Introduction
Ancient eastern ideas in general seem mysterious to most modern western people. Ideas such as yin and yang where we talk about there is always a bit of yang within yin and yin within yang seem very wishy washy. Similarly in TCM ideas such as organs are not “just” organs and meridians do not correspond to any known anatomical structures seem very unscientific.
At a more abstract and deeper level, Taoist and Buddhist ideas also seem at best poetic and at worst paradoxical and self contradictory. For example, in the most famous Taoist book the first sentence goes like this: “The truth that can be expressed is not the eternal Truth; The name that can be defined is not the unchanging name.”
And in Heart Sutra, which is one of the most famous Buddhist Sutras, it says "Any noble sons or daughters who wish to practice the perfection of wisdom should see it this way: Form is empty, emptiness is form,.......There is no eye, no mind and also up to no mental awareness.”
Even though these ancient eastern ideas seem confusing, paradoxical and unscientific I believe the opposite is true. These ideas are not only true but they free us from our mistakenly realistic view of the world.
My presentation today is to first show you what realism is. Why is it mistaken and unscientific. Then I hope to show you a scientific interpretation of these ancient eastern ideas and how they correct the problem of realism.
Realism is basically our common sense view of the world. Our common sense tells us that our world consists of independently existing objects that spread out in space and time. Among them there are also individual subjects (such as humans and animals) that can experience objects through their senses. (Show picture of mountain tree and a person and write object next to mountain and tree subject/object next to person)
Even though it seems self evident, realism is in fact not scientific and is the source of many of our deepest scientific, logical and even ethical problems. John Locke, a famous enlightenment thinker, developed a model of how human acquires knowledge basing on realism which we still use today. He thought very simply that objects outside us cause sensation in us and allow us to have knowledge. (add arrow and bubble to picture, add tree/mountain in bubble) However if all we get is sensation from our senses then we never have direct access to the objects of experience in themselves. One question Locke faced, and has never been resolved even in modern time, was how do we know the image in our head reflects the reality that is independent of our mind? (Draw equal sign between bubble and tree/mountain and then question mark)
Rene Descartes, who came after Locke, was interested in searching for an undoubtable scientific foundation of our knowledge. Because Descartes realized the problem of realism is that we can never have access to physical objects independent of us but only our subjective experience of them Descartes then suggested that the only thing that we know is real is our individual subjective experiences (cross out tree mountain and object of person). As a result the undoubtable foundation that Descartes found is summarized in his famous statement “I think therefore I am.”
However, the problem of realism is not limited to the fact that we do not have direct access to objects independent of us but also our own individual subjective nature. What we normally identify ourselves with are in fact just various kinds of sensations and emotions. These sensations and emotions can be seen as various inner objects that we experience (draw happy and sad faces in bubble). But we never experience the individual owner of these inner objects.
Because of this reason many famous thinkers such as George Lichtenberg, Ernst Mach, and Bertrand Russell have pointed out Descartes’ mistake and suggested that following Descartes’ own trend of thought what we have direct access to is only thinking or experiencing but not the “I” that thinks or experiences.
Now, if we cannot have direct access to ourselves or the “I”, which is supposed to be the individual subjective owner of our experiences then we should no longer characterize these experiences as subjective, private, or individual experiences. (cross out subject in subject/object and cross out person)
So we have covered a lot of areas in a short amount of time lets summarize what we did. Science and scientific knowledge is ultimately about statements or claims that can be supported by experience or empirical evidence. Using this standard we discovered that our common sense idea that objects exist independently in space and time cannot be supported by empirical evidence. Furthermore using the same standard we also discovered that our common sense idea that our individual selves are the owner of our experience also cannot be supported by empirical evidence. Because of these reasons our common sense idea of the world and ourselves, or realism, is really not scientific.
Perhaps that we are not the owner of our experience is too radical or too obscure for us to understand. But since this idea is the core of these ancient eastern ideas let us spend sometime to emphasize this point.
The difference between subject of experience and self
To begin lets start with a rough definition of self and subject. The idea of the self roughly speaking is the common sense idea of the individual person or the idea of the ‘I’ as it is used from the first person point of view. On the other hand, the idea of the subject is that which experiences or that which is able to experience. Defined as such these two ideas do not have to be the same thing. And yet in everyday life rarely anyone would doubt that each person is the subject of his own experience.
In fact this belief has been so taken for granted that we use the term subject and self interchangeably. For example we use the term subjective experience to refer to a person’s own private inner experience or we say things like each person is the subject of his own experience. However the idea of the self and the idea of the subject cannot be the same thing.
Distinguishing subject from the self: Dream
One clear example of how the two ideas are different can be found in our dreams. For example, in your dream you could become a teenage girl in Spain instead of your everyday self which is a TCM student in Oakland. And throughout the course of your dream this spanish girl which IS the self in the dream would think that she is the person who is experiencing everything that is happening in her life, such as dancing in a nightclub in Madrid and falling in love with her boyfriend. In other words she would think of herself as the subject of her experience. However when you wake up you would realize how wrong this belief was. Not only would you realize the spanish girl was not the subject of her own experience, she was actually an object of your experience like all other objects in the dream such as her boyfriend, other minor characters, and the inanimate objects such as the city she lives in and the nightclub that she visited. The subject of the dream or that which was experiencing was not the spanish teenage girl, nor anyone else in the dream but someone outside the dream all together.
We can make two general observations from this dream scenario. First, the idea of the self and the idea of the subject do not have to be the same thing. And second, the belief that the self or ‘I’ is the owner of experience, as certain as it often seems to be, could be wrong or illusory.
Distinguishing subject from the self: Shurangama Sutra
Not only in our dreams but in our awakened state the idea of the self and the experiencing subject do not have to be the same. As recorded in an influential Buddhist script Shurangama sutra Buddha has tried to explained this exact point to his student Ananda.
Buddha was having a conversation with Ananda about how to better control his mind. Buddha told Ananda that in order to better control his mind he needed to first know where his mind was. Buddha described the mind as that which is capable of experiencing the physical world as well as various inner emotions such as anger, happiness and lust(which is the same as our definition of the subject). Buddha then asked Ananda where Ananda’s own mind was. Ananda answered this question seven times but all of his seven answers was refuted by Buddha. Let me summarize two of them here.
Ananda’s first answer was that his mind is inside his body and his eyes are like windows enabling his mind to be connected to the outside world. Buddha and Ananda were both sitting in a lecture room at the time, just like us right now. Buddha then asked Ananda if it is possible for a person sitting inside the room to see things that are outside the window without first seeing the things inside the room or the room itself from within? If the person inside the room must be able to see things inside the room first or the room itself from within before the person sees things that are outside the room then Ananda’s idea that the mind is inside the body is problematic because the mind cannot see or experience the internal organs of the body nor the body cavities from within.
Ananda’s second answer was that the mind is located at the nerve endings. Using eyes as an example mind would be located at the nerve endings right behind the eyes. Buddha’s critique was that if the mind is indeed located right behind the eyes then it should be able to see the eyes first just like people who see things with glasses in front of them should be able to also see the glasses first.
What this story shows is that even in our awakened state the idea that the subject is located somewhere in the physical body can be put to serious doubt. And if the subject is not located somewhere in the body there might not be a good reason to identify subject with the self. Now that we have shown that subject and the self are two different concepts it should be easier to understand why the idea of the individual self just like the idea of the independently existing objects are not based on empirical evidence and hence not scientific.
Back to our drawing, if neither independently existing objects nor individual selves exist then what is left of our drawing? As you can see it is experience itself. The next question is if this is all we have left how do we characterize this experience as a whole and the various elements within it?
Experience is the most familiar thing to us and yet it is indescribable and even unreferrable. To begin since we cannot say experience is a result of independent objects or individual subjects we cannot characterize it as either objective or subjective. Furthermore since experience includes everything that we experience it is all inclusive. Because it is all inclusive experience cannot be described as being certain things or having certain qualities. This is because to describe something we need to not only know what it is but also what it is not. If something is hard it is not soft if it it is white it is not black if it is located in point A it is not located in point B.
Since experience is all inclusive it contains both soft and hard, white and black, point A and point B. However to contain both qualities also means experience is neither just soft nor just hard, neither just white nor just black located at neither just point A nor just point B. As a result there is no set of qualities that is adequate to describe experience.
Even if we try to describe experience as all inclusive we need to remember that this description is still inadequate because even our very act of describing experience is also part of experience. This makes experience not only indescribable but also unreferrable. This is because when we refer to something we assume we are different from that thing that we refer. For example when we say “that is a tree” we assume we are different from the tree. But when we refer to experience our very action and ourselves are part of experience.
Even though this experience is itself indescribable and unreferrable it can serve as a scientific basis for defining or describing the sub-elements within experience. For example we can think of objects as the content of this experience and subject as the awareness of the content or similarly that which experiences the content. The advantage of thinking object and subject this way is that we only use these concepts to mark certain aspects of this all inclusive and inseparable experience. We are not making any unscientific commitments as to the real and separate existence of either concept beyond experience itself. We are not saying there are actually objects that exist beyond experience nor are we claiming the subject is the “I” or some entity but only that these two concepts together represent two correlative aspects of experience itself.
Let us go back to the beginning. If we understand the Taoist saying “The truth that can be expressed is not the eternal Truth; The name that can be defined is not the unchanging name.” as describing the all inclusive, indescribable and even unreferrable experience then it is very scientifically accurate.
Furthermore the Buddhist idea that the individual self does not exist also makes sense. Since that which is able to experience is not the individual self but subject of experience. Even the Buddhist ideas that all objects are empty makes perfect sense if we interpret empty as being having no individual and independent existence outside of experience.
And finally the TCM ideas that there is no pure yin and pure yang, and organs are never just organs, and meridians are not just some anatomical structure are simply different ways of saying that objects of experience are never independently existing objects that are totally disconnected and categorically different from other objects and subject in experience. The apparent separations between all objects and between object and subject are only conceptual; these separations are not physical nor empirical and hence not real.
