The Religion of Tomorrow: A Vision for the Future of the Great Traditions-More Inclusive, More Comprehensive, More Complete: Wilber, Ken: 9781611803006: Amazon.com: Books (original) (raw)

The Religion of Tomorrow

By Ken Wilber

Shambhala Publications, Inc.

Introduction, 1,
Part One: A Fourth Turning of the Dharma,
1. What Is a Fourth Turning?, 19,
2. What Does a Fourth Turning Involve?, 36,
Part Two: States and Structures of Consciousness,
3. The Fundamental States of Consciousness, 81,
4. The Gross and Subtle States of Consciousness, 124,
5. The Causal, Empty Witness, and Nondual,
6. The Hidden Structures of Consciousness, 180,
7. The Structure-Stages of Development, 197,
Part Three: Dysfunctional Shadow Elements in Development,
8. Shadow Work, 253,
9. Dysfunctions of the 1st-Tier Structure-Views, 273,
10. Dysfunctions of the 2nd-Tier Structure-Views, 329,
11. Dysfunctions of the 3rd-Tier Structure-Views, 352,
12. Dysfunctions of the Gross and Subtle States, 413,
13. Dysfunctions of the Causal, Empty Witness, and Suchness States, 448,
Part Four: Elements of an Integral Spirituality,
14. Structures and States, 493,
15. Shadow Work, Quadrants, and Developmental Lines, 534,
16. Miscellaneous Elements, 580,
17. Integral Semiotics and a New God-Talk, 626,
Conclusion: The Evolution of Nonduality, 653,
Notes, 665,
Bibliography, 773,
Index, 778,
CHAPTER 1

What Is a Fourth Turning?

Buddhism is a unique spiritual system in many ways, while also sharing some fundamental similarities with the other Great Wisdom Traditions of humankind. But perhaps one its most unique features is its understanding, in some schools, that its own system is evolving or developing. This is generally expressed in the notion of the Three Great Turnings of Buddhism, the three major stages of unfolding that Buddhism has undergone, according to Buddhism itself. The First Turning of the Wheel is Early Buddhism, now generally believed to be represented by the Theravada school and thought to contain the historical Gautama Buddha's original teachings, which developed in the great Axial period around the sixth century BCE. The Second Turning of the Wheel, represented by the Madhyamaka school, was founded by the genius philosopher-sage Nagarjuna around the second century CE. The Third and final (to date) Great Turning of the Wheel, represented by the Yogachara school, originated in the second century CE but had its period of greatest productivity in the fourth century CE with the brothers Asanga and Vasubandhu. All Three Turnings had profound impacts on every school of Buddhism that came after them.

The Madhyamaka school, although critical of Early Buddhism in many ways, nonetheless transcends and includes many of its foundational teachings, while criticizing those notions it finds partial, limited, or incomplete. And many Yogachara schools attempted to integrate and synthesize all Three Turnings. This was an ongoing, cumulative, synthesizing unfolding, as if Buddhism was plugged into the great evolution of Spirit itself.

In other words, many adherents of Buddhism had a view that Buddhism itself was unfolding, with each new turning adding something new and important to the overall Buddhist teaching itself. My point can now be put simply: many contemporary Buddhist teachers, agreeing with psychologists and sociologists that the world itself, at least in several important ways, is undergoing a global transformation, believe that this transformation will affect also Buddhism, adding to it yet newer and more significant truths, and resulting in yet another unfolding, a Fourth Great Turning, of Buddhism itself. (Some people view the rise of Tantric Buddhism, or occasionally Vajrayana Buddhism, as a Fourth Turning, and from that perspective, we are speaking of a possible Fifth Turning. But generally we will remain with the more common Three Turnings and take it from there.) This Fourth Turning retains all the previous great truths of Buddhism but also adds newer findings from fields as diverse as evolutionary biology and developmental psychology — but only to the extent that they are in fundamental agreement with the foundational tenets of Buddhism itself, simply extending them to some degree, as it were. Known by various names — from evolutionary Buddhism to Integral Buddhism — the Fourth Turning, like all the previous turnings, transcends yet includes its predecessors, adding new material while retaining all the essentials. And what is so remarkable about this development is that it is completely in keeping with this general understanding of itself that Buddhism has grasped — namely, that Buddhadharma ("Buddhist Truth") is itself unfolding, growing, and evolving, responding to new circumstances and discoveries as it does so. Even the Dalai Lama has said, for example, that Buddhism must keep pace with modern science or it will grow old and obsolete.

A brief glance at Buddhist history will show what is involved. Original Buddhism was founded on such notions as the difference between samsara (the source of suffering) and nirvana (the source of Enlightenment or Awakening); the three marks of samsaric existence; that is dukkha (suffering), anicca (impermanence), and anatta (no-self); and the Four Noble Truths: (1) life as lived in samsara is suffering, (2) the cause of this suffering is craving or grasping, (3) to end craving or grasping is to end suffering, and (4) there is a way to end grasping, namely, the eightfold way — right view, right intention, right speech, right actions, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right unitive awareness.

The ultimate goal of Early Buddhism was to escape samsara — the manifest realm of life, death, rebirth, old age, suffering, and sickness — entirely, by following the eightfold way and attaining nirvana. "Nirvana" means, essentially, formless extinction. The prefix "nir-" means "without," and "vana" means everything from desire to grasping to lust to craving itself. The overall meaning is "blown out" or "extinguished" — as if a lit candle were handed to you, and you leaned over and blew out the flame. What is extinguished or "blown out"? All the typical marks of samsara itself — including suffering, the angst that comes from craving for permanence, the separate-self sense, or self-contraction (often called "ego"), and its inherent fear, anxiety, and depression. The state of nirvana is sometimes said to be a state similar to deep dreamless sleep, in which, of course, there is no ego, no suffering, no hankering for permanence, no space, no time, no separation — if anything, there is simply the boundless peace or vast equanimity of being liberated from the torture of samsara and its suffering-inducing ways. According to some schools, there is even an end limit, or "extreme" form of nirvana, called nirodh — complete cessation — where neither consciousness nor objects arise at all, and that might be thought of as an infinite formlessness of pure freedom. Be that as it may, the goal is clear: get out of samsara and into nirvana.

According to Buddhist history, Gautama Siddhartha ("Buddha" is not a name but a title, and means "Awakened," and was added to his name after his Enlightenment) was raised as a prince, with all the princely affluence of palace life, and with a father who protected him closely, so that he wouldn't be exposed to the typical horrors of everyday life in India at that time. But then one day, Gautama escaped from the palace walls and, in wandering around the surrounding city, saw three sights that severely disturbed him — a very sick person, an old and decrepit person, and a dead person. "These are something my palatial life cannot protect me from," he thought, and he promptly left the palace and began a six-year search, studying under various holy men, looking for an answer to life's problems that he had witnessed wandering in his city. But after six years, nothing proved satisfactory, and, exhausted and frustrated, he sat down under the Bodhi tree and vowed not to arise until he had discovered the answer.

Early one morning, glancing at the starry heavens, Gautama had a profound experience. "Aha! I've found you! Never again will I be deceived!" he exclaimed, as much with utter joy as complete exhaustion. What did he find? Whatever it was, it converted him from "ignorance" to "Enlightenment." Different responses as to what he saw and understood have been given by various schools, all of them believable. One was the "twelvefold chain of dependent origination," a profound understanding of the completely interwoven nature of all reality and the inexorable role of causality in tying them all together — all of which conspire to inevitably cause suffering when driven by grasping. Another was the three marks of existence itself (impermanence, suffering, and selflessness) and the eightfold way to end their hold on the human being. According to Zen, Gautama had a profound satori, a deep awakening experience, awakening to his own true Buddha-nature and his fundamental oneness with the entire Ground of Being (or Dharmakaya), ending his separate-self sense, and with it, suffering. Whatever exactly it was, it did indeed soon become formalized in the three marks of existence, the twelvefold chain, and the eightfold way. Gautama Siddhartha had sat down under the Bodhi tree an ordinary individual and got up from it an Enlightened or Awakened being, a Buddha. When Buddha was asked if he was a God or supernatural being, he replied, "No." "What was he?" "Awakened," is all that he replied.

Such was the basic form of Buddhism as practiced for almost eight hundred years — until, that is, Nagarjuna, who began paying attention to this strange duality between samsara and nirvana. For Nagarjuna, this duality tore Reality in half and didn't produce liberation but subtle illusion. For him, there is no ontological difference between samsara and nirvana. The difference is merely epistemological. That is, Reality looked at through concepts and categories appears as samsara, while the very same Reality looked at free of concepts and categories is nirvana. Samsara and nirvana are thus not-two, or "nondual." And this caused a major revolution in Buddhist thought and practice.

Gautama Buddha had discovered the "emptiness," or ultimately illusory nature of, the separate-self sense; but he had not discovered the emptiness — the shunyata — of all of what is usually called "reality" (including not only all subjects, or selves, but all objects, or "dharmas"). Buddhism had just taken its second major Turn in its illustrious history, adding a novel and profound element to its already accepted discoveries.

Nagarjuna relies on the "Two Truths" doctrine — there is relative, or conventional, truth, and there is absolute, or ultimate Truth. Relative truth can be categorized and characterized, and is the basis of disciplines such as science, history, law, and so on. That a molecule of water consists of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom is a relative truth, for example. But ultimate Truth cannot be categorized at all (including that statement). Any category or quality or characteristic makes sense only in terms of its opposite, but ultimate Reality has no opposite. Based on what is known as the "Four Inexpressibles," you can't, according to Nagarjuna, say that ultimate Reality is Being, or not-Being, or both, or neither. You cannot say it is Self (atman), or noself (anatman or anatta), or both, or neither. You can't say it's implicate, or explicate, or both, or neither. You can't say that it's immanent in Gaia, or that it transcends Gaia, or both, or neither. You can't say it's a timeless Now, or a temporal everlastingness, or both, or neither. And so on for any category or quality. The reason is, as we were saying, that any concept you come up with makes sense only in terms of its opposite (liberated versus bound, infinite versus finite, something versus nothing, implicate versus explicate, pleasure versus pain, free versus limited, temporal versus timeless, good versus evil, true versus false, and so on), yet ultimate Reality has no opposite. As the Upanishads put it, "Brahman [ultimate Reality] is one without a second" and "free of the pairs"— the pairs of opposites, that is — and thus can't be categorized at all (including that statement, which would also be formally denied). Nagarjuna says, "It is neither void, nor not void, nor both, nor neither, but in order to point it out, it is called the Void." The Void, shunyata, or Emptiness. It's a radical "neti, neti" — "not this, not that" — except "neti, neti" is also denied as a characteristic.

Now what this does mean is that Emptiness, or ultimate Reality, is not separate from anything that is arising. (Technically, even that statement would be denied; but we are now talking metaphorically to get across the general gist of Emptiness — because the main point is that although it cannot be said, it can be shown, or directly realized. More on this as we continue.) Not being separate from anything ("not having a second"), it is the Emptiness of everything that is arising. Emptiness isn't a realm separate from other realms, it is the Emptiness, or Transparency, of all realms. Looked at free from conceptualization or categorization, everything that is arising is Emptiness, or Emptiness is the Reality of each and every thing in the manifest and unmanifest world — it is their very Suchness, their Thusness, their Isness. Looked at through concepts and categories, the universe appears as samsara — as built of radically separate and isolated things and events — and grasping after those things and attachment to them causes suffering because, ultimately, everything eventually falls apart, and thus whatever you're attached to will sooner or later cause suffering as it falls apart. But looked at with prajna (or jnana) — nonconceptual choiceless awareness — the world of samsara is actually self-liberated nirvana. (In the word jnana, the root "jna," by the way, in English is "kno," as in "knowledge," or "gno," as in "gnosis.") Jnana is a nondual, unqualifiable knowledge or timeless Present awareness, the realization of which brings Enlightenment or Awakening. Awakening to what? The radical Freedom or infinite Liberation or radical Luminosity-Love of pure Emptiness, though those terms, again, are at best metaphors.

Since there is no radical separation between samsara and nirvana (samsara and nirvana being "not-two," or as the Heart Sutra summarizes nonduality, "That which is Emptiness is not other than Form; that which is Form is not other than Emptiness"), liberating Emptiness can be found anywhere in the world of Form — any and all Form is one with Emptiness. It is not a particular state of mind or state of consciousness but the very fabric or "isness" of consciousness itself.

A commonly used metaphor to explain the relationship of Emptiness to Form is the ocean and its waves. Typical, limited, bounded states of consciousness — from looking at a mountain, to experiencing happiness, to feeling fear, to watching a bird in flight, to listening to Mozart's music — are all partial states and thus separate from each other; they all have a beginning (or are "born"), and they all have an ending (or "die"). They are like the individual waves in the ocean; each starts, has a certain size (from "small," to "medium," to "huge"), and eventually ends, and, of course, they are all different from each other.

But Emptiness — the Reality of each moment, its sheer transparent being, its simple "Suchness" or "Thusness" or "Isness" — is like the wetness of the ocean. And no wave is wetter than another. One wave can certainly be bigger than another, but it is not wetter. All waves are equally wet; all waves are equally Emptiness, or equally Spirit, or equally Godhead or Brahman or Tao. And that means that the very nature of this and every moment, just as it is, is pure Spirit — Spirit is not hard to reach but is impossible to avoid! And one wave can last longer than another wave, but it is still not wetter; it has no more Suchness or Thusness than the smallest wave in the entire ocean. And that means that whatever state of mind you have, right here, right now, is equally Enlightened; you can no more attain Enlightenment than you can attain your feet (or a wave can become wet). Enlightenment, and the "Big Mind/Big Heart" that reveals it, is absolutely ever-present Presence; all you have to do is recognize it (about which, more later).

But this being so, one no longer has to retreat to a monastery — away from the world, away from Form, away from samsara — in order to find Liberation. Samsara and nirvana have been joined, united, brought together into a single or nondual Reality. The goal is no longer to become the isolated saint or arhat — looking to get off of samsara entirely — but the socially and environmentally engaged "bodhisattva"— which literally means "being of Enlightened mind"— whose vow is not to get off samsara and retreat into an isolated nirvana, but a promise to fully embrace samsara and vow to gain Enlightenment as quickly as possible so as to help all sentient beings recognize their own deepest spiritual reality or Buddha-nature, and hence Enlightenment.

In one sweep, the two halves of the universe, so to speak — samsara and nirvana, Form and Emptiness — were joined into one, whole, seamless (not featureless) Reality, and Buddhist practitioners were set free to embrace the entire manifest realm of samsara and Form, not to avoid it. The vow of the bodhisattva likewise became paradoxical, reflecting both members of the pairs of opposites, not just one: no longer "There are no others to save (because samsara is illusory)," which is the arhat's chant, but "There are no others to save, therefore I vow to save them all!"— which reflects the truth of a samsara and nirvana paradoxically joined, no longer torn in two.

(Continues...)Excerpted from The Religion of Tomorrow by Ken Wilber. Copyright © 2017 Ken Wilber. Excerpted by permission of Shambhala Publications, Inc..
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The Religion of Tomorrow: A Vision for the Future of the Great Traditions-More Inclusive, More Comprehensive, More Complete: Wilber, Ken: 9781611803006: Amazon.com: Books (original) (raw)

The Religion of Tomorrow

Shambhala Publications, Inc.

Contents