Why do people think they are Buddhists, Platonists, etc. when they don't do anything or change their behavior?

 Q. I wanted to bring something up; a few calls ago we talked about 'Buddhists' who don't follow a vegetarian regime and you commented that you would say 'they aren't really Buddhists'.  This is a sentiment I concur with, but I was wondering why most people don't see this kind of connection?  The question arises because if someone says they are a piano player one infers that they regularly play the piano.  If someone says they play poker, we assume that means that they sit down with others and play poker.  If someone says they are a gardener, again we assume that they spend time planting, trimming, and cultivating plants.  

 

So why do people not assume that there is a specific behavioral component when it comes to following a spiritual tradition?  When it comes to spirituality people do not infer that there are specific behavioral commitments that they follow.  Your view that unless someone is a vegetarian they are not really a Buddhist is similar to saying that unless someone actually plays a piano they are not a piano player.  

 

In the realm of spirituality it seems that people consider spirituality to mean only dealing with the realm of ideas; it would be like someone saying that they are a baseball player because they like to watch baseball games.  Such a person is a baseball fan, but not a baseball player.  Similarly, someone who does not enter into the behavioral component of Buddhism might be a 'fan' of Buddhism, but they are not a Buddhist.  

 

In Platonism, almost all Platonists today are what I would consider to be 'fans' of Platonism, but not Platonists.  They might accept the view of actually existing ideas, but unless they instantiate behavioral components I would not consider that to be sufficient.  I base that on the necessity of purification for experiencing higher hypostases.

 

I'm not sure why this kind of separation exists in religion, philosophy, and spirituality and I wonder if others have observed this dichotomy.  Perhaps it is a feature of modernity.  I'm not sure.

 

A.  I have certainly also observed the same peculiar phenomena that you wonder about.  I believe that the observation you refer to was actually made in the context of discussion of people who profess to be Buddhists but don’t abstain from alcohol, but, of course, it applies equally well to vegetarianism and other required behaviors.  (Somewhat related, you will recall that just recently  I wrote that I couldn't understand how people could profess to adopt the weltanschauung of one or more of these systems and read all the time about it, but not establish a meditation or sadhana practice--not to mention making the necessary behavioral changes.)  I don't really know if it is worse or more common in modernity than in traditional times (though it wouldn't surprise me--everything being worse and more adverse in modernity), nor can I necessarily off hand identify any particular circumstantial factors.  Really, though, whether proximal environmental factors can be identified or not, I think it is the nature of samsara and the cause is ultimately the deluded souls of most people, the obscuration of their knowing, wisdom, and vision by being sunk in the body and "matter" (hule or, as the Greek is more often incorrectly transliterated, hyle), and their heavy karma.  Your analogies are quite good, and I have used similar ones myself in the past in trying, futilely, to remonstrate with silly pseudo-Buddhists and the like, but perhaps it is not surprising or is only to be expected that people, deluded beings/souls, would have more clarity regarding such worldly activities and things that are only the pursuit of worldly desires--after all, their darkened, twisted souls are already turned entirely in that direction, towards the darkness of the sensory world and worldliness--than they do about spiritual matters and what it means to understand and embrace and practice them.  To understand and implement these latter requires turning their souls at least a little towards the light and reality, which is just the opposite of how they are turned now, and requires resisting and loosening from their heavy deluded karma and the bodily and material obscuration of their souls.  The dim eyes of their soul can better see the darkness of worldly desires and activities, but are quite blind when trying to look at the light of spiritual matters in the direction of actual being and reality.  Such, again, is the nature of samsara.  To understand what it means to be a piano or baseball player doesn't require much more than looking at and guessing about the shadows on the cave wall.  To understand what it means to be a Buddhist or Platonist--let alone to do it--requires at least a little start to loosening of the bonds and turning the head towards the light.  To understand about worldly matters and activities only requires deluded base worldly cleverness.  To understand about spiritual matters requires lightening of karma, depends on the closeness or distance of the soul from the Good, regardless of mundane logic or reasoning, even though it seems so clear to us.  Since, in general, most souls are more deluded and have heavier karma now in modernity, which is essentially for most people a rebirth in one of the lower sub-human type realms, it may be then that perhaps this weird phenomenon is more common now than in the past.

 

I hope this helps at least somewhat with your wondering about the issue.  Alas, as I always lament, for me at least, our circumstances being alone or so few among all these crazy deluded vulgar worldly souls is really scary, like the human being fallen in among wild beasts in the analogy in Book 6 of the Politiea.

 

The Cave and Buddhist Pasts

An understanding or insight came to me to help me better understand two seemingly different things that I was not altogether clear about for some time. The two things are how to understand the fire and the objects being moved along the wall with the people moving them also talking in the cave in the Parable of the Cave in the Republic and how to understand my Buddhist practice and realization in this and previous births (and my practice and realization in other related systems in other previous births) in relation to the Path and Platonist practice. I have always found the Parable of the Cave extremely important and powerful, but never understood the part about the fire and objects in the cave and the prisoner initially having to look at them and see them as more real than the shadows, with great pain and difficulty, before proceeding to actually move out of the cave. I now see that the fire, which plays a somewhat analogous role in the cave to the sun/the Good outside of the cave, represents the individuated soul at the samsaric/genesic/space-time/changing level, the center of experience/consciousness/awareness, the mind and true mind, which at some level at bottom is connected to the One, comes from the One, the Source of all consciousness and experience. (Recall the individual soul centers in Ennead 6.9 that are all connected to the true center of the One.) The objects being moved along the wall and the people moving them represent the various karmic acts and thoughts of different souls that are illuminated by the true mind or conscious center or soul, including the world-soul, to be projected out as our experience of the sense world, including ourselves in it, as the shadows and echoes on the cave wall. All this is entirely within the cave. Even when the newly released prisoner is finally able to look at the fire and the moving objects and people and understand what is actually going on and that this is more what the shadows actually are and is more real, it is still all just inside the cave and he still hasn't yet moved out into the real world outside. I have long explained an important and vital difference between Platonist practice and contemplation and that of the other related systems, by putting it that the other Indo-hellenistic systems in general, e.g., Chan and related forms of at least Mahayana metaphysics based Buddhist meditation, Advaita Vedanta, at least some forms of Jaina meditation, Orphism even, and etc., all teach and are about just withdrawing into the subject, turning the light of the mind back onto itself and such various expressions. Platonist contemplation, on the other hand, involves not only withdrawing into the subject, but bringing both subject and object up together into the noetic realm where subject and object are distinguished but not separated, and finally into the One where they are not distinguished at all. You will note, for example, that in the Phaedo the soul does not only just withdraw into itself alone but does so in and for contemplation of the Forms and that this constitutes its true collection and withdrawal and when it is in this condition it is always in contact with the real beings and contemplating them. In other words, in the other systems the soul or mind or awareness withdraws from objects to focus on or turn back to itself, recognizing only half or the subjective side of Reality, and realization consists in, to use as an example just one of the many forms of expression, in this case from Chan, "seeing the nature", seeing the center of the soul where it connects to the One, but thinking that this is the actual Absolute or fundamental Reality Itself, whereas it is actually only the derived or emanated soul center or a shadow or image of the Good. In Platonism, on the other hand, the soul, through withdrawal from the whole sensate phenomenal level and recollecting the Forms shifts its whole and all of being back up to Nous or the noetic realm, shifting or identifying itself with Nous and its objects with the Forms, the two not actually being separate and being mutually dependent or co-arising, and realization consists in moving, initially, to this whole higher and more real level of Nous/the Forms and then from there to the ultimate highest level of the One, where there is only One and Good, and final release is attained. Thus, the practice of the other systems is only turning to look at the fire and the objects and moving people in the cave and their realization is to be able to finally look straight at the fire and see it and the objects and people clearly. They think that this is the end and release, but it, while certainly a big step compared to the chained prisoners who only know the shadows and echoes and think that they are all there is, is still just entirely within the cave and they haven't even left it at all. The practice of Platonism, though preliminarily seeing and understanding the fire and all within the cave, is to actually go out of the cave and see first the images of the objects there and then the things there themselves and finally to be able to look directly at the sun and this is its realization and understanding, which is true final release from becoming. When I consider my many years of Buddhist practice and even realization prior to becoming a Platonist and practicing Platonist contemplation, I have in the past been puzzled how to quite fit that into my present askesis and understanding, especially in terms of realization experiences in the course of Buddhist practice. I now see, however, that all this and even the realizations attained was just turning to look at the fire and the objects casting the shadows and getting to be able to look at them--an important step in the very long journey through thousands of births and lifetimes to release from becoming, but still only within the cave--and it is now time to get on with actual progress towards getting out of the cave altogether, seeing the real things out there and the sun, etc. (already actually intermittently begun at some occasions in some previous births) and real ultimate realization and release. I think that this also goes a long way in explaining some of the differences in the other different systems and why even what are supposed to be the realized adepts and texts of the other systems often seem to still be caught up in and involved with particular relative reality systems and versions thereof. Even if they have seen the fire and the passing objects, they are still in the cave and still enmired in the particular configuration of passing objects in their cave not having seen the true archetypes of the Forms, still having known only that set of particulars not the universals. They are still in their particular hollow in the lower earth not having popped up at all yet to see the true earth, in the expression of the Phaedo muthos.

The Ontological Status of Deities

Q. For some time I have been wanting to ask you your thoughts about the status of deities in Platonism. Because of my long history with Buddhism my tendency is to regard deities in the way traditional Buddhism does. That is to say that I think of deities as beings, subject to karma, and still trapped in genesis / samsara. Though deities are long-lived, they are not necessarily wise.

Platonism appears to take a different view. It seems that Platonism views deities as embodied emanations of a higher status than those beings in the material realm. And some passages suggest that they are immortal (rather like angels in monotheism). This comes in the dialogues when Plato argues against the accounts of the bad behavior of deities, saying that deities could not behave in such nefarious ways because they are close to the One and the Good. This seems to be the dominant view of deities in the dialogues.

It might be possible to integrate the two views: some deities are still in genesis while others are of a higher status. Although technically possible, such a solution strikes me as forced and ad hoc.

Any insights?


A. I also tend to think about deities in what you describe as the traditional Buddhist manner (of course, I have a similar long history with it as you do), and I think that Platonism, as I will further explain, has the same perspective, in fact, actually even more so, and there is actually no contradiction, unless in the opposite way that Platonism accords even less status and importance to deities than Buddhism does, particularly because of its situation as an institutionalized religion for the many, which Platonism happily avoids. There is only experience, mind, consciousness, as Plotinus says, all is contemplation, there is only contemplation. There is no physical, fixed, or enumerated particular structure or cosmology for the alleged universe 'out there', as in the six (or otherwise numbered) realms of Buddhism, for the range of possible relative individuated spatio-temporal phenomenal experiences at the lowest level of the third hypostasis of soul that individual souls may experience according to their karma and which together comprise 'the world' as experienced by the world soul. Individual souls may, for a time, experience rebirths in such conditions as we might describe as deities of various sorts, but they are no more than that and, as you say, still karmic beings, subject to karma, and still trapped in samsara/genesis, and not of importance or spiritual significance, unless, I suppose, they manage somehow to practice as philosophoi in that state. Not only would any deities be incapable of possessing and transmitting true wisdom, which comes only from the higher hypostases of Nous and the One, and the higher soul in direct contact with them, but it seems that we happen at the moment to live in a relative reality system where such deities are not likely to appear, which is not to say that they couldn't in other relative reality systems, and, in any case, even if they do, they are not important and are just to be ignored, while one just directs one's attention solely to transcendent spiritual practice aimed at the higher hypostases. (And I think that this is clearly Plato and Plotinus' view.)

In discussing the position of Platonism, note first that I am not at all talking about the silly theists and theurgists like Iamblichus, Proclus, Thomas Taylor, etc. and their followers both ancient and modern, whom I don't consider to even be real Platonists at all and don't need to be at all taken into account, anymore than, for example, Hindu tantric theists need to be. Rather, I am only referring to Plato/the dialogs and Plotinus/the Enneads (and any following them), whom I consider to be the only real Platonists. Remember that the dialogs are to a large extent and in many places and in their overall dramatic frame allegorical and symbolic and anagogical and expressed in a different language and vocabulary and terminology and mode of expression than we are usually accustomed to. When Plato refers to the gods throughout the dialogs, and in the sort of positive way that you mention, he is referring to/means, not individuated sensory (in the broadest sense that would include even the formless/without sensation deities of Buddhist cosmology) deities such as we are talking about, but the divine principles of, at the lowest level, divine necessity, karma, and providence as mediated by the world soul, and, at the higher levels, of Nous and the Good. One of the things that makes this clear is that he refers to gods plural and god singular alternatingly and indiscriminately, sometimes mixing them even in the same passage, if I recall correctly, indicating 'god(s)' and divinity as an abstract principle, and rarely by name as if he is concerned with the specific Greek pantheon. Even when he does give some by name, note that, for example, that in the Phaedo when Socrates, who symbolizes the higher divine soul and individual nous, not any actual individual named Socrates, says that he is consecrated like the swans to Apollo, that 'Apollo' in Greek is a pun on 'a-polla' meaning 'not-many', i.e., that Socrates as nous is consecrated to the One as non-multiplicity (nisprapanca in Sanskrit). Similarly, when he says that the accomplished philosphos when the soul is released from the body goes to be among the gods or his soul will go to the good and wise god (note again the indiscriminate use of singular and plural) he means that the individual nous and higher soul released from the lower soul and the experience of the body re-merges with Nous and the One. In the discussion of the fact that the gods can only do good and be good, such as in the earlier books of the Republic, which I gather you are referring to, he is not talking about the Homeric/Hesiodic, etc. 'gods', though they and quotations from the poets are used in the discussion, especially since he concerned to counter popular misconceptions of divinity, but showing that the three hypostases as divine principles are wholly good (evil coming from the darkness of non-being) and that the law of necessity/karma/justice operative inexorably throughout the level of soul and becoming/samsara/genesis is wholly just and righteous and divine and always works, so that good is always rewarded and evil always punished. It would be a big project to go through all the instances in the dialogs referring to god/gods and show their actual or undermeaning, but I hope this is enough to give you the idea for now. I want to at least add that in the Enneads Plotinus generally uses god or gods to refer to one or another of the three hypostases, usually the higher two, and even when he may refer to, for example, the sun as a deity is referring to the fact that all is only mind/contemplation/soul and the ordering of even lowest soul level reality is according to divine spiritual principles mediated through the world soul so that one needs to respect this higher spiritual reality and not disparage it or disregard the divine necessity and law. When he does mention conventional lower deities in the sense that you are asking about, just following along with the conventional phenomenal relative consensus reality that he happens to be functioning in in his time and place, and in regard to 'magic', physical cosmology, 'prayers', astrology, etc., he treats them all as unimportant and irrelevant to spirituality and spiritual and philosophic practice and as inferior or irrelevant to the true philosophos, the true renunciant contemplative ascetic.

I hope that this may be enough to resolve the 'aporia' that you raised about deities in Platonism and show that there is no contradiction with the Platonist view as expressed in the dialogs and Enneads and the Buddhist attaching no profundity to deities that we have both held to over the past years. In fact, as I pointed out, Buddhism is really much more concerned with deities, at the popular and institutionalized monastic level at least, with Dharma protector gods and etc., etc., even if they are irrelevant to attaining release from samsara and are inferior to the Buddhist ascetic yogin. Platonism of and in the dialogs and Enneads is, as I have attempted very briefly to show with I hope some success, actually much more purely concerned only with transcendence and dismissive of deities as unimportant, unwise, and irrelevant since it has no need of deities at all, even as protectors of the faith, but is content with the really divine principles of the actual divine underlying structure of reality and of the hypostases and the aspiration for genuine transcendence and release from all relative realities, including any which may include deities, and any seeming reference to a higher ontological status of deities is actually a reference to the higher ontological status of the higher hypostases.