Paradoxical Calculus

If we take the teachings of Buddha seriously, the first act of every day ought to be a conscious effort at detachment. More: That state of mind, detachment, should follow us throughout the day and be the last effort of the night. Paradoxically detachment is the route to empathy. Thus a withdrawal is necessary to be able genuinely to reach out to others. The argument for that in a bit.

Without detachment everything slides into a kind of relativity where another calculus rules. It says: “I exist only in so far as others see me.” This is the calculus of conventionality: attention seeking and bestowing—and we bestow it in efforts to get it. This calculus, habitual although it is, is paradoxical because, if true, then we don’t really exist, not in ourselves. We are strictly a social construct.

All genuine religion is grounded on the perhaps curious notion that Genuine Reality is invisible and intangible. My logic runs thus. The one “other” that always sees me (and thus, using the conventional calculus, makes me real) is God, and if God did not then I would cease to be. But I can’t see God and hence I can’t be sure. Hence the exaggerated role of “faith” in western religiousness. The eastern seeker wishes to reach the Genuinely Real, the pure Buddha Mind, and asserts that all else is illusion. Therefore the only thing that isn’t evanescent is what cannot be perceived at all—because the Buddha Mind is as invisible and intangible as God. Therefore, for all practical purposes, it is Nothingness. And when we at last do experience it, then we have infinite bliss. At the functional level union with God and Nirvana are equivalent, aren’t they? Anything beneath the total sovereignty (read absolute detachment or union with God) is suffering. Is that true or isn’t it?

It seems to be. The area of ambiguity—the only area that is ambiguous in all of this—is intimacy. Therefore we prize it. Intimacy is soul-to-soul communication. It is not really available in group settings. It is also incompatible with radical detachment, strictly speaking, although (ambiguity again) the Buddha’s action (in staying in the world to help others) implies empathy. Genuine empathy and intimacy are virtually one. We don’t seek intimacy for our own sake but for the sake of the other. Here I am reminded of the Sufi story of the lover who pleads for admittance into the chamber of the Beloved. The voice within asks: “Who is it? Who wishes to enter?” — “It is you,” says the lover in response. Until the “me” becomes the “you,” there is no intimacy. That overflow of empathy arises when we succeed in self-extinguishment—or, to put it more dramatically, we love so much we throw ourselves away. For “self” here we must read the unreal self, the projected ego structure. The paradox is present, therefore, in intimacy too. Absolute withdrawal produces absolute empathy. Naturally-occurring intimacy is a foretaste of what is possible writ large—in intimacy a small self-sacrifice, once more paradoxically arising, most frequently, from an initial sexual attraction.

We don’t exist—and I mean this genuinely, literally—if what we are is merely the outer psycho-physical structure. That structure is nothing, as in nothing “real,” because it does not endure, is perishable. If we identify with it, we’re identified with nothingness. Conversely, we are everything if we identify with the seeming nothing of the absolute and indestructible. So the problem is that famous Maya. There is a deceptively real and a genuinely real. The deceptive seems more real than the genuine. We cling to it. And therefore we suffer.

Now of course, when I spend five minutes of serious thought on the matter, I realize that I cannot genuine love unless I’m actually present, real, and free. Therefore genuine love is necessarily a function of detachment—from the unreal. Buddhism is only paradoxical when we think that the fleeting is permanent—and the permanent isn’t there at all. When we correct for that, Buddhism is simply a practical method. But can we teach that sort of thing in grade school? Not very successfully, I don’t think. But it is better to teach unselfishness than self-esteem. The latter arises without any need of help, never mind artificial nurture—unless we’re raising consumers rather than educating souls.