👈🏼 previous note, 05.03. Beliefs East and West
From \[citation] (my emphasis):
Ven. Ñāṇavīra Thera (the pioneer of “existentialist Buddhism” whom Bhikkhu Bodhi critiqued extensively in a 41-page essay) argued that the traditional three-lifetime model of Dependent Origination is a commentarial distortion, asserting instead that it is a timeless, structural description of immediate consciousness.1
See also, the suggestion by Harpur that we re-cultivate a sense of ‘double-vision’, the capacity to see mythology as existing somewhere in the blurry cross-eyed epistemic-state of being simultaneously metaphorical, and literal.
The Psychological Interpretation
Popular among secular Buddhists, some schools of Zen, and found in Tibetan Buddhism, the psychological interpretation of cosmology takes the realms and other features of Buddhist cosmology to metaphorically represent states of mind. The first three bhumīs ‘apply to levels of consciousness as well as realms of existence’2, in a classic case of double-vision, or just that both of these are literal?, though one is psychological and the other cosmological. Punnadhammo includes an endmatter chapter about this interpretation, which was also debated by Bhikkhu Bodhi and Ven. Ñāṇavīra Thera.
I think there is considerable value in considering the psychological interpretation first even, because it may be easier for Westerners to relate to the dhamma more practically, easily, and immediately. This means beginning at the metaphorical level, and once I have access to that I can start leaning more into the literal interpretation. Maybe I would call this entry-level Buddhism, where we get in on the ground floor. That certainly maps with a way of approaching the dhamma I learnt from my Zen teacher, which is that its practice operates on two levels: the therapeutic and the transpersonal. It might be that the psychological interpretation is therapeutic, and the literal is transpersonal.
One of the first times I learnt about this interpretation was from a Tibetan monk who said something like the experience of anger is the hell realm - one doesn’t have to wait for death to be reborn in the hell realms. Every cranky person we meet is obviously already suffering, and that suffering doesn’t depend on belief in a multiverse.
While the psychological interpretation might be a good entry point, it is quite a leap to go from there to a full-blown literal interpretation, but I am happy to lean-in to that because I find the panoramic perspective consoling I suppose. That doesn’t sound very scientific, but it starts with the idea that our whole present is nested in causes and conditions that are largely out of our control … that takes the pressure off, somehow; and if rebirth is real I have infinite chances - this one ‘dress rehearsal’ isn’t my only shot.
The Literal Interpretation
in which it may be that we live in a multiverse that is infinite in both time and space