Turtles All the Way Down
Reading Wendell Berry is always inspiring, and there are some points in his essay “Two Minds” that have bearing on the subject of faith. Faith in Buddhism (saddhā) is a layered subject, to say the least. I guess faith in anything is layered to the extent that thing is layered. So to say the most, saddhā is layered to the same extent Buddhist cosmology is layered. I mean, this all has to do with worldview, and the deeper we get into Buddhism and faith and saddhā and worldview, the more I want to use the phrase ‘turtles all the way down’, and I think that is actually what we’re talking about here when we talk about saddhā and how it changes the kind and amount of effort we apply in both our practice and in our lives, between which there are actually no boundaries. The state of our saddhā changes according to how we arrange the turtles ~ and we do arrange them, either consciously or unconsciously. buddhist-cosmology cosmology
We are talking about turtles when we talk about worldview because, as Berry says, all ‘human orders are 🎯 fictions’, and he doesn’t mention cosmology but he could. Cosmology is written, not discovered ~ it is the study of the cosmos, not the cosmos itself. Buddha discovered the dhamma, which included direct experience of the cosmos we can otherwise only speculate about until our own direct experience ~ what he said about the realities of the cosmos he discovered are written, in the sense that they were expressions about the cosmos, not the cosmos itself … any interpretations of what he said, thereafter, are fictions in the sense that any description of reality is necessarily not reality itself … they are a finger pointing at the moon. If cosmology is not written, but discovered, then all descriptions of the cosmos would be the same, which they are, flagrantly, not. Sheldrake says the once-eternal laws of nature are written, in the sense they are evolving ~ they are written by every action (whether mental, verbal, or physical) that becomes habitual in the cosmos and travels between individuals within the collective memory of species. The laws of nature are not fixed, and the human imagination influences, according to the Observer Effect, what we perceive and what we perceive to be real. So cosmology is written and fluid, not discovered as fixed or unchanging, which is further supported by Buddha’s description of impermanence.
Because cosmological descriptions are written, they are necessarily incomplete, and Berry says that ‘because they necessarily are incomplete’, they ‘labour under an obligation to be continuously revised’. How can we have saddhā in something ever-shifting? By moving our faith into the place internally that follows the story as it evolves, never finished but changing slowly enough that we can act with conviction before it changes underneath us. That place is our own discernment, and we place our faith by discerning the parts/pieces that don’t change: the Three Marks? the Four Truths? I guess this is where we move into metaphysics, if we weren’t there already. If metaphysics is the search for and study of unchanging first principles, and cosmology is always being written, not comprised of unchanging first principles, then cosmological descriptions themselves are not where we need to place our attention. Is there a place internally that is unchanging? Buddha says there isn’t. What he does say is that we can train the mind to see the ever-shifting nature of reality clearly, correctly. Seeing this liberates us from the suffering of constantly trying to find something unchanging when there isn’t any. Until one finds something that is unchanging, the best they can do is take a description that seems to make sense, and hold that with light but firm conviction + wisdom until direct experience confirms (or denies) the true nature of reality as described the instructor we have chosen to trust. It might be that wisdom itself is unchanging ~ by directing our attention skilfully, with yoniso manasikara, we take faith in our capacity to know what we need to know to do what needs to be done. This knowing (experienced by wisdom) also evolves, and so the cosmos evolves in wisdom along with us.
That’s a lot, but the point is we place our attention with unwavering effort on the origin of experience (by practising yoniso-manasikara), and this leads to insight about the true nature of ever-shifting reality, which leads to liberation from suffering. The effort is what is unchanging, which relates to Buddha’s instruction that constant mindfulness leads necessarily to awakening.