Theos-Talk Archives (May 2003 Message tt00122)

The following from D.T. Suzuki's "Studies in Zen" 
might be seen (by some?) as offering an interesting 
perspective:

<< It is the philosopher's business to deal with dry, 
lifeless, uninteresting generalizations. Buddhists are 
not concerned with things like that. They want to see 
the fact directly, and not through the medium of 
philosophical abstractions. There may be a god who 
created heaven and earth, or there may not; we might 
be saved by simply believing in his goodness, or we 
might not; the destination of evil-doers may be hell 
and that of good men paradise, or, this may be 
reversed. True Buddhists do not trouble themselves 
with such propositions as these. Let them well alone; 
Buddhists are not so idle and superficial as to waste 
their time in pondering over the questions which have 
no vital concern with our religious life. Buddhists 
through dhyana endeavour to reach the bottom of 
things, and there to grasp with their own hands the 
very life of the universe, which makes the sun rise in 
the morning, makes the bird cheerfully sing in the 
balmy spring breeze, and also makes the biped called 
man hunger for love, righteousness, liberty, truth and 
goodness. In dhyana, therefore, there is nothing 
abstract, nothing dry as a bone and cold as a corpse, 
but all animation, all activity and eternal revelation.
"Some Hindu philosophers, however, seem to have 
considered hallucinations and self-suggested states of 
mind as real, and the attainment of them as the aim of 
dhyana practice. Their conception of the eightfold 
dhyana-heaven in which all sorts of angels are living is 
evidence of it. When the mythical beings in those 
regions practise dhyana, they enter into different stages 
of samadhi. They (1) come to think that they are lifted 
up in the air like a cloud; (2) they feel the presence of 
some indescribable luminosity; (3) they experience a 
supernatural joy; (4) their minds become so clarified 
and transparent as to reflect all the worlds like a very 
brilliant mirror; (5) they feel as if the soul has escaped 
bodily confinement and expanded itself to the 
immensity of space; (6) they now come back to a 
definite state of consciousness, in which all mental 
functions are presented, and the past and present and 
future reveal themselves; (7) they then have the feeling 
of absolute nothingness, in which not a ripple of 
mentation stirs; (8) lastly, they are not conscious of 
anything particular, nor have they lost consciousness, 
and here they are said to have reached the highest 
stage ofsamadhi. "But, according to Buddhism, all 
these visionary phenomena as the outcome of dhyana 
are rejected, for they have nothing to do with the 
realization of the religious life. In the Surangama Sutra 
fifty abnormal conditions of consciousness are 
mentioned against which the practiser of dhyana has 
to guard himself, and among them we find those 
psychical aberrations mentioned above.">>>>>>
=========== snip

Spculatively,
Mauri