This is basically what Madhyamikans were saying in my understanding. No concept is an exact representation of reality, so don’t get wrapped up in them. Reality lies somewhere in-between or underneath human concepts. As a result, they concluded that no philosophical assertion is absolutely true.
Also, I know Chan Buddhism has been dragged into this in the past. In China, sectarian identities were formed around particular sutras, and ideological debates revolved around trying to interpret textual passages of a foreign religion, or claiming one strand of Buddhist philosophy trumps another (like Yogacara vs. Madhyamika, etc). So Chan ostensibly choose a sutra that said as little as possible (the Diamond Sutra) and then focused on contemplative practice to pull their students away from all of that.
But its not like they never read another text again. A couple Chan luminaries wrote some of the longest collections of essays still extant in East Asian Buddhism. When you aren’t attached to words, you can use them much more freely that someone who is.
To me, having no views just means not being ideological. People work things out by forming views, it’s part of life.
In the twilight of the 19th century, Félix Arnaudin, a visionary photographer and ethnographer, cast his lens upon the rustic tapestry of the Landes region in southwestern France. Among his captivating portraits of rural life, one image stands out: Gascon shepherds, elongated and ethereal, balancing on stilts. Clad in the region’s iconic woolen cloaks and wide-brimmed hats, these shepherds appear as guardians of the marshy landscape, their stilts, known as échasses, carrying them effortlessly across the expansive, watery terrain.
Born from necessity, the practice of stilt-walking allowed these shepherds to navigate the treacherous wetlands with grace and efficiency. Arnaudin’s photograph, now enshrined in the Musée d’Aquitaine, captures these figures as silent sentinels, their elongated forms juxtaposed against the vast, low horizon. The image evokes a sense of timeless solitude, a testament to the resilience of a people deeply intertwined with their land.
Arnaudin’s work, a blend of art and anthropology, serves as a poignant record of a vanishing way of life. As the Landes transformed, its marshlands drained and its forests planted, the stilt-walking shepherds became relics of the past. Yet, through Arnaudin’s lens, their legacy endures. This iconic photograph, preserved in the Musée d’Aquitaine, is a poignant reminder of the ingenuity and adaptability of the Gascon people and their enduring connection to the land.
I suspect they didn’t have this conversation at the dinner table after the sun went down:
Gosh, just think about 2025 when people can look at us on stilts on Facebook! It sure feels timeless out there, doesn’t it!! We shall become a beacon for all beings mired in materialist demands who yearn for something ineffable but don’t have access to sheep and marshlands (or stilts)…We shall be called Proto-Neo-Luddites!
That said, I can imagine this at the dinner table:
Darn, my bad leg’s sore from standing on those damn stilts all day; maybe that swampland will dry up a little next week so that we can stand there with our sheep like normal people. And that sheep crud may not smell so bad then, either!
As I dive into Prajñāpāramitā – I really just started studying it a couple of years ago in earnest – I appreciate its softening tones. (I think Mary W. Thanissara bears witness to this quite profoundly in her writing and teaching.)
I can see its appeal to lay people who feel “agency” is misconstrued as an excuse for forcing things to happen. I feel like Zen became the common understanding of Buddhism here in the US during the 70s, 80s, and 90s as a counter-reaction to the Vietnam War (and wars after that) along with aggressive capitalist projects. Give peace a chance…
It also fits nicely with the Serenity Prayer. Honestly, there’s a lot more discussion out there about what we surrender (to something ineffable) than what we take on through agency. It’s not that surrender doesn’t have its place; it’s that it’s not the whole thing. Agency doesn’t always have to be a dirty word for negative masculine energy.
I feel the New Materialism discussions may substitute doing the right thing through our own agency with everything’s important, nothing’s ruled out, chill out, befriend trees.
He also uses the morality of debt as another lens to dismantle the idea that humanity has evolved to exceptionalism today (Debt: The First 5,000 Years), e.g.:
On the one hand, insofar as all human relations involve debt, they are all morally compromised. Both parties are probably already guilty of something just by entering into the relationship; at the very least they run a significant danger of becoming guilty if repayment is delayed. On the other hand, when we say someone acts like they “don’t owe anything to anybody,” we’re hardly describing that person as a paragon of virtue. In the secular worlds, morality consists largely of fulfilling our obligations to others, and we have a stubborn tendency to imagine those obligations as debts. Monks, perhaps, can avoid the dilemma by detaching themselves from the secular world entirely, but the rest of us appear condemned to live in a universe that doesn’t make a lot of sense.
(I only include that last sentence because he said it; I wasn’t looking for it and don’t claim to agree with it. I appreciate all our monastics for all that they generously offer to us lay people )
In short, we are moral beings, not blobs of jello. We do have views. Otherwise, close up shop and call it a day.
Not really relevant, but it reminds me of a story told in Gurdjieff’s Meetings With Remarkable Men, where he told of meeting and traveling with some people who rode on stilts, using them to cross a desert or something. I always assumed it was just another of his fabulisms, but maybe not!
A very thought provoking article which covers a lot of ground, and some great following comments. It sparked a lot of half-baked pseudo stuff I have stored, which is best kept stored. Regarding straw men; in my experience the hottest fires of Buddhist debate are fueled by them.
Just nitpicking on the spelling, it’s actually Yājñavalkya, a taddhita patronymic apparently formed from the name of his father Yajñavalka, which seems to mean "one who wears the yajña (vedic sacrifice) as/like a valka (tree-bark-garment) i.e. a complete authority on yajña.
Says the Advaita teacher Śaṅkara, in his commentary on the Bṛhadāraṇyaka-Upaniṣad 1.4.3. - “yajñasya valko vaktā yajñavalkaḥ tasyāpatyaṃ yājñavalkyaḥ daivārātirityarthaḥ” [An expounder (valka) of yajña (sacrifice) was called Yajñavalka, his actual name being Devarāta, his son thereby got the patronymics Yājñavalkya and Daivarāti].
It seems only dead people are without views therefore naturally no attachment to views . Living person has thoughts , thoughts appears to be some kind of views .
Here we sit…what made us? Originally? Is there purpose and reason behind The Human? There must be. In the same way what if in some deep corner of the world there is no person close by, similarly as we imagine, to how we can often look into the sky and see a dark expanse. But what if, in this deep dark expanse, standalone thought itself rises and ceases, as we are then, with some machine, are able to observe it beyond the need of it having to be embodied and having a body, thought on its own, it is just arising and ceasing, thinking about some abstract matter, and, on that note, taking some simple Right View on things? Phantom thought in the depths of space. With no root or basis. Is such a thing possible?
If your saying stands , that physically dead people having thoughts , they arent really dead yet . View is only part of the problem besides attachments but even if arahant are without attachment , still existence is itself a problem .
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