Buddhist Idealism

today we're going to return to our discussion of classical Indian metaphysics and talk about the difference between two conceptions of objects now the philosophers what are we talking about today are not for the most part really famous philosophers some are but on the other hand I think you see in classical Indian philosophy a shark divided between two conceptions of objects that is actually found in a number of other different traditions it goes from India into the Chinese philosophical tradition and eventually it makes its way into the Western tradition as well I think on the contemporary scene philosophers still have one of these two fundamentally different conceptions of objects and one advantage of seeing all this is the age of Indian context is that you see that drug very explicitly and very directly so this is through contrast between two very different ideas of what there is that is something that's delineate it very very sharply in classical Indian philosophy and then the debate among these different camps proceeds for centuries whereas in Western philosophy reading one of these only emerges late only emerges in the last two centuries and has only been varied enough in the 20th century itself so let's take a look first of all at the contrast between realism and ideas a realist thinks that the world is really in a profound sense out there that at least some aspects of it are independent of the month and idealist things but no everything is really my dependent they think of the world as a construction as a projection of the line and so everything is really in its deepest essence meant now in classical Indian philosophy Buddhism is pretty clearly on the ideal side but so is it might've been up to the main school Jews and so both of these views heard that everything is really dependent on the mind that in the end everything that exists is mental is built out of the mental elements is constructed is projected is in some way the result of mental activity now that has some really important implications for what there is in the world and what the nature of an ordinary object is these objects are mental constructions they are really things that are put together on mental elements they don't really endure over time as we'll see instead we construct them by drooping together various perceptions various ideas in fact in most of these versions objects exist only for a month let's take a look at a randomly chosen object the one thing that happens to be on the table this pair of sunglasses I don't know why it's here filthy Wow now I can't see anything but anyway those are well what now obviously they are constructions in the sense that they are not a prologue somebody constructed these sunglasses but another way to look at it is to say well are they yes they were built by human hands over to the side of her its physical arts but the deeper question is what is their actual nature are they a physical object that exists independently of us now so that if we were to leave them alone even though they were human and their origin in this the sense of summoning design and create them now might say they have an independent existence they could exist even if humanity disappeared but from another perspective you could say well actually now what do you mean talking about the sunglasses you're really saying that you know I put together in the subway some objects and I call them one thing but I mean I'm doing how many objects am i holding in my hand well here's one answer what okay a pair of sunglasses but notice there's something a little uncomfortable about that it's a pair sunglasses we think why is it a pair it's one object that's weird isn't it I mean okay it's like I'm wearing a pair of pants but they're blob tracks so what's the deal here and you might start thinking wait a minute okay I couldn't think of this as blood object I could think of it as a pair because after all they're two lenses in it two parts from you know each one image through which one eye looks but then of course there's this this part and this other part and the two lenses so that's for the frame here that's five but now I've got a little screw here here so that's six and seven oh and there's a little metal thing here and here that's eight and nine hmm so is this one object two objects nine objects what should we say about this when you buy them or sit there prescription I'm sure these are secular or prescription instead we'd be buying the lenses and the frames independently and so now you might say well from one point of view I don't know what you call it one object is to a mixer of 9.6 who cares but here's one way of thinking about the difference it would make according to our realist this is an object that exists in the world now independently of my mind whereas from an idealist point of view sometimes I treat that as well sometimes I've treated is too sometimes I treat it as not and actually all of that is not a question about the sunglasses it's really about my mental ways of classifying things and so really the object is to be viewed as a mental construction something that I train as one thing has two things a pair of things as nine different things put together in a certain way and so on okay so the thoughts here are in this idealist tradition is that in a hug is really a pup of these momentary things of these elements I've been talking as if they're physical objects left to screw the lenses and so up but actually you might think they're really put together out of various perceptions you've seen them for example you might hear those you might taste I touch them but so anyway we move these various perceptions together for our own purposes now other people the classical Indian metaphysics are realist so people broadly speaking of the night of school of the by a circus school of me I advise you go once they get together in the work of nayana around a thousand they're realist they think that objects like rocks and trees plants sunglasses and cetera really do exist independently of the line they're out there in the world maybe we construct them maybe we just find them but they exist independently of us and they don't depend on our minds in particular this depended on the human body for its construction but now that's there it doesn't really depend on our money it really exists in dependency and of course it indoors over time I've been talking about that pair of sunglasses this whole lecture and so I picked them up again them up the same once now we've talked about the biphasic school the particular school that says there are basic categories of objects and I just want to remind you briefly of that realist perspective because mostly today I've got to talk about the other part the realist idea is pretty common sentiment here's the way Webb did the work of for example I'll remember everything that has the character being he lays out basic categories in answer to the fundamental question of ontology what is there and says what these kinds of things okay look at what we talked about you'll get everyday speech we refer to certain things like sunglasses like rocks like trees like pairs of pants and so on and so some of these things are substances we have basic categories of substance those are the objects like pot clubs pants sunglasses tables chairs people etc and then there are qualities those things have what color are these yeah somebody who's a white base gray it's kind of unclear actually yeah sort of ivory I don't know anyway but their color like hats right and then these lenses are I guess they're green I don't know they're green lenses and rough and grey lenses and brown lenses so I found that I'm very bad at telling them apart they have mirrors things that you see yourself I don't know I don't have any friends who have these mirrors I don't treat me I look at their eyes and it's just my face with you back that's really strange right but do we talk about quality so can we talk about the color of the thing the shape and so on and then we talk about motions we can talk about throwing or eating or seeing or moving and all of those are things that we would express and with sticking with verbs and actually refer to events or motions or actions in the world well anyway those are the basic categories and then as we saw this tradition gets elaborated and people begin to think oh wait a minute I have to be able to talk about universality I need to talk about the color of the lenses or what is I need to talk about inherence I need to talk about the glasses being either three let's say or the lenses being green and then I've got to have an idea of what would differentiate this pair of sunglasses from an identical pair that comes off the line in the factory and so I need to have something that expresses the this part of that and then I can talk about absences I can talk about the picture of the Pokemon on the sunglass it's good okay it's not there it doesn't happen and so I can refer to things that are not there partly as we've seen people want some way of explaining why it is not true that there's an elephant in the room if I say there's no elephant in the room where there's no code lock on the sunglasses then I need something that is making that curve what is it well it's the absence of a mountain the absence of a Pokemon and so no there is another conception of substance so on the one hand we have this by Chase because the ayah realist conception of substance that's really quite common sensical it's very much like the account you get in western philosophy from Aristotle the world is divided up into these substances the substances are the bearers of qualities they have all these they stand in relations and we tend to think when we were dividing the world up into objects we are dividing it and it's joints so to speak that is to say we talked about sunglasses being on the table and we think yeah that's the way the world is there are the sunglasses there are not your business separate and so the world comes to buy the nothin two things there's tingly there are some buses on the table there's a human being in front talking in front of a blackboard the world comes divided up already and our conceptions of objects just reflect the division that is already there in the world well we're going to confront a very different conception objects in Buddhism and in other forms of Indian idealism here's the idea we're dividing the world into objects but those objects are merely bundles of qualities and we're the ones who are dividing them up it's not that the world comes pre divided we are doing the divisions there are no joints in the world so there is no essential difference between the sunglasses on the table or between me and the blackboard we are the ones drawing those distinctions there's not really there in the world scared question have you seen the movie the gods must be crazy yes because of us because no I explained it so pilot is flying over the African savannah and he throws a coke bottle off the window and then a lance near African fishermen tribe and they can't figure out what the bottle is supposed to be so they use it for different things something is musical instrument some think it's used to kill animals something to excuse to cook on grave and so on and so what the idealist say that has no set purpose because each tribesman has a different idea of what it's supposed to be well alright interesting question this is divine this is connected to the question of purpose and so you could look at it this way in the movie it's quite remarkable because this coke bottle just falls into the middle of the Kalahari Desert and it's found by a tribe that has never seen anything that far they don't really have anything in their environment that as far as this taupe so they use it for all sorts of purposes now notice they are using it so on the sort of conception of the realist the cobalt is an object it already comes to mind and in fact in this case it's very different from the other objects in that world and so we have all sorts of purposes events I think people start hitting each other with it they begin to think it's a very dangerous thing that was sent by the devil not gods and for the Gaza made some horrible mistake in sending it and so the the whole movie really is based around this one pursue a Bushman whose job it is to take it to the edge of the world and throw it off and much hilarity ensues in that process but now here's the general idea behind purpose from that point of view well this depends on purpose it really is already a doctor and then once an object is there you can use it for all sorts of purposes for example you can use the sunglasses to see through you can also use the personal Asafa can example this I have today and all of that's fine the object is already there then you can use it for various things on that idealist conception however we are dividing the world up according to our purpose and for some purposes it is useful to think of this as one object for example but for other purposes it's useful to think of it as a combination of office as frame separate from lenses or all these little arms separate from the rest of the frame or the screw separating if for example one falls out when we need to replace it so whether we do that is one thing of two things or nine things will depend on our purposes the way we divide up the world depends on our purposes now in that respect the movie isn't a great illustration because it's one thing and they don't really involved nothing they do involve apart however you can easily imagine a variant where there's something that they find and they find that put together it has one purpose separated apart it has another purpose and so in that kind of context students saying wow yes the purpose is really are moving to Champaign now it's in a way the example there is nice for the ribs because they say well there's one thing there everybody agrees there's one object there and then the question is what to do with it what various purposes it could serve but there are examples where the way we divided up depends more on what the purpose of the thing is and so let's think about an object like that can you think of anything where whether we consider it one of your two objects a combination of many objects depends on what we're doing yeah building a building okay good is the building one thing or is the building a combination of things you might think it depends the architect might think that the building is one thing but if you've got tests to perform in different rooms you might think of it as a collection of rules and so your thinking is actually with many things whereas someone else might need to give it as blending and there might be other ways of dividing out I used to work for example summers in college I worked at an apartment complex where we have a twenty seven storey building and for certain purposes it was really divided up into the public areas and then the private apartments one summer my job where stomach perhaps was to scrub 27 floors worth of vinyl wallpaper in the hallways okay that is the most boring job in the world and it's especially bad as I'm as a floor where the walls are pretty clean it's like it doesn't mean it's right if you do that and you have no sense of accomplishment whatever I relished getting to a floor with a smoker because it was deadly the walls are dirty what I'm doing much different but I'm sort of looking at it as okay there the apartments that separate I don't worry about those but then do these common areas I have to scrub all of those there is another way of dividing it up though somebody who is concerned with the water supply sought as two different things because it turns out that the water pressure will take water maximally up to the 12th floor floor of a building but the 13th floor above you have to pump it up and so actually if you're a water design engineer you're going to think a hub there's two systems here right there's the one for the first 12 stories and then there's the one from the stories that are higher than that and they have to be two different systems and you have to have pumps that go for the one and not the other and power is knocked out then people on the bottom 12 floors are going to be fine this water supply with those on Eire going to be in trouble etc are well having a lotta noise but yeah whether a building looks like one thing of many things to different things as many as there are rooms etc etc Paulo that's going to depend on purposes from the point of view of the idealist there are no natural joints in the world there there's just stuff and we figure out how to actually divide well if everything really is constructs from the log then you might think psychology is really the basic discipline and we need to understand the ways in which consciousness manages to construct the world and protect these objects so in the Buddhist tradition there is a lot of attention paid to that kind of question but ago that is one of the most influential philosophers in that tradition and he there are 89 different kinds of consciousness which events eats the list it becomes a very intricate theory of how the mind actually goes about doing this most versions of the story have about similar that they're the five senses there is a common sense faculty with information from the five senses gets put together coordinated then there is a part of the mind that sort of divided does the divided fall back into objects and then there may be further parts of the mind that then do something with the resultant in any case there's sort of the five senses the combined version than the separated version etc but here's the idea really all of those are different faculties aligned there are all different kinds of consciousness if you will and really oh we experience is some result of all that some combination of these various times so there's a lot of attention paid especially in the Hindu tradition but also in the Buddhist tradition just strands of consciousness to the ways in which an ordinary conscious experience these different kinds of consciousness are woven together yeah will the simplest kind are just for example busy that's one kind of consciousness hearing that's another kind is loved teased would be another kind that combinations of these but then think about the various different attitudes you might have those are all different kinds of consciousness for Buddha ghosa so for example you might believe something you might fear something you might want something all of those would be different kinds of consciousness and as soon as you start thinking about that you're going to wait there Lama who's right it's not just believe and fear and desire there are hopes there are wishes what are some other attitudes we have like that that are all going to end up being different kinds of promises yeah whoo good instincts yeah we're gonna have index patients we're going to have sort of instincts more reactions as opposed to college with sweet develop reactions we're going to have things that are explicit and symbolic as opposed to things that are kind of intuitive we'll have various emotions those will reflect different kinds of consciousness so there will be us or at least there could be in various versions of this theory of consciousness that is one source drenched in anger another one drenched in water third it looks good sup love in you know hatred in indifference and someone and so forth can you think of other absolutes do you have enough things it would be maybe reflective yeah good despair there might be a sort of despairing consciousness there might be up in full consciousness etc so once you go about that line you realize now how do you stop it or maybe not but yeah it's more complicated even than that and some of these he labels quickly without explaining so to be honest I'm not sure what they're supposed to be now here is that another aspect of this a living being and actually as we see enough lasts only as long as one thought now that's a bit scary what do you mean a living being lasts only as long as one thought but as soon as you think something and then think something else your mind changes and you are a different being really the idea here is look you don't have any independent existence either you're just a bundle of thoughts feelings and perceptions you're just a combination of these various mental episodes that are referred to in the Buddhist tradition as Dharma's you are a company to have gardens of bundled honest and the moment the dharma changes in the sense that you have a thoughts and then it goes away that replaced by another thought for example you're different now Dukas is the collection remains the same but the collection is something we are constructing actually the reality is something that is now gone and something new was sent in a place its place so people minds objects their only ways of speaking they don't have any reality independent the life now that's ten of us talking pieces but here's an example meant to make it seem a little bit more friendly okay suppose Jamie flies from Austin to Houston and then flies back she's one person we would say but she counts us two passengers Southwest Airlines might encounter twice right in the sense of saying how many passengers if you float this month well she comes for two even though it's one person because she was one passenger going from Austin to Houston and then another passenger going from Houston to Austin well passenger here is really just a way of counting and witnesses claim is look every now is like passenger the realist says look you're talking about people we're dividing reality at its joints we're actually capturing the pre divided idea of what an object is but when Southwest Airlines call kelps passengers they're doing something else they're carving things up in a way that isn't really the way things are divided in reality but Buddha goes this way I don't understand the difference actually every now is exactly like this are you one object what were you many objects after all you go from Austin to Houston Houston to Austin are you one or two but then you might think well it's more complicated than that every change of thought it might be different or actually think about a longer flight I I have a house in New Hampshire I can't just fly to New Hampshire directly right I have to stop somewhere and I have to change planes and can never get there without changing planes so I have to stop in usually Nashville from Baltimore Chicago or some things like that no once I stopped in Orlando that didn't make any sense at all and by the way was basalt all of a sudden all these alarms started ringing and a voice came over saying evacuate the airport immediately this is an emergency this is not a test evacuate airport immediately what about their business you know the people who gave the game agents just ignored all the passengers ignoring it I think you which is heaven we should probably should scream just like the building up I don't understand went off today with where's the oh yes so how many passengers even do I count as right if the plane goes from here to Baltimore let's say and then from Baltimore to Manchester am i one passing through during that leg and my two passengers my three the guy who went from Boston to Baltimore and the balls of dead Baltimore to Manchester and the guy who went from Austin to Manchester I don't know we divide that up cording to various purposes well there's a wonderful text in this tradition about this it's a Buddhist texts called the questions to Kimball in the Melinda pub and it's marvelous because we get this tremendous dial going on between a Buddhist monk not a saint and King Melinda who is a real pig he's usually called in this by his Greek name in the West banana he really did rule a city-state in Western Asia the was on their grief control part the Hellenistic Empire conquered by Alexander the Great but very close to the border of India in any case this is Marvel's King Melinda comes riding up on a chair okay and he sees the mother Nagas aina he says how is your reference know what is your name to serve as Nagas say no I don't know no Great King how does Nagas sinner do my fellow loves into Peppa truly address me so the little parents given me such as not the same time nevertheless this word naka saying that it's just a determination a designation of a conceptual term temporary appellation to be your name there is no real person here in the apprehended King Melinda explained no listen you five hundreds in eight to 80 thousand months this Naga Cigna tells me he's not a real person how can I be expected to agree with that tanaka-san I've said it most forever in magazine and no person can be apprehended in reality who then I ask you gives you what you need by weight roads food lodging medicines who is that that cards morality practices meditation realizes the four paths who is it commits the five deadly sins blah blah blah if someone should kill you over venerable - Ana he wouldn't kill a real teacher or instructor worth a month what is this not a saint and now this marvelous dialogue are perhaps the hairs of the head focusing the overreaching props the nails teeth the skin muscles the sinews the bobbum samara the kidneys the heart well it gets kind of disgusting the greets the fact the tears no sweat the spit that cetera oh those Nagas ain't no no how about impulses feelings consciousness no raking a combination of form feelings consciousness perceptions no is it outside all of its no well then I discovered on August say that all this Nagas aina is merely a sound but who is the real Nagas a nut well now Naga Cena said the king will end up as king you've been brought up and great for fight to avoid roughness of any if you would walk in midday on this hot burning it's heavy grab her feet would have to tread on roughly pretty brother how did you come up foot hurry no no cherry he said the plot came in a chariot if you've come in a chariot explain to me what the chariot is is the pole of the chariot no the axle no the wheels no the framework no the yoke no the reins no is it a combination all these things no is it something outside of them no then I discovered Oh chariot at all there is no charity appear to be found and then all of autumn to block the cleverness of these two other lockers but notice what's going on here basically the ideas look there is no ego here to be found there is no one big in reality independent of the mind the constitutes a person but the same thing is true the chariot the same thing is true the table of the sun glasses of everything else now the argument in every case goes the same way is any one element the whole is this particular whatever your college head let's take all this people claim to know all the same different things anyway yeah - it's like if word for that object is this particular lens the pair of sunglasses no is this one no is it the frame no is it the combination now they say no and it's interesting to ask why don't they say yes to the combination answer is because you could change out the parts that would remain the same take let's say this breaks and we replace it with a new one is it the same pair of sunglasses yes but it's a different combination of objects so we cannot identify the sunglasses with the combination of all you might think AHA it might be understood physically well is it the combination of all the body parts is certainly not each individual body part bought Alex the nation hold on a second I could I can cut my nails another the same person okay I could lose a tooth and be the same person etc so it won't count with that now what about mentally well I could have different thoughts and still be the same person so it isn't the combination it's nothing apart from the combination though and so the puzzle is there's nothing there in fact there is no we go here to be found there's a share it to be found no what element is the whole the combinations can't be the whole because the parts can change and the object remains the same so I want to remind you a paralyzes idea you can't step in the same river twice as soon as something changes Heraclitus are you it's endocrine alter because there's a change it was something that had this property it now has this problem how could the same thing have the property and lacked appropriate impossible so anytime something changes it is on new up it is just a different thing well the bonus combines that idea from your questions to King Melinda with know that thought nothing can have contrary qualities and so every time an object changes it is a different object every time your thoughts changes you are a new object now of course we don't talk that way we in terms of bundles but if we're really looking at what's going on to the world everything is really just a dharma and it's a changing series of darkness this leads to a view known as the absent self you okay there is no self there is no essence for me to know in Western philosophy Socrates says quoting the nullify Oracle no dice up the Buddhist says there is no self here to be tired there's nothing to know you want to know yourself you won't understand yourself understand that there is no you okay there's nothing to understand there is no essence the best you can do is understand the general patterns in this bundle of thoughts that you group together and call yourself what happens when you interest you say yes spices know myself let me think mmm do is damn water and all the follows is a series of thoughts feelings perceptions and so on you don't find anything else you don't find yourself notice how similar this is to Humes view in fact you read a fair number of books on Buddhism I think his view was influenced by this in any case the conclusion is there is no self there is no soul there is no unity to you there is an imposed unity as it were because certain thoughts are grouped together in a certain way and you take those to constitute yourself now this has some important ethical implications you might take ah what I really seek in like this happens some fulfilling the Buddha says there's enough self to fulfill there is no stuff to make happy there is no you you think well I'm concerned with my own self-interest there is no self okay all of that is an illusion if there is no self then there is no point to desire there's no point to worrying about happiness or fulfillment or any of that there is no point to desire and so if you want to eliminate desire in order to eliminate suffering eliminate that idea of the self suffering comes from desire and desire comes from a quest for accomplishment of happiness or wish fulfillment or whatever it is that is based on idea itself what about reincarnation but what is tense to say well there's no soul dies it will get off the chariot and come and go along in a different body you can't have reincarnation in that sense but you can to the other sense if we're just grouping thoughts feelings perceptions together there's no reason why that has to be within the bounds of what we ordinarily recognizes what human life it could be something that things apart independently of that and so might we might construct people like passenger said in quite different ways we can do so across the bounds of death now I'm going to skip ahead to well yeah God to this Buddhist conception then and samba Feist what we've done is dis there are no continuing substances in the world existing in the penalty of us everything is really momentary moreover everything is really meant what we call a substance or a thing and up it's really just a bundle of these mental episodes called Dartmouth's our talk of substances then it is a convenient fiction every now is like passenger everything is really just a way of counting an Appalachian something that doesn't capture the real identity of anything every substance is really just a conceptual construction nothing gives it unity nothing gives it an essence there's a joke that I like to tell to illustrate the point okay a waitress at a restaurant comes over to Yogi Berra who is ordered a pizza and she says would you like me to cut it into four pieces or eight he said it's better baked at four I don't think I can deviate but it's the same thing right I mean it's the same thing be divided up in those different ways so here is the way that Zen thinkers put this truth in the end everything is empty nothing has a true essence of its own in the end everything is just garbage and that dargas are empty

Channel: Daniel Bonevac

Views: 3,076

Rating: 4.8823528 out of 5

Keywords: Buddhist Idealism, Buddhism, Idealism

Id: SItH1wbLQn0

Length: 35min 30sec (2130 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 29 2017