Fundamental Structure in Buddhism (2024)

Fundamental Structure in Buddhism

“Every moment in your life is a turning and every one a choosing. Somewhere you made a choice. All followed to this. The accounting is scrupulous. The shape is drawn. No line can be erased.” - Cormac McCarthy

We are all migrants on this earth, none of us own anything or live anywhere except temporarily, and in imagination - sharing the air that sustains us. What is this thing called life, with our two certainties that something is going on and that it will end in death? How did we come to be here and what is the point of it all, this human life?

There are myriad ways in which we can interpret ‘this thing’ called life, we all do it. We place our hearts upon that we deem to be of greatest value as the organising principle of our lives. Our touchstones of identity, idea, religion, ideology, culture, politics, community and society - as we seek happiness and meaning through human life as lived.

But what is a successful human life? Who is to say? What is the measure of love, happiness and truth - are these even values worth considering. There are as many ideas about this as there are people, and moral conviction doesn’t make you right even with the assent of the crowd.

Regarding these existential questions Buddhism presents a culture that seeks to address the reality of the situation rather than a philosophical or ideological construction by way of solution. For Buddhism the resolution lies in seeing things as they are shorn of delusion. The Buddha while not questioning the fact of existence, seeks to ascertain the nature of ‘this something that is going on’ in the light of intelligent observation and inquiry.

‘From a Buddhist perspective the enlightened consciousness sees through the fascination with concept, emotion and belief. It sees through the attempt by mundane human consciousness to catch reality in the net of concepts or names. The Buddha’s teaching addresses the unenlightened mind’s assumption that if reality is not to be found amongst its objects, it is to be found nowhere. If the ‘things’ we catch in our net of names prove to be empty of reality, if reality slips through that net, however finely woven it may be, this does not mean that reality is nothing. It means that a net of concepts can in the end only catch concepts.’ - Sangharaksh*ta

The methodology of the Dharma, the Buddha’s teaching, resolves these existential questions by removing the need for the question in the first instance. When coming into communication with the Buddha’s teaching it is helpful to understand that much of the Dharma is methodological rather than doctrinal or philosophical. More often than not the Buddha and the venerable tradition are encouraging us to look in certain directions to help us see things for ourselves.

While not denying the reality of existence the Buddha embraces an emphasis on mindfulness (sati) and clear comprehension that directs attention to how things are. A process that begins with mindfulness of the body as the home of the senses and a stable base for contemplation. The form we wake up to every morning looking back at us in the mirror. The six senses -sight, sound, taste, touch, smell and mind – that by which there is a world in which we are.

The fact that we have two legs, two arms and a head moulds the structure of the physical world we live in and also our perception of what it is to be human. Imagine how different our day-to-day world would be if humans had tails, or three legs, or eyes in their bellies.

Human bodies are made up from the elements of nature and structured in a particular way consistent with the life of mammals. As with most species hom*o sapiens have attributes and distinguishing features which affect how we experience ourselves. Noticeably we are bipods, possessed of reflexive awareness, have binocular colour vision, can touch our fingertips with our thumbs and are able to communicate with one another in complex language. Although not the most powerful animal we are capable of being highly intelligent, socially cohesive, adaptable and extremely aggressive which makes us a dangerous predator and dominant species.

The structural requirements of human society can be considerable. There are imperatives of nature that must be met in order for the individual and society to survive. Humans require food and water, shelter from the elements, protection for infants and sufficient social order that the society and commerce of human life can take place in a reasonably cohesive manner. We are social animals to the core – these imperatives structure our societies imposing high levels of organisation, labour and commitment of time. Britain has to house sixty million people and each day pipe six hundred and eighty million litres of potable water, put one hundred and eighty million meals on the table and dispose of thirty million kilograms of human excrement; before anything else. This is simply to maintain a basic animal existence.

The external forms and the cultural behaviours related to these activities may vary depending on time, place and civilisation – but the basic human shape and impulse for society remains consistent whether it is Sāvatthī 500 BCE at the time of the Buddha or contemporary London. If the reality of these conditions is met and sustained then the possibility arises for the development of a human culture embracing spirituality, the arts, politics, justice, education, work and the activities of a healthy human life.

Even with a relatively benign society for many of us the ‘human’ is something yet to emerge from the complexities of life enmeshed in oppression, injustice, poverty and the habitual tendencies of our own ignorance. The entangling worldly net of cause and effect which can be fiendishly complex and place considerable limitations upon life and soul.

In relation to cause and effect the Buddha taught karma and rebirth which is root and branch of his teaching. Karma and rebirth posit a continuity of consciousness and consequence of action coming to fruition in forms appropriate to the ethical propensity of a given individual. In much the same way as water flows along the line of least resistance and will seek to level itself, human consciousness and form continually re-become, dependent upon the consequence of actions and the ethical propensity of the individual. The epicenter of this psycho physical continuum according to the Buddha is the mind.

If you observe the mind for long enough it becomes apparent that the human mind will eventually think of everything in all its beauty and perversity. In this there is not that much difference between us. Language, philosophy, goodness, wickedness, religion, beauty, art, love and cruelty all issue from the human mind which is capable of anything and everything. The stars, rivers, mountains, great oceans and planets are all perceived through the lens of human perception as a function of the mind.

As with life so with the mind, there is definitely something going on, though if you go looking for the mind you will never find it. To closely examine the mind reveals that it is empty and devoid of characteristic, though naturally aware. There are also mental states that arise from nowhere similarly passing away - intangible though apparent. Resolution is to be found in the experience of consciousness here and now in the present moment - which is outside of time, without condition or determination and cannot be grasped as a subject in relation to an object. There is a transparent stillness associated with this level of mindful equanimity. Free of disturbing thought and emotion this recognition is associated with a profound sense of peace and ease resting in natural awareness - the nature of mind.

This realisation is not static in the sense that you arrive at a place where you can put your feet up, break out the cigars and indulge every mundane wish now that you understand the ‘true nature of things’. Insight into the nature of mind, sunyata in Buddhist shorthand, is more like a spontaneous ground of awareness accompanied by gentleness and peace.

It was not as if the Buddha saw Indo Tibetan images of Buddhas’ everywhere or Gandharan-period Bodhisattvas in every cell of the universe cemented into yellow robes practicing monastic Vinaya, framed by certain linguistic conventions. If the sutras are anything to go by what the Buddha witnessed and experienced was an imperturbable peace and unfathomable stillness, a deathless ineffable void without shape or center informed by compassion and luminous joy. From this perspective, vitally cognizant of the various energies and appearances, through his fundamental compassion, the Buddha’s wisdom was capable of seeing the way that things might be workable. This basic practicality and intelligence of the Buddha was the foundation of his communication with humanity.

Closer to the ground, in addition to being hairy little fellows with teeth and articulated legs, human beings are capable of tender loving kindness and also of unspeakable wickedness and cruelty, both propensities playing out all the time all over the planet regardless of culture or social structure. Although capable of innumerable kindnesses performed each day one to another, we also manifest the capacity to give each other hell as we go about our business. War pestilence, famine, exploitation, argument, cruelty and mayhem all signatories to the human lunch bill.

This process of suffering arises from our incoherent confusion and spiritual inertia embedded in how we would like things to be, which leads to dukkha - rather than seeing how things are, which conduces to happiness. Humans are real beavers when it comes to how they would like things to be with no branch left out of the dam in process of building social structures to resolve the difficulties of life. The commonality is that we all experience the unsatisfactory nature of conditioned existence in our different ways, and generally try to resolve the difficulty by making things other than what they are.

Where this intersects with the Dharma is that instead of approaching the Buddha’s teaching in a spirit of positive humility, trying out the practices in a Dharmic context to see if they work, there is a tendency among people to interpret the dharma in light of how they would like things to be. A pseudo spiritual ‘bed of Procrustes’ as the Dharma is chopped or stretched to fit the ideological agendas of the age, which has the effect of compromising the Dharma in the sense that beyond a certain point it won’t work anymore. The Buddha’s teaching as a means to liberation gets lost somewhere along the way. That’s the rub.

Currently there are some difficulties arising for the Buddhist community in process of translating traditional Buddhism into the modern western idiom. Yes! the Dharma needs to undergo a process of translation from pre-industrial revolution village agrarian Buddhism to interface with modernity, though not by throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

The idea is not that the Dharma gets changed in translation to fit the ideological bent and bias of a particular culture on its own terms. Rather the host culture into which Buddhism migrates is best served by deeply understanding the spirit and teachings of the Dharma, in context of the Dharma, and integrating those enlightened principles to reflect, in practice, the genius and creativity of that culture. A process that can take hundreds of years. In such a way Cha‘an Buddhism is reflective of the Chinese genius and culture, and developed Vajrayana Buddhism reflective of the Tibetan genius and culture.

A tricky area in the process of translation to modernity lies in the tendency toward relativism current in the liberal democracies, proselytizing a judgemental relativism eschewing ontological realism – the belief that the world exists independently of social constructions and identity. Words are employed not to describe reality but to create reality in pursuit of how we would like things to be. In this way control of the social narrative becomes key in cementing the power necessary to implement the will of one’s desire to shape the present in light of an idealised future - weaponised by a legacy media in a soup of historical ignorance and precedence of ideological narrative over truth.

Woke ideology in particular is a species of relativism with its roots in critical theory that is having a significant influence on society in general, and Buddhism in particular, as it percolates into the western democracies. One of the methodological functions of wokery is to politicise every aspect of human behaviour for analysis, criticism and deconstruction in the light of human interaction reduced to a cynical play of power differentials. A movement prone to parasitically colonising legitimate liberation movements, including religion, as it shape shifts into Buddhist discourse under the banner of ethics, kindness and compassion. In its most confused form, it has become synonymous with Dharma posing as the enlightened process itself and by extension beyond question.

To the Dharma eye this suite of ideologies though superficially laudable, are often at root expressions of greed, hatred or delusion and are anything but what they purport to be, albeit often well intentioned. To the extent that such ideologies define our perception of the Dharma - to that extent it ceases to be Dharma. The reason being that from a Buddhist perspective the relationship between the mundane and the unconditioned as represented by the Buddha is understood by the Noble Disciple standing in the unconditioned, cognizant of the Four Noble Truths. From which basis a premise is found in logic to explain the relationship, known in common parlance as the Dharma. The spiritually immature person seeing the world on its own terms, unmindful and not seeing the unconditioned, is therefore blindsided and prone to error when translating the Dharma to modernity.

While eschewing religion as an oppressive form of patriarchal control, the same woke ideologies ironically bear the marks of religious faith. In respect of this Wokism appears to have three articles of faith currently politicising the Dharma in the liberal democracies.

1/ The first article of faith is the belief in the ‘imminent doom’ of the human race and or planet. This is mostly attached to climate change but can be seen through other lens such as nuclear war, AI (Artificial Intelligence), meteor strikes, low sperm counts and conspiracies to rule the planet.

In the 60’s it was the oil would be gone in ten years

In the 70’s it was another ice age in ten years

In the 80’s it was acid rain would destroy all the crops in ten years

In the 90’s it was the ozone layer would be destroyed in ten years

In the 2000’s it was the glaciers would all melt in ten years

In the 2010’s it was the sea levels would put us all under water in ten years

...and now it appears we are all going to die from epidemics if global warming doesn’t get us first...

Faith in imminent doom provides the imperative, the motive force

2/ The second article of faith is belief in ‘systemic discrimination’ which is the view that the social structures and conventions of a society are inherently repressive and discriminatory, sustaining the oppression of the dominant privileged group – human interaction being defined by imperatives of power. In particular by white male colonial power. Those who are able to see into the workings of this unconscious structural repression are ‘awake’ (woke), while the conscious and unconscious perpetrators of the oppression are culpably ignorant and morally deficient – a short goose step away from fascism.

Faith in systemic discrimination provides the moral agency.

3/ The third article of faith is inclusivity, the belief in equality of outcome – that the suffering inherent in the unsatisfactory nature of conditioned existence will be finally resolved if all people are equally represented, equally wealthy and equally privileged by virtue of being alive.

Faith in inclusivity provides the means.

As a holy trinityFaith in Imminent Doomprovides the imperative, the motive force that the survival of the world depends upon. Faith in Systemic discriminationprovides the moral agency and moral justification for action, whileFaith in Inclusivityprovides the means to implement equality of outcome to achieve social justice and the dawn of a new utopia. In light of the scale and urgency of the planetary emergency there is a moral imperative upon those who are woke (awake) to save the world by enforcing social change through controlling people’s thought and behaviour with a sense of moral mission, effected by colonising the institutions of democracy (which include religion) and the levers of political power.

Once embedded in a culture and community the infusion of this mono culture becomes the reset position whereby disagreement or deviance from the ideological norm is considered morally perverse and socially ignorant - the perpetrators of whom are guilty of fermenting disharmony and disinformation.

From the basis of wokery it is only reasonable that Buddhism is subject to the appropriate reforms of its doctrine, methodology and culture. The Buddhist language of ethics, compassion and kindness lends itself to voluntary internal reform from amongst the Buddhist faithful, without the apostles of doom needing to lift a finger by way of coercion.

The mono culture is not a community of people it would seem with a joyful realisation of human life as the inexpressible wonder of a consciousness possessing spiritual creativity, complemented with a basic confidence that things will work out OK in the end - given that skillful actions have inevitable consequences.

How all this plays through the theatre of human activity is a bit of a jumble and not at all straightforward. The observation of karma and rebirth in context of the clear comprehension of reality is interesting inasmuch as it poses many questions for zeitgeists down the millennia - the mundane spheres of politics, ideology and human convention as explanation of reality.

Concerns the current woke ideologies which have colonised the dharma, and identity politics that have politicised the dharma - in light of karma and rebirth the white male may well have been a slave in a previous life and the person of colour a white slave owner. Man may have been woman and woman man - people may even have incarnated from different realms. The possibilities of karma and rebirth can lend a certain theatre of the absurd to the ideologies of the day, cutting the ground from under such notions.

With regard to the ‘liberal democracies’ inequality is not unique to the institutions of the West or the colour and religion of a particular race of people - inequality is a fundamental rule of existence. Every system we know produces inequality when run as an operative social system. What we have in the ‘West’ is a culture that develops wealth and technology making possible a quality of life for the average person that a King three hundred years ago could not have dreamed of. The reason people are risking life and limb to get into ‘western’ society is that westerners enjoy a large degree of cushioning from the relentless grind of nature and the oppressive imperatives of human survival – with the added bonus of individual freedoms and security in the context of a social safety net.

From an historical perspective, without the great Bodhisattvas, spiritual communities, artists, innovators and thinkers through the ages - humanity would be in a very dark place indeed given that every culture possesses its own tyranny and underbelly regardless of hierarchical structure and social organisation. In terms of bringing some balance to these types of discussions it is helpful to be aware of the shadows of one’s own delusion and the cultural hypocrisy of one’s own society. Beware of deconstructing social forms rich in tradition and conscious of their past, built up over centuries of lived human life. Therein lie dark waters and monsters.

In terms of social evolution Dharma practice is no magic solution, that is for sure. Dig into Buddhist civilization and there are plenty of things that go bump in the night and skeletons in the closet. But you would have to reckon at a basic social level that people sticking together in communities cultivating ethics based in metta, developing mindfulness, seeing through to the reality of things, renouncing excessive consumption, meditating and cultivating dharma would be a positive thing. A possibility for the emergence of a society embracing human life that is productive of dignity and reflective of the beauty and creativity of the human spirit.

The Dharma, the Buddha’s teaching, presents the individual with a possibility to become enlightened, standing beyond the view and horizon of mundane human existence in such a way as to be invisible to those seeking a resolution for the world on its own terms.