… The first discipline is phenomenology, the branch of philosophy that deals with phenomena as they are directly experienced, in and of themselves. There are many schools of modern phenomenology, and it is not my purpose to try to equate the Buddha’s teachings with any one of them. However, the Buddha does recommend a mode of perception that he calls “entry into emptiness (suññatā …
… Even though the Buddha’s phenomenological approach answered his questions as to the nature of kamma, it also reshaped his questions so that they had little in common with the questions that most people bring to the practice. As with all insights gained on the phenomenological level, dependent co-arising is expressed in terms closest to the actual experience of events. Only when a …
… radical phenomenology. The term “phenomenology” is a little daunting, but you probably had your first taste of what it refers to when you were small. At some time during childhood you probably stopped to wonder whether your experience of blue is the same as another person’s experience of blue. You and other people can point to an object and agree that it’s …
… In modern philosophy this approach is called phenomenology: talking about the phenomena of experience simply in terms of direct experience, without making reference to any underlying reality that may or may not stand behind that experience. The Buddha was a radical phenomenologist in that he dealt with experience on its own terms. He was a pragmatist in that he adopted this approach because he …
… By placing rebirth in the context of dependent co-arising, he was presenting it in a phenomenological context—i.e., one that focused on phenomena as they can be directly experienced and that refused to take a stand on whether there is a reality of “things” underlying them. His purpose in taking this sort of position was pragmatic and strategic: By focusing on events …
… As we noted in I/B, the knowledge that puts an end to the effluents deals with experience in the phenomenological mode. Thus, the best questions for weakening the effluents are ones that lead the mind into that mode.
Now, not all questions are helpful in this way. Some deal in terms that focus the mind on narrative or cosmological issues in ways that …
… grand history, philology, and phenomenology.
It’s easy to see why these approaches eventually split apart, for they assign meaning to religious beliefs in different ways. In grand history, religious texts and experiences have meaning only with an eye to where the cosmos as a whole is going; in philology, meaning is centered in the texts themselves; whereas in phenomenology, meaning is centered in …
… In this way, his approach can be called radically phenomenological, which means that it deals with your experience as you experience it directly—the part of your experience that no one else can look in to see, and that you can’t share with anyone else. The main problem on this level is the suffering you experience directly, something that no one else can …
… This is why the Buddha’s approach is what you might call phenomenology: how phenomena are directly experienced, without any reference to what there is behind that experience—and without trying to impose your ideas of what’s behind experience on somebody else or letting them impose theirs on you. You’re meditating to look at exactly what your mind is doing right now …
… Even though modern scientific experiments may be more sophisticated than Prince Pāyāsi’s experiments on criminals, the scientists who conduct them are just as wrong-headed in thinking that a phenomenological process—consciousness and mental events as experienced from within—can be captured and measured in physical terms. Although rebirth is often presented as an unscientific view, the material sciences actually have no way …
… This phenomenological mode of perception, or “entry into emptiness,” sees things simply in terms of what is present and what is not [MN 121]. Here, realizations are expressed merely as pointers to present phenomena without any content that would point to anything outside of direct experience: “There is this,” [MN 102] “Such is form, such is feeling,” [§149] etc. The Pāli name for this …
… This, as we have noted, is called the phenomenological approach. And the Buddha aimed his attention directly at the most pressing phenomenological problem: the problem of suffering and how to end it. My suffering is something that only I can feel. Yours is something that only you can feel. I cause my suffering through my own unskillfulness, and can put an end to it …
… This is why discernment needs the faculties of conviction, persistence, mindfulness, and concentration to give it the detached assurance and steady focus needed to stick with pain in and of itself, in the phenomenological mode, and not veer off into the usual narratives, abstract theories, and other unskillful defenses the mind devises against the pain. Only through the development of the five faculties into …
… In the third stage, the function of exertion becomes finer yet, as it maintains a basic “empty” or radically phenomenological awareness of the frame of reference in order to bring the mind to the state of non-fashioning appropriate for the process of Awakening. The equipoise of this state—beyond the categories of effort or non-effort—explains the paradox expressed in §62, which …
… The third insight, however, went beyond shamanism into a phenomenology of the mind, i.e., a systematic account of phenomena as they are directly experienced. This insight was exclusively Buddhist, although it was based on the previous two. Because it was multi-faceted, the Canon describes it from a variety of standpoints, stressing different aspects as they apply to specific contexts. In the course …
… In other words, one tries to stay with the phenomenology of immediate experience, without slipping back into the narratives and world views that make up one’s sense of the world. In essence, this is a concentration practice, with the three qualities of ardency, alertness, and mindfulness devoted to attaining concentration. Mindfulness keeps the theme of the meditation in mind, alertness observes the theme …
… Thus the practice takes the same approach as phenomenology: exploring the processes of conditioning from the inside as they are immediately experienced in the present moment. This is why the pattern of dependent co-arising lists factors of consciousness—such as ignorance, attention, and intention—as prior conditions for the experience of the physical world, for if we take as our frame of reference …
… In formal terms, this is called phenomenology: speaking about consciousness as it’s directly experienced.
However, even though the focus of the Buddha’s teachings is on a problem that is immediately personal, his analysis of the problem is not subjective. In other words, even though the precise texture of your suffering is something that no one else can know, it’s not so …
… In formal terms, dependent co-arising deals in the phenomenology of awareness.
At the same time, the crucial causes of suffering and stress are subject to your knowledge and will. In this way, the focus of the noble eightfold path has to be primarily internal, on the training of the mind.
• The relationships among the factors are not simple. Even though the factors are …
Preface | The Wings to Awakening
… The first discipline is phenomenology, the branch of philosophy that deals with phenomena as they are directly experienced, in and of themselves. There are many schools of modern phenomenology, and it is not my purpose to try to equate the Buddha’s teachings with any one of them. However, the Buddha does recommend a mode of perception that he calls “entry into emptiness (suññatā …
