meditation and awakening occurred, <laugh> and that awakening occurred just because of a conglomeration of causes and conditions… there was no sort of divine inspiration to it; or there’s no spirit behind it. You know, I guess that’s a perfectly valid was to look at life and he still comes to the same sort of sense of awe about it which is where we agree it is awe-inspiring to be alive and yes, of course we want to be aware of our conditioned responses so we can be more present and aware and embodied in our lives. Couldn’t agree with all that more. I just find that there’s so much miraculousness about life. I don’t think it’s just random or I don’t think it’s just a matter of cause and effect. I think there are drivers behind it and I think there are spiritual forces beyond the material. And that’s where we diverge. That’s okay….

First, let’s look at this word “arising” as related to the Buddha’s concept of “dependent origination” which states that there is no independent ‘thing’, entity, substance… no independent phenomenon that exists “from its own side”. This is a formulaic expression to point out that all phenomena interdependently arise based upon myriad causes and conditions, without which, that “individual particular” phenomenon would not exist.

For a naturalist, this means that all phenomena arise based upon naturalistic causes and conditions. I think J hasn’t considered that for a dualist and theist such as he is, the cosmos is seen as “creation” implying a “creator” which would then be the cause of the cosmos’ arising. God – or some divine “spiritual force(s)” would be what theologians call “the First Cause” so J too, has a concept of “arising” that simply happens to be “supernatural” (above or outside the natural order). J says he doesn’t think life is “just a matter of cause and effect” failing to see that for him, God is the cause and the cosmos, including life is the effect.  It’s a bit curious that he doesn’t seem to see that he too believes in the arising of phenomena. He simply sees the cause in an entity or spirit outside of nature.

And I also wish to note that for him to qualify arising as “just arising” to my mind is an example of the devaluing of the natural order that all dualists end up doing. In the very first essay on Zen Naturalism I respond to the editor of Shambhala Sun who dismissively refers to “just cells”. For the dualist, the spiritual/divine/transcendent is always of higher and deeper significance than the natural which ends up being devalued in comparison. Naturalism sees the depth and expansiveness of the natural order as enough… indeed, more than enough!  

Next, J speaks to the Buddha’s awakening. Before addressing what he has to say, I’d like to point out that I specifically use the term “awakening” and not “awakened” or “enlightened” as these terms suggest a final state of attainment. Many years ago on retreat, a student asked Thich Nhat Hanh about “enlightenment” and Nhat Hanh’s response brilliantly pointed to the core teaching of the Buddha (again, this is the doctrine of dependent origination) by responding to the questioner, “enlightened about what?” Thich Nhat Hanh was saying, with this answer, that each situation requires us to mindfully investigate (dhamma vicarya) in order to become “enlightened” about that particular situation. Awakening suggests that this is a relational on-going process in relation to various contexts rather than being “awakened” as a static state that exists independently of contextual situations.

J seems to be saying here that he finds an awakening based upon inquiry into various factors that led to the Buddha’s liberating insight is lacking because it is not divinely inspired. So, let’s look into some traditions that assert they are divinely inspired and see how well they hold up. The Vedas, The Torah, The Koran, The New Testament are all said to be divine revelation, not the creation of man. If we take the Vedas as divinely inspired, what are we to make of the caste system said to be inherently part of the cosmos and the divine order (rita)? The Buddha criticized and denied the caste system as a humanly created construct since not all cultures had such a system. That insight arose through investigation of causes and conditions.

The Torah tells us God ordained the destruction and genocide of whole peoples, including infants. One of its books tells us that the proper punishment for adultery is stoning. There is no such similar teaching to be found in the Pali Canon. All of these allegedly divinely inspired “revelatory” texts and teachings contain abhorrent ideas for all civilized people now living. It is the rejection of revelation as the source of the Buddha’s awakening that is seen in Buddhism as its strength. The ethical religion of compassion and wisdom (karuna and prajña) is the result of disciplining the heartmind and deeply penetrating “things as they are”.

J repeatedly asks where is the ethical authority if not in some transcendent god. Let’s take a moment to look into the concept of “authority” for indeed it seems that there is a human need for authority. We look to authority to tell us what to do. That’s the spirit behind The Ten Commandments. But it is we who invest that authority with power! Authority can be situated within (“the still small voice”) or in someone or thing outside us. For the theist is it “god” but who among us has seen this god? Isn’t the profound experience J has had that has turned him to Jesus a subjective experience? (This is not to devalue it, but to simply point out it was a personal experience J has chosen to interpret for himself as meaningful and meaningful in a particular subjective way).

I simply ask: “Is there really any authority apart from our psychological inclination to make one?” I don’t see what that can be. However, if we can accept this then we can see our accountability to make an authority that is beautiful and gives rise to beauty. We needn’t make an authority out of fear and ignorance or from received tradition. We follow a noble path that we know from our direct experience brings beauty and happiness. And I’d say this is what J has done and what I have done. What anyone of us does who walks any such path.  

Zen does not see the precepts as divine revelation from some external source but rather as the natural, spontaneous expression of a mind of awakening. It is the expression of our Buddha Nature, the “good wolf” I referred to from the Apache tradition. If we are to speak of the precepts as “revealed” in any way it is simply to say that they are not understood as created as a way of managing our social and moral interations but rather as having been revealed to the Buddha, and then to each of us, as intrinsic to the reality to which he awakened and to which we can awaken in one situation after another. The precepts are not merely ethical norms but rather expressions of awakening. It is less a matte of “following” or “observing” them but of being at one with them.

NOTE: And finally, to tie it back to our opening discussion of AI… Helen Toner in the first five minutes of this episode of The Ezra Klein Podcast talks of emergent behavior (things AI was never trained to do) which is a perfect example of dependent origination… the arising of new phenomena that could never have been foreseen by the creators of AI. And in this case of AI, THAT is potentially quite dangerous!

---