From a more personal angle, how can we say, “The sky is blue,” when it changes hues throughout the day? That means that it isn’t actually blue. It can seem blue, but it can also look like a bunch of other colors. Going further, the big sky we see above us, even if we’re standing in the middle of the desert, is still just a fraction of the whole sky. It’s always blue somewhere. It’s always orange, and red, gray and black.

 

By Johnathon Lee

Asanga went to heaven and back without leaving his seat. 

He told his brother, Vasubandhu, about how he traveled to paradise and met Maitreya Buddha, the Buddha-in-Waiting, heir apparent to the Bodhi Tree. Maitreya gave him several teachings which would form a huge chunk of Yogacara Buddhism. He even attributed someone of them to Maitreya directly without penning his own name. 

In short, Yogacaras believed that everything is nothing but consciousness.

It’s all happening in our heads (including the experience of having a head). Everything we sense, think and feel is the ripening of karma as consciousness. There’s no separation between consciousness and what it’s conscious of. The goal is to overturn self-consciousness at the basis, and this transforms consciousness into wisdom. 

Yogacara is present in all current Mahayana schools, and especially in Tibetan Buddhism.

There we see the consciousness-only view combined with intense and intricate visualization practices. Yet even the Pali Canon talks about the Buddha coming and going between different spiritual realms. 

It can be tempting to toss all of this as superstition and supernaturalism. However, I think we do a disservice to ourselves and the Dharma when we do that. If we skip it, then we miss an important question: how does this help ease suffering? How does ignoring it cause suffering?

Buddhadharma can stretch far and wide, but it has the pragmatic aim of freeing beings from pain. Each text and talk has that goal as a subtext. How does hanging out in Tusita Heaven work on a practical level? 

Let’s say you cook a pizza, and as you’re taking it out of the oven, physics decides to torment you and you drop it cheese down on the floor. How do you react? 

I fumed. I cursed the four directions, the gods, and Isaac Newton. Then I rage-ordered a bunch of tacos and ate them over the sink while listening to System of a Down. 

Now, if I’d have paused and remembered the time I saw Manjusri hold up a flower to me while I was meditating, then I might’ve been a bit more easygoing about the mishap. Ditto if I remembered that the pizza was a bundle of sensations projected by my mind, and that I too was such a projection. 

So, there is utility to it, especially if you’re a creative or artistic type. 

Do I believe that Asanga actually went to another realm and spoke with the future Buddha?

Ah, that’s a trick question. Of course he didn’t; it was all in his mind. He knew that. Then he deduced that everything else was too. It’s easy to find evidence for it. Plato believed that the sky was really blue, and that it was blue because it was partaking in a universal blueness of sorts. His views were so influential in the West that most people have Platonic inclinations without even realizing it. 

But, after 2500 years of searching, no one’s ever found blueness. What we did find is that blueness usually occurs when wavelengths of light hit the eye, and then the signal travels around the brain. However, we can also see blue in dreams, or after eating a bunch of mushrooms. In both cases, neurons fire in the same parts of the brain as they do when we see the sky. 

From a more personal angle, how can we say, “The sky is blue,” when it changes hues throughout the day? That means that it isn’t actually blue.

It can seem blue, but it can also look like a bunch of other colors. Going further, the big sky we see above us, even if we’re standing in the middle of the desert, is still just a fraction of the whole sky. It’s always blue somewhere. It’s always orange, and red, gray and black. We know because we can chat with people all over the world and ask, “What’s the sky like there?” 

The common denominator is that everyone’s using their eyes to see it. But, close your eyes: what do you see? 

It’s not nothing. It’s darkness. So, we can still see without our eyes. Mind is the common factor. Not just any mind, but the mind that’s in a specific place and time reading these words. 

Now, if you were hallucinating right now, these words might be floating on the screen, surrounded by colors and forming into fractals before dripping like paint from the page. As that’s happening, the rush of panic or euphoria might even make you forget that you’re tripping, and it only makes sense when the person next to you reminds you of it. 

In Buddhism, that person is Buddha. In so many words and ways, his message (one of many) made its way through history: “You’re trippin’, yo. Everybody be trippin’.” 

I’m honestly surprised whenever someone thinks that the world, as they’re experiencing it, is the world as it is.

It’s an incredibly limited and outdated way of living. An introductory physics or biology class should even be enough to unseat that belief. “You’re made of cells.” “Whaaaat? But I don’t see cells. I guess things aren’t the way they seem.” 

I learned young that my senses were inaccurate. I was born mostly blind and completely autistic. If I trusted my senses, then I would’ve been hit by a bus a long time ago. But I do get how hard it can be to accept Yogacara’s conclusion: there’s only mind. 

That’s quite a leap, isn’t it? To say that this phone isn’t even a physical thing at all, that even time and space are imaginary. Vasubandhu did have an interesting argument against atoms, though (keep in mind that these thinkers were talking about atoms almost 2,000 years before they entered mainstream science). 

Let’s say that this phone is made of atoms. What are those atoms made of? Particles. What are they made of? Quantum particles. On and on until we get to the smallest unit of matter (that we know of). 

If it’s the smallest, then it shouldn’t have parts since those would be even smaller. Ah, Vasubandhu would go for the kill here (metaphorically speaking) and ask, “Does it still have an up and down? A right side and left side?” “Yes.” “Then it still has parts.” 

He was trying to show that physicalism leads to an infinite regress which is, as far as we know, impossible. We’ve never encountered an infinite regress in nature. 

Viewing everything as mind or consciousness solves the regress. There’s nothing smaller or bigger. It’s all just mind. 

This was a better argument 2,000 years ago. Now, we have pictures of atoms. We’ve mapped photon wave fronts onto screens. It’s gonna take more than a thought experiment to convince me that that’s not there. Sure, all appearances are consciousness, but there’s definitely stuff behind the curtain. 

Surprisingly, there’s a growing movement called pan-psychism. The word makes me think of an international psychic convention, but it’s actually a highly academic philosophical position.  

Pan-psychists have different views, but the main one is that, you guessed it, everything is consciousness. They don’t believe that a purely physical model can account for the blue sky or a Zen teacher clapping with one hand. Some sum it up as, “Consciousness is what things are; matter is what things do.” 

Here, each particle is a piece of consciousness. Your consciousness and mine are all of these micro-consciousnesses unifying into one. Then we call it ourselves. If someone asks you, “What’s it like to be an atom?” you could reply, “Just like this.” The logic is clear. If I’m made of atoms, and I’m conscious, then atoms are conscious. 

This can slide right into Buddhism without either paradigm making many concessions. 

All of this shows that not only is Buddhism psychedelic at times, but that life is psychedelic. Enlightenment can’t end that, but it can be a deep recognition of that. This echoes the Mahayana maxim: samsara and nirvana aren’t two. 

Seeking some awakening outside of ourselves is a waste of time that keeps us suffering.

We’ve got to be careful to not say that it’s within us either because that places us in some kind of disengaged observer mode outside of things. That’s the opposite of what Buddha was getting at.  It’s within consciousness, and we are too. Altered states, even through meditation like Asanga did, help us grok all of this firsthand. 

So, I’m always weary when someone says that Buddhism isn’t psychedelic, and that it only deals with everyday things. That’s true, but it’s not the whole truth. Hundreds of trippy, surreal Sutras tell a different story. 

I think we need more Buddhists who are willing to bend their minds. It shakes us out of dogmatic slumbers (as Kant would put it) and let’s us see the blue sky with fresh eyes. 

Also, some Buddhist schools teach something akin to “pure consciousness” or “pure experience.” It’s essentially consciousness without any illusions of self or other. This treads dangerously close to God country (Panentheism), but it’s also a recognized Buddhist view, so don’t let anyone give you a hard time for it if you believe it. 

You do you, alright? Take advice, but not orders. Look outside of your lineage at the sea of diversity. Don’t let these old robes limit your studying and experimenting. We’ve all gotta feel our way through the cave. 

Please tip the writer if you liked this article. I work at a grocery store.

 

Photo: Pixabay

Editor: Dana Gornall

 

Did you like this post? You may also like:

That is Not Your Mind! Zen Reflections on the Surangama Sutra {Book Review}

Which Seeds Do I Water? Yogacara and Connecting It All

 

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Johnathon Lee
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