I haven’t unpacked yet

Very often Buddhist teachings seem to tell us something furled-up and concentrated in its traditional form, without unpacking it so that its implications are apparent. Or, if analysis is given, it’s not the most relevant sort of analysis. Zen texts are possibly the worst for this. They will go on for hundreds of pages essentially repeating the same point about the intuitive and ungraspable nature of the enlightened state, with stories and paradoxes, but not a word about exactly what one might specifically do that would be helpful to practice, let alone a moral analysis. The Mahayana Perfection of Wisdom texts are very similar.

Here is a typical passage from the Diamond Sutra:

Upon the occasion of hearing this Discourse Subhuti had an interior realization of its meaning and was moved to tears. Whereupon he addressed Buddha thus: It is a most precious thing, world honoured one, that you should deliver this supremely profound discourse. Never have I heard such an exposition since of old my eye of wisdom first opened. World-honoured one, if anyone listens to this Discourse of faith with a pure, lucid mind, he will thereupon conceive an idea of Fundamental Reality. We should know that such a one establishes the most remarkable virtue. World-honoured One, such an idea of Fundamental Reality is not, in fact, a distinctive idea; therefore the Tathagata teaches: “Idea of Fundamental Reality” is merely a name.[1]

Typically of Mahayana texts, this text spends a lot of time extolling itself and telling us how profound it is, in a kind of hyper-rhetoric. At the same time as extolling itself, it tells us about its ultimate emptiness in a way that seems calculated to disarm any possible criticism. It is shot full of contradictions, but because the purpose of the text is purely one of emotional manipulation of the reader into the belief that something profound is being said, this is assumed not to matter. If Subhuti had already had his eye of wisdom opened he should not be surprised by the Buddha’s truisms in the preceding section (where the Buddha has told us that “the world is not really a world”). The truisms are not supposed to be ones of Fundamental Reality, because any such Reality is also being denied, yet nevertheless it is referred to as such. Throughout the text we are told absolutely nothing about the implications of the world not really being a world, or how that might change our judgements or our conduct. Instead windy rhetoric is piled onto windy rhetoric.

What would this text tell us if unpacked? Merely that our judgements may be mistaken, nothing much more than that. This is a point with many important implications, indeed, but the Diamond Sutra tells us about none of them. Yet Buddhists report being profoundly moved by the Diamond Sutra. Sangharakshita reports that he realised he was a Buddhist on reading it at the age of sixteen. One hopes that it was the recognition of the one thing that it has to say that led to his realisation, rather than all the empty rhetoric.

Theravada texts, on the other hand, are often achingly pedestrian rather than overblown. Their oral origins create huge amounts of repetition and formulation, so that often there is only one paragraph or so of actual teachings in a sutta. These teachings are far more likely to be repeated in ten different similes than they are to actually be explained and applied. It would be fruitless here to quote a large section of a sutta in the way that would be required to illustrate this point, but if you examine any of the suttas in the Pali Canon you will see it illustrated. Somebody comes to see the Buddha, with the initial details and context often repeated several times in different ways. The visitor asks a question, and the Buddha gives a response, which is either elaborated into a formula or a set of similes, and perhaps leads to further conversation. It is somewhere in the Buddha’s initial response that the actual teaching of the sutta is usually to be found. Sometimes this teaching, having been given first in prose, is then repeated in verse. The visitor is almost invariably impressed or even converted by the Buddha and expresses gratitude for the wisdom offered.

The Buddha’s visitors never really succeed in challenging the Buddha, and they are always made to look stupid if they try. The Buddha is not obliged to justify himself further or examine his premises, but merely dispenses wisdom. The suttas are thus not discourses in the same sense of those of Plato (produced not long afterwards but thousands of miles away in Greece), because the topic is not illuminated by a truly critical examination.

Of course, today’s Buddhists are not personally responsible for the tediousness of their scriptures. However, they can be held responsible for over-idealising what are really very limited ancient texts, and over-hyping the nuggets of useful information that they actually contain. Instead of critically examining their scriptures, Buddhist teachers sometimes repeat or imitate their tedious and useless features. Whether giving talks or in print, they can spend large amounts of time on irrelevancies, or spend so long warming up that they only reach the main point at the end. One is sometimes told very little about the implications of the main point.

There is a long tradition in Buddhism of commenting on the scriptures, but the commentaries are often as voluminous and as useless as the original texts. Instead of commentary, the Buddhist texts need savage editing for a modern audience: but after being cut down to their actual useful content, that useful content (rather than all the attendant contingent matter) then needs to be critically discussed and applied. In effect, the texts need to be totally rewritten, with a quite different kind of amplification of the points they contain. This is a huge job which I have yet to find any Buddhist undertaking, often because of exaggerated respect for the texts as they stand.