Ajahn Geoff, Phenomenology, and perspectives on the Pali Canon

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Hey everyone, this is my first post here.

In the past year I have found the phenomenological perspective of Ajahn Thanissaro more and more appealing. However, I am unaware of any substantial critiques to this approach to Buddhism from an EBT perspective. I would greatly appreciate if anyone here would be willing to share a critique to his phenomenological approach so I have a better grasp of the Buddhist philosophical landscape. For example I would be interested to hear the argument that Buddha in fact was more ontologically minded than Ajahn Geoff understands him to have been.

Metta :slight_smile:

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No, the Buddhist traditions are pretty unified in the phenomenological approach. The Yogacara even went so far as to say that the material, physical world doesn’t even exist and is merely a projection of our minds / karma. The Theravāda school didn’t go quite that far. Their Abhidhamma takes both material elements (fire, water, earth, air) and mental elements (greed, contact, faith, etc) as real. But even for them, salvation comes from experiencing and knowing these Dhammas directly as they’re happening in your mind stream. So, I question your proposed contrast between phenomenology and ontology. Even the more “ontological” Buddhists are still solidly phenomenological.

Can you explain more specifically what you mean by these terms or what it is you’re looking for?

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Thank you for giving your time in responding to me, Bhante. What I meant specifically was in regard to Ajahn Geoff’s writing on self and ‘not-self’, rather than an ontological ‘no self’, as well as his understanding of the three marks of existence as ‘three perceptions’. These two specific topics though to me are a reflection of how Thanissaro’s approach is more deeply phenomenological than the Theravada mainstream. If possible I would appreciate a critique of his perspective.

I also wanted to mention that I recently read a book on Yogachara called ‘Making Sense of Mind Only’ by William Waldron which in fact disputes the popular misunderstanding that Yogachara believed that only the mind existed. His analysis argues that Yogachara is not philosophical idealism, but that misunderstanding began in India some centuries after when the key theorists of Yogachara were active. Just wanted to share that emerging perspective.

Metta

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I haven’t read the papers linked in the first thread but the papers and discussion might be what you are after?

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These look great, thank you venerable.

Metta

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It seems to me that Buddhism is incompatible with classical phenomenology. Phenomenological reduction describes and discerns clearly appearing natural phenomena. Karma and Rebirth (and many other Buddhist ideas) are not phenomena that manifest in such a way.

I believe that any attempt to compare or explain Buddhism with Western philosophical concepts is anachronistic. If anything, early Buddhism is mythical from that point of view - at the time, there was no distinction between ontology and metaphysics, between the natural and the supernatural - Devas were just as real as your breakfast egg.

To live Buddhism, you must take it as a whole, and given that it has undergone at least as many internal developments as Western metaphysics, some very similar, this is still not an easy task.

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But the Buddha uses precisely phenomenological descriptions. Regarding karma and rebirth they are just phenomena, when Buddha is a describer no big difference for Him.

Anyway regarding rebirth and action, it is function of faith to accept them. No need for precise and detailed descriptions.

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I think there’s a way they can be inferred, after all, even when one can not confirm rebirth for themselves.

Experiencing requires experience, right? This naturally entails a modicum of change and instability, like what anicca implies.

Can experiencing experience the end of experiencing? Sounds like a contradiction.

So perhaps it’s kind of like Xeno’s arrow, never quite hitting the target, always fractally dividing.

And as for why then this experiencing can’t be called eternal, then perhaps there’s an insight to seeing it as non-experiencing


Bhikkhus, I say that the end of the world cannot be known, seen, or reached by travelling. Yet, bhikkhus, I also say that without reaching the end of the world there is no making an end to suffering. SN 35.116

Well, perhaps all the insight and caution in the suttas against conceptualisation, proliferation, might in a sense agree with you. :slight_smile:

Not necessarily because Buddhism or Indian thought is fundamentally incompatible with Western philosophy (I would actually think many concepts can be ported over back and forth and used wisely and carefully); but perhaps the nature of Dharma (not in the sense of teaching, but the upholding of the reality) is beyond having an easy one-on-one correspondence with what any words or sentences might entail.

When all Dharma have been struck down altogether;
Likewise all manner of speech are altogether struck down too. SNP5.7

I believe Ajahn Geoff argues as much his “Not-self revisited”:

The need ultimately to go beyond words and discernment comes from the fact that they are made of perceptions and thought-fabrications, which are aggregates coming under the term “name” in “name-and-form.”

As with all aggregates, even the statements of right view, after they have done their work, have to be abandoned for the mind to gain release.

But more than that: A perception may be true as far as it goes, but there are limitations to how far it can go, and as DN 15 indicates, there’s a need to see those limitations.

In one passage, the Buddha goes to the extent of identifying only one thing as really true: unbinding.

"See the world, together with its devas,
supposing not-self to be self.
Entrenched in name-and-form,
they suppose that ‘This is true.’
In whatever terms they suppose it,
it turns into something other than that,
and that’s what’s false about it:
Changing,
it’s deceptive by nature.

Undeceptive by nature
is unbinding:
That the noble ones know
as true.
They, through breaking through
to the truth,
hunger-free,
are totally unbound.” (Snp 3.12)

Now compare this to the opening lines of Dao de Jing

é“ćŻé“ïŒŒéžćžžé“
ććŻćïŒŒéžćžžć

The channel that can be channeled is not the constant channel.
The name that can be named is not the constant name.

And compare it to Plato:

“No intelligent man will ever venture to commit to it the concepts of his reason, especially when they are unalterable—as is the case with what is formulated in language.”

And then Gorgias of Lentoni:

“Even if anything exists, it cannot be known; and even if it could be known, it could not be communicated to others.”

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Following from the characteristics ascribed by the Buddha to his Dhamma, the Truth has to be and can be seen and understood only directly and personally, and that fact automatically and inevitably locks us in the framework of the phenomenology — in the framework of your and only your own awareness of your personal experience and your own understanding of it. At least, in everything that pertains to the conditions and causes for the arising of Dukkha and its cessation.

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Ajahn Geoff argues that nibbana is a type of non-khandic consciousness, so the things in reality cannot be “ontologically non-self” because what is non-self is suffering and thus non-khandic consciousness (nibbana) would be suffering (unless it were actually self, of course)

It’s a little unclear to me how people are using the words “ontology” and “phenomenology” though, because it’s not a contradiction to have a “phenomenological ontology”
 and also, if you say there is such a thing as non-khandic consciousness, then that is (afaik) an ontology – i.e, enumerating a thing that (really) exists in reality.

But (as other people have pointed out before), impermanence, suffering, and non-self is better described as a negative ontology.

I.e., it’s not that impermanence, suffering and non-self are capabilities or powers that the things in reality are “ontologically” imbued with; the three characteristics are words that points to lacks, absences, emptinesses, etc.

One way to think about it is that absences are “ontologically thin” – reality doesn’t need a deep structure to explain why something isn’t there. Moreover, these absences has implications for how we should relate to reality.

Anyway, this ended up more as a train of thought rather than a critique I guess :cow:

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For the purposes of most Buddhist discussions, I agree it sounds like a distinction without a difference. :smiley:

Some do make a difference between “What we experience” and “The way things exist” in a certain fashion though


Hm. Well it should depend on the register — for example, in the poetic register, I can talk about the “taste of freedom”, without really implying that freedom is something I feel with the contact of my tongue. :stuck_out_tongue:

So, since Bhante Thanissaro is being discussed here, his remarks about pure consciousness or mind or nibbāna should be supplemented with his broader views, which is:

So the truth of the Dhamma is not something that’s defined in words
 Nibbana—which is the ending of all dhammas, including all words and all views—is touched at the heart. Dhamma is a Quality of the Heart

And:

The Buddha never says that we have to drop concepts from the very beginning. He says you use concepts to get beyond concepts. Meditations 4

Taking the chance to talk about anicca, I think there’s actually an epistemologic reading that’s possible. :slight_smile:

So for example, if I can’t even see what’s outside my house, can I say if there’s a rain or not?

So, an epistemic reading would suggest that, with their tricksy, unstable nature, we can’t even talk about khandas to begin with, let alone contemplate “me, mine, I”.

Of course, not all Theravadins hold this view of the khandas, but precisely this idea was explained in the Mahāyāna traditions. :slight_smile:

I do think suttas like SN 22.95 do support that view though. As well as the Māyājāla Sƫtra, an EBT Sƫtra from an unknown Agama school, which many Mahāyāna masters seem to refer to in their works.

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I don’t really understand what the supplement does here. But I’m not really trying to be an Ajahn Thanissaro understander either :cowboy_hat_face: , to me he’s the Ajahn that thinks nibbana is a type of consciousness outside the five khandas, and his writings reflect an interpretation of the EBTs that is broadly congruent with his nibbana view imo.

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Well again — if I say “What I’m about to tell you isn’t literally true, but that’s the best way for me to get the point across, so bear with me”, would you not grant me that I was speaking metaphorically? :slight_smile:

So even as he explains nibbāna as a sort of consciousness, if he’s quick to add that this is a metaphorical, ultimately false statement
 What would you make of that?

(FWIW, I think he’s mistaken in the specific explanation of the term viññana anidassana, which I think Bhante Sunyo explains better. I still enjoy his general approach.)

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It seems a bit silly to argue for an interpretation of the EBTs if you think it is ultimately false. Monastics should probably not say (what they think are) false statements about the dhamma also.

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I mean, the suttas also do the same thing, with Arahats being said to use “I, mine” as conventions, even if they know these statements are wrong. Dhammapada has an entire section about the virtues of developing the self, even though, asserting a self is ultimately false. Does that then also sound equally silly to you? :slight_smile:

Taking everything in the EBTs literal at face value might offer logical inconsistencies, which is a much deeper topic
 But perhaps a logically consistent reading of the EBTs involves being able to use words as mere tools without reifying them, and knowing that no words or concepts can explain everything, so all words being ultimately deceptive, papanca.

Which is, well, the entire bedrock of the Prajñāpāramitā / Mahāyāna tradition. So I don’t find it surprising that some EBT-only teachers still use the same method, coming to the same conclusions (sans the Mahāyāna SĆ«tras, of course).

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If someone says “the world is impermanent, just like women who are never faithful and will always leave for a richer and taller man” – the choice of metaphor allows us to infer something about the views of the person using such metaphors.

If someone tends to talk about nibbana using eternalist language, it’s fair to think that they have eternalist views, imo.

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Many people also tend to use annihilationist language with regards to nirvana, does that make those bhantes having annihilationist views? :smiley:

It’s hard not to circle back to the nature of nirvana with all these. Seems like all theoretical discussions kind of flow towards it at some point. You and I even discussed this earlier on a thread of mine. :slight_smile:

Personally, I respect all bhantes and practitioners seeking and discussing earnestly, even as we tackle the topic from different views. I’ve learned greatly from my discussions with cessationalists who I don’t agree with, but who were courteous in their discussion so we had a great chance to practice sīla together, and our discussions bore much fruit, helping me better understand and verbalise my own stance. Who knows who’s right? Hard to say.

But perhaps we’re straying too far from the topic thread. :sweat_smile:

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Ajahn Geoff calls not-self a “strategy”: in other words, a kind of practice you do. In this way it’s closer to some sort of pragmatism, where non-self is less about what’s true and more about what’s useful for letting go. He may qualify this summary, but I think that’s close enough to what he presents.

Of course, essentially all Buddhists would say that they think the truth, liberation, etc. are to be personally experienced and realized in some sense. But if we want to disambiguate between different strands of thought, then lumping all Buddhists into the phenomenological camp won’t do. There are indeed strands of thought which incline more towards an ontological ultimate reality, and others which incline away from an ultimate reality in favor of something which equalizes all experiences as conditioned. For example, as I recall, Ajahn Geoff teaches that Nibbāna is beyond the third noble truth; that liberation is something outside the four truths; more than just the ending of defilements and suffering. This is different from some strands which would tend to put everything in the framework of dependent arising.

Now, there is rhetoric for slipping around these categories. But often it’s a matter of not being comfortable admitting certain things, like the implications of an eternal consciousness being a self. I’m not convinced that the dividing line actually fits a phenomenology/ontology split though in the historic Buddhist traditions. The Yogacāra school, famous for a more phenomenologically-approximate approach, tends towards views of a transcendent ultimate reality, for instance; whereas schools more inclined to conditionality and emptiness can also be very phenomenological to the expense of any ultimate ground.

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Here’s a post Bhante Sujato made about this topic a bit ago.

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Hello bhante! :smiley:

Alright, back to the meat of it! :smiley:

Self can mean many things, and as per DN 15, self can be theorized as having form, being formless, finite, or infinite. So, I don’t see how some sort of an eternal consciousness automatically implies a self as per the theories of self laid out in DN 15.

When I observe people, self usually doesn’t imply an eternal presence (in fact, many people think their self is formed and finite), but that there’s a discreet boundary to their own-being, separate from others, asserted definitely.

However, the argument in MN 22 seems much more nuanced:

It would make sense to grasp at a theory of self that didn’t give rise to sorrow, lamentation, pain, sadness, and distress
 I also can’t see such a theory.

So, it doesn’t seem to me that self automatically implies eternal, rather
 There’s really no theories to explain the self at all. :slight_smile:

I also think that asserting a discreet, stable “stream of rebirths / consciousness” does the same thing, in asserting and theorising a self across lifetime, in so much different words.

However, perhaps the following false views:

  • Cosmos and Self are one.
  • Cosmos is one thing, Self is another.

Would point to a much different idea. In other words:

  • You and I are not the same.
  • You and I are not apart.

If we would gloss anicca as “unstable” rather than just impermanent (though impermanence is also implied in its “it arises, changes, and ceases” conceptual framing), perhaps an epistemic reading would present a coherent solution:

  • If khandas are unreliable, epistemically unstable, ungraspable, then nothing can be said about them belonging to you or I.
  • If they cannot be said to be self, then they’re unsatisfactory, hollow, empty, dart, etc.

Humbly offered. :slight_smile: :folded_hands:

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