T.S. Eliot, Dharma Bum: Buddhist Teachings in "The Wasteland"

The Journal of Religion, 2003

Reviewed by Mario D'Amato Hampshire College Jay Garfield is already well known for his important translation of and commentary on Nāgārjuna's Mū lamadhyamakakā rikā (MMK), published under the title Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way (Oxford University Press, 1995). In Empty Words: Buddhist Philosophy and Cross-Cultural Interpretation, Garfield provides us with his interpretations of Buddhist thought, many of which informed or arose out of his work on the MMK. Empty Words is a collection of fourteen essays, of which eleven have been previously published, two are newly published, and one, jointly authored with Graham Priest, appears in the present issue of this journal. The work is divided into three parts: part 1 is composed of five essays on Madhyamaka, part 2 contains four essays on Yogācāra, and part 3 has five essays on ethics and hermeneutics. In part 1 Garfield presents interpretations of Madhyamaka thought based primarily on readings of Nāgārjuna's MMK. These interpretations may be approached in terms of the following interlocking themes: Madhyamaka as skepticism, causality as regularities, and emptiness as paradoxical. In the first essay, ''Epochē and Śū nyatā,'' Garfield argues that the Prāsaṅ gika-Madhyamaka tradition (namely, Nāgārjuna and Candrakīrti) is akin to the Western skepticism of Sextus, Hume, and Wittgenstein. But, Garfield adds, ''these Buddhist skeptics, because of their cultural and philosophical contexts are a bit more explicit about certain features of the skeptical method than their European counterparts'' (p. 5): they are more explicit in attempting to steer a course between the extremes of reificationism and nihilism. According to Garfield's reading, Buddhist skeptics seek to undermine the essentialist metaphysical presuppositions that reificationists affirm and nihilists deny, and in so doing to avoid falling into either position. Garfield sees this skeptical method significantly deployed in Madhyamaka arguments against a view of causality as based on causal powers. While the reificationist argues that observed regularities in the world are explained through recourse to causal powers, the nihilist denies the existence of such causal powers, and hence denies the possibility of causal explanations. The Buddhist skeptic's response, in Garfield's view, is ''rather than to understand regularity as vouchsafed by causation, to understand causal explanation as grounded in regularities'' (p. 8); there are no occult causal powers, but only regularities, which ''are explained by reference to further regularities'' (p. 29). Hence, the Madhyamaka philosopher disavows the search for ontological foundations of the conventional. It should be noted that Garfield's reading of the MMK's position on causality is not uncontroversial. Garfield posits that the text makes a distinction between causes (hetus) and conditions (pratyayas). According to Garfield, a cause is ''an event or state that has in it a power. .. to bring about its effect,'' while a condition is ''an 136

Philosophy and Literature, 2009

BuDDhiST LESSonS in The WasTe Land M any critics have argued that T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land is a poem that attempts to deal with the physical destruction and human atrocities of the First World War, or that he had somehow expressed the disillusionment of a generation. For Eliot, such a characterization was too reductive. he replied, "nonsense, i may have expressed for them their own illusion of being disillusioned, but that did not form part of my intention." he did not want to be the poet of a "lost generation" of war survivors, but rather, he wanted, like most poets, to write for all ages. To that end, Eliot sought to transcend time and space by bringing to The Waste Land scores of literary, cultural, and artistic allusions from a variety of sources including the upanishads, Greek mythology, the Bible, Chaucer, Dante, Spenser, Shakespeare, and Leonardo Da Vinci. ironically, within this menagerie of literary homages, Eliot has created a vast emptiness, a world of pain, suffering, desolation and despair, as if to suggest that even in the presence of all the greatest artistic and cultural achievements of mankind, we must understand that life is transitory and material things ephemeral. The idea that life is fleeting and filled with suffering is at the core of Buddhist thought and one that Eliot surely learned from his graduate studies at harvard. Several scholars have examined the influence of Eastern philosophy, and in particular Buddhist thought, on Eliot's work, largely in the past forty years. 1 My argument departs from this scholarship in two significant ways. First, i will read The Waste Land through the lens of Eliot's graduate studies, and in doing so will show how the poem functions as a didactic, artistic representation of the Buddhist doctrine of samsa\ ra, an idea that views the world as transitory, overcome

This two-volume publication explores the complex philosophy of Mahāmudrā that developed in Tibetan Dwags po Bka’ brgyud traditions between the 15th and 16th centuries CE. It examines the attempts to articulate and defend Bka’ brgyud views and practices by four leading post-classical thinkers: (1) Shākya mchog ldan (1423‒1507), a celebrated yet controversial Sa skya scholar who developed a strong affiliation with the Karma Bka’ brgyud Mahāmudrā tradition in the last half of his life, (2) Karma phrin las Phyogs las rnam rgyal (1456‒1539), a renowned Karma Bka’ brgyud scholar-yogin and tutor to the Eighth Karma pa, (3) the Eighth Karma pa himself, Mi bskyod rdo rje (1507‒1554), who was among the most erudite and influential scholar-hierarchs of his generation, (4) and Padma dkar po (1527‒1592), Fourth ’Brug chen of the ’Brug pa Bka’ brgyud lineage who is generally acknowledged as its greatest scholar and systematizer. The work is devoted to clarifying how each of these authors attempted not only to establish the continuity of Bka’ brgyud Mahāmudrā doctrines and practices with authoritative Indo-Tibetan traditions of exegesis (bshad lugs) and praxis (sgrub lugs) but also to defend them against charges of incoherence and even heresy (chos min, chos log) in an intellectual climate increasingly dominated and riven by sectarian exclusivism and religious conservativism. Against detractors who had raised questions about the Indian provenance of certain Bka’ brgyud Mahāmudrā doctrines such as Sgam po pa’s “White Panacea” (dkar po gcig thub), and also doubts about whether such teachings should even be considered Buddhist at all, the four authors stood united in promoting this tradition as a way firmly grounded in insights and methods of Indian Buddhist third turning sūtras, the tantras, and the spiritual songs (dohā) and instructions (upadeśa) of the Indian mahāsiddhas. Sgam po pa’s Mahāmudrā is presented as a path that distils from these traditions the most direct and effective means of reaching the Mahāyāna goal of spiritual awakening for the sake of oneself and others. Post-classical Mahāmudrā exegetes generally viewed the rapprochement between Mahāmudrā and certain anti-foundationalist strains of Indian Madhyamaka philosophy — specifically, the *Prāsaṅgika (“Consequentialist”) and Apratiṣṭhāna (“Nonfoundationalist”) systems — as central to their philosophical aims. They framed this synthesis in terms of the reconciliation of affirmative (cataphatic) and negative (apophatic) styles of thought and discourse. This is discernable in our four authors’ attempts to reconcile two basic models of truth or reality (satya) that had long been discussed and debated by Indian and Tibetan Buddhist scholars: (1) a differentiation model based on robust distinctions between conventional and ultimate truths (saṃvṛtisatya and paramārthasatya) and their associated modes of cognition and emptiness, and (2) an identification or unity (zung ’jug : yuganaddha) model of the two truths and their associated modes of cognition and emptiness. Whereas the differentiation model was typically aligned with a strongly innatist view of the ultimate (buddha nature, the nature of mind, or the nature of reality) that underscored its “sublime otherness” (gzhan mchog) from all that is conventional and adventitious, the unity model, predicated on the view of a common ground uniting all conditioned and unconditioned phenomena, emphasized the pervasiveness of the ultimate and its immanence within the conventional in order to indicate how the ultimate permeates the mind-streams of individuals in bondage. In a similar vein, these scholars sought to chart a middle way between opposing Indo-Tibetan dogmas regarding the nature of reality which had become aligned with positive versus negative appraisals of the ultimate, as exemplified by the heated inter-sectarian disputes between Tibetan Other-emptiness (gzhan stong) and Self-emptiness (rang stong) views that had erupted in the fourteenth century. If advocating a “middle path beyond extremes” (mtha’ bral dbu ma’i lam) meant avoiding the postulation of a metaphysical absolute beyond time, matter and the entire nexus of dependent arising, a view they attributed to the Jo nang school, it also meant circumventing the kind of unwarranted deprecation of ultimate reality that they saw as the undesirable result of taking the ultimate to consist in sheer emptiness (stong pa rkyang pa) — a complete absence of anything whatsoever — that was the scope of a nonaffirming negation (med dgag), a view they associated mainly with the Dge lugs pa school. It is in light of the shared concern of these post-classical thinkers to ply a middle course between eternalist Gzhan stong-based and nihilist Rang stong-based currents of Buddhist thought within the framework of an affirmative yet resolutely anti-foundationalist approach to goal-realization that we can broadly characterize their primary philosophical orientation as a “Mahāmudrā of the Middle Way”. This work is divided into two volumes: the first offers a detailed philosophical analysis of the authors’ principal views and justifications of Mahāmudrā against the background of Indian and Tibetan Buddhist doctrines on mind, emptiness and buddha nature; the second comprises an annotated anthology of their seminal writings on Mahāmudrā accompanied by critical editions and introductions. These two volumes are the result of research that was generously funded by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) from 2012 to 2015 under the supervision of Prof. Klaus-Dieter Mathes. The project was entitled “‘Emptiness of Other’ (Gzhan stong) in the Tibetan ‘Great Seal’ (Mahāmudrā) Traditions of the 15th and 16th Centuries” (FWF Project number P23826-G15).

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This two-volume publication explores the complex philosophy of Mahāmudrā that developed in Tibetan Dwags po Bka’ brgyud traditions between the 15th and 16th centuries CE. It examines the attempts to articulate and defend Bka’ brgyud views and practices by four leading post-classical thinkers: (1) Shākya mchog ldan (1423‒1507), a celebrated yet controversial Sa skya scholar who developed a strong affiliation with the Karma Bka’ brgyud Mahāmudrā tradition in the last half of his life, (2) Karma phrin las Phyogs las rnam rgyal (1456‒1539), a renowned Karma Bka’ brgyud scholar-yogin and tutor to the Eighth Karma pa, (3) the Eighth Karma pa himself, Mi bskyod rdo rje (1507‒1554), who was among the most erudite and influential scholar-hierarchs of his generation, (4) and Padma dkar po (1527‒1592), Fourth ’Brug chen of the ’Brug pa Bka’ brgyud lineage who is generally acknowledged as its greatest scholar and systematizer. The work is devoted to clarifying how each of these authors attempted not only to establish the continuity of Bka’ brgyud Mahāmudrā doctrines and practices with authoritative Indo-Tibetan traditions of exegesis (bshad lugs) and praxis (sgrub lugs) but also to defend them against charges of incoherence and even heresy (chos min, chos log) in an intellectual climate increasingly dominated and riven by sectarian exclusivism and religious conservativism. Against detractors who had raised questions about the Indian provenance of certain Bka’ brgyud Mahāmudrā doctrines such as Sgam po pa’s “White Panacea” (dkar po gcig thub), and also doubts about whether such teachings should even be considered Buddhist at all, the four authors stood united in promoting this tradition as a way firmly grounded in insights and methods of Indian Buddhist third turning sūtras, the tantras, and the spiritual songs (dohā) and instructions (upadeśa) of the Indian mahāsiddhas. Sgam po pa’s Mahāmudrā is presented as a path that distils from these traditions the most direct and effective means of reaching the Mahāyāna goal of spiritual awakening for the sake of oneself and others. Post-classical Mahāmudrā exegetes generally viewed the rapprochement between Mahāmudrā and certain anti-foundationalist strains of Indian Madhyamaka philosophy — specifically, the *Prāsaṅgika (“Consequentialist”) and Apratiṣṭhāna (“Nonfoundationalist”) systems — as central to their philosophical aims. They framed this synthesis in terms of the reconciliation of affirmative (cataphatic) and negative (apophatic) styles of thought and discourse. This is discernable in our four authors’ attempts to reconcile two basic models of truth or reality (satya) that had long been discussed and debated by Indian and Tibetan Buddhist scholars: (1) a differentiation model based on robust distinctions between conventional and ultimate truths (saṃvṛtisatya and paramārthasatya) and their associated modes of cognition and emptiness, and (2) an identification or unity (zung ’jug : yuganaddha) model of the two truths and their associated modes of cognition and emptiness. Whereas the differentiation model was typically aligned with a strongly innatist view of the ultimate (buddha nature, the nature of mind, or the nature of reality) that underscored its “sublime otherness” (gzhan mchog) from all that is conventional and adventitious, the unity model, predicated on the view of a common ground uniting all conditioned and unconditioned phenomena, emphasized the pervasiveness of the ultimate and its immanence within the conventional in order to indicate how the ultimate permeates the mind-streams of individuals in bondage. In a similar vein, these scholars sought to chart a middle way between opposing Indo-Tibetan dogmas regarding the nature of reality which had become aligned with positive versus negative appraisals of the ultimate, as exemplified by the heated inter-sectarian disputes between Tibetan Other-emptiness (gzhan stong) and Self-emptiness (rang stong) views that had erupted in the fourteenth century. If advocating a “middle path beyond extremes” (mtha’ bral dbu ma’i lam) meant avoiding the postulation of a metaphysical absolute beyond time, matter and the entire nexus of dependent arising, a view they attributed to the Jo nang school, it also meant circumventing the kind of unwarranted deprecation of ultimate reality that they saw as the undesirable result of taking the ultimate to consist in sheer emptiness (stong pa rkyang pa) — a complete absence of anything whatsoever — that was the scope of a nonaffirming negation (med dgag), a view they associated mainly with the Dge lugs pa school. It is in light of the shared concern of these post-classical thinkers to ply a middle course between eternalist Gzhan stong-based and nihilist Rang stong-based currents of Buddhist thought within the framework of an affirmative yet resolutely anti-foundationalist approach to goal-realization that we can broadly characterize their primary philosophical orientation as a “Mahāmudrā of the Middle Way”. This work is divided into two volumes: the first offers a detailed philosophical analysis of the authors’ principal views and justifications of Mahāmudrā against the background of Indian and Tibetan Buddhist doctrines on mind, emptiness and buddha nature; the second comprises an annotated anthology of their seminal writings on Mahāmudrā accompanied by critical editions and introductions. These two volumes are the result of research that was generously funded by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) from 2012 to 2015 under the supervision of Prof. Klaus-Dieter Mathes. The project was entitled “‘Emptiness of Other’ (Gzhan stong) in the Tibetan ‘Great Seal’ (Mahāmudrā) Traditions of the 15th and 16th Centuries” (FWF Project number P23826-G15).

This course will address themes that appear in Buddhist writings from the past twenty-five hundred years, including the problem of human suffering and its cause, the status of selfhood, the existence of the material world, the meaning of "nonduality," and the mysterious power of innate awareness. The approach to these materials will be thematic and comparative. We will focus almost exclusively on primary materials, whether they be discourses attributed to the Buddha and his disciples, philosophical treatises and poetry by Buddhist luminaries, or recent dharma talks for European and American audiences.

"This is an essential work of Tibetan Buddhist thought written by an influential scholar of the twentieth century. Drawing upon the Nyingma tradition of the great Tibetan visionary Mipam, Bötrül provides a systematic overview of Mipam’s teachings on the Middle Way. Presenting the Nyingma school within a rich constellation of diverse perspectives, Bötrül contrasts Nyingma views point by point with positions held by other Tibetan Buddhist schools. Bötrül’s work addresses a wide range of complex topics in Buddhist philosophy and doctrine in a beautifully structured composition in verse and prose. Notably, Bötrül sheds light on the elusive meaning of “emptiness” and presents an interpretation that is unique to his Nyingma school. Distinguishing the Views and Philosophies exemplifies a vigorous tradition of Tibetan Buddhist scholarship that is widely practiced in contemporary monastic colleges in Tibet, India, and Nepal. Douglas Samuel Duckworth’s translation will make this work widely available in English for the first time, and his thoughtful introduction and annotations will provide insight and context for readers."