What is Scholarship?

A curious thing happens when I say that I study the Heart Sutra. My friends and colleagues will often ask if I have read such and such a book on it, usually a popular and/or religious book. Or worse they will recommend that I read a book they like. Most of my friends are well read and if interested in a subject are quite capable of consuming all the popular books available. And the assumption seems to be that studying the text is a matter of doing this. "Research" is reading the academic books. In this view scholarship appears to be an ability to summarise the ideas of other people. 

But this is not what I do. I almost never read popular books on the Heart Sutra. And most of the academic books are so flawed that they make no positive contribution to my work. The Heart Sutra has been thoroughly misunderstood for about 1300 years. Broadly speaking, I do three kinds of work on the Heart Sutra: philology, history, and philosophy. 

Philology is an account of what texts mean and why they mean that (and not something else). My contributions to philology of the Heart Sutra have been in two areas. I have noticed and corrected mistakes in Conze's Sanskrit edition, and I have contributed to establishing which language the Heart Sutra was composed in. The latter involved noticing and commenting on Chinese idioms in the Sanskrit text. I have stated that the Sanskrit Heart Sutra is a late 7th Century Chinese forgery, committed by someone with a working knowledge of Sanskrit but not of the Prajñāpāramitā genre in Sanskrit. I also showed that the famous phrase "form is emptiness" (rūpaṃ śūnyatā) had been deliberately changed from an original "appearance is an illusion" (rūpaṃ māyā) which could then be linked to the early Buddhist simile that "appearance is like an illusion" (rūpam māyopamaṃ). The change resulted in a statement that cannot be understood at face value. I have also suggested that the selection of the passages copied from Kumārajīva's Large Sutra may have been guided by popularity as some of them appear in inscriptions that predate Xuanzang by at least a century. 

In terms of history I have published the first complete English-language description and translation of the Fangshan Stele, the earliest dated Heart Sutra (13 March 661). I related this to the legend of Xuanzang. I have also extended the historical narrative of the Heart Sutra as a Chinese text, helping to pin down the date of composition, identifying the Heart Sutra with the genre of "digest texts" (chāo jīng 抄經). And in particular, I have stressed that the received history of the text contains deliberate deceptions that hide the real history. One can still make out elements of the original history. We can tell the approximate year the Heart Sutra was composed (656 CE). We can say with some confidence that it was composed by Xuanzang. 

Taking cues from Sue Hamilton and work on the language of the Heart Sutra by Huifeng (Matthew Orsborn) I have outlined a new philosophy of prajñāpāramitā which eschews the twisted metaphysics of (Nazi-sympathiser) D. T. Suzuki and his narcissistic acolyte Edward Conze. Neither man understood the first thing about prajñāpāramitā. I argue that the texts are primarily phenomenology and epistemological: i.e. concerned with experience and what can be learned from the cessation of experience. For example, I explain śūnyatā in this context as "the absence of sensory experience in samādhi". This occurs after the cessation (nirodha) of sensory experience due to practising the yoga of nonapprehension (anupalambhayogena), and results in a state that is without conditions (asaṃskṛta) and synonymous with extinction (nirvāṇa). In this state the apparatus of experience (skandhas) stops producing sense experience but leaves the meditator in a state of contentless awareness. This allows me to discuss Buddhist doctrines and attainments in terms entirely consistent with a modern philosophical Realism. 

And none of this could be found in books. Most of it involves closely reading Sanskrit and Chinese versions of the text together and taking into account all the many variant readings in extant manuscripts and inscriptions. Moreover, none of it can yet be found in books. Although I have now published 10 articles in academic journals detailing my evidence, methods, and conclusions there is no book yet. Hopefully the book will come! But I'll be writing that book, not reading it. 

Religious morality makes no sense

It is a puzzle that many religions contain both a just world theory and a theory of salvation. The former would seem to make the latter redundant.

So for example, if "the arc of the moral universe bends toward justice" as Martin Luther King says, then what is the point of Jesus? Is having jesus tipping the scales in our favour fair? Hardly. It suggests that we can escape the consequences of our actions on a technicality.

Jesus saves Christians from sin, but a just universe would do that anyway for anyone who was, on balance, a good person. And let's be clear most of us are good. Most of our sins are petty and inconsequential. If there was a Heaven then I can't imagine anyone of my friends and family not being there. I can't really imagine that my enemies would fail to get in either, which would be awkward for me.

We have the same problem in Buddhism. In many versions of the religion we have saviour figures, or at least special things that one has to do in order to be saved. But if the universe is just, then this should not be necessary. A just universe rewards everyone appropriately. We may suffer, but only as appropriate.

The whole point of salvation as a concept is that without it we are screwed. Either on our way to eternal Hell, or doomed to endless cycles of rebirth and death which is much the same thing. But what sin could one possibly commit that would make an eternity of suffering just and fair? Eternity is a long time. I cannot think of anything which could justify and eternity of punishment.

There are quite a few people I'd happily give the red hot poker treatment to. But I can't imagine more than half an hour or so would be required to redress, say, the misery caused my whole family by my abusive alcoholic grandfather. Worse, I know that suffering is not redemptive - it surely has not redeemed me! Inflicting pain is pure revenge and that can be cathartic, but it has consequences that have to be dealt with. Suffering is never neutral. Causing a person to suffer for eternity as a concept is monstrous.

There problems in religion-based morality seem so obvious and intractable to me nowadays. I can't really believe anyone ever fell for it. That millions of people still do fall for it is puzzling. 

Explanations and descriptions

It seems like most people leave school utterly confused about how scientists use the words. E.g. 

• A theory is an explanation. 
• A hypothesis is an untested explanation.
• A law is a description.

Who is going to be better at adapting? Scientists or the public? So, why not...

• Newton's [mathematical] descriptions of motion. 
• The descriptions of thermodynamics.
• Einstein's explanation of relativity and gravity.
• The explanation of evolution by natural selection. 

Yes?

Black Cats in Dark Rooms

Found this analogy... I love these...

Philosophy is like being in a dark room and looking for a black cat. 

Metaphysics is like being in a dark room and looking for a black cat that isn't there. 

Theology is like being in a dark room and looking for a black cat that isn't there, and believing you have found it. 

Science is like being in a dark room looking for a black cat using a flashlight.

... extending this analogy...

Buddhism generally is like being a in a dark room looking for a black cat you were sure was there, but not being able to find it and concluding that cats don't exist.

Pureland Buddhism is like being in a dark room and looking for a black cat that isn't there; but deciding to worship an imaginary red cat from another universe instead.

Lay Theravāda is like looking in a dark room for a black cat that isn't there by leaving a bowl of cat food outside the door.

Monastic Theravāda is like being in a dark room and looking for a black cat that isn't there, by dissecting all the cats into their constituent parts and declaring that cats don't exist.

Madhyamaka Buddhism is like being in a dark room and looking for a black cat that isn't there and being smug because you knew it was neither there, nor not there, nor neither, nor both; and though no one knows what this means, it is a great way to win arguments.

Yogācāra Buddhism is like being in a dark room and looking for a black cat that isn't there; except... [reverb] the room is your mind [/reverb].

Zen Buddhism is like being in a dark room and looking for a black cat that isn't there by staring at the wall until the cat comes to you.

Tantric Buddhism is like being in a dark room and looking for a black cat that isn't there; but instead of looking you try to become the cat by imagining that you are the cat. oṃ āḥ hūṃ caṭ svāhā.

Triratna Buddhism is like being in a dark room and looking for a black cat that isn't there, only to discover there's an elephant in the room instead.

... incidentally...

Advaita Vedanta is like being in a dark room and looking for a black cat that isn't there and concluding that you are the cat.

Poem

Letter to Bruce Mason 
— Gary McCormick.

Dear Bruce, your letter finds me to the South,
Two months into a mild winter.
The news you bring of Madam Cancer
Makes me want to shake.
It is an injustice I cannot reconcile.
As if birds without wings
Were born to fly
Or children left to stumble without limbs.

It is difficult to contemplate a God
Who strikes so ruthlessly
As the best.
His is a queer sense of humour
And if He were man like you or me
—If you'll excuse for a moment, the blasphemy,
We'd quarrel in a bar.
And I'd be bound, thinking of you
To kick him in the balls.
Before leave, as he lay there heaving,
To drop into his hand
A copy of your plays.

But then, amongst those we know
There is a distinct mortality.
A disposition to injury.
Old Baxter with his heart worn to a walnut
And Sam, whom people call
A melancholy drunk
Alastair with his smile of tears
And Denis stumbling in the Wellington sun.
These, and Hone with his gut sewn up
Of all who walk these islands,
Are the ones that I admire.

My letter to you, then
Is in the kindest sense, a letter to all.
Those who have worked alone, as you have done.
I have in my mind's eye
A picture of you in the hills somewhere
Back-bent and toiling.
A fencer in the back-lit sun.
Where this picture ends I cannot tell.
It is in your solitary toiling
And your hawk's eye.
The distances you travel still.

~o~

People mentioned...

Bruce Mason (1921-1982)
James K. Baxter (1926-1972)
Sam Hunt (1946 -).
Alastair Campbell (1925-2009).
Denis Glover (1912-1980).
Hone Tuwhare (1922-2008)
Gary McCormick (1951-)

The poem was first published in Scarlet Letters (Gisborne: Piano Publishing, 1980).

Insecurity

On Twitter someone posted a recent YouGov poll showing that Brits feel uncomfortable hearing people speak in foreign languages. The tweeter concluded that Brits are nasty, small, minded xenophobes. But I have another way of looking at it.

Most of the time fearing the unknown has evolutionary advantages. We're more likely to survive if we reduce risks in our environment. Some risk-seeking individuals is fine. Too many and we die out.

We evolved to distrust strangers for very good reasons. We also evolved the capacity to develop trust when required (for trade for example).

The present rise in xenophobia is probably not a character flaw. It probably reflects the general insecurity of life under neoliberalism which treats labour as an overhead to be minimised.

Work is much less secure than when I first worked. Pay is lower. Housing is about 1000% more costly. Education is 10,000 % more costly. Everyone is in debt now (to the tune of 100% of GDP).

So, yes we're anxious about strangers. This is a positive adaptation to insecurity.

Let's not demonise people for responding rationally to insecurity. Let's aim the anger at the people who deliberately create the insecurity in order to maximise profits, e.g. the billionaires and the politicians who enable them. The billionaires treat us like cattle. And we've become so used to it that we prefer to vote for the devil we know rather than the leaders who will protect us from psychopaths.

Realism and Science

This short video by Sabine Hossenfelder makes an excellent distinction between the practice and process of doing science and Realism as a belief system. In response to the question, do you really believe that X exists, Sabine responds, "Why do you care what I believe?"

Science creates mathematical formalisms that make predictions about observations. If the observations agree with the prediction then scientists adopt the formalism as part of their worldview.

Sabine argues that the step that we take in talking about the "reality" or "existence" of such correlations between predictions and observations is not one that scientists take. It is one that philosophers take. And of course, many scientists do implicitly believe in Realism and would find it strange that anyone could doubt the Realist account of the world.

I am personally convinced by Realism as a belief system, although not by the metaphysical reductionism that many scientists add to the Realism. Metaphysical reductionism is the view that all existing things can be reduced to the lowest level of existence and that only the lowest/simplest level of existence is real. In this view no structure is real no matter how long it persists or whether is has causal potential. At the present state of knowledge, only quantum fields are real.

In my view structures are real, precisely because they persist in time (with being necessarily immutable or permanent), they can be causal agents (structure cause effects that none of their parts can even in aggregate), and they instantiate information.

In this view reductionism gives us information about real substances and antireductionism gives us information about real structures. Reductionism treats structure as unreal, and antireductionism treats substance as a mere building block. 

However, much of what scientists study is patterns of change. Most scientific formulas have time embedded in them and encapsulate change over time. This is what enables us to predict future results and to understand the past.

I believe that reality is composed of substances, structures, and regular patterns of change.

I also acknowledge that Sabine has a point about this being a belief system. The problem with this view, is that everyone has a belief system about how experience relates to reality. The default human belief system is naive realism, i.e. the view that what I experience is reality. And since experience is generated by the mind, this allows for hallucinations and false beliefs to be treated as real. Hence superstition, religion, magical thinking etc.

There may be some other belief system that is consistent with science, but I don't see it. And since we cannot realistically operate without a belief system Realism is the obvious choice. Other belief systems tend to treat technology as magic and deny the validity of science.