Dzogchen and the Scenic Imagination
Hello again. Quite a lot has changed recently, so we’re going to go through some updates as well as eventually address some personal remarks (not in this article, although now that that dirty laundry has been aired, I will need to talk about it, formally). I figure I’ll just begin a small series on arguments I may include in my GASC presentation, as I am currently finishing it up.
First, we’ll go through some ideas I’ve had in my head for long time now. This topic has been interesting to me for years, i.e.: initatic schools, mystery schooling, or esoteric training. I have been trying to find a good way to approach it, but have often felt it was too personal a topic. To explain a bit, Mircea Eliade had been one of the pioneers in naming this term called “twilight language”. Twilight language was used to describe these esoteric Tibetan teachings (that we will go into in this article) as well as being used as a more general academic description of esotericism. I believe it was a translation of a Tibetan word that these esotericists had used to describe a way of protecting their sacred teachings from being misused by outsiders; thus having the tradition be ruined and originally meaning be ruined. These words used in “twilight language” (you can think of it as a type of conceptual cypher or secret code) often had many different meanings but the same, fundamental, symbolic content.
This twilight language is the crux of our current article. We will be going in depth in explaining how certain concepts, such as the three Buddha-bodies, have a self-awareness to them that is different in execution to pre-declarative language. In essence, we’ll be looking at what we started explaining in the last article. What we see in declarative culture, or culture in the Axial age, that sacred language starts becoming self-aware that its religious teachings are the foundation of other elements of culture. This process in pre-declarative cultures was an implicit reality but now this language has become something tangible and debatable. This process is related to the way that ritual behaviours continue to be used in spite of the way that the declarative topic disrupts linguistic presence.
Generative anthropology has had the view that most of these myths in declarative culture are, linguistically, describing the originary scene. What this means for what we have described so far, is that the declarative trivializes being present on the scene so it is made possible to think (and is ethical to think) what it means to be present at all. What we will be doing is taking that view and expanding on what generative anthropology has to say of mysticism and how that differs from what its own “originary thinking” is trying to accomplish. I’ll be defending both my own excursions into mysticism (as a form of deritualization) and expanding on why mysticism, or even philosophy, isn’t a “solution” for generative anthropology. Perhaps they accomplish similar goals, but GA still carries with it a unique thesis on the origin of language, and historical theories for pre-declarative cultures. In this case study of Dzogchen buddhism, we will demonstrate some of the common misconceptions that generative anthropology has faced in this underlying goal—its epistemology, and its implications for future scientific experimentation—and how case studies like these can help clear up misunderstandings of that.
The Three Buddha-bodies and the Scenic Imagination
Two things must be explained first: What is scenic imagination and what are the three Buddha-bodies? To explain these, we will draw from two texts representing both: Gans’ The Scenic Imagination, and The Tibetan Book of the Dead.
Gans aptly states,
The point of the term generative anthropology is that the scene of representation generates the meaning and structure that characterize the human. Among the representations that can appear on the scene of representation is that of the generative scene itself. I shall call the faculty that carries out this self-representation of the scene the scenic imagination. (Gans, 2008, pg. 4)
We should also address the difference in the scene of representation and the objects of representation in it. If we are dealing with the possibility of every object to begin with, in the sense that the scene of representation gives the ground for the emergence of representation to begin with, we are also dealing with all of the categories of representation as well,
The success of transcendental representation in deferring human violence explains why we are likely to appeal to it to protect us from nonhuman violence as well. […] The rain dance may not bring rain, but it brings the dancers into closer unity and consequently makes them better able to sustain the drought […] If language, ritual, the sacred, desire, and all other fundamental categories of the human emerged in the same scene, then we can examine each historical manifestation of culture with respect to how it preforms the fundamental operation of this scene: the deferral of violence through representation. (Gans, 2008, pgg. 178-179)
For our second question, here is what is found in chapter two of The Tibetan Book of the Dead, "A Prayer for Union with the Spiritual Teacher, [entitled] Natural Liberation, without Renunciation of the Three Poisons,"1
In the palace of reality’s expanse, pure and pervasive, Is my spiritual teacher, the Buddha-body of Reality — Uncreated and free from conceptual elaboration. […] Without renunciation of ignorance and delusion.
In the palace of great bliss, which is pristine cognition, radiant and pure, Is my spiritual teacher, the Buddha-body of Perfect Resource — Unimpeded and supremely blissful. […] Without renunciation of desire and clinging.
In the palace of the lotus, untainted and pure, Is my spiritual teacher, the Buddha-body of Emanation — Naturally arising in unlimited forms, beyond determination. […] Without renunciation of discordant views and aversion. (Pa et. al., 2006, pgg. 26-27)
Starting here, with the goal espoused by Gans above, on an operational level, we would then, casually, look to the definitions of the Buddha-bodies as given above. The definitions describe both the perfected state that the practitioner should want to consciously attain, as well as the current state the practitioner is in, as exemplified by the phrases, “Without renunciation” (Pa et. al., 2006). If the practice cannot be adopted by everyone reading the text, then there is some minimal violence or disruption of the scene that has to ensue.
To continue, a seminal chapter in the Tibetan Book of the Dead is chapter four, titled “The Introduction to Awareness: Natural Liberation through Naked Perception.” It is thorough and intended to be understood only as most minimally as possible. The contextual introduction states, “This chapter is the essence of the esoteric instruction by which the student is introduced to the ultimate nature of mind,” as well as, “this introduction should be received from an accomplished lineage holder” (Pa et. al., 2006, pg. 37). What this part of the text is attempting to do is provide adequate entry into the necessary esoteric teachings for a new student to hear and obtain as instantaneously as possible—on the merit of nothing but its annunciation. Unlike the other chapters, where rituals and life events are the basis of their teachings, which lead to an inability for some people reading to be excluded by their nature, chapter four hones in on the scenic imagination itself—as well as the complete deferral of all potential violence.
We see this in many of the early introductory paragraphs, this first of which addresses the nonissue of a new practitioner hearing it for the first time,2
EMAHO! Though the single [nature of] mind, which completely pervades both cyclical existence and nirvana, Has been naturally present from the beginning, you have not recognized it. Even though its radiance and awareness have never been interrupted, You have not yet encountered its true face.
The second passage we should look at details the possibility for previous esoteric teaching to have already been learned. It clears up the confusion that if someone has already received appropriate teachings, they need not care about the rhetorical difference between their previous teacher and the current one. This is done through a small exegesis on the quality of all sacred text,
[And even] though there are inestimable volumes of sacred writings, equally vast as the limits of space, Actually, [these teachings can be succinctly expressed in] a few words, which are the introduction to awareness. Here [is] the direct [face to face] introduction To the enlightened intention of the Conquerors. Here is the method for entering [into actual reality], [In this very moment], without reference to past or future [events]. (Pa et. al., 2006, pgg. 38-39)
While we could do the entire rest of the chapter, we will paraphrase and go through the various subsections. They consist of “The Importance of the Introduction to Awareness,” “The Actual Introduction to Awareness,” “Synonyms for Mind,” “The Three Considerations,” “Consequences of the Introduction to Awareness,” “Observations Related to Examining the Nature of Mind,” “Intrinsic Awareness as View, Meditation, Conduct, and Result,” “Synonyms for Awareness,” “The Nature of Appearances,” and “Conclusion.” As mentioned before, these detail a water-proof chapter with the goal of providing every material a student may need for the realization of, what we may now say, is “scenic imagination”. When analyzing the scene from the ground up, we encounter the many difficulties and the potential violence that can arise.
For example, as we have already seen above the Buddha-body of Reality seems to represent the fundamental nature of the esthetic of the deferral violence as it relates to the oscillation between sign and referent of the ostensive; that is to say, the hearer doesn’t concern themselves with the potential ignorance or wrong signing of the ostensive, just the esthetic of its “nature”; for the Buddha-body of Perfect Resource, this is the bliss of the esthetic of fulfilling the gap in linguistic presence left by the imperative; and finally the Buddha-body of Emanation deals with discordant views and states of mind, much like how the declarative deals with the inappropriate use of the imperative, and is the emergence of rhetoric or the topicality of the existence of signs outside linguistic presence.
What we may note is that the difference between religious texts and their deferral of violence to obtain a realization of scenic representation and what generative anthropology espouses is in their goals. For the sacred text there is no need for historical qualification. All that is wanted is made readily available and necessary for the prospective esoteric or religious student, and all that is required is that they simply show up and participate. That they be aware. This is analogous to generative anthropology and the originary hypothesis, where they emulate similar learning curves and goals,
The fundamental task of anthropology is to explain the emergence of this uniquely human realm. Conversely, once we are in a possession of a model of this emergence, that is, of an originary hypothesis, we need have no fear that any phenomenon of human culture will falsify it. (Gans, 2008, pg. 179)
However, since generative anthropology deals with the potential for the emergence of language, and not necessarily the constraints for the awareness of the scene of representation itself, it cannot be a mysticism, fundamentally,
To recognize the newness of transcendence in the evolution of life is to accept its pertinence not merely to religion but to language and all other forms of human culture. What is needed is not an anthropology of religion or the sacred, but an anthropology of the human that offers a model of how defining phenomenon of representation first emerged. In any such model of the human, language and the sacred will be not merely coeval, but identical at their central core. (Gans, 2008, pg. 180)
What this also implies is that all other more secular categories that have arisen for people to teach themselves the nature of the scenic imagination also cannot be what generative anthropology aims at solving.
Ending Remarks
What separates generative anthropology from every other “originary hypothesis” of the origin of reality—or the origin of the scenic imagination itself (the greatest past-time of the declarative human)—is the strength of its hypothesis and, indeed, the historical data. Unlike most other hypothesis, the exact lack of historical data and possibility of proving the exact date and time of the first originary scene is, indeed, the strength of the originary hypothesis. If we could notate a specific historical item, rather than an appeal to a lack of history, then we would likely have seen the declarative be the first linguistic form as well. There would be no reason for this hypothesis in the first place.
What is interesting is that it is only in a culture where linguistic presence can be interrupted with other language that a chapter like the “The Introduction to Awareness,” is required to exist in the first place. While the conditions for the originary scene contain all future elements of language, this does not indicate that fully mature language or its realization must have been there at the beginning. It is parsimonious and it doesn’t explain, heuristically, why we see a difference in cultural artefacts as history progresses and why we even have a notion like pre-history. (Gans, 2008)
However, as I have been making apparent in recent articles, we may look at the topicality of the declarative and how it relates to pre-declarative cultures. If all these pre-declarative cultures have no difference in awareness (this Tibetan school and all other axial age religions appear, curiously, after the emergence of high declarative culture) to both the sacred and the profane, by their nature, then that means we have access to something new in the study of history. We don’t need to speculate on the possibility of the construction of their social norms and mores, we can begin to analyze the archeological data left to us within these cultures. If they had the capability of developing the cultural artefacts we currently leave to ourselves, then they would have. Which may seem fairly tautological, but when we supplement it with theoretical research on the various forms these cultures could have taken, such as ostensive cultures compared to imperative and declarative ones, we can begin to open up new media studies analysis of these artefacts as well as potential migration “reasons” and epistemologies for pre-modern wars. Realistically, it opens up the capability for a cohesive and comprehensive pre-historic politics through linguistic theory.
Citations:
Gans, E. L. (2008). The scenic imagination: Originary thinking from Hobbes to the present day. Stanford University Press.
Pa Karma Gliṅ, Dorje, G., Coleman, G., Jinpa, T., & Lama, D. (2006). The tibetan book of the dead (English title): The great liberation by hearing in the Intermediate States (Tibetan title). Viking.
For formatting I will be replacing sequential lines in the original text, e.g.,
“Line 1
Line 2”
, to now appear with a second space, as in, “Line 1 Line 2”.
The square brackets originally provided are the translator and editors addition to the text.