Toxic dualities

Buddhism is exactly concerned with our mundane, ordinary lives

Seeping out beyond the boundaries of the academic study of religion is a value laden dichotomy between “this-worldly” and “other-worldly.” This-worldly religion is disparaged as merely concerned with matters of the present life, while other-worldly is concerned with the future life. An eternity of heavenly bliss or an eternity suffering the fires of hell certainly seems more important more significant than whether Aunt Lena’s cat will be okay after the neighbors dog mauled it. Thus, praying to ask redemption from an all-powerful, all-knowing, present-everywhere creator of the universe is other-worldly—spiritual in the religious sense, oriented toward the transcendent. Praying for the recovery of Aunt Lena’s cat is, by contrast, this-worldly—caring and compassionate, but oriented toward the mundane.

Both the distinction and the value judgment are rooted in a particular religious world-view, and a particular religious history. At some point in the long history of the development of religious cultures, the celestial heavens were broken off to become a transcendent realm—a dichotomy replaced a continuity.

In the history of Western religious culture, the influences leading to this dichotomy include on the clean conceptual side Plato. Most everyone who took an Intro to Philosophy course should remember Plato’s Allegory of the Cave (okay, I remember the Allegory, but I had to look up: Republic, 514a to 520a, Book VII). To refresh our memories of just how bizarre this Allegory is:

Imagine prisoners chained inside a cave in such a fashion that they can only see the back wall. Behind them is a large fire, and between them and the fire people walk back and forth holding up large cardboard cut-outs (obviously I’m paraphrasing here, as there wasn’t cardboard in Plato’s day). All the prisoners can see are the shadows cast by these cut-outs.

Somehow one of the prisoners gets free. Struggling to their feet, they can now see that what they had taken for reality are just shadows, and they think that they now understand that the cut-outs are what are real. But the now free prisoner sees that there is more to the cave, and wanting even greater freedom, goes out past the fire. Finding their way out to the opening of the cave, out of the darkness, they are initially blinded by the light of the sun. But, gradually their sight adapts and not only can they see the objects that provided the shapes for the cut-outs—three layers here: shadows that they previously thought were real, cardboard cut-outs that created the shadows, and finally the things in the world that the cut-outs imitated: shadow of a tree, cut-out shape of a tree, a living tree. But then they see the sun, and recognize that this is what is ultimately true and the source of wisdom—that which allows them to see the living trees, for example.

So, okay, this allegory is really famous, and has received numerous interpretations in terms of theories of knowledge (epistemology), values (axiology, aesthetics, ethics), political structures (political philosophy), structure of the universe (metaphysics), and god (theology). But, not only is the allegory pretty labored, and artificial, but its really kinda strange. And it seems particularly bizarre that it is used so widely as justification, in support of all those different kinds of theories.

This way of think becomes even more bizarre when aligned with a positive valuing of the mental, & spiritual as transcendent and pure, and of course identified with the masculine/solar/dry/rational, in opposition to a negative valuing of the bodily, & physical as mundane and impure, and of course identified with feminine/lunar/moist/emotional.

All of that is not uncommonly read onto Buddhism, one form of which is the distinction between “kammatic” and “dhammic” forms of Buddhism, that is, popular and elite, or lay and monastic.

Some of the dichotomour characterisations align well enough with some elements in the hisotry of Buddhist thought (such as monastic misogyny) to make the dichotomy seem to be a valid analysis of Buddhism as well.

Consequently the daily, lived concerns of ordinary people are dismissed as merely this-worldly, and not representative of the true essential core of the Buddha’s teachings.

But I find myself wondering, what is any more this-worldly a set of concerns than sickness, old age, and death? These are the profound sights that motivated the Buddha Śākyamuni to seek awakening, not a concern with some imagined transcendence.