I have just glanced at the Huxley. I think it is of importance to emphasize that wherever he uses the word 'religion' this has absolutely no connexion (whatever he may think about it) with the essence of the Buddha's Teaching (Dukkha, Samudaya, Nirodha, Magga). I am aware that Huxley mentions Buddhism; but all his Buddhism (including that of his novels -- After Many A Summer and so on) is Maháyána. And, in spite of all our religious demagogues have to say about it, Maháyána is not the Buddha's Teaching. People say that it is most desirable at the present time that Buddhists the world over should be united. Perhaps it is desirable, perhaps not; but in whatever way they do propose to unite, it must be done not on the pretext that Maháyána correctly interprets the basic Teaching. (Alas! Much that passes in Theravádin countries for the correct interpretation comes from Maháyána. The Milindapañha, I think, is largely responsible.)




[L. 56]   6 July 1963

About the Vietnam affair. You speak of a monk who poured petrol over the intending suicide, and also of others who took part in the procession. A Theravádin bhikkhu doing these things might find himself in an equivocal position, since it is a párájika offence ('defeat') to encourage a person to suicide, if as a result of that encouragement he actually kills himself. To pour petrol and (to a lesser extent) to follow in the procession might almost be interpreted in this sense. But these monks were (I presume) Maháyána monks, and their ordination is not, strictly speaking, recognized by us as valid. For us, they are upásakas and not bound by our Vinaya rules.

As for gruesome (asubha, 'foul') objects, these are specifically recommended in the Suttas as objects of meditation for getting rid of sensual desire. In Ceylon, unfortunately, rotting human corpses are hard things to find (the police and the health authorities disapprove of such things), but in India, so I am told, one may still come across them quite easily.

The difficulty of understanding aniccatá may be realized from the fact that it is seen, in the full sense of ñánadassana, 'knowledge and seeing', only by the ariya and not by the puthujjana. Similarly with dukkha and anattá. For this reason I can by no means agree with the following statement (from the late Ven. Ñánamoli Thera's 'Three Cardinal Discourses of the Buddha', BPS Wheel 17, p. 28): 'The two characteristics of Impermanence and Suffering in the world were well recognized in ancient Indian philosophies and have never been peculiar to Buddhism.'

Now for the Huxley. The preliminary indication that I gave in my last letter has been fully confirmed by a reading of the entire book.[1] The book demonstrates Huxley's prodigious wealth of culture, his great talent as a writer (the passage on draperies, for example, is delightful), and his hopelessly muddled thinking. He speaks (on p. 12) of 'such ancient, unsolved riddles as the place of mind in nature and the relationship between brain and consciousness', but his book does not contribute anything towards their solution. And it has nothing, nothing whatsoever, to do with the Buddha's Teaching.

Actually, these 'ancient, unsolved riddles' have remained unsolved for the good reason that they are insoluble; and they are insoluble because they are illegitimate. The first one comes of making a gratuitous division of things into 'mind' and 'matter' (see NÁMA [b]), and the second comes of assuming that a study of the body will lead to an understanding of consciousness (see my letter to Dr. de Silva about Prof. Jefferson's article). But Huxley's confused thinking seems to be incapable of making even the simplest of philosophical distinctions.

For example, on p. 37 he says 'Meanwhile I had turned...to what was going on, inside my head, when I shut my eyes'; and on the next page, 'What it [the mescalin] had allowed me to perceive, inside, was...my own mind.' For Huxley, then, one's mind is inside one's head. But what is inside one's head is one's brain. So, without any further qualification, we are led to suppose that 'mind' and 'brain' are the same thing. But (quite apart from considerations raised in the Jefferson letter) this needs a great deal of qualification, as you will see if you will read MANO, particularly (b). As it stands, in Huxley's context, it is patently false.

And again, Huxley speaks both of the 'subconscious' and of the 'unconscious'. But the 'subconscious' is Jung's notion, whereas the 'unconscious' is Freud's. Jung, at one time, was a disciple of Freud; but later he broke away and set up his own doctrine in opposition -- partly, at least -- to that of Freud. Are we to suppose, then, that Huxley has succeeded in harmonizing these two doctrines? Not in the least; the words are used without any attempt at definition. And, in any case, what is the relationship, if any, of either of these doctrines to the other concepts that he introduces? He does not tell us. But I do not propose to undertake an analysis of Huxley's inconsistencies -- for a reason that I shall allow Kierkegaard to explain.

Very often the care and trouble taken in such matters proves to have been wasted; for after taking great pains to set forth an objection sharply, one is apt to learn from a philosopher's reply that the misunderstanding was not rooted in any inability to understand the divine philosophy, but in having persuaded oneself to think that it really meant something -- instead of merely being loose thinking concealed behind pretentious expressions. (CUP, p. 101)

The meditation that is spoken of by Huxley has no connexion at all with that taught by the Buddha. Huxley's meditation is essentially visionary or, at its limits, mystical: and the characteristic of all such meditation is that you have to wait for something to happen (for visions to appear, for revelations to be vouchsafed, and so on). What chemicals can do is to hasten this process, which formerly required fasting and self-mortification. And even when the visions do condescend to appear (or God condescends to reveal himself), the length of time they last is out of the meditator's control.

In the practices taught in the Suttas, on the other hand, this is by no means the case. In the first place, it is not a matter of visions or revelations, but of the focusing of attention (citt'ekaggatá, 'one-pointedness of mind'). [If you want to know what is present in jhána see the Anupada Sutta, M. 111: iii,25-7. No mention is made there of 'heroic figures' or 'Gothic palaces' or 'transparent clusters of gems'.] In the second place, once these attainments (I refer here particularly to the jhánas) have been thoroughly mastered, the meditator can enter upon them and leave them at will -- just as one can switch on the electric light and then switch it off again as one pleases. And if he has several at his command, he can choose which one he will enter upon. He can even skip intermediate attainments if he so desires -- he can leave first jhána, skip second jhána, and enter upon third jhána. And he can stay in these attainments (if he is really well practised) for as much as a week at a time[2] without emerging at all. Furthermore, when he sees things in his meditations they are quite unlike the things that Huxley describes. To take a single example, on p. 98 we read

The more than human personages of visionary experience never 'do anything'. (Similarly the blessed never 'do anything' in heaven.) They are content merely to exist.... But action, as we have seen, does not come naturally to the inhabitants of the mind's antipodes. To be busy is the law of our being. The law of theirs is to do nothing.

Moreover, the revelations and insights of visionary and mystical experiences have nothing to do with the insight, the ñánadassana, of the ariya. All these things remain strictly within the kingdom of avijjá: these celebrated mystics that Huxley speaks of are just as much puthujjanas for all their mystical experiences, their 'Infused Contemplations' -- perhaps even more so, indeed, since they become even more deeply embedded in miccháditthi ('wrong view'), which the Buddha speaks of (in A. I,ii,8: i,33) as being the most blameworthy of all blameworthy things. That this is so -- i.e. that the mystical view is 'wrong view' -- can be seen from the way Huxley himself firmly rejects the Teaching of the Pali Suttas and embraces Maháyána.

Maháyána is based (I am speaking only of the philosophical aspect) on two wrong views. (i) That all our normal experience is merely appearance, behind which there lurks Reality (which it is the business of the yogin to seek out), and (ii) that what the Buddha taught was that this Reality behind appearance is the non-existence of things. We can sum this up by saying that Maháyánists (generally speaking -- and also many Theravádins) hold that the Buddha taught that things do not really exist, but only appear to, that this apparent existence is due to avijjá or ignorance. Huxley is not concerned with the second of these two views (to which, perhaps, he might not subscribe), but only with the first, which is common to all mystics at all times and in all places. It is Huxley's theme that mescalin gives admittance, or partial admittance, for a limited period, to the Reality behind appearance.

Let us consider the question of reality. In my writings I use the word 'real' from time to time, and almost always in opposition to the word 'imaginary', and not in opposition to 'apparent'. Reference to NÁMA [b] will show you that, for me, 'real' = 'present' whereas 'imaginary' = 'absent'.

A simple illustration. When you are at Balapitiya, at that time and for you Balapitiya is 'real' since it is present, whereas Colombo is 'imaginary' since it is absent. At Balapitiya you can see Balapitiya but you can only imagine Colombo. When you go to Colombo the position is reversed: Colombo is then 'real' or 'present' and Balapitiya is 'imaginary' or 'absent'. In a similar way, when someone is seeing his ordinary work-a-day world, the objects in that world are 'real' or 'present', and the objects at the 'antipodes of his mind' -- the begemmed Gothic palaces, and so on -- are 'imaginary' or 'absent' (note that absence admits of degrees -- things may be more absent or less absent). But if, by means of flagellation or mescalin, or in any other way, he visits the antipodes of his mind, the objects there become 'real' or 'present' and those in the ordinary world 'imaginary' or 'absent'.

But now, if such a person declares, whether in his normal state or not, that the objects at the antipodes of his mind are 'more real' than those in his ordinary world, then he is using the word 'real' in a different sense. What he should say, if he is to avoid ambiguity, is that these 'more real' objects are simply 'more vivid' or 'more significant' than the everyday objects. But the word 'real' has an emotive power that the other words lack, and he sticks to it. In this way, the more vivid, more significant, objects of his visionary experience become 'Reality' (with a capital 'R', naturally) and the objects of his ordinary life, merely 'appearance'. If he is a full-blooded mystic he will speak not merely of 'Reality', but of 'Ultimate Reality', which is equated with the 'Dharma-Body', the 'Godhead', the 'Void', the 'All', the 'One', the 'Order of Things', the 'Ground', and so on -- such expressions are sprinkled liberally throughout Huxley's book.[a]

The fact is, however, that the notion of Reality concealed behind appearances is quite false. At different times there is consciousness either of different things or of the same thing seen differently -- i.e. with different determinations or significances. And this is true even of the arahat (while still living) as compared with the puthujjana: he does not retreat 'from appearances into an entirely transcendental Nirvana' (Huxley, p. 36), he simply sees the same thing as the puthujjana but without the significance due to rága, dosa, and moha ('lust', 'hate', and 'delusion').

I will not deny that the tendency to seek transcendental meaning (to 'invent God', in other words) is inherent in the puthujjana's situation.[b] It is an attempt to find a solution to the existential ambiguity of which I speak (quoting Blackham) in the Preface to the Notes. On the philosophical level, it is perhaps most clearly evident in the case of Jaspers (see Blackham); but the merit of the existential philosophers is that they recognize the self-contradiction involved in their efforts to find God. (Some of them, of course, prefer to remain in the existential ambiguity -- Nietzsche and Sartre, for example.) The mystics, on the other hand, entirely fail to recognize this inherent self-contradiction, and are quite convinced that they are achieving Union with the Divine, or the Beatific Vision (which for Huxley is Enlightenment -- p. 60).

But, as I point out in the Preface, the Buddha transcends the existential ambiguity, not by answering the unanswerable (which is what the mystics seek to do -- whence the name 'mystic', for an unanswerable question, clearly enough, can only receive a mysterious answer), but by discovering the source of the ambiguity and removing it. The arahat is sítabhúta, 'become cold',[3] and for him there is nothing to seek, since there is no longer any 'seeker'.

In brief, then, the answer to your implied question 'Can chemical devices such as mescalin, or electrical proddings of the brain, in any way replace or abbreviate the long and perhaps tedious journey on the path of meditation as taught in the Pali Suttas?', -- the answer to this question is an unqualified NO. Visionary experiences are without significance in the Buddha's Teaching.

About the brain as a reducing valve. Huxley quotes (p. 21) Prof. C. D. Broad.

We should do well to consider much more seriously than we have hitherto been inclined to do the type of theory which Bergson puts forward in connection with memory and sense perception. The suggestion is that the function of the brain and nervous system and sense organs is in the main eliminative and not productive. Each person is at each moment capable of remembering all that has ever happened to him and of perceiving everything that is happening everywhere in the universe. The function of the brain and nervous system is to protect us...by shutting out most of what we should otherwise perceive or remember at any moment...

I feel that the doctor is perhaps over-estimating the danger of misuse of the Notes. After all, for the ordinary person they are practically unreadable, and they can by no stretch of the imagination be regarded as propaganda. (Nobody could describe them as 'inflammatory'.) The Notes are designed primarily for people with a European background. (I imagine, for example, that the Notes are absolutely untranslatable into Sinhala, and consequently a purely-Sinhalese-educated person will make nothing of them.) Naturally, this is unavoidable, since I simply do not think as a Sinhala. I would suggest that a fairly liberal distribution should be made to university Buddhist societies. English-speaking university students who are beginning to think for themselves (are they?) might well be interested in a fresh approach to the Dhamma. Provisionally, then, in addition to the people and institutions you have in mind, I would say 250 copies (perhaps this is a shade on the generous side). But what are your views?[1]




[L. 58]   13 July 1963

The idea of signing (rather than typing) my name after the Preface seems to have a double advantage: (i) It will authenticate the book ('None genuine without the signature "Ñánavíra" [Registered Trade Mark] on each package'), and (ii) it will emphasize the fact that I am personally responsible for the views expressed in the book. But how much demand will there be for the Notes? I have no idea at all.

P.S. Your Huxley has allowed me to add another footnote to the Preface, warning off the mystics.




[L. 59]   23 July 1963

I have just taken more than a day to rewrite an inadequate passage in the NOTE ON PATICCASAMUPPÁDA. The rewritten passage is a particularly tough one, and will take you weeks to unravel; but I hope that, when you succeed in doing so, it will afford you some pleasure. The whole note, however, is difficult, and you might perhaps wonder if it is really necessary to get such an intellectual grasp of paticcasamuppáda in order to attain the path. The answer is, by no means. But what is necessary for a puthujjana in order to attain is that he should not imagine that he understands what in fact he does not understand. He should understand that he does not understand. If the Notes, by their difficulty, succeed in bringing about this negative understanding but nothing more, they will not have been in vain.

I am fortunately endowed with a considerable capacity for remembering the context of passages, even upon a single reading. This was of use to me during the war when, as an interrogator, I was obliged to have an up-to-date card-index memory for keeping my subjects on the straight and narrow path of truthfulness.[1] It is of infinitely more use to me now, since it enables me to turn up remote Sutta passages with a minimum of delay. I have occasionally found myself being used as an index to the Suttas by my fellow bhikkhus. On the other hand I find it very difficult to memorize a passage literally. I doubt whether I know more than three or four Suttas by heart. I simply cannot comprehend the Venerable Ánanda Thera, who memorized the whole of the Suttas and recited them at the First Council. I am essentially a man of libraries.

Kafka is an ethical, not an aesthetic, writer. There is no conclusion to his books. The Castle was actually unfinished, but what ending could there be to it? And there is some doubt about the proper order of the chapters in The Trial -- it does not really seem to matter very much in which order you read them, since the book as a whole does not get you anywhere. (An uncharitable reader might disagree, and say that it throws fresh light on the Judiciary.) In this it is faithful to life as we actually experience it. There is no 'happy ending' or 'tragic ending' or 'comic ending' to life, only a 'dead ending' -- and then we start again.

We suffer, because we refuse to be reconciled with this lamentable fact; and even though we may say that life is meaningless we continue to think and act as if it had a meaning. Kafka's heroes (or hero, 'K.' -- himself and not himself) obstinately persist in making efforts that they understand perfectly well are quite pointless -- and this with the most natural air in the world. And, after all, what else can one do? Notice, in The Trial, how the notion of guilt is taken for granted. K. does not question the fact that he is guilty, even though he does not know of what he is guilty -- he makes no attempt to discover the charge against him, but only to arrange for his defence. For both Kierkegaard and Heidegger, guilt is fundamental in human existence. (And it is only the Buddha who tells us the charge against us -- avijjá.) I should be glad to re-read The Castle when you have finished it (that is, if 'finished' is a word that can be used in connexion with Kafka).

You may have difficulty in getting a copy of Ulysses locally. The book is grossly obscene, and not in the least pornographic. Customs officials, however, confuse these two things, and Ulysses has suffered at their hands. Of one early edition of five hundred copies, 499 were burnt by the Customs at Folkestone.

As for suggesting further books for reading, all I can think of at the moment is a recent Penguin called Exile and the Kingdom. It is a translation of six short stories by Albert Camus. I don't know anything about the book, but I know quite a lot about the author (he is the Camus that I have quoted in the Notes). Nearly everything that he has written is stimulating, and it might be worth while getting this book. (Besides, I should like to read it myself.)

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Footnotes:

[56.a] I once read a statement by a distinguished Hindu that 'Siva is Ultimate Reality and Parvati is his wife'. It must come as a bit of a shock to a mystic when at last he reaches Ultimate Reality to find that it is married. Mr. and Mrs. Ultimate Reality. Mescalin does not seem to take one as far as this. [Back to text]

[56.b] Kierkegaard: 'It is then not so much that God is a postulate, as that the existing individual's postulation of God is a necessity.' (CUP, p. 179) Dostoievsky: 'All that man has done is to invent God in order not to kill himself. This is the summary of universal history up to this moment.' (Kirilov, in The Possessed) [Back to text]















Editorial notes:

[56.1] Huxley's book: Doors of Perception and Heaven and Hell. [Back to text]

[56.2] week at a time: See e.g. Thig. 44: 'For seven days I sat in one cross-legged posture enveloped by happiness; then on the eighth I stretched forth my feet, having sundered the mass of darkness.' [Back to text]

[56.3] become cold: e.g. Brahma Samy. 3: i,141; Bráhmana Samy. 15: i,178; A. X,29: v,65; Sn. 542, 642, etc. [Back to text]

[57.1] The first edition did indeed consist of 250 copies. [Back to text]

[58.1] Nevertheless, in both the original edition and in the final typescript the author's name was typed, not signed. [Back to text]

[59.1] During the war Musson served primarily in Algiers, in varying capacities including work in the Prisoner of War Interrogation Section. For nearly the whole of 1945 he was in hospital, first in North Africa and then in Sorento, for reasons unknown. At the time of his release, in 1946, he held the rank of Temporary Captain. On his Release Certificate he was noted as a holder of the Military Cross. He queried this: 'I am not aware of having won the MC nor of ever having been in the position of being able to do so.' The entry was found to be an error. [Back to text]