Open Enlightenment

The Dialogue of Eris and Angelos (Part 2)

ANGELOS: What would you like to drink, Eris? I’d suggest something highly caffeinated, because if we continue to pursue the themes we’ve explored so far I’ve a feeling things might get very deep.

ERIS: In that case, Angelos, mine’s a mocha – with extra chocolate. I’ll need a heavy dose of pleasure if you’re going to get mystical on me. Let’s sit over here, at the back, where there’s less chance anyone who knows me might overhear us discussing your spooky trash.

ANGELOS: ‘Spooky trash’? So I’m guessing you’d reject out of hand the idea that there exists something Absolute?

ERIS: Yes. Because it’s impossible. A thing that I experience is defined in some way, so the fact that it’s not an absolute is what makes each thing itself.

ANGELOS: You’d assert that the Absolute does not exist?

ERIS: Yes. Or if it could be said to exist, it would have no relevance to my experience.

ANGELOS: Therefore the Absolute is that which does not exist?

ERIS: Hey, I don’t like the sound of this. I’m not too happy about that ‘is’…

ANGELOS: But would you agree that all things that exist do so in a manner that is distinct, each from the other, and this is what enables us to tell them apart?

ERIS: Of course.

ANGELOS: And that which does not exist does so in a manner which is identical to all other things that do not exist, and it’s this which enables us to distinguish between things that do exist and all those that don’t?

ERIS: No. Because things can ‘not exist’ differently. For instance: dinosaurs do not currently exist, but they once did. Unicorns, on the other hand, never have.

ANGELOS: Agreed. But I’d like to keep our discussion focused on our experience. I want to talk about things existing and not existing according to how they arise within our awareness. Can you go along with me on this?

ERIS: Fine, because what doesn’t exist can’t arise in my awareness. How could it? This is going to be a very short discussion and I’ve hardly sipped my mocha yet.

ANGELOS: Hang on a moment! Although unicorns and dinosaurs can’t arise in our experience, you were able to talk about them just now.

ERIS: Of course, because we have signs in our language with which to do so.

ANGELOS: So when you talk about things not existing in different ways, what you’re really talking about is a difference among types of signs. You’re referring to a difference among things that do exist – the signs. But as far as our experience is concerned, unicorns and dinsosaurs are both absent from it in an identical fashion.

ERIS: Well, yes, I suppose so. I still don’t see how this helps your argument, because now you’re admitting that our awareness is defined and limited by our language.

ANGELOS: Only if we choose to limit ourselves to the realm of thoughts and ideas, Eris. The point I was hoping to make is simply that all things that don’t exist manifest their non-existence in the same way – by not being available to experience – whereas all things that do exist manifest uniquely.

ERIS: I’m not sure that ‘manifesting non-existence’ makes much sense, but I would provisionally accept that.

ANGELOS: I don’t like putting it that way either. All I mean is that what doesn’t exist isn’t apparent to our mind and senses except as a sign or idea (which is a representative, not the thing itself) and that this goes for all things that don’t exist. Whereas all things that do exist are apparent, and are all apparently different.

ERIS: Okay. So what? All you’ve done is to echo my assertion that no absolute exists, and nothing that does not exist is available to our experience.

ANGELOS: You’re right. But I want to look at it now from the converse. Namely: that which does not exist, because all things are non-existent in the same way, is therefore intrinsically consistent and whole. And also, that which does not exist does so unchangingly and for all time.

ERIS: Unless it comes into existence at some point in the future.

ANGELOS: You mean that a conception of something non-existent that we once had may at a later time become a reality?

ERIS: Why not?

ANGELOS: Granted. But is our conception identical to the thing that later comes into being?

ERIS: No. It’s not the actual thing, but we’re able to identify it as such.

ANGELOS: So, again, we have to be careful to distinguish between our ideas and thoughts, which exist, and the things of which they are the representatives, which may not exist. As far as our personal awareness is concerned, isn’t it the case that something that does not exist for us will continue not to do so uniformly and for all time?

ERIS: I suppose so. But if it doesn’t exist, forgive me if I don’t make much of a fuss about it!

ANGELOS: Even though it is whole, consistent, and eternally unchanging? Even though that which doesn’t exist fits the criteria of something Absolute which, at the beginning, you said you couldn’t conceive?

ERIS: But what’s the point? It still doesn’t exist, so therefore I’m still unable to experience it – except in the sphere of ideas and language, which – God knows why – you’ve ruled out of our discussion. Yet you still seem happy to go on chatting, and if this discussion isn’t an example of a purely linguistic exercise then I don’t know what is!

ANGELOS: Well, firstly you said you couldn’t conceive of an Absolute, and yet by talking about the nature of that which does not exist we’ve arrived at precisely such a concept.

ERIS: Yet the concept is not the thing – as you yourself admitted.

ANGELOS: Agreed. So what we need to do next is to examine whether that which does not exist can nevertheless enter experience.

ERIS: I can’t wait to hear this! Come on, then.

ANGELOS: Have you ever come across the so-called ‘pointing-out instructions’? They’re derived from eastern religions and are traditionally used for demonstrating to people that the self doesn’t exist.

ERIS: Yes, I’ve read about those. The instructions take you through awareness of every part of the body and you ask yourself: ‘Am I this finger? Am I these eyes?’, and so on.

ANGELOS: That’s one form of it. But you can ask the same question of anything that arises in your experience: ‘Am I these perceptions? These thoughts? This mind?’ What soon becomes apparent is that there is nothing corresponding to a ‘self’ anywhere in our experience. If you’re aware of something, that thing can’t be the thing that has the awareness – it cannot be you. Even the mind that you’re aware of having – it can’t be the same mind that has an awareness of ‘you’. So what is this ‘you’?

ERIS: I’ve done this exercise. If you continue with it for long enough it can make you feel really weird. But something is wrong there, obviously, because even though it ‘logically’ proves there’s no self, I can still feel one. The self must be some kind of deep structure or pattern in the brain; something that’s not available to experience but is constantly there nonetheless.

ANGELOS: The self is unconscious, in other words?

ERIS: Yes.

ANGELOS: But you’re conscious, aren’t you?

ERIS: So it seems, although there are philosophers around these days who deny that it’s so simple.

ANGELOS: So if Eris’s ‘self’ is unconscious, but Eris is conscious, then Eris and herself are unalike.

ERIS: Consciousness is the greatest mystery of modern science. If I knew the answer do you think I’d be sitting here with you?

ANGELOS: What if the logic of the pointing-out instructions were correct and ‘modern science’ were asking the wrong questions? What if the self truly doesn’t exist, as seems to be the case when we take the time to investigate?

ERIS: Why does my experience tell me it does, then?

ANGELOS: If we experience a self, yet the investigation of it reveals it cannot exist, then your earlier argument that we cannot experience what does not exist is simply an assumption. Each time we experience the self we are actually experiencing something that cannot exist.

ERIS: Not necessarily. It could be just a misperception.

ANGELOS: Misperception is when one thing that is known is mistaken for another. A rook is mistaken for a crow, perhaps, or a pattern in the bark of a tree is taken for a face. But in our case, what is this self that we have mistaken for some other thing?

ERIS: It’s… – I don’t know! It’s just the self; it’s self-evident!

ANGELOS: My point is that it can’t be said we’re ‘misperceiving’ something if we can’t even state what that thing is we suppose is being misperceived.

ERIS: None of this is new to me, Angelos. I know that if we look deep into the nature of anything we find that our grounds for supposing it to exist are baseless. This is called deconstructionism and, on this point at least, modern philosophy and the Eastern traditions have much in common.

ANGELOS: I know the sort of philosophers you mean, Eris. If they have so much in common with Buddhism – as you suggest – and if they’ve realised that nothing possesses intrinsic being, do these philosophers declare themselves enlightened, like the Buddha did?

ERIS: Certainly not! That would be a claim of absolute truth, whereas our contemporary philosophers have demonstrated there’s no such thing. Instead, it’s our language, our social practices and habits of perception that lend things the appearance of intrinsic existence.

ANGELOS: We considered how the criteria for absolute truth matches the criteria of that which doesn’t exist, in that both are prefectly consistent and eternal. To grasp the groundlessness of everything – I suggested – is therefore to grasp nothingness. The claim of enlightenment therefore arises from a realisation of nothingness. It’s not a pretension to any specific knowledge, since that would be something and would not meet the criteria of absolute truth. Yet our contemporary philosophers imply that the ‘groundlessness’ of all things is grapsed through acquiring specific knowledge of lingustic and cultural conventions. Haven’t they contradicted themselves, then, by asserting that there are ‘grounds’ for this supposed ‘groundlessness’?

ERIS: Surely you’re not going to claim that language and culture are unimportant?

ANGELOS: Certainly not. But the very fact that are so important demonstrates that our philosophers haven’t at all grapsed the ‘groundlessness’ of things. What they have grasped is not nothingness, but on the contrary something very salient.

ERIS: Yet without this understanding of the forces that determine our perception and history we’re at the mercy of prejudice and ignorance. You might not consider postmodernism as an equivalent to ‘enlightenment’, but it’s good enough for me! Anyone who rests smugly on a notion of absolute truth will fall victim to their own prejudice by supposing that what seems true to them applies to everyone. And believing that the truth of all things is ‘nothingness’ is tantamount to nihilism.

ANGELOS: If I said that ‘nothingness’ were the truth of everything, then I’d be making something of my nothing. But it’s more subtle than that, Eris. The absolute can’t merely stand in opposition to the relative; the type of nothingness I’m talking about isn’t simply the ‘opposite’ of something. If it were, it would be defined in relation to something, in which case it would itself be relative and not absolute – nor nothing, for that matter. The truly absolute is the negation of something, but it must also be engaged in negating itself.

ERIS: Sounds like a mouthful of philosophical verbiage to me!

ANGELOS: No. It’s completely practical. Enlightenment is an engagement with this self-negating absolute. Meditation and other spiritual exercises involve the practitioner in the negation of self, therefore bringing the practitioner into line with the nature of the absolute itself, and over time this results in a realisation that the self and the absolute are actually one and the same. Deconstructionism, on the other hand, is completely different. For starters, it never steps from the realm of ideas into experience. And it never obliges us to change ourselves through self-negation in the way that is required to align ourselves with the absolute. Which is probably why you only tend to hear it coming from the mouths of academics.

ERIS: Postmodernism leads us into engagement with cultural forces and institutions. I’d say it engages with the world far more deeply than sitting on a cushion with your eyes shut and pretending you don’t exist.

ANGELOS: I see your point. But ethical consequences certainly arise from a realisation of the absolute. Yet that’s a topic for another time.

ERIS: You’re not trying to side-step the issue, are you Angelos?

ANGELOS: I’d just assumed you’d probably had enough for one day.

ERIS: I’d be fascinated to hear how you suppose that believing in an absolute nothingness makes you a better person.

ANGELOS: You’re such hard work, Eris.

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