“Anatta” is not about denying a “self”, because a self can be defined in a myriad of different ways (as body, as mind, as “soul”, as “spirit”, etc.), and some of these ways have no direct relevance to one’s spiritual practice. What does have relevance is the insight into what one directly experiences, and that would fall into the realm of form (or matter, including physical matter and well as spiritual, or subtle, forms of matter) and mind. (Nirvana can also be experienced, or realized, but that’s another issue.)

The preamble to Shankara’s chief work Brahma Sutra Bhasya is aporetic in form. How can it be that the inert object comes to be within me the conscious subject as it actually is? How does it travel from out there and remain as it is? Unity (connaturality) is the answer. The ‘vritti’ or mental modification is related to the object because the object is an ‘upadhi’ or limiting form of pure consciousness. Perception is underwritten by a unity of being. The technical term for this is ‘adhyasa’ or superimposition , the object is as it were placed in the mind of the subject or in another image the mind goes out to the object and takes its form. Now even though the veridical is taken as the default position, illusion, confusion and delusion occur. Enter the rope/snake analogy which in its own way is the worst sort of snare and delusion in that it tends to end up as a parallel or homology. Here the greater understanding in the TE tradition of how analogies work would be exceptionally useful to the traditional interpreters of the superimposition theory did they but know of it.

And all this comes from the original pulse of Realism which is the theoretical precipitate of the experience in dhyana (meditation) of connaturality. So there should be parallels.

Thanks for the interesting points. I must demur, however, here and there. I assume you are playing a kind of advocatio diaboli, so…

Merely because something has a natural, ‘pragmatic’ origin in time does not mean it has a purely natural, evolutionary basis in reality. Consider geometry: it was discovered in root form by the Egyptians in order for them to harness and thrive from the Nile, as an evolutionary pressure. That does not, however, mean geometry is nothing greater in reality than primitive hydrodynamics (hat tip to M. Eliade). Moreover (now drawing on K. Popper), a complex reality need not “show up” all at once. Mathematics has developed from basic axioms, which are as true today as they were back when; their timeless origin nonetheless allows for historical progress. Indeed, precisely because mathematics exists as a subsistent reality independent of us, we can therefore delve into over time.

As for your second, closing point, that religion suddenly “pops up”, it sounds reminiscent of Chesterton in The Everlasting Man (Cave section) or Lewis in Mere Xnity. There is indeed a seemingly analogous infusion of divine consciousness in human history as there is in human ontogeny.

Best,

I am not formally educated in either metaphysics or eastern wisdom, so forgive my inevitable errors.

It seems to me that the Buddhist concept of emptiness, and the accompanying insights (‘form is emptiness’ for example) can be characterised as informal expressions of the same truth pursued formally by Aquinas.

In light of Thomist Metaphysics (or my reading of the subject?) the absence of an independent ’self’ within all things may be equivalent to the recognition that all created beings are ‘contingent’, ie. depend for their existence upon a separate act of existence.

Likewise, I wonder if the realisation that ‘form is emptiness’ is an expression of the mutual interdependence of substantial form and first matter within material substances? ie. without substantial form, first matter has no characteristics. And without first matter, substantial form is immaterial. Given (and of this I am uncertain) the underlying East Asian metaphysics of objects being conceived as forms out of emptiness, it might follow that the equivalence of form and emptiness is indeed a recognition of hylomorphism in material beings.

So, what if the experience of the various great Buddhists in east asian history is better characterised as the transformative effect of an unprecedented insight into the metaphysics of creation? And what then, if the end of such insight is a positive recognition of the self-existent one?

I may be drawing a very long bow, but it makes so much sense to me. I find the characterisations of all buddhism as nihilist or suicidal unsatisfying. And many of the modern western interpretations of it seem – as you mention in comments – more the last resort of a postmodern attitude than a deep and positive pursuit of the truth.

Well, these are some of my thoughts, and I’m grateful to have a place to share them, if this is the right place after all.