19 December 2025
Brief Notes on Various Topics – 81
1. Buddhism, Platonism, and the Gods
“Amelius was fond of sacrifices and used to busy himself with rites of the new moon, and to go around to festivals. He once tried to get Plotinus to participate with him, but Plotinus said: ‘They must come to me, not I to them.’ We did not know what consideration let him to make such a grand pronouncement, and did not have the nerve to ask him.”
(Porphyry, On the Life of Plotinus and the Order of His Books, found in Plotinus: The Enneads, translated by a team headed by Lloyd P. Gerson, Cambridge University Press, 2025, page 27, paragraph 10, ISBN: 9781009602970)
1.1 The relationship between Plotinus and the Gods has been a matter of discussion and confusion even during the lifetime of Plotinus as the above quote indicates. What I want to suggest is that the Buddha’s relationship to deities can illuminate, to an extent, what that attitude was, what the relationship was.
1.2 By making this suggestion I am not making the claim that Buddhism and Platonism, as found in the Enneads are ‘the same.’ But I am suggesting that an inquiry into the Buddha’s relationship to the Gods might shed some light on what relationship Plotinus had to the Gods. What I am suggesting is that both of these teachers had views about the Gods that overlap to an extent, and that this overlap is helpful in unpacking the quote above.
1.3 I am going to be using the Theravada Scriptures as the source for this comparison. I do this because I think the Theravada Scriptures are more clear about this relationship than what is found in other developments of Buddhism such as Mahayana and Vajrayana. I’m not saying that these teachings are not found in these other developments, but they are not as prominently presented or, in my opinion, as clearly presented.
1.4 The Theravada Scriptures are in a language known as Pali, which is closely related to Sanskrit. These Scriptures come in a number of collections. One of the collections is called the ‘Samyutta Nikaya’ which is often translated as the ‘Connected Discourses.’ This is a very large collection consisting of groups of discourses that often share a topic, or have a focus on a person of note. (As an aside, I have read two translations of the Samyutta Nikaya and I enjoyed these usually brief discourses. Unlike longer discourses, these discourses tend to make their point in a straightforward way, yet they often leave a lasting impression as to their significance.)
In some of the collections found in the Connected Discourses the Buddha is found teaching various types of Deities, Gods, Goddesses, Nature Spirits, and so forth. For example, in the first collection, SN1, the Buddha speaks to Devas. In the second collection the Buddha speaks to Sons of Devas. In the sixth collection the Buddha teaches Brahmas, a higher type of deity. In the eleventh collection the Buddha speaks with and teaches Sakka/Indra, a name for one of the highest ranking Hindu Deities. And there is also a collection of discourses between the Buddha and Mara. And a discourse where the Buddha teaches the Sun and Moon, who take refuge with the Buddha. (As an aside, there are other discourses where the Buddha speaks to Deities found in other collections, but I want to keep this post simple.)
Some of these discourses teach the deity the Buddha is talking to about impermanence, one of the central teachings of the Buddha. Like all living beings, deities have difficulty comprehending impermanence and this incomprehension is aggravated by the long lives that deities live.
The overall impression a reader receives from these discourses is that the deities are the Buddha’s students in a classical teacher/student relationship. And this implies that the Buddha’s understanding is deeper, and more profound, than what deities have access to, or in comparison to what the deities have acquired.
1.5 I would like to offer that what Plotinus was telling his students was that he, Plotinus, had a similar relationship to the Gods as did the Buddha; I mean that what Plotinus would be able to teach the Gods was deeper, and more profound, than what the Gods understood.
This is, no doubt, a controversial claim. But I think it explains why Plotinus would say that the gods should come to see him, Plotinus, rather than Plotinus go to see the Gods. This is because it is not the Gods who comprehend transcendence; it is Plotinus who comprehends transcendence and it is such transcendence that Plotinus offers them.
1.6 Buddhism is not the only Indian Dharma tradition that contains such teachings. In the Jain tradition there are Sutras where the Jain teacher Mahavira (a contemporary of the Buddha) similarly teaches deities about the way to spiritual liberation.
1.7 It is more difficult in Platonism to argue that, for example, Plato held a similar relationship to the Gods that the Buddha and Mahavira have in their traditions’ relevant scriptures. For example, I am not aware of a Platonic Dialogue where the main character, or a presumed stand in for Plato, speaks directly to the Gods about their shortcomings, or takes the time to explain to the Gods about impermanence or becoming and begoning.
Nevertheless, I think this episode between Plotinus and his students, contains a profound meaning and points to a reformulation of the status of the Gods.
2. An Overview of the Hypostases
The ineffable transcendental, the Good and the One, is fully unified, without differentiation and without becoming and begoning. The noetic is unified but differentiated and without becoming and begoning. The material world, the world that is under the reign of time, is differentiated and contains becoming and begoning.
3. Ennead V.3
One of my favorite Enneads is V.3, ‘On the Knowing Hypostases and on That Which Is Transcendent.’ The Ennead builds to the climax of the last line which in Greek is ‘aphele panta.’ I think it is helpful to compare translations of this short sentence:
Guthrie: By cutting off everything.
The Guthrie translation links the previous sentence to the last sentence by using a preposition. The closing line is a response to the question of how to ascend to the fully transcendental and Guthrie emphasizes the responsive nature of the last sentence by adding the preposition. The other three translations translate the last sentence as it is, without the additional preposition because the linkage to the previous sentence is clear without the addition. But I understand what Guthrie was trying to accomplish.
The Gerson et al translation relies, I think, on a technical, rather than commonly shared, reading of the word ‘abstract’ (note that the word ‘abstract’ is used as a verb here). When abstract is used as a noun, we tend to interpret the usage as indicating that something is intellectually challenging. For example, we might say that a book is abstract because it lacks concrete examples of what it is talking about. Another usage of abstract as a noun is that of a summary of a paper placed at the beginning of the paper or article. In this case abstract means highlighting the basic structure of what is going to be presented in full in the paper.
As a verb to abstract almost always indicates mental or intellectual analysis. For example we might be searching for the common characteristic of a certain type of thing and we accomplish this by abstracting, or removing, the common characterisitics of a class or type of thing in our search for what they all have in common.
I don’t think that is what Plotinus had in mind. I understand this sentence to be a reference to a broad range of Platonic procedures such as turning away from material things. This is accomplished through the adoption of various asceses. This is the first ‘taking away’ that Plotinus is referring to. It is this turning away from, or taking away (in the sense of taking away our tendency to act on our desires) that constitutes the first steps on the path of Philosophy.
But this procedure is also the primary procedure used throughout the spiritual journey of Platonic Philosophy. In the context of this Ennead, Plotinus is indicating that we also need to turn away from, or take away, our fascination with, and attachment to, noetic realities. This is because the Good and the One are beyond being, prior to any manifestation, even noetic manifestations.
In a sense, there is only one technique in Platonist spirituality. That technique is to remove our attachments and fascinations at whatever level they appear. This is the principle. When that principle is applied to various situations specific ascesis are generated.
An analogy might be helpful: When walking on a mountain path we are always walking. Walking is the constant as we continue on the trail. If we need to climb a cliff, we use additional tools to do that, but those additional tools are used so that we can continue walking up the mountain and reach the summit. We leave everything else behind on this journey on the mountain path. We only take with us that which is essential, which is not very much. And even that ‘not very much’ falls away in the presence of eternity.
4. Canon
In 2003 the Daoist Association of China published a new edition of the Daoist Canon. The Association decided it was time for a new Daoist Canon because in the centuries since the last canon was published archeology has uncovered ancient Daoist works that were either lost, or the discoveries revealed earlier, or alternative, editions of works that are still extant. The Association wanted to include these in their new edition as well as modern works that had not previously been part of the canon. It was quite a project.
I saw a youtube presentation about this new Daoist Canon and it reminded me of when I visited Haeinsa, Haein Temple, which houses the Korean Buddhist Canon. This Canon is carved into over 80,000 woodblocks; each woodblock is a large page and there are about 6,500 books carved in this manner. The project began in 1011 and lasted to 1087. I have a vivid memory of the huge storage facility that was designed to hold the large woodblocks on shelves; row after endless row of shelves.
The amount of energy, dedication, and perseverance it took to produce something like this is very impressive. It reflects the what the society thought of as significant.
This got me to thinking about what a Platonist Canon would look like. I sometimes think that Thomas Taylor had something like a Platonist Canon in mind when Taylor produced his translations. It was a significant effort.
I think if there were a Platonist Canon it might be helpful to follow some of the principles that were used in the formation of the latest Daoist Canon. For example, the Daoist Canon includes works from a wide range of Daoist traditions. In a similar way, a Platonist Canon could be open to a wide range of interpretations of Platonism.
In the case of Daoism and Buddhism, these are both religions and so there is a strong religious motivation to generate a Canon of Scriptures. (And as an aside, I wonder if there is something about Chinese culture (the Korean Tripitaka is an expanded version of a Chinese Buddhist Canon) that inclines towards this kind of activity; a kind of reverence for the written word.) I tend to think of Platonism as a religion, but that view is a decided minority because in the West we have separated religion and philosophy into mutually exclusive categories. We, as a culture, don’t think of Platonism as a path to the divine. Because of this there is likely less inclination for the formation of a Platonist Canon than there is for Buddhism and Daoism. But I still enjoy thinking about such a project, what it would include, and how it would be done.
5. Tragedy and Transcendence
My Buddhist teacher, Seung Sahn, once told me when we were in Korea, that about 15% of monastics had become monks or nuns due to some tragedy in their lives. He pointed out a monk to me and told me that he had come home after work only to find his home in ashes and his family gone. He than became a monk, realizing the tragic nature of the material realm.
But I think there needs to be something else involved. I think for a lot of people, experiencing such a tragedy will lead to bitterness and/or nihilism rather than a turn to a spiritually focused life. There needs to be some sense that transcendence is possible. That is not a given in our culture because in our culture the idea of the transcendental is systematically denied. I suspect that this is unique in history. I’m not saying that nihilists did not exist in times past. But the culture as a whole was not nihilistic. Before modernity the possibility of transcendence as presented in various spiritual traditions was available to those who had experienced tragedy in their lives. Today it is different; the possibility of transcendence is hidden away, like a relic in a museum. That is another, broader, level of tragedy.
No comments:
Post a Comment