Being, language, image, Plato, Buddhism

I think Western culture/philosophy/religion produces a kind of deep but narrow result—and so Western cultures have technical superiority (atom bombs and iPhones), but are spiritually and intellectually empty. Monotheism produces a kind of focus but narrowness and minimalism; perhaps Western culture is so cluttered with insane junk, horrible pop culture, pop politics, pop psychology, and so on, because at its monotheistic core, it’s so minimalistic—and also text based. It’s all about Scripture, and one God. There’s very little to it—and so all these other forms of content rush in to fill the void—science being the biggest one, but the other things I described earlier fit too.

By contrast, Eastern traditions, thinking mainly of Buddhist but also Hindu, are so much more maximalistic; they have so much more content; thousands of gods and deities, 28 buddhas, countless Bodhisattvas, wrathful deities (my personal favorite); so many different heavens (25 heavens); and 8 count em 8 hot hot hells. Just so much more going on than One God, one heaven, one hell, one Scripture. Take a look at this one piece of Buddhist art to get an idea. It’s pure maximalism.

There are Buddhist texts, but it seems to me that art, image, and symbolism are more important for transmitting the spiritual energy and truth of their tradition; in the West, by contrast, it’s all about Scripture; all about the Word; Jesus even describes Himself as the living Word of God.

This fixation on language and text has metaphysical consequences; the Western tradition is so preoccupied with Being; the question of Being, the meaning of Being; for Buddhism, there is no Being (and no Self); in the West, it’s all about Being and Self. For the most important Western philosophers, like Plato, most of philosophy is just puzzling over the meaning of Being, because it is embedded in language; we can’t really speak at all without leaning on the concept of Being; try to write a sentence without using some form of the verb to be; it isn’t that easy (isn’t is a form of being; see?)

When language is the core of your culture/philosophy/religion, as it is in the West, broadly speaking, the prejudices embedded within language become inescapable—hence the centrality of Self and Being; “I am.” Yahweh, the original Abrahamic God, the OG Monotheistic Western Lord; His name means “I am, who am.”

Buddhism has little of this prejudice of Self and Being; and less emphasis on text and Word; more emphasis on image, symbol, and pictures to convey their spiritual truth. In a text-centric (and so Self and Being-centric) system, the meaning goes into you; you are like an empty vessel into which the Truth of the Word gets poured, as you open your mind to it; but in a Buddhist tradition, the image that you see in art like the one above is meant not to fill you up with some external Truth, but set off a truth already inside you; a certain image in the art will trigger a memory of some specific thing, and that’s where the role of meditation comes in; you meditate on it to grow that spark in your mind; but this power of meditation is also coming from inside you; and enlightenment is the process (which never ends) of gaining insight in this way; it’s a thread that you have to constantly pick up, day after day; that’s why meditation is a daily practice—to keep making progress on the little insights that you have, that are sparked off inside of you.

So even though there’s no Self and no Being in Buddhism, there is actually more of a sense of Self than in Western traditions; nothing is being forced on you, no external Truth that you have to submit to; enlightenment comes from within, and is fed by meditation; and in this way you yourself grow.